Category: Web Hosting Articles > More "Web Hosting" Articles

The first thing before choosing a web hosting provider is that you should be fully aware of your hosting requirements. If you are a beginner wanting to host a personal web site, then your only concern is that you get a decent amount of disk space for your web site with a host that is as cheap as $5 per month. However, if you are a developer, an online entrepreneur or an online business looking for e-commerce capabilities or advanced scripting technologies, then you can determine your requirements in the following order.

(1) Whether you need Shared Hosting or Dedicated Hosting:
This depends mainly on two major requirements, the traffic your web site is expected to receive and the degree of administrative privileges you need. If you expect your web site to receive huge amounts of traffic, then you will need to have a Dedicated Server which definitely has a much greater bandwidth offering. Also you should select Dedicated server hosting if your web site requires customized options, secure information or complex applications i.e. e-commerce, dynamic content, database and multimedia applications.

(2) Whether you need Linux Hosting or Windows Hosting:
If you're going to use server technologies such as ASP, JSP etc or intend to run Microsoft applications like Microsoft Access or Microsoft SQL database on your server, then you should use a Windows hosting provider. Although ASP can be run on the Linux platform using some commercial applications, there are security and reliability concerns related to it. However, if you want to use ColdFusion, it can run on both Linux and Windows platforms.

(3) What are your Space and Bandwidth requirements:
Many web hosting providers nowadays offer generous amounts of disk space from 1 GB to 3 GB. However, if your web site mainly acts as a download resource, then your disk space requirements may be 5 to 10 times greater than this. The second consideration is how much traffic your web site is expected to receive which will let you estimate your bandwidth requirements.

(4) How many Parked Domains and Subdomains do you need:
Parked domains are very advantageous and can significantly increase the amount of traffic to your web site. Similarly, subdomains can help with your search engine rankings by pointing to specific directories of your web site. Parked domains and subdomains occasionally come free with certain web hosting packages. However if you need more, you will have to pay an additional price per month.

(5) FTP Accounts and Anonymous FTP Requirements:
You may need more than one FTP account if you have coworkers working on your web site project at different locations. The Anonymous FTP permits the general public to access certain directories on your web server to whom they have been granted permission by you. In most cases, you will need a dedicated IP address for Anonymous FTP to function.

(6) Whether you need e-commerce Features:
If you need e-commerce features, you should choose a web hosting provider that provides e-commerce functionality such as shopping carts and the ability to accept credit cards. You should also check whether their server is SSL secure.

In addition to your own hosting requirements, the following considerations must be kept in mind when looking for a quality web hosting provider.

(1) More than 99.5% uptime:
Choose a web hosting provider that has an uptime greater than 99.5% and if there is an uptime guarantee, it's even better. If your web site is for business purposes, it's very crucial that your site stays online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year.

(2) Fast Servers:
The level of connectivity of your web hosting provider to the Internet is very important. So you should choose a web hosting provider with at least a T3 connection to the major Internet backbone. Analysis has shown that the average web visitor waits for about 30 seconds before your web page loads. So if your web site takes more than 30 seconds to load, chances are that you will lose a lot of visitors and consequently sales.

(3) Server Backups:
To make your data secure, your web hosting provider must have a power backup system and should backup the data to an external device in order to prevent the data loss due to failure. Check how frequently the web hosting provider backups the data, i.e. daily or weekly.

(4) Disk Space and Bandwidth:
Choose a web hosting provider that meets your disk space and bandwidth requirements. Most web hosting providers offer 1 GB to 3 GB of disk space, so if your web site is not mainly a download resource, then this factor is not that important for you. However, as regards the bandwidth, it should be as much as possible because your traffic can increase in the future thereby requiring more data transfer. Also check that you have the option of buying more disk space and bandwidth when required.

(5) Unrestricted CGI, SSH, FTP access & Anonymous FTP:
If you have a professional web site, you will need to run CGI scripts, have SSH (Secure Shell) access and FTP access. CGI and FTP access is provided by most web hosting providers whereas SSH access is provided by a few. You may also need to check if anonymous FTP access is provided.

(6) Software/Scripts:
Choose a web hosting provider that has an extensive script library that you can use to add guestbooks, forms, surveys, newsletters etc to your web site.

(7) E-commerce capabilities and SSL:
Choose a web hosting provider that provides you with e-commerce capabilities with shopping cart software and also merchant accounts. The web hosting provider must also have an SSL secure server for safe and risk-free transactions.

