It was so 8 years ago, and it is the same now! Nothing changed! If you are the guy that I described above, you don’t need suggestions from me, cause you are one step beyond me! But what if not? Don’t quail yourself, nowadays we have some other ways to start a hosting company. Additionaly, there are some companies that offers this service free. Now I am going to explain how to start a hosting company easily (compared the starting one physically) and some free or cheap solutions.

What is reseller hosting?

Reseller hosting is a form of web hosting wherein the account owner has the ability to use his/her allotted hard drive space and bandwidth to host websites on behalf of third parties. The reseller purchases the host’s services wholesale and then sells them to his customers for a profit. The certain portion of hard drive and bandwidth is allocated to reseller account. (Source:Wikipedia)

Basically, you’ll buy a reseller package from a provider, and sell hosting services under your brand within the limits of your reseller package. With a reseller package, you don’t have to deal with hardware, software, maintenance, backups or anything technical. All you have to do is, designing a website or using a pre-built template, learning the simple to use control panel, and start marketing your company. Most of the reseller hosts even doesn’t provide support and outsource it to the main company. (Mostly applicable if you are targeting english speaking customers.)

Which companies provide reseller hosting accounts?

Actually, I can’t provide you a full list, or a suggestions for reseller accounts. The Web Host Magazine’s Reseller Hosting section should help you to find some paid companies that offer reseller hosting. (http://www.webhostmagazine.com/wh/re/), for free alternatives continue to read.

Free Reseller Hosting Alternatives

There are two free alternatives I know that serves for different purposes;

The first is resellers panel, which offers you a free reseller account that you can sell your own hosting services for a premium. Their free reseller hosting program offers complete automation for your web hosting business. They provide the hosting service, the billing and the 24/7 technical support to your clients. You have the freedom to set up your own prices and thus maintain full control over your profits. In addition, as a reseller you have full access to your clients’ accounts and to detailed statistics of all your sales. Follow this link to start your hosting business at resellers panel.

Resellers Panel is a great free way to start your own paid hosting company. I said paid, cause there is another alternative to start your own free hosting company. As you know there are many free hosting providers that offers visitors free web hosting with some limitations. They give the service for free for either making money by adding advertisement to users pages, and/or forcing them to upgrade paid premium packages.

ByetHost allows you to start your own free hosting company for free. You will have your own free hosting company under your brand, add advertisements to users pages, and make money from this advertisements. You will get 100% of the ad revenue, but nothing if someone signup for a paid package, or upgrades their free hosting account. Honestly, I don’t think that the ad-revenue is a big amount. A friend of mine operates a free hosting site (not at ByetHost), makes about $300 monthy with 2000 active users.

You can find a list of ByetHost resellers I’ve found at ByetHost Clones post. This people started their free hosting companies at ByetHost and giving out free hosting to the community under their own brand. The post may give you an idea what type of features you can offer to your potential users.

If you want to operate your own free web hosting business for fun, you should start with ByetHost immediately, otherwise Resellers Panel is a better solution for starting a web hosting business, especially if you have a good customer potential.

Dedicated Servers

A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting where the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc. Server administration can usually be provided by the hosting company as an add-on service. In some cases a dedicated server can offer less overhead and a larger return on investment. (Source: Wikipedia)

If you want to increse your freedom on your hosting business, offer customized hosting packages and services to your clients, and have a total control of your servers, you should lease a dedicated server from a provider. Although it offers more, you should also have the technical knowledge to get all this additional opportunities, otherwise you will use it as a regular reseller hosting package. The only difference will be all your clients sites will be on your own dedicated servers and didn’t affected from other clients of your provider.

Unfortunately there are no free dedicated server providers that I know as reseller hosting, but if required I can suggest you some software to use for your hosting business in my later posts. That is all for this post.

Feel free to ask a question, or giving a feedback using the comment form below. Moreover, I’ll be glad if you add the other free services you know.

Wordpress is a blog publishing system written in Php scripting language and backed up by mysql database management system, therefore it needs a server that is capable of PHP (at least PHP 4.2) and a mysql server (at least MySQL 4). To publish your own wordpress blog you need either host your own wordpress blog, or create one on a wordpress based blogging service like wordpress.com.

What do you need to host your own wordpress?

Although the webserver (php side) and mysql database server can be on different servers, most of the providers (either free or paid) does not allow you to connect an external mysql database from their web servers. It means to host your own wordpress blog you need a host supporting PHP and MySQL. In addition to this basic requirements, you may need some other software, or functions depending on your needs. Some wordpress features require special php functions & rights which may be restricted by your hosting company. Most of the free providers set some restrictions, either for security reasons or to convince you to upgrade a premium paid package. For example, If your provider doesn’t allow you to send mails from your php scripts you can’t use the registration feature of wordpress because it sends users password to his/her e-mail address or any other feature or plugin that requires sending mail. If you are going to use a free hosting provider, I strongly recommend you to find one that allows mail functions.

