Like most things, making a decision on which web hosting company to choose can be tough. With all the companies out there each promising to have 99% uptime, unlimited resources, and knowledgeable support, there has to be a way to cut through the jargon and make an informed decision. Right?

Picture author: Dominik Original Link

This guide will help you make that decision by showing you how to compare apples to apples. By understanding what hosting companies mean by what they say, you’ll be able to decide which hosting company and package best suits your needs.

1. Price

This is the aspect most of us will look at first when choosing a hosting provider; however, it shouldn’t be the deciding factor. When you see price differences it’s helpful to remember the old maxim that we get what we pay for. Jumping on the cheapest offer you see isn’t necessarily the best idea, especially if you rely on your site to make money. Things like non-outsourced support and quality hardware cost money, and a hosting company that charges $1.99 per month likely won’t offer these features. Take a closer look at the features that each host provides, and THEN compare prices.
Further reference(s):

• HostMonk – A site with comprehensive list of hosting companies and their packages. Use this site to compare prices of almost any web hosting companies’ hosting packages.
• WHReviews – Reliable web hosting shopping guide.

2. Area of Focus / Specialties

It’s a fact that not all web hosts are right for all different kinds of customers. Some offer great shared plans but don’t have solutions that are good for growing businesses, while others have great enterprise solutions but aren’t the right fit for someone with a small recipe blog. Look into a company’s specialty or area of expertise before you buy, and go with one that understands your particular needs as a customer. You can find reviews and recommendations on the Web, and many of these will talk about a particular company’s strengths and weaknesses.

3. Tech Specs / Limitations

Take a good, honest look at your site and figure out what you want it to do. If you’re hoping to host a blog, an e-commerce site, rich content, and videos, then you shouldn’t go with the cheapest hosting package you can find. A cheap hosting plan probably won’t have the RAM, processing power, and disk space to serve all these needs, and you’ll spend more time dealing with downtime or load issues than you would like. Look to see what you are getting with the cheap host and what features are included in the cost. Do they charge for additional domains, support, backups, etc.. Call them. Ask questions. Tell them what you envision your site’s needs to be. Just don’t take it for granted that they take your site as seriously as you do.

4. Tech Support

In most people’s opinions, this is the big one. When my site, for some unknown reason, goes down, can I call up and get a real, live person on the phone? And, more than that, can they find out what’s wrong and fix it, or at least tell me what I need to do to get my site back online? Before going with a host look into their reputation for customer support. See what kinds of different ways you can contact them when you need support – email, toll-free phone, chat, and so on. Are they staffed 24/7? Do they outsource support?
You’ll find that, like in price and technical specifications, all hosts are not equal. Some hang their hat on their support crew, and some view customer support as an afterthought. Steer clear of the latter.

5. Features / Add-Ons

This area of consideration comes down to the following question – What makes this hosting company special? What extra incentive do they provide to make hosting your site with them just a touch more attractive? Whether it’s multiple data centers, energy-saving practices, or additional features such as regular data backups or free domain privacy, hosting companies often offer more than just servers. If you see one that offers something you need or find important, that can be a good indicator that you should look into using that company.

6. Hardware

You might have to do a bit of reading (or question-asking) to get to the bottom of this one. What kind of machines does your hosting company use? Are they top-of-the-line, out-of-the-box new machines, or are they cobbled together from what might be spare parts and chicken wire? If the hosting company doesn’t say what kind of servers they use, you’ll want to ask, since hardware can affect the performance of both their servers and your site.
Further reference(s):

• Key factors in selecting Web hosting hardware

7. Customer Reviews / Satisfaction / Reputation

This is one of those factors that you’ll have to get a little creative to get the real story on. Do a Google Blog search for a particular hosting company, or look them up on Twitter – whatever you have to do to see what their current (or former) customers are saying about them. Are they easy to contact for support? What’s the average time it takes to respond to a ticket? When they find a problem with a site, what’s their course of action? This is one of the great things about social media – ask a question about a company, and you’re more likely than not to get a few answers.
Further reference(s):

• LifeHacker readers’ favourite web hosting (list)
• Web Hosting Talk – one of the largest web hosting community on the net.
• Web Hosting Jury – reviews submitted by users themselves.

8. Email Features

This is one of those areas where you might not have considered asking your host for help. If you have a spam problem, then it may be because your hosting company doesn’t provide an adequate solution to stop it. Look into or ask about your provider’s spam solutions and general email practices. No matter what they say, email isn’t dead quite yet.

