Using Free Webhosting Services
October 16, 2009 by Web Hosting Watch
Filed under Top 10 WebHosts
Free web hosting is the most basic web hosting service that you can obtain and there are many free hosting companies that are available on the internet. Free hosting services are usually financed by advertisements on web sites that are hosted.Free web hosting services are extremely limited. If you get a free hosting service you will have ads on the top and the bottom of your web-site and depending on what your web-site is all about, it may not fit at all but for people starting out on the internet it may be the best option if you dont have a lot of traffic or just a small site.The type of web domain that you receive when you get a free web hosting is a subdomain with the name that you pick (yourname.webhost.com) or a name in a directory (yourname.webhost.com). For example, if the name of your free host is freestanding.com,Then your web domain would be yourbusiness.freestanding.com.As stated before, if you are a novice, this is the type of account that you would probably want to get but there are some shortcomings to free web hosting if you are looking for more options on the account.First, many free hosting accounts do not support database management or what you would call in simple terms, putting data structures on the free web host side of their server. Databases are usually used for online data retrieval routines. Many of these free web hosting sites do not support a common package called mySQL which allows you to program queries into your web sites.They also dont support multiple e-mail accounts. Most free web hosting service only gives you one email account and its usually a web based internet account. The host does not include modules for Flash Programming, PHP and Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language (DHMTL).In summary, free web hosting is for novices who want an easy hosting option without many bells and whistles.Cheap Domain and Hosting Services?Lowest UK hosting
9 Free Webmaster Tools You Can Fall In Love With
August 30, 2009 by Web Hosting Watch
Filed under Webmaster Tools
Webmasters and developers don’t need a whole lot of money to spend on tools in order to work efficiently and be productive. Here is a list of free tools that help me run my everyday webmaster chores.
Notepad++
Dreamweaver and such designing tools might have become very advanced in the recent years but I am still far from satisfied with them. I prefer to do the coding with a simple text editor and be in total control of the code and not end up with unnecessarily long code. Recently I discoverd Notepad++ which has the few bells and whistles that are desired by hard core programmers such as code highlighting, Regular Expression Search/Replace support, capability to extend functionality with plugins and nice depository of contributed ones. Worth your attention.
Filezilla
If you are like me and don’t use WYSIWYG editors to do your HTML/CSS designs then you are probably need or are already using a standalone FTP client to upload/download files to and from your server. Filezilla is a free tool that I have been using for some time and has not failed me. New version 3 has lots of new features, if you are FTPing stuff often maybe you should check it out.
Xampp
XAMPP is an apache server distribution that integrates php, mysql, phpmyadmin and a bunch of other great open source projects into an easy installation. It can be used on production servers to host one’s sites but I mostly use it locally to code and test my html/css/php projects. Its easier to develop locally because there is no need to upload files on servers everytime, and only upload when your project is complete. It can be installed on Windows/Linux and lots of other platforms and if you are serious about developing you should get it installed in your computer and start playing with it.
Google Analytics
Google analytics is a free website statistics package that anyone can easily integrate into their website in a few minutes. Analytics once installed on your website it gathers data and presents you with reports about which sites your visitors come from, what country they live in, how long they stayed on your site, which pages were more popular and a whole lot of reports that you will likely not need another statistics package for you site. Those statistics are vital to the progress of any site in order to understand a site’s audience and find things that might need to be improved. You can create as many analytics accounts as you like (unlimited number of sites) as long as your total pageviews don’t exceed the monthly allowance of 5 million.
Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is not only a great browser to surf with. Firefox was build with extensibility in mind and has given developers a way to extent its functionality with add-ons. Add-ons can enhance the capabilities of Firefox and enhance the browsing experience. There is a whole lot of add-ons in the Mozilla repository that can help you with task such as bookmarking, searching, social interaction, developing, news reading, downloading to name just a few categories. Some of the following favorite tools of mine are actually Mozilla Add-ons. Its definetelly worth your attention.
SeoQuake
Seoquake is a Mozilla add-on that was created with the SEO professionals in mind. It will help you gather important statistics about a website or web page with the touch of a button. Such statistics include PageRank, indexed pages, google backlinks, Cached date etc. One can also extend it/configure it to gather other important statistics from online services not already included in it.
