Basic Overview of Web Hosting Services

A web hosting service is a service given by companies to individuals and businesses that allocates them space on their server and provides connection to the Internet. In this way, the information that they want to share will be available for all internet users.

In this day and age of the Internet, you can almost find all the information that you need in the World Wide Web. These different types of information can be seen through websites that are uploaded to the Internet. Several individual and businesses see the Internet as a very good way to share relevant information with other people across the world.

In order for this to actualize, these web developers, or simply the people who make websites, need a space in the Internet so their websites will be available for everyone to see. This is the main goal of a web hosting service.

There are several types of web hosting services that are available today. The simplest one is small-scale hosting, which usually deals with personal web pages. It is the process wherein files that are to be place in the web page are uploaded thru the File Transfer Protocol. This type of web hosting service is readily accessible as many companies offer this for free, and it is commonly known as free web hosting service.

Another type of web hosting service is the shared web hosting service where different websites share the same server, thus may share the resources used for web hosting such as the Random Access Memory.

A different type of web hosting service is the dedicated hosting service where the user gets a Web server for himself and also controls it the way he wants to. The server does not necessarily belong to him though. A type of dedicated hosting is the self-managed hosting where the user gets full access and must maintain the dedicated box by him.

A virtual dedicated server is also another type of web hosting service where each user has a virtual server for his webpage. Virtual since this server is actually divided between different users but it is as if there is a personal server for each one.

The most expensive web hosting service is collocation, which is very similar to dedicated web hosting service. The only difference is that the user owns the server and the hosting company just provides the space taken up by the server and its corresponding maintenance.

Managed hosting service is one more web hosting service available for use. The server is usually leased to the user but he is not allowed full control over it to guarantee the quality of their service. Data management is done thru the file transfer protocol.

An added type of web hosting service is the home server where the server is located in a private residence that allows it to host one or more websites using a broadband connection.

These are just some of the web hosting services that are available for individuals and businesses to avail of. Choosing which the best one for your needs is must be thoroughly decided upon since not all web hosting services are free and they differ in the provision of the server.

About the Basic Concepts of Web Hosting Services

The web hosting service is an Internet based service offering online arrangements to store data, descriptions through Web. As the Internet continues to grow, increased competition, new marketing methods and ensuring excellent quality service to customers are all obstacles that business owners must face in order to turn a profit. There are numbers of different companies offering web hosting services. Some provide free web hosting service and some charges a fee.

It is also very important to find that what kind of hosting service is best for you. Web hosting is a cutthroat business. When looking for a web host for your small business, keep in mind the following as these features can make running your business a little easier. There are different types of web hosting services: shared web hosting, paid web hosting, free web hosting, clustered web hosting, and reseller web hosting, file web hosting and dedicated web hosting. This has drawbacks like reducing speed and making information more accessible to tampering.

Free web hosting is free of cost. On the average the cost of the website should not any longer than per megabytes the low cost web hosting companies must provide the maximum bandwidth with minimum time. You can open account with the help of free services or blogger and no experience is needed for such hosting service. But on the other hand, you have to pay monthly fee for using paid hosting service. The major types of web hosting services are free web hosting, dedicated web hosting, and shared hosting, collocation web host and reseller web hosting. You can set-up your domain by using your own domain name. In shared web hosting service, your website is located on the same server with hundreds of other users.

If a user anticipates lot of visitors to his site, then he needs a service provider that can handle the traffic without any pester. A person using dedicated web hosting service has full control on its server. Small business web hosting service is becoming very popular now a day. It is important to check what the fees for the service. Reseller service allows users to resell the service to others. File hosting service is used for hosting large files.

The choice of the web hosting service will somehow decide the future of his online business. This makes all the difference for your business. Web hosting services are helpful, safe, convenient and reasonably priced. You don’t have to pay much for such services. Most of the web hosting companies are offering user friendly website designs and editing tools like FrontPage, PHP. In collocation web service a person will own physical space to maintain a server.

