Shared Web Hosting is seen as the starting point when entering the web hosting world; this is because the environment in which you are hosted is shared with many other people, and in most cases the resources such as disk space and bandwidth that have been assigned to your account are normally low. Shared Hosting is normally the ideal starting point for people with little or no experience of web hosting, since they are always assigned a control panel which they can use to control their website, also within many control panels, features such as script auto-installers are available to help you get started with your website. If your website is of the utmost importance, and is mission critical for you or your business then you should never have it hosted within a shared environment; this is because shared web hosting servers can be easily bought down by outside attackers if a ‘rogue’ website or account is hosted on the server concerned - in this type of situation you should always consider purchasing a VPS or a dedicated server since dedicated resources will be assigned to you within these environments, and the dedicated environment itself is not shared with anybody else.

Where to Start

Since your shared web hosting package might be your first web hosting package completely, there are several different places that you could consider starting from. If you have bought your package to just mess around with it, then you could try out the auto-script installer that should be included in your control panel (e.g. this is called Fantastico if you are using the cPanel control panel); these types of installers install many different applications within your web environment which you can have a play about with, if you are completely new to the concept of website design and hosting then this is perfect for you since the installer will take care of setting the necessary file permissions and the setup of the database for you. You might have signed up, but not have a website ready to host yet; in this case you could try out the different email functions on your control panel and setup emails for your website domain to get you going - you could also try out other different functions of the control panel and the more technical side of things such as the setting up and the modifying of databases under your website or account. If you are completely new, and are waiting for the completion of your website and don’t know what email accounts you need to setup yet, you could simply just have a browse around the control panel itself so that you know where everything is enabling you to carry out future tasks with ease; also, if you know the whereabouts of everything within the control panel, you are able to use your knowledge to help and guide others who might face problems.

Making the Most of Your Resources

Although you might have a good amount of resources within your account, it is highly unlikely that you’ll ever use them effectively. To make the most of them you should always consider hosting multiple domains under your account, and spreading the resources evenly across each domain; this would ensure that each site is getting a fair amount of bandwidth and disk space, for example. If one site uses more bandwidth than another site, you should always consider spacing both the disk space and bandwidth in proportion to the size of the site and the amount of visitors each site receives as well the amount of disk space each site uses - a factor which is normally dependent on the website’s content and infrastructure. If you have a hosting account which has both a large amount of disk space and bandwidth, then you could consider hosting a website such as an image sharing website; this is because you could easily use up all of the disk space by hosting visitor’s images and photos, and then use up a good amount of the bandwidth assigned to your account by streaming them - in other words allowing people to link back to them so that others are allowed to view them. Something else that you could so with an account which has a large amount of resources is host website for friends and family for a cost; by doing this you are able to make an income out of your package, and if you end up hosting enough websites, could upgrade to a reseller package or even a VPS server at a later date. For a package with a small amount of resources, you could host a small HTML based site which makes minimal use of images; by doing this you are able to establish an online presence, but one which only leaves a small foot print within your hosting resources.

Choosing the Appropriate Shared Hosting Package

When choosing a shared hosting package, you should only consider packages which suit your needs as well as ones which are within your price range. You might see packages advertised around with high specifications which seem unreal, for example a host might be offering 100GB disk space and 50tb bandwidth; the truth is that they are unreal. Web hosts which offer these types of packages are known as ‘overselling hosts’; this is because the packages that they have on offer are inviable both financially and server wise. In most cases, if all of a company’s users used up all their resources then the host would most likely go bust since there just wouldn’t be the capacity on the server to cope with such a demand. If you choose a package with not enough resources, then you could end up using your resources too quickly and having your site suspended because it has no bandwidth, or if you go for a package with too many resources then you could end up paying for what you don’t really need. If you run a small site which doesn’t receive many visitors, then you can easily go with a low end shared hosting package; however, if your site doesn’t receive many visitors but is very ‘image heavy’ then you should always go with a mid-range package for the reason that images can take up both alot of bandwidth and disk space. Your site might not be image heavy, but might receive alot of users and might be based on a database; in this case you should choose a high end package because the more visitors you receive, the more bandwidth you will need - also, databases can use up alot of disk space although that is dependent on the type of data held.