9. Control Panel / User Interface

Even if you’re the least tech-savvy person in the world, there are some things – installing WordPress, setting up email, setting up FTP accounts – you should be able to do without calling your hosting company’s support line. Does your provider use cPanel or Plesk to make updates and modifications easier, or do they use some clunky interface that no one can figure out? You’ll most likely be the one working with it, so if you can’t figure it out, then that’s going to be a problem.
Further reference(s):

• Try a cPanel Demo
• Try a Plesk Demo
• cPanel vs Plesk

10. Scalability / Room to Grow

Finally, an important thing to consider about your hosting provider (and the plan you choose) is whether or not they fit into your plans for the future. In other words, what you consider adequate hosting now might not meet your needs two years from now, once you start selling your wares online and getting some good traffic to your site.
Any web-based enterprise should have its eye on growth, so if a hosting company might have difficulty accommodating that growth it could pose an issue. Does the host have VPS or Dedicated Server solutions? Will they be able to easily upgrade your account? Transferring from one host to another takes valuable time and effort which could be avoided if the company can scale their solutions for growth. As with all these factors, do some research, get some opinions, and make an informed decision.

11. Bonus

Last but not least, we’d also like to share with you some useful resources that might be handy when it comes to web hosting.

Original post at: HONGKIAT

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By Raja

A good hosting is very important to any website. They are foundation of your website, your brand and your business. Any server downtime could potentially hurt and ruin everything you’ve developed over years. If you are serious about your website, you need to make sure they are in good hands.

It is really hard to choose between web hosting companies these days especially as we are constantly overwhelmed by tempting promotions web hosting companies are throw at us. If you are looking to get a web hosting account, here is an article we figured you might take a look before getting carried away by tempting promotions and marketing gimmicks.

Here are some guides to make you a smarter consumer when it comes to getting your own web hosting account.

1. The “Free Domain” Gimmick.

A free domain certainly sounds nice, however here are some things you might need to take note of before agreeing to the free domains provided:

1. Who owns the domain? The domain is free but the hosting company retains the ownership. What it means? You’re either stuck with the company forever or you need to pay a hefty sum to buy the domain back.
2. What about the next few years of renewal? The first year is free but when you want to renew it, they’ll charge $19.95+ for renewal. That is like a 200% mark-up over the average domain name cost.

It’s better to ask questions during the research process to know who will own the domain and also make sure that the standard renewal fees costs are acceptable.

2. Separate Domain and Hosting.

Domain names don’t have to be registered at the same company. Don’t take us the wrong way, we are not implying that your current web host is not trustable; it’s more about finding a dependable and trustworthy registrar right from the start. After all, domain name is your online identity, the most expensive and irreplaceable asset while hosting services are just there to accommodate website.

You may argue for convenience sake. Of course, web-hosting companies would prefer to have your domain registered with them, as it is their other profitable revenue stream. However, it won’t be that convenient if the web hosting company decides to go down together with your domain.

3. Read That Bandwidth and Disk space Terms.

Bandwidth and disk space are terms often ignored by people shopping for a shared web hosting. You should ask yourself, “What if my website becomes really popular overnight, and draws in thousands or millions of visitors? Will I pay hefty charge for the huge data transfer?”

Of course, most websites won’t go past their bandwidth quota by high traffic alone, but if you provide some files for downloads in your website, it can potentially happen.

4. Unlimited Storage’s Catch.

Unlimited Storage seems like a great offer doesn’t it? That’s what some web hosting services want you to think. But, there is no such a thing as “Unlimited Storage”.

Unlimited Storage seems like a great offer doesn’t it? That’s what some web hosting services want you to think. But, there is no such a thing as Unlimited Storage.

Have you ever study the TOS of your web hosting service completely? If you’re like many people, you‘ll scan it and don’t read it carefully. Somewhere in the TOS there is a section that mentions CPU/Server Usage. To sum it up, basically it says if your web site uses more than a certain amount of storage, it violates the TOS and will subject to termination. Of course, it is necessary for just about every hosting service to have something like that in their Terms of Service to protect resources on their servers from improper usages. However, many web-hosting services are using the CPU/Server Usage to get around their Unlimited Storage promises.

5. Research and Find out More About Them.

One common way is to insert the following query “web_hosting_company sucks” and see what are the results returned. You’ll be surprise by the amount of consumers that had complained about their web host.

