Archive for July, 2009

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Linux Shared Hosting

July 25th, 2009

Linux shared hosting packages are among the cheapest web hosting packages available, and although some may think that cheap will mean nasty, you will be wrong; Linux shared hosting packages offer great value for money when you consider both the account resources that you are paying for but also the extras that you will get with your web hosting package. Most Linux shared hosting packages are based upon the cPanel control panel meaning that your web hosting provider can guarantee you both security and reliability for your Linux shared hosting package; the use of cPanel also means that you will be provided with an easy way in which you can manage your web hosting package.

Competition is stiff when it comes to Linux shared hosting packages because it doesn’t cost much to start off with a small reseller hosting package that will allow you to offer your own Linux shared hosting packages; because of this you will find that it pays off to shop around for the best web hosting deals, since because of the cost of Linux shared hosting it is highly likely that you’ll find something that is able to offer you more than what you actually need but is at the bottom end of your budget. Linux shared web hosting services are able to cater for most peoples needs with support for PHP and MySQL based websites as standard; the cost of Linux shared hosting services also makes them ideal for people who wish to host small websites that may not necessarily receive much traffic, as if they aren’t bringing in any money then you’re not at a loss to be hosting it on a small Linux shared web hosting plan. If you starting off with web hosting for the first time then your first web hosting package should be a Linux shared web hosting package, primarily because of the cost but also because full support is available in most cases; if you are able to receive full support for your Linux shared hosting package then you can be sure that your web hosting provider will be able to offer you assistance with setting up your web hosting package for the first time. If you wish to make the most of a Linux shared web hosting package then you should choose one that will allow you to host a large number of domains; this will allow you to spread your account resources across multiple websites.

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Use of Parallel’s Plesk Control Panel In Web Hosting Industry.

July 25th, 2009

Parallel’s Plesk Control Panel is considered to be a highly recommended and one of the most used control panels in the Web Hosting Industry today. Plesk control panel can operate with Windows as well as on Linux platforms.

Plesk is an ideal solution for Dedicated, Shared and Virtual hosting. Plesk control panel is the most stable and secure multi-platform web hosting control panel available for users. Most of the leading web hosting service providers use Plesk for the purpose of increasing their per server profitability. There are many benefits of using Plesk Control panel. Windows and Linux server’s can make use of Plesk.

Dedicated Web Hosting

Plesk’s RPM installation and modular design allow Dedicated Hosting providers to satisfy the needs of tech savvy customers. It deploys and is ready in a very short time. It provides high performance solutions which is comprehensive yet inexpensive. There are many unique features such as XML-API which automize the provisioning process and integrating 3rd party applications, included in Plesk. It includes a complete Software Development Kit with multiple backend utilities delivering service providers and customers more power to adapt their offerings as well as an avenue for easy up selling and additions.

Shared Web Hosting

Plesk’s tiered self administration and uniform multi platform design is perfect for the management of a shared web hosting environment. The control panel strengthens providers for managing multiple domains running reliably on highly scalable  architecture optimizes for the reseller channel. A person with no technical background too can easily create, manage and set-up accounts while customers can administer their virtual domains without the support from the technical staff. Plesk satisfies the needs of both simple and complex web hosting system configurations at the same time allowing full customization.

Virtual Web Hosting

Plesk efficiently delivers management power with a small footprint making it an ideal for Virtual Private Server Hosting solution. With the use of Virtuozzo, Plesk users can deploy templates of Plesk control panel systems. Virtual servers provide an isolated dedicated server environment. Getting upgrades has never been so simple before from a single VPS console. Plesk and Virtuozzo are unsurpassed in their ability to increase ROI and generate revenue for the professional web hosting provider.

