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September 12, 2013
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I Use Virtual Server Hosting… I’m In The Cloud, Right?

| Web Development, Web Hosting | No Comments

So often — too often — the terms “VPS” and “cloud hosting” get used synonymously. A cloud host can offer virtual private servers (VPS), but owning a VPS does not mean the company gets cloud hosting. Confused? The difference is important for business and is as follows.

Virtual Private Servers

I Use Virtual Server Hosting… I’m In The Cloud, Right?VPS emulates a dedicated server instead of hosting on one physical server. The VPS is sandboxed from other VPS customers on the same physical machine. But unlike shared hosting, VPS offers a way for businesses to control the way its server functions. For instance, web services typically need customized settings on the server. With shared hosting, the host rarely changes configurations for one customer, especially if it might affect any other sites hosted on the same server. All sites share the same resources, so web hosts keep shared servers standard across the board.

VPS eliminates the problem of one site affecting another, so the business is given complete control over the server interface. If the business crashes its VPS, it does not affect any other customers’ VPS services.

VPS has several additional advantages over shared hosting, even if it’s not true cloud hosting. First, VPS gives the webmaster better control over server functionality, configurations and added software. If the business has licenses for software such as SQL Server, the webmaster can install the software without going through the cloud host provider. If the webmaster needs to add some Windows server functionality, log in to the console and change the settings. The webmaster can even reboot the machine at-will and won’t affect other customers.

Cloud Hosting

Although cloud hosting has some similarities to basic shared hosting, it’s more powerful and gives businesses a way to serve millions of web requests without ever harming performance. Cloud hosting also offers the power of data centers and content delivery networks. Combined, these resources have a more powerful backend for enterprise businesses with big data and software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps.

Cloud hosting also offers infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). IaaS is a service for businesses that need more server resources, storage devices, hardware or networking components. This cloud service is generally used when the business needs more resources but doesn’t have the real estate or IT personnel to handle massive additions to the network.

VPS Versus Cloud Hosting

VPS is a more expensive route than shared hosting, but it offers a dedicated server environment without the dedicated server costs. Small businesses and individual site owners get the most benefits from VPS. VPS is more personalized, and the webmaster can host several sites on the same virtual interface. Bloggers with high traffic spikes, small ecommerce stores or businesses with several websites can take advantage of VPS.

Cloud hosting is beneficial when the business needs more power. The business only pays for the resources used, but it’s generally more expensive because of the large data centers and web farms available. Load balancers control traffic to the business’ website, so the website never falters. Cloud hosting offers 100% uptime, so businesses that rely on website revenue at all hours of the day benefit from cloud hosting.

IaaS and SaaS are also cloud-hosted benefits. Small web services can run on VPS, but VPS is still one server, so it cannot handle the massive amounts of traffic that cloud hosting can manage. VPS is a solution for small businesses or personal websites, but when the business depends on performance, cloud hosting is a solution that has endless scalable resources.

This is a guest post by Jennifer Marsh. Jennifer is a software developer, programmer and technology writer and occasionally blogs for open cloud company Rackspace Hosting.

September 2, 2013

Web Hosting Companies Are Offering Discounts All Around

| Web Hosting | No Comments

For webmasters and entrepreneurs looking for qualitative albeit affordable web hosting August month end have brought some very good news. Web hosting companies all around are offering huge discounts making the web hosting much more affordable for the webmasters and entrepreneurs.

Web Hosting CompaniesDuring the week that ended on August 30th this year, some of the leading web hosting companies of the world announced cut off on their web hosting charges. For instance; CrocWeb has reduced its web hosting charges by 20%. On the other hand TurnKey Internet has come up with announcement of 50% off now. Among others Signetique and DemoWolf are also offering 20% cut off in their hosting offering.

A leading trade journal speaks about the discount offers in the following words. “There are three plans to choose from, ranging from $6.95 per month to $26,95 per month.”

Most of the companies are also providing coupon codes for availing the discount offers. For instance; Crocweb customers need to enter coupon code “ssdcrocweb” to avail the 20% discount offer from the web hosting company.

However customers looking for highest discount will usually turn their heads towards the offer of Turnkey Internet that is offering as much as 50% discount on their web hosting charges. This could be particularly useful for small and medium enterprises and websites for whom budgetary constraints are a major stumbling block on the way of effective web hosting process.

There is a reason behind Turnkey Internet offering such hefty discounts for its customers. It is providing such discounts on its email and newsletter services with the objective of celebrating its latest EPA ENERGY STAR certified data center. The company offers various plans and each plan has now a discounted price.

For instance; the silver plan offered by the web hosting company that gives three thousand contacts and unlimited emails is now priced at $4.75 per month that is reduced by 50% from its original price of $9 per month. Customer looking for such discounts need to use the coupon code “EARTH50”.

Good and bad follows each other in natural sequences and here also there is one bad news for the customers looking for discount. The bad news is that you can avail only one discount per customer and not more. Thus there is no chance of availing numerous discounts with restriction.

