Choosing a web hosting company can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Out of all the web hosting companies that bombard you with advertisements you may only consider a few. The first step in making sure that you pick the perfect company to handle your web hosting is to dig into their reputation.

Search for a web hosting company through a major search engine, as well as their own company website appearing, you may also find customer reviews online too so make sure that you choose a web hosting company who seems to offer highly regarded solutions. The next phase is looking at and comparing what hosting packages the different web hosting companies can offer you.

What do you really need and what do you want?

Companies that offer quality web hosting services, such as CWCS Managed Hosting, will offer you different plans and packages ranging in price according to the features they offer you. The more basic the web hosting plan the cheaper it will be. Now you need to assess what you really need from your web hosting and what you want.

Depending on your business budget you may need to cut back on what you want in favour of what you need. Take the time to compare the packages on offer.

If you jump at the first package you like you may miss out on another that offer you the same for less. Remember though, price is important, but quality services are the most important, which is why CWCS are renowned for offering superb customer services as well as comprehensive web hosting packages.

It is often hard to predict what will happen with internet based technology over the course of 12 months, many different factors come in to play and innovative thinking can rarely have its results reliably forecast. However, one thing that makes the whole process easier is knowing the current market forces and how they will effect the products that web hosts put on offer.

At the moment, there is a lot of talk about Cloud hosting. This is likely to be a big influence on the way many large and small companies host their services, however this is not a new technology and its unlikely to have as huge an impact as some marketing directors would like. The low level benefits of cloud are the low initial start up costs for small businesses, especially if they are using a cloud to run applications and rent licenses based on usage rather then a one off fee. Another is the uptime that a clustered system can offer. However the shared usage and potential security holes in a cloud system may discourage the some consumers from hosting all their applications on line as opposed to keeping them securely on their own network which they can monitor themselves, its also often cheaper to buy a dedicated server and use its resources as much as you want without having exact usage measured and charged.

Another key factor in 2009 will be power. With energy prices increasing and servers requiring more and more power, hosting providers will look to ways to reduce overall power usage using techniques like virtualisation on servers or using hardware or software that is more energy efficient. Colocation customers may also find that power usage is more closely monitored and limited. Consumers will also demand more energy powering their servers to come from renewable sources so more innovation by hosts and data centre operatives may lead to new technologies coming into play as the year goes on.

These days everyone talks about the uniqueness of every single human being on this planet. It has reached the point where being unique has become stereotypical. But the truth is that we really are all unique and different from the next person. The same applies to websites and businesses. Even two businesses offering the same products and services are not exactly the same.

That is why some websites opt for specific kinds of web hosting to meet their particular needs. You need to know what your individual needs are when making your web hosting decisions. CWCS Managed Hosting is one of the top companies in the UK that offer you value.

Decisions, decisions

Your website is unique, just like your business and thus needs web hosting to suit its specific needs and goals. The last thing you want is to spend money on your web hosting only to have it yield poor results because you made the wrong choice. You need to know if you need a shared or dedicated server. If you have a dedicated server are you also going to opt for managed web hosting?

You need to find a web host that offers you the customer services, technical support and hosting features that you need in order to reach your website goals. You also need to weigh up the pros and cons of each package carefully so that you both stay within your designated budget and don’t spend money on features you do not need.

A reputable company such as CWCS Managed Hosting will expertly advise you which hosting package is best suited to address all your web hosting demands.

As with every other aspect of a business, the specific web hosting package needed totally depends on size of the business and the amount of web traffic handled daily. An entry-level business will be comfortable with shared hosting services, until it expands. Dedicated servers are for big business as well as intensive web traffic, such as experienced by gaming sites.

The amount of disk space and bandwidth needed will determine when it is time to upgrade to dedicated servers. It is logical that dedicated servers will be more costly as it incorporates many extra features, plus larger disk space and far more bandwidth.

With dedicated servers there are choices as well. Depending on exactly what the business needs are, a company could opt for entry-level package dedicated servers or the more costly larger dedicated servers.

Growing Needs

CWCS Managed Hosting offers both managed and unmanaged hosting packages within the dedicated servers range. Managed hosting is often cheaper than having to maintain an in-house IT professional to manage and maintain the dedicated servers of a business. CWCS offer additional services for all dedicated servers such as weekly and daily backup. On offer is additional port monitoring, firewalls and total server management.

A client also has options such as web development and security maintenance available from CWCS. The only disadvantage with dedicated servers that concern clients is the higher costs but the extra investment is worth it for the reliability and more.

The cost is offset by the huge benefits for the client’s business when the needs have outgrown shared server capabilities. There are also the cost-effective benefits of managed hosting instead of the expenses involved with maintaining and troubleshooting dedicated servers.

All the preparation and efforts from staff here at CWCS truly paid off with a massive interest at the Internet World 2009 exhibition in Earls Court 2, London.

From 28 April until 30 April 2009, CWCS Managed Hosting was exhibiting at the event with a large tailored display stand, communicating our products and services to the general public.

We had fruit smoothies being made with each flavour representing the services we provide. If you had chance to meet us during the event, the names of our smoothies will be familiar to you.
Immuniser – Security
Energising – Support
Supercharged – Services
Refresh – Reliability

Give your Hosting a Boost…

The idea of using fruits linked with the services we provide turned out to be a massive success. For those of you who didn’t have chance to come visit us at the stall, have a look at some of the photos taken during the exhibition

Thousands of visitors and professionals attended the event, with so many people gathered in one place, all with the same interests, the exhibition held a truly amazing atmosphere.

