Articles on Hosting | Topics: hosting, web, host
by Imperia Stark
If you are planning on starting a small web hosting business, it can be hard to predict what you will need before you have started. There will be many bumps and surprises along the way and you will learn as you go. However, there is one aspect that you can predict. The top requirement for small business web hosting is space, and lots of it.
One of your most important jobs as a web host is to allocate adequate amounts of space for each of the web sites you will house. How much space do you need per site? In general, web sites don't take up a lot of space. For instance, a web site with around 100 different pages will probably use less than 5MB of space. But, when you are allocating space it is a good idea to double your projected space requirement to allow for growth in the future. It will reflect poorly on your business if you constantly have to turn down requests for more space and repeat business is an important source of revenue.
When trying to predict how much space you will need for each client, do not forget to take e-mail into account. Email takes up more space than web pages and it is a good idea to allocate 10 – 20MB of space per email account. This number might need to be expanded further if the client communicates with his customers this way. Make sure you allow room for growth. Do not just take numbers of emails into account. You should also think about attachments. These take up lots of space because of the way that they are encoded. You do not want to have clients complaining because all of their emails are being returned to sender because their email account does not have enough space to hold them.
Data Transfer (Bandwidth) is another top requirement for small business web hosting. Data transfer or bandwidth is the term given to the amount of information that users will download from your site. Whenever anyone views anything from your website, whether they are just viewing a web page or looking at pictures or music files, they are transferring data. Data is also transferred when clients check their email or upload something to their site.
| Bit of History |
The spider spinning his web for the unwary fly. The blood is the life, Mr. Renfield.
| —Garrett Fort (1900–1945) |
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Bandwidth can quickly add up depending on the popularity of the different websites that you are hosting. A client who is just starting out will not have a lot of visitors and won't use up much bandwidth. But you never know when their site will gain popularity so you can't assume that they will be obscure forever and skimp on their bandwidth allotment. Popularity is not the only factor that you need to consider. If a site has lots of pictures, music or videos it will need a larger allowance than most no matter how unpopular it is. And if it grows in popularity, the numbers will grow exponentially. Overnight popularity can cause bandwidth usage to go through the roof in a very short period of time.
It is extremely important to be able to manage and predict the amount of space that web pages and email accounts will require. Try to make recommendations to your clients for keeping space to a minimum. For example, pictures take up lots of space and bandwidth. Its beneficial to you and them. A good rule of thumb is to make sure that none of your clients are using pictures that are .bmp. Those types of files aren't compressed and they take up loads of space. Picture galleries are another bandwidth and space zapper. To save space, recommend thumbnail galleries to your clients. These are pictures, which are smaller versions of the full sized pictures located on another page. This way the user can pick and choose which pictures he wants to use and limits the amount of bandwidth. It also makes the downloading process easier for viewers with slower download times.
The most important idea to take away from this article is to manage your space. Do not take on more clients than you can handle. While you might make more money in the short run, it will eventually damage your credibility and hopes for future revenue. If you don't know how to create one of your own, take some time out to research companies that specialize in affiliate programs. Many will not only allow you to accept credit cards instantly, but they will also run your affiliate program for you while you sit back and watch the revenue roll in. Everybody likes free stuff. Another idea is to offer a free service to your potential customers. Use your imagination. Look for a server and take these pointers into account then you should have a good idea of how much space to allocate for your small web hosting business which is the top requirement for small business web hosting.
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