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How to Get Your Website Absolutely FREE!

20 Web Host Services to Avoid!
What do-it-yourselfers really need to know
to avoid a major headache
By Jim Moore, Owner of Phoenix Technologies
Member - International Assoc. of Webmasters & Designer

Problems with your web host can cost you a lot of money. If you want to tackle this on your own, make sure that you make a careful choice in this area ... or you could just let Phoenix Technologies handle the whole thing for you!

• Ability to have a secure server for credit card transactions.
• You might need autoresponders for your website.
• Access to your log files so you can get stats for your visitors.
• Unrestricted FTP access to modify your site.
• Access to your personal CGI bin.
• Shopping cart software.

Find domains that have just expired

Sometimes you can get a really good domain name by looking for a domain that has just expired. Thousands of domains expire every week, and some of them are just because the owner forgot to pay! If you look carefully you can find some excellent domains. You might even find a domain that is already listed in Yahoo, or a domain that has lots of links to it from other sites - this way you can get a head-start with your web business!

There is a free service where you can search for deleted domains at: www.deleteddomains.com

Here are some other articles from various sources you may also find of interest on this topic:

Three mistakes to avoid while choosing a Web host Small businesses can easily be duped by the numbers of scams and bad services out there in the Web hosting market. Take a look at this article to learn the reasons why you should stay away from many free and low-cost Web services. Source: 123Webmaster.com

Choosing a Web host This tutorial walks you through every step of the host selection process. It explains the basics of hosting lingo, discusses types of hosting available, then offers evaluation criteria to help you choose the appropriate host for your needs. Source: Outfront

Advice on key criteria for choosing a Web host This page contains a whole mess of reviews written by Epinions members. Each offers the member's own advice on how to select a Web host, and some include horror stories that serve as a great reminder to be careful. Source: Epinions

Finding a Web host This lengthy guide offers feedback on every aspect of the Web host selection process. It goes over specific hosts to avoid, offers advice on the decision-making process, and gives a great list of what NOT to do when selecting your host. Source: forumhosts.com

8 essential questions to ask your Web host If your business is small, in-house hosting may not be a viable option. This article discusses eight essential criteria you should use when selecting a Web host for an e-commerce site. Don't miss this helpful advice if you're putting together a site where every minute of downtime costs potential income. Source: Lycos

HostingDiscussions.com Peer consultation is always one of the best ways to investigate a company's potential value. At this site, you can network with other hosting customers to discuss hosting-related issues in a number of forums. Source:

Speed matters! Taking control Speed of load time is one of the biggest factors that will determine whether a customer comes back to your site, although it's easy to forget about that in these days of high bandwidth. It's a very important but easily neglected criteria to keep in mind when you select a Web host, and this article discusses how to evaluate each host's capabilities. Source: HostSearch

Size matters! Or does it? On space and bandwidth... It always sounds nice when a host offers you unlimited space and bandwidth, but is it really the great deal it's made out to be? Sometimes, as this article points out, the answer is no. Source: HostSearch

Good times, bad times: Uptime, downtime, runtime errors It's easy to be in too much of a hurry to get your site up, and then to forget to thoroughly read your Web host's uptime guarantees. This article urges that you don't wait until your site is down to find out that your Web host doesn't offer what you thought it did. Use the three "R's" of uptime to determine whether a host's uptime guarantee works for you. Source: HostSearch

I just called to say...HELP! Tech support is extremely important to keep in mind when you're choosing your new Web host, especially if you depend on your site for income--and it's completely kaput! This article goes over a customer help call and offers advice on how you can evaluate a company's customer service, and also how you can better get your point across when you're requesting assistance. Source: HostSearch

Choosing the type of host best suited for your needs Do you need virtual hosting? Will free hosting work? What about e-commerce functionality? These types of questions are addressed within this article, which aims to help you sort out the types of available hosting and what they offer. Source: HostSearch

To share or not to share? On dedicated servers This excellent article explains types of hosting, using easy-to-understand examples, and what the benefits and drawbacks are of each. It also contains a lengthy section on dedicated servers and the questions you should ask yourself when evaluating whether or not to go with one. Source: HostSearch

HostPulse.com HostPulse.com is a Web site solely devoted to Internet users who wish to find web hosting services and resources. Research the top 25 hosts, search for hosts by price, platform and disk space and learn Web hosting terminology. One of the interesting utilities at Hostpulse.com for users in the U.S. is its ability to find host providers within a specific radius from their location. Source: HostPulse.com

