Cheap Umbraco 8.11.0 Hosting Provider Recommendation

Umbraco

Umbraco is a fully-featured open source content management system with the flexibility to run anything from small campaign or brochure sites right through to complex applications for Fortune 500’s and some of the largest media sites in the world.

Umbraco is easy to learn and use, making it perfect for web designers, developers and content creators alike.

Umbraco is strongly supported by both an active and welcoming community of users around the world, and backed up by a rock-solid commercial organization providing professional support and tools. Umbraco can be used in its free, open-source format with the additional option of professional tools and support if required.

Why Should You Use Umbraco?

The award winning, responsive CMS

Umbraco  is one of the most deployed CMS systems on the Microsoft stack.

Umbraco CMS offers the power and flexibility to run anything from pure publishing sites and large media sites, to complex applications for Fortune 500 companies. Massively extendable, there is no limit to what you can do.

It’s FREE & Open Source

Umbraco is a completely free and Open Source CMS built upon Microsoft’s .NET Framework.

With no ongoing license fee Umbraco is both a powerful and cost effective CMS solution.

Umbraco Cloud Hosting

Umbraco can be hosted on any Windows Server but if you’d prefer to remove the stress of managing and setting up your own website hosting then Umbraco offer an amazing hosting solution called Umbraco Cloud.

Let Umbraco manage your website hosting so you can concentrate on your website and business.

Website Owners

Managing your website couldn’t be easier than with Umbraco CMS.

• Multiple Site Management, run and manage multiple websites from a single Umbraco installation.
• System Integration, easy integration with any 3rd party tool.
• Cross-Platform, manage not only websites but also mobile apps, intranet sites, rich-media and e-commerce.
• Responsive CMS, manage content on the go with your smartphone, tablet or laptop.
• Out-The-Box Features, 301 redirect management, health check dashboard, device preview and lots more features to help you with your website.

Content Creators

Creating content couldn’t be easier than with Umbraco CMS.

• Easy to Learn & Use, super simple CMS interface, a wealth of documentation, training videos and the famously helpful Umbraco community.
• Multi Lingual, in built support for multi-lingual sites.
• Role Based Access Levels, easily assign different publishing rights for your website administrators.
• Media Library, manage all your media assets from a single location. Scale and crop your images directly within Umbraco.
• Schedule Content, automatically publish and unpublish content whenever you want.

Designers & Developers

Extending your website couldn’t be easier than with Umbraco CMS.

• Integrate with Business Systems, open and flexible architecture allows for easy integration with any existing system.

• Easy to Use API’s, Umbraco API gives you programmatic access to everything in the Umbraco CMS.

• Performance Boosts, with image and content caching built in, your Umbraco powered websites will be lightening fast.

• Custom Code, using Razor, User controls or XSLT you can develop with whatever approach you prefer.
• Design Freedom, Umbraco places no restrictions or set frameworks to your front-end giving designers maximum freedom for their design creations.

Umbraco Hosting Provider Recommendation

Are you looking for cheap Umbraco hosting? Finding a high quality cheap Umbraco hosting provider is crucial for your web application. Your Umbraco application can only run smooth if it will be hosted on a server which can provide a higher up time & plenty of computing resources. There’re thousands of web hosting providers which offer asp.net hosting, but choosing cheap Umbraco hosting provider is a time consuming task. To make your buying decision easy we’ve concluded 3 best yet cheap Umbraco hosting providers which are reliable and offer affordable Umbraco hosting so that every one can afford it.

Cheap Node.js v15.9.0 Hosting – Dedicated Cloud Server

Cheap Node.js v15.9.0 Hosting – Dedicated Cloud Server

Node.js is a runtime system for creating (mostly) server-side applications. It’s best known as a popular means for JavaScript coders to build real-time Web APIs.

But Node.js is not a JavaScript framework; indeed, several authors have written excellent frameworks specifically for Node.js, including Express.js, Restify.js, and Hapi.js. So what exactly is this phenomenon finding its way into Web applications, operating systems wrappers, microcontrollers, and robots?

At it’s core, Node.js is a stripped-down, highly customizable server engine — a proto-server, if you will — because out of the box it doesn’t do anything until you set it up. This proto-server processes in a loop, ready to accept and respond to requests. Any of those requests themselves may initiate other requests to some other part of the system, such as to read a file off of disk or to send a signal to spin a motor on a robot arm. That loop, known as the event loop, is the “runtime” part.

Node.js ships with workhorse connectors and libraries such as those relating to HTTP, SSL, compression, filesystem access, and raw TCP and UDP. JavaScript, already tuned for a Web browser’s event loop environment for GUI and network events, is a great language for wiring up these connectors. You can snap connectors onto the event loop almost as easily as you can snap Lego parts together. Doing so lets you create a simple, dynamic Web server in just a few lines of JavaScript.

What’s New in Node.js v15.9.0?

Notable Changes

• crypto:
  • add keyObject.export() ‘jwk’ format option (Filip Skokan) #37081
• deps:
  • upgrade to libuv 1.41.0 (Colin Ihrig) #37360
• doc:
  • add dmabupt to collaborators (Xu Meng) #37377
  • refactor fs docs structure (James M Snell) #37170
• fs:
  • add fsPromises.watch() (James M Snell) #37179
  • use a default callback for fs.close() (James M Snell) #37174
  • add AbortSignal support to watch (Benjamin Gruenbaum) #37190
• perf_hooks:
  • introduce createHistogram (James M Snell) #37155
• stream:
  • improve Readable.from error handling (Benjamin Gruenbaum) #37158
• timers:
  • introduce setInterval async iterator (linkgoron) #37153
• tls:
  • add ability to get cert/peer cert as X509Certificate object (James M Snell) #37070

Are you looking for Cheap Node.js v15.9.0 Hosting? Finding a high quality Cheap Node.js v15.9.0 Hosting provider is crucial for your web application. Your Node.js v15.9.0 application can only run smooth if it will be hosted on a server which can provide a higher up time & plenty of computing resources. There’re thousands of web hosting providers which offer asp.net hosting, but choosing Cheap Node.js v15.9.0 Hosting provider is a time consuming task. To make your buying decision easy we’ve concluded 3 Best yet Cheap Node.js v15.9.0 Hosting providers which are reliable and offer affordable Node.js v15.9.0 Hosting so that every one can afford it.

If you know JavaScript, Node.js is a gentle on-ramp to asynchronous computing for the Web. And it just so happens that Node.js is suited to solve Web problems exactly of this type: integration and glue challenges, with cascading calls to API after API.

