Category Archives: FTP

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.

Is FTP Better Than A Web Based File Manager For My Website?

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Is FTP Better Than A Web Based File Manager For My Website?

FTP accounts are given with all web hosting accounts, so that users can upload, download, transfer and modify files in their hosting account. But contemporary web hosting control panels like cPanel, Plesk, HSphere etc. also offer a web based file manager which works through the browser. The web based file manager does not need any additional software to be downloaded, but an FTP client is need for accessing the files through FTP. Then why use FTP rather than the file manager? We list a couple of points in favour of using FTP over your browser based file manager. This article advocates for the use of FTP over your web based file manager in certain circumstances.

Multiple Files

When transferring multiple files to or from your website, FTP is definitely your best bet. FTP clients allow multiple connections to the server, thereby allowing you to start multiple file transfers simultaneously. This can drastically increase your file transfer speed and same a lot of your time. This is especially useful when dealing with a large website with lots of files spread across a large number of files and folders. Web based file transfer interfaces usually do not allow multiple file handling and only allow you to transfer files one by one. This can be a headache and make it difficult to transfer many files quickly. FTP clients put files into a mail queue and allow you to set priority for file downloads. You can set a “Very High” priority on small files and set a “Low Priority” on Large files which will take time.

Bandwidth Throttling

FTP clients like FileZilla allow you to restrict the amount of bandwidth that the file transfers should take. This prevents donkey work like file transfer to take up a major chunk of your internet speed and allow you to use the network simultaneously for other important purposes. This can also be important if your ISP throttles your connection and gives you a slower speed at different times of the day. An online file manager rarely has such an option, especially because it is supposed to be rudimentary.

Automation

FTP clients allow you to automate many tasks. Some software allow you to batch edit documents in your account on the fly. Other FTP services allow you to perform certain functions or execute commands based on file downloads or uploads. For example some FTP clients allow you to shut down or restart the system when a file queue completes downloading. This can be especially useful for unattended systems where you have left the files to download over a long period of time and don’t want to monitor the progress. You can also open up programs or pass on information to software on your machine about the file downloads.

Secure Connections

FTP systems allow you to use an encrypted connection to transfer files. Using multiple methods of encryption, FTP allows more security than conventional browser based file managers, due to the multiple failure points in them. SFTP, FTPeS, FTP over SSH etc. are some common options that you can use when using FTP. These options need to be enabled by your FTP server in order to use them. Browser based file managers can also be accessed over a secure https connection, but the main cause for concern is browsers which are needed to access the files. An added security measure is that FTP clients can provide you a log of the files that were transferred so that you know exactly what is going on.

File Modification

FTP clients allow you to quickly change file permissions, file ownership, file locations and even allow you to edit files directly in the FTP client. This saves you time in uploading the file again. Some FTP clients also allow you to open a new connection in the same window so that you can copy or move files to and from each account. This can be especially useful when you are migrating a website from one server to another.

When in a hurry, you can always use a web file manager to make small changes or upload / download a couple of files. However, for mass file management, FTP clients become indispensable.

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.

 

Why Are Website Templates Preferred Over Custom Web Design?

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Why Are Website Templates Preferred Over Custom Web Design?

Why Are Website Templates Preferred Over Custom Web Design?

Template based website systems are overtaking the requirement for a custom made personalized website. Even web designers are constantly finding ways in which to package their products and manufacture them in bulk. But what are the reasons for people buying template based websites and avoiding custom built websites? This articles aims to highlight the major factors which influence the purchase of a template based website design over a customized one.

Turn Around Time

The crux of setting up a new website is having it up and running quickly. The main objective is to put the website out and keep improving it. Most design firms take ages to put out the first version of a website. They have lengthy procedures and sometimes have long and cumbersome processes to be followed before any work can be made live. This often leads to delays and long timelines, which cause disinterest in the client and also demotivate the design team. This is remedied by ready made template based options which allow a certain level of customization to personalize the template for the clients business.

Seeing Is Believing

Just like ready made clothes, templates allow you to see a live working of the website and allow you to preview and simulate the website’s functioning before you actually purchase it. This means that you can see a fully functional sample website with dummy text and images and actually visualize how it would suit your website design. While tailor-made clothes will definitely fit you better, there is always a time-lag and also a risk of the tailor getting it wrong.

Cheaper

A ready made website will definitely work out cheaper than a custom made one, especially due to its re-usability and lack of personal touch. This maybe very crucial for a business which is newly launched and wants to atleast have a placeholder website to show to customers. This is also a crucial factor in determining the long term goal of the website and how you would like to keep evolving your online strategy.

Independence

A very major factor in deciding your design option is whom you are dealing with. Many designers consider themselves to be at par with Picasso and Michelangelo. This means that you may have a tough time in getting them to do things in a time-bound or disciplined way. Almost all design firms that we have dealt with have overshot their promised timeline and taken more than double the time to do the work correctly. While a bit of creativity should be left to the discretion of the design studio, it should also be clearly agreed that time is of essence and that a delay in work can be costly. Some businesses have taken years on end just to get the first glimpse of their website live. By that time their funds were drained and they had lost a considerable amount of revenue from online sources. On the other hand, templates allow you to go to any designer or coder to alter the design. Some websites even offer their own customization service. The bottom line being that your design source is with you and you are not locked into the services of a particular firm of developers.

