If you think that web hosting is a load of geek speak then I can assure you that you are in safe hands here. Web hosting is one of the most important elements of building a successful online business and there are a few things you need to know before you decide on which web hosting provider to go with.
Web hosting tip 1:
Space: What amount of space are you requiring? Are you looking at setting up simple one page websites, or are you wanting to develop your own product with audio downloads? I recently put an ebook and audio product together and could not understand why I couldn't download any of my audio. I was over my disk space and this could make or break your business.
*Please note: Keep your files tidy and delete whatever you don't need because extra files take up valuable space - lesson learnt!
Web hosting tip 2:
Bandwidth: This is the amount data that you are allowed to broadcast from your website each month. Your needs will differ significantly depending on whether you are running basic websites or a complete multi media experience.
Web hosting tip 3:
Customer Service: This goes without saying! Before choosing your web hosting provider contact the support desk or give them a call to see how responsive they are. If your website is down for some reason you want to get this sorted out as soon as possible.
Web hosting tip 4:
Extra Features: If you are new to the internet your initial needs will not be as demanding as the more experienced user. Extra features may include free scripts, PDF writing software, web audio features...and much more.
Web hosting tip 5:
Domains: A domain or URL is your website address. If you are planning on having a number of different websites then you will want a web hosting provider to offer unlimited domain hosting. Most of the time you will have to pay a minimal charge to transfer your domain name to your web hosting provider. Having additional domain names on one hosting account will also use up your disk space and bandwidth a lot quicker so this will be a factor when considering a web hosting provider also.
Web hosting tip 6:
Subdomains: Subdomains are the extensions you have on your domain, such as, www.success-system.co.uk/ultimatehosting. 'Ultimatehosting' is the subdomain. Most good web hosting providers will offer unlimited subdomains which is great because you don't have to keep buying a new domain name each time you want to set up a new website.
Web hosting tip 7:
Statistics: Good web hosting providers will offer a fully functional statistical analysis of your pages. From this information you will be able to see how much traffic you have had, what keywords people are typing in to find your page, what country your visitors are from...and so much more. Internet success is about testing and tracking and you can get a lot of this information from the statistics packages offered.
Web hosting tip 8:
Website developing software: Some web hosting providers offer a complete package that include web design software so if you are looking to create your own website a great cheap alternative is to have this included within your package for a minimal extra charge. The great thing with this is that you will have the support from your web hosting company whenever you run into any problems. They will be able to look at your entire back office to help rectify any problems.
Web hosting tip 9:
Email, Autoresponder, POP3 & Mail Forwarding:
If you are serious about building a successful online business then you will want to automate your business as much as possible and also have the ability to create proper email addresses that are related to your website. Forwarding is a great feature also that allows you to have a number of different email addresses that go to the same account.
Web hosting tip 10:
Control Panel: This is the panel that will allow you to do many of the features that I have mentioned above. Some are more user friendly than others. The first time I saw one I was a little overwhelmed as there are a lot of features on here. If you are a beginner there are some options that offer a basic user experience.
Now you have some information to start you off in the right direction for choosing your web hosting provider. It is worth spending a bit of time checking this out. I actually uses a number of different web hosting providers so after having made a choice you will probably use other services as your build your online business and have different requirements.
Source by: Clint Gray
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
How To Find The Best Web Host
Building a website is very easy as there are countless web hosts, software programs, and website builders on the internet to choose from. But building a website that really produces profits, that builds traffic and ranks among the top websites on the net is extremely difficult to do.
Choose a hosting service that owns their own equipment and has high-speed connections to multiple Internet backbones, backup power generators and backup systems in place. Make sure they are a reliable business that has been around for awhile. Check their support system and make sure they offer 24/7 email, ticket system or live telephone support. Try their support team and see if they respond quickly enough for your needs and if their support staff is helpful and knowledgeable.
You should be able to host at least one domain name. There should be no restrictions on sub-domains. Look for e-mail access as well. The better the service, the more options they will provide for email. Make sure to get ample disk space for your website and try to get as much bandwidth as possible. Also make sure that your hosting service includes a statistics program so you can monitor your website traffic on your website.
If you plan on running a internet store or ECommerce shopping cart you need a hosting service that offers this service and supports SSL(Secure Sockets Layer.) When starting an online storefront, a web host will be able to guide you through the hosting process effectively. Ask the host about upgrade options so you can have an upgrade plan in place for when it is needed. Starting an online store is an exciting opportunity, and your web host will impact the success of your store.
