If you are self-hosted, you almost certainly have email set up through your host. Even the most basic hosting accounts today include IMAP and POP3 email accounts in addition to providing a Web server.

However, Google offers a very solid alternative in the form of Google Apps and it comes in two flavors, a standard version, which is free, and a premium version that costs $50 per year, per user.

These services don’t just let you access your email, they host your email, replacing your on-server mail system completely. This means all mail sent to your domain goes straight to Google’s servers and doesn’t even stop off at yours.

But why would someone go through the trouble (and potentially expense) of opening up a Google Apps account when they have a free and ready-to-go alternative already as a part of their hosting package?

The answer isn’t simple, but there are many valid reasons to consider giving Google Apps a try. Read the rest of this entry »

If you use a VPS or a dedicated server, you most likely have some form of control panel installed to help make management a little bit easier. If that’s the case, odds are better than average you’re using CPanel.

While it is no substitute for SSHing into your site and managing things directly, it can help reduce the burden of many of the more common tasks, such as setting up new sites, updating accounts, restarting services and getting your system status.

However, the CPanel backend is far from mobile-friendly. Frame-heavy and bulky, it it almost impossible to use effectively on an iPhone or other smartphone. This can be a great headache when you have an emergency on the road and need to restart your server or add a new account.

Because of this, an iPhone app seems all-too-natural for the product. But how well does the WHM app do its job? Sadly, the answer is not very well though it does clearly highlight the potential for such a product to do great things. Read the rest of this entry »

It was in June 2005 I had my first major run-in with social media. Slashdot had picked up a controversial story I had just written and it was flung onto the front page.

Though it was a huge success in terms of getting attention and new readers to my site, it was a complete disaster for my host. My site, then hosted on a regular shared hosting with Westhost, crumbled. The thousands of people Slashdot was sending to my site were greeted with a not-so-friendly error page, and if it hadn’t been for one user posting the article in the comments, most Slashdotters would never have been able to read it.

Eventually I was able to work with Westhost and get the site restored while some of the flood was still ongoing. They told me that, if I saw the potential for another spike in traffic to warn them and they would help. I agreed to let the incident go and simply waited for the next opportunity.

However, I didn’t have to wait long. Read the rest of this entry »

Today Who Is Hosting This has a brand-new look. So we thought it’d be fun to look at how the site has developed over the last few years.

2007: Site Launches

Site launched summer 2007 by Gordan Orlic and Stan Sredl. Stan now blogs at Mashable, while Gordan runs many Croatian websites, like WhoIs.Com.hr.

2008: New Management

The site is acquired in the summer by London-based Quality Nonsense Ltd, joining a webmaster tools like Domain Lookup. We get busy adding new features…

• Web hosting Reviews
• Hosting coupons
• A forum
• A blog, featuring Jonathan Bailey from PlagiarismToday.com
• Our Twitterbot

Scott at Red Robot Studios uses superhuman skills to turn our ideas into reality. Later, we then launch a fresh design to show-off the site’s new features…

2009: Work In Progress

Anna & her team at Bravenet Media start managing advertising sales for the site.

We start work on a complete overhaul of the site, including a redesign by our new designers at DesignBuzz. Planning & design work takes months longer than expected (almost entirely my fault).

We finish the design after several months hard graft in time for Christmas.

2010: Redesign Launches

Version 3 of the site goes live, designed to bring the sites features together.

We’re busy testing the site today in our London HQ. If you find anything wrong – or even if you just have other feedback! – we’d love to hear via:

• Contact form
• In Our forum
• In blog comments

Pop Quiz: How fast does your site load?

Does it load in under ten seconds? What about five? Does it make it there in two? One?

The answer is obviously going to be dependent on many different variables including the time of day, who is looking at the site, where they are located and how good their connection is, but having a good idea of your site’s loading time is critical as it is the only way to improve it.

Speeding up your site, in turn, should be one of your top priorities. Simply put, it is one of the easiest ways to ensure that you get more visitors and that they stick around longer. A faster site means more page views, more traffic from Google and a guarantee that every visitor you do get counts.

So if you want to know how fast your site is loading, here are five tools to help you get the answer, all for free. Read the rest of this entry »

WordPress has a very bad reputation when it comes to taxing a server. It’s known for killing servers under high load, especially without caching, and at times being a resource hog.

However, running a blog, with any application, is far from the most taxing thing you can do to your server. If you are really interested in making a run at burning down your data center, there are much worse things that you can do.

While it is true that it is an apples to oranges comparison in most cases, especially since there are light and heavy apps for almost any purpose, here are five applications for a server that you need to think twice about before moving forward, lest you find out that you’ve run out of power.

To be clear, I wanted to think of things that the average web hosting user might actually do casually. Developers, for example, can do far worse things to a server but they are usually more aware of the potential damage and, thus, don’t need as much warning. Read the rest of this entry »

WordPress is far and away the most popular blogging platform for bloggers running their domains. It is free, powerful, stable and well-understood by most in the blogging community.

However, those who do know it also know it can be rather difficult to host at times. A dynamic platform running on PHP, it can crush servers when put under load, especially small shared hosting accounts. WordPress sites are famous for collapsing under a Digg or similar traffic spike.

Because of this, many users have become intimately familiar with WP Super Cache, a caching plugin that reduces server load by serving static pages when possible, rather than dynamic ones. This makes the site both faster and more stable, especially under load.

