anuragbhatia.com !!!

This was one of the greatest poems by Sh. Atal Bihari Vajypee. Although i don’t like poems much but when it comes to patriotic feelings, i like everything

I can clearly feel the energy levels poet here is having….really really energetic.

Hope you will also enjoy it.

Hello all

This is one of the common question, people ask me – How to choose a web host?

So now I am posting about choosing a right web host for small biz and mid scale business sites.

Unless you are about to use a really complicated script, there is no need to worry about versions of php and MySQL and other complex factors….

Selection criteria will be based on:

• Web Space & Bandwidth
• Reliability
• Support
• Type of access
• Cost factor
• Account limits

So here we go!

Web Space

Web space is NOT much big issue, but I still see people worrying about those.

Let’s see how:

an average page of a site these days weighs around 300KB (having little flash work and rest data and a few pics.) thus if we take average site up to 8 pages (common for a business site.) thus whole site data is about300 X 8 = 2400KB = 2.4MB

Now adding space for PDF Boucher’s, a few more heavy pages like company’s pics. and other product detailed reports; a few video’s etc…..all will hardly cross 50MB

let’s keep a little reserve scripts – 500MB will more then enough for blog, forum, and other similar scripts

Thus saying 1GB space is TOO much for a corporate site!

I just want to make a point to ignore “web space” factor unless space is less then 1GB, rest just consider other important factors

Then comes bandwidth, now that relies on visitors…lets try to calculate it also

average homepage size – 300KB and contact us page size – 100KB, average product detail pages – 500KB so we can assume here that 90% of visitors will go only through these pages

so 90% visitors will be using – 300+100+500×4 = 2.4MB of bandwidth….so now one can calculate based on that.

so 25GB bandwidth means 10,000+ visits which means 300+ visits a day…just for an average site

so here I just recommend considering your visitors and going with appropriate bandwidth and as for an average site, I personally feel 25GB is more then enough

Reliability

This is an important concept which most of people miss out.

Reliability includes (but now limited to):

• Type of Web Hosting company
  There can be lot of difference if you choose a reseller as your web host, sorry to say BUT mostly they have poor quality of everything (including support, servers, policies) and thus I do NOT recommend going with a reseller unless that is highly popular.
  Now e.g. as per this Hostgator, Dream Host etc are good BUT still host like Go daddy aren’t up to that level.
  So I just want to say preferably go with a Hosting “company” like thing rather then a “reseller”
  And ALWAYS make sure you are owner of domain. NEVER ever register your domain with a hosting company which doesn’t gives you access to domain control panel or doesn’t allow you to switch registrar. That’s the most common way in which people are trapped up!

• Type of Hosting infrastructure. Again an important factor. It includes what type of setup your site is on….that might be a “single” server of a reseller OR a cluster of servers by a company like Dream Host.
  While the 1st one is HIGHLY unsecured (anytime your cPanel account could be hacked) and will suck out your hours to restore back your site.

• Backups – find out if web host is giving free full backups or not. It is one of most important yet most ignored feature.

Check out for frequency of backups, checkout for cost of restoration of backups (it should be free or VERY low cost…) and also ask for time a host needs to restore backup.

Support

This is the thing which you will find in most of articles on choosing a web host. Yea that’s true it’s important. Just consider the following things in support:

• Should be quick (if replies after 24hrs, its almost useless)
• Replies should me sensible.
• Do not give much weightage to chat support, as instant solution to hosting queries is generally not possible. A 24/7/365 email support is good enough.
• And as already stated MOST of “resellers” have poor support.

An interesting question here could be how to know (without purchasing!) a web host about its support!

So the best way out is…contact support with pre-sales queries about various things I had discussed here. If you get reply in 24hrs then it “could be” a good host but if it’s more then 24hrs then it “is” worst host!

Type of access:

It is important to know what type of access your web host will be giving to you. Check out with your host about:

• Type of control panel (cPanel is best recommended for Linux but still control panels which hosts like dream host offer are also fine..)
• Ask about Shell access (you might require them for some script work, etc)

Cost Factor:

Again one of fundamental most factors, here important is MOST of web host don’t give what you want. Let’s take example of Hostagator baby plan; I like it because of great speed servers, good support, no stupid limits. But can ANYONE from Hostgator could explain us which small business site need hundred GB’s of space, TB’s of bandwidth could be an exceptional case for some business BUT 600GB web space, does it makes ANY since when file hosting is not allowed, and you even can’t have more then one backup of your own cPanel account.