Basic Features of a Web Hosting Plan

Web hosting plans come outfitted with varied features, tools and functionalities in order to cater for diverse needs and budgets. In this article, we would be discussing the basic features of a web hosting plan and which features and tools are best suited for your website. This will help you determine and ascertain the type of hosting plan that befits your website needs.

Disk Space: Disk space is the amount of space offered by the hosting provider to store all your files. Here it becomes important to determine the exact amount of disk space that your website would require. Different web hosts offer different amounts of disk space for individual hosting plans. It is advisable to have an estimate of your disk space requirements. Try to ascertain as to how much space you would require for storing your email, web files, databases and log files.

Once you get a breakdown of these figures you would be in a better stead to work out the disk quota required for hosting your website. It is important to note here that certain we hosting providers would also include email and/or logs in the quota. This could make your disk storage estimate a tad difficult. Therefore always keep a safe margin in selecting your disk space since your email and log file needs could change as your website grows.

Email Accounts

Email accounts are a common and essential feature offered with hosting plans. While with some hosts, you may wield control over mail settings, putting restrictions on mail activities (for example the number of accounts or maximum size of mail boxes) on the server side, other web hosts would do the entire set up for your account. There are essentially 4 types of email accounts including POP3, forwarding, aliases and auto responders. How you wish to configure each is of course a matter of preference.

FTP Access

Most paid hosting accounts come equipped with the FTP access feature. These FTP programs allow the users to upload files and to edit and delete the content more quickly and conveniently as compared to the web-based interface. In fact, hosts also offer the option of creating one’s own FTP accounts. This is a highly utilizable feature if you wish to share your web space while keeping the user files separate from your own or if you want someone help you on your website.

Bandwidth

This is one vital feature that needs to be taken into consideration when selecting your hosting package. Choosing the right amount of bandwidth is imperative for the growth of your website. A wrong decision here could either make or break your website. The amount of bandwidth or data transfer differs depending on the type of website you own. Therefore the requirement varies and this explains why web hosts make different hosting packages available. Once you have a rough estimate of the amount of bandwidth required for your website, make sure that it suits your monthly hosting budget. For this one also needs to ensure that the company has mentioned all prices in a clear format and there are no hidden costs involved.

Basic Information About the Web Hosting Lingo

If you are new to the entire “webpage world” and hosting lingo, it would be very useful to get some information which will allow you to understand just what the heck webmasters are talking about. Lets start by illustrating the main concept of hosting, a web host is basically a computer which has been specially built to run 24 hours a day 365 days a year and which will host your websites, if you were to do this from home you would definitely not be able to afford the electricity, Internet and hardware expenses, this is the reason why hosting companies charge a monthly fee for their services. Let’s describe some of the words that are commonly used by webmasters and hosting companies.

Server or Web server:

This is a physical machine which holds your website and all of the information that you put on it.

Bandwidth:

This is the amount of data that your server is going to exchange with people that are visiting your site for instance, if you upload a photo with a size of 100 kB and 10 people would come to your site to see this picture then out of these 10 people you would be utilizing 1 MB of data transfer or bandwidth, this is because 100 kB X 10 picture downloads equals 1000 kB which is almost be equivalent of 1 MB.

MySQL:

This is better described as a database where you can put all of the information that you will get from your visitors, if you are gathering statistics and information from your visitors then you obviously need a system which will about you to store all this information, that is MySQL. If you start a blog you will obviously need to store a lot of posts in your database, otherwise you wouldn’t have it any other way to store information and create a dynamic environment for your visitors.

Domain name:

This is the name of your website including the .com part of it which is also referred to as a top level domain or TLD, when someone asks you for your domain name they are referring to “thenameofyoursite (dot) com” they are not asking for the full URL which includes the “http” part.

Virtual hosting:

This is the most basic package that hosting companies offer to their subscribers, it offers the ability to create several databases and host many websites which are usually limited by the amount of bandwidth and system resources that you can use, is because you are going to be sharing a web server with many other websites, this is also the reason why this type of hosting account is so cheap.

Scripts:

These are programs that can be installed on your web server in order to make your life easier for instance, you can use a blogging script such as WordPress in order to create your blog, can you imagine how difficult it would be for you to find out how to write a system which will allow you to create entire pages and posts without having to design and redesign each and every page manually? if you are not using scripts to automate certain tasks then you are obviously putting a heavy tax on your time.

