Kaiser Webs Solution Blog

Web Design, Web Hosting, SEO and Online Business

Overview
The amount of space where a website’s data and applications are stored is called the disk space. This is found inside the server. Everyone who is being hosted by a particular provider all have their own alloted space in the server hard disk. Basically, if you want more space, you have to cough up the dough.

Normally, a simplae site will only need about 1mb of space or less. Eventually though, more and more information and data are placed on the website and it starts to grow. When this happens, you will start to need more disk space.

That is why it is important to know how much space you require. Here are the reasons why:

Determine minimum amount of disk space for the web hosting plan they choose:

Anticipate for future needs, i.e. choose a web host
Establish web hosting budget

Disk Space and Bandwidth

Disk space is always an important aspect when deciding on a hosting plan or provider. When estimating your disk space requirements, remember to estimate your current as well as your future requirements. Always look for a plan that is flexible enough to give you the disk space that you need when you need it. Furthermore, you should always relate your disk space and bandwidth because one is useless without the other. Look at it this way, even if your site had enough disk space, it still won’t load fast if the bandwidth can’t handle all the information passing through it.

A few things you can do if you want to speed up your site minus paying for the extra space is to make your site simple. Cut down on the audio streaming and flash presentations. Compress your graphics for web applications before using them to save space. Overall, this will not only be beneficial for you but for your visitors as well, especially those with slow internet connections.

Managing Disk Space Requirements

Providers follow a policy regarding disk space usage and more especially when too much is being used. Always check this policy with your provider to make sure you’re getting a good deal. If your disk space is almost over the limit, make the decision to either upgrade the space or delete some files.

Monitoring Disk Space Usage

Your provider should provide a control panel that you can use to check up on your disk space atatus as well as other concerns regarding your plan and website. This is will you an up-to-the-minute status report which will be very helpful.

Cheaper Disk Space

Normally, a web page would need about 40-50kb of space but then obviously gets bigger with more data and information added. Thankfully though, with the current surge in technology, the price of hard disk space seems to have taken a plunge. But remember, don’t think that just because it has gotten cheaper that you will forget learning and understanding disk space management. It is always better to know what you are doing than just second-guessing.

PHP hosting is one of the types of hosting available to you, if you are looking for a hosting service. In this type of hosting, the PHP programming language is used. You will be able to find highly affordable hosting plans from many PHP hosts on the web. PHP is an acronym for Hypertext Preprocessor, although in the past it used to be known as Personal Home Page. The commands in PHP are written in HTML The execution of the PHP programming language is being carried out server side, and this programming language for web development is also of the open source type. Not only is PHP a highly valuable programming language for many web developers, it is also very dynamic, especially with its wide-range of applications.

Due to the compatibility of PHP with MySQL, this programming language is often a foremost choice for many web developers and programmers. MySQL is one of the most well-known online databases. It can automate sites easily, without much complex procedures. If you choose to get PHP hosting, you will be able to run it not only in Windows servers but in Unix servers as well. The fact that it can be run on both servers is a big part as to why hosting with PHP is being opted for by many website owners and web developers. Moreover, PHP is considered as an open source language in web development, making it one of the most widely-used programming languages available today.

Among the advantages of PHP hosting are speed and reliability. However, you need to find a good host for your PHP-run website. Since this type of hosting is efficient and reliable, it is often used for many dynamic websites, such as e-commerce sites. This programming language can also manage sophisticated and more advanced applications on the web since it is highly reliable.

Many programmers who are already adept at Perl and C programming languages can easily take on PHP. This is why most web hosting providers offer PHP hosting services, especially when it comes to hosting for e-commerce websites. In fact, many of those who are seeking out e-commerce hosting plans should check first if the hosting is executed through PHP. Hosting through PHP is well-suited with almost all of the databases in existence nowadays. Thus, there is no complexity involved when interfacing PHP with these databases. If you are planning to build a functional and dynamic e-commerce site, with database information fully supported by the hosting plan, you can go for PHP hosting services.

When it comes to finding a host for your website, not only should you consider the requirements of your online business. You have to look into the needs of your consumers as well. With the type of hosting provided by PHP, you can customize your site easily, so you can cater to the needs to your clients better. If you are looking for a reliable hosting type which is considered efficient and secure by website owners and programmers alike, you will do best with PHP hosting.

