Icethunder – Your place for webhosting stuff!
The art of shifting responsibility in web hosting [IV.]
Jul 3rd
Yeasterday we talked about the first server service I would suggest you should “outsource” to a third party and do not run it yourself. It was DNS and as stated it’s easy to set it up when you read a few tutorials, but the security risks involved and the knowledge required are just too risky and it’s good to leave it to someone with more time and experience.
Mail server
Today I will continue in this discussion and introduce another kind of service I think would be a prime candidate for outsourcing. It is the email service and the mail server itself. I have run across many articles on the Internet suggesting leaving mail services to big companies with resources and knowledge. And I think it is even a better idea then leaving DNS to be managed by a third party. The one reason is the volume of spam rising each year. If you are thinking about setting up and using your own mail server than spam will find you sooner or later and thus I think it is very important to really think about leaving email server services to someone else. By “someone else” I mean someone with the resources and know-how. Read the rest of this entry »
The reseller hosting catch…
Jun 26th
You may not even heard about it or know anything about it, but it really exists. It is called reseller hosting and it is the topic of today’s article. Reseller hosting is based on the fact that company A has some spare space on their server and thus they decide to sell this and create a new product called the “Reseller hosting plan”. They offer their customers a set amount of bandwidth and web storage.
The customer who buys this kind of hosting plan can use this and sell it to his own customers. It is a very simple scheme. I have lots of web space on my severs and as I really can not afford it to be empty I will sell it to someone and maybe this person will be bale to find his own customers and sell the space to them. I get the money from my customer and he [possibly] gets some money from his own customers, too. If he does not find enough customers – it does not matter. It is his business opportunity not mine. And here is where it starts to be interesting.
Reseller hosting customers…
But the catch here is at the customers side. You are searching for a quality hosting and on your way you have to know and understand the different terms and kinds of hosting providers there exist. It is not always about big or small companies with real data-centers with servers, but sometimes you even can buy from some kind of company which only re-sells the space and bandwidth of a bigger company. Read the rest of this entry »
Is there a “best web hosting company” thing out there?
Jun 3rd
I will need to cool you down right at the beginning of this article, because I will tell you there is no such a thing like “the 
best web hosting provider”. The reason behind this is the diversity in the field of web hosting and moreover the various needs and expectations of different customers. What is good for Mike form Miami does not need to be regarded as a good service by Alison from London and Jerry from San Jose can even regard it as absolutely bellow average!
What I tried to say is the pure fact that what is good and what is bad is influenced by the experience of single individuals and these individuals all have different criteria they use for evaluating. And this is what you should keep in mind. Also the experience is influenced by the users “luck factor” as you may go from one host to another host and do not get into any kind of trouble even if you sing up with the host with the worst image in the industry. On the other side other people might never really get a satisfactory level of service even if they only sign up with great web hosts. Sometimes it is about luck. Read the rest of this entry »
How to solve hosting problems?
Jun 2nd
This is a nice topic for the mid of the week 
The end of the week is still far away and thus problems and work needs to 
be cleared and done. And hosting problems are no different as web hosting is not problem and trouble free. There are just so many things which can go wrong:
- The network could brake down
- The datacenter could encounter problems
- A hard drive might get broken
- You site might get hacked
- Your host could stop operating
- etc.
And do you know the best way to react to such problems? Well, I know a few of them, but first of all I will mention have it should not be done
The bad way of responding to hosting problems
This first part talks about “How it should not be done” and thus do not perform anything mentioned in this part as it only makes the whole “problem” worse. I think, that encountering problems with your web site hosted by a company is a hge problem as you might start loosing money immediately, but never do any of the following: Read the rest of this entry »
Do you procrastinate your hosting tasks???
May 24th
Well, not a very good headline for a web hosting blog, but it is very descriptive. It asks you if you procrastinate your every day tasks and among them is are also tasks like: researching your future web host, monitoring your web site’s uptime, looking for ways to improve design, speed ranking of your web site and much more.
