My Hosting Tips

Archive for October, 2011

Getting Your Web Site Launched

To get your web site on the Internet you need a domain name and a hosting company. The following information answers frequentlyasked questions about domain name registration and hosting.

Choosing an effective domain name is important to attract potential buyers increase visibility convey a professional image and inspire trust.

What is a domain name?

Having your own domain name is a must for a business web site. Your domain name or web address is a unique name identifying a specific web site for example http://www.yourdomain.com.

You can register your domain name with .com or other extensions including .net.org.info and .us. Always register the .com name since most people are familiar with it. In addition consider registering your domain name with.net to prevent competitors or speculators from registering a similar name.

Follow these tips when selecting a domain name

Choose a descriptive domain name that conveys professionalism and is easy to remember and type.Consider a domain name that represents your business name product name or indicates your type of business.Consider variations of your domain name like making it plural adding dashes or underscores.Include relevant keywords in your domain name to boost your searchengine ranking.

More tips about domain names

A domain name can include up to 67 characters including the .com .net .org .edu or other extensions.Domains cannot contain spaces.Domain names are NOT case sensitive so you can spell your domain in uppercase lower case or a combination of both e.g. http://www.YourDomain.com or http://www.yourdomain.com.You can use numbers letters and hyphens dashes in your domain name but the web address cannot start or end with a hyphen.Special characters such as ! * and ? are not permitted in web addresses.Avoid confusing characters like 0 zero l one 2 s and z to minimize the risk of typos. The number zero 0 can be confused with the letter O and the number “1″ with the letter “l.”If you register a domain containing hyphens also register the same name without the hyphens for example www.yourdomainname.com and www.yourdomainname.com.

You can check the availability of a domain name at http://www.networksolutions.comor any of the registrars listed by http://www.internic.com.

Registering a domain name

It’s best to choose a hosting company first before registering your domain name. Have the hosting company register or transfer your domain name for you.

You can register your domain name yourself through domain name registration services known as registrars. Internic provides a list of ICANNaccredited registrars the organization governing domain names at http://www.internic.com/regist.html. When submitting a registration or transfer the registrar will ask for the name of two domain name servers that contain your IP address. Your host will give you that information. Once your domain name has been registered or transferred it takes approximately 72 hours before it becomes active.

Fees for domain name registration

Each registrar sets its own price for registering domain names. The fees to register a domain name for one year range from 3 to 35 a year. It’s a small price to pay to gain your prospects’ trust. You can register a domain name for one or several years. At the end of the registration term you must pay a renewal fee to keep your domain name. If you don’t renew someone else can take your domain name. Some registrars offer free or discounted registration services in connection with other offers such as web hosting. Make sure they are reliable. Receiving a 10 discount is not worth the delays and hassles you may encounter. Ask your professional web designer for a referral.

Parking a domain name

If you want to reserve a domain name but don’t have a hosting company yet you may have to pay a fee to a hosting company or registration service to hold or “park” the name. Some registrars charge 40 and others offer parking for free. Make sure they are reliable.

Protect your business and product names by registering them as a domain name before someone else does and renew the registration before it expires.

IMPORTANT TIP: When registering your domain name make sure you are both the billing contact and administrative contact. If your hosting company lists itself as the billing contact you won’t have much leverage to keep your domain name if you decide to switch hosts.

Keep the Same Email When Changing Hosting

When changing hosting companies you can keep the same domain name and email address connected to that domain name e.g. www.webmasteryourdomain.com. You simply transfer your domain name to a different hosting company.

About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;Adrian Lawrence is the webmaster for Discount Domains one of the UK’s leading Domain Name Registration Companies.

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5 Features A Secure Web Hosting Package Must Have

Whether you have to host your personal page or a big eCommerce site a secure hosting service is what you should always look for. This may seem a raw statement to many. But it’s not. Secure hosting doesn’t always imply a higher cost necessarily. Hosting security as much as internet security in general is up to the people running the appliances and infrastructure behind your website more than the costly firewalls or IDS protecting the network.
Many times it is better to have a knowledged web administrator than a sophisticated 7000 Cisco Firewall. There are some web hosting services that in our tests proved to be stable and secure. But what should one look for when in need of a secure web hosting?

The following is a list of the most important 5:

SSL / SSH /sFTP

SSL allows you to have a secure encrypted tunnel between you and your server. This means that all the input including login credit card and any sensible information doesn’t travel in plain text and it is readable only by you and the server. It works using the Public/Private key paradigm.
If you have a shopping cart or if you are going to host some membership portal storing personal members information SSL is a must have. Your visitors will appreciate it and will feel more comfortable to pass their data to you.

SSH stands for secure shell. It is used mainly as a secure access to the Unix machine from remote. You will be able to issue commands on the server console as if you were on the server keyboard. As SSL it works creating a secure tunnel.

SFTP is a network protocol that provides file transfer and manipulation functionality over
any reliable data stream. It is typically used with the SSH2 protocol to provide secure file transfer. With normal FTP access all the files being transferred are sent in plain text
with no encryption at all. Many times you will have to transfer source codes containing hard coded passwords or database information.

