Over the years, I developed a technique on how to best move a website to a new server. I’m using it ever since and it has resulted in 0 downtime or difficulties when moving a site to a new host.

Here is the list of data and information that you need to get started:

• Old and new ftp server logins.
• CPanel or web hosting logins from both the old and new web host.
• MySQL logins, MySQL user and database information.
• Website admin interface logins.
• Logins for the old and new web hosting company.

This is the step by step guide on how to move the site to a new server:

Download all data

My first step is always a full backup of all site data. This includes the web files and databases. I often connect to the ftp server and download the web files to my local computer, and use Cpanel or a comparable hosting panel to create the database backup. This step can take some time. But we can prepare the new hosting account in the meantime.

Setup the new hosting account

I start to configure the new hosting account while the data is downloading. This includes basic setup of the account, quotas, ftp login, MySQL database and user among other things. I do that to have the data at hand to proceed to the next step immediately after the data backup completes.

Upload the data

Once the downloads are finished I begin to upload the data to the new host. I use the same ftp client to upload the data to the new host, and Cpanel or phpMyAdmin to import the MySQL database.

I also modify the data if needed. This may include the new MySQL database information or paths in configuration files.

Hosts File Changes, Testing

I edit the Hosts file on my system to point to the new server IP address. This is done for testing purposes. Remember that you cannot access the domain name on the new host at this point in time, since the nameservers are still pointing to the old hoster. Check out Work On Websites Before DNS Propagation for a detailed guide on how to change the Hosts file for that purpose.

Once the Hosts file has been changed, it is possible to access the site with its domain name on the new server. Just enter the domain name in your web browser to do that. I test the new site extensively, check that everything is displayed correctly and that no error messages show up. I also test the admin interface if available to make sure that it works as well. If you are unsure, ask a friend to take a look at the site to see if you have overlooked anything.

Switch Nameservers

If the website passes all tests I open the domain hosting panel at the domain registrar and switch the nameservers so that they now point to the new web server instead of the old one. The propagation may take up to 48 hours to complete. I suggest you test the connection with proxies or virtual private networks for testing purposes.

I keep the data on the old domain name for at least a week or two. I also backup the downloaded data to have it at hand if I should need it.

It pays to monitor the traffic and web servers during the propagation phase to make sure that the process is fluent and without service interruption.

Have you ever moved a domain name to a new web hosting account? If so, tell us about your experience.

It is relatively easy to check for whois information, which may give you information about the domain’s registrar, and more importantly, the name of the registrant, administrative and technical contacts. It is a good sign if those match.

But what about finding out where a website is hosted? You could look up the IP of the website and look at the company who owns that IP range, but that is rather complicated and not as speedy as the following option.

The website Who Is Hosting This offers an online service that will give you information about the company that is hosting a website. Why would you want those information? If you are like me, you’d like to verify the seller’s claims. But you could also use it if you are a webmaster and stumble upon a super fast loading site, or if you want to contact the hosting company, for instance if the website in question is infringing on copyright.

All you need to do to find out where a website is hosted, is to enter the website’s url into the form on the service’s frontpage. A click on Search displays the results after a short scan on the next page.

The screen displays a thumbnail image of the website and the hosting company prominently. The latter with a link to its web page, if available.

Listed on the page are furthermore the website’s IP address, name servers and links to futher details. This includes Whois lookup, DMCA Takedown and the BuiltWith website.

The whois links directly to the registrar’s whois page, DMCA Takedown to a service that sets you back $99 for filing a DMCA notice, monitoring the site for removal, filing a DMCA with major search engines and preservation of the evidence trail.

Built With finally displays technical information about a website. This includes server information, advertising, analytics and tracking or frameworks used.

Who Is Hosting This is a nice to have service. It works really well for most domain lookups. I have tested it with US-based and German domains. The links to the company websites are not working all the time, especially if a parent company is listed and not the hosting company. Users can add webhost urls in this case to fix that issue, provided that they know the host. If they do not they still need to research the company on a search engine like Bing and Google for that information.

That back then did not turn out as well as well. Ghacks was suspended by Goddady back then after it made the Digg homepage, and Godaddy decided it was the most customer friendly way to simply suspend the website, without informing me prior to this. I did not receive an email, nor telephone call at that time and only found at because I visited my site several times a day.

I had to call the US for 30 minutes to resolve the situation, which basically meant that I ordered my first dedicated server at the German web hosting company Hetzner as Godaddy was not able to resolve the issue for me.

Took some time to move the domains and web files, I probably lost a couple hundred bucks and lots of potential readers in the process. That was a huge blow back then for the young site.

