Category Archives: Blog Hosting

When Do We Need MySQL Databases With Our Web Hosting?

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Whenever you buy web hosting, your hosting provider is sure to include an option called “Databases” in his price quotation or package details. But not many of us know what are databases and why we need them when setting up a website. This article aims to explain a couple of reasons why we use databases and when we need them for our website.

The database systems we usually get with our web hosting accounts are all relational database systems or RDBMS. If we take a Windows hosting server we usually get Microsoft SQL aka MSSQL and if we take a Unix based system we usually get MySQL. Both these systems put your website data into tabular layouts for fast and easy retrieval.

Databases are a collection of rows and columns, where each row or column is related to the others in some way. Due to this relation, information from this database can be retrieved quickly and efficiently as compared to if the data was stored in any other unstructured format. You can consider a database as a collection of multiple spreadsheets which are all related to each other in some way or the other.

Security

A major advantage of having your data stored in a database is the ability to protect the database from unauthorized access, or the ability to protect a database record from being tampered with. A simple example would be the storage of login credentials. In a simple way, login credentials can be stored in a simple text file and be read by your script which does the authentication. However, your file will always save the password stored in plan text, making it vulnerable to anyone who has access to it. Databases have the ability to encrypt the entries using a hashing algorithm to obscure them. Further, to read or write to the database, you need to specify login details, something which is not easily possible with an ordinary text file or spreadsheet.

Efficiency

Due to the manner in which data is stored in the database, retrieval and storage is most efficient. Unlike a spreadsheet, where anything and everything can be stored in any cell, SQL restricts the type of information stored in each row or column based on certain conditions. This validation is inherent in the properties of SQL and is an added advantage for a programmer or developer. Due to the various inbuilt mechanisms that are present in RDBMS systems, they are the most preferred method of storage and retrieval of data.

An article on the DatabaseJournal Blog explains this in a lucid way:

“…The problem with text files is during a read, if the text file is large, it can take quite a bite of time to open and scan the contents of the file looking for what we want. Also, if we wanted to see all the sales to a specific customer, the entire text file would have to be read, and every line occurrence of the customer name would need to be saved in some temporary place until we had them all. If we saved to a spreadsheet instead of a text file, we would have a Sort feature built in. So we may be able to find all the sales to a specific customer quicker, but again, if the file was large, opening the spreadsheet could take a great deal of time.”

Administrative Control

Database systems also have various control mechanisms which allow easy administration of the database and tables within it. The most important part is user management. Each user can be given specific rights to the database, thereby allowing limitation in access so as to secure the data from being tampered, modified or altered. Database Administrator’s can tweak many settings of the database thereby restricting the flow of data, the connection speeds, maximum number of connections to the server and even adjust what hardware resources should be allocated for performing a task.

Tips To Prevent Failed Backups Of Your Website

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Tips To Prevent Failed Backups Of Your Website

Tips To Prevent Failed Backups Of Your Website

Most of us keep regular backups of all our important data, especially which is on the internet. Websites should also be backed up regularly as a safety measure in case of a disaster and also as a version tracking mechanism. This ensures that in the event of our website being hacked or becoming corrupt, we can quickly restore it to a prior version. Most of us have automatic mechanisms to take a backup. But little do we realise that taking a backup doesnt really end there. We need to ensure that it is a workable backup and not a dummy file which has not value. This article explains how we can prevent backup file failures and how to ensure that our website backup will be of use when we need it.

Elements

An important aspect of taking backups is not to forget any of the elements that make up your account. Your web hosting account has several elements which need to be backed up so that you can restore your entire account. This means that you need to backup things like Email, Website Files, Databases, Configuration Files, Web Statistics, Email Forwarders and any other customizations that you may have done with any of these elements. Hosting Control Panels like cPanel or Plesk may allow you to take backups of these elements separately or compile them into a single compressed file. Forgetting even one part of your account backup may render your website useless. Many people forget to take a backup of their database files since the backend is not something that the users interact with. Similarly, the small configuration files and customizations can also boost the speed and efficiency when you attempt to restore the backup.

Disk Space Shortage

The in-built backup options of your web hosting control panel will usually save your backup in the home directory of your account. This means that the backup will also consume hosting space within your account. If you are on a limited space plan, you should have atleast 50% free disk space before you backup your account. If you do not have enough space, the backup may not complete fully or may get corrupt. This can be disastrous when you are dependent on it and when you want to restore the account. Ensure that you have enough free space so that your backup is not stuck.

