Mentioned the 3-letter words, VPS, it carves a smile to certain people. Why? Because it resembles a dedicated server. This is particularly a cheerful news for those folks who wish to own a dedicated server but cannot afford to do so. Basically, as most of you would have known by now, VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. The physical server is separated into a few partition and these partitions are the VPS-es. It gives you the feeling of having a stand-alone server when you purchase the hosting spaces. You are isolated from your neighbours and barely know each other although under the same roof.

What about reseller hosting? I’d define reseller hosting as an account in shared server environment. Simple as that, almost the same as shared hosting. But the difference between reseller hosting and shared hosting is that with reseller hosting, you can create multiple accounts of shared hosting. So, to choose VPS or reseller hosting? This is a big question for almost everyone because it’s kind of confusing as there are pros and cons to every decision that you make. Let’s just analyse some of the features of VPS and reseller hosting, hopefully will make your hosting decision not much of a headache.

VPS – A solution for dedicated server

VPS offers you the features of dedicated server but it’s more to a dedicated server being shared by a few other tenants. I know what you are thinking now. But bear in mind that I mentioned “a few” other tenants. Which means, it is not shared by as many other websites as a shared hosting in a physical server. A reliable hosting provider will have the maximum amount of tenants in a physical server to a certain degree so that the resources of the server can fully support the minimum resources allocated for every client. The most precious feature of VPS would be the root access. Every client will be provided a root access, hence, you can install anything that you like from softwares to Operating System so long it has proper licenses.This means you have the ability to install software which your provider doesn’t even have or provide to its other existing shared hosting or reseller hosting clients. Those who long for a peace of mind, will be happy to have owned a VPS because with VPS you are isolated from other clients’ VPS-es and regardless of how heavy their traffic is, it won’t affect your website. In addition, everyone is provided with a certain amount of CPU usage , RAM usage and bandwidth usage. Although their traffic has drained the amount of bandwidth, it will be the bandwidth allocated to them and has got nothing to do with you although they are your neighbours in the same server.

The above features of VPS seem tempting but do remember that you have to do all the installation yourself. You need to know a bit of server maintenance knowledge and also software-related stuffs. Although you can always refer your problem to your hosting provider, I believe you will be charged with an amount of fees.

Reseller Hosting – Ease your life!

Does reseller hosting offer you a better solution? Well, it depends on people. If you are a person who wants freedom of this and that, you might not be able to survive under reseller hosting. Reseller hosting is good in the sense that it’s more organized as everything is setup for you by your hosting provider. You are given the WHM (Web Host Manager) and with WHM you can customize the hosting plans (webspace, bandwidth and etc.) for your resold accounts. A resold account is just like any other shared hosting account, with a cPanel as its control panel under Linux platform. You can sell your resold accounts at your own price and some hosting providers offer the private label reseller plan(meaning you can have your own brand name, thus having your own nameservers). In other words, your resold clients will only know you as their hosting provider and won’t figure out you are reselling unless you tell them when they ask you. With reseller hosting, you are bound to what the hosting provider offers you, especially the softwares and applications. Hence, like I’ve mentioned in the first sentence, reseller hosting might not suit you if you want freedom. However, it’s useful if clients do not mind what the hosting providers offer them particularly in terms of applications. Imagine you don’t have to get yourself in with all the fuss of installing and configuring this and that. All you do is via the control panel provided to you, then you can start reselling already. In my opinion, reseller hosting is never a bad option and would still be a competitive option towards VPS. It is indeed reliable and useful when you think of the user-friendliness it provides to those who are not so familiar with hosting related stuff.

In general, it is widely speculated that in near future, VPS might take over the role of Reseller Hosting, but truth is yet to be known. Let those hosting fans decide for themselves which one holds to be a better option.

Hiring an independent contractor to help you with home improvements has pros and cons.

You can save money by avoiding hiring a general contractor but then, when working with an independent contractor, you can end up with low quality work or someone who has abandoned the job halfway through. If the independent contractor hasn’t lived up to what they said they would do, you can end up spending more on a job than hiring a general contractor.

How Can You Find Quality Sub-Contractors? – There are starting to be resources online that can help you find reputable contractors. Google maps sometimes has reviews about businesses there. Those are difficult to depend on though, but they can be easily fabricated. Ask around with friends or try calling other businesses to see what independent contractors they have used in the past.

Learn About The Project Yourself – The more you know about what a project entails the better able you will be to analyze the bids you receive.

Learn about the project online and see what the job will require. Price out some of the materials at your local hardware store. That way when the contractor is giving you a bid you will have an idea of how realistic his bid is and how long it will take.

Get Multiple Bids – Make sure you have at least 5 different independent contractors bid on your project. The more quotes you have the more likely you are to pick someone who is reputable, honest and inexpensive.

Ask For References – Make sure you contact references from the contractor of people they have worked with before.