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Competing Features Of cPanel 11 and Plesk 9

July 25th, 2009

cPanel 11 and Plesk 9 are the latest control panels available for the web hosting service providers. These panels enable them to provide their web hosting services to their clients. With the help of these control panels provided by the hosting firms, clients can manage different tasks involved in the web hosting accounts, these panels simplifies the tasks for the support staff as clients are able to carry out majority of the tasks themselves. There are many different tasks that can be simplified with the use of these control panels, it involves the management of web services, E-mail, DNS and Database on both half’s i.e. client and administrator. Normally most of the web hosting service providers provide control panel access as a standard feature for the web hosting accounts. These control panels are simple to use, a person with no knowledge of web hosting too can operate it and hence this is one of the major reasons why these control panels have gained popularity in the web hosting industry.

Until now cPanel is compatible with Linux Servers only. Which means cPanel can be provided by web hosting firms only to the clients that choose Linux Servers for hosting their web sites. Which is not the case with Plesk, Plesk control panel is compatible with Linux as well as with Windows web hosting platforms. Plesk is majorly used by web hosts due to its stability.

cPanel and Plesk have their own advantages when used by customers and administrators of Web hosting services. Usually Plesk is provided with Windows Web Hosting service and cPanel with Linux Web Hosting solutions.

Below one can find the advantages of Plesk control panel.

>> Windows Support : Plesk works on Windows Web hosting service allowing web hosting service providers to provide Windows based web hosting packages to the customers. Customers ASP and ASP.NET websites can only work on Windows servers, so Windows Web Hosting service needs to be opted. Customers usually prefer Plesk with Windows Web Hosting.

>> Windows Service Support : As Plesk can be used on Windows based servers it has the capability to integrate to integrate with multiple Windows based programs. It has an advanced feature support for some Windows programs such as Microsoft SQL Server which can be managed by Plesk 9.0 by server administrators and clients with their own databases which makes it an ideal control panel solution for Windows.

>> Cross Platform Compatibility : From a system administrator’s point of view,  one may find it more beneficial having a single control panel on all the servers. Mastering a single control panel is much simpler than mastering two. As a customer one may find it easy since it means that one should be able to get the same sort of features from both Linux as well as from Windows web hosting solutions.

Though Plesk seems to be perfect for Windows web hosting packages, it can also be used for Linux packages.

cPanel is a preferred control panel for Linux web hosting services. Benefits of cPanel are as follows.

>> More Features of Linux : cPanel encompasses more features for Linux web hosting solutions than Plesk control panel. cPanel can be used in combination with different add-ons such as Fantastico script installer and CFS firewall to provide customers a wide range of services which can be used from their web hosting accounts control panel, such features can’t be used on Plesk Linux Web Hosting servers.

>> Reseller Support : Apart from Plesk 9.0 version, other versions does not provide support for reseller web hosting accounts whereas cPanel offers good support for resellers. cPanel is available with the Web Host Manager (WHM) panel which allows resellers to control all different aspects of their reseller accounts including the configuring of their own packages and the setting up of client web hosting accounts.

>> Faster Loading : cPanel’s internal pages load more faster than those of Plesk and certain tasks are carried out quicker than they would be with the Plesk control panel. cPanel does not rely on external databases in much cases, this is one of the reasons of the smooth functioning. cPanel has proven to be more reliable than Plesk on Linux.

To sum it up, both the control panels cPanel and Plesk provide web hosting service provider firms a reliable control panel service but come with their own advantages and disadvantages. But, Plesk for Windows and cPanel for Linux is the perfect solution offered by web hosting firms.

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Game Server Web Hosting : Dedicated Server Hosting Is Highly Recommended

July 25th, 2009

Online gaming industry is one of the highest earning businesses in the world of Internet today. The choices of online gamers have drastically changed. Online gamers no longer like to play simple games. Todays trend is of high definition and more realistic kind of games.

Due to the ever increasing users of online gaming, many users have switched to dedicated server hosting to provide their customers with better services. In the initial stages users opted for shared web hosting packages to start the online gaming service. But as the number of gamers increased, the web hosting packages had to be upgraded. Today the big online gaming web-sites are hosted on dedicated servers.

Today those who wish to start an online gaming website either select a VPS hosting package or Dedicated server options. Now-a-days Gaming websites isn’t a normal business website. Though not every gaming website needs a dedicated server. It depends on the type of game that is hosted on a server, the number of visitors to the website etc.