The Benefits of Shared Hosting

If you are new to the concept of web hosting, then a shared hosting package is perfect for you. Most packages, such as those provided by eUKhost, are feature packed allowing beginners to become extremely knowledgeable of everything related to their hosting account. Your account is normally hosted within a secure and controlled environment which means you are able to test new things out without disrupting others which may be hosted on the same server as you. The server maintenance and support is normally taken care of by your host meaning that you can use your account safe knowing that if anything does go wrong with the server you are unlikely to have caused it, and that it will most likely be dealt with by your host at the earliest possible convenience.

Conclusion

By making the most of the resources which are assigned to your shared hosting account, you are able to maximize the possibilities open to you - and in some cases are even able to make a return on the purchase of your package. Shared hosting is perfect for you if you are new to the concept of web hosting since you are in a shared and controlled environment meaning that you are not able to cause any actions which are likely to disrupt fellow customers on the same server as you. Also, the maintenance of the server is not something which falls back to you, giving you one less thing to worry about.

As long as your host allows you to, you can use a custom php.ini file within your Linux shared hosting environment. By utilizing .htaccess you are able to create a custom fileset which you can then use to disable and enable PHP functions as per your wish within your website; this can be done site-wide or directory-wide. This can be helpful to you if your host has disabled certain modules within the server wide php.ini file, or if there are modules which are enables but you’d rather have disabled, for example if they don’t work with a PHP application which you have installed on your website. As long as you are able to within your shared hosting environment, the deployment of a custom php.ini file is relatively easy if the following steps are followed.

Deploying a Custom PHP.ini File

First off, you need to create a .htaccess file; you might already have one within your hosting environment, if so you can easily edit. In either case, you will need to add the following line to the .htaccess to enable Apache to find the custom php.ini file:

SetEnv PHPRC /path/to/custom/php.ini

You will then need to create the custom php.ini file itself within your site - the file can actually be named anything and can have any posess any extension, if you want it to. Within this file you are able to specify whether PHP modules are enabled or disabled for your website - Apache will pick the custom php.ini file up via the use of your .htaccess file and will then apply your custom settings to your virtual environment on run time. For our example we will be disabling PHP’s use of magic quotes. To disable PHP’s use of magic quotes on run time, we will need to paste the following three lines into our custom PHP.ini file:

magic_quotes_gpc = Off
magic_quotes_runtime = Off
magic_quotes_sybase = Off

Once that has been done, as long as the .htaccess file is pointed towards the correct custom php.ini file, Apache should pick the changes up on the next run and the specified modules or settings will take effect every time your site is run as long as the appropriate files are in their correct locations. By doing this, you are able to ensure that all custom settings for your website are served on the next run, meaning that they will always be applied to it. Another example of a module being changed would be the setting of the time zone for your website through the use of a custom php.ini file, to do this we need to paste the following code into the file:

date.timezone = “America/Indianapolis”

The example shown sets the date timezone to Indiana, America; if we want to set our time zone of GMT London, we need to paste in the following code:

date.timezone = “Europe/London”

Changing the time zone can be an important change, since your website might be hosted in somewhere like America, but your audience however might be Australia - that is a vast time difference. Some applications are time/date sensitive, which means that you should ensure that you change the time zone to fit in with your audience, as it could cause confusion with both the system and your visitors if a different time from what they’re use to is displayed, or if completely the wrong day is set.

Conclusion

With the use of .htaccess you are able to use a custom php.ini at either site or directory levels within yoru website, allowing you to run your website with the appropriate settings as per your wish. This is good since it allows you to achieve things which in some cases are only achievable within a dedicated environment such as a VPS server or a dedicated server. Also, some applications only work if certain PHP settings are enabled or disabled, so this allows you to customize your environment to ensure you are able to run any type of PHP application. This sort of tweaking is something that certainly allows you to make the best out of your shared or reseller website hosting.

Every web host uses some sort of web-based billing system to ensure that their customers are able to be notified of new invoices, be able to pay them online as well have the ability to edit and update their contact information; there is a market for web host billing systems, although some companies prefer to build their own in-house solutions. Some of the current market leaders include ModernBill, ClientExec and WHMCS; all these systems contain multiple features, but all vary greatly from each other. Choosing a billing system can be a hard task because almost every system has many features and gateways built into it; however, if you work out which features you need then choosing a system can be made easy. The core features of most systems include automatic WHM account setup, automatic domain registration and invoice generation if a cron is used.