Fast forward to 2010. Imagine my surprise when I received an email send by the web hosting company Just Host telling me that my account has been suspended. It apparently used more server resources than it should. I test a few hosters here and there with smaller sites, first to diversify the hosting a bit but also to see if I can find a real gem amongst the web hosting companies.

Deja Vu one might think. I did receive an email this time but that’s it. No prior consultation, no phone call, nothing. When I open the site in the browser I get a suspended page. Not good for visitors, trust and everything else.

The email reads:

As you probably aware, here at Just Host we proactively monitor all our servers to ensure that our clients websites are loading as fast as possible at all times. During this routine monitoring we
have found that your account is utilizing an excessive amount of system resources, and we have been forced to suspend your site as per our terms and conditions ’10% CPU/MEM/MySQL Policy’.

Just Host offer unlimited hosting space and unlimited bandwidth, but as per our terms we will suspend any website which exceeds our 10% CPU/MEM/MySQL policy. We hope that you understand our position in
ensuring that we provide the best possible service. In order to continue to provide this high quality service, you will need to upgrade to a dedicated server, which will give you an abundance of
additional resources and speed up your website.

Sounded much like they wanted me to order a dedicated server instead, something that Godaddy requested back then as well. I probably would have thought about this if the domain was still up and running and if they would have contacted me to resolve the situation.

Even more puzzling was the fact that they disabled Cpanel and ftp accounts as well, so no option to create a backup or to move the domain to a new registrar.

The good news is that I was prepared this time. I had a dedicated server up and running and could use it to move the domain and hosting account to that server. I still had to convince Just Host to create a backup for me, let me access the DNS settings, and hand me the EPP code so that I could make the transfers.

It took them about 40 minutes to reply to my first ticket. That’s a long time if you are sitting on a suspended domain name. They did however do what I asked them to. The backup was linked in their response, as were the login information to change the nameserver information and the administrative email which is important for the domain transfers.

It is now two hours after their initial email. The nameservers are unfortunately still resolving the old suspended site. I was however able to restore the backup and verify that the site is 100% working on the new dedicated server.

The transfer is pending, still have to figure out how to accept the transfer without any login possibilities at Just Host at the moment. Have contacted their support again and am waiting for a response.

How to be prepared if your web hosting account gets suspended:

• Make sure you have access to recent backups or that you download the latest backup regularly to be able to restore them at another web hosting company or server if the account gets suspended. This can be problematic if the backup is very large (hundreds of Megabytes or even Gigabytes). Backups come in many forms, make sure that the backup created on the current site can be restored at the new hoster. Nothing’s worse than having to restore files and databases manually, takes a lot of time.
• Make sure the administrative emails are set correctly. They are needed for the domain transfers. It takes a while before they are updated.
• Have at least an account at a second respected web hosting company. You do not really need to have a hosting package there or anything, just make sure that they setup the hosting packages in less than an hour when needed. Having the account ready ensures that you do not have to create it first.
• Make sure you have the ftp / sftp / cpanel account information at hand. Nothing’s worse than having to request new login codes if time is pressing.
• You can test that the website is working correctly by changing the hosts file in the operating system so that it links the new IP to the domain name. Very helpful to test a site before DNS propagation. And since you are waiting for the DNS to propagate you can at least do something useful in the meantime. You can check if the nameservers have been set correctly at web services such as DNS stuff. A traceroute to the domain can also provide the information if the DNS has propagated already.
• Live chat or calling is often the faster option to resolve a situation. It is a good idea to have the links and phone numbers ready in case of emergency. Put them in a text file, notes or support folder so that they are directly accessible when needed.

Wishlist

Websites who exceed the allowed server resources require a change, I agree to that. What I do not understand at all on the other hand is the lack of willingness to find a solution with the customer. I have experienced the same suspension without initial warning or contact to resolve the issue twice in the last years. Both times websites who have seen a sudden increase in visitor numbers were affected.

A web hoster who would contact the customer first, or at least try to, before suspending the account would get all my money, I only have to find one first. I suspect that most web hosters have the necessary resources to cope with the traffic increase before it affects the whole network which means they should try to resolve the issue without suspending the site in the beginning.

They should also at the very least keep the hosting login account activated. The email that informs the customer of the suspension should contain a link to the latest backup to speed up the process of moving the site to a new hoster. They need to understand that time is essential in this process, and that they can part with a disgruntled customer or a customer who is happy that the transfer did not take down the site for a long period of time.

Have you experienced something similar in the past? Let us know in the comments.

