Kaiser Webs Solution Blog

Web Design, Web Hosting, SEO and Online Business

The Overview

Expressed in percentile, downtime refers to the condition when a server is down or unavailable. The opposite of uptime. A downtime is usually an indicator that something in the server or the system went wrong or crashed.

Scheduled and Unscheduled Downtime

As the name says, a scheduled downtime is an announced downtime that is aimed at maintenance. Nobody will be surprised when the system or server shuts down. This is also good because it shows that the providers understand what the customers need and are trying to improve the system.

An unscheduled downtime is unannounced and can happen anytime, which can be a cause for concern. This usually happens when a network or a software in the infrastructure fails or crashes.

A leading candidate for unscheduled downtime would be a software failure. It is usually the operating system or one of the applications.

Effects of Downtime on E-commerce

The severe impact is usually felt by businesses that have dedicated e-commerce. This impact will be felt both directly and indirectly. A website is important not only for direct sales but to other services as well such as product launches, customer service and after sales. Looses have been pegged by experts to be at around $1000 an hour. Imagine that! But there are damages worse than this which cannot immediately be felt because it is indirect but will slowly reveal itself in time.

Downtime Monitoring System

Out of 100%, most providers assure of a 99% uptime guarantee, leaving a 1% chance for a downtime. Not bad, right? Well, it depends. If you translate the 1% into the number of hours in a year, it represents 7.2 hours of downtime. Remember, this 1% only refers to server downtime and not the entire system which is an entirely different story.

If your company does online business, it would be best to transfer it in-house. A drawback would probably be the cost as this might be a tad too expensive to swallow.

A good thing to have is a monitoring system that will track your downtime. Usually third party, they make sure that your site is running optimal and that you are getting the best value for your money. Another advantage from this would be the trust and confidence that you gain from your customers when you place the monitoring system’s link in your site. It will show the customers that you are serious about quality and service and we know that that is what they want.

This is an arrangement where an account is bought in bulk by a third party or otherwise called the web host reseller from a principal web host provider. The web host reseller then resells the alloted hard disk space to customers in an attempt to gain profit.

Going further ahead, this is a form of business wherein an account which is usually a product or a service is bought by a reseller from another company, repackaged with more added value and then sold to other companies under the reseller’s account. The adding of more value to the product is a way of enticing the potential customers to purchase from the reseller rather than buying from the pricipal company. These added value are usually extras in the form of website designs, technical support or maintenance.

Web design firms, web developers or a systems integrators are companies or people who usually double as a web host reseller. Apart from the services they render, the hosting becomes an added value for their company. Without requiring too much technical knowhow, web host reselling is one of the better ways to start a web hosting company.

The reseller can basically focus on business as the technical stuff such as the maintenance of the infrastructure is taken care of by the datacenter operator while configurations, upgrades and server security are the responsibility of the dedicated server owner. Resellers are even able to look less like a reseller since they are capable of customizing control panels and name servers.

Before you start with your own blog or website, whether you use a registered domain or a third party domain – the next step that you need to do is choose the best blog hosting package to go with your requirements.

You need to decide on what type of package should you choose from web hosting package. There are three main choices that you can make your mind up. Though, there are other few choices out there but we will focus to the main choices.

Free Web Hosting. If you tend to blog alone for fun or just putting websites together as part of your hobbies or yet for a charitable cause where maintaining costs very low are essential, well then this is a good choice that will work for you possibly. Though there are hitches of free blog hosting, to mention; you will most likely have to live with the adverts of your host on your blog or website. Also, you will be sharing with so many other people and brawling for inadequate resources. You could also experience so many down times and the technical support is legally responsible to be fictional. The domain name of your host will also form part of your domain name, e.g.yourdomain.hostname.com. But as long as none of these hitches matter to you then free hosting is a good choice for you.
Shared Web Hosting. This is common for forum hosting these days. Where it is the cheapest among the two options which you can use dedicated domain and you can have your own email address to your domain name for example: ‘yourname@yourdomain.com’. However in shared web hosting you will not have your own server because you will be sharing a server with other domains, for this reason this choice has been referred to as being cheaper to some extent. Generally speaking this is a good choice for several people because it is very reasonably priced with choices for different hosting packages varying from single domain to reseller web hosting. So for your convenience, you must select the right hosting company so you will have a trouble free and well-supported hosting expediently.

Dedicated Web Hosting. At this choice, you will be paying the most for, but as a matter of fact if your site is all about multimedia with heavy data driven requirements or maybe you are into big eCommerce then you do not need this choice. As the name suggests, this choice means you will have your own server and no sharing with other domains, but you will definitely enjoy the singleness of this web hosting package over other packages as you pay for the privilege.

There are three levels in web hosting which are differentiated depending on the needs and budget of the client. You can rent a whole server just to yourself or share a server with others to save on money. You may also decide to just buy the server and just pay for the maintenance and connection fees.

Shared Hosting (Virtual Hosting) – Of the three choices, this is the most affordable. This is the most common of the three as well as over 95% of websites use this method. Depending on the speed of the ISP, a typical shared host can accommodate up to a thousand sites with no problems whatsoever.

Dedicated Server (Managed Hosting) – This is when a company decides to rent a whole server just for themselves. Although the company uses the server alone, they still do not own it and are still liable to pay rent fees aside from the maintenance.

Server Co-location – This is the last level where a company decides to purchase their own server. The term means basically having the server co-located together with other servers in a datacenter. The company then pays for the connection and the maintenance of the server.