FTP accounts:

These are accounts that you can create for each and every one of your domain names in order to upload content in a more easy and efficient way, with a file transfer protocol application you are able to upload files to your web server just like if you were dragging them and dropping them from one folder of your computer to another folder.

There is a lot more terminology which is used by webmasters and web hosting companies, if you don’t understand them all immediately don’t worry and don’t get frustrated, you’ll understand everything as time goes by and you gain more experience.

Windows 7& Windows Server 2008 R2 Step-by-Step: Basic Windows Deployment for IT Professionals

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Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written agreement with Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.

©2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Microsoft, Windows, Windows 7 and Windows Vista are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States or other countries/regions.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

 

Introduction

The Windows® Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) is designed to help IT professionals deploy the Windows® 7 operating system.

This document demonstrates a basic example of how to configure and deploy a Windows® image. At the end of this process, you will have a valid answer file, a bootable Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) CD, and you will have deployed your first custom Windows image. After creating this basic answer file, you can modify it to include additional customizations. You can also automate parts of the process by scripting some of the manual steps in this scenario. For a comprehensive description of all the tools and deployment methods, see the Windows® Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) User’s Guide or http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=121503.

In this example, you build a basic answer file, and then install Windows using that answer file. This process includes:

Step 1: Building an Answer File

Step 2: Building a Reference Installation

Step 3: Creating Bootable Windows PE Media

Step 4: Capturing the Installation onto a Network Share

Step 5: Deploying from a Network Share

Walkthrough on a Basic Web Hosting

This article will cover the two main basic categories of web hosting. The first one is Dedicated Hosting and the second is Shared Hosting. The second type of hosting i.e. shared hosting can be break down into paid and free as our requirement/ need but normally in dedicated hosting we can’t avail a hosting for free.

Some terminology

Bandwidth – It is related with the amount of data our site can transfer in a given period. Whenever people view our site on the internet they have to download it from the server which uses up our bandwidth.

Storage – It is on the whole the measure of hard drive space allowed to our website to take up on a server.

OK, now about the type of hosting.

1-Dedicated hosting- the dedicated hosting or a dedicated server, is where our web site gets one entire server to itself and we are entitled to all of the resources offered by this server. The entire bandwidth and hard drive capacity is ours which includes the memory for processing and anything besides it. Dedicated hosting is pretty better traffic intensive web sites but for individuals and small to smallish medium businesses shared hosting is usually more than sufficient.

2-Shared hosting- is basically when a hosting company puts our web site on a server along with other customers. Monthly limits for bandwidth, storage, email accounts are allowed by our hosting provider. It always depends on what kind of server we were put on and how good our hosting provider is. Because sometimes on a server things can get a slight crowded and cause our site to be slow and unresponsive.

3-Free hosting- is shared hosting which we can get from a free service like geocities or other ones but it is generally exceptionally limited one. Posting in forums and such may help in earning from a decent free hosting account but generally paid hosting and a real domain name are much better than these options.

4-Paid hosting- is actually reasonably priced these days and we can get good solid hosting which support a small business for under $100 per year. A free domain name and free setup as well as a money back guarantee are included by the hosting providers these days.

Hope the compilation of information is proved to be helpful. If we have decided to buy hosting choose the best one making sure of the needs. The last thing how to select a right host Reading some articles on picking the right domain name and hunt down reviews of web hosting companies will definitely proved to be beneficial.

So never go with the companies that aren’t huge and well established because many people have lost web sites when unstable hosting companies went under.

Be watchful and have fun. Getting a web site is the cheapest way to start a business.

Seven Basic Ingredients of Unix Hosting

Though often overshadowed by the market dominated Windows and Linux platform, Unix remains a widely used platform and a popular option for web hosting.  This article will introduce you to seven features commonly found in Unix hosting plans.  Though basic, these features are very important and should not be underestimated.

1.) POP3 Email Accounts – An example of a POP3 email account would be “mailto:yourname@yoursite.comyourname@yoursite.com“.  Most hosting companies will provide you with a large number of email accounts to use for yourself or distribute to your employees.