I researched the new web hoster extensively before making my decision to move the website to the new hoster. That is probably the most important step in the process to ensure that the hoster has excellent customer support, servers and connections to the Internet. Wiredtree was all that and more and I learned during the server transfer that their 15 minute reaction time to customer support requests was not just a figure that they picked out of thin air.

I had to deal with customer support in a few occasions especially during server migration to ensure that everything went underway smoothly. Wiredtree was always prompt to response with a solid solution that solved my requests. They also contacted me after three months to find out if everything was as I expected it to be. Support is therefor excellent, cannot be better in my opinion. But what about the server and hardware?

I ordered one server upgrade in that time; A backup server to store backups of all the websites and databases that were on the server regularly. The performance of the server itself is great and capable of running Ghacks and a few minor websites without problems. The load average, cpu, swap file, hard drive and memory utilization of the server were much lower than on the old server. More importantly than that is the fact that the server never crashed under the load so that I did not have to get up late at night after receiving a SMS that the server was down to fix the problem.

The Wiredtree server is not as cheap as it can get but it is still a cheaper priced server especially compared to other web hosting companies who charge double or even more of the amount that I’m paying for a comparable server. The excellent hardware and connections of the dedicated server in combination with top notch customer support make Wiredtree the hosting company that I recommend to all my friends and colleagues. It cannot get much better than that. We (that’s Everton from Connected Internet and I) are for example hosting Windows 7 News on another Wiredtree server and had no complaints (only praise) there with the hardware or customer support there as well.

I will do another review in 4 or 8 months to see if they are keeping their high standard. I currently have no reason to believe they do not.

Geocities users can still use the day to backup their files from the web hosting service before these get deleted. Yahoo is suggesting to move to Yahoo web hosting but there are other free options available which might appeal more to Geocities users.

If you search for Geocities in major search engines you still find millions of websites and files that are hosted at the free web hosting service. It will be interesting to see how the search engines cope with the sudden termination of those pages and files.

Here at Ghacks we had ten pages with links to Geocities. Some to great software programs such as Iso Puzzle which will from today on only be available on third party download portals.

What’s your opinion on the termination of the Geocities service? Good move by Yahoo to get rid of another slow and ad infected free web hosting service or bad move as some treasures of the past decade will be lost in the process?

A lot of research should go into such a decision and that’s what I did. One tip that I would like to pass on is to take a look at the dedicated server forum over at Webhostingtalk. Web hosting companies post special offers in that forum that will give you benefits such as double bandwidth, server memory or discounts on the price.

My business partner and I moved our Windows 7 website recently from a hosting company in the UK to Wiredtree in the US using one of the discounts found in the forum to get a great managed server for a good price and absolute reliable and fast support.

I decided to do the same and order a managed server at Wiredtree. Here is what I got for the yearly price of $2315.8 (second year will be $199 less due to setup costs which would reduce the price of the server by $25 per month for its lifetime which means it pays of after eight months). I got a deal with double server memory, bandwidth and a discount of $70.

Intel Core i7
12GB DDR3
Primary Disk:250GB 7.2k RPM SATAII 16MB Cache

Plan is to add another server with a faster hard drive (raid I suppose) that will run the database eventually. The server is currently setup by the Wiredtree support team who will also handle the migration of the website. It could mean some downtime in the next days but the website will definitely benefit from the new server with speed improvements.

Many users felt however that the Sourceforge website was hard to navigate and looked kinda outdated. Lucky for them that the website was redesigned lately. It is not really clear when the changes went life, neither the blog nor the homepage contain information about the redesign.

The Sourceforge homepage looks very user friendly. A prominent search form, categories, popular projects and other services have been placed cleanly on that page. Changes have also been made to the project pages which make it now easier to download the Open Source software from the Sourceforge website.

The project owners have still all possibilities to change the default homepage to a unique project homepage. Designs have been taken over from the old website. The new website is definitely easier to navigate. Thanks to Yansky for submitting the news. What’s your opinion about the new Sourceforge homepage?

Every server has an IP address and using specialist websites, a list of domains which point to that IP address can be returned. Several websites do this, and many charge for the service.

If one types in a domain or IP address on myIPneighbors, the site lists other domains that point to that IP. It can be a little unreliable, though, no doubt due to the site’s heavy load.

I have already mentioned that this site does have practical uses. It’s interesting to see how packed your host’s server is, so you can see how good a deal you are getting, and what they are hosting. This could be useful as it’s something hosts rarely reveal but is very important to company’s reputations.

It could also make an interesting tool for doing investigations. Using it, you can see what projects companies are launching if they’re silly enough to put the domain on the same server.

