Tel: 0113 2170419
www.littlefishwebdesign.com
Free website hosting at HostMe123
Monday, July 16, 2007
This post has been updated.
HostMe123 is a new free hosting site with lots of features:
- 250 300 MB Disk Space
- 6 10 GB Monthly Transfer
- 3 7 MySQL Databases
- 5 Add-On Domains
- 5 Sub Domains
- Webmail
- POP E-mail Accounts
- Auto Script Installer
- PHP MyAdmin
- FTP Access
- Integrated File Manager
- PHP Flags Manager
- Password Protected Folders
It is ad-supported but unusually for this type of hosting, there is a clear policy on the sort of ads to expect and even a demo, so you can see exactly what ads will be shown:
"HostMe123 is a free web host supported by banner advertising, but bears your needs in mind as a web user. One banner ad at the bottom of each page is required BUT we will not display any advert that is deemed unsuitable for a family audience, contains flashing images or is context-based."
Even better, you can now pay just $7 to remove the ads for the lifetime of your hosting account.
Rather refreshing don't you think?
Labels: hosting
Buying a domain name and hosting - a new Squidoo lens
Friday, June 15, 2007
I keep hearing from various sources about a website called 'Squidoo' and how you can create a 'lens' which is a collection of links on a topic.
Today, I finally created my first lenses, pulling together information about buying a domain name and buying website hosting. Why not visit and see what you think? Either comment in the guestbook or rate it - either way, I'll be pleased for your feedback.
Labels: domains, hosting, internet, linking
Free PHP MySQL website hosting
Friday, April 13, 2007
When searching for free website hosting with no banners or ads, I came across phpnet.us and signed up for an account. It isn't cPanel based, but the control panel "Advanced Hosting Control Panel" is very straightforward to use. The FTP upload is a little slow, but this seems a small price to pay. On signup, you choose a subdomain to use but you can setup your own domain name to work with PHPnet as it gives full setup and nameserver details.
The spec they offer is:
- 300 MB free web space
- 80 GB free monthly bandwidth
- Fantastico type script installer
- Control Panel
- 3 x MySQL database
- PHP enabled web space
- No maximum file size
- All file types allowed
- Free FTP account
- Catch-all e-mail address
- Free sub domain: you.phpnet.us
- No forum posting required
- No setup fee
- Instant activation
The immediate drawbacks I can see are no cron jobs (Don't know what I mean? Not a problem for you there then!) and there's no mention of uptime.
Edit - there is a 468x60 banner that appears at the bottom of most pages. You can't get rid of them entirely, but with a little spacing at the bottom of your page, or editing your stylesheet, you can minimise their impact.
The perils of a free website
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
I've recently had a client come to me for a site redesign. A few questions later and I ascertained that he was unhappy with the current design - it looked clumsy, was not user friendly and the company were only interested in helping him until they took his money.
When asked how much he'd paid for the site, his reply was surprising... "Oh nothing, but I do have to pay £35 per month in hosting fees!"
So what's wrong here? Firstly, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Secondly, I charge my clients £25 per year for hosting (if you're interested let me know and I'll give you the name of the company).
For the five-page site which left him open to large amounts of spam (through exposing his e-mail address) and very few visitors (due to the poor design etc...), he effectively paid £420 per year. The same site with LittleFish Web Design but created to far higher standards? £325.
Excuse me whilst I blow my own trumpet..!
Importing large files into phpMyAdmin
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Okay, so I moved to a Hostgator server earlier this week. It's gone fairly smoothly, and as I have unlimited addon domains, it means I can host all my sites on the one package. There are reasons not to do this if you're heavily into using one of your websites to promote the next which I'll cover in a different post.
In the meantime, one site had a MySQL dump file of 57,571 KB which is quite large. It's bigger than the allowed upload limit for phpMyAdmin and the thought of manually pasting it filled me with dread - it would take several hours, perhaps too much caffeine and definitely not much fun.