Where does Node.js not work so well? It’s not totally appropriate in places where a single-threaded calculation is going to be the holdup, like some kinds of successive approximation or classification. In those instances, it’s more efficient for Node.js to drop the request to an independent library that’s dedicated to the task, where it can be distributed across hundreds or thousands of processors.

Node.js is maturing quickly and is being deployed in more and more mission-critical and revenue-critical systems, such as eCommerce Black Friday infrastructures. It’s easy to get started with Node.js, and yet Node.js is deep enough to handle modern Web complexities. If you’re building your next generation Web site — especially APIs for mobile and Web integration — or if you are creating something new that depends on underlying services itself, Node.js is a runtime system that could very well work for you.

Cheap Node.js® v15.9.0 Hosting – Dedicated Cloud Server

How to Choose Cheap Node.js® v15.9.0 Hosting – Dedicated Cloud Server?

Reliability and Speed of Access

Not only should the web host be reliable and fast, it should guarantee its uptime (the time when it is functional). Look for a minimum uptime of 99%. In fact, even 99% is actually too low — it really should be 99.5% or higher. The host should provide some sort of refund (eg prorated refund or discount) if it falls below that figure. Note though that guarantees are often hard to enforce from your end — especially if the host denies there was any downtime. However, without that guarantee, the web host will have little incentive to ensure that its servers are running all the time.

Data Transfer (Traffic/Bandwidth)

Data transfer (sometimes loosely referred to as “traffic” or “bandwidth”) is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your site.

Don’t believe any commercial web host that advertises “unlimited bandwidth”. The host has to pay for the bandwidth, and if you consume a lot of it, they will not silently bear your costs. Many high bandwidth websites have found this out the hard way when they suddenly receive an exorbitant bill for having “exceeded” the “unlimited bandwidth”. Always look for details on how much traffic the package allows. I personally always stay clear of any host that advertises “unlimited transfer”, even if the exact amount is specified somewhere else (sometimes buried in their policy statements). Usually you will find that they redefine “unlimited” to be limited in some way.

In addition, while bandwidth provided is something you should always check, do not be unduly swayed by promises of incredibly huge amounts of bandwidth. Chances are that your website will never be able to use that amount because it will hit other limits, namely resource limits.

To give you a rough idea of the typical traffic requirements of a website, most new sites that don’t provide video or music on their site use less than 3 GB of bandwidth per month. Your traffic requirements will grow over time, as your site becomes more well-known, so you will need to also check their policy when you exceed your data transfer limit: is there a published charge per GB over the allowed bandwidth? Is the charge made according to actual usage or are you expected to pre-pay for a potential overage? It is better not to go for hosts that expect you to prepay for overages, since it is very hard to forsee when your site will exceed its bandwidth and by how much.

Disk space

For the same reason as bandwidth, watch out also for those “unlimited disk space” schemes. Many new sites (that don’t host videos or music) need less than 20 MB of web space, so even if you are provided with a host that tempts you with 100 GB (or “unlimited space”), be aware that you are unlikely to use that space, so don’t let the 100 GB space be too big a factor in your consideration when comparing with other web hosts. The hosting company is also aware of that, which is why they feel free to offer you that as a means of enticing you to host there.

Technical support

Does its technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (often abbreviated 24/7), all year around? Note that I will not accept a host which does not have staff working on weekends or public holidays. You will be surprised at how often things go wrong at the most inconvenient of times. Incidentally, just because a host advertises that it has 24/7 support does not necessarily mean that it really has that kind of support. Test them out by emailing at midnight and on Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, etc. Check out how long they take to respond. Besides speed of responses, check to see if they are technically competent. You wouldn’t want to sign up with a host that is run by a bunch of salesmen who only know how to sell and not fix problems.

Email, Autoresponders, POP3, Mail Forwarding

If you have your own site, you will probably want to have email addresses at your own domain, like [email protected], etc. Does the host allow you to set up whatever email addresses you want on your domain, so that mail can be forwarded to your current email address, or placed into a mail box on your web hosting account itself? Can you set an email address to automatically reply to the sender with a preset message (called an autoresponder)? Can you retrieve your mail with your email software?

Control Panel

This is called various names by different hosts, but essentially, they all allow you to manage different aspects of your web account yourself. Typically, and at the very minimum, it should allow you to do things like add, delete, and manage your email addresses, and change passwords for your account. I will not sign up with a host where I have to go through their technical support each time I want to change a password or add/delete an email account. Such tasks are common maintenance chores that every webmaster performs time and time again, and it would be a great hassle if you had to wait for their technical support to make the changes for you.

Web Server and Operating System

Is the type of operating system and server important?

In general, most people will want to sign up for a web host offering a Unix-based system (like Linux, FreeBSD or OpenBSD) and running the Apache web server. Most web-based software assume your website is running on such a system, and you will usually experience fewer compatibility issues with it. There are also a lot of guides available on the Internet on configuring such systems, so finding help when you need it is easier as well.

In my opinion, the only time when you will want to use a Windows server is if you’re running Windows-specific programs, like ASP scripts. But even then, you’ll probably be better off looking for a PHP-equivalent, and using a Unix-based system.

Price

I was actually hesitant to list this, but I guess it’s futile not to. However, I would caution that while price is always a factor, you should realise (“realize” in US English) that you often get what you pay for, although it’s not necessarily true that the most expensive hosts are the best.

Monthly/Quarterly/Annual Payment Plans

Most web hosts allow you to select an annual payment plan that gives you a cheaper rate than if you were to pay monthly. My current personal preference is to pay monthly with all new web hosts until I’m assured of their reliability and honesty. Paying monthly allows me to switch web hosts quickly when I find that the current host does not meet my requirements: this way, I’m not tied down to a bad web host because I have prepaid for an entire year. I do this even if the new web host guarantees that they will refund the balance if I’m dissatisfied, since at the point I sign up, I have no assurance that they will honour their guarantee. Later (usually after a couple of years), when I’m satisfied with the host, I may change payment plans to the discounted annual plans.

Resellers?

Not all hosting companies own or lease their own web servers. Some of them are actually resellers for some other hosting company. The disadvantage of using a reseller is the possibility that you are dealing with people who don’t know much about the system they are selling and who take longer to help you (they have to transmit your technical support request to the actual hosting company for it to be acted upon). However, this also depends on both the reseller and the underlying hosting company. It is thus wise not to rule out all resellers; there are a number of reliable and fast ones who are actually quite good and cheap. In fact, a number of resellers sell the same packages cheaper than their original hosting company. If you find out that a particular company is a reseller, you will need to investigate both the reseller and the real hosting company.