Update: Site seems to be down for some time know, an alternative is DomainByIP

You’ll need to do some research on web hosting companies first. While most companies offer generous bandwidth, disk space, and email accounts, variables such as cost and availability of technical support increase in importance. Here are some ways to begin your search for the perfect web host.

First, determine what you need. You probably wouldn’t walk into a shoe store and say, “I need shoes.” You’d give some specifics, like your shoe size, what type of shoes you want, how much you’re willing to pay. The situation with buying website hosting is similar. Are you a one-person shop, or do you have a dozen employees? Will you be selling things on your site, or is it purely informational? Will visitors to your site download large files? How many visitors do you expect or hope to have on a given day?

There’s nothing wrong with asking someone you know who runs a website how they went about it. In fact, it’s an opportunity to learn from others’ mistakes. But there are also plenty of resources online. The home pages of web hosting providers should give you some ideas, and there are user forums where you can read and learn some real world experiences with various hosting companies. If you are able to join these forums, it’s OK to ask questions, such as, “I see you chose Company X for your web host. Do you think they would work well for my site? My site will offer downloads of video training materials, and I’ll need quite a bit of bandwidth.” The user forums are where people tend to tell it like it is.

Speaking of bandwidth, while that and disk space are important considerations, you should know that most hosting providers will offer sufficient resources unless you will have a bandwidth hogging application, or a 10,000 visitors per day. It is important, however, to make sure that you will be able to upgrade your service if your business outgrows its original website. The answer is almost always “yes,” but it’s a good idea to make sure.

If you plan to have extra features, like extensive photo storage, database support, or other add-ons, ask up front if your hosting package will accommodate these things.

One thing that you should never consider as an “extra” is live tech support by email, live chat, and phone. Web hosting companies are coming around to the fact that there are no “regular business hours” for online businesses, and that their clients want to talk to an actual human regardless of time or day. Again, don’t take it for granted; make sure upfront that you’re getting true 24/7/365 support services.
Many clients enjoy having a web based control panel. This will allow you to add or modify email accounts, tweak your site’s configuration, and do basic file editing. These control panels often are graphical user interfaces that make it easy for you to make changes to your site without having to know HTML.

Round the clock FTP (file transfer protocol) access is another very handy thing to have. This will allow you to make changes to your site no matter what time it is. Web based email is another near necessity in today’s business environment. This will allow you and your employees to check their email anywhere – not just from their own computer.

Beyond these basics, here are some other questions to answer before signing on with a hosting company.

Will you share a server or will your site have one dedicated to it alone? For most businesses, shared hosting works fine. But larger businesses may need to flexibility and control that comes with having an entire server devoted to their website. Fortunately, shared hosting can now be quite generous with disk space and bandwidth, and security measures between websites hosted on the same server minimize the chances of technical problems. And shared hosting costs much less than dedicated hosting.

Does your hosting provider have e-commerce capabilities? Many come with ready-to-use shopping cart programs and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protection for online credit card transactions. These features allow you to configure your retail site quickly and with minimal costs.

Some hosting companies provide other goodies, like blog software, content management, and picture galleries. Fantastico is the name of a package of software that contains over 40 free programs that are easy to install from your site’s control panel.

While price is still important in determining which webhost you choose, tech support and a good reputation are more important factors. You need to get your site up and running, and you need to be able to grow on the web as your business takes off.

You can think of web hosting as being divided into two types: virtual web hosting and dedicated web hosting. Virtual web hosting is often favored by small businesses because of its cost effectiveness. With virtual web hosting, you rent space alongside many other businesses on a server. While it sounds as if all the businesses are jumbled up on one piece of hardware, what is actually the case is that each client in a virtual web hosting environment has its own server resources blocked off from everybody else’s, including processor, memory, and disk space. This works well for businesses that don’t need a lot of disk space or bandwidth to operate their web site. It is also a great choice for clients who want to manage a number of separate web sites at a low cost.

The reason that this type of web hosting is so cost effective is that despite their unique functions, the web hosting requirements are very similar among small businesses. Hosting vendors who can offer nearly identical services to a large number of customers efficiently are able to multiply small profits by large numbers of customers.

Dedicated hosting is an option that midsize and large businesses may consider if they need the control and flexibility of having a server (or servers) dedicated to their website. This type of web hosting is expensive, but allows greater control over security, support, and maintenance. Web hosting vendors who offer dedicated hosting have redundant resources in their data center that can nearly eliminate downtime.

