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Why Your Web Hosting Account Is More Important Than Your Internet Banking Account

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Why Your Web Hosting Account Is More Important Than Your Internet Banking Account

We often neglect securing devices and services which don’t result in a direct loss of money to us. We take them for granted and live in hope that they will never get compromised, or better still, we may live in a false sense of security that those devices or services will never get compromised or fall prey to wrong-doers. One such area of concern is the Web Hosting Account. We have seen numerous persons and businesses who are so careless about the security of their hosting account, that they will only learn when a major “hack” or compromise leaves them stranded.

Official Email Address

If you are using an official email address of your company or business, it would be foolish if you don’t take care of your account. Regularly changing the password and setting a long tough password is ideal. You should also scan your network and computers for virus or malware on a regular basis, especially on the computer where your email address is configured. Your email address is interlinked with various other accounts of other services. Your banking, your utilities and your clients information is all stored in the email account. If your email address gets hacked or the password falls into the wrong hands, it may be the beginning of a disastrous journey to recover the account and retrieve any lost or stolen information.

Your Website

Your hosting account also contains access to your website, which is another reason why special care should be taken to keep the passwords and logins safe. The website represents your business online and is the online face of your brand or organization. Just like you would not want someone to misrepresent your brand or create confusion in the minds of your clients, the same way you should protect your website from unauthorized access and defacement. If you are selling products online and also collecting payments, then you need to ensure that the payments and sensitive personal information of the clients is safe and cannot be compromised. Ensure that your Main Control panel password is not shared with anyone. If your website developer needs to upload or download files, he can be given an FTP login with restricted access to only the necessary folders. If some database needs to be accessed, then only the database login needs to be given. If you do end up giving your control panel password, ensure that you change it once the work is over. Also ensure that you take backups of get backups taken before and after the work is done. This way you will be able to compares changes and identify any unneeded changes.

Business Secrets

You may often store business secrets or confidential information in your hosting account. This could include plans and drawings of inventions, customer information, employee information, price lists and even something as simple as a suppliers list. If these are exposed, it could lead you to lose out on a lot of business and cause immense damage to your contractual obligations. Business Secrets are always on the hunting list of competitors and people will jump to the opportunity of getting information which will benefit their business. Following strict practices of physical and online security will ensure that your data remains safe. Using multiple login names and passwords on each computer will help you identify the flow of compromise, incase you are ever a victim.

Automation Tools and Web Applications

If you are using an eCommerce or Billing Software and have set it to perform actions on your behalf, it may be quite disastrous if someone got a hold of it. This would cause a major loss of goodwill and would immediately lower your reputation in the eyes of clients. Following the same practices for securing your website can also be followed here. However, more care needs to be given when you are authorizing a software to communicate on your behalf.

Why Do Most Web Hosting Providers And Resellers Recommend WordPress?

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Why Do Most Web Hosting Providers And Resellers Recommend WordPress?

Why Do Most Web Hosting Providers And Resellers Recommend WordPress?

If you ask most web hosting providers about what their recommendation would be for a blogging platform or Content Management System for a website you will most probably hear WordPress as the first option. Day by day, the patronage for WordPress is on the rise, and with good reason too. This article explains why most web hosting providers would encourage the use of WordPress and why it may be their number one choice for clients.

Updates and Community Support

WordPress is regularly updated by the community and is kept bug free and as secure as possible at all times. If there is a vulnerability or exploit detected, many people work hard to plug the vulnerability and fix the flaws in the system. Since it is open source, this is all a team effort of the community. No dependence on a dedicated team or on a profit-focused software company. This gives much assurance to web hosting providers that the software is safe to run on their servers without a hitch.

Auto Installer Support

Almost all auto-installer software support the WordPress system and enable quick setup and maintenance of WordPress. With auto-installer software like Softaculous, you can auto-update WordPress when a new version is released, you can update all themes and plugins when new versions are released and you can also configure automatic backups to take place through cron jobs. This eases the burden on the web hosting provider in monitoring outdated installations and asking users to keep updating their obsolete software. This also comes in use when the web host needs to step in to provide support or fire-fight a website compromise.

Useful Documentation and Helpful Tutorials.

