Virtual Web Servers - The Perfect Alternative to Shared Hosting

If you're like most webmasters out there, you've probably started off with shared hosting at one point or another. Though shared hosting has some advantages, by nature the hosting is shared with plenty of other websites. In order to cut costs, shared hosting companies over pack many accounts all on one single server. This can cause plenty of problems which shared hosting is all too known for, especially slow download speeds as well as sporadic downtime.

If your website is seeing a good amount of success, many would suggest that you switch to your own dedicated server. If you've seen the prices for a dedicated server, you know that costs can run high.

There is a solution in between shared hosting and dedicated hosting which is called a virtual web server. A dedicated virtual web server will let you operate your own websites as if you actually owned the server virtually. Each virtual web server has direct control over its own resources like RAM, CPU, and others. Each and every virtual web server is completely isolated from other virtual web servers, so you won't be affected in any way by the actions of other webmasters and their domains/servers.

If you treat your website like a business, or even if it is an e-commerce site, then getting a virtual web server is probably the best route for you to take. When it comes to giving your website a home on the Internet, you'll definitely want a presence that's going to be up at all times, with top download speeds.

You also have the option of installing any application on your server that you'd like. No longer are the problems of not being able to run certain web applications on your shared server because your hosting company doesn't support them. If you want something, simply install it on your virtual server. A single virtual web server will give you the flexible solution that you need for web hosting.

Published by Doug Smith. Find more information on virtual web servers or find out more about getting your own virtual private server

Select a Web Server Dedicated to Your Success

If you have a successful online business, you might want to consider looking for dedicated web hosting. The dedicated web hosting gives you the opportunity of having an entire server at your disposal, and that server is not shared with anybody else.

Even for a person who doesn't know too much about servers, the advantages are clear right from the start: you, as the webmaster, have full control over YOUR OWN server, including options of what operating system to use, the type of hardware, etc. You can customize everything according to your own personal desires, while the administration is handled by the hosting company.

The most important advantage of using an online dedicated web hosting is that your website performance (like loading time, which is an important factor for your visitors) will not be affected by the traffic of the other websites with which you would have been sharing your server's bandwidth.

The online dedicated web hosting environment provides you with an exclusive server or servers devoted to the sole purpose of serving yourself and your business only. You do not share hard disk space with other customers, and you avoid shared hosting.

Before dedicated web hosting existed, a web site developer used to have two hosting options, the low-priced shared hosting model and the premium-priced dedicated web hosting. A person who bought space on a shared host would get a certain amount of disk space and monthly transfer, and would have the web site served from a common web server.

The hosting company, in its' attempt to increase the popularity of their products, would provide a wide range of options for the web site developer. But, limitations would still be there. For example, if a customer needed a non-standard program installed or maybe wanted to use a privileged account in order for a particular utility to run, he would be completely not be able to achieve these goals.

A good example would be a web site which required a database to store the precious information in. Many hosting companies provide the standard MySQL database to use on their servers. If your application requires another type of database though, then it could prove to be incompatible with the shared hosting account. And trust me, databases are a very important element in the success of your internet business.

A dedicated web server can be customized anyway you want. But, there's also a catch. Because it can handle much more traffic than a shared hosting account, the far better performance doesn't come cheap. On average, dedicated web hosting can cost the savvy webmaster hundreds of dollars per month depending on the size of the server, network connectivity and the amount of management required from the hosting company.

Webmasters who don't quite fit into the standard shared hosting model and find that it doesn't work for them, or whose sites grow very popular and require a large amount of resources have the alternative of dedicated web hosting.

Reliable, affordable dedicated web hosting service
Dediated web hosting.
http://www.dedicatedwebhostings.com
More tips and advice on web server selection

http://www.webhostingbin.com

How Good Free Web Hosting Servers Really Are?

There are a number of websites offering free web hosting. Tripod.com or geocities.com being the most popular among them. So, the question is : Are free servers really good?

Well, the answer is simple. You don?t get anything free in life and same goes for the net.

To be frank, some of the websites host you on really fast high-end servers even with your free account, but there are many drawbacks still.

To start with, nearly every free server puts up this huge banner right on top of every page in return for their free service. This is totally annoying and not desired at any cost.

To further increase their unusability they come with very limited bandwidth or monthly transfers. So, even if you get a healthy 20 MB for free, you are limited to a very narrow monthly transfer limit of around 50-100 MB a month. Huh ? What does that mean? It simply means and if you are serious about making money on the internet, a lot of people are going to visit your website. This in turn burdens your web server and a free web server, well, it will just collapse!

Thirdly, you get an ugly looking URL which no one save the program that generated can remember eg. www.freeserverxyz.com/abc/~uv/

And that by no means is acceptable. Some of the companies have gotten round this and provide you with a cleaner whateveryouchoose.freeserverxyz.com. This is at least better than the previous mammoth.

Fourthly, nobody trusts a website hosted on a free server. Would you for instance make a $50 purchase from a URL like www.freeserverxyz.com/abc/~uv/ ? I certainly think not. To come around this problem, some free servers allow you to host your privately registered domain name for free. There is a catch here too. For this you will either have to transfer your current domain to them or register a new domain, either ways, you are at their mercy for domain pricing and still stuck with a banner on top of your page with limited monthly transfers.

However, if you still tight on budget and at any rate cannot afford a paid hosting, then I sincerely recommend one free server to you. Netfirms (www.netfirms.com) is one of the most renowned free web hosting providers with the provision of hosting your own www.yourchoice.com.

You could check out http://www.0host.com though not a kind you would expect; it does have a pretty much exhaustive list of free web hosts.