• So it means you are paying $8-$9 per month for many resources which you will never use, so just keep that in mind. Don’t pay for 300GB when you need 1GB
• Never have longtime contracts, 1year hosting contract is good enough, and do NOT think about those 5year stuff! yuk!
• Make sure about things like domain transfer fees, cPanel account transfer fees, account restoration fees, etc

Account Limits:

There are some “heavily frustrating” things which just cause web host huge loss of customers and customers to just ignore that host.

Make sure about the following limits:

• no. of sub-domains (must be unlimited or at least 50+)
• no. of add-on and parked domains (must be 20+)
• no. of MySQL databases – SHOULD be UNLIMITED!!!
• no. of FTP accounts – should be unlimited
• no. of auto responders, mailing lists etc in cPanel – should be unlimited
• How much CPU resources you can use (including memory, processor load) and for how long? Typically it is 25% allowed maximum for 90 seconds. (if you have extensive scripting work, you must check it up with host)

I hope you will find this helpful

(7 votes, average: 4.86 out of 5)

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i just came across this WONDERFUL firefox plugin

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8731

it use Google translator API and thus making Hindi chat experience REALLY smooth

Thumbs up for Sridhar an Engineer from Zoho

I wish him all the best for next versions of plugin

Hello all!!!

i was just getting lot of queries regarding setup of GApps with external web host. So basically using GApps for email hosting and using a separate web host for Web hosting.

Now we can have this kind of setup in two ways:

1. using DNS hosting of web host
2. using external DNS hosts

regarding differences in both i had given here

1st way is quite easy, it just need you to put Google’s mx records at web hosting control panel

But you will need #2 in case of following things:

• web host doesn’t allow using custom mx
• you want to create cname records and web host is not giving option to do so
• you can put only one mx record but still you want all emails on time with full redundancy
• you also want to create advanced records like SPF, SRV etc

So here’s the info on #2

here i am giving some DNS related steps and tricks to do that.

Step 1 – choose DNS Host

Now here you may choose your registrar’s dns hosting (if available) or else you can go with an external free dns host (remember free DNS hosts are highly reliable)

you may go with:

• Edit DNS
• Zoneedit
• Everydns
• Sitelutions
• web-dns

Incase you need something with gurantee, you can try out Googleing for “paid external dns”

Step 2- create GApps records

Now here start creating GApps records….as

1. mx records – http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33352
2. cname record for verification and custom url’s – http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=47283
3. Optional – SRV records – These are to enable usage of GTalk for GAPps account from outside of Google network. Here’s more info. – http://anuragbhatia.com/2008/09/googles-srv-records/
4. Optional – SRF records - These are to protect your domain from being used by spammers.
   in case you want to use ONLY GApps for sending mail on behalf of your domain, just create this “txt record” at dns hosting for root (domain.com) zone -
   v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all

   and incase you plan to use servers others then (but including) Google’s then use this wizard to generate custom SPF for your domain.

Step 3 – Configuring Web Hosting

to configure web hosting, you need to point root zone (i.e domain.com) and also subzones to web hosting server’s ip using “A record”

Now here exists two possibilities:

• your web host gave you web hosting server’s ip (sweet host!)
• your web host gave you only nameservers and not any hosting server’s ip.

in 1st case ignore next section and scroll down and further instructions.

here’s what to do in 2nd case to get ip of hosting server.

Here’s the idea is just to query nameservers given by web host for “A records” of your domain.

proceed as:

• use any dns lookup tool, for simplicity i am using zoneedit’s nslookup tool
• put your own domain in domain field
• select record as “A record” for querying
• use nameservers to query of your web host.

here’s a preview

(click on image to enlarge)

you can also use dig command if you are on Linux, use it as

dig your-domain.com@ns1.your-web-host-server.com a

Thus you will notice output as

[anurag@root ~]$ dig harisri.in@ns1.anuragbhatia.com a

; <<>> DiG 9.2.4 <<>> harisri.in@ns1.anuragbhatia.com a
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 398
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;harisri.in@ns1.anuragbhatia.com. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
harisri.in@ns1.anuragbhatia.com. 60 IN A 72.9.152.48

;; Query time: 253 msec
;; SERVER: 69.56.247.250#53(69.56.247.250)
;; WHEN: Mon Sep 29 16:23:41 2008
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 65

[anurag@root ~]$

Now after getting ip of web hosting server just create the following records:

1. A record for domain.com pointing to that ip
2. A record for *.domain.com pointing to that ip

This will enable web hosting on domain.com as well as all subdomains (including www.domain.com)

Step 4 – Changing nameservers of domain

Now just change the nameservers of your domain. Point your domain to nameservers of the dns host you are using.