WordPress is well documented and the documentation is easily accessible on their website. This is a major relief to most web hosts, especially when troubleshooting client issues. A web host would always like to know if there is some issue with his server or there is a misconfiguration with the user’s install of WordPress. Although providing support for WordPress may not be covered in the scope of work of the hosting provider, it would definitely give them brownie points for pointing a distressed client in the right direction.

WordPress also has a lot of tutorials for newbie users and private bloggers. Many websites offer Video and Audio Tutorials for free, while some charge for premium guidance. YouTube also offers numerous free videos on WordPress issues and how to solve them.

Turn Around Time

A primary reason why web hosts and web developers love WordPress is due to the miniscule turnaround time for setting up a website and actually getting content online. The coming of auto-installers has further improved the speed of setup and updates. When a client trusts a web host for all their IT advice and expertise, they are sure to ask about WordPress. Setting up WordPress for an elderly client or a loyal patron is super fast and easy.

We have seen many clients struggling for months on end just to pick a suitable web designer. When they do pick one, it is an endless process to get the final site up and running. Either the Web Designer dilly-dallies or the client has very little time to give inputs. This process goes on for a couple of months, till the client realizes that the web hosting space they have taken is being wasted. When the client sits up and wants a website done yesterday, it’s the development team’s turn to act fussy. You can’t setup a full website quicker than with WordPress.

Is Managed WordPress Hosting Worth The Money Or Can You DIY?

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Is Managed WordPress Hosting Worth The Money Or Can You Do it yourself?

Is Managed WordPress Hosting Worth The Money Or Can You Do It Yourself?

WordPress websites require constant care and attention, especially when the site has a large number of daily visitors. “Managing” WordPress includes optimizing WordPress for Speed, Security, Efficiency, Fault Tolerance, Scalability and even Disaster Recovery. This means ensuring that the WordPress website is always available to visitors and there is minimum downtime. This article discusses whether you really need “Managed” WordPress Hosting or any ordinary shared hosting will also suffice. The aim of this article is to introduce a newbie or a novice WordPress Webmaster from deciphering the jargon and hype created about “Managed” WordPress Hosting.

What is Managed WordPress Hosting?

Managed WordPress Hosting is when you outsource the management of your WordPress installation to your hosting company (or to a specialized agency, which will handle it for you). It may be called a special type of hosting which may have been optimized for WordPress or special tools which will enhance the overall WordPress experience.

Most “managed” hosting providers provide services specially fine-tuned for WordPress which can broadly be categorized as Caching Tools, Web Application Firewalls, Version-Control Tools, Content Delivery Network (CDN) routing, Staging Areas and more.

Is there a difference between ordinary shared hosting for WordPress and Managed WordPress Hosting?

Yes and No. Some hosts who provide managed WordPress Hosting indicate the exact distinction between their WordPress Plans and ordinary hosting plans. They also mention that you can add more features for a price. They often sell features like CDN and Version Control as add-on packs which you have to pay for. If a provider has not specifically mentioned that they offer “Managed” WordPress hosting, you can assume that their WordPress plans have minor variations from their regular shared hosting plans.

Can you “Do-It-Yourself” for WordPress Hosting

Can you “Do-It-Yourself” without Managed WordPress Hosting?

The short answer is Yes but with certain limitations. Lets take a look at some options which the “Managed WordPress” providers sell and also list the alternatives which are available on ordinary shared hosting.

Website Speed

Content Delivery Networks (CDN) cache the static parts of your website like images and directly provide the visitor with the images from their servers. You can always purchase a CDN solution to boost your website’s speed and availability. This can be purchased independent of your shared hosting account. Options like CloudFlare, Photon, MaxCDN can be purchased separately as and when you need them. WordPress also includes great plugins like W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache and WP Fastest Cache which will do the caching in your hosting account. This will be a similar technology used by the Manage WordPress Providers. However, some providers will have their own proprietary software to do the caching, which maybe significantly faster or use a different technology. Many of them also use HTTP Accelerator’s like Varnish to speed up pages at the Web Server level, something which you maybe able to achieve only if you have your own server.

Website Security

Most hosting providers have multiple levels of security implemented by default on their servers. This means that Web Application Firewalls are implemented by default. You can also use reverse-proxy services like CloudFlare to enhance the security level.