Dedicated hosting often means that your business can write and run custom scripts and applications, or just manage the web site and leave the upkeep of the network and hardware to the hosting company. You can buy a server and host the site yourself, but this is an expensive option and means you have to either know how to manage the hardware, software, and connectivity or you have to hire someone who does. Some businesses already have a dedicated IT staff and data center, and if this is the case, then it probably makes sense to buy and operate another server.

However, for companies without their own IT department and budget, renting a dedicated server from a hosting provider is the most cost effective option. There are many web hosting vendors who offer dedicated server packages. Once you know how much of a hands-on approach you’re willing to take, you can examine the offerings of several hosting vendors and see if their operations complement yours. Some vendors provide tools for creating and managing your site by providing a web based control panel that you can use to tweak your site. Some vendors let you use your own HTML authoring program and upload pages as you make them.

Web hosting vendors know they have to compete for your business, and most try to make your choice easy by offering services that are popular and packaging them together into specific web hosting plans. Most of the plans out there have you pay an upfront set-up fee, and then a monthly fee for your plan and any additional a la carte options (like extra storage or extra email accounts) you purchase.
There are so many web hosting vendors around that it can be overwhelming for a business to choose who they want to host their website. If you know your requirements, or can broadly estimate them, you can almost certainly find a web hosting vendor with a hosting package that is right for you and allows for your site to grow along with your business.

There are several web hosting directories, but as one example, http://www.webhostdir.com/ works like this. At the very top of the home page are two tabs, one for “Web Hosting” and the other for “Dedicated Server.” If you don’t yet know whether your businesses website will require a dedicated server, chances are good that it will not. Most business websites are small enough that shared web hosting offers adequate services for their website needs.

Underneath those two tabs is another row of tabs: Home, Web Host Search, Request a Quote, Web Hosting News, Guides, Hosting Forums, and Web Host Awards. The hosting forums are where you’ll find a lot of firsthand knowledge about what works and what doesn’t in web hosting. This is where the clients get together to discuss their web hosting experiences and to ask questions. You can sign up to participate in the hosting forums, but before you start posting, you should go through the FAQ section to see what answers are already available, and to learn the dos and don’ts of participating.

After looking through a hosting directory, and maybe participating in forums, you may have a good idea which hosting company you want to use. The directory will give you contact information for web hosts, and this is valuable information in your search. You should be able to go to your short list of web hosts with your requirements for disk space, bandwidth, and amount of traffic you need it to handle, and from their responses you’ll be able to gauge a bit about the web hosting culture at different hosting vendors as well as their eagerness to answer your questions and help you find the right hosting package.

In addition to presenting your needs in a web host, you should also ask hosting providers about basic things like how long they’ve been in business, and what methods of customer support they employ. Between these factors, your needs, your budget, and what you’ve learned from hosting forums, you should be able to make a wise choice in hosting providers. A web hosting directory can be your key to sifting through the many companies out there to find the one that suits your needs best.

More recently, shared hosting has evolved into what is called “virtual dedicated hosting.” This treats every sector of the server as if it was an entire, standalone piece of hardware, so that if one site crashes, the others are unaffected.

For those sites that do need an entire server, dedicated hosting is available. This means that an entire server is devoted to one website and all its sub domains. If you are just starting out with your website, even if you plan to have e-commerce features, shared hosting, or virtual dedicated hosting will probably be your best bet, mainly because true dedicated hosting is more expensive. The average web site does just fine with 1 to 3 GB disk space, which is well within the capabilities of shared hosting setups.

The main reason a site might need more is because it offers downloading services of audio or video, or if a site regularly receives over 5,000 visitors per day. Those situations require plenty of disk space and bandwidth. Otherwise, a typical shared hosting package will almost certainly be sufficient and cost effective for you.

You need to know what type of server operating system will work with your site. Don’t panic. You don’t need to know how to program the servers. There are people who do that for you. What you need to know is what kinds of software you will be using, and if that software has to be run on Windows or on Linux, or if it will work on either. The operating system you use for your own personal computer has little to do with whether your site will require Linux or Windows hosting. All you have to be able to do is use your web publishing software.

Linux is widely considered to be the best operating system for web servers. It is reliable, efficient, and stable. If your website is hosted on a Linux system, it will likely have very high uptime, which is crucial for any e-commerce sites.

If you plan to use Microsoft proprietary software such as FrontPage, Windows Streaming Media, or MSSQL, then you will probably require a Windows based host. Most anything else will work with either Windows or Linux platforms. Unless you will be using features that require either Linux or Windows servers, you can most likely worry about other things, like making sure you find a good hosting service with the technical support you need.

