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Open source software (UNIX and its plugins, other software) and web applications (Servers, forum applications, email applications, programming languages, etc.) have attracted the people all around the world. And they are gradually becoming the dominant in many areas. This is due to many important characters common to these open source software. I will describe some of them in this post.

The most significant attribute of any open source software or web application is the complete availability of the source code. This enables the developers to customize or improve these software and applications according to their requirements. Most of these are available for free download and usage. And they have a huge user and developer community around the world. Many of them contribute to the improvements of the software or web application. If anyone gets stuck with open source software or a web application, he/she can get help from the user and developer community. This is very important and economical compared to the high priced software and their vendors.

Open source software and web applications are always more reliable compared to others. When there are any bugs (errors) anyone can report to the main developer or company and they will fix it in the next release version.

As most of them are freely available and reliable, more than 50% of the computer users around the world use at least small open source software or a web application. But when it comes to web applications, open source web applications are dominating. For an example, if you take web hosting, Apache Tomcat server is dominating as a reliable and less complex server. And most of these tomcat servers run on UNIX based systems which are also open source. Due to this most of the web hosting services charge less for web hosting plans hosted in UNIX servers compared to Windows servers.

In my personal view, I think that the open source software will make the world happier and a safer place to live in the coming future. They will definitely win the competition with high priced software and web applications and more and more people will embrace the open source software and web applications saying BYE to the highly priced ones.

Companies are selling domain names for very cheap prices. Therefore some people buy them without any purpose just for fun and keep them. This will block the chance for a person who really wants to reserve a domain name with a desired name. Sometimes they get disappointed as they can’t reserve a domain name according to their wish. Therefore I thought to give some guidelines on how to select a domain name according to someone’s desire.

First thing you must understand that the domain name that you are going to select (buy) should indicate the content of the website that you are going to build and what you provide from that website. For an example if you are going to buy a domain name to design a website for your biscuit manufacturing business (let’s say your business name is ABC Biscuits), first you should find whether you can reserve a domain name like abcbiscuits.com. If it is not available, the domain name reserving service will suggest you some weird domain names like bestabcbiscuits.com, abcbiscuits123.com,topabcbiscuits.com, etc. But those domain names don’t give a clear idea about your business name. Then the best thing you should do is to check whether a domain name available like abc-biscuits.com,a-b-c-biscuits.com. Even if it has a “-“ in the middle it clearly shows your business name. I also did the same thing to reserve this domain name www.best-internet-guide.com as bestinternetguide.com was already reserved. Using “-“ will increase the readability of your domain name.

Some people think that short named domains attract more users. But according to my point of view it doesn’t make a big difference. If your website is famous and customers or visitors are satisfied, then they don’t care about how long is your domain name. They will find ways to remember it easily. The most important thing is that your website must run smoothly and continuously increase the visitors per day. I’m not going to discuss how to increase the traffic for the website here as it is out of the topic. I will discuss it in a future post.

Another important thing is that you must consider about how to host your domain when you choose a domain name reservation service. The less trouble way is that you find a good hosting service. Most of the hosting services provide a free domain if you buy a hosting package. As you have to host your domain someday, I think this is the best way to do. You must not go for a cheap service always. Because sometimes it will give you unexpected troubles as their service is not good. Normally the companies charge higher rates, maintain their infrastructure with a high quality. I hope that you got something from this. More relevant topics to come in the future.

Web hosting industry is booming very rapidly as many people around the world design their own websites for various purposes like for business, as personal pages, charity work, to give information, for fun, etc. . At the same time, the amount of web hosting companies around the world are increasing in a rapid phase. Most of these companies are US based. These companies can be mainly categorized into 2 categories as follows.

Self owned web hosting service providers - Companies who invest on hardware, technology, staff and buildings etc. to maintain the web hosting service.

Resellers - Companies who provide a web hosting service which is bought by a self owned web hosting service provider.

Both above mentioned companies provide the same service. But the prices of their hosting packages may change. If you plan to host your website with any web hosting company, there are certain factors you must consider before you make a decision.

Purpose - If you are starting a website with a commercial purpose where you plan to earn money by various ways from your website visitors, you must go for a web hosting company which provides a quality and reliable service with high storage capacity, high bandwidth, high uptime and a very good customer service. Your website must be available to your customers or visitors all the time with a reasonable access speed. If you want to host a website without a commercial purpose, it is better to go for a cheap web hosting company.

Budget - If your budget is good, go for a trusted and one of the best web hosting company. If your budget is bad, there are many websites who provide free web hosting facilities. You can register with them and host your web site free. Some display their advertisements on your website and some don’t. Just type “Free web hosting” in Google or Yahoo. You’ll find many free web hosting services there.

Selecting the company mainly depends on the above mentioned factors. You can find reviews on web hosting companies in various forums, blogs and websites in the internet. Host your website after a reasonable background study. Good luck!