Category Archives: Support

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.

 

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

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.

Are Cheap Domain Names For Real? Whats The Catch?

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Are Cheap Domain Names For Real? Whats The Catch?

Where should you purchase a domain name from is purely your own decision. Although the differences in domain name management facilities are few across different providers, the pricing varies drastically. There are various factors (besides competition) which contribute to this disparity in pricing. Knowledge of these factors is important in influencing your decision in how to and from where to buy domain names. Savings can range from a few dollars to even $50 per domain name. This article explains why domain names are available at such a cheap price and why sometimes it maybe an illusion to fool the customer.

Addon Services

Many Domain Name providers offer the cheapest pricing because they provide only the basic rudimentary domain registration services. They do not provide any extra services and only allow minimalist domain management options. Domain Name Servers (DNS), Email Forwarding, Domain Forwarding, Free Landing Page, WHOIS Privacy and some other services are facilities which are charged extra. If your domain name provider is giving you these services for free along with cheap domain pricing, it is definitely worth it. But to maintain a slim margin and to undercut the competition, most domain registrars charge a hefty additional fee to provide these addons.

First Year Pricing

Most domain name providers offer a very cheap price for domain name registrations to lure new customers to their service. However, many providers mislead people into buying from them by displaying an extremely low price for registration. They do not mention what the price for renewals will be. Renewals are offered at the normal price which most providers offer, which will obviously be much higher than the price of the first year registration. Most customers do not read the fine print at the time of registration and follow the price carrot into the providers net. This is often a reason why customers are delighted at the time of registering the new domain but are frustrated the next year when realization dawns upon them. A transparent host will clearly indicate that the domain pricing will increase from the next year onwards, as the offer or pricing is only applicable on fresh registrations.

Reseller Discounts

Some websites offer cut-throat pricing for Domain Registrations, Renewals and even Transfers. This is possibly due to the fact that they themselves receive a heavy re-seller discount from domain registrars and are able to pass on the discount to their customers. Registrars do not usually sell domains to the end user in a big way. Their retail pricing is very high and discouraging for retail clients. The easiest way for them to get customers is to shift the burden of customer acquisition on the resellers. The incentive given to resellers is proportionate to the yearly commitments of the resellers. Hence if you try and compare a reseller’s price with the price of the same registrar, it will be like comparing apples and oranges i.e. they are uncomparable.

Bundled Pricing

Many hosting companies offer heavy discounts on domain name pricing if you bundle a domain name with their hosting packages. If you cease to keep their other products or services, your domain which is bundled with it will be renewed at their regular or standard pricing. The cost of the standard or regular pricing maybe much higher than the discounted pricing, but it is natural that the service providers who offer such discounts will obviously offer an incentive to promote their products or services. If you really need the bundled product, then it would be a good idea to take the package, but some clients often buy the bundle just because of the price illusion that they are getting the domain name free. This is not the case, especially due to the fact that the cost of the domain name has also been factored into the price of the bundle. Similarly it will offer a good perspective on how much the principal product should really cost.

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.