International

If you don’t stay in the USA, you have the option of hosting your site with some local provider. The advantage here is the ease of dealing with them (they are after all easily accessible by phone call or a visit), your familiarity with the local laws and easy recourse to those laws should it be necessary. It should be your choice if your target audience is local (eg a local fast food delivery service). On the other hand, hosting it in USA has the advantage of faster access for what is probably the largest number of your overseas visitors (particularly if you have an English-speaking audience). You also have a large number of hosting companies to choose from, and as a result, cheaper prices too.

Why is Magento The Best for Ecommerce Sites? Magento 2.4.2 Hosting Recommendation

Why is Magento The Best for Ecommerce Sites? Magento 2.4.2 Hosting Recommendation. In this article, we will discuss why is Magento the best for e-commerce sites and who is Magento 2.4.2 hosting recommendation.

Why is Magento The Best for Ecommerce Sites?

One company’s experience with Magento is likely to be totally different than another’s because Magento is really what you make it. A team of highly skilled designers and web developers can make Magento into the Cadillac (or Maserati) of websites, but a poorly done ‘botched theme-job’ could leave you struggling with a site that looks like rubbish.

To get the most out of Magento you’ll want to engage with a company that is serious about SEO and Conversion Rate Optimization.  To start you’ll want a site that has a place to update content regularly or that integrates with an outside blogging platform for regular content updates. You’ll want that blog to live at YourStore.com/blog and look very similar to the rest of your site however you do it, rather than blog.YourStore.com and looking like a totally different site. This ensures your blog content not only attracts potential customers but facilitates them around the site as seamlessly as possible without giving them a jarring effect.

“Everyone uses it”

Yes, we know that this argument may lead to false conclusions. It well may be that something is agreed on by the majority while it is not necessarily the best option.

But now we are talking about ecommerce and business results.

Magento is the second most popular ecommerce platform: it has a market share of 17%, among the Top 100k sites (Magento CE and Magento Enterprise combined, July 2017).

Professional technological support and huge knowledge base

The IT developers of Magento eCommerce, thanks to the help of volunteers, have been able to create a platform that truly serves the unique needs of users.

The flexibility and openness of the system is basically the result of this philosophy. A couple of years ago Magento was acquired by eBay.

This did not come as a disadvantage: it stayed to be an open source platform, while it also enjoyed the massive amount of expertise of the huge ecommerce company.

Magento Commerce then got independent of eBay, but its extremely strong and loyal developer community, which had evolved well before its acquisition by eBay, is still passionately working on its development.

Huge array of product information

It is no surprise that Magento is so popular: it is the most widely used ecommerce platform (according to 2015 statistics) in the world with a nearly 30% market share. Serving such a big chunk of the market successfully would be impossible without a massive amount of flexibility.

You can define basically any product feature you like.

You can set and manage the attributes without compromise in the admin panel. Basically, you can adjust the entire system to your products.

The discount system is equally flexible. For instance, you can give a discount (e.g. a percentage of the price or free shipping) to a particular shopper if he or she puts two products from the same category into the shopping cart. You can define a whole bunch of combinations, you have loads of opportunities to do whatever you like.

Impressive, responsive design

Needless to say that you can tailor the look of your Magento store according to your expectations. It simply could not be any other way, since a standard template would not add very much to your brand value.

It is not a problem if you are not an expert in web design, for Magento offers thousands of freely customizable templates. Installation, however, is recommended to be performed by a specialist.

Responsive design is even more important. There are many solutions on the market that have “forgotten” to adapt to the most recent market needs. Since 2014, more and more people use the internet on their tablets and smartphones, and an increasing proportion of purchases are done on mobile devices.

An online store can compete in such an environment successfully if it has a responsive layout, which means that it offers an interface to its shoppers, which is easy to handle on all platforms from tablets and smartphones to PCs and netbooks.

Supports SEO

Magento features a range of default options to create an SEO-friendly website. You can generate SEO-friendly URLs and sitemaps (e.g. yourdomainname.com/productname), can define the meta data and so on. Searches within your e-store is also crucial, which is also a major strength of Magento.

Customers make multiple, narrow-down searches, which is good for user experience, but less beneficial for SEO because this makes the system generate new product lists or new pages after the searches have been made, but can be regarded as duplicate content by Google.

This drawback can be handled by custom development. The developers of Magento have always kept in mind that Magento websites should be easily found and stay strong in terms of SEO.

Magento is secure

Safety is not an option, it is a must in an environment where hackers try to crack databases every minute. We hear news almost every day mentioning data breaches, so in case of an ecommerce store it is essential to have a hack-proof system.

Luckily, Magento is always tested by a vast number of developers.

The whole system is constantly watched by experts (e.g. ethical hackers) searching for defects and eliminating vulnerability by uploading patches.

But don’t worry, you don’t have to hunt down updates all the time. Magento always calls your attention when an update is available so you will know about fresh developments right away. (You had better ask an expert to carry out the update process, especially when you already have some custom developments in your store.)

All in all, the system is not perfect. No system is. But with Magento it is just amazing how fast its dedicated community can reveal the errors and after making the safety updates, you can avoid any future problems before they can kick in.

Data!

Even if you only have a little experience in online marketing, you very likely know that this business is based on data.

No matter what kind of a website you run, if you want to earn money with it, you need to build databases and after examining them, draw the appropriate conclusions.

You have to know how many visitors you have, how they find you, how much time they spend on your pages etc.

There are a lot of factors you should keep an eye on so that you can optimize your website according to user behaviour and preferences.

You can integrate one of the most useful data collection systems, Google Universal Analytics, into your Magento website.

An even better solution can be implementing Enhanced Ecommerce, specially developed for ecommerce systems. Applying this extension for Analytics needs some programming, but it provides much more detailed data.

Thus you can collect a huge amount of useful data about your shoppers, such as what they like or how they behave when browsing in your store. You also have to watch and control the system. You should know how your website performs, how it works, what may cause failures.

Thanks to the tools of Magento support, you will receive comprehensive reports from which experts can easily find the reasons for malfunctioning.

If you have the possibility, it is worth to request an automated testing system service from your developer partner, which may raise problem solving to a whole new level.

