Choose the Best Host For Your Needs

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Whether you have been in the web site business for a long time and are looking for a new web hosting company or you are looking to host your first website, it is important to choose a company that will suit your needs.

Very few people have the desire or skills necessary to maintain their own host web servers, so they rely on hosting companies. Here are a few tips for choosing a company that will suit your needs.

Web hosting companies can come and go like the wind. When making a list of possible hosts, include only those companies who have been in the game for several years. This will provide you with some security that they can maintain satisfactory services for your website.

Select a host company that provides a larger amount of disk space, especially if your site is going to contain graphics or videos. There are a number of host companies that do provide unlimited space options — at a price, of course.

Determine that the speed or bandwidth of the company is sufficient; again, especially if you plan on stream videos or some similar action. A higher level of bandwidth will also serve up your pages to your visitors more quickly as well.

Make sure the company you choose has a 99.9 percent uptime rate. This translates to a downtime of no more than 45 minutes total each month. It is unsettling to you and your visitors if your site is not accessible for long periods of time.

How to Improve your Website Traffic Bandwidth

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If you’ve done a great job designing your website, drawing traffic, and engaging your users, bandwidth can become a problem. Although you’ve accomplished your goal, the very traffic you craved can turn into a congested mess and result in slow results or even users who find they suddenly can’t connect. The only solution is to improve your bandwidth. Here are a few ways to do just that.

Enhanced Networking

If you are working with on-site equipment and your own line out the door, it might be time to upgrade your networking capabilities to include faster communication lines.

Dedicated Hosting

If you’re using dedicated hosting services, your service provider should be able to bump up your bandwidth with a quick call or email. In some cases, these third-party companies may even provide a self-service feature so that you can adjust this setting yourself. Of course, you’ll be expected to pay an extra charge for the additional resources.

Use the Cloud

When you host your website on the cloud, your bandwidth should adjust as your traffic volumes increase or decrease. With cloud computing, you don’t have to do a thing or pay for anything you don’t use.

Reduce the Flash

As a last resort, try to use your available bandwidth more efficiently. Although all those animations and cool graphics look nice, your users would rather have a faster, dependable site to visit.

No matter what you choose to try, increasing your bandwidth will improve your user’s experience and encourage them to return again and again. How will you make this adjustment?

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The Webby Award Nominees You Should Get to Know

Webby Award

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Every year The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences combs the Web, plucking select residents from its vast universe of pages, blogs, advertisements, and videos for its Webby Awards. It’s the Academy Awards of the Internet so to speak, and citizens of the world are given the power to vote.

This year the nominees range from Martha Stewart’s website to the Pandora music app, serious current events to the downright weird. Unless you’re an Internet junky however, chances are good the Webby’s nominees are comprised largely of the best you’ve never heard of.

It’s time to broaden your internet horizons and see what you’re missing. Check these out for starters:

Wanderfly: Best Websites >Services>Travel

Doubtless you and Travelocity are “like this”, but Wanderfly is a pretty and easy new pal. Choose where you want to leave from, how much you want to spend, and what your interests are, and Wanderfly will hook you up with an adventure.

Attraction: Best Online Film & Video>Experimental and Weird

Attraction? It could be anything right? This Attraction is interactive anime brought to you by the French Ministry of Health and artist Koji Morimoto, designed to help teens understand the manipulation of tobacco companies. Not a teen? Unfamiliar with anime? Attraction still looks (and sounds) very good.

Jambalaya: Best Mobile & Apps>Games>Tablets

Tablets like the iPad are used more for gaming than anything else, and Jambalaya is one you may or not be spending time with. If not, it’s a word jumble game where you use your finger to mix letters together and create words. Soothing and still spicy, much like its edible counterpart.