With the US economy the way it is, any chance of saving a couple bucks becomes a huge incentive to buy now. Buying a dedicated server is no different. So here are 5 tips to save you money on dedicated server hosting.

1. Shop Around.

You know how when you’re buying gas you search for the absolute lowest price, even if that means waiting until gas has gone down or until your tank is running near empty?

Buying a dedicated web hosting account should be no difference. Make a list of the providers you like and shop around for the best deal for the features you need. Keep in mind, any good web hosting provider should be able to cut you a deal if you give them specifics of must-have features and budget.

2. Evaluate Billing Cycles Vs Budget

Set an absolute top dollar you can afford and do not waver in your quest to meet this budget, because money is the key issue in today’s economy. Then, evaluate the possible payment options that your chosen dedicated host provides.

For example, let’s say you set a budget of $1000 every year for web hosting. Paying monthly for your dedicated server costs $99 each month – plus, there will likely be some kind of setup fee, so let’s add $100 to that. So yearly, with this monthly billing cycle, you will be over budget by $288 (99pm x 12m + 130setup)! So consider the longer billing cycles if they save you money or add extra features that are must haves for you, such as more RAM or free months hosting.

3. Negotiate

Call the dedicated hosting provider up and ask them questions! Tell them your budget and make them work around you. After all, they will want your business and will likely negotiate with you if your demands are reasonable.

4. Ask About Long-Term-Agreements

Also known as LTAs, long term agreements are contracts you sign with your dedicated web host, promising you will be a customer for X amount of months, usually 1 year or more. In exchange for your signature to their terms, the web host will only bill you monthly but offer discounts and benefits of longer contracts. Lunarpages Dedicated Hosting is especially famous for providing affordable LTAs for specific customer needs.

5. Dedicated Hosting Coupons!

Simply put, use a coupon! The easiest and most effective way to save money instantly.

Backing up from cPanel for your dedicated hosting account is really easy.

The first step in the process would be to login to your cPanel account. Once you are on the front page, then find and click the icon marked “Backup”. This will take you to the cPanel Backup screen.

The full backups are backups of your entire web site and everything in it except for MySQL databases. To generate a full back, click on the link at the top of the page that reads, “Generate/Download a Full Backup”.

To do a normal backup generation, just select from the Backup Destination drop down menu, “Home Directory”. Next, put in your e-mail address in the second box and skip over the remote settings. Click on the button that reads, “Generate Backup” and you should be e-mailed once the backup is ready to download. When it is, you can come back and get it. To download your backup, login to cPanel and click on “Backup”. From there, under full backups click on the text link the reads, “Download a home directory backup”.

To backup your MySQL databases, login to cPanel. Once you are on the front page, then find and click the icon marked “Backup”. This will take you to the cPanel Backup screen.

Near the bottom of this page, you should see a section titled, “Download a MySQL Database Backup” with your databases listed under it. Click on your database name, and then save the backup to your own computer.

Now you can do this for each cPanel account you have under your dedicated hosting server to update all of your personal backups.

Building your website using WordPress, Joomla, b2evolution, ExpressEngine, or any of the other amazing Content Management Systems or tools out there can take the trouble out of designing your dedicated server’s website. WordPress, for example, is one of the best resources available for websites, blogging, and even business web hosting. Many businesses are catching on that not only does WordPress look nice but it’s also easy to understand, even for a technological newbie, and it works hand in hand with Google and the SEO search engines.

With that said, here are some WordPress design resources to help you get started on your dedicated server site.

Free WordPress Themes

If you are looking for quality free WordPress themes, this link from Lunarpages Web Hosting Blog is sure to do the trick. These contests have accumulated hundreds of free WP themes for you to choose from and customize to your server’s unique website look.

Free Webmaster Tools

Need to learn a bit more about SEO and keyword analysis before you are done with your WordPress website? Well check out these amazing free webmaster tools from Lunarpages, which can not only help you research keywords and check out competitor data but submit your website to the search engines as well. This is a very, very useful site to have handy.

300 Tools for Running WordPress Blogs

This is by far the biggest resource for free WordPress tools you will ever find. Check this out for helpful URLs to plugins, comment assistance, removing NOFOLLOW tags for SEO, and more.

Your business is very important to you, and the image you portray on the internet for that business should be just as vital. When you purchase a dedicated server from a reliable hosting company, you should automatically get a domain name. If you haven’t already created one, here are some tips for creating the perfect domain name:

* Shorter is better! (Name.com instead of ThisIsMyName.com)
* Keep it simple
* Hyphenless trumps hyphenated (firstlast.com instead of first-middle-last.com)
* Catchy is key (Google sounds so much better than SearchEngine1)
* Words that are easily misspelled can spell doom
* Go easy on the web 2.0 slang

These tips will help you when choosing the perfect domain name for your dedicated web hosting account.