Complete ecommerce toolkit

• Shopping Cart: Magento can comfortably lead the customers through the whole shopping process. It can be either used by registered users or guests and can also offer multiple payment options.
• User Account: Shoppers can quickly access their purchase history, check their orders or save products that they want to buy later. In addition, they can store information so that next time they can check out faster. Such information can be delivery address or invoicing address which the users can switch with only one click if they wish to.
• Management: You can manage transactions in the admin panel, start and complete the shipping process or resolve complaints. A top list can be downloaded about the most searched products (exact terms of what your customers typed in the search field), about the most popular products, or you can see if a particular shopper put some items in his or her shopping cart, but did not order them.
• Product Management: You can import and export thousands of products and modify their attributes at the same time, you can upload images, set custom pricing conditions, and determine what to show and how to show them in your “shop window”.
• Marketing: You can run promotions, create unique sales deals, offer free shipping or other special bargains. You also have opportunities for up-selling and cross-selling, you can preset opinions about or comparisons between products, display lists of recently viewed items, and also make it possible for shoppers to share your product pages easily and quickly with each other on social networking sites.
• Multiple websites: Magento is capable of handling more, an almost unlimited number (!) of websites simultaneously. You can run multiple iterations at the same time with only one user account so managing all these is much simpler. What does it mean more precisely? Say, you have a central online store with a dozen brands. You also have separate e-stores for each brand, all independent from the main website, where you can define different prices and discount offers―and you can manage all this in one single admin area.

Better than anyone – you know what the needs you have for your eCommerce store are – it would be wise to get a master list of these and determine which eCommerce platform lives up to your list before going to a web development shop. If you try to work with a web development company too early, you might find yourself being advised towards a particular solution that doesn’t actually fulfill everything your company needs, because it is what that web development shop is best at.

No web development shop can be the experts in every Content Management System – and it’s actually best if you find a company that is actually specialized in the particular CMS you have a need for. So to recap – these 3 key steps should be taken before you choose an agency:

• Write out a list of needs of your eCommerce platform to facilitate your online sales goals – both absolutely needs and non-negotiables.
• Do research on which CMS’s are the best possible solution for your specific needs and which would be most effective as accomplishing the job for the money.
• Search out and find agencies that have clear examples of using this technology in their portfolio – and contact the top 3-5 to start conversations. Narrow them down as soon as you are able and create a serious discussion where you can determine if you can get what you need done for you budget and if the companies can work together from a ‘cultural-fit’ perspective.

What’s New in Magento 2.4.2?

Magento Open Source 2.4.2 introduces enhancements to performance and security plus significant platform improvements. Security enhancements include expansion of support for the SameSite attribute for all cookies. Elasticsearch 7.9.x and Redis 6.x are now supported.

This release includes over 280 new fixes to core code and 35 security enhancements. It includes the resolution of almost 290 GitHub issues by our community members. These community contributions range from minor clean-up of core code to significant enhancements in GraphQL.

All known issues identified in Magento 2.4.1 have been fixed in this release.

Security-only patch available

Merchants can now install time-sensitive security fixes without applying the hundreds of functional fixes and enhancements that a full quarterly release provides (for example, Magento 2.4.1-p1). Patch 2.4.0.12 (Composer package 2.4.1-p1) is a security-only patch that provides fixes for vulnerabilities that have been identified in our previous quarterly release, Magento 2.4.1. All hot fixes that were applied to the 2.4.1 release are included in this security-only patch. (A hot fix provides a fix to a released version of Magento that addresses a specific problem or bug.)

For general information about security-only patches, see the Magento DevBlog post Introducing the New Security-only Patch Release. For instructions on downloading and applying security-only patches (including patch 2.4.1-p1), see Install Magento using Composer. Security-only patches include security bug fixes only, not the additional security enhancements that are included in the full patch.

Other release information

Although code for these features is bundled with quarterly releases of the Magento core code, several of these projects (for example, Progressive Web Applications (PWA) Studio) are also released independently. Bug fixes for these projects are documented in the separate, project-specific release information that is available in the documentation for each project.

Highlights

Look for the following highlights in this release.

Substantial security enhancements

This release includes over 35 security fixes and platform security improvements. All security fixes have been backported to Magento 2.4.1-p1 and Magento 2.3.6-p1.

Over 35 security enhancements that help close remote code execution (RCE) and cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities

No confirmed attacks related to these issues have occurred to date. However, certain vulnerabilities can potentially be exploited to access customer information or take over administrator sessions. Most of these issues require that an attacker first obtains access to the Admin. As a result, we remind you to take all necessary steps to protect your Admin, including but not limited to these efforts: IP allowlisting, two-factor authentication, use of a VPN, the use of a unique location rather than /admin, and good password hygiene. See Adobe Security Bulletin for a discussion of these fixed issues.

Additional security enhancements

Security improvements for this release include:

• All core cookies now support the SameSite attribute.
• Magento now displays messages that identify potentially malicious content in product and category description fields when the user tries to save values in these fields.
• File system operations across Magento components have been standardized and hardened to prevent malicious uploads.
• Core Content Security Policy (CSP) violations have been fixed.

Infrastructure improvements

This release contains enhancements to core quality, which improve the quality of the Framework and these functional areas: Customer Account, Catalog, CMS, OMS, Import/Export, Promotions and Targeting, and Cart and Checkout.

Platform enhancements

• Elasticsearch 7.9.x is now supported. Although we recommend running Elasticsearch 7.9.x, Magento 2.4.x remains compatible with Elasticsearch 7.4.x.
• Magento 2.4.2 has been tested with Varnish 6.4. Magento 2.4.x remains compatible with Varnish 6.x.
• Redis 6.x is now supported. Magento 2.4.x remains compatible with Redis 5.x.
• Magento 2.4.2 is now compatible with Composer 2.x. We recommend that merchants migrate to Composer 2.x. Although you can install this release using Composer 1.x, Composer 1.x will soon reach end-of-life. For an overview of Composer 2.x features, see Composer 2.0 is now available!

The ability to configure a Magento installation to use a split database has been deprecated in this release. Merchants who currently use split database should start planning to revert to or migrate to a single database or use an alternative approach. See the Deprecation of split database functionality in Magento Commerce DevBlog post for an overview of this issue. See Revert from a split database to a single database for migration instructions.

Performance enhancements

This release includes code enhancements that boost API performance and Admin response time for deployments with large catalogs. Multiple scalability enhancements enable Magento 2.4.2 to natively support complex catalogs up to 20x larger than in previous releases.

Adobe Stock Integration

This release includes Adobe Stock Integration v2.1.1.

