Outstanding.biz - Introduction to Web Hosting
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Introduction to Web Hosting
Web Hosting Overview
It used to be that individuals and business had to be big to get a Website... That's not the case now with Outstanding.biz -- the most reliable, economical and easy way to get your company's or personal Website up and running, trouble-free. If your company has business cards, sales literature and people, it needs a Website. Your online window to the world is increasingly the means by which customers, prospects and partners wish to view you, even as just a supplement to letters, faxes and the more traditional ways of communicating. To a company new to the Internet, getting a Website can be a confusing experience, and often costly. That isn't the case with Outstanding.biz. Our packages start from the basics: getting you a domain name, which is your "dot-com" address. You can have your first Website up in minutes for as little as $6.99 per month. If you already have a Website hosted in-house or with another supplier, you may be paying too much and not getting the features and reliability you need. Take our online demo to see what you may be missing.

It starts with your Domain Name Getting your company or personal Domain Name registered is as easy as filling out a simple form. To register, just go to Outstanding.com, enter your desired name into the display window. In seconds we'll confirm whether the name you've chosen is available. A few easy steps later and the name will be yours. Your company is ready to go online!

Choose a Web Hosting Package From a basic online business card to a full-blown ecommerce enabled online store, Outstanding.biz has the package to meet your needs. You can start with a basic package and upgrade anytime. Whichever plan you choose, you'll know that your Website will be up and running quickly and with ongoing reliability of 99.9% uptime. And you can manage your Website with ease thanks to WebsiteOS, our powerful yet simplified "control panel" that makes website management as easy as using a word processor! We're so confident that we even give you a 30-day money back guarantee!. View Plans... (click here)

Build Your Website Whether you want a simple one page website or full-blown ecommerce enabled store, Outstanding.biz has all the tools you need to get the job done.

Promote Your New Website Getting yourself known on the Internet is now easier then ever with Outstanding.biz. We offer a wide variety of tools to help market your new Website on the World Wide Web. From search engine submissions to managed mailing lists, we understand what it takes to get noticed. There are even tools enabling you to create a revenue generating site with banner advertising! Our tools and resources are second to none in the industry, supporting the novice web builder to the high-end professional.
 

What is Web Hosting?
Web hosting providers rent out web space on a monthly or yearly basis just like office space.  So, the definition of web hosting is directly in its name - it is the process of hosting web data.  Essentially web hosting is the real estate industry of the web.  When you have a web site or store data online, it is stored on a server.  A server is nothing more than a computer: generally a high powered machine optimized for internet usage.  Some companies or individuals setup their own hosting operations from scratch, however this can be a costly and time consuming process.  This is why people turn to web hosting providers to store web sites and data.  A web hosting provider is able to purely focus on proper technical maintenance of the server and its connection to the internet.  Instead of worrying about up-keeping complicated server technology, clients can focus on their business and leave the technical work to web hosting professionals.

With thousands of web hosting providers and thousands of service offerings, prices vary from free to thousands of dollars a year.  Some companies rely on an expensive rock-solid hosting solution for the success of their business.  Perhaps they provide internet access, or run a high trafficked, high content online store.  Others may simply be using the web to tell people about their company - a web brochure.  Web hosting is not only used for storing web sites however; company databases, email, picture files, mp3's, movies, and anything that you could put on your computer can be stored on a server.  Once a database or web site is setup, the client is able to easily access their server space using a web publishing tool or an FTP (file transfer protocol) tool. An FTP tool simply put, is an application that allows you to upload files to a server. Many of these tools are free. We will be further elaborating on web publishing later in this article.
 

Terminology:
If you come across a word you don't understand try looking it up using Webopedia.com.  They offer a great selection of computer/Internet related definitions, complete with links and articles pertaining to each term. Also, you can use this glossary if you are unable to find any particular word:

- http://www.outstanding.biz/glossary.htm

 

 
Getting a Domain Name (www.yourname.com):
A domain is simply the web address you type into your browser.  For instance you would type www.google.com in your browser to go to Google's web site.  The most common extensions are ".com - .net - .org.", however there are many more. Today, domain names are easy and affordable to reserve.  The average price for a domain is anywhere from $15 to $35.    When you purchase a domain name you purchase it through a registrar like www.outstanding.com. Many web hosts will reserve your name for you, but the advantage to reserving your domain through a pure domain registrar is in the versatility.

