When children are very young, one of the first things you teach them is to share with others.  It is an important social skill that every child has to learn. If a child doesn’t learn this skill, they won’t be able to make friends.

As a business owner of a Web-based business, one of the first decisions to make is whether to share . . . a Web host. Just like learning to share as a child, the decision to share or not share is important. This decision will help determine how reliable your Web site is and how quickly things are resolved when there is a problem.

First, let’s take a step back and learn about Web hosting in general. There are three types of Web hosting options available to small to medium sized business. Shared Web hosting is the least expensive because the Web hosting company buys one big server and subdivides it among many different Web site owners. These servers can be tens of thousands of dollar, but they can offer service at a relatively low rate because each server can house thousands of clients. The advantage is that it is cheap; shared hosting ranges between $5 and $50 per month. The downside is that in the unlikely event that something goes wrong, technical support is usually of a low quality and service interruptions can last for days. There is no service level guarantee with most shared web hosting plans.

Dedicated Web hosting is when you rent a physical server and you put your Web site on it. This can be more reliable because no one else is using your server except you so there are less chances of a problem. When there is a problem, technical support tends to be of a higher level and they are often guarantees of how quickly problems are resolved. The downside is the cost, which starts at $100 per month and can go up from there to thousands of dollars.

Cloud Web hosting combines the best of both shared and dedicated. It puts your Web site on one giant network of servers that can all act as your Web site. This network is more reliable than any one server and technical support tends to be of a high quality. The cost starts at $50 a month and goes up from there — depending on usage. The downside is that if you use the cloud environment capabilities to their full extent, you may find it difficult to switch to a different hosting service.

Which is right for you? Shared hosting is the least expensive, and is a good starting point for many businesses. Dedicated or cloud can be best for businesses that run their business based on a Web site — such as an ecommerce store or some other Web-based business. Many start on shared and migrate to dedicate — this works great as long as you migrate when your business is ready. Don’t wait for a problem to make a switch.

Photo courtesy Flickr User familymwr.

At Curvine, we’re always keeping an eye on trends in Web site browser software. We’ve noticed an important trend that will speed up Web site development in the months and years to come that we wanted to share: Internet Explorer 6.0 usage is on the way down.

First, some background: All Web sites are developed using a mix of HTML and CSS — many also use Javascript. All three are standards, which means there’s a document available that says exactly how it is supposed to function. In theory world, that would mean every Web site would look the same in every Web browser. In reality, many Web browsers don’t render things the way the standards say they should, and they often add extra items that aren’t even in the standard in the first place.

This means we have to test all of our work in each Browser that people use. Currently, Curvine tests in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, 7,0 and 8.0, Mozilla Firefox 3.6, Chrome 5.x, and Safari 4.x. That’s a lot of testing. Of all of those, Internet Explorer 6 is the oldest by far and has the most challenges.  It is the least consistent with the standards that Web developers follow and because of its age, doesn’t support many of the items that newer browsers do. One example would be “rounded corners” — which are snap in most modern browsers, but are more difficult in IE6.

We’re constantly watching usage of each Web browser, so we know what most people use and we know what needs to be tested. International use of IE6 is still high, but US use of IE6 is dropping fast. Several sites we track show IE6 usage below 4% of all Internet users, which has dropped from 7% – 8% at the end of last year. Soon, IE6 usage will be below 3% and we will stop testing for most new sites.

Web site developers everywhere will rejoice!