GraphQL

This release adds GraphQL coverage for the following features:

• Added support for comparison lists. Shoppers can create and delete comparison lists, and add and remove items to the comparison lists. In addition, shoppers that create a compare list as a guest can log in as a customer and retain their comparison lists.
• Added the generateCustomerTokenAsAdmin mutation and updated the Customer object to support remote purchasing assistance.
• Added localization support across stores to support tasks such as changing languages, carts, and currencies.
• Added support for unions in Magento GraphQL. GitHub-29425
• The GraphQL schema has been enhanced to optimize product data retrieval for configurable products with many variants.
• Integer type object IDs have been deprecated in favor of uid attributes of type ID.
• Added the staging attribute to the ProductInterface and CategoryInterface to determine if a product is staged and to view its associated campaign information.

See the GraphQL Developer Guide for details on these enhancements.

PWA Studio

This release of PWA Studio includes:

• Internationalization and localization. Venia now provides support for multiple languages and currencies.
• Improved extensibility framework to support code changes through extensions.
• Initial components for My Account related features such as Wishlist, Saved Payments, Address Book, and Order History.
• Various performance optimizations and bug fixes.

For information about enhancements and bug fixes, see PWA Studio releases. See Magento compatibility for a list of PWA Studio versions and their compatible Magento core versions.

Media Gallery

New Role Resources for Media Gallery. This release provides merchants the ability to limit administrator access to only the Media gallery and to control who can perform these actions:

• Insert media assets into content
• Upload assets
• Edit assets details
• Delete assets from the Media Gallery
• Manage folder structure.

Web-optimized images in content. Merchants can now use web-optimized image rendition in content instead of high resolution images. The original image remains unmodified in the Media Gallery, and the image rendition is dynamically generated when the image is inserted in the content.

Magento Functional Testing Framework (MFTF)

MFTF 3.2.1 is now available. This release introduces error tolerance in both tests and test suite generation. Additional enhancements and bug fixes are described in the Magento Functional Testing Framework Changelog.

Vendor Developed Extensions

See the following articles for updates on features and changes for this release:

• Amazon Pay
• Braintree
• dotdigital Engagement Cloud
• Klarna
• Vertex Cloud
• Yotpo Product Reviews

AWS S3 support enhancements

Amazon Simple Storage Service (AWS S3) support has been enhanced to include support for:

• Object storage and future extensibility
• Storing media files on AWS S3

Are you looking for Magento 2.4.2 Hosting Recommendation? Finding a high quality Cheap Magento 2.4.2 Hosting provider is crucial for your web application. Your Magento 2.4.2 application can only run smooth if it will be hosted on a server which can provide a higher up time & plenty of computing resources. There’re thousands of web hosting providers which offer asp.net hosting, but choosing Magento 2.4.2 Hosting Recommendation provider is a time consuming task. To make your buying decision easy we’ve concluded 3 Best yet Cheap Magento 2.4.2 Hosting providers which are reliable and offer affordable Magento 2.4.2 Hosting so that every one can afford it.

Magento 2.4.2 Hosting Recommendation

Cheap Drupal 9.1.4 Hosting Provider Recommendation

Drupal is a free community supported framework for creating, organizing, presenting and managing a website. It powers millions of websites and applications from all over the world. Drupal makes it easy for contributors to publish to websites and easy for developers to deploy new sites as well as add features to existing ones. Most commonly referred to as a content management system, or CMS, Drupal has much more to offer. Drupal installations include a set of modules called Core Components, which provide features such as user management, menu systems, and user contributed content.

The Drupal open source community (one of the largest in the world) contributes and supports thousands of free flexible and robust modules and themes, which can be easily integrated into websites to offer powerful features such as multimedia, calendars, rating systems, and other social media tools. Drupal is also an application framework that can be used to build other aps. Drupal requires no programming skills yet the HTML code produced is accessible, cross browser compatible, and search engine friendly. Drupal is used for every type of site from personal blogs to highly trafficked enterprise level sites. 2% of all websites worldwide are built in Drupal including whitehouse.gov and many other high profile, highly visited sites.

What is Drupal Used for?

Drupal is a great choice for building all manner of websites from simple 1 page personal websites to enterprise level applications. It is particularly well suited to e-Learning systems, Community/social networking sites, and news publishing, where its powerful authoring and publishing features allow administrators to create, revise, and deploy content in a rapid and organized manner. User management, site reporting and statistics, ad management, community management, and other administrative functions utilize an intuitive and robust back-end user interface.

Are you looking for Cheap Drupal 9.1.4 Hosting? Finding a high quality Cheap Drupal 9.1.4 Hosting provider is crucial for your web application. Your Drupal 9.1.4 application can only run smooth if it will be hosted on a server which can provide a higher up time & plenty of computing resources. There’re thousands of web hosting providers which offer asp.net hosting, but choosing Cheap Drupal 9.1.4 Hosting provider is a time consuming task. To make your buying decision easy we’ve concluded 3 Best yet Cheap Drupal 9.1.4 Hosting providers which are reliable and offer affordable Drupal 9.1.4 Hosting so that every one can afford it.

Cheap Drupal 9.1.4 Hosting Provider Recommendation

How to Choose Cheap Drupal 9.1.4 Hosting Provider Recommendation?

Reliability and Speed of Access

Not only should the web host be reliable and fast, it should guarantee its uptime (the time when it is functional). Look for a minimum uptime of 99%. In fact, even 99% is actually too low — it really should be 99.5% or higher. The host should provide some sort of refund (eg prorated refund or discount) if it falls below that figure. Note though that guarantees are often hard to enforce from your end — especially if the host denies there was any downtime. However, without that guarantee, the web host will have little incentive to ensure that its servers are running all the time.

Data Transfer (Traffic/Bandwidth)

Data transfer (sometimes loosely referred to as “traffic” or “bandwidth”) is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your site.

Don’t believe any commercial web host that advertises “unlimited bandwidth”. The host has to pay for the bandwidth, and if you consume a lot of it, they will not silently bear your costs. Many high bandwidth websites have found this out the hard way when they suddenly receive an exorbitant bill for having “exceeded” the “unlimited bandwidth”. Always look for details on how much traffic the package allows. I personally always stay clear of any host that advertises “unlimited transfer”, even if the exact amount is specified somewhere else (sometimes buried in their policy statements). Usually you will find that they redefine “unlimited” to be limited in some way.

In addition, while bandwidth provided is something you should always check, do not be unduly swayed by promises of incredibly huge amounts of bandwidth. Chances are that your website will never be able to use that amount because it will hit other limits, namely resource limits.

