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      <h3>Professional Website Hosting - What to Look For</h3>
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      <i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By: Andy Nataghi<br>
      Posted: 2010-05-12 07:07:47</i>
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      A professional website hosting service is essential if you are a business owner to ensure that your site:* is always online and available to your customers <br>* loads quickly to provide a good service and to get the best possible search engine ranking.Depending on your level of activity you will probably want something better than a standard shared hosting service. Even if your business is new and a shared service is ok it is still important that your hosting provider offers an upgrade path to follow as you grow.The first upgrade from a shared account might be to Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting. This means that a server is configured such that multiple customers are hosted on a single server but the resources are split rather than shared i.e. they all have their own mini server. By using a virtual private server, professional website hosting companies can offer small businesses the performance, security, and control of a dedicated server at a much lower cost.Later you may outgrow VPS hosting and need your own dedicated server. Here you actually have a physical server (which you may get to select the specification of) for your sole use.You need to be aware that as you up grow the services of the hosting company may change. Backups are a good example. The hosting company may backup their shared servers but may not the dedicated servers.As well as the physical infrastructure you will also need to consider a website host's software infrastructure. If you site has been (or will be) professionally produced, your developers may specify the hosting requirements.The most important question is whether Linux or Microsoft hosting is required (this decision is not connected with your PC operating system).Linux is the most common (about 80% of web servers) and being open source may be slightly cheaper. Stability and speed are also areas where Linux has a good reputation. It supports an extensive range of software, applications, languages, and databases including PHP, Perl, PostGre, MySQL. However it cannot accommodate some Microsoft technologies.The main reason for using a Windows environment is that it can run Microsoft software such as Access and MS SQL databases. This will also be required if your developers use Microsoft programming environments like Active Server Pages and Visual Basic Scripts.If the requirements of your site do not force you one way or the other it is generally best to go the Linux route.Andy Nataghi is an enthusiast and writer about all things technical and has a particular interest in Professional Website Hosting. To see more detail on assessing hosting providers please visit http://website-hosting-plans.com
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