When purchasing domain names for your dedicated server, you will need to decide almost immediately how you’d like to handle the registration for said domains. Beware of choosing an unreliable hosting provider with little to no reputation in the industry, as they could maintain control of your name! Reliable web hosts like Lunarpages will show in the fine print that they do not monopolize your domains and that you have full control.

When registering a domain, you can choose to anonymously register it, which means your name, address, telephone number, and email will all be invisible to the rest of the world. Normally your web hosting provider’s information will show up instead, though this doesn’t necessarily mean they own you domain – it just means you are not listed publicly in a WhoIs query search.

There are many benefits to registering your domain anonymously:

* Privacy
* Less Spam
* No 3rd Party Telemarketers
* Security
* Affordability

Registering your domain anonymously is something every professional webmaster should think seriously about before setting up affordable dedicated hosting.

Want to setup a default index that gets shown whenever you create a new account on your dedicated server via Web Host Manager?

Today we are going to go over how to create a default placeholder home page for your customer accounts in Web Host Manager (WHM) for your dedicated server.  The first thing you need to do is login to your WHM account and click on “Account Functions”. 

On the Account Functions page, then click “Skeleton Directory”.  Create an HTML page you would like to display as the default home page whenever you create a new hosting account on this plan.  This page will eventually be replaced by the customer (your yourself) when their own index page is uploaded to the server.

Name the default home page index.html or index.htm and upload it to the cpanel3-skel directory.  This is not inside the public_html directory.  Rather, it is the same directory as public_html.

Want to manage your parked or pointed domain names via Web Host Manager (WHM) on your dedicated hosting server?  Here is the easiest way to get that done.  First step would be to login to WHM, and then click on the link for DNS Functions.

On the DNS Functions web page, you want to click on the link for Park or Point a Domain.  Now, select an existing domain on your server on which you would like to park a domain.  Then, in the text box to your right enter the domain that you would like to park or point.  Double check your settings, and if all is correct hit the “Do it” button.  You have successfully parked a domain on your server.  Now if you point your browser to the parked domain, it will send you to the domain name you specified.

You can also remove it by logging into WHM, and then going to the Account Information page.  From there click on List Parked Domains.  You can see the domains you have parked and you can unpark them from here too.  Now you have a little more control over domain parking on your dedicated server or account.

Knowing about MX Records will help you in self managing your dedicated server, especially if you are using one server as a mail server and hosting your website on a separate server, etc. So here is a brief FAQ on MX Records.

What are MX records?

MX records assist your domain name in handling email. These DNS records point the email to the mail server where it is supposed to go.

Where can I see my MX records?

Normally they will be located on your DNS provider or web host’s server. To view them, simply visit www.mxtoolbox.com/, type your domain name into the search field, and view your records instantly.

What do MX records look like?

Every MX record includes the same fields (though they can be formatted differently), such as:

Name – yourdomain.com
Class – IN (Internet)
Type – MX
TTL – This stands for “time to live”: i.e. the time it takes to update the record, measured in seconds. For example, a TTL of 7200 means the MX record will take two hours to update. The higher the TTL the less traffic load on the DNS.
Preference or Priority – The order in which mail is delivered to which server, etc. Servers that are sending should be the lowest preference number.
Data – the DNS information for your mail server: i.e. yourdomain.com.ns1.smtp.com

When your going out on the web hosting town, in search for your next dedicated server be sure to do your homework before being sold on a deal that may be too good to be true. 

Most dedicated hosting providers will be happy to discuss any any all questions you have about the service, so best to find out all the facts that you can before you sign on the dotted line.  I often recommend to people to create a list of questions before you talk with “your soon to be” dedicated hosting provider just to make sure, if nothing else, you have your thoughts in order.

Last but not least, it can not be said enough to not fall too hard for ridiculous offers.  Better to be safe now than sorry later.

In Dedicated Server Hosting or actually in many forms of shared web hosting as well, oftentimes customers need to specify where and how email should be routed. MX Records do just that!

An MX record stands for Mail exchanger record and just specifies exactly how the email is routed using SMTP (or simple mail transfer protocol). Each MX record has a priority and host name – that way the entirety of the record for your domain name will point the servers to the right places.

In layman’s terms, all domains are assigned several DNS (domain name servers) records upon registration. These DNS settings allow you and others to locate the website online through the Internet. These DNS settings includes MX records. Each record points to a specific email server so that your email can be efficiently processed on that domain name.