To give you a rough idea of the typical traffic requirements of a website, most new sites that don’t provide video or music on their site use less than 3 GB of bandwidth per month. Your traffic requirements will grow over time, as your site becomes more well-known, so you will need to also check their policy when you exceed your data transfer limit: is there a published charge per GB over the allowed bandwidth? Is the charge made according to actual usage or are you expected to pre-pay for a potential overage? It is better not to go for hosts that expect you to prepay for overages, since it is very hard to forsee when your site will exceed its bandwidth and by how much.

Disk space

For the same reason as bandwidth, watch out also for those “unlimited disk space” schemes. Many new sites (that don’t host videos or music) need less than 20 MB of web space, so even if you are provided with a host that tempts you with 100 GB (or “unlimited space”), be aware that you are unlikely to use that space, so don’t let the 100 GB space be too big a factor in your consideration when comparing with other web hosts. The hosting company is also aware of that, which is why they feel free to offer you that as a means of enticing you to host there.

Technical support

Does its technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (often abbreviated 24/7), all year around? Note that I will not accept a host which does not have staff working on weekends or public holidays. You will be surprised at how often things go wrong at the most inconvenient of times. Incidentally, just because a host advertises that it has 24/7 support does not necessarily mean that it really has that kind of support. Test them out by emailing at midnight and on Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, etc. Check out how long they take to respond. Besides speed of responses, check to see if they are technically competent. You wouldn’t want to sign up with a host that is run by a bunch of salesmen who only know how to sell and not fix problems.

Email, Autoresponders, POP3, Mail Forwarding

If you have your own site, you will probably want to have email addresses at your own domain, like [email protected], etc. Does the host allow you to set up whatever email addresses you want on your domain, so that mail can be forwarded to your current email address, or placed into a mail box on your web hosting account itself? Can you set an email address to automatically reply to the sender with a preset message (called an autoresponder)? Can you retrieve your mail with your email software?

Control Panel

This is called various names by different hosts, but essentially, they all allow you to manage different aspects of your web account yourself. Typically, and at the very minimum, it should allow you to do things like add, delete, and manage your email addresses, and change passwords for your account. I will not sign up with a host where I have to go through their technical support each time I want to change a password or add/delete an email account. Such tasks are common maintenance chores that every webmaster performs time and time again, and it would be a great hassle if you had to wait for their technical support to make the changes for you.

Web Server and Operating System

Is the type of operating system and server important?

In general, most people will want to sign up for a web host offering a Unix-based system (like Linux, FreeBSD or OpenBSD) and running the Apache web server. Most web-based software assume your website is running on such a system, and you will usually experience fewer compatibility issues with it. There are also a lot of guides available on the Internet on configuring such systems, so finding help when you need it is easier as well.

In my opinion, the only time when you will want to use a Windows server is if you’re running Windows-specific programs, like ASP scripts. But even then, you’ll probably be better off looking for a PHP-equivalent, and using a Unix-based system.

Price

I was actually hesitant to list this, but I guess it’s futile not to. However, I would caution that while price is always a factor, you should realise (“realize” in US English) that you often get what you pay for, although it’s not necessarily true that the most expensive hosts are the best.

Monthly/Quarterly/Annual Payment Plans

Most web hosts allow you to select an annual payment plan that gives you a cheaper rate than if you were to pay monthly. My current personal preference is to pay monthly with all new web hosts until I’m assured of their reliability and honesty. Paying monthly allows me to switch web hosts quickly when I find that the current host does not meet my requirements: this way, I’m not tied down to a bad web host because I have prepaid for an entire year. I do this even if the new web host guarantees that they will refund the balance if I’m dissatisfied, since at the point I sign up, I have no assurance that they will honour their guarantee. Later (usually after a couple of years), when I’m satisfied with the host, I may change payment plans to the discounted annual plans.

Resellers?

Not all hosting companies own or lease their own web servers. Some of them are actually resellers for some other hosting company. The disadvantage of using a reseller is the possibility that you are dealing with people who don’t know much about the system they are selling and who take longer to help you (they have to transmit your technical support request to the actual hosting company for it to be acted upon). However, this also depends on both the reseller and the underlying hosting company. It is thus wise not to rule out all resellers; there are a number of reliable and fast ones who are actually quite good and cheap. In fact, a number of resellers sell the same packages cheaper than their original hosting company. If you find out that a particular company is a reseller, you will need to investigate both the reseller and the real hosting company.

International

If you don’t stay in the USA, you have the option of hosting your site with some local provider. The advantage here is the ease of dealing with them (they are after all easily accessible by phone call or a visit), your familiarity with the local laws and easy recourse to those laws should it be necessary. It should be your choice if your target audience is local (eg a local fast food delivery service). On the other hand, hosting it in USA has the advantage of faster access for what is probably the largest number of your overseas visitors (particularly if you have an English-speaking audience). You also have a large number of hosting companies to choose from, and as a result, cheaper prices too.

Cheap and Reliable WordPress 5.6.1 Hosting

Are you looking for Cheap WordPress 5.6.1 Hosting? Finding a high quality Cheap WordPress 5.6.1 Hosting provider is crucial for your web application. Your WordPress 5.6.1 application can only run smooth if it will be hosted on a server which can provide a higher up time & plenty of computing resources. There’re thousands of web hosting providers which offer asp.net hosting, but choosing Cheap WordPress 5.6.1 Hosting provider is a time consuming task. To make your buying decision easy we’ve concluded 3 Best yet Cheap WordPress 5.6.1 Hosting providers which are reliable and offer affordable WordPress 5.6.1 Hosting so that every one can afford it.

Cheap and Reliable WordPress 5.6.1 Hosting

How to Choose Cheap and Reliable WordPress 5.6.1 Hosting?

Reliability and Speed of Access

Not only should the web host be reliable and fast, it should guarantee its uptime (the time when it is functional). Look for a minimum uptime of 99%. In fact, even 99% is actually too low — it really should be 99.5% or higher. The host should provide some sort of refund (eg prorated refund or discount) if it falls below that figure. Note though that guarantees are often hard to enforce from your end — especially if the host denies there was any downtime. However, without that guarantee, the web host will have little incentive to ensure that its servers are running all the time.

Data Transfer (Traffic/Bandwidth)

Data transfer (sometimes loosely referred to as “traffic” or “bandwidth”) is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your site.

