All blogging software, all forum software, and darn near every cool Web application you can think of requires a database in order to function. Unfortunately, most shared server packages only offer between 1 and 5 databases, thereby limiting your ability to expand with new sites or to experiment with new ideas.

In my opinion, this is completely unacceptable. If I want to see if I can tie 10 databases into one WordPress installation, then by god, I ought to be able to do that! Sadly, this would be an impossible task with just about every shared server package I’ve ever seen.

Because of this limitation, I have resorted to purchasing more expensive plans that offer more flexibility. Remember my first inadequate server that I told you about earlier? After that terrible experience, I opted for a more expensive server that cost me roughly $550 up front, and the primary reason why I went with the more expensive unit was because I could have unlimited databases.

But seriously, a $300 difference over a few databases?

What a joke.

Web Hosting Sin #2: Too Few Domains Allowed

Probably in an attempt to curb spammers, Web hosting companies usually limit the number of domains you can have on a shared server. Oftentimes, the limit is between 1 and 5 domains, but just like with the databases, this really affects your flexibility over time.

Want to start that new site you’ve been thinking of lately? Too bad, you’ll have to buy new hosting because you’ve already maxed out your domains.

Oh, and here’s another gem from the crazy world of Web hosting… I’ve seen shared server accounts before that would let you have 5 domains but only 1 database. If every site on the planet requires a database to run, how the hell can you run 5 domains with only one database?

Sanity? Anyone?

The bottom line—and the thing you really need to know here—is that good shared server plans will offer you at least 20 domains, and even better ones will let you add as many as you like (usually up to 999).

Web Hosting Sin #3: Crappy Developer Support

So, that new version of WordPress you want to run requires MySQL 4.0 or higher in order to work properly? What a shame, because your junky shared server only runs MySQL 3.23 and hasn’t been updated since 2005.

Of the three cardinal sins I’ve listed here, this one is probably the easiest to avoid. However, developer support is the ultimate litmus test for any Web host, and you can bet your bottom dollar that if the company you’re looking at doesn’t consider developers a priority (we’re a raucous, complaining bunch), then they damn sure won’t consider you a priority.

No matter what hosting package you’re looking at, make absolutely certain that you see support for the following developer tools:

• PHP
• MySQL
• Ruby on Rails
• Python
• CGI
• .htaccess
• cron jobs

Source: Web Hosting

80% of the end-user response time is spent on the front-end. Most of this time is tied up in downloading all the components in the page: images, stylesheets, scripts, Flash, etc. Reducing the number of components in turn reduces the number of HTTP requests required to render the page. This is the key to faster pages.

One way to reduce the number of components in the page is to simplify the page’s design. But is there a way to build pages with richer content while also achieving fast response times? Here are some techniques for reducing the number of HTTP requests, while still supporting rich page designs.

Combined files are a way to reduce the number of HTTP requests by combining all scripts into a single script, and similarly combining all CSS into a single stylesheet. Combining files is more challenging when the scripts and stylesheets vary from page to page, but making this part of your release process improves response times.

CSS Sprites are the preferred method for reducing the number of image requests. Combine your background images into a single image and use the CSS background-image and background-position properties to display the desired image segment.

Image maps combine multiple images into a single image. The overall size is about the same, but reducing the number of HTTP requests speeds up the page. Image maps only work if the images are contiguous in the page, such as a navigation bar. Defining the coordinates of image maps can be tedious and error prone. Using image maps for navigation is not accessible too, so it’s not recommended.

Inline images use the data: URL scheme to embed the image data in the actual page. This can increase the size of your HTML document. Combining inline images into your (cached) stylesheets is a way to reduce HTTP requests and avoid increasing the size of your pages. Inline images are not yet supported across all major browsers.

Reducing the number of HTTP requests in your page is the place to start. This is the most important guideline for improving performance for first time visitors. As described in Tenni Theurer’s blog post Browser Cache Usage – Exposed!, 40-60% of daily visitors to your site come in with an empty cache. Making your page fast for these first time visitors is key to a better user experience.

Source: Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site

HTTP compression is easy to enable and requires no client-side configuration to obtain benefits, making it a very easy way to get extra performance. This article discusses how it works, its advantages, and how to configure Apache and IIS to compress data on the fly.

Why Compress?