A quick Google search threw up 'bigdump' - a single PHP script that you input your database variables into, create a folder in your hosting account - 'dump' for example, and upload the large mySQL file in question to it.
The database to import to must exist, and if the dump file doesn't contain 'drop' commands, you must manually do this first in phpMyAdmin.
For more details, see this post I found called "How to Import Large MySQL Data Files" with a much more detailed explanation. And if you don't know what I'm talking about...lucky you!
Labels: hosting, programming
Moving Servers
Friday, March 23, 2007
Just a short blog post to let you know that LittleFish Web Design is moving servers this week, so I may disappear off into cyberspace for a while before returning.
I started off hosting with Supanames, who provide a convenient 'all in one' package - domain name and hosting in one. However, I quickly outgrew what they could provide and decided to look for an alternative host. I still recommend them for good, basic web hosting when you're not trying to do too much with dynamic (PHP) files and RSS feeds (if you want RSS you have to apply for that particular feed address to be added to their firewall rules).
I considered GoDaddy and Hostgator - both are big reputable hosts with 99.9% uptime guarantee, more traffic (bandwidth) than you can shake a stick at, allow subdomains blah blah blah. Customer service for both has been really good so far.
In the end, I transferred our .com and .co.uk domain names to GoDaddy and 1and1 respectively (you've got to get the cheapest deal!) and chosen hosting with Hostgator.
Now, I'm just waiting to set the nameservers and then have to wait for them to resolve. Simple as that!
Labels: domains, hosting, internet
Consolidate your pagerank with .htaccess
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
If you look in the search engines, you may notice that some of the links to your site start with 'www' and others don't. The problem with this canonicalisation issue (despite the situation improving as the search engines become more sophisticated) is that some search engines will view this as two different domains and firstly, will split pagerank between the two and secondly, could push your pages into the supplemental results so your site won't be as easily found.
There is a simple solution to this if you use linux-based hosting and involves editing your .htaccess file. If you don't already have one of these files in the root directory of your hosting server, you'll have to create one. Note that whether you see this file may depend on your FTP program - set it to show all files including hidden ones. I use FileZilla which is an excellent open source FTP program and very simple to use.
The dot (period) in front of the htaccess means that it is a hidden system file. To create an htaccess file, open notepad and save a new file. Ignore the extension which is set to text file (*.txt) and in the filename box type ".htaccess", including the quote marks. You should now have a correctly named file.
Now type in:Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.co\.uk$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]
At the end of the last line, press the enter key to add a newline to the file. This is really important or your htaccess won't work. Now save this and upload it to the root of your website. Some hosts take a short amount of time to update htaccess (GoDaddy for example) but it should work instantaneously on most hosts. This can be adapted for any domain:RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.com$ [NC] etc...
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Just remember to change 'yourdomain' to your actual domain name!
Labels: hosting, searchengines, webdesign
Guest article: Move Up to Virtual Private Server?
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Traditional Shared Hosting
Most people are familiar with "shared" web hosting accounts. A shared hosting account is where you rent disc space on a server which is shared among many other users.
This is a cost effective way to getting started as a webmaster but it has some disadvantages. Firstly you may encounter email delivery problems if someone else with a site on the server decides to run a large business mailing. Also abuse of web hosting providers service may result in a torrent of spam clogging the shared mail queue, causing a "denial of service" attack.
You will find your website slowing down when someone else with a datebase intensive website (such as a forum or bulletin board). Another disadvantage of shared hosting is that you very rarely get administrator or root access. This can make setting up dynamic sites more tricky. Also you can't install your own software and will have to put up with software libraries (such as Perl or PHP) that the web hosting provider has installed.
Security
There are also security issues to consider of using a shared file system. Could other users access your files and data with an appropriate script? This is of critical concern if you are considering ecommerce hosting and in particular storing credit card information. Certain credit card payment processors may wish you to have a more secure arrangement than a shared hosting server. A shared server introduces many more security vectors and someone elses unpatched phpBB script may result in lost business and downtime for you.