2.) Webmail and SMTP – As soon as your website goes live, email will likely become your main source of communication.  The tool you need to make this an easy process is a webmail program such as Horde or Squirrelmail.  This process can be even faster when downloading your messages to email clients such as Microsoft Outlook or Eudora.  However, in order for this to work, you need a Unix hosting solution that supports messaging protocols such as IMAP and SMTP.

3.) Spam Filter - It doesn’t matter who you are, no email user is immune to spam messages.  In this day and age of the internet, having a reliable spam filter is a must.  These applications are installed on the web server where your site resides and typically offer features such as blacklisting, whitelisting and greylisting to mitigate spam.  The more flexible filters will allow you to make configurations to tag spam and have it delivered straight to a quarantine folder to keep it from cluttering your inbox.

4.) FTP Accounts - FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a method that allows you to upload your files and maintain them on the server.  A Unix host that supports this protocol usually provides the ability to create a certain number of FTP sub-accounts.  This allows you to provide your clients and users with access to password-protected directories, which is very useful for sharing files in a more efficient and secure manner.

5.) Backup Utility - While most web hosts perform automated backups on a regular basis, you should never put the fate of your website in their hands.  There are many ways to backup your website data, but the easiest way is with a utility specifically designed for this task.  Most of today’s control panels come included with built-in utilities that allow you to easily backup your site in minutes.

6.) Web Stats – Analyzing your visitors and traffic can play a crucial role in the success of your site.  Popular web stat software such as AwStats and Webalizer run on the back-end of the server and can provide you with detailed reports on your statistics.  This can give you the knowledge to make the needed adjustments or additions that increase traffic and boost sales.

7.) PHP and MySQL – Similar to Linux, almost all Unix plans come with support for PHP server-side programming and the MySQL database server.  These features are generally provided for no extra costs and can give you the power to create a dynamic, data-driven website.

Basic Things People Should Look For While Choosing Low Cost and Cheap Web Hosting

The Internet media has long been used by companies from various sectors to reach their potential customers. Fortunately for small and medium scale businesses, there are many low cost web hosting which can also offer high quality service to their clients. With the growing numbers of this budget web hosting providers, what was once an expensive service has become much cheaper and more affordable to most business owners.

This is not true that expensive web hosting providers automatically mean that they can provide high quality services. With steep competition in this field, a lot of companies have been offering cheaper price in order to lure potential customers-which in turn is a good thing for people who only have limited budget to run their business.

For business people who have limited budget, the type of web hosting service they should avoid is the collocation web hosting service since this one is the most expensive (but also most powerful). Meanwhile, they can choose to have self-managed dedicated web hosting service (this is probably the expensive dedicated plans). But having this type of web hosting service, clients should possess technical skills and give much time in maintaining and facilitating their dedicated box

There are various things in choosing the best discount web hosting plan. Here is the rundown of some features clients should look for in deciding for their service providers.

Efficient data transfer: This feature is important for any kind of websites in order to accommodate huge number of site visitors.

Reliable uptime: Uptime refers to the amount or percentage of time the website is accessible to viewers and visitors. There are many companies which promise their clients to give 99 percent of uptime. But according to experts, the most ideal uptime should be closed as to 100 percent. With many service providers which can give 99.5 percent of reliability, why choose others which only provide less? In addition to this, there are some companies which offer refunds to their clients in case that the uptime falls below their performance goal.

Customer support: Reliable customer care support which must be available even on weekends and holidays. Make sure that the company provides this important service feature so that in case that there are some technical glitch happening, there will be someone to help clients solve their problems.

Securities: Security features which can protect the sites from intruders. This feature is probably one of the most important things to consider. Take note, there are incidents where a company had experienced tremendous amount of profit loss due to hackers and intruders.

For those who want to find the best and most affordable web hosting company, there are searchable directories where they can find the service provider that can suit their requirements and needs. In doing so, they have to scrutinize each company to see if this can really provide what they are looking for; nevertheless, they have to be extremely careful since some web hosting reviews are purely promotional ones and may be affiliated with the company.

