Tutorials

One of the advantages of having a VPS account is that you can play Web host to some of your friends. Currently, four people other than my wife and I have six different sites on my VPS, most of them small blogs or static sites. They’re not a burden by any stretch, at least no […]

A content delivery network (CDN) can speed up your site. But a CDN may not be that useful if you want to serve a lot of media. Is it better to upgrade your hosting account or use a file host? [Note: This article is from 2009, so some of the prices are now out of […]

There is little doubt that green is the new black, especially in tech circles. Everyone wants to be as environmentally friendly as possible and that includes web hosts. Web hosts are some of the largest energy consumers and biggest polluters in the tech word. Hundreds, if not thousands of high-end servers left on 24/7 in […]

Looking to save money on hosting? Fortunately, you don’t have to sacrifice quality. Sometimes, you can bag discounts with a little bit of planning and a lot of research. Here are five tactics to use. 1. Look for Hosting Discount Coupons Before signing up for a new host, check and see if you can find […]

If you have your own server then you are most likely entrusting it to a server provider or co-location company. They are responsible for ensuring the underlying network infrastructure is working, and whilst they might also ensure your server is responding to ping, they will probably not be looking at what is running on the […]

James Rolfe – better known as the Angry Video Game Nerd – recently had a bit of a hosting problem. His host couldn’t keep up with demand, so he decided to host his website at home. Home hosting can work in some cases – but is it right for everyone? Home Hosting: What You Need […]

As a client of a web hosting company, you have responsibilities and duties. A bad client can harm other customers on by causing reliability problems and other issues that detract from their experience. How can you tell if you are a bad hosting client? Here are five warning signs to watch out for. 1. You […]

Last month, I did a side-by-side review of five of the big uptime monitoring services. Since then, Pingdom announced a major change that changes the game completely. Pingdom (previously a paid-only service, now offers free accounts. Most amazing is that the free accounts come with 20 free SMS alerts (more can be added if desired) […]

Web servers are a prime target for hackers, and running a site requires a certain amount of vigilance. If you have a managed hosting solution, much of the security work is handled for you. But there are still some security blunders to avoid. 1. File Permissions If you install scripts on your server, you probably […]

Shopping for a new hosting plan? You may have to make the choice between managed and unmanaged hosting. Most of us start out hosting our websites on shared servers, so we don’t come across the word ‘management’ at all. The term only really applies once we start looking for VPS hosting, semi-dedicated hosting or dedicated […]

Downtime is damaging for any website. Sometimes, you may be totally unaware that your site is offline. Monitoring services are your 24/7 watchdog against outages. They can you via email, text message or instant message when your site becomes unreachable. But how do they stack up in terms of price or features? [Note: This article […]

Before you sign up for a host, we always recommend you check hosting reviews. These reviews give you a good idea of how real users rate a host. But what if you skipped checking ratings and used other methods of evaluation? There are three other tests you might have performed, but they could be less […]

No matter what kind of hosting account you’ve got, it’s prone to failure. Some hosts don’t take backups. Even if the fault’s at their end, your data could be permanently lost. It’s your responsibility to ensure you have a backup plan in place. How to Prepare For a Hosting Disaster A few simple changes can […]

In a previous article, we looked at the benefits of a content delivery network (CDN). There are plenty of reasons to use one. But how do you know which is best for your blog? Sometimes the guidance offered by providers can be quite alien to the hosting customers they’re trying to attract. In this article, we […]

Everyone paying for web hosting has one aim in mind: maximise speed, improve uptime and minimise cost. Finding the right host for your site helps. So does picking a good company to host with. But you still have to optimise your content. A content delivery network (CDN) can greatly increase the speed and reliability of […]