Most hosting packages come with email addresses on your own domain in the format you@yourdomain.com. A “catch-all” email, such as mail@yourdomain.com, is a good thing to have, as are a generous number of other email accounts for your employees. Often, hosting providers throw in things like auto responders for when you’re out of pocket, and the ability to access your mail over the Internet, so that you or your employees can check it when they’re away from the office. These are fairly standard features these days, and with the web hosting industry as competitive as it is, you should have no trouble getting decent email service as part of your hosting package.

Uptime and downtime are two words you hope you don’t ever have to use when talking about your business website. Hosting providers have a number of contingency plans up their sleeves to eliminate downtime or at least keep it as brief as possible. They have the ability to distribute the traffic to your site over more than one server if it should reach a level where it’s overwhelming the hardware. If one piece of equipment has a problem, they can begin using a backup server almost immediately. The good web hosting providers can offer you at least 99.8% uptime, and you should accept no less. If they back that with a guarantee, so much the better.

You can check out what others are saying about a hosting company by simply typing the name of the company into a search engine. You sometimes find a treasure trove of information that you couldn’t get otherwise about the company. One word of caution, though: every hosting company that’s been around for any length of time will have a few bad reviews. Sometimes it’s the fault of the company, and sometimes it’s the fault of the client for expecting something different from what was negotiated. The point is, don’t let one or two scathing rants cause you to cross a company off your list. What you should look for is a pattern of complaints over time. Also, if you see nothing but glowing reviews, perhaps you should be a little suspicious. No web hosting service is perfect, and less than scrupulous companies have been known to overload customer feedback sites with planted positive reviews. Most companies are more honest than that, however.

Of course, price is a major consideration. If you’re starting a new business, you definitely don’t want to waste money, either for substandard service or for fancy features you’ll never use. A rule of thumb is to weed out the hosting companies that are very high priced and the ones that are very low priced (or free), and work with the ones that don’t seem too extreme pricewise. Cheap or free hosting isn’t always a good choice for a business site (though they can work fine for personal or hobby sites), and expensive hosting doesn’t always mean you get the best of everything. It may just mean that you’re buying a lot of stuff you don’t need.

Finally, perhaps the most important consideration when choosing a web hosting company is their level of customer and technical support. You should expect real 24/7/365 support from a hosting company that has experience hosting e-commerce sites. This doesn’t mean that they have a voice mail tree that you have to navigate through before having any hope of talking to an actual person. It also doesn’t mean that messages are taken during non-business hours, but addressed during business hours. If you’re the owner of a business website, there are no such things as “business hours.”
The kind of support you should expect is from a real human who is either physically at the server farm or who can hook you up with someone who is. And it shouldn’t matter if you’re calling on a weekend or a holiday: somewhere on the planet, a person may be trying to get on your site and having difficulty, and that needs to be fixed no matter where they are and no matter what time it is. Downtime is money out of your pocket, and you need to work with your hosting provider to eliminate or nearly eliminate it.

Don’t be intimidated at the thought of choosing an Internet hosting provider. They all want your business, so you’re in a relative position of power. Just be aware of those that promise what sounds like too much (such as “unlimited” bandwidth), and steer clear of sites that have histories of poor service or support. That’s the great thing about the Internet: if enough people have trouble with any company, whether it’s a car rental company or an Internet hosting provider, they will talk and put the information out there, hopefully saving you some trouble, too.

Once you have a written business plan, it’s time to do some research on which hosting firm is most suitable for your website. You will need to know, obviously, if you plan to sell products from your site, or if it will be strictly promotional. Do you plan to have video? Elaborate graphics? Or just text? Will your chosen host provider help you set up your web site? How many email accounts will you need?

There are a number of things you need to know about the hosting companies you choose among. Perhaps the main thing is how reliable their service is. If you have a business website, you can’t afford for it to have downtime. After all, it’s always normal business hours somewhere. Closely tied to the need for reliability is the need for technical support. Many hosting services say that they have so-called 24/7/365 tech support, but their definition of what that comprises may be different from yours. You don’t want to find out the hard way that calling tech support late at night or on a holiday only gets you to an answering machine and that you’ll have to wait for regular business to resume before getting any actual help.

Of course you should ask your candidate hosting companies directly about these things, but you should do something else too. There are forums all over the Internet where people will meet online to talk about such issues. Read these discussion threads. Ask questions. You should be able to get a more objective assessment of an Internet hosting provider than you would from the company itself.
There are, however, two things you should be aware of. The first thing is that every web hosting company that’s been around for any length of time will have some negative feedback. One or two rants about a certain hosting company shouldn’t put you off. It is possible that the user was the one with the problem, and it is also possible that the company has fixed the problem.