Having an account for dedicated server with a web hosting company means, you are not required to share the server with any other user. Dedicated server hosting has more advantages than shared web hosting solutions. A dedicated server is necessary for the web-sites that has more traffic daily to the website. Usually most of the online gaming websites charge customers with certain amount of money every month for allowing them to play the games. Traffic on the Internet is dynamic, hence if a website is slow or takes long time to respond, then visitors might turn their back to such websites and search for a better option. Falling into such situations means losing out a lot of potential business. Here having a dedicated server hosting package becomes vital.

The fact that dedicated game servers are costly but if thinking of a long term objective then hosting the game on a dedicated server from the beginning itself can repay well in future, because as the web-site grows older on the web, means more traffic and more traffic means more business.

Usually a well reputed web hosting company provides assistance for all the queries regarding dedicated game server options. They would help your business grow. Hence, selecting the correct web hosting company is crucial. Selection of the appropriate operating system, data backups, bandwidth, package, hardware and space is the next thing after choosing a reliable web hosting company.

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Control Panels For Windows Web Hosting

July 25th, 2009

Windows Web Hosting is one of the most preferred web hosting options present in the Web Hosting Industry. The Windows web hosting services offers access to control panels in order to manage the web hosting account. With a control panel managing the account becomes simple, there is no need to contact the administrator everytime for resolving simple tasks such as creating a new mail account under a domain, deleting an account etc. There has been an increase in the number of users opting for control panel access for a web hosting account.

Windows web hosting control panel’s are few as Windows isn’t an open source operating system, hence lot of knowledge of programming in order to be able to produce an application that is able to fully function with a Windows server. Windows web hosting services are becoming more and more popular in terms of control panels too due to the growing demand for Windows web hosting services and customers.

There are various control panels offered by web hosting companies. Three control panels that are mainly offered by web hosting firm’s are Plesk, DotNetPanel and Hosting Controller.

Out of these three Plesk is more widely used and it has been in the market since a long time. Plesk is considered to be the most reliable and stable control panel. Hosting controller is classed by many web hosting providers as unreliable but DotNetPanel has yet to gain exposure. These three control panels satisfy the core purpose of managing the Windows web hosting accounts hosted on the Windows servers.

Below are few Advantages offered by the three control panels:

A] DotNetPanel : DotNetPanel doesn’t only emphasize on standard shared Windows Web Hosting services but on advanced Microsoft service hosting too to support web hosting service providers increase the range of Windows based web hosting products. Cheap Hyper V based VPS hosting solutions as well as Microsoft Server 2007 e-mail hosting solutions can be provided by web hosts with this control panel. Web hosting services can be offered with a cheap cost by using DotNetPanel hence offering cheaper web hosting solution.

B] Hosting Controller : Hosting controller is the biggest rival of Plesk provisioning characteristics. But, yet Hosting Controller has many other features to offer web hosting providers like built-in back-up and restore feature to ensure that if any data gets lost due to a software or hardware failure then there will be back-ups which can be relied on. control panel due to its focus on offering shared Windows web hosting services. Hosting Controller does not include any advanced management and

C] Plesk : Plesk has the ability to offer the web hosting service provider as server administrators as well as the customers as easy way to use interface which one can use to configure the different settings related to both Plesk and one’s server as well as to create web hosting accounts for the customers front end. Plesk proves to be useful for those who are hosted on the server and wish to manage the account successfully and effectively. Plesk is more

user friendly compared to others hence a newbie too can easily use Plesk.

Similar to Plesk, cPanel has proved to be the most popular control panel for Linux web hosting.

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Collection of Terms Used in Web Hosting Business

July 25th, 2009

As an amateur, any webmaster can get confused with the common web hosting terms which can make things complicated. Therefore, below is a list of commonly used terms in the business of Web Hosting.

Bandwidth : Bandwidth is the term that is used to describe the amount of data that is passed or is estimated to travel across a communication channel in an estimated period of time. It can be measured monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or Annually. It depends on the plan a client signs-up for.

