I told him that there are many web hosting out there in the market today. It all depends on one’s needs and requirements. For some, they would go for lower cost while some would go for one which provides unlimited bandwith.

So his next question to me, where is a good place to start looking for web hosting plans? And if possible, it should show him a list of top web hosting plans so that he could easily compare them side by side.

Without hesitating, I recommended to him a site that’s at the back of my head called FindMyHosting.com

FindMyHosting.com allows one to easily search and compare web hosting plans.

On the home page, you can view the top ten web hosting plan which is updated on a daily basis.

The comprehensive search feature also allows one to search for plans based on:

• Country
• Monthly price
• Platform – Linux or Windows
• Disk space
• Bandwidth per month

Another good feature of FindMyHosting.com is the directory of hostings. These directories are simply a group of similar featured web hosting plans. Say you’re only interested to look for plans which supports PHP and MySql capabilities, then clicking on the PHP/MySQL Web Hosting Plans shows you exactly those that are capable of doing so. Some of the directories includes

• PHP / MySQL Web Hosting Plans
• JSP Web Hosting Plans
• Adult Web Hosting Plans

For a complete list do check out  FindMyHosting.com!

As for my friend, he ended up going for JustHost.com simply because it was ranked #1 on the top 10 list. Fast, simple and easy. Sometimes people just need some simple recommendations to make some decisions.

If you’re wondering what’s my great idea about, well… ok I’ll let you all know. The site will allow people to exchange reviews. Nowadays there are many sites which allows you to purchase reviews. Just to name a few: ReviewMe, SponsoredPosts, PayPerPost. The thing about these sites, they will take a cut from the reviews you wrote as a publisher, which also equates to paying more for a review purchase. So the big idea is all about a marketplace for publishers to exchange reviews. I can’t foresee how successful the site can become but this sort of site is worth going to.

So the next step is to get a good domain name. We all know the importance of a good and catchy domain name that people can easily mention and remember. The first domain name that I could think of is… ReviewExchange.com! I wonder if it’s still available. So I headed over to Gossimer’s domain services.

I quickly did a search for ReviewExchange to see if it’s still available.

Shucks!!! The domain name is no longer available! But wait, Gossimer’s domain services recommended a list of other domain names. One good name that caught my attention was…. ReviewBarter.com!

Isn’t it smart? The domain services engine managed to recommend an even better domain name for me. So the next time you need to search for a good domain name, head over to Gossimer’s domain services. The price of $8.88 a year is also quite affordable.

Besides domain services, Gossimer also has web hosting plans starting from $5.95 a month which has many features including Fantastico. Their servers are are on OC3 connections at Hurricane Datacenter. In case anything goes wrong, all plans also come with 24 hour support. For sure you can expect your site to be hosted on a fast and reliable center.

Sponsored Post this is!

• To start a new thread at one of the forums.
• In the forum, describe a little background about yourself.
• Specify the domain name to host. No subdomains or free subdomain names are allowed. So yes, you’re gonna have to purchase your own domain name first.
• Describe what your ruby on rails application is about.
• Your ROR app has to be production ready, not half way in development stage.

The hosting details:

• No Ads
• 100 MB space
• 1 GB bandwidth monthly
• cPanel/Fantastico
• Shell access
• Ruby on Rails 1.0.0
• Pre-installed Gems
• FastCGI Support (Typo blog is not allowed using FastCGI)
• PHP5 & Perl
• Unlimited MySQL 4.1.x Databases
• Unlimited subdomain, ftp accounts, email accounts

If the above hosting specs are not sufficient for your ROR app, be sure to also check out Pratik’s other offer for Free Rails Hosting + Free Domain! I think it’s quite a good deal since you get to host for free with Dreamhost, a quite popular and reliable web hosting company. I’ll probably go with this deal if I’m not already subscribed with Bluehost which also offers ruby on rails hosting. The best part about Bluehost is that they allow me to host up to 6 domains on one account for only $6.95 a month which is also equivalent to only about $1.20 for one domain. So I’m planning to purchase another domain name soon to host my very own rails app (currently under development) on Bluehost.

Canadian Shared Web Hosting Packages:

CA Basic Plan $3.95/mo – included 500 MB Hosting Space, 10 GB Monthly Bandwidth

CA Value Plan $8.95/mo – included 125GB of Hosting Space, 1000 GB Monthly Bandwidth

CA Pro Plan $15.95/mo – included 300GB of Hosting Space, 3500 GB Monthly Bandwidth.

