UK Hosting and Web Services

Google Closes The Door For New Websites

Sarah — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 16:50:42 +0000

Google has made it even harder for new website owners to generate traffic for their site with the implementation of its AJAX based search sugestion technology on google.co.uk.
The technology has been implemented on Google’s US (.com) site for some time and now it has unfortunately hit the UK .co.uk site too.
The problem with this tool is that most new sites rely on non-standard search phrases to generate traffic. With the search suggestion tool, these searches drop dramatically. This is because the tool narrows search phrases down, as it suggests to users what they ‘should’ be typing in.
Google has become fixated with generating more money from their Adwords scam and this seems to be another trick up their sleeve, with the sole intent on pushing up Adwords bidding.
Please, someone give us an alternative to Google. They have cornered the market for far too long, frequently doing as they please with search engine rankings for websites and now they are narrowing they search phrases down in order to increase Adwords bidding.
Some will say that the new systems allows Google to optimise their database for these known search phrases and I’ve no doubt it will, but at the end of the day, we all know that Google are pushing peoples search queries in the direction they want (i.e. towards their paid search phrases).
At one point in time everybody on the web hated Microsoft, the worm is turning and Google in now becoming generally loathed by all.

5 Crucial Tips for Choosing the Best UK Web Hosting Company

Sarah — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 12:17:59 +0000

The UK web hosting company you select can make or break your online business. Good hosting firms will run things efficiently, are easily reached and fix issues proficiently. Bad hosting companies can give you more problems than solutions. This often manifests in the company being unavailable during critical periods, thus bringing your operations to a halt. Finding a good website host is central to your online success.

So, how do you start finding the best hosting company for your website? The following are some tried and tested tips for selecting a hosting company.

1. Select a hosting service that primarily performs website hosting

While it may be appealing to sign up with a company providing umbrella services in addition to web hosting, a company that excessively diversifies its services normally won’t deliver great value in any of them (e.g. technical support, system updates, system maintenance, etc.)

2. Choose a host with security in mind

On the whole, secure hosting companies will allow you to install SSL Certificates. Without an SSL Certificate on your website, your visitors might be wary of interacting with the site. Ensure that your hosting company implements best practices when it comes to maintaining infrastructure security. This includes updating security related software and responding well to breaches if and when they do take place.

3. Excellent customer service and technical support

Nowadays phone based support is not required, but some form of access to technical support is vital. The hosting company should provide a staffed support email address at minimum. Ideally a support ticketing system should be available for customers.

4. Great features and enough room for future expansion

You may have no idea how your website may evolve. Look for a website hosting company that supports many different scripting languages (i.e. PHP, Pearl, etc.), provides industry standard database access (i.e. MySQL). Go for Linux hosting if you have no specific requirement with regards operating system, avoid hosting on proprietary operating systems if you can avoid it (i.e. Microsoft). Keep costs down from the start and you will be setting off on the right foot. You don’t want to become reliant on feature of a proprietary system unless you absolutely have to. Especially during the early days!

5. An easy to use and feature full shopping cart

According to many estimates, U.S. and U.K. consumer online spending will be nearly USD$150 billion per year by 2010. Your website’s e-commerce options must be straightforward, secure and proven.

What to Look For From UK Website Hosting

Sarah — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:22:49 +0000

Where do you start looking for UK website hosting? Typing “websites hosting” in Google or your preferred search engine will fetch you hundreds of potential candidates. So where do you begin to look?

To start with, you need to know what to expect for your cash. And yes, it will cost you money, whilst in all probability, not as much as you may think. Website hosting can be achieved through free hosting services, except you may find that these types of accounts are very limited if you require something more than a few pages and normally have advertising enforced by the host.

Most peoples key criteria for website hosting is the quality of support that you get. Most hosts are impressive at selling you a system and setting it up, but the true test of a professional and dependable hosting company is how they respond when the chips are down and something goes awry.

Generally the most obvious criteria is that of hosting resources. The majority of hosts nowadays will give you a good deal of web space and a wholesome bandwidth quota, but be wary not to buy more than you need, unless it’s at a great price. If the website you are constructing is going to be greedy on resources then you will want to be conscious of this whilst you look for website hosting.

As a rule of thumb, any website that features heavy audio or video will need a fair bit of disk space, and likewise, a large quantity of bandwidth.

A good estimate with regards bandwidth, is to multiply the total disk space your site will use by 10 and this will give you a good indication of how much bandwidth you need. For example if your disk space requirement is 200MB you would typically require around 2000MB (2GB) for bandwidth.

Finally you should take into account the features that your prospective website host puts forward. By this we mean things like software and script support, SSL facilities, database support and that kind of thing. If you intend to run a blog or online shop then script and database support is normally considered vital.

Busy Easter for Magaluf?

Sarah — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 22:13:19 +0000

It looks like Magaluf is going to by busy this Easter according to this post.

Will Technology Stocks Pull US Out?

Sarah — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:29:54 +0000

According to a recent article we have just seen the highest one week growth of US shares this year. As we’re just leaving the first quarter of 2009 this could be a good indicator for remainder of the year.
Leading the way were the big technology stocks including Google, Microsoft and Intel. Could this be the beginning of the end?

Website Hosting Options

Sarah — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:41:43 +0000

BloggingTips.com have a nice explanation of the different web hosting solutions available to users at present.
The article covers grid, vps, hybrid, dedicated and shared hosting.

UK Hosting Choice

Sarah — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:40:00 +0000

Well it’s that time of year again when all and sundry seem to be posting their list of favoured web hosting companies. Unfortunately the majority seem to be based on hosting in the USA! For UK based hosting I’d recommend the following:

Farbyte.com
EUKHost.com
DataFlame.co.uk

Between them you should be able to find a package that suits you.

Magaluf

Sarah — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:31:03 +0000

Magaluf is one of Majorca’s biggest resorts. Anyone going there should find the information on Magaluf at holidays-majorca.co.uk of interest.

UK Chartered Surveyor

Sarah — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:56:16 +0000

I was recently looking for help with the landlord increasing the rental on me at my shop. I found this chartered surveyor who managed to reduce my rent!

Holidays in Majorca

Sarah — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:06:15 +0000

Thinking of going on holiday this year has had me searching the internet for information regarding my choosen destination… Majorca. Majorca is the largest of all Spains islands, Holidays Majorca is a source of great information for all those planning a journey there.