Linux/unix: Basic Ntp Configuration

Network Time Protocol (NTP) is an Internet protocol used for the transfer of accurate time, providing time information so that a precise time can be obtained and maintained on a network

Most UNIX and Linux operating systems provide built-in time synchronisation functionality with its NTP (Network Time Protocol) daemon. If the NTP service is not available on your version of UNIXLinux, NTP version 4 is open source and can easily be downloaded and configured, compiled and installed from www.ntp.org.

Network Time Protocol is the standard service for time dissemination across TCP/IP networks. It provides accuracies of 1-50 milliseconds, depending on the characteristics of the synchronization source and network paths.

The configuration file fro the NTP daemon is named ntp.conf and contains a list of reference clocks that it can synchronise too. The command ‘server’ specifies the reference clock, any characters after the ‘#’ symbol are comments, example:
server time-a.nist.gov # Public NTP server: NIST
driftfile /var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift

The drift file command identifies the location where the drift is recorded (sometimes referred to as a ‘frequency error). This value can be offset by NTP to ensure of increased accuracy. When configured, NTP can be controlled using the commands ‘ntpd start’ ‘ntpd stop’ ‘ ntpq –p’ (displays status)

NTP can also authenticate timing resources Note: It is strongly recommends that you configure a time server with a hardware source rather than from the internet where there is no authentication. Authentication codes are specified in the ‘ntp.keys’ file.

Specialist NTP servers are available that can receive transmissions from either GPS or national time reference broadcasts. They are relatively cheap and the signal is authenticated providing a secure time reference.

Authentication allows passwords to be specified by the NTP server and its clients. NTP passwords or keys are stored in the ntp.keys file in the following format: number M (The M stands for MD5 encryption), password:

1 M mypassword

3 M my2ndpassword

5 M my3rdpassword

Authentication for NTP has been developed to prevent malicious tampering with system synchronisation just as firewalls have been developed to protect networks from attack but as with any system of security it only works if it is utilised.

Shared Web Hosting – Basic Understanding

Computer is one of the modern inventions and it has made the life more flexible. Internet is the new dimension of the modern science which is not only the ornament of science but also the basic need of human life. Without the internet, we can’t think of a single day in this period. The importance of the internet can never be expressed by general description and website is the hart of the internet. To make the service global, you must host the website in reliable server.

Web hosting may be different in types depending on varieties aspects. Reseller web hosting, hosting of shared web and dedicated hosting service are some types hosting services. There are many companies or institutions those serve you for hosting your website. You will get some providers those permit you to host your website in free cost and they also give you a domain name which is actually the sub domain. Free hosting is cost effective but has some restrictions and problem in using the service.

Shared web hosting is now popular and is used by a number of people. In this service you can get place for hosting your website along with the other websites. But the clients get separate control panel and some features though they are not similar to the services of dedicated hosting services. Dedicated web hosting is only for one website and for that reason the number of features are also high. Shared web hosting is fully different from the dedicated hosting services.

Shared web hosting is cost effective and a single administrator can control and observe the services. Here is the main issue for getting the advantage from the shared web hosting. This service is one of the most used services in this period. Most of the people get this service because they have no capability to manage the dedicated hosting. In dedicated hosting, one administrator is required for maintaining the server and a single machine is used for hosting one website. It is very expensive and is not applicable for all kinds of clients.

The bandwidth in shared web hosting is distributed among all the hosted websites and that is the demerits of shared web hosting. The maintenance is difficult for shared web hosting because the administrator has to look over all the websites at a time. The algorithm is complex to distribute the services of the server and they are mainly equally distributed. Some techniques may be applied to distribute the bandwidth manually.

The security of shared web hosting is not so strong like the dedicated server because a number of websites are hosted in a single server. Some logics and techniques are applied to improve the shared hosting services because they are used everywhere. For that reason, shared service is also developing day by day. All the servers are strong enough to serve the purposes of websites and some technical algorithms and mechanisms are applied to give the maximum services among the hosted websites. The browser of the website gets lowed bandwidth but the owner of the site can give the services with lower cost.

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