Our merchandise included mouse mat and pen giveaways along with a CWCS Managed Hosting brochure documenting the services we offer with a whole profile of information on CWCS.

What’s Next?

Did you attend the event? Walk away with a CWCS goodie bag, and now want to know what we can do to help give your website a boost? You can contact Laura or Paul by calling us directly on 0845 203 1000.

CWCS Managed Hosting has some big plans for later this year; feel free to contact us directly to find out more…
http://www.cwcs.co.uk

The world of web hosting for businesses and companies is split into two huge categories. As a business, the most common options are to either shared web hosting or dedicated hosting. The big difference is apparent in the titles of the two groups. Shared hosting means that you share a server with many other websites, and both kinds of hosting have their good points.

Dedicated servers and web hosting means that you have a server dedicated to your exclusive use. Although there are a host of other differences between the two you can easily make a decision based on pros and cons.

Ask advice

At first glance a dedicated web hosting service seems an attractive option. You get an entire server all to yourself and you needn’t worry about other websites as with a shared server. You don’t have to worry about any harmful scripts from anyone else’s website either. Another perk is that you need not worry about server overload. A dedicated server can handle much higher traffic than a shared server and a much greater bandwidth allowance. The negative aspect of dedicated web hosting is the higher costs when compared to shared hosting, but is the most suitable option for medium to large businesses.

Small and medium businesses can often not afford a dedicated server. Depending on the features you want and what is on offer you could end up paying through your neck for dedicated web hosting. If you are doing fine on a shared server and do not need total dedication then it is just a waste of money. If you are not coping with sharing then dedication is what you need.

If you are unsure what web hosting is best, approach a top-notch company such as CWCS Managed Hosting. We will advise you on which web hosting plan is best suited to you.

There are many reasons why you might want to change a web host, but it is usually quite straight forward to do. Provide you prepare before you cancel your existing package and ensure that there is sufficient overlap between the current host and the new host accounts being cancelled and setup, then there is no reason why you can’t move hosts with zero downtime.

Firstly ensure you have the most recent copy of your website files. Losing your site files because you cancel your old plan and your old web host delete the files earlier then expected can be a major cause of problems when moving. You should always make sure you have a copy of your files anyway for disaster recovery purposes, but especially if you are moving hosts. We would recommend backing up the files before contacting your current provider to cancel.

The second stage is to get an idea of the contract length or grace period for your cancellation so you know when is best to setup your new host. A week overlap between the two accounts should be a minimum. Once you have reached the overlap period you can start uploading your site to your new host and testing to make sure it works.

Most hosts provide a preview facility, however if they don’t you can follow the guide that follows and this will allow you to accurately preview your site files to ensure they work correctly.

http://support.cwcs.co.uk/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=55

Finally, when you are happy to transfer the domain over, take a last backup of any files that might have changed and then swap the domains Name servers (if you manage the domain yourself or you have a designated domain manager you are sticking with) or initiate a registrar transfer/ IPS tag transfer of your domain to your new provider. Once the domain is transferred, request the new provider update the name servers if they haven’t automatically and allow 24 hours for the site to switch to the new host.

We are pleased to announce that phpBB is now a feature on our Linux Web Hosting plans. It is available as a one-click option within our the Supreme Control Panel. phpBB is a popular open source forum software, it allows you to create a community/forum on your web site. For more information or assistance on installing it on your web site, please contact our 24/7 technical support team.

Having an email address using your domain looks a lot more professional than using a free email service or an Internet service providers. These days it’s also very easy to do. Often the hardest part is picking the correct domain name. You need to find a name that’s memorable, personal to you our your company and most importantly still available. Web hosts such as CWCS Managed Hosting have search pages which can help search through the many top level domains to see if ‘your domain’ is available.

Once the domain name is purchased you have two main choices. You can either purchase web hosting, which comes with email hosting or you can get an email forwarding service.

The first option gives you more control over the email address(es) you have and what they do. You’ll be able to create many different email addresses and be able to pick up your email directly from the web host or forward them to another email address. You’ll often be able to add auto-responders, aliases and may be even a mailing list. The added bonus of this option is that you can add a web site in the future, even if it’s just a holding page with your contact details.

A mail forwarding service is much simpler. The most basic, forwarding all of your domain’s email to an email address you already have. Some services allow you to specify which email addresses you wish to forward. However you are usually fairly limited in what can do and the control you have.

Open source, in terms of hosting web based applications, loosely means the application has been developed for the wider web community without license fees or charges and can be used by anyone on the internet. There are usually some clauses in the open license which prevent the code being resold or used to generate revenue or passed off as someone else’s work, but for the purpose of this article, so long as you use this for non-profit reasons as part of your site, open source software can be fairly cheap and easy to use.

It is important to remember though that due to the low cost of open source software, it is widely used and on some occasions the criminal side of the internet look for security holes and ways to get into peoples installations of this software to exploit it. So when choosing an open source application, remember that you may well need to update it at any given point in the future and ensure you are signed up to any relevant mailing list or check the distributors site regularly.

Another not worthy factor is that open source software often requires some technical knowledge to install. A great many applications will come with an install process; however there is no standard within the industry and some vary wildly in the amount of work you need to do to get them working on your web hosting.

Companies like CWCS on our Linux shared server packages allow you to get round this by offering a “one click install” of some of the most popular open source programs like phpBB, wordpress and Joomla. As a result you can install these applications anywhere on your website within seconds and immediately concentrate on adding content to them. This helps make these applications a lot more accessible and indeed the application developers themselves are constantly looking to improve the installation sections of their programs.