Apr
21st

Using cPanel to Manage Your Host Files

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CPanel is an easy user-interface site that lets you control your host account environment. The main peculiarity of this operating system is that it so simple to use that your below average computer user can’t mess it up. It’s got great features embedded into its panel and some of the features are listed below.

Site Tools

There are such tools available for your use, which are Web Protect (.htaccess editor), Custom error pages, Redirects, Ability to edit MIME types, Ability to edit Apache handlers, Install/Uninstall FrontPage Extensions, Search engine tool submitting and File Manager.

Email

The email program provides you with the possibility to add, remove, and change passwords while managing email accounts. CPanel is also provided by Webmail for the accounts, Auto responders, Forwarders, Mailing Lists, Spam filtering and some more.

Backup

Backup allows you to create copies of account files and databases.  The backup menu also allows you to download any automatic backups that were downloaded by your CPanel administrator.

Stats

Here are different tools to survey your site popularity and efficiency. Those are Webalizer web stats, Webalizer FTP stats, Analog stats, AWStats, View latest visitors, View bandwidth usage and View error log modules.

FTP

There is a module that controls FTP accounts (add, remove, change password for its access), Anonymous FTP controls; Ability to change FTP login message and Ability to kill FTP sessions.

Advanced Stuff

You have an ability to add or remove subdomains, Subdomain Redirects and its Stats.

Advanced Tools

You are provided with tools of SSH access tools, Manage GPG keys and Cron jobs.

There are also Pre-Installed CGI Scripts. Those are Interchange Cart, Agora Cart, Bulletin Board, Java Chat, HTML Chat, phpMyChat, CGI Wrapper (for non-suexec installs), Random HTML generator, Advanced Guestbook, Counter Generator, Java Clock Generator, Java Countdown Generator, Secure FormMail clone, CGIEmail, Entropy Search, Entropy Banner. Network Tools are DNS Lookup and Traceroute. Database Management tools includes Managing MySQL databases and phpMyAdmin access.

For beginners, CPanel has a lot of options that are easy to use.   CPanel works with most of browsers, such as IE, Opera, Firefox and others.

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Apr
21st

Free and Cheap—Web Space Options for the Thrifty At Heart

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There are some good deals on the internet concerning web space and hosting but you have to look to find the best deals. You should also consider how long a provider has been in business.

Finding free web space on the Internet is simple. All you have to do is use a simple Web search (Google, AltaVista or Yahoo) and the results should bring back options for free web space. There are many individuals and businesses looking for a place to put their website without having to pay for the service. These free services can provide anywhere from 5MB to 100Mb of online web space for hosting your web site.

Free sites also come with some cool stuff, such as counters, guest books, virtual domain names, tracking logs, blogs, copy and past scripts that are usually Java code scripts and more. These additions are good for people that have little or no knowledge into building a web site.

A free service provides benefits to all people and may sound like a good idea but the goal is to do your research to see if the deals are viable or not. Free services can also bring other unwanted things that you have to deal with when you sign up for the service. Usually, you have to submit to advertising and surveys by filling out a form before you can get your free service. Be sure that you read the user agreements that come with the free services.

You can go on the cheap and don’t want advertisements running on your site, you can get a service similar to free hosting but you would have to pay a small fee to keep your web page ad-free. Some of these providers will offer you a service for $2.95 a month with 100MB of web space if that’s all that you need, and you can always upgrade your packages.

There’s a lot of competition for your Web site hosting dollars, and you can find some pretty good deals if you look hard enough.

Apr
20th

Using Free Hosting Services

Files under Web Development, Web Hosting | 68 views | Leave a Comment

Free web hosting is the most basic web hosting service that you can obtain and there are many free hosting companies that are available on the internet. Free hosting services are usually financed by advertisements on web sites that are hosted.

Free web hosting services are extremely limited. If you get a free hosting service you will have ads on the top and the bottom of your web-site and depending on what your web-site is all about, it may not fit at all but for people starting out on the internet it may be the best option if you don’t have a lot of traffic or just a small site.

The type of web domain that you receive when you get a free web hosting is a subdomain with the name that you pick (yourname.webhost.com) or a name in a directory (yourname.webhost.com). For example, if the name of your free host is freestanding.com,
Then your web domain would be yourbusiness.freestanding.com.

As stated before, if you are a novice, this is the type of account that you would probably want to get but there are some shortcomings to free web hosting if you are looking for more options on the account.