For most people, probably the biggest single factor against low energy LED lighting as a substitute for the soon-to-be-phased-out regular incandescent light bulb is the cost differential. There is no doubt that an LED equivalent light bulb (for example a 6w LED spotlight as a direct replacement for a 35w GU10 halogen lamp) is significantly more expensive than either the original or a CFL alternative.

There are however three important points to bear in mind about the higher price for low energy LEDs as compared to incandescent and energy saving CFL light bulbs.

First, the price difference reflects the fact that the use of LED for general purpose domestic lighting is still quite novel, though increasing manufacturing levels and consumer take-up will drive the price down dramatically once both come fully on stream over the coming months.

Second, and partially related to the observation above, is that the cost of LEDs drops by a factor of twenty over the course of each decade. This characteristic is reliably predicted by Haitz’s Law (very similar to Moore’s Law for computer chips and for similar reasons, principally because LEDs are, just like computer chips, pure electronic devices). Haitz also states that LED performance (amount of light per watt of electricity) increases tenfold over the same decade.

Third and perhaps most intriguing is the fact that as far as the cost of domestic lighting is concerned, the price of light bulbs is almost entirely irrelevant. It is an extraordinary yet easily provable fact that even if regular light bulbs were totally free and LED lights cost, let’s say something outrageous like $80 each, it would still be vastly more economical to purchase LED low energy lights.

The reason for this is simple: the cost of electrical lighting is the cost of the energy i.e. electricity. It matters not one jot what the actual light bulbs cost; it’s what it costs to run them that really counts. Also, since LEDs last for tens of thousands of hours (in practice, decades of use) you only need to pay the purchase price once, unlike regular bulbs which last only upto two thousand hours or just over one year.

The second biggest gripe about low energy LED lighting is light levels and quality, or in technical parlance luminosity and light color.

The concern about luminosity stems largely from historical notions of LED lighting applications such as LED Christmas lights and pocket torches which are clearly not capable of providing anything close to useable domestic lighting. However, you could right now purchase one of the latest Sharp Zenigata LED series of light bulbs which is rated at 80 lumens per watt (measure of luminosity).

To understand what this means, consider that a standard 40w incandescent bulb delivers about 360 lumens and a 60w bulb about 540 lumens, which gives a ratio of 9 lumens per watt. Anything that offers greater than 25 lumens per watt can be classed as an energy saving light bulb. Zenigata LED light bulbs consume 6.7 watts and thus produce 6.7 * 80 lumens per watt which is 536 lumens, on a par with the standard 60w incandescent light bulb.

So you could, right now, replace all your 60w light bulbs with Zenigata LED light bulbs rated at 6.7 watts and consume 1/10th (or 90% less) electricity. And remember Haitz’s Law? Because of performance improvements, eighteen months from now you should be able to obtain the same 60w worth of lighting from just 3 watts.

LED light, in common with CFLs, has tended to be a somewhat cool blue colour, whereas we are more accustomed to a warmer yellow white colour. This is something that is now commonly addressed with the use of colored phosphors (these do reduce luminosity but this is in turn compensated for by the ever increasing lumens per watt yields for LEDs).

The third factor that might be considered to weigh against low energy LED lighting is that the light emitted by an LED is intrinsically directional and doesn’t scatter in all directions the way that incandescent and fluorescent lights do. This is actually quite acceptable in a spotlight, flood light or bright reading lamp, but it’s not especially effective for emulating general ambient lighting such as a table lamp would provide. Though again, there are LED powered general lighting light bulbs becoming more commonly available that do a reasonable job here.

Two obvious plus points for low energy LED lighting are ease of retrofit and ecological credentials (other than simply saving energy).

LED lights are widely available for all common base fittings such as mains powered GU10 and 12v MR16 spotlights and the low energy standard base GU24 as well as regular bayonet mounts and Edison screw fittings. LED lights also don’t suffer from the many inherent problems associated with CFLs such as: noticeably poor start-up times; reduced lifespan caused by frequent switching on and off; and bulky unattractive bulbs.

But perhaps one of the most widely known advantages of low energy LED lighting over energy saving CFL light bulbs is that they don’t contain toxic mercury vapour or other unpleasant materials, and thus do not pose a serious health risk or require tiresome and expensive disposal procedures to protect the environment.

To sum up, the main perceived disadvantages of domestic energy saving LED lighting are cost and application (luminosity and color). Yet as we have seen, the cost of a light bulb is actually a red herring – the true cost of electrical lighting is the price of electricity and on this score ultra low energy LED lighting puts everything else, including energy saving CFLs, completely in the shade (pun intended).

As regards luminosity and light quality, LED lights on balance deliver a cleaner, sharper light than CFL light bulbs and offer far more flexibility in terms of color choice and brightness.