 > Click here to read more on Domain Name Registration Services and Resources
 

General Types of Web Hosting:
While there are many specific types of web hosting, all hosting solutions fit into one of these three technical categories:

- Shared Hosting - Shared hosting is when you rent a portion of a server - like renting an office room in an office building.  Usually shared hosting packages are sufficient for basic web sites.  If requested, your hosting provider will reserve your own domain name (www.yourname.com) and provide you with email at your domain name yourname@yourname.com).  Or if you reserved your own domain name in advance, your web host will provide you with the information necessary to "hook it up" to your web server. Pricing in the category of shared web hosting can range from free to over $100/month dependent on the service offerings. Check Outstanding.biz's pricing and service offering of its shared hosting here

- Virtual Managed Servers - Are you a website designer or developer looking for a low-cost, high performance web hosting solution for your business? Traditional solutions involve co-located or in-house dedicated servers, which invariably require system administration, thousands of dollars investment infrastructure and hardware maintenance. VMS allows web developers to manage their own server in a virtual environment providing the highest level of reliability and functionality. With a Virtual Managed Server (VM Server) from Outstanding.biz you can spend your time taking care of your business and not your systems. Let Outstanding.biz take care of all the hardware, software, and systems infrastructure while you concentrate your efforts on what matters most, your core business.

- Dedicated Hosting - This is when you rent an entire server - like renting an entire office building.  Once you have your server you can put whatever you would like on it, your choice of applications, your choice of data.  You can store whatever you need on a dedicated server with fewer restrictions than that of a shared hosting solution. Low end dedicated servers start around $100/month, and go up from there.

- Co-located Hosting - This is when you actually buy the server, hardware, and software.  Your server is then monitored and connected to the web from a data center. This gives you the most control of your server - not only do you choose what to put on your server, but what technology will be hardwired to the physical machine itself.  Frequent clients of co-located services are web hosting providers, because they want 100% control and ownership of their servers.  Co-located services are for companies or individuals in need of mission-critical hosting operations. Co-located web hosting prices are not usually based on specific pricing plans as the prices vary greatly on each individual client's needs.
 

Client-Specific Hosting:
Listed below are common client goals, and the type(s) of hosting solutions that best match those goals:
 
Client Goal: Type(s) of Hosting:
I want a email hosting only. Outstanding.biz Email Hosting
I want a simple, very affordable dot com web site. Budget Web Hosting
I need to a relatively affordable, but somewhat powerful web site. Basic Shared, UNIX/Linux, Windows, Mac OS, or FrontPage Hosting
I want to sell products online. E-Commerce
I want to resell web hosting packages and make money. Reseller Hosting
I need to streamline internal company operations ASP (Application Service Provider)
I need a full server to store my website or data. Dedicated Hosting
I need to have someone host my server at their data center. Co-located Hosting
 
 
Choosing an OS:

For most basic shared hosting; the operating system should not make a big difference. UNIX and Linux are stable and more affordable than Windows. Microsoft FrontPage is supported on the Windows OS, UNIX, and Linux. Fortunately Outstanding.biz has you covered .

Outstanding.biz has a seamless blend of UNIX and Microsoft™ Windows technologies that combines the functionality of "Windows™ hosting" and "UNIX hosting" onto one platform. You can run ASP/MS Access and PHP/MySQL based sites from the same server farm. With our seamless blending of UNIX and Microsoft™ technologies, Outstanding.biz's hosting system is truly "cross-platform and one of the most advanced in the industry.

Also, here are the official definitions of the different operating systems:

Operating SystemWindows NT - Windows 2000 - UNIX - Linux
 

What to Expect From a Good Web Host:
Keep in mind budget web hosts cannot always provide all of this, but at minimum all web hosting providers should supply some kind of money-back guarantee and responsive support. Even pure email support can sometimes be quick and responsive.
 
24 Hour Support Outstanding.biz has 24-7 support
Money-Back Guarantee (at least a 14 day minimum) Outstanding.biz has a 30 day money back Guarantee
99.9% Uptime Guarantee Because of our 24/7 Network Monitoring, we can guarantee that your web site will be up and running 99.99% of the time. This means your views can always view your site day or night.
Server backups Outstanding.biz will always have backups of your data in case they or you lose or delete data.
High Levels of Bandwidth Outstanding.biz has very high level of bandwidths
Backup Power Supplies Also referred to as a UPS, or uninterruptible power source.
A T3 Connection or better to a primary internet backbone

Outstanding.biz has at least a T3

Redundancy Redundancy is simply more than one connection to the internet in case one fails. Click for the official definition

 

Web Publishing Tools:

