![[budgetweb.com title bar]](../image/budgban.gif)
- Some history of budgetweb.com and this FAQ
- What is the difference between virtual and non-virtual?
- What is the difference between an IPP and a VAR?
- What do you mean by low cost?
- Can you explain what the following options mean?
no access or hit charges / image maps / predefined cgi scripts (e.g. response form) / userwritten cgi scripts / auto mail responders / commercial use is allowed / shell account / email account or mail forwarding / access reports / secure server / server side includes / database available on server / JAVA available on server as programming language / discount to non-profit organisations / RealAudio / mailing lists / Microsoft FrontPage (tm) / space can be resold / payment accepted by credit cards / Cold Fusion (tm) / telephone support is provided - Can the following options/information be added to the web space
lists?
Alphabetical ordering / Search engine for filtering - How about letting people leave comments/feedback about services?
- How about providing a form for sending questions to all the service providers?
- Which service is the best?
- Which providers allow adult content?
- Can you give me more information about a particular provider?
- How do I register a domain name?
- Please remove this provider because their service is $^#&
- Is budgetweb.com a web space provider?
- How do I accept payments on my web site?
- How can I make money with my web site?
Some history of budgetweb.com and this FAQ
budgetweb.com started life back in November 1995 as a short list of web space providers with their monthly rates, setup costs, and space offered. I had compiled the list while researching where I should move my own home page, since I was soon going to lose the free web space which I had. During the search I found that there were a lot of adverts for web space being posted on usenet quoting exhorbitant rates, and a lot of FUD being spread about low cost web space providers.
I therefore decided to post the list to alt.internet.access.wanted and a few other relevant newsgroups where such adverts and discussion was taking place, and also created a web page for the information called Surviving the WWW on a tight budget. To my knowledge this was the first list of web space services on the WWW offering detailed pricing information about each provider.
A lot of web space providers began writing asking to be added to the list, and I received a lot of other feedback about how the lists could be changed and improved, and also a lot of questions asking for advice. I added a separate list for virtual hosting services, graphic designers and scanning services, and the lists grew quickly, as did the amount of effort it took to maintain them. In December 1995 I had also volunteered to take over maintenance of another list of web space providers called Leasing a Server which had begun to get out of date.
About this time I moved the home page and renamed it to LIST of low cost web space services, later dropping the word space to make it more general. I also decided to experiment with making my hobby pay for itself by asking for sponsors. The response was enthusiastic, and I very quickly had sponsors signed up for several months. The down side was I quickly found that handling the extra work generated by adding sponsors, and making sure that banners were updated on the right day, more than out weighed what I was taking in, but it was still nice that perhaps for the first time in my life I had a hobby which was paying for itself.
To insulate myself from any future changes in local ISP or web space provider I registered the domain budgetweb.com in February 1996, after finding that mercer.com (my first choice) was already in use. I renamed the site Budget Web Index although typically still referred to it as the LIST of low cost web services.
For the rest of 1996 the lists grew in size and were redesigned a few times. I tried one or two ideas, including a prize draw which never took off, and a form for sending feedback to all providers, which was a bit of a fiasco. I continued to update the lists weekly, which became more and more of a chore, although the positive feedback encouraged me to keep at it. (including some from people whose address my mother would like for her christmas card list ;)
For 1997 I decided the lists could do with a new look, and also that I was going to add the FAQ which I had been promising would be ready next week for more months than I care to remember. Also I had to compile some information about sponsorship opportunities, and make some hard decisions about how I could accomodate the growing demand for advertising without compromising the integrity of the lists. Not all this got done in time for the New Year upload, but it was all in place in early 1997.
The site has changed name again and is now the easier to remember budgetweb.com. I'm sure this won't be the last name change, but it will do for now :)
Alex Chapman
What is the difference between virtual and non-virtual?
If you want your web space URL to be http://www.yourcompany.com then you will either need your own web server, or to rent a virtual server. The latter is really just space on someone else's web server which has been configured to respond to requests for your domain. This service is generally slightly more expensive than non-virtual web space, where you simply have a subdirectory on someone else's web server, and your URL incorporates their domain name, such as http://www.someprovider.com/yourcompany.
What is the difference between an IPP and a VAR?
For the purpose of this definition an IPP is a true Internet Presence Provider who operate their own servers, over which they have full control. A VAR is a Value Added Reseller which in this case is someone who sells space on servers that do not belong them. A VAR might offer some other service which make them an attractive choice, such as support in a particular language or knowledge of a certain industry. Exactly how much control a particular VAR has over the servers they sell space on will vary widely.