However, a new caching plugin, W3 Total Cache, may completely change the game for WordPress users. Not only can it serve static pages, but it can also interact with a CDN, offloading your images and other static files. This can make your site faster and cheaper to host all at the same time.

To see how it works, we have to take a look under the hood. Read the rest of this entry »

Though first founded in 2003, Squarespace has been attracting a lot of attention lately.

Simply put, Squarespace is not a traditional Web host that offers a space for you to run your site, it is an entire hosted blogging platform that, like WordPress or any other CMS, allows you to easily set up and manage a site without messing with any HTML code.

It might seem like the perfect service for beginners, but several celebrities have been using the service including Miles Davis, Jamie Kennedy and Dane Cook as well as many organizations including the World Wildlife Fund and at least one of Twit.tv’s blogs.

Likewise, WordPress.com, Automattic’s hosted WordPress solution, offers a VIP service aimed at enterprise customers. They too have attracted several big name customers including the BBC, CNN and Gigaom among others.

But why would these customers, who could obviously afford to host their sites themselves or with anyone they choose, opt to go with a hosted blog/CMS platform? Given how trivial it is to install WordPress or another CMS on a blank server, it seems odd to accept the perceived limitations of such a service.

However, underneath the surface lies a set of compelling features that may just change the way you, as well as others, choose to host their site in the future. Read the rest of this entry »

Abuse policies are one thing that few hosts publicize. They are usually kept quiet, buried in the footer of a host’s site or footnotes in the lengthy legal agreement users sign.

Host don’t want you to see them, read them or think about them. But they should.

These abuse agreements are the tools that hosts use to keep unseemly customers out while still providing service to the good guys. These rules enable them to provide quality service to all without worrying about the handful who might wish to misuse the network.

Because of this, as unseemly as they might be, abuse agreements are important and, more accurately, important to get right. Too loose of an agreement and a host can become a haven for spammers and others who become “bad neighbors” on the Web, too tight and even well-intended Webmasters can run afowl.

So what should you be looking for in a good abuse policy? Here are a few things to consider. Read the rest of this entry »

Nearly every major shared hosting provider offers some sort of reseller program. This includes Site5, Hostgator and SurpassHosting.

The idea behind these hosting accounts is that you get a block of server space, usually for only a modest amount more than a traditional shared account, and you then turn around and resell that space to multiple customers, thus making a profit. This has enabled many of the Web’s smaller hosting companies to take flight and is the way some of the larger ones got their start.

But most hosting customers aren’t interested in creating their own hosting company. They aren’t interested in making a profit from reselling their accounts and don’t want the headaches that come with being a Web host provider.

Still, that does not mean that they should overlook the reseller accounts. Not only are they often great deals, offering more hard drive space, bandwidth and domains than regular shared accounts, but they also offer more power.

So why should a regular hosting customer check out the reseller page, here are a few things to consider.

Reseller Hosting Features

In addition to the extra space and extra bandwidth, reseller accounts also, typically, come with a slew of interesting features that might appeal to regular hosting customers.

1. WHM/CPanel: Though most basic accounts come with CPanel, WHM is the administration Web hosts use to manage accounts on their service. It allows you to create accounts (domains), pull them offline and allocate resources to them. It also makes it easier to do CPanel transfers, making it easier to move one site to another server.
2. Custom Nameservers: Rather than having your nameservers be something like ns1/ns2.yourhost.com they can now be ns1/ns2.yourdomain.com. Though most visitors don’t see your nameservers, it adds an element of professionalism to your site and some claim can help with search engine ranking.
3. Billing System: Most reseller programs come with their own billing system. Not particularly useful in most cases, but if you ever do offer hosting to a friend, it can be handy.
4. Domain Reselling: Though not a feature of all reseller accounts, many allow you to resell domain names for a profit, which means you get access to cheaper domain names than if you had purchased through a regular registrar.

In short, a reseller hosting account gives you greater control over your slice of the shared server. You can set up new domains, control how much resources they can use and generally administer your domains in a way that, previously, only your host could do.

Many of these features are similar to what you get when you obtain a VPS account from most providers. However, there are some limitations to be aware of before taking the plunge.

Limitations

Though you’ll have greater control over your domains and your account, you will not be “root” on the server either.

Unlike a VPS or a dedicated host, you will not be able to install your own applications or servers. For example, you can’t add a different version of PHP, change out your FTP server or alter your server settings beyond adding and removing accounts.

Even though you are the administrator over the domains you control, you are still just a user on a shared host. Where a VPS or dedicated server can give you root access to your server, your reseller account just replaces your host for some of the more common functions that you might need as a user.

Also, reseller account tend to have hard caps on bandwidth and storage space where many regular shared accounts do not. If you prefer “unlimited” hosting, a reseller account is not right for you. However, bear in mind that unlimited hosting comes with restrictions on what you can do with the account, such as file hosting, where reseller accounts usually do not.

Still, there are times where reseller hosting might be a good deal and well worth considering, especially for those whose needs are beyond what can easily be done with a shared host, but they don’t quite need the full resources of a VPS or a dedicated server.

Bottom Line

Most hosting customers probably won’t have much use for the features of a reseller account. If you only plan on running a few sites and there is a good hosting plan that fits your need, a shared plan is likely best.

However, those who operate a lot of sites, such as Web designers or those who purchase domains regularly, may want the additional control and flexibility of a reseller account.

The “sweet spot” for reseller accounts sits between shared hosting and a VPS. If you need more control than a shared account provides but don’t need the resources of a VPS, a reseller account is a good bet.