Failed Download

One of the most common failure points when taking a backup is the download to your local machine or onto the media you are ultimately backing up on. Very often, when the backup file is being downloaded on the media or machine, the network connection may drop or the process maybe terminated. This may indicate that the file has been downloaded, but actually the file is only partially downloaded. A client of ours who was switching from shared hosting to a dedicated server was taking a backup of his website on his own. He started downloading the backup file from his hosting account. The size of the backup file was about 600 MB. On his internet connection, it indicated that about 8 minutes were left for the download to complete. In between the download process, his internet connection dropped. He noticed that the file transfer had stopped and file was on his hard disk. However, he did not notice the file size and assumed that the entire 600 MB has been downloaded. The backup file was corrupt and had downloaded only 350 MB. Luckily he noticed the mistake and was able to retrieve the backup file. You may not always be so lucky.

Integrity Check with the Checksum

The best way to ensure your backup file’s integrity is using a checksum tool to verify the checksum of the file before and after it is downloaded. Ideally this means that you get a unique hash value of the file from the web server. This unique hash value is tied to the file and is almost impossible to reverse engineer. Then, after you have downloaded the file, retest for the checksum of the downloaded file on your backup media. The checksum of the file should be exactly the same. If the file is corrupt or tampered or has not downloaded properly, the checksum will mismatch and you will get to know easily. This ensures data integrity and provides assurance of a healthy backup file.

 

Buying Web Hosting Space From Your Web Designer? Watch Out

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We all love to shirk responsibility and hand over some of our problems for people who are willing to handle them. Buying the right type of web hosting maybe quite an overwhelming process for a not so tech savvy business owner. The task of how muck disk space, how much bandwidth and all the technical jargon involved can get quite taxing to understand. This is a primary reason why web designers are more than happy to bundle a web hosting account along with their designing fees. But there are many ways in which such relationships can get sour if the terms of the bundling are not made clear initially. This article explains what could go wrong if you buy web hosting space from your web designer rather than buying it independently.

Buying Web Hosting Space From Your Web Designer? Watch Out

Buying Web Hosting Space From Your Web Designer? Watch Out

Price

Although you may feel that you’ve got a great package deal on your web hosting along with design fees, you should be aware that web hosting fees are recurring fees and usually payable monthly or annually. Don’t get carried away with the waiver of fees for the first year. Some website owners are in for a rude shock when the next year on the renewal anniversary, they receive a huge invoice for renewal of the web hosting account. Design firms are almost always resellers or affiliates of web hosting companies and never a web host themselves. This can be a positive thing as well as a negative thing. Sometimes they may be able to offer you a highly competitive pricing, while some of them may just exploit your ignorance or inability.

Lock In

Taking a package from your website developers may lock you in to their web hosting package as well as their design. More than a physical barrier, it creates a sort of psychological block which prevents you from switching services or choosing a different design for your website. This is precisely the reason why low cost packages are offered and customers are lured to them. Website owners fear that if they shift the design services, then the developers may not be too cooperative and not give them control of the hosting account. Similarly, even if the hosting account has limited features or provides bad service, you may be willing to stick to it if it is bundled with your development package. You should always have control of your hosting account and also have your design source code with you.

Support

If your web designer is knowledgeable, well equipped and efficient, you may get good technical support. Issues related to your website’s hosting will be solved quickly. But if your designers are new to the hosting world, they may not be of much help. Sometimes it maybe helpful to buy the hosting and design from the same company, so that all your services are under one roof. This way there can be no blame game as to which service is deficient, in case of a failure. However, this can also be a disadvantage if you have hired a nascent design firm. They maybe too raw to know the intricacies of hosting and may not be able to keep up with changing technologies or may not be competent to provide the right security or optimization measures. This should not be expected from them either, as designing is their primary business and all other things are side businesses.

Control

If you are taking a package deal, make things clear at the beginning. What happens if you decide to hire the services of another designer? Who keeps the control of the website? On whose name is the domain name and hosting registered? How do you login to control your website files? These are some of the basic questions that you should ask when you are offered such a deal. You don’t want to end up having a disagreement with your web designer, who turns off your website and takes control of your domain name, leaving you high and dry.