This list may give you an idea but you should not take it for granted because:

* Unfair count. Large companies tend to disappoint more people because they have more disgruntled customers, although they might be only an extremely small percentage of the overall customer base.
* Bias and subjective verdicts. Statements on personal blogs can sometimes be highly subjective, biased and influenced. Any rebuttals can potentially deleted by the site owners to give one-sided impression.
* Complaints are common. It is easier for some people to rant than to praise. In general, if a web host performs smoothly, they’re just doing their job and if it doesn’t, then it deserves all the bad reviews. That’s just what we do

6. Buy & Save with Commission Rebates or Coupons.

In an online business like web hosting service, where companies are ready to pay one year of revenue for one customer, it might be unwise to go shopping without finding for commission rebates or coupons. Of course you’ll find many hosts that don’t give out coupons, or don’t even have an affiliation program, but that doesn’t mean they’re not good hosts.

7. Do Your Own Backup.

The following question might have crossed your mind – Should we trust and rely on our hosts to backup our files? Of course not. While the host needs to perform regular backups, it can be considered unwise not to do off-site backups.

The following question might have crossed your mind – Should we trust and rely on our hosts to backup our files? Of course not. While the host needs to perform regular backups, it can be considered unwise not to do off-site backups.

8. Use a One-Time Credit Card or PayPal.

Always use PayPal for transaction if you are not an American and PayPal is the only US Dollars you have. It may be impractical, slow and costly to ask your local bank do the conversion. If you have no choice but to use your Credit Card, make sure the company is a reputable one to avoid ending up an unpleasant ride.

9. Avoid Long-Term Contracts Unless You Trust them

We’ve seen how companies giving us ridiculous discount for paying two years up-front. Unless the web host has an excellent track record, else think twice.

About Author: Raja maintains the community-powered web hosting reviews site HostWisely.com. He regularly publishes interesting articles on web hosting, web development and latest hosting deals and coupons. Read more: hongkiat

keywords: cheap domain hosting, hosting reseller plans , web hosting, hosting web, website hosting, hosting services, site hosting, webhosting, high bandwidth, reseller hosting, hosting reseller, cheap hosting, cheap virtual web hosting, domain hosting, linux hosting, dedicated hosting, web host, hosting companies, hosting cheap, windows hosting

More and more people are building blogs, and that means there are lots of blogs competing for the same eyeballs and your blog is just one of many. Try finding accurate figures on how many blogs there are and you will know it’s impossible to find a verifiable number because bloggers and their blogs come and go. Look around. It’s certainly a disheartened moment when you see blogs with quality articles that have been abandoned by their creators.

With all of these blogs out there, and all those information available at no cost, how do you make your blog stand out? No problem, just follow these tips and your blog will blossom in this new era when you stay ahead of the rest of your competitors.

1. Target your content to a specific readership

Image: via Dat Le

Unless you want to throw all of your marketing budget and precious time on people who could care less about your blog, then you must pay attention to determine the preferred audiences to whom you would like to target. Before posting any piece, determine if it hits the sweet spot of your demographic.

2. Be original, be honest

Don’t follow the herd within your sphere of interest. Followers aren’t innovators and innovation keeps readers reading. So, don’t simply spin the same old post. Take an original slant on a common topic.

Be honest. Verify your facts and provide links to additional verification. Readers trust you to be a good reporter, instructor, mentor or inspiration so keep it honest at all times.

3. Don’t be afraid of a little controversy.

Controversy sells. You and I know that. If it is a part of your business model, be prepared to engage others with differing opinions because, guaranteed, lots of readers will disagree, and you may even encounter a few trolls and haters who frequent blogs for no other purpose than to post inflammatory garbage.

4. Post as a guest blogger

Image: via AjDreams

Don’t post to just any blog within your realm. Submit your best pieces to the prestigious blogs – the ones that already have a substantial following. For example, Hongkiat.com is considered by industry insiders to be one of the best blogs for designers, marketers and freelancers. Getting one of your posts published on a top of the line blog is a great way to drive traffic to your blog where readers can find tons of content – all your archives – just waiting for a bookmark.

Of course, getting published on a well-established blog requires insight and something new to be added to the discussion. A rehash of conventional wisdom, regardless of the field of endeavor, won’t make the cut with top tier blogs within any industry or area of interest.

5. Simplify subscriptions

Don’t hide your RSS button down the page together with your Wordpress theme credit links, make them visible & clear for your reader’s eyeballs by taking the following approaches:

• Add an RSS chicklet at the top of your sidebar so visitors can easily load your posts into their RSS readers.
• Offer email subscriptions.
• Provide links to mobi feeds so readers can access new content from their cells or iPhones.
• Provide one click subscriptions using reader links to PageFlakes, Google Reader and other remote site readers. You can build a big following fast if you make it easy to find your blog again. And again, and again.