Strong Firewall/IDS

Almost all the networks have firewalls but not all of them are managed sapiently thus
allowing remote access information disclosure and active attacks to the hosting
provider network. A secure hosting service should manage redundant firewalls and should give you the capability of adding directly or indirectly through administration access to firewall rules. For example if your website experiences an enormous malicious traffic brute force http/email password as an example your hosting administrator should give you the opportunity to add the ip address from which the attack came from to the blocking Firewall ACL’s.
IDS stands for Intrusion detection system. They provide a further level of security because they can recognize a number of attack vector and stop them before they get any success on the target machine.

AntiDDoS

DoS stands for Denial of service it is at the same time the most basic and the most
difficult to prevent attack that can be taken to a network. Such kind of attacks slow down your hosting provider network and all the sites hosted on the same node. This means that if hackers decide to attack a website hosted on your same server in case of shared hosting your website will suffer from this attack as well.
AntiDDos features are now included into routers and firewalls and once again a secure hosting provider should be able to identify and block such attacks.

Anti Spam

Although Spam is not directly connected with security it can be a threat to your business. Spam carries viruses worms and spy ware. Spam can even slow your server down up to shut it down depending on the emails number the mail server can handle. Not to mention the wasted bandwidth. That’s why Anti Spam solution should never be missing not only into secure web hosting packages but in any kind of hosting you’re going after.

Secure trusted web hosting providers

In my experience as security consultant I have found out that many sites of web hosting services have security holes in their shopping carts hosting control panels or web application in general. These kind of holes can allow an attacker to gather access to registered users credential including ftp passwords. This is probably the worst thing you may encounter but it really happens.
Protecting from such bad security practices is difficult because no one knows the existence of such security issues beside hackers and security consultants. That’s why it is very important to always review secure web hosting listings made by hackers in order to avoid poor secured web hosting causing you money and data loss.

About the writer:  Hackers center provides security information and tools to keep hosting computer systems safe. Learn more about secure web hosting and get lists of hosting providers.

Content Management Systems Equal Business Suicide!

One of the fastest way to minimise your chances of web business success is to use a Content Management System CMS. There are a number of opensource CMS products such as phpWS Mambo Plone Drupal Geeklog Siteframe and phpNuke etc and and a plethora of proprietary CMS products espoused by individual web design companies as the answer everything from lack of HTML knowledge to rapid shopping cart deployment etc.

Expressing this in simple terms its said that possibly as high as 80 of online purchases are made from leads generated by search engines. CMS systems place a huge handicap on achievable Search Engine rankings. meaning there is a direct immediate and practically insurmountable conflict with business aspirations. There are multiple reasons for this.

Duplication of Content
Search engines loathe duplicate content. In the average CMS there are numerous common design elements images HTML and/or JavaScript code blocks etc which are portrayed across ALL sites using the same system and this is not a good thing.

Many CMS systems make it hard to impossible to generate unique page Title Description Keyword metatags meaning all pages can look identical in search engine results. Many CMS systems do not permit you to assign keywordrich image names or apply unique and specific image ALT tags and the page file names are usually not directly controllable. Few CMS systems allow you to easily add anchors on specific pages and to link to those anchors from other pages. All of this translates into losing you valuable search engine optimisation opportunities.

Shared IP Addresses vs. Unique IP
Proprietary CMS systems usually go hand in hand with a “total package deal” that includes web design web hosting and CMS.

The hosting is invariable on a “shared server” meaning your site has the same IP Address as all other sites on the server. Should a situation occur Where another site or sites are offering very similar or identical products and services there is a potentially serious conflict of interest which the web design hosting company will probably not advise you of! The first
site is highly likely to be given priority rankings and treatment by the search engines and all subsequent sites are highly likely to be consigned to oblivion as Search Engines will probably regard them as “duplicate content!” So two or more “Christmas gift shops” on the same “shared server” or two or more “human resource consultants” face a problem they will be blissfully unaware of. Having a unique IP address assigned to your site is far more sensible!

Usability
Opensource CMS systems are written by geeks and nerds for other geeks and nerds. It is painfully obvious that none are written by people with the faintest understanding of search engine optimisation or an awareness of the old adage “form follows function.” As for “usability testing” there is no demonstrable evidence that any research and science has been applied to either the user or the administration interfaces! Unfortunately the same criticisms can be levelled at the commercial CMS systems on offer.

CMS and Being Held To Ransom
In terms of the proprietary CMS systems you are also seriously at risk of being captured and held hostage by your web design company because they now “own” your site and you cannot easily escape without sacrificing your total investment. In this respect use of CMS demonstrates a complete lack of business risk analysis. From that point on you can also be
systematically milked like a cash cow for every amendment change edit etc that they carry out on your behalf! Believe me it happens every day… and I’ve seen people charged 90 for a simple edit that took me less than 2 minutes to implement!

CMS Saves You Money?
Yeah right!!! The overheads of managing a CMS are usually far in excess of managing a conventional site. Content percentagewise most sites actually change very little and the majority of pages are static and do not change at all. CMS is total overkill for the average business site.

Stand Out from the Crowd
To succeed on the web today you need to be a clearly unique entity with original content properly organised logically described and all pages must be optimised for a set of specific keyword phrases that accurately describe your products or services. Anything less is a compromise and is to YOUR business detriment. A CMS system has a direct negative impact on almost all desired outcomes from minimising business risks improving search engine rankings and prompt return on investment.

About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;Ben Kemp is a freelancesearchengine optimisation consultant and web designer. He offers free SEO articles web design tips see The SEO Guys Blog Web: http://www.comauth.co.nz