Enter the Virtual Private Server
How can you avoid this problem? A few years ago you would have had to consider a dedicated server. However there has been a relatively recent development in web hosting - the virtual dedicated server. These are often known as VPS's or Virtual Private Servers. A virtual dedicated server lets you run your sites as if you had your own "dedicated" server, except it is cheaper because you are really just using part of a server that has been split into multiple virtual dedicated servers.
The most important distinction to shared virtual hosting is that you have "root" or admin access and you control your own background processes, such as apache (httpd), qmail (smptd) and MySQL (databases) So someone elses buggy application or script is not going to crash or interfere with your own processes. Furthermore you have filesystem security as it effectively jailed or "chrooted" from other users and processes, and you can install your own libraries and software.
Where to Find a VPS Hosting
There are now plenty of VPS Providers. You can find many by searching Google for "virtual private servers" or "vps hosting" or looking in one of the many web hosting directories or forums. Virtuozzo by SW-Soft is the main commercial software that web hosts use to run virtual hosting services, but there are others. For instance vserver is similar in principle to Virtuozzo but is not as well used. Open source vps systems exist in the form of OpenVZ ( a subset of Virtuozzo) UML (User Mode Linux) and more recently Xen. It's highly likely that you will be hosted on a Virtuozzo system.
VPS hosting used to be the prerogative of the smaller web hosts primarily looking for a more geeky market but recently the bigger mainstream web hosts have moved into VPS's. Virtual Dedicated Server hosting starts at just £30 a month. You'll get a much more generous bandwidth allowance compared to shared hosting, and none of the problems that go with a shared host. Usually you get multiple IP addresses that are exclusive to your sites, which you will need for SSL certificate hosting and for running your own nameservers if you want to register domain names.
So what's the catch? Apart from the price there isn't one. You'll be spending a lot more on hosting each month but not as much a for a real dedicated server. The main drawback of upgrading to virtual dedicated hosting is that you will need to be more technically proficient so that you can administer the server. You might think this requires a lot Linux skills to make sure your server runs smoothly but most VPS hosts provide a control panel such as Plesk or CPanel to make administrative tasks a cinch.
Many hosting providers will offer "premium" or managed support which includes a bit more hand holding - this is definitely recommended if you don't have much experience with Linux, and are not confident about keeping your VPS updated. It's worth talking to your web host about updating and installing software. If its a Virtuozzo system, the web host will have pre-installed templates for common applications such as Coldfusion which can be rolled out across many VPS's thus cutting down on disc space inside your VPS and well as saving memory and resources on the "hardware node" it runs on. Quite often the VPS provider can roll out operating system updates and bugfixes across all their VPS infrastructure.
With the increased speed and bandwidth that a virtual dedicated host offers, and none of the shared hosting headaches, the move is one you will never regret.
About the author
Paul Lee has over six years experience in the web hosting industry and was formerly Senior System Administrator with Simply.Com Limited. He currently lives and works in London and runs his own consultancy and hosting company Weycrest.
Labels: hosting
How to set domain name servers
Monday, October 16, 2006
When you purchase domain names and hosting separately, you need to tell them how to talk to each other. This is done be setting your domain name servers (DNS setting). You will receive an e-mail from your web host confirming your hosting, and this will contain the addresses of the nameservers. These typically look like ns1.webhostnameserver.com and ns2.webhostnameserver.com. Instructions are provided below for 1&1 and GoDaddy, both of which are our recommended domain sellers .
With 1&1:
- Log into your 1&1 account at http://admin.1and1.co.uk; you can do this quite soon after registering your domain, by using your domain name in the account name field, and using the password you chose during registration.
- Click on 'Manage Domains'.
- You will see your domain name(s) listed - click on the box to the left hand side of the domain you want to change.
- Click on the down arrow on the DNS button and choose 'Edit DNS Settings'.
- In 'Basic DNS Settings' select 'My name server' from the dropdown list.