Outstanding.biz is one of the very few web hosts that provides it customers with web publishing tools. For those of us, however, looking to create a professional web site, a visual web publishing tool is a quite a valuable investment, unless you prefer working only in simple raw HTML, in which case Notepad should be sufficient. Outstanding.biz web hosting packages all include several award winning tools for all your hosting needs .The Site Building Tools contain valuable individual tools such as ASP/CFM Enabler, Business Card Builder, Frontpage Manager, Free Plug-in Scripts, Webmaster Tools and the EasySiteWizard. Whether you're new to the web or a seasoned pro, each of these tools can help develop your online identity quick and easily. Listed below are some major Outstanding.biz web publishing tools that are inlcuded in the hosting packages

Outstanding.biz Web Hosting Publishing Tools:

EasySiteWizard-
The EasySiteWizard is a robust tool that allows you to quickly create a professional looking website with no knowledge of HTML. Your website can have many pages and can be customized to meet your needs. This application will allow you to create a completely customized, multi-page website in a few simple steps. There are numerous professionally designed templates available for you to choose from and you can even upload your own graphics or logos for use in your site. No knowledge of HTML is neccessary!

Business Card Creation Tool-
This application can create a simple, but professional looking single-page website that can be created with a wizard. Several templates are available to provide professional quality background images and site designs.

EasyStoreMakerPro- is an advanced website tool, is useful for customers interested in building and maintaining an ecommerce site. With EasyStoreMaker Pro, you will benefit from the same features and benefits that other industry leading e-store applications offer including 100% compatibility with EasySiteWizard - an easy to use three step website creation tool located right in your WebsiteOS, the ability to add unlimited products and images, plus catalogue them into your own defined categories, a built-in inventory stock counter so you can keep track of your store stock in real time and it has online credit card transaction capabilities. EasyStoreMaker comes in two versions which are described below. EasyStoreMaker allows you to create a fully secure online store in just a few minutes! This powerful e-commerce tool allows for an unlimited number of products and creates an unlimited number of SKUs for easy tracking of your items. EasyStoreMaker PRO has all the same benefits as EasyStoreMaker only it allows greater customization and real time credit card processing! Also available are ecBuilder SOHO/PRO and Miva Merchant.

EcBuilder Pro- ecBuilder Pro is essential for any business which needs to create a professional looking website, maintain it regularly, and keep track of customers and their orders.
ecBuilder Pro uses industry standard security and encryption for orders, inquiries, and real-time credit card transactions.

Announcer Pro- Announcer is an easy way for you to create new distribution lists or edit existing ones and keep your customers or friends up-to-date with what's new and exciting on your website.

Ad-manager - This function allows you to configure an ad server for use on your website.An ad server allows you to place rotating banner advertisements on your website, manage your advertising clients, and to collect statistics on banner views and "click throughs".

EasyMail - The "EasyMail" function allows you to manage your domain's email accounts. EasyMail setup is a full featured accessory that allows a novice user to easily configure various email account features. These accounts can be accessed by traditional mail reading clients as well as over the web with WebMail.

Plus More - For more web site tools click here

 

WYSIWYG Web Publishing Tools:

Dreamweaver- (Street price: $399) In advanced web publishing, Dreamweaver is the industry standard, hands down. Sometimes knowing very basic HTML will help in developing pages using dreamweaver. The tool is far more professional, however the steepest learning curve of the visual editors.

FrontPage- (Street price: $149) With FrontPage you don't need to know a bit of html to design a professional quality web site, however it seems that FrontPage has complications with browsers other than Internet Explorer.

ColdFusion- ColdFusion is for designing advanced web applications, and web sites. 

Free Web Publishing & FTP Tools:

- Download.com - HTML Editors
Contains many free trials of web publishing tools; some are fully free.

- Download.com - FTP
A useful selection of free FTP tools.

Graphics Design Tools:

Jasc's Paint Shop Pro
Paint Shop Pro has a variety of different versions, demos, and free versions.  All of them are extremely easy to use, and extremely powerful.  We highly recommend you take the time to look around their web site.  The majority of the graphics used on HostCompare.com have been designed using Paint Shop Pro. It is an incredibly affordable and easy alternative to Adobe Photoshop.

Macromedia
From Flash, to Fireworks, the people at Macromedia know how to make incredible graphics design software.  Be sure to visit their web site, and take a look at the many products they have to offer.

Adobe
Adobe provides industry standard software for creating visually attractive pictures and illustrations.

Also visit Download.com - Design Tools for a selection of free trials, and free tools.

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