You should not underestimate any part of your web hosting life, because it could backfire in a very bad way. You should be always the one who manages every aspect of your online project and thus no problem should surprise you. As long as you do have a back up strategy everything is great. But procrastination of your every day hosting tasks is a very bad habit. One day you wake up and find out, that your web site is down for several days. You would have noticed thisa lot sooner if you only would monitor it regularly 
Read the rest of this entry »
7 basic tips for good hosting experience
May 21st
Here are the tips I would give you if you would ask me the question: “What should I know before buying a hosting package?”
- Definitely make some estimation beforehand. You need to know how much bandwidth and web space you will need!
This comes very handy in the beginning and during your search as it helps you to decide which hosts and package just do not offer what you need… .
- Decide what operating system & database type you need.
- Decide your annual budget.
Yo should know how much you are wiling to spend on web hosting beforehand. Read the rest of this entry »
In web hosting You need to have realistic plans!
May 12th
Hosting a web site online is a great thing. It gives you so many new opportunities. And even more opportunities are waiting for you to be discovered! But there is one thing you need to keep i your mind. You need to have a clear vision 
of what you can really get from a shared hosting environment at a certain host and with a certain budget.
Your budget matters
You may have seen many ad’s with hosts offering plans for $ 5 and less and others offering the same features for $30 per month. When you see such a big difference in prices you should start to wonder how is it possible? Well, sometimes the price difference is irrelevant, but sometimes it’s an indicator of the level of service you will get for your money. Many times you are told by the hosting community at different hosting forums, that in web hosting you get what you pay for, but it does not mean, that a shared hosting packages should cost $50 to provide you with a great service. I would say, that this saying is 90% true while with a VPS or dedicated hosting provider, because there you are renting the whole machine. But while with a shared hosting provider you should be able to get a good level of service for around $10 per month Read the rest of this entry »
Why is it a good thing to have a back up strategy in place? [II.]
May 9th
The examples of back up strategies I talked about in my last article [click] are not the only ones. there are of course many more and it depends mostly on you and your needs. Today I would like to expand on the last article a little bit more. To back up something, or better said to have a back up strategy in place if something happens does not only mean to back up your web space data, database tables, but it can be understood in a much wider view.
What more back up strategies could be used?
We all know, that data are very valuable to use. We own a web site and users leave interactions on the sites, web sites change every day, we update them from time to time and thus data is valuable, but there is one more thing we could consider as very important. It’s our email messages!!! Read the rest of this entry »
Why is it a good thing to have a back up strategy in place? [I.]
May 8th
Yesterday, when I wrote the article about domain names and hosting , I thought about another very similar topic. It’s about the subject of back up strategy. What back up strategies do I have in place and what back up strategies are there. I know it might sound a little bit too secure, but it is always good to be prepared for bad things on the Internet!
What back-up strategies can be employed?
Basically, what this question tries to ask is what can be backed-up and what can not be. And it tries to ask what should be backed-up and for what reason. I think, that many of you will agree with me, that your data are very valuable to you and thus they deserve to be backed-up while hosted by a third party. But even when you host your data yourselves it’s a very good idea to back everything up! Read the rest of this entry »
Why the image of a hosting company matters? [II.]
May 6th
As said in the previous article the image of a hosting company is “constructed” of many different pieces and working only on one of them is a very bad idea. Hosting companies should concentrate on the most important factors which are influencing a customer’s experience and the word of mouth will most probably bring them tons of new customers even without the need to spend excessive money on advertisement campaigns.
What company would I choose?
I talked mostly in general until now and I would like to give my own opinion. Maybe you are asking who I would go with if I would have the choice. Well, I am a comfortable person and I am not willing to sit behind the PC for 24/7 and watch if my site is operational and if there is no problem. And thus I am very concerned about the support level and service level. Read the rest of this entry »