And done!!!
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Hi there….

Out sourcing is really going everywhere and really EVERYWHERE!

And now it has reached Email Hosting too!!! Sounds exiting, isn’t it?

and latest work by one of US big web hosts proves that.

More and more companies these days are moving towards outsourced email hosting and fun is web hosts are too in that cue!!!

A few months back even Dream Host also recommended Google hosted email via GApps suite….in one of their blog >>> http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/05/23/what-web-hosting-is-for/

observe the lines

But why would you use Gmail? Well, they do have a pretty cool web interface, which you can add your own logo to and access at your own domain; but besides that they also have regular POP/IMAP/SMTP access, plus awesome archiving, searching, filtering, reliability, accessibility

Thus Dream Host is also accepting that GApps provide better service then an hosted email at there server…..truly saying thats true!!!

Actually, there is much profit in having an outsourced email hosting with service like Google Apps…

1. Out sourced email….so you don’t need to put effort in maintaining servers at office, looked after by a server admin (adding more to the cost) , you don’t need to worry about storage, hardware, ISP’s link, spyware and Virus issues…..actually truly saying all these points become good excuses to not have an @company-name.com id by small businesses.
2. In comparison with email hosting of web host, its even still better……say lets compare GApps with an web based email service like squirrel mail .
   In this case, unfortunately most of small web hosts show 1-2 min downtime ever week (as per what i observed…) and in this setup here is only one server which hosts email, thus late delivery can be an common issue with small web hosts, having one server hosting about 500 small business web sites with email…….
3. After reliability, data protection is also an issue, since most of email hosting is based on Linux server giving cpanel in front end and WHM panels in backend, its really not much difficult for hackers to get into a server which is like kids playing football in a showroom but till now i haven’t heard any case of data loss by Gmail, thats true it was down a few weeks back and the outage was for about 24hrs for some accounts, but isn’t its STILL MUCH BETTER then seeing an own server being crashed with data loss after morning coffee ?
   So the point i wana say, GApps gives a feeling, might be not reachable but its there!!!

   I heard many critics just crying out for little downtime in GApps……yes! …it was about 24 hrs BUT BUT and BUT for “a FEW” accounts and i don’t feel it that much painful, after observing other reliability features.

4. And if we talk about things other then reliability, features is another great attraction towards Google hosted email.

So actually truly saying out sourcing mail has many profits BUT for small business… how? (read on…)

your office?

if we look at cost of an email server….

• cost of hardware
• cost of storage…..(really high as remember, we are comparing it with Google’s hosting)
• cost of bandwidth
• uplink speeds, since most of small biz email server have uplink of 5-10Mbps which can make everything slow in case of peak time hours
• Facilities like sending attachments can cause heavy load on low infrastructure (storage and link speed)
• cooling solutions to have an “always-on” …i repeat have an ALWAYS ON…. but for small businesses maintaining all that will be even more tedious.
• cost of a guy called “server admin!”

So thus truly saying out sourcing is good BUT there are a few problems still evolved…. or we can just put a question – is there is any need to have a personal data center for small businesses just to have an @company-name.com id ?

Negatives of using out sourced email…

• Data security……yes that can be… e.g an server admin handling mail server can …….
  but but and but small business don’t have that much trouble and also we can rely on reputed email hosts like Google…..but for a Very BIG organization, it can be troubleful …….
• Buggy servers! there can be whole lot troubles in using …like e.g if you add and domain alias in Google and then delete it, there is high probability that you won’t be able to add it back to Google “smoothly…” and also same case lies with deleted user etc……..which are not at all any problems when you have your server is nxt down floor of your office.
• You will be having full control on eveything, like e.g taking you can’t assign a user less/more then 7GB space in GAPps and at max is 25GB which is in premium edition at $50/user/yr cost whereas you can assign any limit on storage of individual account.

BUT if we observe these things, they are the features which small businesses doesn’t need any more…..

Concussion

Its really good for small businesses to have an out sourced email rather then having own data center just for providing a few people with business email but yes, can cause a little pain for big organizations who can afford personal data centers for reliability and can spend huge money on it.

So for a company having less then 500 users GAPps hosted mail is much better choice, for more then that, company can invest in server …mind it “reliable server!”

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