It's easy to get lured into the sweet deals of "Free Domain Name" when purchasing web hosting. Many web-hosting companies advertise such a free domain name.

The same is true for transfers. You'll get something for "free" if you transfer your domain name to your hosting company.

Well...

First, the domain name is never really free. You may get the first year for free, but after that, you'll pay full price for renewal every year. And that price may be well higher than what you would pay at a domain registrar. See what various webhosts really charge you for your domain here.

But that's not even the worst part...

The worst is this: if your domain name is controlled by your webhost, they can make it very hard for you to leave!

Unfortunately, this has happened more than once: customers of some fine web hosting company suddenly realize said hosting company has been acquired by another. Soon they cut costs, staff leaves (or is fired) and service degrades rapidly. Comes time of renewal, customers try to leave for another hosting company only to find that the company makes the procedure so convoluted they pass the due date for renewal. Renewal price is unexpectedly high... but hosting company holds the domain hostage and locks down your site. Customer has no choice but to pay through the nose...

Don't let this happen to you!

Pass on the one year of "free domain" and keep your domain free instead!

In case you wonder: some good domain name registrars are Namecheap Domains, Uniregistry and Moniker to cite a few.

Why you need a CDN

Using a CDN is one of the easiest and fastest ways to boost your website performance.

In order to see where the biggest peformance bootlenecks are, you can start by having a look at a waterfall graph of your website. The example above comes from b2evolution.net (before optimization). Any modern web browser will let you display this for you own site by using its developer menu/tools. When you do this for your site, just remember to clear your browser cache before measuring, otherwise your results won’t really show what your visitors experience.

The waterfall graph shows one line for each file that is downloaded to display your page. Here are the color codes used by Safari:

• The blue line is the main PHP/HTML file;
• The green lines are for CSS files;
• The yellow lines are for Javascript files;
• Finally the purple ones are for images.

Pay attention to 3 important aspects here:

• There are usually more files than you think that need to be downloaded to display a single web page.
• All files don’t start downloading right away.
• Each file has a long Latency time and a comparatively short Actual Transfer time.

Let’s look at these 3 problems in order.

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The problem

Many of us have registered domain names at Moniker.com. And while they are both effective and efficient at registering and managing your domain names for a low "bulk" price, their DNS servers have proven to be utterly unreliable with several day long outtages over the last year.

This means your domains are all good and safe but if you use Moniker's own DNS servers (instead of, for example, your web hosting company's name servers), people may experience additional delay in trying to access your site or they may even not get there at all.

One solution would be to use your web hosting's provider's DNS servers. But these tend to not be very reliable either... and to say the least, they are very slow.

The Solution

So we went out to look for a dedicated DNS service provider. There are many but only a handful use AnyCast. AnyCast allows your visitors to use a DNS server closest to them, cutting latency times and getting their DNS queries answered 10 to 100 times faster than with standard UniCast DNS providers.

Out of these, only one has affordable pricing: DNS Made Easy . For less than $30/year can host DNS service for 10 domain at lightning speeds!

Measuring results

Go check out the speed of your current DNS service here at ultratools.com. Look at the max delays! With Moniker DNS servers you may get delays as long as 350 ms, if not flat out dropped requests! You can compare it with b2evolution.net since we use DNS Made Easy ourselves. You should see results as low as 3 ms!

We receive a lot of feedback and comments from people purchasing a webhosting account for the first time. One of the most misunderstood events is customer verification. Here is the why and how about this sensitive topic.

Why do customers get verified?

Web hosting is a very legitimate need for most individuals and businesses. Unfortunately it is also an urgent need for hackers and spammers of many kinds. These people will always try to sign up for cheap hosting accounts, especially if there is an x months for free promo. Worse: they will also sign up for more expensive hosting accounts using stolen credit card info!

This is why hosting companies have to remain vigilant about every sign up they get. Unfortunately, this is why you may also have to provide additional info upon signup, which could extend your signup process from a few minutes to a couple of days. For your own safety though...

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Every now and then we get feedback from a user complaining that this or that hosting company canceled their account without warning. And when checking up on it it always turns out they were hosting "adult content" or something else which is clearly against the Terms of Service (TOS) of almost all hosting companies.

Most of the time it's outright porn...

For those of you who think it is unfair or discriminatory or whatever, here are a few reasons to help you understand why the vast majority of hosting companies will not allow "adult contents" on their hosting plans:

• The hosts tend to get a lot of expensive and distracting contacts from the FBI inspecting on child pornography.

• The sites tend to not publish their content with the appropriate legal disclaimers.

• They tend to generate above average DMCA complaints.

• The resource usage is unpredictable and can go wild at any time.

• Those sites tend to have a short life span and the hosts are statistically left with a lot of unpaid bills.

• And finally, a very important one: as a hosting company, asking your support staff to deal and help debug sites with a lot of potentially offending graphic content may severely impede on your recruitment options.

Now that being said, there are a couple of companies whose staff actually don't mind, let alone enjoy, working on the latest 21st century creative sex trends or whatever it might be. If you want to do adult hosting go with one of them (Cirtex Hosting for example). If you're not sure, read the TOS! Failure to do so is the best way to get your account canceled. And by all means, don't complain to us!