Web Hosting Reviews, Tutorials & News

There’s quite a discrepancy between the cost of a domain and its importance. Control over the domain name is the key to a web site and all the bookmarks, feed readers and search engine rankings it might have. You can back up your content and host it elsewhere should you ever loose your domain, but you cannot easily regain your traffic.

At the time when you’re registering a new domain it’s not worth more than the $7-10 that you’ve spent for the registration fee. But 5 years later it might be your main source of income, and losing it could be a devastating blow. That’s why choosing the right domain name registrar is so important, and why it shouldn’t matter whether the registration fee is 1 dollar higher at registrar X than at registrar Y.

This is what you should look for in a registrar:

• Shouldn’t have a track record of taking away/down people’s domain because someone sent some random complaint through email. I am not saying that the registrar should cover a criminals back, but there have been cases where registrars took down domains for pathetic reasons. Actually, a registrar should not take down anything without a court order or a DMCA notice - EVER. Any registrar that goes beyond the absolute must should be avoided at any cost. The last thing you want is a trigger happy registrar. Google for “[name-of-registrar] shut down” and similar to check up on the trigger happiness of a registrar.
• Live updates of DNS settings. Not a daily update to save server costs or because they aren’t capable enough to handle live DNS updates. This might not be a big issue for everyone, and I am assuming that you’re going to use the registrar’s DNS service which not everyone is going to do (but which I recommend, see below to be explained in another post).
• No track record of holding customer domains hostage once they try to move their domain to another registrar. As with many subscription based services be it on- or offline, registrars too will show their true face once you dare to try leaving them. Again, google your registrar with the appropriate search queries.
• A control panel that doesn’t take an hour to load and one that isn’t redundant or confusing.

Enom

Had a ton of domains with them. They never harrassed me with anything. That’s a good thing. Control panel o.k. but could be leaner. Loads like 500 Kilobyte of Javascript with every page load.

Moniker

Claims to be very secure regarding domain hijacking, and I have not heard otherwise. They might be a good choice for valuable domains. Unfortunately their DNS doesn’t propagate immediately which is a bit of a turn off for someone who wants to actually use the included DNS service. The control panel is quite bad. I recommend moniker for people who don’t change stuff on their domains every other day. They have some unique features, i.e you can register domains for a short while to check out wheter they have any traffic, and then give them back, and you’ll get your money BACK (minus the ICANN fee of 20 cents). Moniker has phone support during business hours but I cannot attest to the availability of that as I never needed that. Once you need SUPPORT at a registrar (why would you need support) something’s already gone wrong. But having the possibility of phone support doesn’t hurt, of course.

Namecheap

“Just” a reseller of Enom as people repeatedly say, and it’s true but Enom is not the worst registrar to be a reseller of, and besides that, the control panel of Namecheap ROCKS. If you want to use their DNS service, and you are rather impatient when you need another subdomain, then they’re pretty good. The control panel is lightening fast and well organized and the DNS is live as in LIVE.

So these are the 3 registrars I recommend: Namecheap, Moniker, Enom. If you have several domains, spread them among these registrars so you’ll never depend on a single company. (The same applies to web hosting providers).

Whatever registrar you end up with, be cautious when you find something weird or uncommon. There’s no reason to let you wade through 3 pages of promotional “offers” each time you want to register a domain, or to extremely hide the links for transferring domains out. Do absolutely not care about the domain price (it should be below $15 though) and research your prospective registrar in Google first. See how seemingly big and established registrars can in fact be really “evil” by searching for ”registerfly”.

Shared or virtual web hosting packages are the typical web hosting accounts for beginners and intermediate web site owners. Shared means the server on which the web hosting account resides is shared by many (up to hundreds or even thousands of) customers. This is generally the most economical and thus also the most popular type of hosting.

The web hosting provider provides the administration of the web server since it is shared by many users. Most regular web site owners wouldn’t want to care about the in depth tasks of server administration anyway, so this is a benefit for them. Power users however often require greater control over the system, i.e. “shell access” to perform command line operations or to install specific software (besides ordinary - php, perl, etc. - “scripts”, which usually shared customers can install, too). Those power users will often prefer a Virtual Server or even a Dedicated (= physically real) Server, both with root access to configure, remove and install whatever they want.

Shared web hosting accounts usually come with a specific web hosting control panel. The type of control panel offered by the hosting provider is often an important feature for intermediate web site owners since they are often used to “their” control panel (i.e. CPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin…).

Types of web sites suited for shared / virtual web hosting:

Almost all web sites are suited to be run on shared web hosting accounts, with a few exceptions:

- Chat server applications: These usually consume too much server resources and require a dedicated server unless the chat is barely active.
- Wildly popular forums: These also usually require too much server resources at a certain size (i.e. hundreds of users online simultaneously).
- Other very active web sites if they are very dynamic. Dynamic sites are sites that are served live from a database on each request, opposed to “static” web sites which can serve much more visitors on the same server resources (CPU time and RAM memory) than a dynamic web site.

Shared web hosting providers:

There are thousands of shared web hosting providers and their sizes range from mom and pop operations to huge companies. Many of the small and very small outfits rent servers from bigger providers and resell them, often with added features or support. I personally tend to use mid sized to bigger providers and avoid the very big ones and the basement operations.

A web hosting control panel is an online interface provided by the hosting company for the configuration, maintenance and monitoring of a website. Web hosting control panels usually include these modules:

- Web site visitor statistics
- Available and consumed web space and transfer (bandwidth).
- Creation and configuration of databases, ftp accounts, email accounts, subdomains, domains, etc.
- Access control for (parts of) the web site
- Dozens of other modules depending of control panel used

Popular control panels are:

- CPanel: Probably the most popular web hosting control panel. Many features, can be overwhelming.
- Plesk: Similar to CPanel, almost as popular.
- DirectAdmin: Less features as the two mentioned before, but also popular, and might be easier to maintain for a beginner.
- Webmin: Free alternative, suited for maintaining a server with a single web hosting client.

Using the command line instead of a control panel:

- A web server (and - if a shell account is available - a web hosting account) can be configured and maintained without the use of a control panel. But even experienced webmasters will often prefer to use a control panel because it makes the day-to-day tasks of running a web site easier. No need to remember every single command. Using the command line for certain tasks is still possible even if a control panel is installed and running.

Which control panel to choose:

- I personally use webmin because I usually run servers rather than web hosting accounts. If I were to use a web hosting account my choice would be CPanel or DirectAdmin. CPanel because it is the most popular and there is a feature for almost every task. DirectAdmin because it is smaller and neater and also quite popular. I mention “popular” so often because I like to learn software only if it is sure to stay around. Also, if you use a “popular” control panel you are sure to easily find another host with the same panel when you’re changing your hosting provider which is something you’re going to do sooner or later. Finally, “popular” control panels are popular for a reason, many web hosting customers have voted with their feet. If you’re going to build your own web hosting company, CPanel would probably be the right choice. It will be easier to sell the company later on.