Finally, the biggest advantage that low energy domestic LED lighting has over its rivals is that the lighting industry itself regards domestic LED lighting as the future and can barely disguise its contempt for CFLs. Lighting giants such as Philips are on record as stating that they will not invest a single dollar further into CFLs and that their entire research and development efforts are now directed at domestic LED lighting technology.

Those who follow eco-technology trends are well aware that there is a world-wide phase-out of incandescent light bulbs already well underway and scheduled to complete within the next couple of years. Given international legislation to ban incandescent lighting and lack of support for the already dated and unloved CFL, it’s near certain where the future of lighting lies – with low energy LED light. And as advantages go, I’d say that one’s pretty compelling.

The Pros and Cons of Managed Hosting

Managed hosting is a type of internet hosting using a dedicated server. For you, the client, this means that you have the server to yourself and you do not share digital space with anyone else. This is also called a dedicated hosting service. Using a dedicated service like this will enable you to have complete control over the programs, operating system, the hardware, and other specifications. The server administration is usually provided through the hosting company as an add-on service. In many cases, a dedicated or managed hosting service can have fewer overheads and can cost much less to run or purchase for a company.

It is ideal for large online corporations, as the extra room allowed by the exclusivity of the server can enable more programs and computer to run off the server.

Another ideal feature for larger companies is the ability to perform updates and patches to programs, whereas a shared hosting service would prevent that. In addition to this, the availability of high powered networks from multiple providers enables server providers to secure massive amounts of bandwidth, thus providing for a lower price for its clients.

There are on the other hand a few downsides to this hosting.

It does come at a price as most managed servers will cost significantly more than unmanaged servers. They can mean different things to different companies, so you must be clear on these differences before committing.

Problems can still occur on your server, so you must feel you can trust the company that is supplying this service to you.

And lastly you will have less control of your server, so this is maybe not so much of an option for the technically minded that prefer to have more control of their server environment.

In this scenario you can see the pros really do out way the cons.

Shared Hosting – Weighing up the pros and the cons

In sharp contrast, shared hosting means a simple partition is placed in-between companies programs and services. Often, programs or services may even be shared. This allows for viruses and bad code to easily be shared across the partition. This allows bots and other harmful malware to creep across the partitioned platforms and destroy your data. Even though shared hosting may be cheaper than dedicated hosting, in the long run it really isn’t. Shared hosting is also improbable for most companies in other respects, since it is not large enough to hold most the programs a large corporation would take. Additionally, you the client cannot use the programs you want. You are forced to use the hardware, programs, and operating system that are provided by the host of the shared server.

On the plus side, it can provide reliable web presence without having special technical skills.

It can be divided into 2 subtypes -Free and Paid.

Free Hosting allows you to try new ideas without the expense. It provides you with everything necessary for your floating site.

You should however NOT expect the best conditions for your site as Bandwidth and Disk space is limited.

Web statistics are also poorly provided.

Paid Hosting provides features that free hosting doesn’t such as multiply e-mail, MySQI and PHP which are all supported. Whether you want to host a small, intermediate or large professional business website, this can be used.

Using shared hosting you get a very good chance of hosting your site on a powerful, well administrated server at a low monthly cost.

As you get your web venture off the ground and notice the first signs of growth, you may want to consider the best type of server to help run your site into the future. While many prefer shared hosting in the early stages, this avenue is fraught with difficulties. For starters, your site is limited by what it can store and accomplish for its users. Secondly, you never know what other forms of risk taking software that the other sites on that server are running. If a virus gets into the server then it can spread to other sites under the umbrella. Essentially, you could get hacked without ever actually doing anything wrong. If you don’t generate much traffic, a shared host may be just fine, but it’s only a matter of time, as you continue to grow, that the need for something bigger will arise.

When that need does arise, most turn to budget dedicated servers for support. These particular types of servers carry with them many pros and a few cons that you need to be aware of before you upgrade. First, the bad news. Budget dedicated servers may be affordable, but they are still going to require that you pay more than what you may be used to paying. After all, you have the entire server and its resources to yourself versus splitting the costs with other sites on a shared plan. Another possible con of the budget dedicated server is that you may end up paying for power that goes far beyond what you actually need to run your site. But if you are thinking about this in a negative light, it is important to note that you most likely do the same thing when finding a personal computer. How many of you are actually going to need a full terabyte at any time in your computing career, for instance?

The advantages of the budget dedicated host are many, far outweighing the drawbacks. Firstly, expansion and fluctuations in traffic are easier to handle. Your visitors get a more reliable web experience, and the chances of them contracting a virus or getting hacked as a result of activities occurring on your site are nil. Rather than all out dedicated hosting, budget dedicated servers actually allow you to pay less than what you would have to pay if you ran everything on your own. With budget dedicated hosting, you can often take advantage of the expertise of a server manager, who can ensure your web properties are taken care of and safe from viruses at all times.

While you may currently be content with your server, consider where you are going to be in 10 years. It may be that a budget dedicated server is in your future.