For hosts looking towards Cheap Reseller Hosting, your search ends at Host Nexus. This company offers lucrative business opportunities and can help you in being a Web Hosting provider to other webmasters. It is reputed and can aid you in providing great services to your client with minimum effort on a daily basis.

There are certain critical features that have made Host Nexus to be at a position, on which it is, at this moment:

Bandwidth

They offer considerable bandwidth when you compared their services to others offering reseller hosting. At a minimal fee, you can use up to 45 GB of bandwidth.

Memory Usage

Similar to other top resellers, Host Nexus offers more than enough space at an affordable rate to a large count of clients, irrespective of what is there on the websites. You can get up to 7 GB of memory at a meager pay on Host Nexus.

Customer Service

This is what makes Host Nexus far better than other resellers on the web. They have a lively customer care service agents, who are always on the move in replying to the queries of a client and getting their issues resolved in very little time.

Host Nexus can be your ticket to getting an excellent passive income. So, what are you waiting for? Cheap reseller hosting services are only a click away.

A scheduled downtime is a common event among among web hosting providers and is the type that is anticipated. This usually happens when there are scheduled maintenance to be done and since this is anticipated, customers won’t be surprised to find their site down. They will also appreciate the fact that the maintenance is aimed at improving the overall quality of the service that they are paying for.

An unscheduled downtime on the other hand can be a cause for concern as there are no prior announcements made. This usually happens when there are network failures within the infrastructure or serious software failure in the system.

Based on previous incidents, software failure is the leading culprit of an unscheduled downtime. It is usually caused by either the operating system or one or more of the applications crashing.

Web hosting providers usually offer a 99% uptime guarantee for their servers. It’s like indirectly saying that you should expect a 1% chance of downtime. To appreciate the percentile measure of reliability, we will translate this in the equivalent number of hours per year. Basically, the 1% chance of downtime translates into 7.2 hours of downtime a year. You think you can handle it? Also keep in mind that this 1% only refers to the server downtime and not the entire system.

Companies that do online business are advised to move their operations in-house. A major drawback to this though would be felt on the financial side as the infrastructure can cost a lot.

Having a couple of monitoring reports available for the downtime of their web host would probably be the next best thing to have. There are advantages to having a third party monitor your downtime. This will guarantee that your investment is money well-spent and that your business will be running smoothly. Also, by having their links placed on the site, it assures the customers of quality service.

There are necessary issues to be resolved when deciding whether to purchase a managed or an unmanaged server. Things like geography, terms of service, backbone providers and lastly, the power supply back ups.

If you only have one server, you may be better off getting a managed server than an unmanaged one for the fact that the cost you have to pay just to hire competent personnel will be telling. You will need to hire people to maintain and monitor your server 24/7. If you decide not to hire, you face the risk of downtime if problems are not solved fast.

The other option, a managed server will free your company from all the responsibilities that come with having a server. Having only one managed server will not cost a lot compared to an unmanaged server. Of course, if you have a cluster of servers, the cost will increase significantly.

See if you have the technical means to do server maintenance and monitoring. If not, you would be better off with a managed server. A managed server isn’t bad at all as it is likened to a dedicated server with many value added services included. You also get the basics plus a lot more which is like having your own team of server and database administrators 24/7.

The Overview

This is the service that is provided for most companies that sell goods or do business on the internet. This type of service is basically the same as other basic hosting plans such as shared, dedicated and the like. What makes this different is that this plan includes the added dimension of a Secure Socket Layer or SSL which companies need to secure their customers privacy.

Basically a customized web hosting service, E-commerce hosting is designed for companies that operate E-commerce websites. These companies are provided software, tools, and other solutions that are required to operate an E-commerce website by the web hosting provider. These tools allow these online merchants to create catalogs, do inventory tracking, and accept orders and secure payments for goods and services offered online.

Keep in mind however that not all hosting plans that are suitable for e-commerce are specified as such. There may be several plans to choose from which includes some or all the features that an E-commerce website would need. There are other hosts as well who operate purely on E-commerce web hosting.

Define Your Needs

It is always important to define what your website needs first before setting out to look for a host or a plan. If you have a one page site where you’re trying to sell a book, then you won’t need an extensive plan. Just enough for one page with modest traffic.

You might need a more definite amount of disk space though if you’re looking for a website that can handle a long list of items to be put on sale. The amount of disk space will be able to dictate the number of pages or sites that you can host. Under these specifications, you will be required a different kind of web hosting package or even a different web hosting provider.

The basic things your website will need would be a shopping cart, a merchant account, a payment gateway, an SSL certificate, a web analytics program, and a mailing list program to send out newsletters and announcements.

Determine the Required Tools and Services

It is important that you identify your needs from an E-commerce hosting plan. Knowing what you need will give you a good idea of what plan you need for your site. There are several questions to ask in order to know what you will require.

1.Type and cost of the services that you will be expecting from your web host
2.Preset template or custom-made template
3.Start with a basic website design and upgrade later
4.Tools, software, features of the website
5.Added services like guestbook or a blog

Common E-commerce Hosting Terms

Here is a list of the more commonly used terms in E-commerce hosting:

Shopping Carts – It is a piece of software that operates like an online store’s catalog and ordering system. It is the interface between the company’s website and its deeper infrastructure. It allows customers to pick out merchandise from the list of items sold online and purchase the merchandise.

SSL, Secure Socket Layers – This is a unique feature of ecommerce web hosting that allows you to safely carry out credit card transactions on your website.

Disk Space and Bandwidth – Your chosen hosting package must provide you with adequate bandwidth and disk space or provide you the option to upgrade when the situation requires for it.