Identifying Your Needs

Identifying your needs is important when looking for a web host billing system; many systems have many features so it is important you know what you want when you are looking. Most web hosts require a billing system which has features such as a helpdesk, knowledgebase, downloads section and a client area where a client can manage things such as packages and invoices. You should also make sure that the systems you look at allow for styling and customisation so that you can change the design to match your site; if you choose to stay with the default design then clients are going to be more cautious about entering their personal details. You should also take security into consideration when choosing a system; some systems have known vulnerabilities, and warez copies are also available meaning that a hacker could easily hack a system by take advantage of one of the vulnerabilities, or by finiding a vulnerability in the package themselves; security should be something that is at the top of your list whilst looking for a billing system as you should always consider the confidentiality of the data which it will be storing. All web host billing systems come at a cost, but there are a few which are free as long as you don’t remove their coopyright notice from the footer of the pages; the following is a list of free web host billing systems:

• PHPCoin - http://www.phpcoin.com
• Adore 2.0 - http://freedownloadscenter.com/Web_Authoring/Automated_Web_Publishing_Tools/Free_Billing_Software_from_Adore.html

The following is a list of the most popular premium web host billing systems which are worth a closer look at:

• ModernBill - http://www.moderbill.com
• WHMCS - http://www.whmcs.com

The Final Choice

You should make your final choice based solely on your requirements; you don’t want to end up buying a package with not enough features, or one too feature packed you don’t know what you’re going to do with half of it. There are some features which all systems come with which can be easily waived, these include helpdesks and built-in knowledgebases; most hosts have another system for support features, such as Kayako or SupportTrio. When trying out billing systems, most web hosts only trial the administrator panel and not the client panel; your final decision should always be based on the client since you want to make sure that you keep your clients happy; it is for this reason that you should always trial the customer control panel as well to see if it is easy to use, if you find it easy to use then your clients will most likely find the same, which should keep them happy. If you are to use the built-in support solutions then you should always make sure that it is easily accessible from the client control panel; you should also ensure that you have email piping and cron jobs setup so that you are able to support your clients in a organised and respectful manner.

Reseller Hosting allows you to host multiple websites which in most cases is impossible with regular Shared Hosting; most Reseller Hosting packages also allow you to create separate sub-user accounts for each website allowing you in effect to resell your assigned web space onto your clients – reseller hosting is seen as the starting point for web hosts. Getting started with reseller hosting can be a complicated task because of the many factors which you have to take into consideration when planning your web hosting business. Most webmasters and website designers would like to setup their own hosting business because of the appeal that it could have to their existing customer base, but don’t have the necessary skills to administer a dedicated server; this is the audience which reseller hosting is designed for – it allows you to host multiple websites for multiple clients, yet the administration of the hosting server is normally taken care of by the web host itself. To get started with your reseller hosting package, you need to make sure that you have a billing package of some sort and are able to receive support requests via any form of communication, whether it be phone or email; you also need to have your own active website so that the general public are able to find your web hosting plans, and purchase them if they find that they suite their needs. Once those two pre-requisites have been checked and complete, you can get on with starting out with your reseller package.

Where to Start

In general, your main starting point for getting starting with your reseller hosting package should be organising packages so that your web space can be divided up and sold on to clients; this process can be a lengthy one since you have to take into account the space and bandwidth that you have been provided as well as the likely needs of your clients. As well as the specifications of your web hosting packages, you should think about the different features which are provided such as an auto-script installer or a statistics tracking system. You will need to remember that all your clients have different needs, and you will most likely have people coming to you asking for custom hosting quotes – this is something which you should train prepare yourself for so that you quote the right price. You will also need to work out different pricing scenarios so that at the end of the day the prices you charge are making you a profit so that you can continue to pay for your reseller package but also have some money which you can keep for yourself as well as an amount which you can then invest back into your venture so that you can upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server when the time comes; working out the pricing structure of your business is critical to your success, because setting your prices too low can result in little to no profit leaving you out of pocket and could result in the business failing altogether.

Your Website

Your website is the first thing your customers see before they order any of your hosting packages; it is for this reason that it is important that you make it look as good as possible and that you use it to show case your hosting packages and any other products or services that you wish to sell. As well as having a good looking website, you should also make sure that all the text on the site is free from spelling errors and is readable as well as grammatically correct. Your website should be the place where your TOS, AUP and privacy policy are located so that they can be viewed by both current and prospective customers. SEO and link backs should also be used to ensure that your website receives the highest Google PageRank available and to ensure that it gets ranked high within search results - both of which can lead to increased custom.