Most user’s knowledge of compression is from compressing a group of files that they download, extract, and open. But compression can also be used passively to compress documents as they are being transferred to a client’s browser. Because it’s a passive process, the server can reduce the size of the pages sent, therefore reducing the download time for users and their bandwidth usage.

Working the numbers helps clarify the gains. You can typically reduce an HTML document to less than half of its original size. This, in turn, halves the amount of time the client needs to download the page as well as the amount of bandwidth required. All of this is achieved without actually changing the way the site works, its page layout, or the content. The only thing that changes is the way the information is transferred. Unfortunately, there are limitations.

Suitable File Types

Not all files are suitable for compression. For obvious reasons, files that are already compressed, such as JPEGs, GIFs, PNGs, movies, and ‘bundled content (e.g., Zip, Gzip, and bzip2 files) are not going to compress appreciably further with a simple HTTP compression filter. Therefore, you are not going to get much benefit from compressing these files or a site that relies heavily on them.

However, sites that have a lot of plain text content, including the main HTML files, XML, CSS, and RSS, may benefit from the compression. It will still depend largely on the content of the file; most standard HTML text files will compress by about a half, sometimes more. Heavily formatted pages, for example those that make heavy use of tables (and therefore repetitive formatting content) may compress even further, sometime to as little as one-third of the original size.

Fortunately, with most HTTP servers it’s possible to select which types of files are compressed so the effects of trying to compress non-compressable data is limited.

Source:  Server Watch.com

Preferably, we shouldn’t have to serve up any images at all: we can outsource the hosting of our images to an external website. There are a many free or nearly-free image sharing sites on the net which make this a viable strategy:

• Imageshack
• Flickr
• Photobucket
• Amazon S3
• Favicon.ico

Be sure to read the term of service of these sites before using it.

1. Switch to an external image provider
2. Turn on HTTP compression
3. Outsource Your RSS feeds
4. Optimize the size of your JavaScript and CSS

The right answer for the question is a “NO”.

The truth is unlimited bandwidth is only possible if the website hosting company possess their own internet broadband company. If they have own broadband company, then it is possible to offer their customers unlimited bandwidth per second.

So why do unlimited bandwidth hosting plans exist?

However, that’s not the full stop for our story.

To be fair, the bandwidth limitations we are talking about here are almost incomprehensible and would never be reached by a single website. Thus in practical, a hosting company could actually (very much) offer virtually unlimited bandwidth to its client.

Most websites only consume a very small amount of bandwidth and disk space. Web hosting companies that provide unlimited anything as a plan feature are banking on the fact that you won’t use very much.

This is the controversial area between truth and falsehood upon which marketing claims feed.

Source: Webhostingsecretrevealed

Web hosting is the ability to move a business or information, product content, research to Internet. Actually, web hosting service is an Internet hosting service that permits an individual or an organization to provide their websites accessible via World Wide Web. Web hosts are those firms or organizations that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. These also furnish data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center, called colocation or a service that allows you to put your website (domain name) on the internet. After you have thought of a name for your website and registered the domain name, the next step is to find a web hosting service from a web hosting provider.

Over standard e-mail:

• Anytime, Anywhere Access – Enjoy Outlook features like calendars, contacts, and tasks, from any internet connection.
• Security – Company e-mail is stored on one secure server with backup. (If your computer or entire network crashes, e-mail will simply queue until you are back online.)
• Sharing - You and your coworkers can choose to make your Outlook calendars available to each other, allowing others to view and edit your calendar, as well as schedule meetings.
• Integration - The system is easily integrated with Windows-based handheld mobile devices like the Blackberry, as well as the iPhone.
• Advanced Features - Advanced Outlook features like return receipts, email forwarding and aliasing are included.
• Protection - All messages will be filtered for spam and virus before being sent to you.
• Synchronization - See an identical copy of your email, contacts and calendar from any computer or mobile device.
• Reliability - Each mailbox includes a licensed version of Microsoft Outlook 2003 Client for the best user experience. Copies available by request.

Over hosting in-house:

• No expense of building and maintaining a dedicated server
• No expensive software licensing
• No need to maintain another computer in your office
• No need to worry about backups

These managed web hosting services have data backup system in case of a disaster which will help in keeping your data safe. Likewise they also defend your website on any viruses that might attack  and other network related issues.