podcast about web hosts and web hosting topics
So, you want to start your own website where people can upload videos of dogs of skateboards? A few years back, this would be nearly impossible. These days though, finding a script that will clone many of the best features a video sharing service like YouTube has is pretty easy. There are a lot of duds out there though in the world of YouTube clone scripts so I have gone through the trenches to find you the three best scripts for the job.
What exactly does it mean to be using too many server resources in a shared web hosting environment? Web sites can often get suspended for using too many server resources, such as RAM or CPU usage. To put in the simplest terms, your web site might be overloading the server to an extent where no other accounts on the same hosting server can continue to function.
How Many Server Resources Do You Have?
When your web site is hosted on a shared web hosting server, you share certain elements of the web hosting with other people that are on the same server you are on. The metaphor might be a little old, but think of it as being virtual neighbors with other web hosting clients like yourself. Each neighbor has to share the same amount of the server’s RAM and CPU processing power.
Now the limits on how many sever resources you can use might vary from web host to web host, so check with your web host for the hard numbers and statistics. Now the next question is, how do these problems happen?
Causes for Server Resource Usage Suspensions
There are many different events that could cause you to use too many server resources. Here are just a few common examples:
Anything that is over working the server could be considered a cause.
I hope that helps to explain what it means to use too many server resources in web hosting. As long as you are proactive about how much RAM or CPU power your web site is using, you should never run into a big server resource usage problem. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments.
Getting an e-mail saying that you are using “too many system resources” as it relates to your web site hosting account can be a scary situation. What does this mean, and what can be done to get your web site back up and running. This week we’ll be discussing what using “too many resources” in web hosting really means, and what you can do to curb your usage so you can get back up and running.
Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 207!
Running Time: 8 minutes | File Size: 3.39 MB
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Learn on this week’s podcast how to reduce your impact on the shared hosting server your web site is hosted from and have a little fun.
So, if I was going to start looking for a web hosting job, where would I turn to? Well, there are three resources you should keep in mind. You have the web host themselves, the web hosting forums out there, and special job hunting resources that will list for you spots available with a number of different web hosting companies.
Find Jobs at the Web Host
Some web hosts will look for contracted workers in their own user base, so that is something to keep in mind. If you want to go work for one specific web host, join their user forums and help out as much as you can. See if you can become friendly with the current staff, and let them know if there is a spot available, you would like to be the one to fill it. Many web hosts also have “employment” pages up with positions that are open in the company.
Find Jobs on the Web Hosting Forums
Web hosting forums are another place to look for web hosting related jobs. One of the most popular out there would be the Employment Offers and Requests section over at WebHostingTalk.com. Other web hosting forums may have equally as helpful resources too, to start looking for a new web hosting job.
Find Jobs on the Web Hosting Employment Resources
Be sure to check out the web sites that specialize in advertising web hosting jobs too. One of the more popular job boards for web hosting positions is webhostingjobs.com. Run by the same staff the control TheWHIR.com, they have a lot of jobs listed for local and remote positions.
Don’t get discouraged if you get turned down by the first web host you try to get a job with. Just go to the next one on the list, or try to ask around at several web host if they have any spots available for you as a local technician or remote contracted worker.
Are you wondering to yourself, why is it that my web site isn’t working? Why is my web site down? Is my web site down or is it me? These are questions I hear in the hosting industry day after day, year after year. I have heard them so many times, and seen so many reasons for the problems in question I have been able to compile a list of the top ten reasons why your web site is not working.
So that, my hosting homies, is the topic of today’s show.
Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 193!
Running Time: 10 minutes | File Size: 4.67 MB
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This week on the podcast we will be covering the top ten reasons why your web site is not working. So without further interruption, let us take a dive into these troubling web site problems.
Every single day, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people looking to get up and going with their own web hosting account. I thought, with that in mind, it might be a good idea to go over the basic questions you need to be able to answer when shopping for a web host, and the questions you need to ask the web hosts you are looking at.
Web Hosting Questions for You
Before you go shopping for your first, next or any type of web hosting plan, you should be ready to answer these questions:
Web Hosting Questions for Your Future Web Host
As far as questions that you should ask, I would make sure that you at least ask them these questions.
Now, your own list of questions might vary depending on what type of web site you want to host and how complex it will be.
You might be aware of it, or you might not – however you are already doing cloud hosting. Do you check your e-mail via Gmail? Do you share your photos via Flickr?
These are just two popular examples of hosting from the clouds.
With cloud hosting you say goodbye to the old idea of renting a server or shared server space. In its place, cloud hosting provides us with server clustering. Instead of using the power of one server, you have access to the power of many; linked together through visualization.
An Example of Where Cloud Hosting is Needed
We have all seen the situations where a web site might be under stress because it has had a sudden burst of popularity. With regular shared hosting we have today – once that web site reaches the limits of the single server it is on, it chokes. Now with a cloud hosting setup, you would have access to a number of different servers so the web site under stress could still have access to as much bandwidth, RAM, CPU power or any other server side resource that it needed.
Cloud hosting provides computing power, on demand, when you need it. If you no longer need so much power, you can easily release the resources back into the proverbial “cloud” so that they can be used by others.
Three Reasons Why Cloud Hosting is Good for You
The most important thing to remember is that hardware is no longer your main focus with cloud hosting. You new main focus is your web site. Cloud hosting is easy to scale to meet your demand. Cloud hosting provides computing power when you need it. Cloud hosting only requires you to pay for what you use.