Selling Domains

Selling domains can give your web hosting business a big boost and will definitely help you to make the most out of your reseller package, the main reason being that you can make a large profit out of selling domains alone. To begin selling domains, you must first sign up with a reseller registrar such as eNom or DirectI; eNom accounts are pricey but you can normally get a free one through your web host, DirectI accounts on the other hand are completely free. Once you have chosen a reseller registrar, you should then move on to choosing a billing package which can then register the domains for you.

Billing Software

Once you have your hosting packages and prices sorted, you will need to choose a billing package so that you can bill your web hosting customers as well as manage them with ease; there are many different web host billing systems on the market so choosing the right one can be difficult. You should always make an informed choice when choosing your billing software, meaning that you should always read reviews of the software which you are thinking of buying over at forums such as Web Hosting Talk, and also on the testimonials section of the software vendor’s forums. Things which you should take into consideration when looking around for a billing package include whether the package supports the control panel you are using, the domain registrar gateway you are using and what payment gateways are supported by the package; these 3 factors are the most important because you want to make sure that you are able to interact with your server from the package so that tasks such as auto-setup will run, registering domains is also something that most billing packages do so you must make sure that the one you choose supports the domain gateway which you are planning on using. Considering the available payment gateways within the package is important as well since you want to be able to receive payments from your customers online.

Legal Documents

Any hosting business, whether it is large or small, has several publicly-viewable legal documents accessible at all times; all clients agree to them whilst signing up for a hosting plan. These documents are known as TOS (Terms of Service), AUP (Acceptable Usage Policy) and then the standard privacy policy which nearly every business carries. A TOS normally consists of the full terms of the business including issues related to billing, support and ownership of the contents of websites as well as the minimum age a customer must be; AUPs normally consist of information to how a customer may use their allocated web space, the detailed information normally covers issues such as server overloading, the hosting of illegal content, the hosting of adult content and bandwidth overages; the privacy policy should consist of a description of what information is collected when a visitor visits your website and whether the information is passed on to third parties, and if that is the case then the third parties should also be stated – the sharing of information section should also be extended to cover information which is entered on the purchase of a domain or web hosting package. It is always good practice to have the three listed legal documents in place and easily viewable by anyone because it can give the customer assurance as well as giving you as a business something to fall back on or to refer to if a customer is no longer wanted because of reasons which you should always state within your TOS and AUP.

Conclusion

With the use of affordable web hosting packages along with a website where SEO has been applied in an effective way with an appealing design, you should receive a good amount of visitors which should lead to a good amount of custom at your benefit. Also, with the implementation of reselling domains and other services you should build a solid hosting business; all of these factors added together will help you make the host of your reseller package.

cPanel and Plesk are two examples of web hosting control panels utilized by many hosting providers. Currently cPanel is only available for use on Linux operating systems, but this is set to change from 2008 when cPanel releases it’s cPanel/WHM 2008 Suite for Windows 2008; Plesk has been available for both Windows and Linux for a while now.

cPanel

cPanel is seen by many as the preferred control panel for Linux operating systems because of its quick loading times which is main due to the fact that the system is based mainly on Perl scripts meaning that it requires little to no database access at most times. cPanel also has greater capabilities than those which Plesk contains, these being that cPanel gives more server side information to the end user which they may need to use at times which can be mission critical in some cases; cPanel is also able to sort add-ons, examples of these include ‘Fantastico’ and ‘RVSkins’ - this add-on functionality also allows developers to build their own custom functions and programs for use within cPanel.

cPanel provides better reseller hosting than Plesk does. This is because cPanel has a specially created control panel included with it called WebHost Manager (WHM for short) which has been designed specifically for the purpose of reselling web hosting services. Plesk is only one control panel and makes setting up reseller account remarkably hard.

cPanel has also made migrating your hosting account to another cPanel hosting provider easy by intergrating a site migration module. This allows people to transfer all their sites and settings without loosing any data. This is something which makes cPanel stand out from the rest as it is something most control panels lack.

Plesk

Plesk is a cross platform control panel which is available in versions for both Windows and Linux. It is seen as the preferred control panel in the Windows hosting industry because its closest rival, HostingController, is remarkably unreliable and has helped give Plesk a big boost in the control panel industry. Plesk is a relatively closed operating system meaning that isn’t open for developers to create their own add-ons, however, it does have intergration for many other programs in different fields such as the ability to allow customers to use SmarterMail in the Windows version of Plesk.