Developer Tools and Aids

While you may not be able to setup a professional staging area for your website, you can make do with a couple of plugins for WordPress, which will be able to provide you some limited functionality for staging. An ideal plugin is SitePush which can easily move content and code between WordPress sites and also pull your site’s database to a development site or push new code to a staging site. The same applies to version control tools like git as well. However, some of these software’s may need you to have server level control, which maybe possible only if you have your own server. This maybe an expensive affair and taking the managed solution maybe worth it.

Do you really need Managed WordPress Hosting?

Managed WordPress services hand-hold you and perform routine tasks on your behalf. They may also have some unique technology to offer. They do come at a price, but if you feel that you cannot handle your website on your own, you are better off with such a service. If you are even a little tech savvy and have a bit of programming knowledge, you can Do It Yourself and achieve reasonably good results without having to pay a fortune. Having a managed service on a very high traffic site will definitely show some performance improvements. But if your daily visitors are in the thousands, then you will notice only a marginal difference. Be sure to do a cost-benefit analysis and take a trial account before you actually put your money into it.

Domain has exceeded the max defers and failures per hour (5/5 (100%)) allowed. Message discarded.

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Error Message:

Domain domainname.com has exceeded the max defers and failures per hour (5/5 (100%)) allowed. Message discarded.

What does it mean?

This bounce message means that the senders domain name (as given in the error message) has been sending out mail which is not getting delivered to the intended recipients. Due to a large number of such messages failing to be delivered, the mail server has prevented any more mails being sent by the domain name, for the rest of the hour.

Why are all my mails bouncing with this error message?

This is a security measure active on our server which is triggered when a “sufficiently significant” number of mails from an email account bounce or are undelivered. This is indicative of spammy activity or a compromised account.

Possible reasons for getting this bounce message are:

  • One or more email accounts on your domain have been compromised and are sending out spam mail which is failing.
  • You are sending out marketing emails to persons who have not subscribed to your newsletters or marketing emails. Always take permission before sending out marketing emails.
  • You are sending out marketing emails to an old email list, out of which many email addresses are shut or no longer active. Update your list and verify each email address before sending mails.
  • The recipient has blocked your email address knowingly or by mistake. Sometimes an overzealous mail filter or firewall on the recipients server may also be the cause.
  • You have some forwarders set up which are bouncing messages (probably due to the forwarded mailbox being over quota)
  • The recipients mail server has detected your domain name or email address as a spam source and has blocked you.
  • The recipients mail server is facing some issue and preventing mails from being delivered.

What should I do so that I can resume normal mailing?

Many a times, the best thing to do is stop all mailing activity and identify the problematic recipient addresses. Refer to our article on Tracing Email Deliveries and Failures.

if your email address has been compromised or hacked refer to our article: How email accounts get hacked

If your website form or page has been hacked see our article: How to recover from a hacked website

I am not able to send mail from any email address on the affected domain. For how much time are all the addresses blocked?

Yes. Your entire domain name is prevented from sending any more mails out from our server. This is a security measure to ensure that our server cannot be used to send out unsolicited bulk mail or spam.

The restriction on sending any more emails will last for 1 hour from the time the last email bounced or delivery was deferred. So if the last of the mails bounced at 10:08 a.m. you will be able to resume normal email delivery only at 11:09 a.m.

Will I continue to receive incoming emails on my domain?

Yes. Incoming emails are not affected by this security measure and will continue to work through the block period.

Web Hosting Companies Being Over Run With Competition, Fair Competition And Unfair Competition

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The web hosting industry is bustling with activity. There are new companies coming up and old loss making companies selling out. Competition is very hard. Some web hosting companies such as India Access are still selling web hosting at outrageously high prices. For example, India Access is selling merely 250MB of web space at $136 per year. At the same time, other companies such as Blue Host sells unlimited hosting for $47 per year. There is such a huge difference in price, and such a huge difference in the amount of space offered. Why is this so ?

Are you intending to upload your wordpress blog, and create a quick website using wordpress ? You need to understand what you need and why you are buying hosting from a particular company. If you are intending to use wordpress, you probably don’t need more than 100MB of space. Why buy unlimited space then ? The idea is, not that you can use hundreds of GB of space, but you can be rid of the mental worry of planning the amount of space you need. You can worry more about developing the website, as you really need to.

