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This video was filmed internally at the Rackspace Cloud and simply depicts a few common customer scenarios and the recommended solutions for them. These are very high-level of course, so please come and discuss your specific situations with us. We hope this gives you a little bit of guidance however based on your general needs.

If you are looking for a good cheap Web Host to host your web site you will literally find 1000′s of sites with reviews and awards for web hosting providers. Be careful with how much trust you put into these reviews and awards, a huge percentage of them are not serious and are nothing more than a creative marketing trick to get you to buy hosting.
Reviews of existing customers are of course very valuable when buying any kind of product, and definitely for web hosting. You know this, I know this, and advertisers know this which is why they use fake reviews. Most often it is not the web host company itself that stands behind such fake reviews, instead it is some middleman that stands to earn a buck by referring customers to a host.
So how do you know which reviews are fake and which are real? Well, if they sound to good to be true they probably are. No company can deliver 100% quality 100% of the time and make 100% of it’s customers happy. Unhappy customers are always the loudest ones, if you like a product you are less likely to go online and say so than if you hate it. So if all reviews are super positive then that is a good indication that they are either fake or that the reviews are at least very carefully chosen to hide the unflattering ones. To see a good mix of good and bad reviews just check any book on Amazon, as much as a book can be loved it can be hated, and it is the same with web hosting. The bad reviews are usually more useful since they tend to tell you the weaknesses of a certain web host, and knowing these makes you a smarter consumer.
Another giveaway is fake hosting reviews often sound very similar, suspiciously like they were written by the same person. If a hosting review site has the review “Great host, great service. A great buy that I really recommend!” for 10 different hosting providers then something is wrong. Use your common sense and be a bit careful of how much trust you put into reviews like this. Also be aware if there positive reviews for all hosts listed on an “independent hosting review” site, surely some hosting providers must be better and worse than others. They can not all be great.
Another thing to be arware of are all these Web Hosting Awards that you bump into when you are researching your hosting. Keep in mind that all you need to create a Web Hosting Award is some design and some marketing skills. There is no government controlled Central Web Hosting Awards Association that guarantees that each web hosting award actually awards the best host and that the award is anything more than a fake marketing ploy. Before you trust any award make sure that you who is behind the Award and what criteria that has been used to award a certain host (“paying most for banner space” isn’t that useful for you as a consumer). Just as for reviews, common sense and a healthy bit of skepticism will enable you to look behind the marketing hype quite easily.
To get the best insight to what service a web hosting company really provide the best way is to take a look at the hosts support forums. Usually these can be found via the hosts homepage, otherwise just search for them on Google. In the forums you will be able to read about the problems people really have and what the hosts customers really think about the service provided. Again, be aware that the unhappy customers will be loudest, so there will always be more negative than positive posts. The key for you at this point though is that you know for sure that the information you are getting is real and not just marketing language.
To sum up. . .
- Be careful on who you trust when it comes to web hosting reviews and awards
- Be aware that there are a lot of sites that use reviews and awards as advertising and not to provide a good independent service
- Use your common sense when you do your research of web hosts
Being a smart and informed consumer will get you good hosting that you will be happy with for a long time.

There are several web hosts which try anxiously to get contract of hosting from the user to root themselves in the beginning era into a stable hosting provider, for that they hide several things from the user. Coming next are the things which the user should never hope to be get informed from there host. For an instance, web hosts which are new in the market, many times do not have the facility to provide service to the users. Low cost or budget web hosting services are generally comes in such sort of category. In this there are two categories of hosts, one, who neglects to provide details of services to the users and another who show the mirage of outstanding (24/7) service which, is a mere misconception.

There are several hosts in the market which are cheap, however, not experienced in this field. One straightforward and ideal way to inquire about the level of service is to get the customer care number and apply it before dealing with the host. This will prove whether the service is up to the expectation or not.

Another hidden fact is that several web-hosting enterprises are inexperienced. The user should verify that the host he/she is dealing with is experienced or not, even to some extent. The user has the right to know about the work experience of the host because no one wishes to become a puppet for conducting experiments.

Another crucial factor is that while dealing with a low cost or budget web hosts, the host may be involved in several other businesses including web hosting. The user should remain aware of their other sorts of businesses or projects before signing up with them. In hosting a user requires specialized person instead of generalized person bearing various tasks together, applying both resources and time for providing faithful services to the customer.