Hosting Plan (Dedicated Hosting) : A dedicated hosting is recommended for websites that incur high amounts of traffic. A user gets complete root/administrative access to the server. Same is the benefit with a VPS or Virtual Private Server.

Gigabytes (Hard Disk Space) : It is an unit to measure a computers storage capacity. One Gigabyte equals one billion bytes.

DNS : DNS is an abbreviation of Domain Name Server. It differentiates between different institutes such as .com, .us, etc.

Domain parking : When an individual or any company purchase domain names and keep it unused is known as domain parking. Later when required, they can link those domains to their required old domain. Domain parking has become a common way of business, individuals buy domains in a bulk, park it and then resell it at a higher price.

FTP : FTP or File Transfer Protocol is a common way of transferring files or data across a network in a secure way.

Auto-Responders: While auto-responders are not email accounts in themselves, they are assigned an email address and it auto-respond to anyone who sends them an email. The reply is a pre-formatted email and every response is identical to the corresponding queries.

HTTP and HTML : HTTP or Hyper Text Transfer Protocol is used inorder to request or transmit web pages and components over the Internet and various other computer networks.

HTML is an abbreviation of Hyper Text MarkUp Language which is used to structure the multimedia and text present in a website. It also creates hyper text links between electronic documents.

ISP : One might be aware of this, an ISP is the Internet Service Provider. An ISP is essential if one wishes to connect to their servers.

There are many more terms that I would describe in my later post. The above mentioned terms of Web Hosting are some of the very commonly used one’s and are essential for a webmaster to know.

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An Explanation on Managed Dedicated Web Hosting

July 25th, 2009

A managed web hosting is a smarter alternative for any small to medium sized business, who wants to make an effective web presence but do not have the time, budget and other required resources of IT. Neither you want to invest in costly hardware required to host a website.

With a managed web hosting solution, an individual leases bandwidth, diskspace and other resources from a web hosting provider. The website is then placed on one of their servers chosen by you. Apart from web hosting, the web hosting provider provides you with number of other features which can prove to be beneficial for companies/organizations using Internet as a medium to accelerate the revenue generation plus attract new customers, which I believe is the main objective of any business.

There are various benefits of Managed Web Hosting for a business, some of them are listed below:

Professionals Take Care of One’s Website

When it comes to any business, as we all are aware, its better to let experts handle critical responsibilities for you. Failure to do so, would spend a lot of  amount of time and resources and ultimately add to the loss incurred by an organisation.

By, letting a professional web hosting provider host a site for you, you are getting rid of waste of time and resource required to maintain the website and related tasks. Their staffs consists of professionals and have good experience in maintaining the hardware and programming necessary for keeping one’s website up and running all the time. The uptime of a website is most crucial for any online business. A web hosts knowledge and experience can suffice your business additionally and you can direct your resources to other crucial tasks of business.

Save Crucial Resources by opting for Managed Web Hosting

Applying cost-effective techniques to any business is crucial in terms of its growth. Managed hosting has proven to be one such wise decision and has added exponentially for businesses profits.

If one plans to host a website and related components in-house, the hardware required isn’t cheap. Then, you would need professionals for setting up the server and the website. The costs charged by these professionals aren’t cheap. After the set-up is done, you’d later need them again for maintenance and resolving other problems, which means you would once again need to put hands in your pocket in order to make them payment.

This expenditure can be avoided by opting to submit your website to be managed by a third party professional, who charge nominal fees to execute the crucial tasks. The web hosts also offer range of different plans suitable for your requirements. They offer cheap web hosting solutions with Good Quality Branded Hardware with latest and up-to-date technologies. They take complete responsibility of keeping the servers up and running, incase a problem does occur, they can get that sorted within few minutes. You can get an option of switching between plans , depending on the provider they offer Windows Web Hosting as well as Linux Web Hosting solutions. Incase you run out of resources you have the privilege of upgrading to a higher plan within minutes. The only task that you or the owner of the website needs to do is to keep the website updated for the visitor. Varying from web host to web host, come provide back-ups of the sites and applications.