- In 'Advanced DNS Settings', you'll see 'Primary name server' appear.
- Type in the first nameserver as it appears in the e-mail from your webhost.There is no www or http at the start.
- Underneath, choose 'My secondary name server' from the drop down box.
- Type in the second nameserver as it appears in the e-mail from your webhost. The is no www or http at the start.
- Click 'save' and don't forget to logout.
- It will take a while for the information to be updated.
- Do this as soon as possible after purchasing your domain name and hosting - until you do this, your website will point to a 1&1 page.
- Log into your GoDaddy account.
- Click on 'My Account' that appear under your name on the right hand side of the page.
- Click on 'Manage Domains'
- You will see your domain name(s) listed - click on the box to the left hand side of the domain(s) you want to change.
- Click on the 'Set Nameservers' button in the choices above the list of your domain names.
- The screen will refresh and you'll see a new panel on the right hand side of your screen.
- Select 'Custom Name Servers'
- Type in the nameservers exactly as they appear in the e-mail from your webhost. There is no www or http at the start.
- Click on 'Save Changes' and don't forget to logout.
- It will take a while for the information to be updated.
- Do this as soon as possible after purchasing your domain name and hosting - until you do this, your website will point to a GoDaddy page.
Small business web hosting tools
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Our sister site LittleFish Web Hosting offers web hosting tools and advice for small businesses.
A hosting comparison table shows reliable and affordable hosting from sources that we use whilst if you need a domain name to go with your hosting, current prices from two of the largest domain registrars are shown, and just to help you out with some of the terms used on the site, there is a glossary.
How to check your website is up and running
Sunday, April 02, 2006
When choosing a web host, you might have taken 'uptime' into consideration - most hosts guarantee 99.something percent uptime. This is literally the amount of time that your website is up and running. Downtime, is the opposite of this i.e. when your site is unavailable.
To put it into real terms, 0.1% uptime equates to just over 86 seconds per day. Whilst this doesn't sound much, if it's at a peak time for your visitors - how many potential sales have you just lost?
And even when you have chosen your host, how can you tell if it really does stick to the uptime promised?
SiteUptime is a free service that monitors your website every 30 minutes (more frequently if you pay a small monthly fee) and sends you an e-mail each time your site is down. In addition, you can see monthly aggregated statistics.
Whilst this is certainly not the only uptime monitoring service, it's ease of use and simplicity makes it a good choice.
Visit the SiteUptime Web Site Monitoring Service
Labels: hosting, internet, resources
Domain Name and Hosting Reseller Business
Sunday, December 04, 2005
GoDaddy, one of the largest domain name and hosting sellers worldwide have several reseller plans that look to be good value. On the basic plan ($99 per year), net rates start from $7.75 for domains, $3.35 for hosting and $23.10 for SSL certificates. You set your selling price, and pocket the difference. GoDaddy also provide you with a fully customisable website, allows you to sell through affiliate programs such as Commission Junction and ClickBank, throws in loads of useful extras such as customer support for you and your customers, reporting tools, search engine submission software, a free SSL certificate and gives you a Google AdWords credit ($100 credit on the basic plan).
So what's the catch? With all these "sounds too good to be true" opportunities, there is always a sticking point somewhere. With this opportunity, the obvious catch is the $99 annual outlay. However, the real question is whether you are able to commit yourself to marketing the site. If you are established on the web with a mailing list of eager potential customers, it will be a lot easier than starting up with no contacts. See my previous post on a free dating website business for more marketing ideas.
Find the reseller plans here at GoDaddy.
(Approximate prices in GBP - $99 = £57; $7.75 = £4.50; $3.35 = £1.95 ; $23.10 = £13.35)
Cheapest Hosting and Domain Names
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
We can recommend several affordable and reliable domain name and hosting providers:
Hosting:
GoDaddy
1&1
Domains:
For cheapest .co.uk domains - 1&1
For cheapest .com and most other domains - GoDaddy
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