Category Archives: Social Media

How Many Servers Does A Web Hosting Service Need?

How Many Servers Does A Web Hosting Server Need?

Web Hosting customers don’t always realize what goes on behind the scenes of their web hosting service. The layman often thinks that the web hosting service is just another software installed on a monster computer, bit of which are sold to the end user. But there’s a lot more that goes on behind setting up a web hosting service. While some hosts use separate machines to run services like email, FTP, HTTP etc., some hosts install all these services on a single machine. This article takes you into the web hosting world and shows you which software servers are running to give you the best web hosting experience with different services.

Web Server

The web server is one of the most important parts of your web hosting service. The web server is what actually delivers your web page to the user’s browser. It also handles different requests for information that your browser makes and also takes care of incorrect or erroneous requests. When you see 404 error pages or warning messages, these are all served up by the web server. Web hosts commonly use IIS, Apache, Nginx and Tomcat amongst many different web servers. Web servers use the HTTP protocol to communicate with the user’s browser. The administrator also has the capability of restricting folders, files and websites through the web server configuration.

Mail Server

The mail server is essential when providing email service. The mail server allows the sending and receiving of email on specific ports. The mail server helps filter the received mail to different users’ folders and thereby allows multiple domains to be hosted on a single physical machine. Mail servers are also capable of redirecting mail and applying conditional filters to weed out unwanted mail and fight spam. Most mail servers allow the use of third party plugins or software to aid them perform their functions. For example mail servers can intelligently use third party RBLs or black lists to identify if a mail sender is actually a source of spam which should be rejected before he can reach the mail server. Mail servers usually use IMAP, SMTP and POP3 protocols to serve their purpose.

FTP Server

Almost every web host offers FTP services to transfer files. But most users don’t realize that this requires an FTP server at the hosts end. An FTP server allows connections using the FTP protocol, for the transfer of files. This aids users in downloading or uploading files in simple, quick and efficient way. FTP servers control the bandwidth usage, user connections, authentication system and even file management for the user. FTP servers are inexpensive to maintain and are now considered as included in any web hosting package.

SQL Server

An SQL server is a database management server which allows users to create and store data in relational tables, using the Structured Query Language or SQL. On windows machines, Microsoft MS SQL is installed, whereas Unix based hosting systems usually come with open source alternatives like MySQL, Postgresql, MariaDB among others. Web hosts sell databases based on the package that the user takes. Each database requires CPU and memory resources to function properly. Databases form up the backbone of most websites which have a Content Management System or which store a large amount of data.

Others

Some web hosts offer their own DNS service, for which they need to run a DNS Server on their systems. The DNS server just maps the domain name to the servers IP address so that when a visitor is using a service on a website, he is served up the right information from the right source. Premium web hosts offer File Sharing services and have a Web DAV Server either separate or integrated into their Web Server (as above). This allows users to quickly sync files to and from their website onto their mobile devices. Almost all web hosts also provide an SSH service so that users can connect securely to different ports for different services on the account.

While web hosting may seem like an easy business, managing all these services can be quite a task, which web hosts need to do on a daily basis.

Tips To Prevent Failed Backups Of Your Website

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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.

SEO Tips And Tricks That No Longer Work. Stop Using Them

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SEO Tips And Tricks That No Longer Work. Stop Using Them

Search Engines worked differently a few years back. They were less intelligent, more susceptible to manipulation and could be easily fooled. Today they are not the same. Search Engines factor in over 2000 variables when giving your page or website a rank. There are simply some SEO tricks that used to work wonders earlier but can be bad for your present day rankings. This article explains why you should shed the old methods of SEO and get up to speed with what search engines want.

Keyword Stuffing

As the name suggests, Keyword Stuffing is when a web page is stuffed with various relevant or irrelevant or even unrelated key words, in an attempt to attract the attention of a Search Engine or to mislead the search engine into ranking that web page or website for those keywords. Google’s Support Blog stats that:

“Keyword stuffing” refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results. Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not as natural prose). Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking.

When you punch in a phone number in Google, you may have noticed websites which don’t contain the phone number information, but instead contain the endless list of phone numbers, just so that they come up in Google Search when anyone types in any of those phone numbers. You may also have noticed several articles on the internet, which have an overwhelmingly large number of repetitions of words or phrases, to come up in the Search Engines Rankings.

