Cheap Web Hosting

Advantages Disadvantages
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Server, software and | Bandwidth restrictions.
network is managed and|
supported for you. |
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You can select a | Shared processing power
custom domain name. |
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Search engines don’t | Limited software.
view you as second |
class if you have your|
own domain name |
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Improved response time| Potentially limited disk
for support | space
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Uptime is improved |
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Technical support is |
provided, generally 24|
hours a day.

Free Servers

Advantages Disadvantages
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No Cost. | Search engines view free hosting
| services as inferior and
| sometimesd do not include them in
| their index.
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You manage the server | Some free hosting services do not
software and network. | allow you to use a custom domain
| name.
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| The bandwidth is restricted and may
| cause difficulty for visitors
| attempting to access your site.
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| Because the service is free, some
| providers do not strive for 100%
| uptime which could result in your
| site being frequently inaccessible.
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| Software availability is limited,
| and free hosts do not generally
| provide database options.
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| Disk space is sometimes limited;
| ensure that you are getting all the
| room you need.
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| Poor response time for support.
------------------------------------------------------------
| Very limited support.

The Host

This installment will deal with finding the right host for
your site; from the free to the very expensive, we will
discuss what your options are so that you can find your
“perfect host”.

A host is a server which provides a home for your website on
the World Wide Web. Just as your computer contains all your
files, so a host contains all the files needed to run your
website. Why can’t you just keep all those files on your own
computer? Because that would mean users would have to
connect directly to your computer to see your website. Not a
good idea—it wouldn’t be secure and it would make your
machine run like a tired snail. With a host, you can simply
upload everything you need to the server and your users can
then connect there to see your site. It lets the site run
faster and allows it to have all the security and extras it
needs.

Selecting a host is the first important step towards
building your Internet business.

Hosting services and companies vary from totally free,
shared servers to large-scale dedicated machines. You’ll
have to decide which is right for you and your business. To
help you make that decision, study the following tables:

Indexing

Once the spiders have completed the task of finding
information on Web pages, the search engine must store the
information in a way that makes it useful. There are two key
components involved in making the gathered data accessible
to users:

* The information stored with the data
* The method by which the information is indexed

In the simplest case, a search engine could just store the
word and the URL where it was found. In reality, this would
make for an engine of limited use, since there would be no
way of telling whether the word was used in an important or
a trivial way on the page, whether the word was used once or
many times or whether the page contained links to other
pages containing the word. In other words, there would be no
way of building the ranking list that tries to present the
most useful pages at the top of the list of search results.

To make for more useful results, most search engines store
more than just the word and URL. An engine might store the
number of times that the word appears on a page. The engine
might assign a weight to each entry, with increasing values
assigned to words as they appear near the top of the
document, in sub-headings, in links, in the meta tags or in
the title of the page. Each commercial search engine has a
different formula for assigning weight to the words in its
index. This is one of the reasons that a search for the same
word on different search engines will produce different
lists, with the pages presented in different orders.

An index has a single purpose: It allows information to be
found as quickly as possible. There are quite a few ways for
an index to be built, but one of the most effective ways is
to build a hash table. In hashing, a formula is applied to
attach a numerical value to each word. The formula is
designed to evenly distribute the entries across a
predetermined number of divisions. This numerical
distribution is different from the distribution of words
across the alphabet, and that is the key to a hash table's
effectiveness.

The search engine software or program is the final part.
When a person requests a search on a keyword or phrase, the
search engine software searches the index for relevant
information. The software then provides a report back to the
searcher with the most relevant web pages listed first.
Is Your website search engine friendly? If you have any
doubts, it may be time to take a look and make your own “big
break”.

Spidering

Before a search engine can tell you where a file or document
is, it must be found. To find information on the hundreds of
millions of Web pages that exist, a search engine employs
special software robots, called spiders, to build lists of
the words found on Web sites.

When a spider is building its lists, the process is called
Web crawling.

In order to build and maintain a useful list of words, a
search engine's spiders have to look at a lot of pages. How
does any spider start its travels over the Web? The usual
starting points are lists of heavily used servers and very
popular pages. The spider will begin with a popular site,
indexing the words on its pages and following every link
found within the site. In this way, the spidering system
quickly begins to travel, spreading out across the most
widely used portions of the Web.