Detailed Wordpress Requirements

WordPress server requirements for Version 2.2:

• PHP version 4.2 or greater
• MySQL version 4.0 or greater (3.23 is also okey for versions below 2.0)
• (Optional) Apache and mod_rewrite module (for clean URIs known as Permalinks)

It is also essential that your host allows remote connections.

How to install wordpress on your own computer?

If you want to install wordpress on your own computer and use it as a testing environment you should install PHP, MySQL and Apache softwares to your computer. I suggest you to use the opensource software called XAMPP instead of installing all of them seperately. XAMPP is a very easy to install Apache Distribution for Linux, Solaris, Windows and Mac OS X. The package includes the Apache web server, MySQL, PHP, Perl, a FTP server and phpMyAdmin.

After installing the required software and making the configuration, your computer will be ready to host a wordpress blog! You can use it for testing purposes and also to host your wordpress blog or any other php based page. Notice that it will be less reliable, less secure and slower than a real hosting provider, therefore I suggest you to get a hosting package either free or paid.

How to install wordpress on your own host?

If your host provides you a one click application tool (names may vary, Fantastico Installer, Auto install, 1 click install etc.), you can use this tool to install wordpress easily, otherwise you should install it yourself following the steps below.

First you need the latest wordpress packages which you can find at download section of wordpress.org. Next send the extracted packages into your web directory of your page. (Some providers have tools to extract the zip file on the server, which takes less time.)

Now the scripts are on your server, if you enter your site you will see a wordpress installation page. There are a few simple steps, which asks for blog name, blog description, the name and e-mail of the blog administrator (you), and the mysql database configuration.

The mysql configurations varies depending on your host, you may be supplied with a predefined database name with predefined username and password by your hosting provider, otherwise you should create them using your control panel. You also have to know the mysql hostname of your hosting provider. (The registration e-mail or the control panel may include this information. Otherwise you should ask it to your provider.)

After completing this easy installation steps your new wordpress blog is ready to use.

How to migrate from a wordpress blog hosted elsewhere?

If you were hosting your blog on wordpress.com or any similiar blogging service, you need follow some steps for migration.

• The new wordpress installation only includes a few basic templates. You should find a theme to use on your wordpress blog. There are tons of free templates at http://themes.wordpress.net/. Select a theme to use, edit it as you like, upload it to the themes directory (wp-content/themes) of your wordpress blog, and set it as your blogs current theme using the presentation menu on your admin page.
• Download the plugins that you use on your old blogging service. Differently from the past, now you are free to use any additional plugin you need. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ is a good starting point to find some plugins that are usefull for your purposes.
• Export your posts on your old provider, and import them to your new wordpress blog using the import tool under manage tab on your wordpress admin panel.
• The categories may mess up after the import, you should put them in order yourself!

If you have any questions or need further help, please feel free to leave a comment. It is hard to cover all topics in one simple article. Moreover I can’t imagine all possible uses and problems. I will edit the article, or write specific ones depending on your future questions.

Some of this companies also provides ad-less hosting to the community. Some might be supported by big companies, universities and similiar sources, but how about the others? How can they provide this service for free without adding any advertisement to your content? The answer is simple, they use it as a marketing strategy, they provide the service with some limitations and if some day your page grows and you need a better package most probably you have to go for a premium package from them. It is hard to migrate to another provider on a high traffic web page. If you can’t make the migration process smoothy you will lose lots of time, visitors and prestige.

After all this information, it is good idea to read the article “How To Decide Between Free Web Hosting And Paid Web Hosting?”

1. For what purpose are you going to use the web hosting?

Are you going to use the hosting to make a simple page to publish your child’s photos to show your close friends or relatives? Are you going to use the hosting to operate your blog that will be visited by only your friends? Are you going to blog about something popular that will get a lot of hits? Are you going to sell some products, even open an online store? Are you going to use it for your company web site? Are you going to make money on that web site on some way?

In other words, How many visitors do you expect? What software are you going to use? Are you sensitive about the uptime? Are you sensitive about your “own” brand?

Most of the free web hosting providers put ads on your webpage, and the others are setting some restrictions for the service. Even there are some providers with no ads and a little restrictions, the “free” may harm your pages prestige. Say that you are okey with “free”, but what if you need a better hosting package? Be aware that migration to another provider is not an easy process, on some situations almost impossible.

I recommend you to pay for your own hosting because it gives you a wealth of choices, much more storage space, much more bandwidth and almost no restrictions. Having a support staff at the end of the phone line is another advantage of paid hosting. If you don’t need or want to pay for the hosting, just surf arround this page and you will find one that fits your needs for sure.