Firebug
Firebug is yet another Mozilla Add-on; a webmaster tool that can help you understand and debug your javascripts. It has so many bells and whistles that I am thinking of devoting a whole article on it. I will just mention the features that I use myself; Inspecting and editing HTML and CSS on the fly, debugging and running javascript on the fly, monitor network activity but there are many others. Here is a video tutorial I recently found that will help you get started with firebug debugging
Gimp
Gimp is an open source image manipulation package that can help you with photo retouching, image composition, format conversion and animations among other things. Its not likely to replace adobe photoshop any time soon but its a free alternative that has found many followers and through its plugin architecture promises to built the only image manipulation tool you will ever need. Some of its features are presented in a way of a presentation but nothing can convince you better than to actually install it and try it on your own.
Drupal
Drupal is a content management system much like wordpress but a lot more extensible. Wordpress is a good CMS (content management system) for simple sites and even though it has many plugins to extend its capabilities I would not recommend building anything other than a blog with it. Drupal on the other hand was built in such a way to be extensible. A programmer digging in its code will appreciate its flexibility, code quality, and modular design and simplicity for writing a new module. Drupal is was build from the ground up a tool for building community sites, and as a result it has many features to support such sites but it is also capable for supporting standard websites. Its learning curve is quite steep but it pays off in the end. Worth more than a look from you.
Godaddy Dot Com: My Favorite Web Hosting Service
May 24, 2009 by Web Hosting Watch
Filed under WebHost Reviews
GoDaddy.com states that they offer world-class hosting as good as or better than most hosting companies offer, but I think they are referring more to their state-of-the-art, World Class Data Center rather than to their actual web hosting products and customer services they offer. A web host can have all the technological bells and whistles in the world backing them, but if a host service doesn’t have solid customer support and a few key features, that host will fall short of the competition. GoDaddy.com does offer some very attractive and affordable packages. I have personally been using Godaddy.com for around 2 years now. I have not to this day encountered any difficulties using their web hosting and domain name registering services. Some of their features described in more detail below. Before that though, I just want to say that I personally recommend them as they are still somewhere in the top 10 web hosting providers list.
Feature Set:
GoDaddy is not a bad value, but lacks a lot of features that competitors offer for virtually the same price. GoDaddy offers 5 GB of disk space storage, 500 email accounts, 250 GB monthly data transfer, and limited on languages/platform support. Many other web hosting providers offer more for less. All plans with GoDaddy include these features: World Class Data Center, online set-up and instant account activation, FrontPage Extensions, 24/7 FTP Access, best-of-breed routers, firewalls and servers; Web Site Statistics, free setup, daily backups, 24/7 monitoring, 24×7 email, telephone and web-based tech support, 24/7 physical security and secure SSL Certificates (an optional extra) GoDaddy places their emphasis more on technology than on customer support.
Customer Service:
Customer Service is what separates great hosts from the mediocre. GoDaddy offers an array of support options, such as Email Support, Telephone Support, an FAQ Section on their Web Site and access to various user guides. Unfortunately, there are a few items that are definite drawbacks with their Customer Service. If you use their Email Support, you will not get a response for 10 to 12 hours. Too long for most customers! GoDaddy even posts this right on their Web Site. I wouldn’t be boasting about a 10 to 12 hour response time. If you don’t want to wait for an email, there phone support is a little better. The average waiting period we experienced was 30 minutes. This is still too long of a wait and much longer than the wait we experienced with other web hosting companies that we reviewed. The tech I finally did speak with was not well-informed about the products or services offered and not eager to help. Unfortunately, Go Daddy does not offer live chat, a valuable customer service tool that allows you to receive instant help online.
Control Panel:
GoDaddy is not too difficult to use, even without a technical background. Most functions within the Account Management tool are similar to other control panels, but GoDaddy.com’s panel lacks certain features that competitors offer. On the plus side, with GoDaddy.com you can perform account management tasks, email management, web security, database setup and management, manage statistic tools and install FrontPage Extensions (without these supported by your host, you can’t take advantage of all the perks FrontPage offers).
Summary:
Overall, GoDaddy has some catching up to do with the competition. Other than that, they are basically easy to use, reliable, and I definitely recommend them. Read this post for more information on web hosting services.