The other thing you should know when reading forums is that sometimes hosting companies plant people on them to say good things about them. The rule of thumb should be: discount the overly positive posts on a company, and discount the overly negative, too. Any post filled with capital letters and exclamation marks is suspect. Take your information from the saner posts you come across, and if you’re allowed to join a forum, don’t hesitate to ask questions, particularly about free web hosting companies.

The reason these companies are able to offer free hosting is that they will run ads on your site. These might be unobtrusive ad links, or they may be pop-ups, or they may be the really annoying ads that follow the reader as he or she scrolls down the page. You have to decide if you can live with the annoyance, and if you think your customers will stick around long enough to buy something.
The obvious advantage of free web hosting services is price. You won’t have to register a domain name or pay for hosting. A free web page can serve as a training site for you as you learn how you want your site to look, or test out new promotions. There are free services like sitemeter.com that will gather basic statistics on your site that can give you valuable information on your visitors. You can find out where most of your visitors come from, what time of day they visit, and how many page views they amass.

You could, if you had the time and motivation, use multiple free hosting providers to set up your site, and then monitor all of them to see if one outperforms the rest. You will likely see differences in the different hosts, and quickly learn which ones are the easiest to work with. You may find that one hosting company gets your site indexed by search engines sooner, and therefore drives more traffic to your site.

Or you may decide that free web hosting just isn’t going to be good enough. All you will have lost is time.

The biggest disadvantage to free web hosting is the ads cluttering up the site. Many visitors are turned off by pop-ups that suddenly materialize as they try to enter or leave your site. And a few will click on those ads and leave your site without looking at anything at all.

Even if you eventually choose paid web hosting for the control it gives you over your site, the free websites you set up may still work to your advantage. You never know where your web traffic will come from. Some of it might come through an old free site you set up when you were just starting out. So, while free website hosting may serve you well as you learn how to be a webmaster, if you have any kind of e-commerce function, you’ll almost certainly want to switch to paid hosting at some point.

But if you’re broke and just starting out, or just learning the basics of having your own web site, then free hosting providers may be exactly the right thing for you.

A recent discussion over at the Donation Coder forum touched that subject. A user noticed that he was able to restore data from a dedicated server that was rented by someone else before. This can have some serious implications. Dedicated servers can hold all kinds of sensible data including user accounts, passwords, business databases, email addresses, personal information, photos, media and documents. Many of these can still be restored if the hard drives are not wiped correctly which obviously can be very problematic not only from a business point of view but also from a private view depending on the kind of data that has been stored on the hard drives of the dedicated server.

There are two possibilities to ensure that no third party will have access to the data stored on the server drives. Option A would be to purchase the hard drive from the web hosting company. Most will not have problems selling hard drives to their customers for a premium. This is actually a good option for most companies as it would mean that they will have physical access to the hard drive that has been in their dedicated server.

The second option is to wipe the hard drive of the dedicated server securely before the contract ends. The possible solutions are limited as the server has to be running to be able to remotely access it. One way to wipe a specific hard drive or partition of a dedicated server is to issue the following command:

shred -f -z -v -u /dev/sda

This will wipe /dev/sda, you might need to change that. The process will take some time obviously. The parameters mean the following:

• -f: force, changes permission levels to allow writing if necessary
• -z: zeroes, will overwrite the entire disk with zeroes in the end
• -v: verbose, display the progress
• -u: remove, truncates and remove file after overwriting

The first step in finding a good dedicated server provider is to make a list. What exactly do you need? Do you want to run a Windows or Linux dedicated server? How much hard drive space and computer memory should the server have? What about the processor, how much bandwidth should be included, what networking interface should the server use? A few factors cannot be fully answered at this time but some can. If you plan to migrate a website you know the requirements of that website. You also know if it is a high traffic site or uses lots of system resources like computer memory, hard drive or processor at the old site.

Dedicated servers are usually a good choice if the current hosting situation, may it be a VPS or shared hosting account, limits the growth of the site or the user experience. Requirements like computer memory or cpu are harder to judge. High traffic sites benefit from lots of computer memory and a fast cpu but there is also chance for an overkill. Running a blog with 100 visitors a day does not justify a high end dedicated server with 16 Gigabytes of RAM and Intel Dual Harpertown processors. A very populated forum on the other hand would benefit highly from that setup.