What do you mean by low cost?
Any service which includes at least 1 MB of web space and costs less than $20 per month for non-virtual or $50 per month for virtual.
Can you explain what the following options mean?
- no access or hit charges
- The provider will not charge you extra if your web site receives lots of visitors. The more visitors you receive, the more data is transferred from the server, and the more bandwidth this uses. Some providers charge for high bandwidth usage to prevent their servers from being overloaded. Although many people prefer not to be charged in this way, it may be in your best interests, since it gives some assurance that the server which you will be sharing with several other web sites will not become hopelessly overloaded. Furthermore, most providers allow a certain amount of bandwidth before charges apply, and this minimum level is often much higher than your site is going to generate even in your busiest months.
- image maps
- An image which has multiple hot spots on it which link to different pages. For example, it might be a picture of several people setup so that clicking on a persons face takes you to a web page about that person. Image maps can be done on the server or on the client, and each has its pros and cons. Client side image maps do not require any special access to the server (and whether or not a provider shows this option you will always be able to do client side image maps). However, not all browsers support client side image maps. Many more browsers support server side image maps.
- predefined cgi scripts (e.g. response form)
- cgi scripts allow you to make your web page interactive. They may provide things like counters for your web pages, or response forms to get feedback from visitors. Often providers will have several cgi scripts already installed on their server ready for you to use.
- userwritten cgi scripts
- While all servers support cgi scripts, many providers restrict users from installing their own. This is generally due to the potential harm that a cgi script could do to the server. However, this needn't be the case, and many providers allow you to install your own scripts.
- auto mail responders
- Generally this is a feature which allows you to setup a note to be automatically sent back to someone who mails a specific address. This can be used for sending out price lists or any other information.
- commercial use is allowed
- You may use this web site for advertising products, selling services or any other legitimate commercial purpose. If a provider does not show this option then it may only be used for personal or non-profit interests.
- shell account
- A shell account lets you edit your html files in place, rather than having to transfer them to your PC to make changes. It also allows you to rename and delete files. Most of these things can be accomplished in other ways using extensions to ftp or special purpose software, but shell accounts are still common and popular.
- email account or mail forwarding
- The provider offers either a POP mail account, or at least an address distinct from your ISP email address to which mail can be sent and which will forward along to your ISP email address.
- access reports
- Information about how many visitors your pages receive is available in some form. This commonly shows the IP address or hostname from which each visitor came, along with the pages they requested and the date and time. It may also include such things as where the visitor came from (referrer logs) and what web browser they were using (agent logs).
- secure server
- This allows you to setup forms where people can submit information to you, such as credit cards, in a safe manner. The information is encrypted to prevent anyone intercepting the transmission from getting at the data.
- server side includes
- These allow you to imbed html documents or the results from scripts inside other html documents.
- database available on server
- With hindsight it occurs to me that this option is a little too general to be useful. At the time I added it I was interested in setting up the list of low cost web space providers as an online database which was searchable, but even if a server can theoretically have databases it is not always straightforward to set one up. What might be more useful to list are some of the products just now becoming popular like ColdFusion which allow for such databases to be setup.
- JAVA available on server as programming language
- It is possible to use JAVA and JavaScript in your pages without the need for Java on the web server. JavaScript for example is just embedded in your html document. However, if you want to write cgi scripts in Java then you will need it on the server. That is what this option refers to.
- discount to non-profit organisations
- The provider offers discounted rates or setup charges to customers who qualify as non-profit organisations or charities.
- RealAudio
- The provider offers RealAudio server streams. These allow you to broadcast audio from your web site. For more information refer to Progressive Networks, home of RealAudio.
- mailing lists
- The provider allows you to operate mailing lists from your account.
- Microsoft FrontPage (tm)
- This is one of the packages which allows Microsoft Windows users to manage their web site without the need to understand ftp and or shell accounts.
- space can be resold
- The provider allows you to sell on all or part of the web space, some restrictions will apply and you should contact the provider if you are interested in doing this.
- payment accepted by credit cards
- You may pay for this service by credit card.
- Cold Fusion (tm)
- This package provides a scripting language for you to more easily integrate forms with an online database.
- telephone support is provided
- The provider will give support over the phone, rather than just by email.
Can the following options/information be added to the web space lists?