On this CA Pro Plan is where you can host your Ruby on Rails application. This is the package to go for because of the high bandwidth and lots of storage space provided. A dedicated IP which comes with the package also ensures that traffic to your application is fast and not shared with other sites or applications.

Most hosting packages include cPanel along with Fantastico installation scripts.

Besides shared hostings, they also offer VPS (Virtual Private Servers) which allows you to share a dedicated server with others. This method of hosting ensure that you have full root access to reboot your server like a real dedicated server. Great for office intranet applications or as a staging server to your organization’s critical applications.

Two strengths of this hosting company is the 24/7 Tech Support and the 30 days money back guarantee. Head over to Canadian Web Hosting today!

The above is a sponsored post.
 

Most people don’t have a personal web page or a business web site. But there may come a day when you feel the urge to promote a product or invention or just share your thoughts with the online world. There are thousands of web hosts to choose from out there. But the question is how do you go about choosing the right one for you and do it without getting ripped off in the process. Most people feel they do not have enough knowledge or experience to get a web page or web site up on the Internet. So they are afraid to even try. This article will help those of you who want to but are either too afraid or don’t know how to get started.

You have a choice of using free hosting which gives you a small amount of space and bandwidth on their domain. Or you can have your own domain name and pay a small fee for this privilege. If you decide to use a free host provider then your site address will be something like: YourName.HostDomainName.com or HostDomainName.com/YourName. The free services also force you to have advertisements on your website to pay for your free service. Some people prefer not to have advertisements on their sites and they want to have their own personal and/or business domain name. For instance www.YourName.com or YourName.US or .org or .net. If this is what you want then you want to find the web host that is right for you.

First you should make a short list of things you want to do on your web site and make a list of things you want from your potential web host. As far as things you want to do on your site, that is a personal choice and I cannot tell you what you can and cannot do. But here is a small list of things that you can setup and do easily on a personal web site:

* Personal Website

* Picture Gallery

* Discussion Forums

* Blogs

* E-Commerce Store and Shopping Cart

* Guest Books

* Mailing Lists

* Polls and Surveys

* Content Management

* Contact Management

* Auction Site (Similar to E-Bay)

* Website Building Tools

* FAQ’s

* Wiki’s

And much much more! The good news is that most of the software required to do all of the above is included with most web hosting packages at no extra cost. The bad news is that if you don’t have much computer know how it can be difficult to install and start running the software mentioned above. The better news is that there are web hosts out there that can and will help you as little or as much as you need to get going on the Internet.

Now you need to make a list of things you want from your potential web host. Don’t worry, I’ll explain some of these in more detail:

* Good server uptime guarantee (You should insist on 99.7% or more uptime)

* 24/7 Technical Support via e-mail

* An address and phone where you can call if you need to talk to a real person

* A host that specializes in supporting New Web Users Called Newbies

* A realistic requirement of how much disk space and bandwidth you really need

* Which Operating System do you want/need

* No requirement to buy your domain name from the web host

A good web host will publish their Terms of Service (TOS) on their website. This TOS should include an uptime guarantee and refund policy. It should also include the hosts’ requirement to provide you with 24/7 support via e-mail as a minimum. Some better hosts also provide online chat and a phone number to call with technical problems. Part of their support for your billing and customer support needs should be e-mail and a telephone number. Be wary of hosts that do not provide an alternate way of contact other than e-mail. It is hard to find a host that will truly support a newbie but they can be found. Some newbie’s will require a minimum amount hand holding and some will require a walk through and some will require that the host do most everything for them. Expect to pay extra for a host that will design and manage your web site for you. You need to know how much disk space and bandwidth you will require. Most people don’t really know how much they need or want and will over estimate their requirements sometimes by 100 fold. Most web sites use between 50MB and 100MB. And most E-Commerce store sites use less than 1,000MB (or 1GB) of storage. I suggest if you are just starting out you should start with an account with at least 200MB and no more than 500MB for a personal web page and at least 1 GB for a small business site and at least 2GB for an online store. Most people see ads from web hosts with extremely large amounts of each or unlimited amounts at ridiculously low prices. Stay away from these hosts. Hosts like this tend to sell more space and bandwidth than they have and this will cause you to have poor uptime of your website, a lot of sending in support tickets for problems and the frustration of having to deal with these problems. Plus you will not get the support you are truly looking for because they have to cut back somewhere in order to stay in business. Speaking of which it would be a shame to find your web site down and the host ran off with your money just because you didn’t want to pay a little extra. To choose which Operating System you want is easy. You have a basic choice of two, Linux/Unix and Windows. If you have no preference or special needs go with Linux. Linux provides for more inexpensive hosting packages and more hosts use Linux so hosts are easier to find. Too many people make the mistake of buying their domain name from their web host. Do not do this under any condition. Some unscrupulous web hosts will hold your domain name hostage if you want to leave them of if you don’t want to pay their rate hikes. Always buy your domain name from a separate domain name registrar.