Web Hosting And Net Neutrality In A Nutshell

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Web Hosting And Net Neutrality In A Nutshell

Web Hosting And Net Neutrality In A Nutshell

Net Neutrality is a phrase which is being sprayed all over the internet without providing a simple and clear explanation to the layman. Web Hosts are as affected by Net Neutrality decisions just like any ordinary internet user. Many people are quick to point out that Web Hosts also practice data discrimination and should be placed on the same guillotine as ISPs. However, this is not the case as there is a huge difference in providing Bandwidth and in providing a web hosting service. This article points out a couple of reasons why the Web Hosting industry also embraces Net Neutrality with open arms and why a comparison maybe equal to apples and oranges.

Low Entry Barriers

Unlike Internet Services in any country, it is pretty simple for a person to start a web hosting business. To become an ISP, there are several legal and business hurdles that one must cross. It’s not an easy task and needs deep pockets and great influence to start the business. It is on par with a Telephone Company or Electricity Supplier. On the other hand, starting a web hosting business can be done with little or no investment. Web hosting resellers don’t even need to own a server or commit any sales to start their business. A small or medium host can spend a couple of dollars every month and lease a hosting server. This means that to enter into this industry the cost is very low and regulation is negligible. There is no Government control or paper work that needs to be done to sell hosting space. This automatically increases the number of players in the industry.

Intense Competition

The low entry barriers cause such intense competition, that the ultimate beneficiary is the end user. If one web host starts acting restrictive, people can easily switch to another one without much ado. Due to customer-facing side of the business being virtual and online, there is easy accessibility and no physical hindrances to switching. However in most places around the world, the number of ISPs are miniscule and in rural areas there may not even be more than one or two. This kills the competitiveness of the business and gives a dominant position to the ISP, which can be misused to exploit subscribers. Often, when there are only a couple of ISPs operating, it leads to a sort of cartel and price fixing which cannot be questioned. Anti-competition laws around the world prohibit such behavior and try to break up this dependence.

Cut-throat Pricing

Besides striving to offer the best service in terms of speed and resources, every web host aims to offer the best price too. The price-war is so aggressive that even customers find it hard to make a decision as they are spoilt for choice. This is exactly what ISPs don’t want. ISPs want to create restrictions among different website services or online facilities by throttling the popular ones and charging a premium for them.They may either recover the premium from the customers or may ask the web services to cough up that money. If a web host throttles traffic for a certain type of domain name and prioritizes traffic for one that he is selling Eg: .co domain names, then he will soon be out of business because all his clients will switch. As we have learnt from free online services, the consumer doesn’t like to be restricted. The more restrictions you place, the more they will shun your service.

Security and Convenience

Web Hosts do restrict certain type of traffic and also do some filtering, but this is not to create unfair competition or to get a dominant position advantage, but to ensure security and stability of their services. Eg: A host may limit simultaneous FTP connections from a single IP address to a maximum of 50. This is to prevent abuse of their FTP server and to ensure that other users on the same shared server are able to enjoy the service too. ISPs want to filter traffic to commercially exploit the end user, as they know that the end user has limited options for accessing the internet.

A Simple Explanation Of What Big Data Is

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A Simple Explanation Of What Big Data Is

Big Data has become a new buzz word in the IT industry. Everyone is talking about it and repeatedly using it to impress others, even if they themselves don’t really know what it means. Big Data is often used out of context and more as a marketing gimmick. This article aims to explain what Big Data really is and how it will be useful in solving problems.

Physics and Mathematics calculations can give us the exact distance from the East Coast of USA to the West Coast, accurate to about 1 yard. This is a phenomenal achievement and has been applied to various technologies in our daily life. But the challenge comes in when you have data which is not static, which is constantly changing and changing at a rate and in volumes which are humongous to determine in real time. The only way we can process this data is by using computers.

IBM data scientists break big data into four dimensions: volume, variety, velocity and veracity. But there are many more aspects of Big Data. Big data can be described by the following characteristics:

Volume is the size of the data which determines the value and potential of the data under consideration and whether it can actually be considered as Big Data or not. Variety means that the category to which Big Data belongs to is also a very essential fact that needs to be known by the data analysts. This helps the people, who are closely analyzing the data and are associated with it, to effectively use the data to their advantage and thus upholding the importance of the Big Data. Velocity refers to how fast the data is generated and processed to be useful. Variability of the data can also be a problem for the analysts. Veracity is the quality of the data being captured. Accurate analysis depends on the veracity of the source data.