First, many free hosting accounts do not support database management or what you would call in simple terms, putting data structures on the free web host side of their server. Databases are usually used for online data retrieval routines. Many of these free web hosting sites do not support a common package called mySQL which allows you to program queries into your web sites.

They also don’t support multiple e-mail accounts. Most free web hosting service only gives you one email account and it’s usually a web based internet account. The host does not include modules for Flash Programming, PHP and Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language (DHMTL).

In summary, free web hosting is for novices who want an easy hosting option without many bells and whistles.

Apr
20th

Domain Names and Search Engine Ranking

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Does the length of your website’s domain name registration affect search engine optimization and results?

Should you renew your domain name for a long period of time? And if so, how long is long enough? If you want to stay ahead of your competition, then you might consider looking at the length of time your competitors have registered their domain names. If your competitors have generally renewed their domain names for one or two years, you might consider registering your domain name for 5 or 10 years. While putting off your domain name’s expiration date might help your search engine rankings, keep in mind that this may be only a small victory when it comes to search engine rankings.

Its good business sense to register a domain for at least 10 years. You don’t want to deal with the process annual process of renewing them every year. It’s best to obtain the domain names that you want to keep for a while and renew then on a 5 to 10 year plan.

If your domain name expires, there’s a good chance that someone will register your domain name immediately after it expires. If, for whatever reason, you don’t renew your domain name, someone watching a ‘watch list’ of expiring domain names will try to capitalize on the online business that you’ve built over the years. They know that there is potential website traffic they can have simply by renewing your old domain name. By renewing your domain name for several years, your domain name won’t expire for a while, and it won’t be opened up to expired domain name buyers.

If you really want to stay ahead of the competition, you might consider registering or renewing your domain name for 100 years. Currently, Network Solutions (www.netsol.com) is the only registrar offering the 100 year option, which costs $999.00. GoDaddy (www.godaddy.com), currently offers to renew or register a domain name for 10 years, at a discount of $6.95 per year.
Yes, you can lose critical positioning in the search engines if you don’t reregister your domain name in time. You may have to start the SEO process all over again!

Apr
19th

Using JSP as a Host Server

Files under Web Development, Web Hosting | 96 views | Leave a Comment

JSP Hosting is a Java hosting program that has many similarities to Microsoft ASP. JSP hosting refers to the ability to run and manage Java Server Pages. Even though Java Server Pages (JSP) is quite similar to Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP) JSP does have slight differences in the hosting environment.

Java Server Pages is a server-side language that uses simple tag-based codes inserted into HTML and XML to produce dynamic and interactive web pages that are platform independent, meaning that by all rights they should appear exactly the same on every computer screen, regardless of the platform. This is the result when your publish yoy JSP-coded website on a JSP-supported Java hosting provider.

JSP allows web designers combine dynamically generated HTML in with their standard, static HTML code. While most CGI programs require you to compose the entire website in that one program, JSP allows you to compose the dynamic aspects and the static aspects of your site separately.

Java Hosting which includes JSP support would be the logical choice of any web designer wishing to eliminate the irritating need to repeat work they’ve already done. Java hosting, and JSP hosting specifically, would also be an efficient choice for those web designers working with a team.

One of the greatest aspects about JSP is that you don’t need to learn Java to use it and it’s practically built into programs like Macromedia Dreamweaver MX.
JSP’s use a variety of simple tags. The following are some of the most basic and common ones:

* Directives: <%@directive%> Instructions processed when the page is compiled
* Hidden Comments: <–comment–> Document the page, not sent to the client
* Declarations: <%!declaration%> Declare methods or variables with scope throughout the page.
* Expressions: <%=expression%> A bit more complicated to explain, expressions produce results which are then inserted into the output stream at the appropriate place
* Scriptlets: <%scriptlet%> A fragment of code that can access a declared variable and execute it at a defined time.
* Actions: <jsp:action> An XML-style tag that can perform any of a slew of functions

So if you are running JSP, remember that you need to have a host that provides JSP runtime modules on the host side of your web server so that you can run the appropriate scripts.

Apr
19th

Developing Cold Fusion Hosting

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Cold Fusion Hosting is all about databases, really. Cold Fusion, a software suite brought to us by the fine folks at Macromedia, which allows web-interactivity with databases. With Cold Fusion web hosting, you can now query, update, index, and chart databases from any web browser.