It is also a misconception that few cheap web hosts will definitely provide the promised bandwidth, which is not true in real sense. It is important that they should not advertise one thing and end up providing something else as it can be treated as a fraud.

Preferring short term contracts at beginning is one of the ideal ways to prevent oneself from any of the undesirable surprises. Doing payment as per monthly charges can be effective. This will not only display one as a responsible and smart user but also assists to easily change the host in the condition of dissatisfaction.

You probably know that submitting articles can boost your website’s popularity in search engines. However, submitting to multiple article sites can be a daunting task. Directories expect different types of formatting. They allow variable numbers of characters in titles, and they may restrict links to as few as 1 – or they may permit several.

Whether you use article submission software or submit your articles manually, there are some advance preparations that will make your job much easier.

Of course before you submit, you must write an article. At the bottom of this page is a handy text template. Although the character counts in the template given here are less than indicated, there is a link in the resource box to an online template with correct parameters.

Compose your article in your favorite word processor; 500-1000 words is an optimal length. Before you begin, set the font to Courier 10 point. This should force your word processor to use plain text characters for quotes, rather than smart quotes and other characters that may cause problems. Allow your typing to wrap naturally. Press the ‘Enter’ key twice between paragraphs or other important blocks of text.

Avoid using double quotation marks. Instead, opt for single quotes [']. Utilize your word processor’s spell-check and grammar features, and check everything meticulously once your article is ready for submission. Then copy and paste into the template, using Notepad or a similar program.

If you see any strange-looking characters on your screen, perform a search and replace and convert them to plain text equivalents.

Your title should be kept below 60 characters. The line under ‘TITLE’ (*in the online template*), including the leading letters, contains exactly 60. Although most directories permit more, for SEO purposes you should keep your title within this limit. Your title is usually displayed in search engine results. Google will show approximately 68-70 characters. However, article sites often precede the title with a word like ‘Articles’ or ‘Content’. This must be added to the character count.

Once you are satisfied with the title, delete the first line of the template, if you wish.

If suitable, you can utilize the first paragraph of your article as a summary. Otherwise write an appropriate summary in your word processor – and keep it short. A 250-character count is ideal.

The article itself should be copied and pasted below the ‘ARTICLE’ heading.

In the ‘AUTHOR’S NOTE’ area, place your bio or linking information. Do not add html at this point – just bare links. Avoid immediately following a URL with a period or other punctuation. Some article directories will not format your link(s) correctly if you do.

Under ‘NO AUTO LINKS’ copy and paste your bio text, then format the links with html ‘href’ codes for the directories that allow it.

The ‘COPYRIGHT’ section is for an occasional article directory that requires it.

The ‘KEYWORDS’ area is where you enter two lines of comma-separated keywords. The number of characters, including the letters, is 100 (*in the online template*). Some directories allow 100, others up to 200.

Save as a plain text (. txt) file – but don’t exit yet!

Go through your copy and add html, as appropriate. Some directories allow codes for bold, italics, unordered lists, ordered lists, etc. Save the file again – indicating in the filename that this is the HTML version.

For example, you should have two filenames, similar to the following:

How-to-Write-an-Article. txt

How-to-Write-an-Article-HTML. txt

Next set up a spreadsheet. The first time you submit to a new directory, do a manual submission. You can register if required, get a feel for the ‘tone’ of the directory, and check format and linking requirements. Make notes in your spreadsheet. If you use article submission software for subsequent submissions, you will know exactly how to configure your program for each directory.

The resource box at the end of this article provides a link to a page with both versions of a sample article, the template, and an example spreadsheet.

Good luck with your submissions!———- Begin Template ———-

TITLE:

60CHAR===============

SUMMARY:

ARTICLE:

Author’s Note:

NO AUTO LINKS:

COPYRIGHT:

Copyright YOUR NAME – YOUR LINK – This article is free to publish as long as links remain clickable.

KEYWORDS:

100CHAR============== ———– End Template ———–

©Copyright Kathy Steinemann: This article is free to publish only if this copyright notice, the byline, and the author’s note below (with active links) are included.