(8) Web-Based Administration:
Almost all web hosting providers nowadays provide a control panel to access and manage web site features. Ask for a demo of their control panel if possible and check to make sure that it is simple as well as comprehensive. The control panel should provide access to FTP, e-mail, databases, e-commerce and all other functions for effective web site management. VDeck 2.0 and CPanel are the leading brands of administration control panels.

(9) Full e-mail services:
Choose a web hosting provider that provides both POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts, web-based e-mail, autoresponders, mailing lists, forwarding accounts and antivirus and spam filtering software.

(10) Moneyback Guarantee:
If the Web hosting provider gives a moneyback guarantee, it's even better because it makes you absolutely risk-free.

(11) 24/7/365 Customer Support:
The web hosting provider should provide as many support channels as possible including an FAQ section, a knowledgebase, video and flash tutorials, toll-free support, e-mails support, live chat support and a community forum. Try e-mailing the web host a couple of times to check how quickly they respond to your request. The customer support should be as prompt as possible and should be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. This is crucial because if you run into problems and the support staff is not receptive or knowledgeable, you will be helpless.

Michael Smith is an expert web hosting analyst. His site Web Hosting Provider reviews and rates the leading web hosting providers.

Category: Commentary

Currently, the RIAA is suing Grokster and trying to convince the Supreme Court that Peer to Peer or P2P file sharing is a technology that has little or no legitimate uses and is almost exclusively used as a method to illegally trade music and movie files. The RIAA is complaining that P2P is severely damaging the music industry and thus this technology should be stopped. Despite the fact that the music industry reacted in the exact same way with the invention of the radio they continue to see the glass as half empty rather than trying to realize the tremendous potential P2P technology presents.

Billionaire Mark Cuban has decided to step in and fund Grokster’s legal battle. In his blog he wrote; "If Grokster loses, technological innovation might not die, but it will have such a significant price tag associated with it, it will be the domain of the big corporations only," Cuban wrote. "It will be a sad day when American corporations start to hold their US digital innovations and inventions overseas to protect them from the RIAA, moving important jobs overseas with them."

This article takes a look at some uses P2P could be put to in the web hosting industry as a defense of innovation and as a creative stab at solving some common problems web hosts face.

While the RIAA may be wrong on a lot of points and their intention to illegalize peer to peer may be ill-founded but they are correct that P2P is used in large part for music, movie, and software swapping.

In other words, P2P file sharing has yet to be tapped into and utilized as a fully-fledged technology. Part of this is perhaps history. Products, whether it is news, music, soda pop, or hosting a web site traditionally features the product flowing from a central source to many consumers.
Corporate America, like the RIAA, doesn’t take kindly to giving up the ‘control’ that this model provides over the product. However, there is one industry that has taken a peer to peer business model and made it massively profitable and it’s not even legal; spamming. Spammers can’t be stopped and they sell incredible amounts of goods. MCI was said to have made $5 billion a year hosting spammers (SendSafe) through resale hosting.
Has there ever been a more virile proof of concept?
Why not take the concept that viruses, music swappers and zombie PC spammers use and put it to good use? Why not fight virus and spam with their own weapons? Why not use P2P web hosting?

Although there are multiple issues to confront in terms of serving up a site with a P2P model the advantages are speed and ubiquitous availability.

While a static web site could easily be served through a P2P model, and quite effectively at that, a dynamic data base driven page simply can’t exist without reproducing databases on supernodes which raises very large security issues not to mention the feasibility of recreating databases.
Even login DBs can hold quite a lot of data as well as being quite sensitive.

At the very least though a P2P model could be used much like a browser’s image cache with the most common pages and images being distributed around a network of users of the site.

Here again a problem occurs in the issue of version management. Suppose peers checked with the central server to see if they had the latest version before sending out a file. A situation might occur where many peers were checking so often with the server to see if they were correct or not it would end up having the same effect as a DDoS attack. A sports ticker tracking the score of an ongoing game for example might cause a web host to use more bandwidth answering peer questions about versions and updating versions than simply serving up the new score for the game itself.

On the other hand, when a lovely model goes on the Howard Stern show and causes Google and Yahoo searches for her images to go up 2,000% it could keep a host from crashing horribly to have a peer network help serve up the same 5 image files.

The Fingerprint Sharing Alliance may be a first step towards P2P hosting in terms of security. The FSA is a first-of-its-kind industry initiative aimed at helping network operators share Internet attack information automatically. The Fingerprint Sharing Alliance marks the first time companies are able to share detailed attack profiles in real-time and block attacks closer to the source. This global alliance marks a significant step forward in the fight against Internet attacks and major infrastructure threats that cross network boundaries, continents and oceans.

