Web hosting sites, e-commerce and domain registration. Problems, advantages, disadvantages. The need to be aware.

Probably the creators of the Internet, twenty years ago, have never dreamt of what the World Wide Web has vecome today. In only twenty years, we have met with so many different devices, developments and so on, that we have practically faced with a big issue: where are we heading for? What’s next, teletransportation?

In this exhausting advance, that doesn’t leave a tiny space to react and to think, websites have spread, and so the businesses made to earn money from that websites. As for any business related to trademarks, appeared the web hosting sites, related to the possibility of giving virtual space to website contents, and charging them for maintaining their names and domains. Always depending on the host provider, costs maybe sometimes very big. But what is the actual business of this web hosting sites? Is just making a domain available, so you can put there your stuff? Well no. these businesses, spread all over the world where connections to the Internet are available, have combined their services as hosters with services related to online issues but not limited to giving domains. For instance, some enterprises offer complementary services: web design, special servers for enterprises that do e-commerce, technical support, ftp servers, etc. these complementary services are offered at a lower cost, and discounts are provided within the payment of both services. What has been triggered is an unhealthy race between all the enterprises, that try minute by minute to differentiate from others, offering always new resources and possibilities.

Latinamerica has been a region in which web design and hosting has been very well developed, moreover during the last years, due to a boom that came in 2006 and 2007. the services offered always include , or try to include, different designs, trademark designs, works with Flash, PHP, html and other resources. In many cases, you can also ask for prices online.

What problems should you encounter when looking for web hosting sites? The main issue, I think, is dealing with some people who work on that and may not be professional, who as amateurs enter the business offering very cheap prices, that sometimes may not be the best services. That’s why you should look very well, analyze everything, put everything into perspective and try to weigh everything perfectly before reaching to an agreement with any enterprise. Other common drawbacks that someone may encounter is not thinking thouroughly about the space that the web hosting site is providing: for instance, sometimes very cheap prices may be offered, but on the other hand very little space is offered with that cheap cost.

Is hacking possible, from a web hosting site?

Well. This is another problem that sometimes is left aside. But there are some informations that may help us understand this. On Web Workshop (www.webworkshop.net), it is perfectly explained how some website hosting companies can take advantage of the innocence of the customer. In the website it is mentioned a case where the server of the web hosting was used to intercept all page requests for all sites of all of their website hosting customers. “If a request was from a person, the normal page was returned, but if a request was from a major search engine spider, the web host's server scam modified the page that was returned, by dynamically adding a set of links to it. This was done to all the web host's customers' sites, and without their knowledge or permission”.

The purpose of this hacking system was to add tons of working links, with targetted link text, to the website host's own sites, so that they would be pushed up the search engines' rankings.

This kind of scam, according to Webworkshop, is not a unique case, It is possible to encounter it anytime. Users should be aware of this, yet it is very difficult to point out where the scam is. To conclude, it is valuable the information posted on the cited website, on how this works: “Fortunately, Google comes to our aid. Do any search in Google. At the foot of the results page there is a link to "Language Tools". Click it. Near the top of the returned page is a box in which you can enter the URL of a page to be translated . Enter your page URL there, leave the setting at German to English, and click "Translate". There will be no German words in your page, so it will all come back in English. If the web hosting company has changed anything in your page, you will see the changes in the translated page”.

So there are more problems, apart from costs and operative issues. You have to take into account the possibility of dealing with a scamming web hosting site, even though they may look professional, you should be always aware of this. According to Triple Fiber Network, there are three main problems that should be looked at, and with this we will be rounding up: sometimes, poor Technical Support is mentioned, although it is usually offered, as we commented before, as a special service. Many times, the service is poor and the result is “total chaos”, as stated in the website. Many times, phone calls are not answered or long waits are encountered. In second case, reliability “is another major complaint with sites being down too many times or being too slow at certain times. All this impacts negatively on the performance and revenue potential of the site”. Last but not least, in some cases delays after signing up, When people sign up for web sites, they are often anxious to go ahead as quickly as possible, as nobody wants delays. But the most of the web hosts, after signing up they take several days for the account to be ready.

So, if you need to get a web hosting site, think It twice, and analyze everything, in detail. The problems you may encounter may sometimes be impossible to take back.