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| The
Best Web Hosting Company |
What
to look for when seeking a web hosting company. There
are many factors to take into consideration
and each factor can be weighed according to what is most
important to the user. MVI offers several
different plans. The features from plan to plan differ.
So do your research and compare different
companies and plans until you weigh all the factors that
are important to *your* needs. |
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| Tech
Support |
I
don't know about you, but I like the feeling of knowing
that support is available when I need it. Test
different companies before you sign up by sending them
an email with a question or two and then see
if they have a telephone support line that is being answered
24/7. |
| Uptime
|
The more uptime they guarantee, the better. 99% uptime
is the minimum acceptable standard. But the
quality of the data center is also important. MVI hosts
from a NAP data center, NAP stands for Network
Access Point and that means that our data center is right
on the Internet with the NAP being the doorway
to the Internet. There are only 7 buildings like this
in the USA. So it makes sense that our uptime would be
free of any Internet connectivity issues. |
| Redundant
|
Redundant
hosting is the only way to go if the Internet is important
to your business. Redundant hosting
means that MVI provides two servers and if one server
goes down the other server automatically takes over eliminating
down time. MVI will never have a server down longer then
15 minutes. You can sleep nights not worrying about downtime
when your web hosting is on redundant hosting servers. |
| Disk
Space |
Decide
how much disk space you will require. A web page with
one logo does not take up much web space
at all. Calculate how big your web site is in relation
to the disk space allowed. Our lowest priced hosting plan
provides 100MB of disk space more then enough to house
a 5o page website.
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| Bandwidth |
This
factor is usually overlooked until the bandwidth limit
is reached. If you are running a site with lots of downloads,
or a site with lots of images such at a photo post site,
your bandwidth will be a lot higher
than a site with mainly text. Our lowest priced hosting
plan offers 2 bib bandwidth per month. |
| CGI
Bin |
| This
is currently standard with good hosting companies. If
you do not have access to your own CGI Bin, you cannot
install scripts and programs. |
| Per |
If
you do not have Perl, you cannot run Perl programs. Many
good scripts that you buy or get for free
are written in Perl. In my opinion, it would be a limitation
not to have the latest version of Perl installed.
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| SSL |
If
you intend to accept credit card orders directly from
your website, you will need Secure Socket Layer
included in your plan. This is one of those easily overlooked
features. You might sign up for a plan that
looks attractive for whatever reason, then down the track,
you might discover that you need this feature.
If it is not included in your plan, you will be charged
extra. To use this feature you need a merchant account.
There is no need to make this a priority if you have no
merchant account because you can use a third party credit
card processor. MVI plans Silver an above provide SSL
for security, |
| SSI
|
Server
Side Includes are great if you want to spend minimal time
updating your site. Here's how it works.
The left and right nav menus and the little search engine
in the left nav menu are "included" with an
SSI command in the master page template. If I need to
update one of the nav links, there is no need to edit
all the pages that contain the menus. I just edit one
file which contains the menu html and upload it to my
site. |
| MySQL
|
What
scripts are you going to run? Some programs require a
MySQL database to run. MVI will charge you
extra for a MySQL database, because this database will
run on a separate server. Why do we use a
separate db server ? Well that makes your database more
secure. Also protects you better against the
lost of data. |
| PHP
|
Many
new scripts and programs require PHP support. PHP is a
specialty at MVI we have been using and
all our servers operate PHP for no charge. |
| Domain
Name |
What's
the point in buying web space if you cannot point your
own domain name to the site? Some
companies will help you register a domain name but you
should compare prices and learn how to register
your domain yourself. This way you are in control of your
domain name if you ever change hosts. |
| FTP
Access |
Unlimited
and unrestricted FTP access to your site is essential.
You will need an FTP program to transfer
files. |
| Control
Panel |
Not
all control panels are the same. Some are easier to use
than others. With some control panels the
learning curve is steep while others are easy. |
| Statistics
Program |
| A
good stats program is essential if you want to keep an
eye on how many visitors you are getting, where they are
coming from, referrers, top entry and exit pages and so
on. MVI offers an excellent stats programs as standard.
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