Being a cross platform control panel, Plesk has the advantage over cPanel meaning that companies can run the same control panel on both panels meaning that minimum training is required for technicians as they only have to work out the operations of one control panel - this can save a business both time and money. However, on the security side of things Plesk for Windows doesn’t fair as well as it’s Linux counterpart or competitor do; there have been several holes found within the Plesk software allowing hackers to take control of a Windows server through the Plesk control panel, and the hacker can still gain access a second time after the administrator password on the server has been changed.

Conclusion

If you are after one control panel that suites all then go with Plesk - it can save you both time and money as a business and what you learn can be applied to both systems. However, if you prefer to go with the market leader and are willing to spend some time studying both options (cPanel for Linux, Plesk for Windows) then fo with cPanel as you will be able to customize it more to suite the environment in which you want your customers to control their websites.

Blogs are online journals in which people write about things - whether it be the ramblings of their life or tutorials to help others along. The word ‘blog’ comes from the word ‘weblog’, and has many words which derive from it; these words being: blogger and blogging. The word blogger is the name given to the author of the blog, and blogging the name given to the process of writing to a blog; the world blog can also refer to the process of writing to a blog. Blogs have been becoming more popular over the last 2 years, and as of July 2007 there are around 70 million active blogs on the internet. If you are looking to start your own blog, there is no time better than now to do so.

To start your own blog, there are certain factors which you need to work out before you start anything, there are:

• What you are going to blog about.
• Your intended target audience.
• The name of your blog.
• Whether you are going to use a free or paid blogging service.
• If you are going to pay for a hosting service: what blog software you are going to use.

What You Are Going to Blog About

The most important factor to consider when starting your own blog is what you are going to blog about; this is because the content of the blog will determine how successful it is: if you write about personal stuff then your blog is not going to gain much traffic, as the only visitors will probably only be friends or family; if you write posts which will help others out in any way then they are most likely to recommend your blog to others which means that it will gradually gain traffic.

Identifying Your Intended Target Audience

Once you have worked out what you are going to blog about, you need to work out who is most likely to visit your blog, and why; this is important because when you come to promoting your blog, you want to make sure that you are promoting it to the right group of people. This also plays a huge part in the amount of visitors that you receive; if it’s only family and friends visiting your blog then the amount of traffic that you receieve won’t be a huge amount, however, if people are finding and visiting your blog from web searches then they are most likely to be returning visitors, and will recommend your blog to others.

The Name of Your Blog

You can name your blog anything you want, you can even name it after yourself. However, most blog names are normally linked to the blog’s subject in some way or another. The name of your blog must be simple to say, and easy to remember; simple names are more likely to stick in people’s heads which means that if people can remember the name and address of your blog then they will most likely recommend it to others.

Using a Free or Paid Service

There are many different services which you could use to host your blog. You could use a free service which gives you a sub of their main domain name; the main downside of free blog hosting services is that they normally fill your blog with unwanted adverts. The following is a list of free blog hosting services which you can use to help get you started:

• http://www.blogger.com/ - Blogger is Google’s free blog hosting service. It is one of the most popular in the world. The adverts that they place are rather discrete and blend in with the chosen design. The address given is normally ‘blogname.blogspot.com’.
• http://www.cjb.net/ - CJB.net run a free blog hosting service along with a range of other free services. Adverts placed by them aren’t that discrete and don’t blend in with the blog. The url provided is normally ‘http://blogs.cjb.net/blogname’.
• http://www.wordpress.com/ - Witth Wordpress.com you can create your own instance of the popular open source WordPress blog system, but hosted on their servers. The url provided is normally ‘blogname.wordpress.com’.

If you are not tempted to use a free blog hosting service, then you buy a cheap web hosting package with a web host along with a domain. With paid blog/hosting services you have full control of your blog and don’t have forced advertisements displayed. You can then install one of the following free blog software packages:

• http://www.wordpress.org/ - Wordpress is the world’s most popular open source blog system.
• http://www.b2evolution.net/ - B2Evolution is another piece of popular blog software. It is different from Wordpress in the way that you are able to create multiple blogs within one installation.
• http://www.mephistoblog.com/ - Mephisto is a relatively new piece of open source blog software. It is different from both Wordpress and B2Evo since it was written in the up and coming RoR scripting language.