Many companies nowadays want clients to host their sites with them. They offer some great deals, for a standard price. However oversea companies commonly are cheaper for the same services. This is largely because of the fact that living costs may be lower, so cheaper electricity to power servers and the person managing the server may not add loads to the price as he will only add a fraction as he gets food etc cheaper so he needs less money! But in this article we will look at some of the flaws and then will look at the benefits.

#1.Support
Have you noticed that people get up and go to sleep at different times, depending on where they live? That is the problem here! People may not be awake when you try to call them, despite maybe offering 24/7 support. This can be annoying as if your site is down, they won’t fix it for several hours or more!

#2.Location
Because you are hosting is India or Pakistan, your site will be slower to the majority of people you maybe targeting. Because the physical location of a server affects how fast a server is to load the page for you. Most people target the United States of America or Europe and so having a server not near either of them is silly!

#3.Because of bad Support there can be a lot of downtime
If people are asleep when the server breaks and goes down then the person won’t even notice until they get up. This will mean a lot more downtime than American companies like Host Gator, who have true 24/7 support and monitor your server.

Now we get onto the benefits of hosting offshore.

#1.The Price
Lets face it, we like to pay as little as we can for as much as possible. And so this is a very good upside to offshore hosting as why pay more for the same thing? Yet we like to earn as much as possible! But in this economy it comes in handy if you can save money on your hosting bill along with other things people are doing to save on money!

#2.Location
Yes I mentioned it up there in the downsides, but it can be helpful if the people you are trying to market to live in India or another offshore country. Remember however, if you live in Europe or America then expect to experience slow loading time to edit your site. So it is a double edged sword.

#3.Quality of Support
They need to try and help you a lot as you are not one of one million clients. No you are probably one of fifty or a hundred clients, so your business is crucial to them. They won’t be mean or annoying on support as if they cause you to terminate your contract with them, they have lost a bit of money, albeit a higher percentage than a huge hosting company who would have lost a lot less percentage of money if you go. They may not even notice you have gone!

Where you host your sites is important. You don’t want to be on a host that is too small for your needs, yet spending too much and getting a load of space, bandwidth and CPU that you don’t need.

Shared Hosting is the first hosting type we shall be reviewing today. This is the cheapest option and is great for small sites. You commonly get unlimited space and bandwidth or near to that at least. However you cannot host a site like YouTube on it as you are limited by CPU and RAM usage as well which will shut you off before you run out of the allotted space and bandwidth

As the name implies you ’share’ the server with other people, up to around 50 or 100 on a paid host, but if you are on a free host maybe 10,000 other sites. The main problem is all it takes is one person who may not know about memory limitations on shared hosting, who runs a memory intensive script and the whole server crashes, causing everyone’s site to be down.

Next is VPS hosting. This is better and thus more expensive than shared hosting, yet dedicated hosting is faster however dedicated hosting is far more expensive. VPS hosting starts at around $45 a month, which may seem a lot compared to shared hosting $5-10 a month.

You however can do what you want with it. Think of it one part of a computer. You have an eighth of the memory, CPU, hard drive and bandwidth. This allows you to use much more memory etc and the space is guaranteed space compared to shared hosting, where overselling is too common and if you use jut 10% of the space you get banned.

Finally we reach Dedicated hosting! This is where your sites and your sites only are hosted. You can do whatever you want on these as you have no limitations and if your site won’t go down from some idiot installing a memory intensive script such as a proxy or the rapid leech script (A script that downloads files from RapidShare to the server, and then provides a link to download from-this is how Rapidshare Premium link Generators Work).

This is only recommended for those that host very large files such as a flash arcade or a wallpaper site. This is very expensive and usually start at around $150 a month for the basic ones and around $300 a month for the expensive top of the range servers. You can do whatever you want with these servers, provided it is legal. You could run 10 or 20 proxies and nobody would shut your account down!

As you can see the difference between the plans are huge, however I personally advise everyone to go with shared hosting and work their way up. You shouldn’t pay for things you don’t need! Hosting is cheaper now than it has ever been and you can find loads of great hosts offering great priced shared hosting for around $5 a month easily.