Link Exchanges

Google’s Page Rank or Page Quality indicator, is based largely on the number of quality inbound links from high quality websites. Link Exchanges are the buying or selling of links from one website to another, especially when there is no real interest or relevance in both the linked pages, except the fact that money was paid or a barter was done to get the links up. Pages with high ranks often take money to list links of various other businesses, so that the Page Rank passes on to the other pages. Search Engine’s penalize this behavior do not consider the number of inbound links in isolation. They check for quality, quantity and even relevance of the website and internal pages, before they allow the page rank to pass on to other pages.

Mass Directory Submissions

Another way of getting inbound links was to mass submit your website to various website directories. These directories classified your website into various categories and allowed your website to be listed in it. People paid several hundreds of dollars to purchase automated software for submitting your website to these directories. Due to the submissions being free and due to no quality control measures, the value addition of these directories got diluted. Search Engine’s stopped respecting these directories and gave them the boot. Numerous such directory services shut down. There are still a couple of directory services, which exist and have maintained their reputation. The Yahoo Directory charges and annual fee for listing and they have strict guidelines. DMOZ is another directory which is heavily moderated and has earned reputation. However, the DMOZ directory is also losing Goodwill due to lack of updates and weeding out old or invalid links.

Low Quality Content

Pages which were mass produced and dumped with information were very popular a few years back. The aim was to get quantity and not quality content out to the user. This meant that the search engine user would be dumped with irrelevant or bad quality information, which would be wasteful. Search Engines have started cracking down on such pages and also on pages which are simply copy pasted from other sources. This however, does not deter people from generating mass content and manufacturing web pages which have duplicate or low value information. It simply is a waste of resources and does not have any effect in improving the search rankings.

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

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

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.

Why Are Website Templates Preferred Over Custom Web Design?

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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.

The Evolution Of Passwords: What Are The Alternatives?

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The Evolution Of Passwords: What Are The Alternatives?

With the internet being an indispensable part of life, passwords have also become an integral dilemma. With more and more facilities coming up online, each facility requires different types of passwords based on length and strength. Some require you to put in a special character, others may want a CAPITAL letter and others may want you to do a back flip as well. The odd part about passwords is that not many people seem to have invested their time, money and resources into investigating what the alternatives to passwords could be. Some services offer to remember your passwords while others offer to automatically fill them into your web forms, but this doesnt really solve the problem of passwords.

With 2 factor authentication becoming more popular, passwords have to share their space of glory with other authentication tokens or methods. 2 Factor Authentication matches “something you know” with “something you have” and thereby allows you to sign in.

Audio and Visual Passwords

Using Audio and Visual means to authenticate is becoming more and more popular across the internet. Services like Clef provide a system by which an image on your phone app is matched with an image on the login screen of your website, by using the phone’s camera. This image matching causes the system to authenticate and allows you to login. Its something like how a bar code is read by a scanner and the entry is automatically filled in. Illiri goes a step further by transmitting passwords in audio form.

OTP by SMS / Email

A lot of websites with sensitive information often send a second password or a One Time Password to your email or mobile phone by SMS. This acts as a second layer of security to establish your identity. You have to then enter the exact same character string into your login box along with or after entering your password. Banks use this to authenticate high value transactions and also before you make important changes to your account profile. The limitation in this system is that you have to have mobile phone connectivity or access to your email at the same time that you want to do the transactions. This can be quite a limiting factor if you are travelling. Some banks also provide phone apps to allow you to generate the number using the app rather than sending the OTP by SMS. However, this system can be easily fooled if the impersonator has your password and mobile phone or email access.

Bio-metrics

Another way of replacing passwords is by using certain unique elements of the human body. Modern bio-metrics use Fingerprints, Retina Scans and even Face Recognition to help you authenticate even if you suffer from memory loss. Increased reliance on bio-metrics is visible from the integration of a fingerprint scanner in iPhones and also the launch of many laptops for home use with face recognition and also finger print readers. Although bio-metrics are somewhat unique, they don’t remain fool proof and also can be inconvenient. Hence, all devices which come with bio-metrics also have an alternate password or PIN option to authenticate.

Physical Tokens

Banks use physical tokens or “dongles” which generate a random number which must be put in with the password at the time of authentication. This is a replacement to the OTP, to ensure that there is no middle-man or interceptor who can steal your OTP when it is being sent by the bank by SMS or email. Physical tokens have a high chance of being lost or forgotten. Further, they maybe reverse engineered and misused by hackers.

As it is famously known that “security and convenience are inversely proportional”. This means that the more security you have, the less convenient it is and the more conveniences you have, the less secure they make you. True to this, no matter what security measures we try and implement, the human element will be the weakest link in the chain of security.