Don’t believe any commercial web host that advertises “unlimited bandwidth”. The host has to pay for the bandwidth, and if you consume a lot of it, they will not silently bear your costs. Many high bandwidth websites have found this out the hard way when they suddenly receive an exorbitant bill for having “exceeded” the “unlimited bandwidth”. Always look for details on how much traffic the package allows. I personally always stay clear of any host that advertises “unlimited transfer”, even if the exact amount is specified somewhere else (sometimes buried in their policy statements). Usually you will find that they redefine “unlimited” to be limited in some way.

In addition, while bandwidth provided is something you should always check, do not be unduly swayed by promises of incredibly huge amounts of bandwidth. Chances are that your website will never be able to use that amount because it will hit other limits, namely resource limits.

To give you a rough idea of the typical traffic requirements of a website, most new sites that don’t provide video or music on their site use less than 3 GB of bandwidth per month. Your traffic requirements will grow over time, as your site becomes more well-known, so you will need to also check their policy when you exceed your data transfer limit: is there a published charge per GB over the allowed bandwidth? Is the charge made according to actual usage or are you expected to pre-pay for a potential overage? It is better not to go for hosts that expect you to prepay for overages, since it is very hard to forsee when your site will exceed its bandwidth and by how much.

Disk space

For the same reason as bandwidth, watch out also for those “unlimited disk space” schemes. Many new sites (that don’t host videos or music) need less than 20 MB of web space, so even if you are provided with a host that tempts you with 100 GB (or “unlimited space”), be aware that you are unlikely to use that space, so don’t let the 100 GB space be too big a factor in your consideration when comparing with other web hosts. The hosting company is also aware of that, which is why they feel free to offer you that as a means of enticing you to host there.

Technical support

Does its technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (often abbreviated 24/7), all year around? Note that I will not accept a host which does not have staff working on weekends or public holidays. You will be surprised at how often things go wrong at the most inconvenient of times. Incidentally, just because a host advertises that it has 24/7 support does not necessarily mean that it really has that kind of support. Test them out by emailing at midnight and on Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, etc. Check out how long they take to respond. Besides speed of responses, check to see if they are technically competent. You wouldn’t want to sign up with a host that is run by a bunch of salesmen who only know how to sell and not fix problems.

Email, Autoresponders, POP3, Mail Forwarding

If you have your own site, you will probably want to have email addresses at your own domain, like [email protected], etc. Does the host allow you to set up whatever email addresses you want on your domain, so that mail can be forwarded to your current email address, or placed into a mail box on your web hosting account itself? Can you set an email address to automatically reply to the sender with a preset message (called an autoresponder)? Can you retrieve your mail with your email software?

Control Panel

This is called various names by different hosts, but essentially, they all allow you to manage different aspects of your web account yourself. Typically, and at the very minimum, it should allow you to do things like add, delete, and manage your email addresses, and change passwords for your account. I will not sign up with a host where I have to go through their technical support each time I want to change a password or add/delete an email account. Such tasks are common maintenance chores that every webmaster performs time and time again, and it would be a great hassle if you had to wait for their technical support to make the changes for you.

Web Server and Operating System

Is the type of operating system and server important?

In general, most people will want to sign up for a web host offering a Unix-based system (like Linux, FreeBSD or OpenBSD) and running the Apache web server. Most web-based software assume your website is running on such a system, and you will usually experience fewer compatibility issues with it. There are also a lot of guides available on the Internet on configuring such systems, so finding help when you need it is easier as well.

In my opinion, the only time when you will want to use a Windows server is if you’re running Windows-specific programs, like ASP scripts. But even then, you’ll probably be better off looking for a PHP-equivalent, and using a Unix-based system.

Price

I was actually hesitant to list this, but I guess it’s futile not to. However, I would caution that while price is always a factor, you should realise (“realize” in US English) that you often get what you pay for, although it’s not necessarily true that the most expensive hosts are the best.

Monthly/Quarterly/Annual Payment Plans

Most web hosts allow you to select an annual payment plan that gives you a cheaper rate than if you were to pay monthly. My current personal preference is to pay monthly with all new web hosts until I’m assured of their reliability and honesty. Paying monthly allows me to switch web hosts quickly when I find that the current host does not meet my requirements: this way, I’m not tied down to a bad web host because I have prepaid for an entire year. I do this even if the new web host guarantees that they will refund the balance if I’m dissatisfied, since at the point I sign up, I have no assurance that they will honour their guarantee. Later (usually after a couple of years), when I’m satisfied with the host, I may change payment plans to the discounted annual plans.

Resellers?

Not all hosting companies own or lease their own web servers. Some of them are actually resellers for some other hosting company. The disadvantage of using a reseller is the possibility that you are dealing with people who don’t know much about the system they are selling and who take longer to help you (they have to transmit your technical support request to the actual hosting company for it to be acted upon). However, this also depends on both the reseller and the underlying hosting company. It is thus wise not to rule out all resellers; there are a number of reliable and fast ones who are actually quite good and cheap. In fact, a number of resellers sell the same packages cheaper than their original hosting company. If you find out that a particular company is a reseller, you will need to investigate both the reseller and the real hosting company.

International

If you don’t stay in the USA, you have the option of hosting your site with some local provider. The advantage here is the ease of dealing with them (they are after all easily accessible by phone call or a visit), your familiarity with the local laws and easy recourse to those laws should it be necessary. It should be your choice if your target audience is local (eg a local fast food delivery service). On the other hand, hosting it in USA has the advantage of faster access for what is probably the largest number of your overseas visitors (particularly if you have an English-speaking audience). You also have a large number of hosting companies to choose from, and as a result, cheaper prices too.

Cheap phpBB 3.3.3 Hosting Recommendation

Cheap phpBB 3.3.3 Hosting Recommendation

phpBB is a free flat-forum bulletin board software solution that can be used to stay in touch with a group of people or can power your entire website. With an extensive database of user-created modifications and styles database containing hundreds of style and image packages to customise your board, you can create a very unique forum in minutes.

No other bulletin board software offers a greater complement of features, while maintaining efficiency and ease of use. Best of all, phpBB is completely free. They welcome you to test it for yourself today. If you have any questions please visit their Community Forum where their staff and members of the community will be happy to assist you with anything from configuring the software to modifying the code for individual needs.

What’s New in phpBB 3.3.3?

Improvements

• Increased compatibility with PHP 8
• Increased compatibility with MySQL 8

Notable Changes

• Update to Composer 2
• Use Github Actions as CI

Notable Bugfixes

• SQL error on empty data in numbers profile field
• Dropdowns not working in mobile view

Are You Looking for Cheap phpBB 3.3.3 Hosting?