Customization

Although a template can hardly be tweaked to suit your corporate branding, you can make a lot of changes to make it look more personalized. Just like you can get a ready-made shirt altered to suit your size, you can get a ready website also tweaked and twisted to give it a better look. It may look clumsy and a bit out of place, it may even look very cliche and standard, but for the price it is definitely a good deal.

Why you should think thrice before taking a Dedicated Server

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We are all prone to wanting more in almost everything life offers. This is also common to buying website hosting - we want more. More hosting space, more processing power, more RAM and more bandwidth as well. We want a bigger, meaner machine which has all the bells and whistles that your money can buy. But we rarely stop to think, whether we really need it and whether that is really the solution to everything. This article tries to reason why you should rethink your purchase of a Dedicated Server for your website or web application.

Why you should think thrice before taking a Dedicated Server

Misled by Developers

The most common cause of goofing up a dedicated server decision is due to being misled by your software developers or designers. Many a time, they have no clue how much of the resources they will really need and want to save themselves the trouble of migrating your data at a later stage, hence they coax you into believing that you need a monster configuration server which will magically solve all your problems. The less experienced the developer is, the less empirical or statistical evidence he will show you, for justifying the purchase. 3 years back, we received an email from a friend, asking us for a very high configuration machine. When we realized he was being guided by his developer, we suggested that they do a trial run on a small 5 GB shared hosting account. Till date, they have not needed more than that and are very happy we saved them the huge expenditure.

Warped Estimates

Before we suggest a Dedicated Server, we request the client to send us an estimate of his requirements and how he has come to that conclusion. Most of the time, the client has made wrong calculations and drastically changed the entire estimation by using predicted figures, which may not actually work in a production environment. This may mean that he has either under-estimated the requirement and will need to upgrade the server in the short term or he has overestimated the requirements and goes for an overkill solution. There are numerous benchmarking tools, which can help predict the exact amount of resources that the website or application requires and also helps test the limit of those resources.

Over-ambition

In the past few years we have often heard from atleast 10 different clients, that their future plan is to make an “online portal like Facebook”. While that may seem like a very progressive thought, it is often accompanied by a lack of planning and exaggeration. Ofcourse everyone wants to be the best, but they want to do it overnight, without looking into the path travelled by the industry giants. This over ambition eclipses their decision of doing some realtime tests and then jumping into the project in full swing. We often see that those who take a dedicated server, drop the idea by the 5th or 6th month, when they realize that their requirement was miniscule or their goal is not achievable at the time.

Laziness to troubleshoot

Another common reason why people want to go in for a Dedicated Server is because they don’t want to get down to the root of the issue of high resource usage, but instead would like to work around the issue by pumping in more hardware resources. A blaring example would be that of a small time ecommerce portal, which was so badly coded that the SQL queries kept getting throttled due to being slow, clumsily written and buggy. Rather than modifying the query to its optimum best, the webmaster chose to add more CPU resources by upgrading the server. This solved the problem for a few weeks, till the query started taking more time. Thereafter he went in for a better configuration server. This time, in a few weeks the same problem cropped up and he realised that the problem lay in his SQL coding and not in the server. He has now happily switched to shared hosting and has got the SQL beautifully optimized. His laziness definitely cost him time and money, but it also made him wiser for the long-term.

Switching Your Website Development Team Without Risk

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Switching Your Website Development Team Without Risk

A business owner is often faced with the dilemma of deciding whether changing his / her Software Vendor or Development Team will boost the efficiency and progress of the website thereby improving productivity of the business. Many of us have had to take the decision to axe the existing service provider and hire a new team due to various reasons which were causing a hindrance to progress. This article explains how you can easily switch your software service provider, without causing any friction or widening scope for harassment in future.

Make it Quick

The crux about making the switch is to do it with speed, without allowing time for the old team or provider to brood over the matter and make matters sour. Dealing with a hostile provider may also delay the process and strain future relations, which maybe necessary in ensuring that the software transition happens smoothly. You should be ready with a detailed list on what exactly you want from your old vendor and also draft a timeline outlining how you want to go about the transition. This must be placed before the old vendor and discussed with his firm or team to ensure that they have understood the plan.

Pre-Planning and Study

Before the old provider is approached about the switch, make sure that your new vendor has understood the system and is capable and ready to take on the task of servicing your existing system. Many a times you may realize later that even your new developers are as unsuitable to manage your website, just like the old ones were. Allow your new team to study the website and all the bells and whistles with it, so that there is no scope fora shabby job in future.

Knowledge Handover

Software developers often incorporate work-arounds, patches, beta versions, test software and leave bits of code undocumented and often forgotten. These may lead to anxiety for the next team that takes it on and also be a cause for confusion. When diagnosing a compromise or security issue, you will be left perplexed at the test code that was forgotten about. It’s best that both the team’s sit face to face and crease out any difficulties that they maybe having.

Documentation

Documentation of the entire website and software is something which should be present at every stage and hopefully the prior documentation which was made, will come in handy for the new team to understand the intricacies of the software and intention of the previous software team. The entire website with sitemap must be well-documented with exhaustive number of screenshots and adequate number of examples to illustrate the functionality.

Keep them parallel

Before you discontinue the services of the old team that you are switching from, ensure that the new team needs nothing more from them and is not dependent on their knowledge or information to continue servicing your website. This may mean paying extra for the old team to continue their support and may also mean putting up with the delays and whims of the old vendor.