Cold Fusion hosting adds versatility and interactivity to ecommerce sites. Cold Fusion allows you to publish and then have automatically removed from your site time-sensitive content, such as flight schedules or event calendars. It adds functionality to creating and managing mailing lists and business reports. It allows you to offer your visitors printable content and customized menus.

Anytime you see .cfm as the extension on a web page, as opposed to .htm or .asp for example, you know you’re dealing with Cold Fusion Markup Language (CFML).

Though cold fusion is built on the Java platform, CFML allows web developers the benefits of Java without its inherent technical complexities. You need not know Java scripting in order to use cold fusion. CFML is a tag-based language quite similar to HTML and XML which makes it easy for anyone with even the most basic knowledge of web scripting to learn.

Cold Fusion is a server-side language which means that any web pages using CFML are read and interpreted by the Cold Fusion hosting company’s server and converted into an HTML page prior to being sent back to the user’s browser.

Cold Fusion web hosting can be significantly more expensive than other forms of web hosting, and should therefore only really be considered if its unique set of tools are relevant for your site’s intended uses. Cold Fusion hosting is usually run on Windows 2000/NT/2003 operating systems, though you can also find support for Cold Fusion hosting on Linux and Sun servers.

In addition to all the usual factors you must consider when choosing any web host - cost, disk space, bandwidth, uptime, scalability, support - you now also have to consider certain factors specific to cold fusion hosting, including: potential tag restrictions, additional security concerns, whether the cold fusion hosting company provides database support, and which version of Cold Fusion they’re using.

One type of tag restriction that is also a security concern is “high risk” tags, such as those that can be used to find and erase selected files from a server. For some larger businesses, this functionality is crucial to their operation, though potentially detrimental if accessed by the wrong hands, in which case a dedicated server is probably in order. Fortunately, cold fusion hosting is offered on shared, virtual, and dedicated servers.

Cold Fusion is well worth considering if you’d like the functionality of the Java platform with the facility of a comparatively autonomous and user-friendly software system. Especially if your website is expected to generate an income, you may find that the intimidating price tag, in the long run, turned out to be a bargain.

Apr
18th

Using MySQL in a Hosting Environment

Files under Web Development, Web Hosting | 66 views | 1 Comment

MySQL is a heavy-duty database server. Used with various software languages, most notably PHP, and part of the LAMP family (which is comprised of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP),

Whether it’s a customer relations management list or medical records, any data you have that needs storing, is stored on a database. You will need a database management system to add, access, edit, and process data in your databases, and MySQL is one of the best and most comprehensive packages on the market. MySQL can also be used as a relational database management system, which means it can store data in various tables that can communicate with one another rather than all in one large “storeroom” of data.

You can run MySQL as a server in your local device or in a remote server. All you need to access your MySQL databases and MySQL functionality is your server name (such as the name server of your MySQL web hosting provider) or the appropriate IP address. You can then input your various commands, most likely using PHP scripts, to interact with your various databases. These commands are written on programming scripts.

When choosing a MySQL web hosting provider, you’ll want to consider some additional factors beyond the standard uptime, backup/redundancy systems, bandwidth, email, and bandwidth concerns.

* Databases: If you’re seeking a MySQL web hosting provider, you’re surely planning on making databases a significant part of your web-presence. You therefore need to find a MySQL hosting provider that offers you at least as many data structures as you might need. A host that promotes itself as a MySQL hosting provider must offer its clients with multiple websites at least five databases.

* Interface: You’ll be working with your databases intimately and frequently. You’ll want a MySQL hosting provider that’s designed its admin interface with the MySQL user in mind. If you have various staff-members involved in the building and maintenance of your various tables and databases, you’ll want to be able to create multiple user I.D.’s to allow varying degrees of secure access. CPanel is a good administrative dashboard to have for MySQL databases.

* CRON support: A cron helps you to run specific scripts for regular, routine tasks to be run at periodic intervals. A MySQL hosting provider should allow you to set up and manage crons from your admin control panel. These scripts are also good for Preventive Maintenance routines.

* PHP Info: The most common script for MySQL databases is PHP. A MySQL hosting provider with PHP extensions enabled is likely to be more frustrating than useful to you. By checking into a prospective MySQL hosting provider’s PHP capabilities, you can ensure compatibility between your scripting language and your database management, thus saving yourself tons of trouble and loads of regrets later on.

Remember, if you are running MySQL databases; make sure that you get a host that specializes in MySQL hosting.