Building a website that works, that drives traffic for long-term profits, takes the right process, the right tools and the right training. Check and see if the web host offers a website building program and tutorials to help you along the way. Make sure they have tools to optimize your website for the search engines. Check and see if they offer extras like auto-responders, Ezine publishing, and website submission services. Most web hosts bundle their services in package deals for you to choose from.
Don't be afraid to ask questions. Good website hosting services have no problem directing you to helpful information or answering your questions in a way that you can understand.
Article Source: Don Fletchinger from ABC Article Directory
Choose a hosting service that owns their own equipment and has high-speed connections to multiple Internet backbones, backup power generators and backup systems in place. Make sure they are a reliable business that has been around for awhile. Check their support system and make sure they offer 24/7 email, ticket system or live telephone support. Try their support team and see if they respond quickly enough for your needs and if their support staff is helpful and knowledgeable.
You should be able to host at least one domain name. There should be no restrictions on sub-domains. Look for e-mail access as well. The better the service, the more options they will provide for email. Make sure to get ample disk space for your website and try to get as much bandwidth as possible. Also make sure that your hosting service includes a statistics program so you can monitor your website traffic on your website.
If you plan on running a internet store or ECommerce shopping cart you need a hosting service that offers this service and supports SSL(Secure Sockets Layer.) When starting an online storefront, a web host will be able to guide you through the hosting process effectively. Ask the host about upgrade options so you can have an upgrade plan in place for when it is needed. Starting an online store is an exciting opportunity, and your web host will impact the success of your store.
Building a website that works, that drives traffic for long-term profits, takes the right process, the right tools and the right training. Check and see if the web host offers a website building program and tutorials to help you along the way. Make sure they have tools to optimize your website for the search engines. Check and see if they offer extras like auto-responders, Ezine publishing, and website submission services. Most web hosts bundle their services in package deals for you to choose from.
Don't be afraid to ask questions. Good website hosting services have no problem directing you to helpful information or answering your questions in a way that you can understand.
Article Source: Don Fletchinger from ABC Article Directory
Thursday, October 4, 2007
5 Features a Secure Web Hosting Package Must Have
Whether you have to host your personal page or a big e-Commerce site a secure hosting service is what you should always look for. This may seem a raw statement to many. But it's not. Secure hosting doesn't always imply a higher cost necessarily. Hosting security as much as internet security in general is up to the people running the appliances and infrastructure behind your website more than the costly firewalls or IDS protecting the network.
Many times, it is better to have a knowledged web administrator than a sophisticated $7000 Cisco Firewall. There are some web hosting services that in our tests proved to be stable and secure. But, what should one look for when in need of a secure web hosting?
The following is a list of the most important 5:
- SSL / SSH /sFTP
SSL allows you to have a secure encrypted tunnel between you and your server. This means that all the input (including login, credit card and any sensible information) doesn't travel in plain text and it is readable only by you and the server. It works using the Public/Private key paradigm.
If you have a shopping cart, or if you are going to host some membership portal storing personal members information SSL is a must have. Your visitors will appreciate it and will feel more comfortable to pass their data to you.
SSH stands for secure shell. It is used mainly as a secure access to the Unix machine from remote. You will be able to issue commands on the server console as if you were on the server keyboard. As SSL it works creating a secure tunnel.
SFTP is a network protocol that provides file transfer and manipulation functionality over
any reliable data stream. It is typically used with the SSH-2 protocol to provide secure file transfer. With normal FTP access all the files being transferred are sent in plain text
with no encryption at all. Many times you will have to transfer source codes containing hard coded passwords or database information.
- Strong Firewall/IDS
Almost all the networks have firewalls, but not all of them are managed sapiently thus
allowing remote access, information disclosure and active attacks to the hosting
provider network. A secure hosting service should manage redundant firewalls and should give you the capability of adding directly or indirectly (through administration access) to firewall rules. For example, if your website experiences an enormous malicious traffic (brute force http/email password as an example) your hosting administrator should give you the opportunity to add the ip address from which the attack came from to the blocking Firewall ACL's.
IDS stands for Intrusion detection system. They provide a further level of security because they can recognize a number of attack vector and stop them before they get any success on the target machine.