Global telecommunications companies participating in the Fingerprint Sharing Alliance include British Telecom, MCI and NTT Communications.
And leading carriers, network providers, hosting companies and educational institutions joining the Alliance include among others; Asia Netcom, Cisco Systems, EarthLink, Rackspace, The Planet, University of Pennsylvania and XO Communications.

It’s great that web hosts are sharing security information but it’s not particularly helpful during a DDoS or Denial of Service attack.

Net security and legal expert Ben Edelman described a recent DDoS attack in his website after he posted an article on spamming, “Globat was not particularly responsive in informing me of the problem -- my site was down for one and a half business days before they told me what was going on, and they only told me when I reached out to a personal contact who happened to work there. Then again, they're a $10/month company -- not exactly premium service. I was happy with them otherwise, and for most folks I think they provide an extraordinary value.”

This is not to criticize Globat as Yahoo and Google have been taken offline and even the website for industry giant Microsoft was taken down by troubled teen Jeffrey Lee Parson’s Blaster B virus. If Microsoft is at the mercy of a teen hacker and neither Yahoo or Google can completely defend themselves then who can be expected to be able to? This highlights the obvious need for a higher level of overall security on the internet.
i.e. a need for innovation.

What if, when the DDoS attack hit Edelman’s site, Globat had been able to switch on a P2P mode emergency system and distribute the files to other web hosting providers and allow them to send the files out in response to requests for the site?
No one may have even noticed Ben’s site was being attacked. Then, with P2P, the Fingerprint Sharing Alliance or ‘File Sharing Alliance’ could share attack vector information and shut down the offending zombies.

How do you fight a million zombie computers barraging a site? With a million servers of course!

This is perhaps an oversimplification in that database driven pages, and ecommerce sites would not be easily transferred on a P2P network although for a static site like Edelman’s this would have been ideal.

For a more dynamic site a P2P backup plan would only allow a limited amount of a site to be displayed but it’s a lot easier for a web host to explain to a customer why functionality is limited than to explain why a site is down completely.
A P2P technique could even be used offensively to combat spammers and hackers. The FSA could combine to knock spammers out by sharing spam source information and then spamming the spammers with mail that looks like responses to their ads or at the very least combining to lock them out of the internet.

Of course, all this is predicated on a high level of cooperation among web hosts, or rather, a large peer sharing network.

Press releases work much like a P2P form of news sharing so why shouldn’t smaller web hosts ban together to create advertising cooperatives? Web hosts or the web sites they host could also use P2P file sharing for cross site or even cross host advertising. Again, by cooperating, multiple web sites could form advertising cooperatives and share ads. While a single point of access could be developed for the advertising to make it easy for those who want to advertise to send their ads out to as wide a distribution as possible it could work from a many to many P2P model as well. When an advertiser wanted to change an add they could access their ad campaign with whatever site or host they are working through and then P2P could be used to distribute their ads through the ad sharing network.
Of course, P2P would only be a small part of such a complicated project.

These are only a couple of ideas to incorporate P2P in web hosting but if the Supreme Court is wise they’ll see that P2P is more than just a music swapper.

Category: Domain Articles > More "Domain" Articles

When you use computers and the Internet in your business, it's all too easy to start feeling like you're drowning in a sea of nonsense. Computer-related things tend to have a language all their own, and while you don't need to know all of it, there are many confusing words and phrases that you're going to come across sooner or later. Here's a quick primer.

Bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data that your website can send each second, as well as the amount of data that the visitor to your website can receive. If either one doesn't have enough bandwidth, then the website will appear slowly. For this reason, you should choose a host with plenty of bandwidth, as well as testing that your site doesn't take too long to download on slow connections.

Browser. A browser is the software (see below) that visitors to your site use to view it. The most popular browser is Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which comes with Windows.

Cookie. Cookies are data files that your site can save on the computer of someone who visits that site, to allow it to remember who they are if they return. You will find that problems people have in ordering from you will almost inevitably be related to cookies -- they will need to have them turned on.

Download. Transferring data from a website to a computer.

Favourite. A favourite is a website that a user has stored to look at again, by choosing 'Add to Favourites' in their browser's menu.

FTP. File Transfer Protocol. This is a common method of uploading (see below) files to your website.

Javascript. A common language for writing 'scripts' on websites, which are small programs that make the site more interactive. Another common cause of problems for visitors.

JPEG. Joint Photographic Experts Group. This is the name of the most popular format for pictures on the web, named after the group that came up with it. If you want to put pictures on your website, you should save them as JPEGs.

Hardware. Hardware is computer equipment that physically exists. It is the opposite of software.

