When websites for .mobi are designed by developers, they need to make sure the web pages are fully compatible with mobile web access by reducing their weight, screen size etc. Also, objects or graphics created using flash won’t be used frequently. The web designers should make sure that only the essential information is displayed in the web pages and no unnecessary information and graphics are displayed.

Although .mobi is the youngest domain extension for top level domains, it is making headlines already and there are millions dollar sales happening at the moment via .mobi sites.
When it comes to traditional websites, you can build your own website using a vendor supplied website builder through the web browser. Likewise, the mobile devices users are offered the facility for building their own website through the mobile web browsers. This is actually being .mobi technology matured to compete with traditional web.

Among hundreds of advantages of maintaining a .mobi sites for your business, there are few disadvantages as well. There need to be two websites maintained separately; one for traditional web access and other for mobile devices. This increases the risk of web security, maintenance overhead and information redundancy.

Since .mobi is sort of a certification that the web site is optimized for mobile device use, you can use .mobi site for your information needs on the go without any hesitation.

The latest addition to both virtualization and webhosting is web hosting on virtual machines. This is different from virtual servers in technology. In a environment where web hosting is provided on a virtual environment, there are so many “virtual” servers running on the same hardware. The web hosting company can install a number of virtual machines on top of a powerful server and provide hosting facility for each. If they wish, they can assign each virtual machine for clients as dedicated servers or they can choose to server multiple clients using the same virtual machine.

With the addition of virtual machines, web hosting companies can afford a large number of installations using the same hardware; maximizing the profits. At the same time, clients would receive web space for cheaper prices due to the less maintenance cost.

In terms of technology, there are many wonderful advantages. If a reinstallation of the operating environment is needed for some reason, this can be done within few minutes of time. Most of the cases, operating system images can be stored with the required software (such as web server, database management system etc.) so the server can be up and running with a short period of time. Rebooting the system is also quite fast as the operating system runs on a hardware emulator.

Among the virtualization software for web hosting environments, VMWare and Xen take the market lead. Among many web hosting services that run servers on virtual machines, Slicehost has a good reputation.

In terms of portability, most of the web servers and add-ons were not available for Mac OS until recent days. Adding new add-ons or upgrading the web servers were nightmare as not much of expertise was available for the general public for guidance.

What about the webhosting services such as MacHighway and MacHost? How did they provide their services over a decade? The answer is simple; they did customize Mac OS and web servers for their need. They did a lot of tweaks and changes in order to get the web servers up and running. Actually they started hosting web servers on top of Mac OS even before Apple officially supported hosting in the operating system.

Some web service providers who run on Mac claims that they offer specific services for Mac users as their hosting environment is Mac. This is only half true. Since the client machines do their business with the web servers only through TCP/IP, it doesn’t really matter what hosts your web site. When it comes to software integration such as email clients etc. there can be an advantage but they are not directly affected to your expectations from web hosting.

If you ever consider running a blog site or a personal website at home using some old hardware, then you need to go for a light weight web server. Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) and Apache are two of popular but light weight web servers. Apache also has a lighter version called Apache Light purposely built for old hardware.

Before you start hosting your own web server at home, you need to check with your ISP. Most of the ISPs do not allow regular Internet users to host web servers using the connection provided. This may be due to various reasons including bandwidth concerns. Usually you won’t get a static IP from your ISP if this is the case. Even if you get a static IP from your ISP, traffic through standard HTTP ports to your IP will be blocked by ISP so you cannot publish your website. Therefore most of the users who host web site from home use alternative methods such as using “no-IP” web sites to route traffic or publish the website through non –standard ports.

Last but not least, the security of your home server should be maintained strictly especially if you use the same computer for other purpose as well. This is due to the vulnerability it creates by exposing the server to thousands of users. If your operating system and the software are not properly patched and secured, then there can be hackers coming in to your system and perform various harmful acts.

First of all, overselling is an easy way to get more out of your resources than normally is possible. As an example, if I get a web hosting package from one of the famous web hosting providers, they would give me about 5GB of web space and 100GB of monthly bandwidth. They will sell the same package to another few thousands of users under the same space and bandwidth. Now, what if all these thousand users start using all the space and bandwidth available for them at one point of time that comes with in next few hours? I’m sure the web hosting service will not be able offer, specially the bandwidth, for this usage. So, then why do the web hosting services offer 100 GB bandwidth for each hosting plan? That’s because they know, most of the users would not use their allowance fully so they sell more packages than they can handle assuming that the unused resources will cover it.

There are two main advantages of overselling for web hosting companies and clients respectively. For web hosting companies, they can make more money than normal by overselling. Indirectly, this helps clients to have cheaper hosting plans with more features while minimizing negative experiences related to overselling. Overselling is generally not an issue unless the host becomes extremely greedy and starts selling much more than they can handle. If you are thinking about buying a web space, do a research on the potential web hosting companies and see who are likely to be overselling “too much” and avoid them.

How will you feel about climate-positive hosting in an attempt to go green and support the nature’s loud cry for help? ServInt’s initiative focuses on this aspect and provides a whole line of green solutions to help customers operate with minimal environmental impact.

Let’s explore how ServInt tries to achieve its goals. Firstly, they offer climate-positive hosting on all of their Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting services where each service is backed up by a commitment to put off the total carbon footprint of the VPS by 110 percent. This is mainly achieved by reforestation campaigns throughout the United States. In order to make it a practical approach, ServInt calculates reforestation in line with energy consumption of the host servers and their entire VPS infrastructure.

Secondly, ServInt has made a commitment to be responsible to recycle hardware at the end of each working life cycle. This task involves, recycling all recyclable components and disposing all non-recyclable components using hazard-free methods.

Apart from the above aspects, ServInt further engages in green methodologies through its SuperVPS and UltimateVPS by featuring low-capita energy consumption through effective virtualization. These services only use DELL’s low voltage server hardware which provides high performance and smaller carbon footprint. Having revealed that great innovation, I truly believe that now it is time we got rid of the traditional dedicated servers.

If you are running a small or medium scale company, the cost factor involved with high performance will be a draw back that you may have. However with ServInt’s solutions, you save up on the money while getting the best deal in terms of performance. To add to that, you will feel good by doing some social service in becoming a green movement supporter because as you may already know, web hosting industry is a major contributor to environmental problems.

Guild hosting companies typically provide services such as but not limited to; public or private forums for game community members to communicate including instant messaging software and chat servers, applications to schedule and organize evening related to gaming such as tournaments, and facilities to promote the gaming community and events. For these services, the hosting company doesn’t need to have sophisticated infrastructure with high capacity servers and high network bandwidth as in the case of game hosting due to the fact that Guild hosting just provides specific light weight services for these communities.

When these gaming communities (guilds) started, they used bulletin boards such as vBulletin and phpBB for communications and publications. But the enhancement of the complexity of the games, their game play and the number of membership required more sophisticated scheduling and roster management tools. There were few companies such as GuildPortal and GuildCafe who identified this requirement and provided facilities including social networking up to some extent.

There are usually two types of communication between game players; on-game and off-game. Guild hosts only provide the facilities for the latter. Although the guild can maintain a server for such communication by them, guild prefer a guild host due to the maintenance overhead involved when maintaining own servers. In 2006, Guild Launch was formed to expand the existing guild communities to the level of social networking and to deliver high quality, easy-to-use tools.