In similar manner the Gold Plan of the web hosting company that was priced at $39 will now cost only $20; nearly half the original price. This and the discount in the Platinum Plan that will now cost only $50 against the price of $99 can be both availed with the coupon code EARTH75. You also cannot combine one discount with another to compound your benefits.

Singapore based web hosting provider Signetique that offers 20% discount but the major benefit of availing such discount is that the discount applies to both Linux as well as Hyper-V plans. All VPS plans offered by them include a free Parallels Plesk control panel for as many as 10 domains.

September 2, 2013

Small Business Can Benefit By Use of WordPress Plugins

| Web Design | No Comments

Small businesses can benefit by use of WordPress plugins. Especially those that have been introduced by developers in 2013 could come up very useful for small and medium enterprises.

Basically a free content management system, wordpress does not carry with it the tags of expensive plug ins. In result; it can substantially benefit small business websites on the web world. Some of the new plug ins can be especially beneficial for this type of websites.

WordPress PluginsAccording to some experts; there are at least six such wordpress plug ins that can help promote small websites and bring them up in contention with their larger counterparts.

There are no two opinions about the use of wordpress for content management system for start-ups as well as the small business websites. Some of the reasons that have contributed to such preference for wordpress are multiple.

First of all; it is free content management system and quite easy to use. An open source management tool; it is also supported by extensive documentation as well as numerous how to do guides. As one of the leading website designer points out;
“Very little technical or design knowledge is required to create a website using WordPress, and new businesses don’t need to worry about allocating a sizeable chunk of their start-up budget to pay for an expensive web designer.”

Apart from all these there is also another major advantage of the use of wordpress content management system. It is the plugin architecture that makes wordpress popular with users and designers alike. One will be astonished to learn that not one or two but there are as many as 22,000 different plugins that have already been developed for WordPress and many of them have been developed with a view to developing the small business websites.

You can have a look at some of the latest wordpress plugins developed with a view to assist small businesses.

Small businesses can substantially benefit from the use of social networks as they offer huge potential with their extensive database of online community. Many of these people are potential customers and they can be converted into real and ultimately loyal customers. Though small; wordpress Sharebar social sharing plugin provides links to various social media networks including Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter among others. With tweets and shares are extremely effective tools to boost website traffic.

A similar; and often ignored; wordpress plugin is the wordpress super cache that has the potential of dramatically improving the performance of any website. Task that is performed by this particular tool is conversion of website contents into static HTML files instead of displaying the PHP scripts that require a lot of resources. With economy introduced in use of resources the loading time will be much faster and it will also help reduction of bandwidth usage.

But the most convenient feature that comes with wordpress plugins is that they provide high levels of security. Small websites cannot use many resources to manage the security aspects. Hence the wordpress plugin use helps them to take care of the security aspects without involving huge expenses.

It however depends on the small website owners recognizing the correct use of plugins to get the best benefits.

September 2, 2013

SEO And SEM Facilities For Small and Medium Enterprises Are Now Available in Toronto

| SEO & SEM | No Comments

Toronto is one of the busiest business centers not only in Canada but also in the entire world. Thousands of people visit the city everyday in the premier city of Canada for various business endeavors.

In face of growing competitions for market supremacy, most small and medium enterprises find it extremely difficult to stay in the contention owing to the fact that their resources are much limited in comparison to their larger counterparts.

SEO And SEM Facilities For Small and Medium Enterprises Are Now Available in TorontoGood news for small and medium business enterprises is that it will be now possible for them to effectively counter the moves of the large and multinational enterprises with efficient search engine optimization and search engine marketing services available in Toronto. These are extremely qualitative and efficient services and the best part of it is that they are also affordable and will not financially bleed the small and medium enterprises financially white.

One of the leading experts presents the scenario in the following words. “Small and medium business owners often wonder if they can compete with the big players when it comes to online marketing and website visibility.”

What he says is a true depiction of the field realities. The fact is quite well known that larger enterprises spend huge sums in promoting their business. In the process they resort to various ploys like occupying the advertisement slots in the electronic media at prime times and raising big hoardings and public places of importance, online bill boards and banners are some of the ways they ensure it.

But the expenses that are incurred by these larger enterprises on a couple of aspects that has major bearing on business promotion of all types are the search engine marketing and search engine optimization popularly known as SEM and SEO respectively.

Reaching out to the vast online community with these two methods and following them intensely, they were easily able to keep the small and medium enterprises out of the way and thumped on them what is called brand recognition. In the process these large enterprises not only created web recognition but kept such recognition consistently present in the minds of the potential customers.

There is still some glimmer of hope for the small and medium enterprises. Growing power of Internet is opening up various avenues of marketing and finally it has also opened up some sources for the small and medium business owners.

As one of the prominent online experts points out the new trend; “Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social Media Integration (SMI), and Content Marketing are some of the many ways in which small businesses can create a strong online presence for their brands.”

Importance of Toronto in the commercial world is indicated by the fact that a survey conducted by U.K based Banker Magazine shows that it is second most important center among commercial hubs in entire North America.

Naturally; the city offers vast opportunities for all types of businessmen; even small and medium ones. According to experts; information technology has now opened up the vistas for the small and medium businesses to tap the vast potential available.