We’d like to wish all our U.S. readers a very Happy Thanksgiving. As always, we’d like to give thanks to our readers for your participation and support. If you’re traveling, we hope your journey is safe, and wish you a fun holiday weekend with your family and friends.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Free Web Hosting
Free hosting is the most basic type of web hosting. Free hosting is generally supported by advertisements, and only offers limited features. This is the best type of hosting for those that are starting out and only need hosting for a small personal site that will require little bandwidth.
Free web hosts will normally give you a directory for use (www.xyz.com/~yoursite) or a subdomain (yoursite.xyz.com). They only provide a small amount of space and bandwidth, and also tend to not offer any support for server side scripting such as PHP, or MySQL databases. Generally free web hosting is limited when it comes to email services as as site statistics.
Shared Web Hosting
Shared hosting is the most popular type of hosting. In almost all cases small businesses, with small to large web sites find that shared hosting fits their requirements perfectly. Small businesses generally don’t need all the resources that a dedicated server can provide, not to mention the costs associated with purchasing a dedicated server
Shared hosting as the name suggests allows web hosting providers to have more than a single account on a server. Shared hosting providers also provide close system administration which is excellent for users that don’t have the time to deal with the hassles of running a server along with a number of other users.
While it depends on the specifics of the hosting plan chosen, most server features will be avaialable to the user such as PHP, MySQL, ASP, multiple email addresses, multiple domains or sub domains, and more storage and bandwidth than a free host will provide.
Unmanaged Dedicated Hosting
Unmanaged dedicated hosting is a good option for those that are looking for more bandwidth, storage or other features that shared hosting doesn’t provide. Having dedicated hosting means that you have access to virtually unlimited databases and email addresses that the user can create, as well as access to larger bandwidth capacity. Also with dedicated hosting, you can normally purchase upgrades for your server, such as a new hard drive to gain extra storage, or more system memory to improve server performance.
There is one drawback to unmanaged dedicated hosting, you must be your own server administrator. If you do not have the skills to manage your won server, you have two options, learn how to manage a dedicated server, or go with Managed Dedicated Hosting.
Managed Dedicated Hosting
If you require the vast resources of a dedicated server but do not want to deal with the day to day operation of an unmanaged dedicated server, then a Managed Dedicated Server should fit your requirements. Going with a managed dedicated server means you will have the avaialability of technical support to help you set up your server, and you will also have ongoing technical support assistance if a problem with the server should ever arise.
Pricing of managed dedicated servers vary according to how much support you will require, and also how much reliability you require.
Microsoft has launched an online store simply called The Microsoft Store.
Microsoft Store offers the company’s entire consumer catalog, including desktop software, the Xbox console and its related game titles, the Microsoft Zune, and all of the company’s hardware, including mice, keyboards, web cameras, and joysticks.
“Microsoft Store gives customers a trusted environment to discover, learn, try, download and buy from the largest selection of Microsoft software, devices and hardware,” said Larry Engel, general manager, Microsoft Store & Marketplaces. “For the first time, customers will have one place to find and purchase everything from Microsoft, rather than seeing just a list of products.”
According to Engel, one of the most compelling features of the new store is that it will offer many products, including Windows and Office, as a digital download. “We think customers will enjoy the immediate satisfaction of purchasing, downloading and installing these products within minutes,” he says.
Although the Microsoft Store will price all its products at the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP), customers still see benefits, says Engel.
“Microsoft Store is really about making that direct connection with the customers, and then making it a great experience from start to finish,” he says. “The entire focus of our design is to make it easy for customers to navigate and find the products they want, and understand which products will work best for them.”
Customers will find tabs to broad product categories, and simple links for version comparisons, pricing and ordering. Straightforward “connect the dots” diagrams allow for fast and clear comparisons between software versions, so customers can get the right package for the features they need.
In addition to downloads, Microsoft Store will also offer full packaged products. In general, PC software will be available either as a packaged product or for immediate download, while games and hardware will be shipped.
Microsoft Store has already launched in Germany, UK and Korea. Over the next year, the store will also launch in several countries worldwide, in a number of languages. New stores are in the works for Japan, France, Spain and the Netherlands.
My every social networking activity is automatic. I don’t have to post everywhere whenever I publish new post. Because I have submitted my RSS Feed to all services that I use.
Lets take Facebook fan page as an example. Facebook fan page is integrated with blog, so when I publish new post Facebook imports it and publish it on your wall.
Like that, you can use your RSS Feed to post tweets.
Twitterfeed.com is probably the most well-known and used feed apps for sending site information (mostly blogs) to Twitter. A lot of people use it, including CNN, the Wall Street Journal, the White House, and myself.
All you have to do is Sign up @ Twitterfeed.com and give your RSS Feed url. They will automatically post tweets whenever you post new topics. Just check it out!
Do you want to experiment with any of the following hosted software applications without buying domain names or spending money on web hosting?
1. Google Apps – with Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and more.
2. WordPress.org – hosted version of WordPress where you can install plugins, download new themes and more.
3. MediaWiki – powerful wiki software that also powers Wikipedia
4. phpBB – software for running your own web forums.
If the answer is yes, Dreamhost just launched a new service that may interest you. It’s called Dreamhost Apps where you get free hosting for Google Apps, WordPress, Drupal and other popular hosted web software.
You can either use your own web domain or block a sub-domain like test.dreamhosters.com that will become the main address of your site. Dreamhost will manage all the databases and DNS entries – you’ll get an email as soon as the services are setup and ready for use.
Dreamhost Apps is absolutely free and you don’t need a PayPal account or credit card to sign-up so there’s no risk of getting charged later. Simply sign-up and then click on I value your friendship and let me in, pick the services that you want to install and done.
Dreamhost Apps is useful even you already have a domain or have signed up with some other web host – in that case you may use Dreamhost Apps as your playground to test stuff like Drupal, phpBB, MediaWiki or to check if your current themes and plugins are compatible with the latest release of WordPress.
Deamhost Apps is free only during the beta period but if you sign-up now, it will remain free for you forever. Also note that Dreamhost Apps doesn’t offer FTP or shell access so you will not be able to install custom PHP scripts or MySQL databases.