I'm grateful for all suggestions of how the lists can be improved, but I also want to keep the amount of information I record down to a manageable level. Also each time I add a new feature I have to go back to each of the hundreds of providers and ask them to answer that extra question. For this reason I generally try to add features in batches, rather than as they come along.
How about letting people leave comments/feedback about services?
The very popular ISP listing service called the List used to have this feature, but it was removed. At the time they had a lengthy article explaining why, but basically it was due to abuse. It seems providers were writing in or offering incentives for their customers to do the same, either to praise themselves, or criticize their competitors. Until someone can suggest a way of recognising legitimate feedback and thus avoid such abuse I am not going to implement such a system.
How about providing a form for sending questions to all the service providers?
I've tried that, and it turned out not to be very popular among the providers. Many of them pointed out that all the questions being asked of them were answered either in the information on my web pages, or on their own web site to which I linked. There were also some technical misshaps when I set it up, which caused replies to go back to all the original recipients. Whoops. I withdrew that part of the web site, and I'm none too comfortable about setting it up again. The purpose of this web site is to allow you to narrow down which providers are appropriate for your needs. Once you have this down to a manageable level, it ought to be possible to investigate each of those providers further by visiting their web site, and finally by emailing them for questions not answered by either of these two sources.
Which service is the best?
Short answer: I don't know.
Long answer: It depends what you want.
Several people have sent me copies of my list formatted slightly differently and sorted on the rates field, or on some function of the rates, setup cost and web space. I'm always interested in people's opinions of how they judge web space providers, but please don't send me reformatted copies of my own lists. If you think some new way of calculating which provider is best is so compelling as to be incorporated somehow, then just send me the formula. A popular one that is suggested is based upon calculating how much the first years web service costs for a fixed amount of web space.
To me the problem with all these suggestions is that price alone does not make a good provider, and it is not the intention of these lists (despite the perhaps missleading name list of low cost web space providers) to encourage the selection of a provider based solely upon price. When I come to selecting a web space provider there are three factors that I look at, in no particular order:
- price
- performance
- service
Since price is the only one which can be reliably quantified, it was the basis for my lists when I first started compiling them in my search for a web space provider. The only measure of performance that I know to collect is what type of connection a provider has to the internet (64K, T1, T3, DS3) but this is not at all an accurate reflection of the sort of performance you or visitors to your web site will necessarily experience. That will depend heavily on other factors such as how many other web sites are served from that provider, and how busy they are. And also how well connected your provider is to the backbone of the internet. These things are not easily quantified, and I have made no attempt to list them. Service is the most intagible of all. It is not unknown for service companies to be incredible responsive to sales requests, but then totally unresponsive when it comes to supporting you once you have signed on the dotted line. All I can suggest is searching around, and perhaps asking for recommendations on newsgroups such as alt.internet.access.wanted or from existing customers of the provider you are interested in.
Which providers allow adult content?
Refer to the list of web space providers who will host adult content.
Can you give me more information about a particular provider?
The only web space provider with whom I have recent personal experience is pair Networks. I am happy to provide my opinion on this providers if you will write and ask. Everything else that I know about all the other providers listed on these pages is included on these pages. I have no inside information, and am not qualified to make recommendations based upon your requirements.
Please remove this provider because their service is $^#&
I will not get involved in these disputes. If details about a provider listed on these pages are wrong, then I will correct them based upon details at the providers web site, or correspondence with the provider if the former is in dispute. What a provider says about themselves in the comments field is just their opinion. Don't complain to me if they say they are the best, but it turns out they aren't.
A service will only be removed if details at the providers web site, or correspondence with the provider, prove to me that they are ineligible to be on the list, using the criteria quoted on the relevant submission form, or attempts by me to access the providers web site in two consecutive weeks fail. In the latter case the entry will be reinstated when the provider writes to inform me that their web site is back online.
If you want to make your complaint public, then one way to do this would be to post to alt.internet.access.wanted and another is to create a web page. If you plan to do either of these, I recommend you find another provider first, since you are not likely to be welcome at your present one for very long.
Is budgetweb.com a web space provider?
No, budgetweb.com is a list of web hosting services offered by other companies not associated with budgetweb.com.
Disclaimer / Small Print
All information on these pages is intended as a guideline only. Most of it has been gathered by me, or submitted by service providers. I try to check the validity of the information, particularly prices where quoted, but mistakes will slip through, and providers may change their prices and services without informing me. In particular, check with providers carefully about exactly which features are included in a particular service, and which cost extra.