So you’re dreaming of quitting your job and starting up your own web hosting business. You figure that it can’t be too hard, especially with reseller web hosting packages. Just lounge your way to easy street, right? Wrong. Web hosting is a business, like any other, and the vast majority of businesses fail in their first year. It is not a way to fast, easy money. Don’t believe me? Do a little research for yourself. A recent article at Tech News World on choosing a web host pointed out that “many of the biggest [web hosting companies] filed for

It’s time to choose! Should you spend some money to get a web hosting solution for your business or get one for free? This article helps you sort out the advantages and disadvantages of each option, and helps you figure out which one is better suited to your needs. Yes, the big moment has finally arrived. Your business is now on the verge of taking the next step forward. It will establish a web presence. This is an important step as from now on your business is able to

If you’re a small web host, and especially if you’re a web hosting reseller looking to grow your business, the number of tasks you have to handle will quickly become enough to overwhelm even the most organized person. You won’t be able to grow past a certain point without software to automate at least some functions. In this article, I’ll take a look at some of the parts of your business that can benefit from software automation. There are several areas that can be well served by web hosting software automation. These can be usefully divided into the front end and back end, or, more functionally, into the customer-facing software and the business processes. This does not

Whatever may be said about attracting customers to your business (be it web hosting or anything else), it all seems to boil down to one thing: give your customers what they want. It sounds like a simple formula, but there are layers to it. With a recent offering from Monsterhosting.ca as an example, we’ll pick apart what it means. When you’re a writer searching for a topic for your next article, sometimes you get lucky. You go through news items and how to articles and several of them crash into each other in your brain in a way that both makes sense and creates something new. They illuminate each other, and perhaps even reveal some

If you’re setting up a web site, you will probably need to transfer files to your web host. To accomplish this task, FTP is invaluable. But what is it and how do you use it? Keep reading to find out. FTP stands for "File Transfer Protocol." As you may have guessed from the name, it is a protocol for transferring files from one computer to another over a network connection. While this is often done over the Internet, it doesn't have to be. Users on a large intranet, like those at a corporation or on a college campus, may also transfer files between computers within the intranet via FTP. In basic outline, it works like

Sometimes an old scam shows up in a new technological guise. So it is with domain slamming, where one registrar tricks you into switching from the company with which you currently have your domains registered, to his. In this article, I’ll explain what it is, where it came from, how to spot it, and what steps to take to make sure you don’t become a victim. You may have heard about a practice that telephone companies engaged in several years ago. They would have “customer service agents” call customers from other phone companies, pretending to be

Some have compared it to trying to get into your own bricks-and-mortar store and discovering you’re locked out, while a stranger sits behind the counter – and worse, the cops can’t do anything about it. It’s been going on for years, and if you’re not careful you could be the next victim. Read on to find out how you can stay the master of your domain. This particular crime is usually called either domain name theft or domain hijacking. Another variation of it is domain slamming, which I’ll define a little later in this article. By any name, the results are the same: for some reason, you can’t get into your own domain, you’re not receiving email from that domain, and you

You have probably encountered Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policies as a customer of various businesses. Guess what? As a web host, you need one of each for your own business. This article explains what they are, why you need them, and gives you some hints as to what they should include. Let's start by defining our terms. A Terms of Service and an Acceptable Use Policy are not the same thing, though the names of the two documents are often bandied about as if they are. While they are both legal (and legally binding) documents, they have two entirely different purposes. The Terms of Service, as you might guess from the name, describes the

Everyone hates spam, and there seems to be no escape from it. As a web host, however, you're closer to the front lines of this battle than your customers. In this article, I'll detail some of the steps you can take to keep this unsolicited annoyance from getting out of hand. By some estimates, spam, also known as unsolicited bulk email, has already gotten out of hand generally across the Internet. Ferris Research estimated that the cost of spam to the United States economy came to more than $10 billion

This article covers two important maintenance tasks for web hosts. The first two sections cover backup and recovery strategies. The third and fourth sections cover how to set up a new WHM cPanel server. Dedicated Servers – Backup and Recovery Strategies for Web Hosting Companies What kind of backup recovery strategy should a company have for its dedicated server? Web hosting companies have been debating this