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Cheap phpBB 3.3.3 Hosting Recommendation

How to Choose Cheap phpBB 3.3.3 Hosting Recommendation?

Reliability and Speed of Access

Not only should the web host be reliable and fast, it should guarantee its uptime (the time when it is functional). Look for a minimum uptime of 99%. In fact, even 99% is actually too low — it really should be 99.5% or higher. The host should provide some sort of refund (eg prorated refund or discount) if it falls below that figure. Note though that guarantees are often hard to enforce from your end — especially if the host denies there was any downtime. However, without that guarantee, the web host will have little incentive to ensure that its servers are running all the time.

Data Transfer (Traffic/Bandwidth)

Data transfer (sometimes loosely referred to as “traffic” or “bandwidth”) is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your site.

Don’t believe any commercial web host that advertises “unlimited bandwidth”. The host has to pay for the bandwidth, and if you consume a lot of it, they will not silently bear your costs. Many high bandwidth websites have found this out the hard way when they suddenly receive an exorbitant bill for having “exceeded” the “unlimited bandwidth”. Always look for details on how much traffic the package allows. I personally always stay clear of any host that advertises “unlimited transfer”, even if the exact amount is specified somewhere else (sometimes buried in their policy statements). Usually you will find that they redefine “unlimited” to be limited in some way.

In addition, while bandwidth provided is something you should always check, do not be unduly swayed by promises of incredibly huge amounts of bandwidth. Chances are that your website will never be able to use that amount because it will hit other limits, namely resource limits.

To give you a rough idea of the typical traffic requirements of a website, most new sites that don’t provide video or music on their site use less than 3 GB of bandwidth per month. Your traffic requirements will grow over time, as your site becomes more well-known, so you will need to also check their policy when you exceed your data transfer limit: is there a published charge per GB over the allowed bandwidth? Is the charge made according to actual usage or are you expected to pre-pay for a potential overage? It is better not to go for hosts that expect you to prepay for overages, since it is very hard to forsee when your site will exceed its bandwidth and by how much.

Disk space

For the same reason as bandwidth, watch out also for those “unlimited disk space” schemes. Many new sites (that don’t host videos or music) need less than 20 MB of web space, so even if you are provided with a host that tempts you with 100 GB (or “unlimited space”), be aware that you are unlikely to use that space, so don’t let the 100 GB space be too big a factor in your consideration when comparing with other web hosts. The hosting company is also aware of that, which is why they feel free to offer you that as a means of enticing you to host there.

Technical support

Does its technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (often abbreviated 24/7), all year around? Note that I will not accept a host which does not have staff working on weekends or public holidays. You will be surprised at how often things go wrong at the most inconvenient of times. Incidentally, just because a host advertises that it has 24/7 support does not necessarily mean that it really has that kind of support. Test them out by emailing at midnight and on Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, etc. Check out how long they take to respond. Besides speed of responses, check to see if they are technically competent. You wouldn’t want to sign up with a host that is run by a bunch of salesmen who only know how to sell and not fix problems.

Email, Autoresponders, POP3, Mail Forwarding

If you have your own site, you will probably want to have email addresses at your own domain, like [email protected], etc. Does the host allow you to set up whatever email addresses you want on your domain, so that mail can be forwarded to your current email address, or placed into a mail box on your web hosting account itself? Can you set an email address to automatically reply to the sender with a preset message (called an autoresponder)? Can you retrieve your mail with your email software?

Control Panel

This is called various names by different hosts, but essentially, they all allow you to manage different aspects of your web account yourself. Typically, and at the very minimum, it should allow you to do things like add, delete, and manage your email addresses, and change passwords for your account. I will not sign up with a host where I have to go through their technical support each time I want to change a password or add/delete an email account. Such tasks are common maintenance chores that every webmaster performs time and time again, and it would be a great hassle if you had to wait for their technical support to make the changes for you.

Web Server and Operating System

Is the type of operating system and server important?

In general, most people will want to sign up for a web host offering a Unix-based system (like Linux, FreeBSD or OpenBSD) and running the Apache web server. Most web-based software assume your website is running on such a system, and you will usually experience fewer compatibility issues with it. There are also a lot of guides available on the Internet on configuring such systems, so finding help when you need it is easier as well.

In my opinion, the only time when you will want to use a Windows server is if you’re running Windows-specific programs, like ASP scripts. But even then, you’ll probably be better off looking for a PHP-equivalent, and using a Unix-based system.

Price

I was actually hesitant to list this, but I guess it’s futile not to. However, I would caution that while price is always a factor, you should realise (“realize” in US English) that you often get what you pay for, although it’s not necessarily true that the most expensive hosts are the best.

Monthly/Quarterly/Annual Payment Plans

Most web hosts allow you to select an annual payment plan that gives you a cheaper rate than if you were to pay monthly. My current personal preference is to pay monthly with all new web hosts until I’m assured of their reliability and honesty. Paying monthly allows me to switch web hosts quickly when I find that the current host does not meet my requirements: this way, I’m not tied down to a bad web host because I have prepaid for an entire year. I do this even if the new web host guarantees that they will refund the balance if I’m dissatisfied, since at the point I sign up, I have no assurance that they will honour their guarantee. Later (usually after a couple of years), when I’m satisfied with the host, I may change payment plans to the discounted annual plans.

Resellers?

Not all hosting companies own or lease their own web servers. Some of them are actually resellers for some other hosting company. The disadvantage of using a reseller is the possibility that you are dealing with people who don’t know much about the system they are selling and who take longer to help you (they have to transmit your technical support request to the actual hosting company for it to be acted upon). However, this also depends on both the reseller and the underlying hosting company. It is thus wise not to rule out all resellers; there are a number of reliable and fast ones who are actually quite good and cheap. In fact, a number of resellers sell the same packages cheaper than their original hosting company. If you find out that a particular company is a reseller, you will need to investigate both the reseller and the real hosting company.

International

If you don’t stay in the USA, you have the option of hosting your site with some local provider. The advantage here is the ease of dealing with them (they are after all easily accessible by phone call or a visit), your familiarity with the local laws and easy recourse to those laws should it be necessary. It should be your choice if your target audience is local (eg a local fast food delivery service). On the other hand, hosting it in USA has the advantage of faster access for what is probably the largest number of your overseas visitors (particularly if you have an English-speaking audience). You also have a large number of hosting companies to choose from, and as a result, cheaper prices too.