Finding the right host

Have you ever wanted to own a site and don't know which host to pick? Ever read all of those negative host reviews that tell you of how bad a hosting service is? Well, I will not tell you which hosting service is the best, but I will tell you how to choose one... one that is best for you.

What you should do as number one is choose about 5 alternative hosting services that meet your needs and read all of their privacy policies, terms of services and all of that fun stuff. Yeah, that is what I did...

And don't choose a hosting service that says you would get unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space as that is a big fat lie that you should not jump into. So don't get excited when you see that advertisement. That just tells of how desperate those hosting service is.

Why they are desperate? Well, they have to use most absurd lies to try to get costumers and the costumers they do get are probably stupid enough to fall for that lie... so that allows the hosting services to do more unruly stuff and cheat money from the costumers.

I actually had my host suggested and recommended by people and so far, I'm happy with my host. They are really honest (so far) and I'm happy.

And you can be happy too, never forget to read the privacy policies, all of the reviews of web hosting services and all that stuff... do your research to get the right web host you need.

I got 10GB with 600GB Bandwidth on a shared hosting for about $9.50 a month. Oh yeah, the prices are another big thing nowadays. You say, why don't get hosting for $4.50 a month? That's cheaper!

Yeah yeah yeah, and get tricked off my money... how dare they say I will get 300GB with 1200GB of bandwidth for only $4.50 a month when a honest hosting server gives 10GB disk space and 600GB bandwidth for $9.50 a month?

Are they trying to insult mine, yours and our intelligence? The weird thing is, some people are greedy enough to fall for it. The 300GB of disk space they "offer" is the total amount of disk space they have and provide for 300 others... so its shared... same goes for bandwidth.

I'll tell you which hosting service I'm using later (Well, blogspot for this blog, I mean for the other site *LOL).

Ah, oh. Almost forgot to mention this. Some hosting services don't support domain registration. Mine didn't so I had to go to a domain registrar and register a domain with them and then point that site towards the hosting servers. The host that I use provided them in a very visible spot and I saw the server list like 10 times I was on their site... and forum... that's good. They are loud and clear.

I had the domain registrar recommended to me as well. godaddy.com <= "blyack don't use them". Well, I heard SO MANY bad reviews on godaddy.com that I don't even want to hear another word about them. I used namecheap.com 9.29 a year to get a domain registered with them not bad and you actually get it registered and available in minutes... easy as that.

To point the site from that domain registrar all you have to do is click on the option "Point site towards..." something like that don't remember, but it's pretty self-explainatory. You get 5 fields (2 of them are required) and in all of those fields you put in the host's servers (I put all 4 that were found on my host's site).

In total, I payed $9.50 for the host and $9.29 for the domain... good luck for all of you looking for a domain host/registrar... I'll put my host up here later on after I give it a thorough and honest review...

(Okay, sneak peak at my review)

* Costumer support is ubber-super FAST *zoom*, honest, straightforward (Remember I said something about their forum?) and did I mention fast, honest and straightforward? So far, I'm happy with it

Some tips and tricks to web design

I have being doing this for awhile already and now decided to share it with the world.

To built a website I use about 5-6 PHP pages to make up one PHP page. Since PHP is a web developing code, I would talk a little bit about it.

Before I get into the tricks or tips I would say a few of the features that PHP has... It can INCLUDE files into other files and STORE values into variables and you can call on them multiple times making it easy to change multiple stuff that are the same throughout the site... such as the web master's email.

Here is how you INCLUDE files into other files...

<?php include_once('filename.php'); ?>

The file could be any web file type... not only PHP, but it could be HTM, HTML, CSS, PERL, etc. etc.

Here is how you STORE values into variables...

<?php
$webmaster_email = 'my_email@my_site.com';
$site_title = 'site_title';
?>

And below is how you CALL on them...

<?php echo $webmaster_email; ?>

I store values into variables in one file and name that file as "site_config.php", than I put everything starting from "<html>" to "<body>" into another PHP file which I like to call "header1.php". Then I store the logo into another file and I like to call that file as "header2.php". And than I store the footer with the ending tags (</body> </html>) into another file and I like to call that file as "footer.php".

Than I include those files into "index.php" and type in the content where the main content would be... a sample of one of my main pages is shown below...

<?php include_once('includes/header1.php'); ?>
<div id="wrap">
<?php include_once('includes/header2.php'); ?>
<?php include_once('includes/leftContent.php'); ?>
<div id="rightContent">
<div class="content"><p>Main Content</p></div>
<div class="mainContent">
<p>My Main Content</p>
</div>
<div class="spacer6"></div>
<div class="content"><p>Updates/Important News</p></div>
<div class="mainContent">
<p>Important News</p>
</div>
<?php include_once('includes/footer.php'); ?>

It's an easy trick that may be hard to explain.

Correct way to Web Design

Many web designers have built there web site using CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) and that is the best way and more correct way to built a site. CSS is the major way on how to make a site valid, unless you want to make a plain white unorganized site, than... it's your choice.

CSS makes your site a little more flexible in both views... web designers and the visitors. Visitors don't get a lot of code that could lag up their computers and web designers could only change one thing, and that one change could change one thing on all of the pages.

It is best to save the CSS as an external document... something like design.css and link that as a stylesheet to your web site (<link rel="stylesheet" href="Scripts/design.css" />). That would make it easier to change the CSS once, instead of going from page to page until you finish... a site could be a thousand pages long, and not only that, it can grow.