Look before you leap! Here is a very good article for readers thinking about using or building a reseller. The writer covers all the bases and considers the needs and expectations of providers and consumers. Source: The Recellar

Addahost.com Looking for a host for your company? What kind of hosting do you want to go with, ASP hosting, non-virtual hosting, reseller hosting ? A variety of useful information and links to companies that offer those services and more are available off of this homepage. Other useful information is available as well as a search engine to find the perfect host for you and a listing of other great resources for finding hosts. Source: Addahost.com

Hosting moves up in the value chain Data centers have sprung up rapidly, anticipating a huge demand from proliferating ASPs and dot-coms. Now that the data center supply has outrun the demand, the two types, co-location providers and managed hosting providers face different challenges, but this article thinks managed hosting will come out a winner. (Feb. 26, 2001) Source: ASP News

The right-sized colocation facility The comparison between a small colocation service provider and a large facility provokes many strong opinions about whether bigger is really better. This conversation has its share of standard reactions, but these ideas are still worth considering and some thoughtful ideas do emerge. Source: ISP-Planet

Your place or mine ASPs rent the applications to the end user, but who exactly hosts the applications for the ASP? Hosting providers do, and this article outlines the three different types in use today. They are: co-location, managed hosting and application hosting. Learn the differences between each, and which one is used most often, and why. Source: ASP IndustryNews.com

Why choose a dedicated server over colocation services It is often useful to see a well-argued solicitation in writing. By investigating this point-by-point attack on colocation services, readers will be able to prepare themselves for the many variations of this sales pitch they are forced to bear in order to do a satisfactory investigation into the many options of Web hosting. And despite the bias, this writer does reveal a few of the more well defined disparities between the two environments. Source: HostIndex.com

Ironically, if you go online and do a search for "worst Web hosts" you won't find much. Google returned only 5 results - one of those had been taken offline for violating someone's policy, and another had nothing to do with web hosts. That's understandable - the web hosting companies are not going to host articles that tell you just how bad they really are.

Personally, I'm suspicious of sites like 10 Best Web Site and Domain Hosting Services - because, in this case, they rank iPowerWeb.net as #2. My own experiences with iPowerWeb have been little short of a nightmare ... but others have been even worse!

Here's a short list of hosts to definitely avoid:

• TrueHosting
• CI Host
• Interland
• CommuniTech
• GalaxyWeb or Galaxy-Web (in trouble with BBB)
• CT 
• BurstNET 
• AIT (Advanced Internet Technologies) 
• HalfPriceHosting
• WebExpose.net
• GX Hosting 
• Alabanza 
• YourWebHost
• WebHosting.com 
• 9NetAve 
• Concentric/XO 
• ICOM (Internet Communications) 
• u2me3.com
• iPowerWeb
• Virtualis

One of the better information sources I've found is ForumHosts.com. This is a real eye-opener! It tells you which "review sites" are frauds, which hosts have bad BBB reports, lawsuits, etc. As they point out ... if you pay 50 cents a day for your $1000 e-commerce site - expect 50 cents worth of service and don't complain because you're too cheap to pay a reasonable price.

For a real horror story, read this one from Wired Magazine! 'News From Lake Scamison' a review of 18-year-old Bryan Kruchten's infamous Page Creators, LLC:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,40673,00.html. This guy, an 18-year-old running his scam out of his parents home, promised web hosting for $40 a month tops - and that ain't really cheap! But when he got his "customers'" credit card numbers, he soaked them for thousands and thousands of dollars each before the feds caught up with him.

A worst-case scenario of what can happen if you make the wrong choice.. and also, learn how to spot and protect yourself from unethical or scam hosting companies like Page Creators.

More info can be found here and here.

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Jim Moore is manager of Phoenix Technologies, a website design and promotion service in Williamsport, TN, where he also serves as online editor of TennTimes - the News , America's largest online newspaper. He has won numerous writing and web design awards, is a member of the International Association of Webmasters & Designers and for eight years produced, directed and hosted "The Omega Report", a popular hour-long TV documentary cablecast into 1.5 million homes from Nashville to Boston. He publishes a free monthly newsletter, "On the Go!", for busy people like you. Subscribe here, or send an email to OntheGo-subscribe@topica.com. He may also be reached at . ã Copyright 2002 by The Phoenix Foundation. All rights reserved.