Archive for the 'Hosting' category

Do you want to get a synthétic view of the operation of your web site? Go check Is My Blog Working to know all about your blog.

Recommended by A Photo Editor, here is a list of cheap web hosting offers that are well targetted for photographers (users that usually need a lot of web space).

BlueHost $7/month
GoDaddy $5 – $15/month
Oditech $10/month
Yahoo Small Business $10/month
DreamHost $10/month
Tiger Tech $7/month
Site 5 $8/month
NearlyFreeSpeech Pay as you go
HostSite $10/month
ICD Soft $6-10/month
Certified Hosting $5/month
Host Papa $5/month
PowWeb $8/month
HostGator $15/month
WebHero $7/month
LaughingSquid $8 – $14/month
Pair $10 – $30/month
SurpassHosting $4 – $15/month
Eleven2 $6 – $21/month — Maybe not good. A commenter is having serious problems.
LiquidWeb $15 – $25/month

I had some difficulty after moving my WordPress web sites to a new host. It was impossible to have the WordPress auto-update feature working: I could not get WordPress to udpate the plugins or itself. Apparently, it failed when trying to FTP the code.

Solution was easy enough, even though I had to find the exact place where it was trying: Give write access to the root directory of the web site.

It is quite important to track the exact status of your server. It has been proven again to me last Saturday. During a few hours, OVH which is hosting my web sites had a bad connection with the rest of the world (some users could go through, most couldn’t reach the web site).

The first visible consequence is small dip in the visits as shown by Google Analytics. But it is not very visible (about 10%). Most importantly, the visitors who could get through were not able to visit conveniently and the Google Adsense earnings dropped by 30% on this same day.

Two lessons:

1. Be sure to have a reliable web service (not only the machine, but also its connection) to deliver a pleasant visiting experience to your web site.
2. Web site performance has a direct impact on your earnings. In this case 1/2 of visitors seeing a slow web site reduced ads revenue by 30%. A little web page optimization could be welcome, too.

Sometimes, you are looking for the best possible web hosting solution (amongst a plethoric offer). LifeHacker.com asked the question to its many readers to reach a consensus list of top 6 web hosting:

• DreamHost
• Blue Host
• NearlyFreeSpeech.NET
• 1&1
• GoDaddy
• HostGator
• A Small Orange

Even if most may not be advertising heavily in your country, remember that they are all available from everywhere in the world.

Just a small reminder if you setup your own Apache server (like I currently do all by myself). Be sure that the httpd.conf file contains the following (I almost forgot it):

#
# The following lines prevent .htaccess and .htpasswd files from being
# viewed by Web clients.
#
<FilesMatch "^\.ht">
    Order allow,deny
    Deny from all
</FilesMatch>