Web Hosting

What is a hosting service , have you ever seen the Ridley Scots film ALIEN ,John Hurt [KANE], is the host and you , the budding web master , are the creature , ready to burst from KANEs stomach ! . Please forgive the analogy but parasites are on my mind . No it's not a country and western song , but the subject of internet fraud , a subject we will touch on , in our articles on site security , but i digress , so lets press on .With hosting services waving and blinking at you on every virtual street corner on the Web, it is difficult to select the best one for your business and website. They all offer similar services with their multiple option packages. At times the price will be the same or so close that the difference doesn't matter.

Business owners, from the gigantic, major international corporations to the small "mom & pop" establishments found on the sleepy streets of any small town, are moving their businesses online in record numbers. The popularity of the original World Wide Web, and now Web 2.0 with all it's multimedia glamour, moved the entire world into our living rooms. Borders don't matter anymore.

When you are looking for a web hosting service for your business, whether a virtual storefront, Internet Marketing sales page or an information database to keep your customers happy, you need to know what options being offered are the best for your purposes.

The names of those options might seem strange and confusing to you at first, so here's a list of MUST HAVE features to help you make an informed decision

#Cpanel : Control panel is a graphical interface , the server side landing page where you access and manage details of your website account online . The graphic icons allow you to move easily through all the applications and options available to you as part of your hosting service. One of the best and most functional tools in the industry of web hosting.

Providing the end user you with a more convenient and easier way to manage a website. It is the software that makes website administration, which includes the setting up and maintenance of web sites accessible for non experts . Through the pictorial interaction of the web server and its webmaster, [you] . Setting up sites and adding features , password protecting directories reviewing statistics ,adding blogging and forums are administrative tasks that can be handled by anyone

Since cPanel inception made website administration a lot easier, it has been become the industry standard. However if you really want to get ahead of the game then look for hosters who enhance cPanel , look for Fantastico scripts :. Together, cPanel and Fantastico are able to streamline the process for the end user in setting up software and other applications. Fantastico: Automatically installs scripts on your website, like blogs, forums, collections of images.

#Security : Since it is widely used cpanel, has become the method of phishers and hackers that create scripts that run and command it to setup unauthorized sub-domains that will be able to gather information from innocent victims. This method is referred to as phishing, and the user must always look out for signs of these when utilizing the cPanel. The other must-have feature, is the Secure Socket Layer (SSL). With SSL, sites will begin with the https: prefix the security of an online website is going to be taken care of by the hosting provider. Since security is one of the most important, if not the most important feature of an e-commerce website, SSL guarantees the peace of mind of making transactions safely. With SSL, private information such as credit card numbers, telephone numbers and personal information can be sent through encryption that is virtually safe from theft.

# Support : Often overlooked in our opinion the most important factor for the non expert . Host monster with it’s excellent real time chat and it’s knowledgeable operators has stepped up where other hosters have feared to tread and quite rightly earned themselves an excellent reputation ., the service is free of charge and sets our home site recommendation apart .

VIEW RECOMMENDATION

# Disk Space: 50-100 megabytes should be enough for an average website. Hosting several domains on one account, or a large website with data tables, pictures of your products, video/audio enticements or explanations, will require much larger space requirements.

# Bandwidth: (Data Transfer) 2-3 gigabytes should satisfy most average websites. More will be required for extremely large websites with interactive or multimedia applications.

*Bandwidth is a measure of the amount of available website traffic available to you and your customers. When customers visit your website, data has to pass from your hosted website on a remote server to your browser. You will have a monthly limit expressed in either megabytes or gigabytes.

# PHP: This is a language used to write instructions for a web server. There's PHP scripts offered all over the Web for your use, some free and some not. Check them out.

# MySQL: This open-source (free) relational database management system is the most popular online database engine in the world. As a result, there's more support sites and tutorials than you could ever need. Using PHP and MySQL together will give you a powerful method to provide organized data to your customers.

# SSI (Server-side Includes): a simple scripting language used almost exclusively for the web. Its primary use is to include the contents of one file into another one dynamically on a web server. Your hosting server should have a list of offered includes and some support for you.

# FTP (File Transfer Protocol): This is a simple, secure way, to exchange files over the Internet. It is used to download files from the Internet to your browser and, more importantly here, to upload files from your computer to your website.

VIEW RECOMMENDATION