Hosting. If you've got a website out there on the Internet, then you'll be paying someone for hosting. It is the service of making your site available for people to see.

HTML. HyperText Markup Language. A kind of code used to indicate how web pages should be displayed, using a system of small 'tags'. The 'b' tag, for example, causes text to appear in bold, and the 'img' tag displays a picture.

Hyperlink. A hyperlink is when a piece of text on a website can be clicked to take you to another site, or another page on the same site. For example, if clicking your email address on your website allows someone to email you, then your email address is a hyperlink.

Programming. This is when the computer is given instructions to tell it what to do, using one of many 'programming languages'. Programming languages for the web include PHP and Perl.

Server. The server is where your website is stored, and it is the server that people are connecting to when they visit the site. If someone tells you, for example, that your server is 'down', it means that your website is inaccessible. Note that server refers both to the hardware and software of this system.

Software. Programs that run on the computer, or that make your website work. Microsoft Word is software, for example, as is Apache (the most popular web server software). Opposite of hardware.

Spider. Don't be scared if a spider visits your website! Spiders are simply programs used by search engines to scan your site and help them decide where it should appear when people search. It is good to be visited by spiders, as it means you should start appearing in search engines soon.

Upload. Uploading is when you transfer data from your own computer to your website. For example, you might upload your logo, or an article you've written. Opposite of download.

URL. Uniform Resource Locator. This is just a short way of saying 'web address', meaning what you have to type in to get to your website. Sometimes pronounced as 'Earl'.

About The Author:
James Calvin will show you how to market your product to the World using the only REAL techniques that make the Internet pay off. Go to http://www.MillionaireMarketingManual.com NOW. You may freely distribute or publish the above article as long as this bio and an active hyperlink are accompanied with it.

Category: Commentary

People often neglect data backup until something bad happens and information is lost. For households, this can be catastrophic as PC hard drives are bulging with digital pictures, music libraries, and personal finance files. Companies have gone out of business after the loss of customer information and accounts receivable/payable data.

Yet in the face of this sobering fact, it's widely estimated that more than half of the PCs in homes and small business remain unprotected by regular backups. PC hard drives, though generally reliable, contain many moving parts spinning at up to 10,000rpm, which means eventually they are going to wear out and break.

Online Storage & Online Backup Software

The big hard drive in "the cloud" is fast becoming popular as it stores your information over the Internet/Intranet on a server "offsite" so a fire, flood, theft, or other disaster won't affect the backed up information.

One such online backup software is Proxure's KeepVault, (http://www.keepvault.com) which automatically and in real-time protects data once a few simple options are set. KeepVault utilizes both online and local backups to keep the important stuff protected and available. In the event of a catastrophe, you can get everything back.

Unlike provider such as Carbonite, Mozy that sell you online storage limited to a single computer, the KeepVault online backup software can be installed on as many Windows PCs or Windows Home Servers in your home or office and the storage can be shared by all the computers in your network; perfect for homes and businesses with more than one computer.

KeepVault online backup software is available for XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows Home Server, and Windows Server 2003/8.

Check out KeepVault - http://www.keepvault.com

Backup Strategies for Home Networks

Now that you're armed with some learning on storage technologies and the power of Proxure's KeepVault backup software, let's blueprint a real-world backup scenario for protecting a home network with 3 computers sharing a single Internet connection via a wireless router. In this particular home network, the family is sharing an iTunes library located on "Dad's" computer, along with the family's financial information. "Mom's" computer, however, has several thousand digital pictures from family vacations and events. The "Kid's" computer has many videos that have been downloaded as well as pictures from his cell phone. In this scenario, a basic KeepVault setup with 40GB of online storage is more than sufficient for the family's needs. The KeepVault software is downloaded and installed on all 3 PC's, and the shared online storage account can be configured to backup the contents of the 3 computers every Friday at 12am, when the computers are not in use, or it can be set for ccontinuous, real time backup. Additionally, on "Dad's" PC, the financial information is backed up locally on a USB flash drive to have access to the backup quickly in case of a hard drive crash.

Another home scenario that could come into play is if there is a Windows Home Server (WHS) installed in the home. In this case, depending on how much content is being stored on the WHS, the 40GB basic online storage account might not be enough if there are lots of video content, which is no problem as the WHS version of the KeepVault software's online storage account can be easily expanded. Note that the WHS version of KeepVault protects the contents of a single Windows Home Server. Users connected to the server should have accounts on the server to store important files/folders that they want backed up.