Apr
18th

Choosing Windows Web Hosting

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Windows/ XP Web hosting provides web hosting on Windows operating system platform. Microsoft Corporation provides host based software operating system for servers. Windows XP web hosting programs are considered to be easy to cope with, reliable and inexpensive.

The simplicity of the Windows XP operating system is what stands out with these applications. Windows provides its users with friendly, familiar environment that is easy to work with. Today as so much work has been done by developers it’s very easy to administrate your site with using Windows/ Server Side operating system. The Windows/NT platform is also reliable. You also should know that reliability of any platform, same as Windows/NT platform, depends mainly on maintenance and technical knowledge.

Windows/XP platform is scalable and very cost-effective because at a relatively low price you can set up a fully functional Internet server with Windows XP in a matter of hours.

The big question is what do you want your web-site to do? Interactive websites usually rely on ASP (Active Server Pages which allow scripts on a web page to be run on the server before the files are transmitted to the client), PHP, or Perl (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language which is a scripting language used for receive and process data stored on web page forms).

And if you prefer ASP most of all Windows/ XP - based web hosting is the perfect choice for you. There are also some more only Windows available applications such as Access, MS SQL, Windows Media and Virtual Basic scripts. Windows XP offers benefits over other operating systems. Using these benefits gives you an opportunity to be productive and publish your information on the Internet rapidly developing your website or web application.

Windows XP server packages have great programs for individuals who are familiar with MS Windows XP software. The server package for hosting even allows for optimization of hard disk space and RAM which eliminates computer lock-ups while loading web applications.

Apr
17th

Using Subdomains - Benefits and Drawbacks

Files under Web Development, Web Hosting | 56 views | Leave a Comment

Most businesses don’t like to use subdomains because they feel like they give them a disadvantage in many areas, such as having a prefix name before your web-site, being ignored by bots and index spiders in search engines and all in all, it just doesn’t look right. So let’s check our facts on subdomains.

A subdomain is substitute or second-level of a domain. A regular domain looks as follows: www.mixedsoup.com . A sub domain looks like this: subdomain.mixedsoup.com. Subdomains do not have www on the front of them. All subs start with “http://subdomain.maindomain.com pattern of identification.

Subdomains rank efficiently well. Search engine spiders and bots are not prejudiced when it comes to the ranking of subdomains and regular domains. As long as your site has the right SEO keywords and has been optimized, whether you have a subdomain or regular domain name doesn’t make a difference at all.

Let’s pretend that you site has a lot of categories in it. If you were to submit to a search engine, you could submit each subdomain as its own individual category and still get a good ranking. Each subdomain would be looked at by search engines as a new site with its own index or home page. You may want to try creating subfolders on the subdomain to get around this so that search engines can read the folder as one set of site information.

People worry about their subdomain getting banned if the main domain name is banned. If the main domain is banned, it will have an effect on the subdomain. You see this happen often in adult content sites that have violated certain agreements that they have signed with a provider that does not want a domain used for adult material.

Again, there is nothing wrong with using a subdomain. If you want to develop each subdomain as its own entity, then by all means, do so. If not, get yourself a main domain name and use that as a certified landing page.

Apr
17th

Beware of the Cyber Squatters

Files under Web Development, Web Hosting | 53 views | Leave a Comment

Your domain name could be stolen or given up to the evil entity known as the Cyber squatters whose main mission is to steal your web identity and this is how they do it. They could register YourDomainName.org, and do the same thing with YourDomainName.biz, therefore contacting you and try to sell you those names at advanced prices. If that doesn’t work, then the following events could happen.

They will allow your competitor to get a domain that sounds like yours, and allow him to cause confusion or try to steal your hard-earned traffic, business and clients.

Take these steps right now to halt the cyber squatters.

Have people go through you for authorization: Go through your domain name registrar and fill in a form that locks in authorized entities of your claim of other domain names. You can buy these names and keep them under your roof.  It will provide you information to include, such as contact information, who should be contacted if someone wants to register your domain, the character string you are claiming (this must be an EXACT match), description of your current products/services, when you began using that domain name.

You have a small window to accomplish filling out an authorized entry form. Check with your domain registrar for time frame windows in filling out an authorized entry form Failure to enter a claim during a certain time frame means the registering entities will not check to see if there is an equivalent .com, .net or .org name. They will not check the IP Claim Service database. Meaning, you could lose your .info or net-version of your domain name.

Don’t let cyber squatters shake you down and ruin what you have built up on the net. Get the rights and the authorization to similar or like names to your main domain name!