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Unmanaged Dedicated Web Server Hosting Solution

July 25th, 2009

Unmanaged web hosting is one of the other type of web hosting solution. One can choose the unmanaged dedicated server plan inorder to avail the unmanaged server. A customer is provided with the hardware and the Operating System installed on the server. Other tasks such as installation of applications and server maintenance, needs to be taken care by the user himself.

All the executive files and the dynamic link libraries files necessary for the website needs to be installed by oneself. The user is free to choose and install the applications and softwares required for the website as s/he is the sole controller of the dedicated server.

The user posses the rights to resell the server space at any point of time to others. This can help you cover the cost of the dedicated server in the meantime server your purpose.

A dedicated web server hosting is the best suitable web hosting solution for businesses and large enterprises. An unmanaged dedicated server hosting can prove to be profitable if you posses the required server management skills. There are number of users who have transformed their businesses into huge profit gaining business by opting for an unmanaged dedicated server hosting solution.

However, one needs to carefully select the such a dedicated web hosting provider. The appropriate web hosting server can help the website’s success and in-turn growth in the business.

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Windows Server 2008 – Dedicated Server Hosting

July 25th, 2009

Windows Server 2008 Datacenter edition offers large scale virtualization to small to large server systems with workloads which require highest levels of availability, scalability and reliability. Memory and processing requirements of large scale, critical applications like ERP, databases, server consolidations, custom and line of business applications are well supported by Windows 2008 Datacenter Edition. Datacenter edition is a good option for virtual workloads as unlimited virtualization licensing is coupled with scalability.

Windows Server 2008 is one of the most preferred server’s by Web Hosting firms.

Main scenarios of Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition :

A] Windows Server 2008 with SQL Server and Exchange Server

  1. E-mails are considered to be critical applications as downtime affects productivity. Implementation of high availability solutions with Microsoft Exchange Server becomes very important in such cases. Scalability too is important as it enables users to provide more mailboxes or else to increase the size of the mailbox with lesser server footprint.
  2. Customers make use of Microsoft SQL Server for database applications where high availability and scalability are important.

B] High Availability

Windows  Server 2008 Datacenter edition helps in keeping vital server workloads available to customers, partners and employees around the world and around the clock using

  1. Geographically scattered clustering which spans network subnets
  2. Dynamic hardware partitioning which supports Hot/Add Replace Memory and  Hot Add/Replace Processor.
  3. Failover clustering which supports upto 16 nodes
  4. Flawless real time operating system memory backup

C] Identity and Security Management

This new authentication architecture in Windows Server 2008 datacenter delivers advanced identity and access management features which help in maintaining employee productivity, parallely enhancing security of the IT operations

  1. Better management of certificates and smart card enrollment with Advanced Certificate Management Services (ADCS)
  2. Federated access to internal resources for external users through Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS).

D] Large Scale Virtualization

Server virtualization technology allows to optimize the resources and realize significant infrastructure and management cost saving. It offers an ideal platform for enterprise scale virtualization:

  1. Quick migration couples the failover clustering of Windows Server 2008 Datacenter edition with Windows Server 2008 Hyper V for moving virtualized server workloads from one host server to another with minimum disruption. It maintains the availability of virtualized servers in the event of both planned and unplanned downtime
  2. Its license include unlimited virtualization rights  providing customers to use rights to run an unlimited number of virtualized instances of Windows Server on processors licensed with Windows Server 2008 datacenter without purchasing any additional licenses

E] Increased Scalability

Windows Server 2008 Datacenter easily scales to adapt to the increased needs of data warehousing and transaction processing .

  1. Supports upto 2 tera bytes of RAM (64 Gb on 32 bit system)
  2. Authentication and authorization for unlimited number of network connection requests
  3. Support for upto 64 processors i.e. 32 processors on 32-bit systems
  4. Supports unlimited Virtual Private Network connections (VPN).