Tip: It helps to keep your content organized. People have a tendency to lump all their digital pictures into the My Pictures folder without organizing them in a way they can easily find them. For some good tips and tricks to keeping all your digital content organized, check out the book Organize Your Digital Life by Aimee Baldridge.

Backup Strategies for Small/Medium Business

Certainly business owners know the importance of keeping their data backed up. A hard drive crash on the PC running the accounting software could be catastrophic to the business if it's not backed up. The business owner could find themselves in the position of not knowing who owes them money, or who they owe money to.

A professional version of KeepVault can back up critical information on each PC to a shared, scalable online storage account starting at 40GB of online capacity with NO bandwidth throttling. Enable KeepVault's encryption option for local backups so that in the event a drive is lost or compromised, the data will be gibberish without the password. Consider backing up locally to a NAS server with RAID implemented. The size of NAS server required will depend on how much data is needed to be backed up. Two or four drive NAS servers are most likely perfect as you can expect between 1TB and 5TB of capacity with very high transfer rates. Implement RAID 1 with a two drive NAS, or RAID 5 with a four (or higher) drive NAS as this gives maximum data redundancy.

Check out KeepVault - http://www.keepvault.com

by Dan Reynolds is the Director of Marketing & Sales for KeepVault Online Backup Software (http://www.keepvault.com). Previously he directed backup and mastering products for VERITAS, Sonic, & Roxio

Category: Web Hosting Articles > More "Web Hosting" Articles

Written By HostVoice.net 

Too often web hosts talk about bandwidth and data transfer in the same breath but truth be known they are different although very closely related. Bandwidth is how much data can be transferred at a time and data transfer is how much data is being transferred. Think of it this way. If bandwidth were a bridge, then the bigger the bridge is the more vehicles can pass through it. While data transfer is the number of vehicles allowed on the bridge in say a month. In essence, data transfer is the consumption of bandwidth. 

How It Affects Your Site 
The less bandwidth you have, the slower your site takes to load regardless of the visitor’s connection type. If you have more visitors, some of them will have to wait their turn. The least data transfer you have, the more often you’ll find your site unavailable because you’ve reached the maximum allowed until a new month rolls by or you upgrade your account.

Determining Your Requirements 
Usually when a host talks about bandwidth, they are referring to your transfer. So you need to figure out what is sufficient for your site to function. You’ll need to gather some information; fairly easy if you already have a site. Most of this information is available from your traffic history. If you don’t have an existing site, provide an optimistic estimate if you intend to heavily promote the site. Then get ready for some math. 

Find out the daily averages of: 
· Number of visitors / expected number of visitors 
· Page size including the graphics of the page 
· Page views / expected pages viewed by each visitor 

Then, multiply them as follows: Visitors x Page size x Page views x 30 days = Monthly Website Transfer 

You should also throw in a small margin or error there to take into account email traffic and your own uploads to the server. If you offer downloads, then you should add the following: 

Average/Expected downloads x File Size x 30 days = Monthly Download Transfer 

Unlimited Plans 
Bandwidth is very expensive. All hosts are limited by their own allocations. Thinking back to the bridge. What happens is each visitor to your site will be given a smaller lane to transfer the data, creating many tiny lanes therefore “unlimited”. The more visitors you have the smaller each lane will be, which makes each visitor wait for the page to load. More often than not there is little choice over your bandwidth as your host controls this. Some hosts may limit the number of simultaneous connections so in affect slowing down your site and refusing some visitors. This is called throttling. If you’re concerned about this, you should ask the host how they control bandwidth usage or purchase a package with more data transfer. If you use HostVoice.net, this information is easily obtainable with one request. 

Reducing Transfers 
On the other hand, you can reduce your transfer amount by building simpler, more efficient websites and optimizing your graphics. Refrain from fancy flash presentations or streaming audio. Use CSS, call JavaScript externally instead of embedding in every page. Remove unwanted tags, white space and comments. Limit your META tags to those absolutely necessary. Having too many keywords is not search engine friendly. Besides many search engines will only review the first few and ignore the rest. 

Another good idea is to cache your website but you might want to set an expiry date in the HTTP headers so the browser will refresh the content after a certain time. Use mod-gzip. It could save you as much as 40% of your bandwidth. Out of control robots can also suck down your bandwidth like a black hole. So use robots.txt to keep spiders in check. 

This article has been contributed by the team at HostVoice.net: Where Hosts Compete For Your Business Looking for a web host? Have them compete for your business! Submit a FREE, no-risk request and receive offers within 15 minutes from qualifying hosts. Personal, Business, eCommerce, NT, Dedicated, Reseller, Adult - we’ve got it all! For information on reproduction of this article, eMail us at info@hostvoice.net