6. Social Media Marketing

The expansion of social media and the evolution of multi-generational media apps are only going to pick up steam. Social media sites have taken off, providing bloggers with an arsenal of tools based on the guerrilla-marketing axiom: Use the resources of others to your advantage.

A few years back, Twitter didn’t exist. Today, not only is it ubiquitous, it spawned a whole new level of web innovation and interactivity.

Follow the rules & open accounts at Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter. Every time you make a new post to your blog, let your readers know about it by posting to these popular sites. Update your status with interesting & latest news that fascinates your readers.

7. Create different profiles for each social media site

On LinkedIn, you want to be all about business. On Facebook, show a little of your personality – the carbon-based life form behind the blog. On Twitter, shine the spotlight on your blog. Each profile should be designed to show a different facet of you and your expertise.

8. Don’t oversell. Teach, too

If you post to social media sites all day long, flogging your latest blog post, it won’t be long before your Facebook friends hit the hide button next to your name. It can’t be all selling and no sizzle. Instead, post information on a new blog piece, but also post news from other sites that you think will benefit your readers. Know when to stop pushing for a larger readership and when to start giving away information to drive more readers to your blog.

9. Long tail keywords get you found

Image: via Wiki

If you maintain a book review blog, a broad keyword like books will keep you buried in the backwash of Google’s SERPs. Instead, narrow the focus of a search engine search through the use of terms and phrases, broadly referred to as long tail keywords.

So, instead of using “books” as a primary keyword, use a long-tail keyword like “independent book reviews” or “book reviews of current bestsellers.” Sure, not as many people will use these long tails when conducting a search but those who do will discover your blog at the top of page 1. And that’s just where you want to be.

10. Optimize your blog – Both for readers & bots

Cut the clutter of 23 affiliate banners, animated adverts and other distractions. Remember, your site should be attractive to human sensibilities.

Indeed, it’s important to look good to readers who follow you. It’s just as important to look good to search engine spiders. Conduct keyword research using tools like Google’s keyword generator that provides keywords used by actual Google users over the past 30 days. Place those keywords in headlines, sub heads and a few of them in your blog posts.

If you don’t know much about SEO, grab yourself a cup of coffee & start reading the comprehensive list of search engine ranking factor provided by Seomoz.

The pace of innovation is only going to increase in this new decade so, if you’re standing still you’re losing ground to competitor bloggers. Stay current, use all the new tools and follow all the new rules.

Your blog space is your real estate. It has value. Make the most of it.

This post is written by Edward Khoo for HONGKIAT , a tech enthusiast based in Malaysia.

visit original post: HONGKIAT

original article: link hongkiat

If you surf Facebook on daily basis or occasionally, chances are you’re already familiar with regular stuffs like add/delete friends, update statuses, walls and profile, add and explore pages & applications, etc, but there’s more..

This week we want to cover some interesting things you can do on (or with) Facebook; inclusive of tricks that are not documented or unknown to many, as well as tips to stay connected better with your friends. Without further ado, here’s 20 Facebook Tips/Tricks You Might Not Know. If you have interesting tips/tricks related to Facebook, please feel free to share in the comment box below.

1. How to Place Facebook Chat On Firefox Sidebar

   If you are using Firefox, you can place the Facebook Chat at the sidebar.

   

2. How to Download Facebook Photo Albums

   FacePAD: Facebook Photo Album Downloader allows you to download your friends’ facebook albums, Events albums, and Group Albums, en masse, with the click of a button.

   

3. How to Share Flickr Photos to Facebook

   Flickr2Facebook is an unofficial Flickr to Facebook uploader(bookmarklet) which allows you upload photos to Facebook from Flickr.

   

4. How to Update Facebook without Using Facebook

   hellotxt and Ping.fm both introduced features that let Facebook administrators update Facebook Pages.

   

5. How to Schedule Facebook Messages

   Sendible lets you schedule Facebook messages ahead of time so you can send messages to your friends, customers or colleagues in the future.

   

6. How to "Friend" Someone on Facebook & Hide It From Your Status Updates

   A short tutorial on Makeuseof to guide you how to hide Facebook status updates and keep that fact confined to your closer friends.

   

7. How to Create a Photo Collage Using Pictures of Your Facebook Friends

   Click on Friends tab. Proceed to More tab. From "Choose an option" dropdown, choose any of the dashes "—" . Your Facebook friends collage is right on your computer screen.

   

8. How to Know When Facebook Friends Secretly Delete or Block You

   X-Friends is a unique tool for tracking friends that disappear from Facebook.