It happens from time to time. You see an amazing web site, and you ask yourself, “How was that web site made?”. Now, instead of hunting through the web site source code you can plug the domain name into this simple tool – and get all the information you need.
BuiltWith.com is a perfect companion if you want to do a little spying on how a web site was made and what is running behind it. From the web site, all you need to do is type in the domain name and hit the “Lookup” button. For an example, lets spy on thewhir.com to see what it was built with.
Under server information, we can find out it is using IIS 6.0. So that would tell us they are using a Windows-based server to host from. For tracking, we can see they use Google Analytics – which is never a bad thing. Under framework, they are running Adobe ColdFusion and ASP.net. As you can see – this gets pretty interesting for those of us who are geeky enough to have the desire to see what is going on “under the hood”.
From the BuiltWith.com web site, you can also get quick and easy access two two more tools, AboutUs.org and WebsiteGrader.com.
Live chat, in one way, shape or form seems to be a perk that many web hosting customers are looking for. If you are a web host though, how do you know which live chat tools are the best? Here are some of my favorite live chat providers out there that seem to get a lot of love from the web hosting community.
Kayako Live Response – When it comes to live chat support, Kayako is one of the best. Not only do they provide the web interface for it, they also have a desktop client to interact with the service too. Other nice features include desktop sharing, quick responses and a VoIP softphone add-on.
ProvideSupport.com – This tool is one of the cheaper ones out there, but don’t let that fool you. They too provide some visually appealing tools as well as chat transcripts, multiple chat support, and easy integration into any web hosting site.
LiveZilla – For those web hosts out there on a budget, I do have one free live chat support option for you. LiveZilla might have a few less frills than the paid for applications, but still deserve consideration. The fact that it is free gives it a big green check mark in the “good things about it” column too.
What live chat solutions do you use?
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Mitch Keeler is nothing more than your average Joe trying to leave his mark on the world though both his professional work and his online projects, articles, podcasts and more.
7 Dirty Words Every Hosting Customer Should Know
Here are the top seven dirty web hosting words (and phrases) that every hosting customer should know or be able to define.
1. Server Resources - This is often the limitation you don’t hear about until you have reached it. Many people might call it the, “Haha, got you now!” clause, but if you stop and think about it, it does make sense. You can only do so many things on your computer before you begin to have performance problems, and the same could be said for a hosting server. If one script, service or person is taking up all the RAM and CPU up for themselves, they have to be taken out of the picture to help everyone else who may be hosted on that server.
2. Database Connections - Depending on who the web host is, and how they have their servers setup, you may only have available to you so many connections to a database. For example, Joe hears that his database connection limit is 25 simultaneous connections. What Joe doesn’t stop to think about is what the word simultaneous actually means. For him to go over his limit, he would need 25 connections in roughly the same few seconds to get in trouble. Since most scripts only connect for a second, this is not something most of us need to worry about.
3. E-mail Sending Limits - Yes, you are limited on the number of e-mails you can send out. This is a pretty new limitation that web hosts have been putting on their customers, mostly to curb spamming in any form. If you are doing any sending of newsletters or something that goes out to a great amount of people via e-mail, you might want to look at scripts that will spread the wealth sending around. That way instead of sending your newsletter to 10,000 people at once, you will be able to send it to maybe 2,000 people per hour through the day. Both DadaMail and phpList will allow you to do this.
4. Unlimited - There is no such thing as unlimited in web hosting. It is a marketing word though that is bound to bring people in. People like to get something for nothing and the chance to be able to grow their web site and brand to unlimited boundaries is a dream we can all be excited by. Now, why does this word not really bug me that much anymore? Well, even if you are sold by the word unlimited, chances are you aren’t even going to use enough of your unlimited disk space or bandwidth to hurt the server. In most cases, it doesn’t do any harm.
5. Uptime and Downtime - The one thing you see asked about by people who like to think they know a thing or two about web hosting is, “How is the uptime?” or “How much downtime have you had?”. These are kind-of important questions, but I wouldn’t put too much weight into their answers. Like I have said before, you are not going to find a web host who is perfect and has not even the smallest single flaw. You will need to find an example of the problems they have had, and see how they have dealt with them. That is how you can really tell how great a web host is.
6. Overselling – In the world of web hosting, overselling is the term used to describe be hosts who put more customers on a server than the server can really support. Most big name web hosts won’t have a problem with this, but some of the smaller to mid-range web hosts do. The problem is that they can’t afford to bring more servers online, or they are packing you in like sardines into a can to save on costs. It is something to try to be aware of, but chances are you won’t know about it till it is too late.
7. The Comparison Box – I hate the comparison box of features you see web hosts use. We have all seen them. You have the features listed down the side, the different plans listed across the top and the thing that bugs me is every plan has every feature. Why do a comparison chart, if every stinking plan has the same features? The comparison chart should be use to compare the differences. Most of the time, the only difference might be the disk space, bandwidth and price. Give me a shorter comparison box, and just give me those three items if that is the case. One more smaller item that bugs me about these boxes too is when they list stupid features that even your 98 year old grandmother knows are there. For example, I am looking at a web host who does this, the comparison chart is as cheesy as ever and what is one of the features each plan has? “support”. As if in some bizarro world, there would be a web hosting plan that doesn’t come with “support”.
Know of another dirty web hosting word that didn’t make it onto the list? Drop me an e-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com or leave a comment and we’ll see if we can find at least seven more amongst us all.