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Step-By-Step Procedure of SSL Certificate Installation

July 25th, 2009

First of all one must understand if your website needs an SSL certificate installed. SSL is an abbreviation of Secure Socket Layer. It is used for transfer of data through a secure channel i.e. between computers and the servers in an encrypted format. A website that involves online transactions, or share sensitive data, then it is highly recommended to install an SSL certificate onto the domain. A web hosting provider does offer SSL certificates or one can even purchase an SSL directly from the manufacturers. One thing to be highlighted is that, SSL is a third party offering, so the web hosting provider has nothing to do with it. They would just get the SSL installed as a part of customer service. Inorder to have an SSL certificate installed onto the domain, you require a dedicated IP. Depending on the web hosting service provider, they would offer it for free alongwith the SSL certificate.

Prior to the installation of the SSL certificate, you are required to generate the key for SSL certificate and a CSR. If you haven’t done so, below are the steps for the same.

Procedure to Generate Private Key for SSL Certificate

You are required to have a Dedicated IP, inorder to generate a Key for SSL certificate. You cannot proceed further without the IP address known. Once you have it, below is the procedure to generate the key:

1. Log into your control panel

2. Click the SSL MANAGER Icon (or “SSL/TLS Manager”)

3. Click the Private Key icon (or “Generate, view, upload or delete your private keys”) Scroll down to Generate a New Key and select the domain you wish to use with the SSL certificate.

4. Make sure you enter “www” in the box preceding the domain name if you want the certificate to be on www.domainname.com, as a domain without www. is considered as a different domain altogether, and you would face errors.

5. If you want the SSL Certificate to be on a subdomain, you are required to create it in cpanel, then enter the subdomain when generating the key.

6. Once the selection of the domain you wish to use is done, click on “Generate” this would generate the public key file.

7. You are required to save this information for future use. Though you can retrieve the Key file from the server whenever required, but in case somehow due to an unexpected error the information on the server is lost or the key file is lost, you may need to purchase a new SSL Certificate. Hence, to be on the safer side, it is advisable to save the information.

The next stage is to generate the CSR. Below is the procedure for the same.

Procedure to Generate CSR

CSR is an abbreviation of Certificate Signing Request. Here again, a dedicated IP and the Key file is required.

1. Click “SSL Manager” (or “SSL/TLS Manager”) to generate the CSR

2. Click on Certificate Signing Requests (CSR) (or “Generate, view, or delete SSL certificate signing requests”)

3. For the HOST, choose the domain name that you’ve generated the KEY for. Make sure that you select the www version if you wish to install the certificate using www.

Note that, if you have made a key for www.domainname.com, you will need to include the www too. Its essential to enter the same domain name that was used for generation of the key file.

Incase you are unable to select www.domainname.com from the list, it might be possible that you probably did not add (www) to the key you generated. If you need www in the certificate and can’t select your www.domain.com from the list, you are required to repeat the procedure of key generation, make sure you include www.

4. Having done so, you are required to complete with filling the information in the form.

5. Click on Generate

Here again you must save this information.

Once you have your SSL certificate, get your generated Key, CA bundle & CRT files, follow the below steps to Install the SSL Certificate.

1. You must be logged in to your control panel of your domain.

2. Click SSL Installer OR
Click on SSL/TLS Manager icon (it various with the version of the control panel), then click Setup a SSL Certificate.

3. Choose the domain name from the drop down menu at the top

It is required to uninstall any previous certificate by clicking the Delete Host button for installing a new certificate.

4. Now, you need to paste the CRT file provided to you by the company from whom you’ve purchased the SSL Certificate.

5. The KEY file must have automatically appeared, incase its not, then click FETCH to import it. If it still does not appear, you should paste a copy of your KEY.

6. The Certificate Authority (CA) file is the last step. Some SSL Companies provide this. You will need to paste the contents of the CA file now

7. Now click the “Do It” button (or “Install Certificate”) and wait.

This ends the process of your SSL Certificate on your desired domain.

The web hosting provider can help you in the installation of the SSL certificate.

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