   

9. How to Display Selected Pictures Only on your Facebook Profile Page

   A little-known feature in Facebook that lets you decide who shows up in that Friends box. Click that "edit" pencil in your Friends box and type the names of your best friends in the box that says "Always show these friends"

   

10. How to Remove Facebook Advertisements

    This Greasemonkey script – Facebook: Cleaner removes many of the annoying ads and updates that unavoidably appear on your Facebook pages.

    

11. How to Syncs Photos of Facebook Friends with Contacts in Microsoft Outlook

    OutSync is a free Windows application that syncs photos of your Facebook friends with matching contacts in Microsoft Outlook. It allows you to select which contacts are updated. So you can update all contacts at once or just a few at a time.

    

12. How to Display Facebook Statuses on Wordpress Blog

    The following method make use of Facebook status feed and Wordpress RSS widget to display Facebook Statuses on WordPress blog.. It will also work for self-host Wordpress blogs.

    

13. How to Post Your Blog Posts to Your Facebook Wall Automatically

    Wordbook allows you to cross-post your blog posts to your Facebook Wall. Your Facebook “Boxes” tab will show your most recent blog posts.

    

14. How to Access Facebook Chat on Desktop

    Gabtastik and digsby let you keep Facebook chat sessions open on your Windows desktop outside of your regular web browser, using minimal screen real estate and system memory.

    

15. How to Create Quiz on Facebook Easily

    LOLapps provides quiz creator that can be employed to conjure up these popular personality quizzes that are so widespread in Facebook.

    

16. How to Hide Your Online Status on Facebook Chat from Select Contacts

    Facebook has integrated friends list with Chat and you can also choose which of these list members get to see you online.

    

17. How to Get Facebook Updates on Email

    NutshellMail consolidates your Facebook accounts through the inbox you use the most.

    

18. How to Update Facebook Status from Firefox

    FireStatus is a status update utility for multiple social networks, including FaceBook.

    

19. How to Get Facebook on Your Desktop

    Seesmic Desktop, Facebooker, Xobni, Facebook Sidebar Gadget, Scrapboy and Facebook AIR application are desktop applications that allows you interact with your stream just as you would on Facebook, but without the browser.

    

20. How to Delete, Cancel and Terminate Facebook Account and Profile

    A simple guide to terminate, delete or cancel Facebook account, together with the Facebook profile easily.

    

How to make money on hotfile ? How it works ? This is simple but not stupid. I’d like to introduce how to earn money on free file hosting in few steps.

INFO:
Hotfile – is a free file hosting service for anybody who wants to upload their files or content for public exhibition or private downloading. The free file uploader accepts all file types (compressed archive files, songs, audios, photos, videos, etc.), and hosted files are kept until the user removes them. All files can be download unlimited times.

This is an easy way to make money. Earn money while uploading and sharing your files with your friends. All what you need is an account on HOTFILE ( Click here to signup a free Hotfile account. ) , then upload your files, and you will gain money when your files are downloaded.

DETAILS:
1. Min payout 15$
2. Instant upload by FTP and Remote upload feature. Unlike many other pay-per-downloads, Hotfile features Batch Remote Upload. You can add a bunch of remote links at once!
3. 20% Referral Bonus

Hotfile pays:

*All prices are for 1000 downloads.

Step-1 – Getting started
What you need to do to actually start using hotfile affiliate program is to Join Affiliate program and to fill your payment details. Only after this step you can take full advantage of hotfile affiliate program.

Create an account on HOTFILE here

If you create your account, you must only fill your payment details here ( http://hotfile.com/affiliatejoin.html ) but first you must be sign in to see this page.

Step-2

Make money quick. Select a file to upload. You can upload any file you want but remember your rights when you uploading and sharing files.

You can upload from your pc or use remote upload function to transfer file from other server. Hotfile support remote upload from Mediafire and Rapidshare. The Hotfile FAQ will tell you how to do it.

Step-3

Wait while your file is uploading

Step-4

That’s all. Now you have HotFile download URL link.

Share this link with your friends and make money !!! you may share this link in your blog, site, forums etc.

PROOF
Before getting started here is a tempting payment proof:

The first few days are most difficult and my rank is low, but now I have already turned gold and i am making at least $10 per day (more less there is 300$ per month) and I always recieve their payment on monday morning (Easten American time).

YOU CAN ALSO:
Earn money spreading links in your site!
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For every referrer that comes from your site and buys premium you will get 5% of the account’s price.
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Referral program
You can earn money simply by inviting your friends to use our affiliate services. What you need to do is to simply register to hotfile, set up your payment info in your account and send your referral link to your friends. You will earn 20% of whatever they earn if they are registered to Hotfile using your referral link.

That’s all on Hotfile.com! Have fun uploading your files and make money online !