The most important process in the selection of a dedicated server is the choice of the hosting provider. Quality and services differ widely and extensive research is suggested before making the selection. It is not enough to compare hardware and prices alone, other factors are of even bigger importance. What good is a dedicated server that is unreachable for most of the day because of overselling or poor infrastructure?

You can try and find an answer on so called hosting review websites but they usually are more interested in sending you to those dedicated server hosters that give them the biggest cut if you decide to order a server there. The best way to research potential dedicated server hosting companies is to search and post in webmaster forums. Not everything is golden and shiny in there and there have been cases that hosting companies have posted on such forums praising their own services but it usually results in a handful of dedicated server providers that are recommended.

Some webmaster forums where you can find such help and information are:

• Digitalpoint
• Web Hosting Talk
• Webmaster World

You can start by searching for general terms. These forums on the other hand can deliver great results for specific hosting companies as well. Once you got your list of suggested dedicated server providers you should perform a search on the Internet. Suggested search terms are “name of company” problems, “name of company” reviews and so on. This will give you more insight if the provider is as good as it should be.

Comparing Dedicated Servers

It is now time to compare the dedicated servers and services offered by the hosting providers that are still on the list. Prices range widely from about $100 to $600 and more depending on the setup and provider. Many providers do offer customization of the server hardware and software. It is possible to add additional computer memory, a better processor, increase free traffic limits or use a better connection to the Internet.

Ghacks for example has been running fine on a Debian 4 dedicated server with an AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core processor and 4 Gigabytes of computer memory. The hardware requirements do however largely depend on the site that has to be hosted there. One interesting option if you are unsure about the requirements would be to contact the hosting providers asking for their assistance. The email should include questions about:

• Suggestions on needed hardware
• If hardware upgrades are available after setup and the costs of those
• If special bargains are available. Bargains are usually servers that use slightly older hardware but it could also be new servers that they want to sell as soon as possible)

It is also a good idea to ask the same question in webmaster forums or other places with proficient users who can give you a good answer. Compare the results to get a better idea of what server you might need.

Many factors are important when comparing dedicated servers, some are:

• Raw hardware meaning cpu, ram, hard drive capacities
• Software that is included (e.g. Cpanel, firewalls)
• Services that are included (e.g. assistance in server migration)
• The connection speed of the server (usually 10 or 100 Mbit)
• The included traffic limit of the server (how many Gigabytes can be transferred without additional costs)
• Usage restrictions (which sites are not allowed)
• Contract period
• Server uptime
• Managed or not. Knowing Linux in and out is not the only skill needed to administrate a dedicated server but it is one of the most important ones. A managed server on the other hand usually comes with a web interface like Cpanel that takes lots of the burden away from the user.

Dedicated Server Providers

My research has revealed a few companies that get recommended more often than others, they are:

• The Planet
• Rackspace
• Hetzner (not managed but great prices, located in Germany)
• Wiredtree

Yes there are more out there but those four are definitely among the top. The most important step is research. You need to find a totally reliable dedicated server provider that is offering great network uptimes, hardware and services for a good price.

The upload limits are 250 Megabytes for video files and 50 Megabytes for mp3 and images. The user guide is still speaking of a 2 Gigabyte limit per user which contradicts the information on the homepage of the service most likely because the user guide has not been updated with the new information.

The options offered by Oosah surely look nice. Besides the storage capacities the service offered Flickr, Youtube, Facebook and Picasa integration, an iPhone client, playlists, galleries, slideshows, public and private sharing and a easy to use web interface.

A new announcement on the homepage and on the blog seem to suggest that the developers did not expect the popularity of the service: Uploads have been disabled temporarily and Flickr integration disabled.

That problem is homemade on the other hand. The Internet has seen multiple services that made a huge announcement and could not live up to their promises because of the massive media coverage and exponential user increase.

The insight from the situation should be to make sure that the important data is backed up properly before rushing to new services.

I quickly contacted Sarah Perez who is in charge of the website and she told me the following. Her websites are all hosted at Dreamhost who closed down the account because of disputing credit card charges which Sarah had nothing to do with.

Now the funny thing is that you can only get the Dreamhost account access back if you send them a money order or check by postal mail for the amount of the chargebacks. The mail goes to a postbox address that Dreamhost seems to check twice a week.

Imagine that. You are a business owner and need your website and they check the frigging postbox twice week adding to the waiting time.

Support is unreachable it seems. She put in four support tickets and one complaint and tried to phone them but is only receiving voicemail. She cannot reach them no matter what she tries.

I hope everything sorts out soon. Things like that can throw a business back several months.

I wonder why all those companies shoot first. It would be so much better if they at least tried to contact the owner of the account before going on a rampage.