On the other hand, if you want merely a small 10-15 page website, you need not pay for “unlimited”. If you can make a rudimentary estimate of the number of pages you need, and you can significantly save even more. Siteground offers 10GB space at $3.95 per month, and at the same time bluehost offers unlimited hosting at $3.95 per month - why would you chose to take only 10GB ? I will explain now that, you are better off, by choosing the 10GB one.

When you pay for a certain determined amount of space, you get much more bang for your buck. This means that you are able to use more resources in terms of CPU processes, RAM allocation and simultaneous processes. You will almost never find these details on the website of any web hosting company. This is a well guarded secret of the industry. Why do they not tell you this ? They need to constantly change those things so that all the users can use the servers. Imagine this, there are 200 users on one server - one user is using a ton of CPU in a very complex php script, but all the other users have only HTML pages. At this point, you can afford to allow that one user to use the excessive CPU usage that he needs. But now imagine that all the users need a ton of CPU ? What do you do now ? You have advertised unlimited space, and packed the customers on one server like a pack of sardines. The only option is to start restricting the CPU and add more hard drive space to the server, or buy a new server. Buying a new server is very expensive and would affect your bottom-line. So, what do you do ? You go ahead and restrict the CPU. Why would this not happen if you had a restricted space account ? This would not happen, because almost always, all users having restricted space account would be on one server, and all users having unlimited accounts would be on another server. The total users having limited space accounts are generally relatively low - which gives you a larger share of the overall resources.

Don’t fall for tricks and fancy advertisements. Be smart and estimate your requirements. Most of the users who take unlimited accounts, think they are getting a good deal by doing so. But that is not always the case. Estimate your needs and buy smart.

At HostingXtreme, we offer wordpress hosting, web hosting and domain name solutions at competitive rates. We have both restricted space accounts and unlimited web hosting accounts.

Web Hosting Companies That Include Arbitration Clauses In Their Terms Of Service

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Does your web hosting company include an arbitration clause in its terms of service? This is an important question to know the answer to. If there is an arbitration clause, you have to mandatorily seek out arbitration if you want to seek damages, either from contract for a wrongful termination of the agreement.

If something goes wrong with your services, and if you want to claim civil damages against the hosting company - you would have to do it through arbitration proceedings. This can be very expensive. Merely appointing an arbitrator can be very expensive. Some arbitrators charge $5000 or $10,000 to merely accept a retainer.

Hostgator, one of the popular web hosting company places the following clause in its terms of service;

“15b.) Arbitration By using any HostGator services, you agree to submit to binding arbitration. If any disputes or claims arise against HostGator or its subsidiaries, such disputes will be handled by an arbitrator of HostGator’s choice. An arbitrator from the American Arbitration Association or the National Arbitration Forum will be selected in the state of Texas. Arbitrators shall be attorneys or retired judges and shall be selected pursuant to the applicable rules. All decisions rendered by the arbitrator will be binding and final. The arbitrator’s award is final and binding on all parties. The Federal Arbitration Act, and not any state arbitration law, governs all arbitration under this Arbitration Clause. You are also responsible for any and all costs related to such arbitration.”

As you should note - all the costs of arbitration are to be borne by you! That is extremely unfair and inequitable. It should at least be 50/50. If you are buying a hosting account for $3.96 per month, and you have to pay $5000 to appoint an arbitrator, and resolve a dispute. Further, even if you have other tort claims - such as interference or fraud (non-criminal fraud) those claims would also have to be determined by the arbitrator. This is very unfair. It takes away your right to a jury trial under the 7th Amendment (or the Sate’s version of it).

Godaddy on the other hand does not include an arbitration clause, but only adds a waiver of jury trials;

“You agree to waive the right to trial by jury in any action or proceeding that takes place relating to or arising out of this Agreement.

Yahoo does neither. It makes you litigate in California. Which seems more just.

While although you would not think about suing the hosting company you buy from at the outset, you should know about it, because it is quite common for disputes to arise when you suffer damages from downtime. Say the site is down for 1 day - due to no fault of yours. You may have a cause of action for damages against the hosting company. You can not only sue them for actual damages - you can also sue them for consequential damages, ie. lost sales, lost advertisement revenue and loss of your online reputation. These can be significant as the uptime goes to your SEO reputation.

At HostingXtreme we pride ourselves in a 99.98% uptime. We provide imeccable servcie, and are proud to have a five star rating. Check out our web hosting plans.