Analogies

An article on the Tibco Blog provided a very simple analogy to understanding what Big Data really is. Their blog says that:

“One analogy for Big Data analysis is to compare your data to a large lake… Trying to get an accurate size of this lake down to the last gallon or ounce is virtually impossible… Now let’s assume that you have built a big water counting machine… You feed all of the water in the lake through your big water counting machine, and it tells you the number of ounces of water in the lake… for that point in time.”

A better, more visual analogy is presented by Paul Lewis of Hitachi Data Systems. He often explains about Big Data by showing a picture cartoon filled with hundreds of people who are doing different things in the picture, looking busy. He explains:

“You need to find the person with the suitcase of money (Value)…but there are many people (Volume), all walking at various speeds running to work (Velocity), from all walks of life (Variety), some are crooks (Veracity).”

Importance and Benefits

One of the major reasons why we need Big Data is for prediction and analysis. One of the best examples where Big Data can be seen in action is the Large Hadron Collider experiment, in which about 150 million sensor deliver data 40 million times per second. After filtering and refraining from recording more than 99.999% of these streams, there are 100 collisions of interest per second. Another important example is Facebook, which handles over 50 billion user photos.

Healthcare is another area where Big Data can play a significant role. One of the most amazing example is Google Flu Trends, which analyses search data from various locations and uses the Big Data Analysis to identify patterns of Influenza epidemics and endemics around the world. Although this data is not necessarily accurate or may have a lot of false positives, it highlights the potential of what Big Data can show you.

A key benefit of Big Data is that there is no specific format in which it is stored. Crudely put, it is a raw dump of data i.e. it is unstructured. The system uses complex algorithms to classify and process this data, which makes it very special.

Why Should You Pay Your Web Hosting Provider On Time?

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Why Should You Pay Your Web Hosting Provider On Time?

A common grouse which most web hosts have is collection of payments and fees. Delayed payments from customers can mean that web hosts have to rework their monthly budget and cash flow and adjust their outward payments accordingly. This itself can be time-consuming and expensive. The advantage that web hosts have over other businesses is that they have full control over the clients account and can suspend the services or terminate the account at will. This article highlights a couple of reasons why you should pay your renewal fees or hosting charges to your web host, on a timely basis.

Prevent Account Suspension

Most web hosts automatically setup their services to Suspend or even terminate an account, if the renewal or subscription fees are not paid on time. This can be managed by an Automated Billing System which integrates with the Hosting Server and controls the Accounts. The billing system can send out automatic reminders for the payment and can also provide an online payment collection service. This means that clients can pay their renewal fees online at any time of the day, from anywhere in the world. If the deadline is missed, the account may be suspended after giving a Suspension Notice to the client. Account Suspension can lead to services becoming unavailable and visitors seeing a Suspension Message on all the pages.

Prevent Last Minute Delays

Last minute payments can be subject to several delays and failures which will ultimately lead to non-payment and the account getting suspended. Last Minute payments are often affected by bank delays, postal delays, payment processing issues, expired credit cards, connectivity issues and so on. Don’t wait till the last minute to make the payment, lest one of these factors prevents you from doing so and your payment becomes overdue and your account getting cancelled.

Prevent Your Website Ranking from falling

With a suspended account, you can’t do much. Search Engines will realise that your account is suspended and that no fresh content is being served up from it. This will lead to your ranking falling in various search engines. It may also lead you to fall so drastically that you are unable to recover from it. A prominent financial analyst Saneil Shah pointed out that “the cost of remembering and paying your hosting fees on time is miniscule compared to the loss your website will face if your website is suspended”. He went on to say that “losing your website ranking could lead to a permanent loss, which may be irrecoverable”.

Avoid Late Fees

Some hosting providers charge a Late Payment Fee to penalize clients for paying late as well as to deter procrastinators. While this may not be very helpful in getting payments on time, it surely helps the web host by compensating for the delay in payment. Late fees can be a fixed amount or even a percentage of the outstanding payment. This could increase the payment to a significantly high amount. When the payment due is high, there may also be interest on the outstanding amount along with the other charges. The simplest way to avoiding all these excess payments is to pay your dues on time.

Build Trust and Goodwill

When your payment for web hosting or related services is made on time or before time, it eases the burden of your web host in collecting the payment. Web hosts keep a mental note of your payment patterns and how many times they have to chase you up to recover the dues. Having a client who pays on time is a pleasure for any business and may lead to your host being helpful and even going beyond the line of duty to help you out when you most need it.