- Anti-DDoS
DoS stands for Denial of service, it is at the same time the most basic and the most
difficult to prevent attack that can be taken to a network. Such kind of attacks slow down your hosting provider network and all the sites hosted on the same node. This means that if hackers decide to attack a website hosted on your same server (in case of shared hosting), your website will suffer from this attack as well.
Anti-DDos features are now included into routers and firewalls and once again a secure hosting provider should be able to identify and block such attacks.
- Anti Spam
Although Spam is not directly connected with security, it can be a threat to your business. Spam carries viruses, worms and spy ware. Spam can even slow your server down up to shut it down depending on the emails number the mail server can handle. Not to mention the wasted bandwidth. That's why Anti Spam solution should never be missing not only into secure web hosting packages but in any kind of hosting you're going after.
- Secure trusted web hosting providers
In my experience as security consultant I have found out that many sites of web hosting services have security holes in their shopping carts, hosting control panels or web application in general. These kind of holes can allow an attacker to gather access to registered users credential including ftp passwords. This is probably the worst thing you may encounter but it really happens.
Protecting from such bad security practices is difficult because no one knows the existence of such security issues beside hackers and security consultants. That's why it is very important to always review secure web hosting listings made by hackers in order to avoid poor secured web hosting causing you money and data loss.
Article Source: Ivanovich Cuxev from ABC Article Directory
Many times, it is better to have a knowledged web administrator than a sophisticated $7000 Cisco Firewall. There are some web hosting services that in our tests proved to be stable and secure. But, what should one look for when in need of a secure web hosting?
The following is a list of the most important 5:
- SSL / SSH /sFTP
SSL allows you to have a secure encrypted tunnel between you and your server. This means that all the input (including login, credit card and any sensible information) doesn't travel in plain text and it is readable only by you and the server. It works using the Public/Private key paradigm.
If you have a shopping cart, or if you are going to host some membership portal storing personal members information SSL is a must have. Your visitors will appreciate it and will feel more comfortable to pass their data to you.
SSH stands for secure shell. It is used mainly as a secure access to the Unix machine from remote. You will be able to issue commands on the server console as if you were on the server keyboard. As SSL it works creating a secure tunnel.
SFTP is a network protocol that provides file transfer and manipulation functionality over
any reliable data stream. It is typically used with the SSH-2 protocol to provide secure file transfer. With normal FTP access all the files being transferred are sent in plain text
with no encryption at all. Many times you will have to transfer source codes containing hard coded passwords or database information.
- Strong Firewall/IDS
Almost all the networks have firewalls, but not all of them are managed sapiently thus
allowing remote access, information disclosure and active attacks to the hosting
provider network. A secure hosting service should manage redundant firewalls and should give you the capability of adding directly or indirectly (through administration access) to firewall rules. For example, if your website experiences an enormous malicious traffic (brute force http/email password as an example) your hosting administrator should give you the opportunity to add the ip address from which the attack came from to the blocking Firewall ACL's.
IDS stands for Intrusion detection system. They provide a further level of security because they can recognize a number of attack vector and stop them before they get any success on the target machine.
- Anti-DDoS
DoS stands for Denial of service, it is at the same time the most basic and the most
difficult to prevent attack that can be taken to a network. Such kind of attacks slow down your hosting provider network and all the sites hosted on the same node. This means that if hackers decide to attack a website hosted on your same server (in case of shared hosting), your website will suffer from this attack as well.
Anti-DDos features are now included into routers and firewalls and once again a secure hosting provider should be able to identify and block such attacks.
- Anti Spam
Although Spam is not directly connected with security, it can be a threat to your business. Spam carries viruses, worms and spy ware. Spam can even slow your server down up to shut it down depending on the emails number the mail server can handle. Not to mention the wasted bandwidth. That's why Anti Spam solution should never be missing not only into secure web hosting packages but in any kind of hosting you're going after.
- Secure trusted web hosting providers
In my experience as security consultant I have found out that many sites of web hosting services have security holes in their shopping carts, hosting control panels or web application in general. These kind of holes can allow an attacker to gather access to registered users credential including ftp passwords. This is probably the worst thing you may encounter but it really happens.
Protecting from such bad security practices is difficult because no one knows the existence of such security issues beside hackers and security consultants. That's why it is very important to always review secure web hosting listings made by hackers in order to avoid poor secured web hosting causing you money and data loss.
Article Source: Ivanovich Cuxev from ABC Article Directory
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