Go about e-mailing all the hosts you feel have the requirements you are looking with your list of questions. Then make your decision based on their answers, grammar or the replies and the timeliness of their replies.

David Brilliant owns and operates The Kona Forum http://konaforum.com, An online resource for people who want to visit and/or move to Kona and the Big Island of Hawaii. He also owns Da Kine Website Design http://dakinewebdesign.com and Brilliant Host http://brillianthost.com providing premier website design and web hosting services. You can e-mail him through any of these websites.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Brilliant

The site which I’m talking about is Awardspace.com http://www.awardspace.com

You must be wondering, since the site provides free web hosting, what ever it offers must be at it’s minimum. Check out the hosting plan and judge for yourself if the hosting services are any good

• 200MB Disk Space
• 5GB Monthly Traffic
• 2 Domains Hosting
• 5 Subdomains
• Free DNS Server
• PHP, Perl/CGI-BIN
• 1 MySQL Database
• FTP/FrontPage Access
• 5 POP3/IMAP E-mails
• Instant Account Setup
• Web-based File Manager
• Easy-to-use Control Panel
• Reliable RAID Backups
• GRID Hosting Platform
• Super Fast Servers
• Reliable Data Center
• 99.8% Uptime Guarantee
• 24×7 Network Monitoring
• Forum Support
• NO BANNER ADS
• Fully Upgradeable

-> ALL THIS TOTALLY FREE!

Awardspace.com is an ideal web hosting for small business, for personal websites, phpbb forums, mambo cms and wordpress. When it’s free, I can’t ask for more. Besides hosting the site WangInternet.com, another site I have is also hosted with Awardspace -> Software for Enterprise site.

Now, you must be getting excited and wondering what’s the catch. Why is Awardspace giving away free web hosting with no pop up advertisements? How do they make money? The answer is simple, through Google Adsense (one of the many ways)! Awardspace basically takes the opportunity to display their own pages when there is a broken link on your site. Take one example from my site:

Accurate Link
http://malaysiaweddings.awardspace.com/

Broken Link
http://malaysiaweddings.awardspace.com/content/MalaysiaWeddingCards-BROKEN-LINK.htm

You will see that clicking on the Broken Link, you are redirected to Awardspace’s site. The site has an article with Google Adsense ads around it. Smart eh! I wonder how’s their daily earnings, since there are usually many brokens links on sites.

I hope you find this post useful, especially if you’re looking for free web hosting. Another one that I could quickly recommend is 50webs.com (http://www.50webs.com). Some of my other sites are hosted with them. Example, CCTV Camera 101, Wedding Planning, Beauty Tips, Stress Management

*Updated August 21, 2006
After hosting WangInternet.com on Awardspace for nearly 6 months, there are several downsides and will highlight them here.
1. Database server can go down occasionally. In within these 6 months, it has gone down twice but for less than 24 hours. If your site is really critical don’t host with them for free. If it’s for fun, then no prob.
2. Awardspace blocks certain ISPs from accessing their server because of constant DOS (Denial of service) attacks. Not sure who would want to do this but blocking certain ISPs ensure that their free servers don’t go down frequently. You could lose some traffic because of this.
3. There are some affiliates which cannot be hosted with Awardspace! However, Google Adsense is allowed. Phew…
4. You must make sure to back up your WordPress or PHPBB or Mambo database constantly.

Other than the items above, Awardspace is the free web hosting company to go for. It’s free, thus it’s not perfect, and I’m ok with it so far! Hope you find this post useful, then head to awardspace.com to host your very first WordPress Blog!

Updated Nov 3, 2006
This site is no longer hosted with Awardspace since I bought a web hosting package with BlueHost.com which allows me to host 6 domains on one account. Contact me to obtain a rebate up to $60 when you sign up for an account with Bluehost.com.