Gautamm Mehra is a young entrepreneur and IT consultant. He was introduced to computers in 1989 and has since than had a passion for everything digital. You can write to him at gautam [dot] mail [at] gmail [dot] com

Inexpensive Web Hosting - Running Your Own Server Or Not?

As there are so many hosting companies competing for your business, you'd get far less troubles than if you tried to get your own one.

Are you technologically savvy? Do you understand what it takes to secure a server? Do you have access to a broadband connection? Are you willing and able to devote the amount of time it'll take to solve the inevitable glitches that come your way one after another?

To host your own server you will need: a computer that must be used ONLY as a server with enough capacity to manage the amount of requests that may receive, a Network Interface Card (NIC) and a broadband connection with a high upload rate, and an internet service provider (ISP) in conditions to handle web traffic.

If this sounds like it's trying to scare you, then you're following completely. If there are so many inexpensive hosting companies out there, you need a very strong motive to prefer doing it yourself. If one company didn't bring you the service they had promised, it's not enough to stop seeking any other way out. There must be another inexpensive hosting service out there.

You may not consider everything you just read to be crucial information about hosting. But don't be surprised if you find yourself recalling and using this very information in the next few days.

If your site is promotional in any way - whether you're selling a product, a service, yourself - an amateurish presentation fraught with technical glitches and poor layout could cost you your business. The average web-surfer has a 20-second attention span, and if they encounter one problem accessing your site, they are unlikely to return.

With minimal research, you can really take advantage of the fierce competitiveness in the inexpensive web hosting industry and find a service that offers mouth-watering promotions, and innovative features unique to your needs. Most likely, if you're considering running your own server it's because your website generates a ton of traffic on more than one website or application. Fortunately, running your own server is not your only option. You can find many inexpensive hosting providers that could assign you a dedicated server for a fee, of course.

Then you will have your OWN server and nobody else will be able to use it, you won't share it at all, either storage, memory or bandwidth. And the performance of your site will not be affected by the traffic and usage patterns of any other customer. With a dedicated server you will have your own IP address and root (admin) access. You have full control over server usage and software installation. Dedicated servers allow you an unlimited number of email accounts and databases and the speed is inordinately faster.

These services, offered by many inexpensive providers, can be "managed" or "unmanaged". In the "unmanaged" ones, you are the administrator, so you must have time and skills, that's why most people opt for the "managed" package. i think you should consider an inexpensive dedicated server as a viable alternative to keep your business running smoothly and yourself well rested.

Now that wasn't hard at all, was it? And you've earned a wealth of knowledge, just from taking some time to study an expert's word on hosting.

Sandra Ruiz-Aguilar is a Native Spanish Speaker and Systems Analyst from Argentina doing freelance English - Spanish Translations for fifteen years. Lately getting into Internet Marketing. Website: http://englishspanishtranslation.4t.com

Have A Big Website - Worried About Server Load

Have we ever thought how big websites could be configured to handle massive amount of traffic? How thousands of businesses worldwide are facing challenges everyday to make sure there are no connection failures due to heavy load or congestion of traffic at the website.

The answer is straight, every organization will have to monitor and baseline amount of traffic by going for stress test to find out if the current hardware could be supportive enough to handle a specific amount of load. One such great software is the ?Web Application Testing? or WAPT, which is a great utility for any website?s sustainability. This software is load, stress and performance testing tool for web sites and intranet applications with web interface. WAPT is designed for MS Windows 2000/XP/2003 and Windows 98/Me operating systems. The question that should be asked is why should we consider WAPT or why should the organization consider Load or stress testing? We certainly believe, major performance issues would arise if stress test has not been performed.

This could very well mean that after the server reaches a certain level of concurrent connection made by visitors, it would consume its hardware resources to process every visitor?s request. If there is a lot to process, the server might give priority to web application than its local resource ending up in a system crash.

Thus, the goal of WAPT is very simple; it helps the organization?s web servers to become active at every stage of stress, whether it?s a web development or website traffic processing power. WAPT can perform a stress test by simulating several thousands of concurrent connections to check the web server/website performance and if it finds any bottlenecks it would warn and suggest fixing this issue by recommending the very next thing.
There are lots of new features added in WAPT 4.0
- You can use multiple virtual profiles to test a single scenario
- There is support for IP spoofing where each virtual user can run with individual and unique IP address
- Each Virtual can be configured with different username and password and is compatible with Windows Integrated Authentication or Basic Configuration.
- You can see and configure the type of reports even a test run summary report is generated
- There is command line interface available
- There is a support for persistent cookies
- All the test scenario and profiles are stored in XML format The Main features of WAPT 4.0
- You can have the application run and understand multiple languages
- There is cool recording feature which you can use to record any configuration and stress test simulations for later review or demonstrations as it supports playback of HTTPS/SSL 2.0 & 3.0 pages. You can also record the user connection speed using the keep-alive connections to a HTTP 1.0 or HTTP 1.1 pages or even HTTPS/SSL pages.
- You can generate data for run-times on specific scheduled intervals by randomizing the delay between the page hits.
- It also has a support for proxy servers for HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4 & 5 and supports cookies as well.
- All the authentication request can be handled using NTLM (windows Integrated Authentication) or using the basic authentication.
- If you would like to call the website by a different name, then you also have the facility to add custom host headers
- All this the scenarios can be configured using the user friendly Wizard
- You can choose the reports to be either graphical or in plain text along with full virtual server logs
A must tool for administrator or other user who would to maintain their website efficiently.

Ted Peterson writes for CoreDownload, a shareware archive where you can find utilities like WAPT to test your server

Have a big website? Worried about server load ?

If you have a big website, then it happened more that once to see it moving very slow. There is a way to do some testing and find out is the problems are caused by the hardware, or by the website itself.

Have we ever thought how big websites could be configured to handle massive amount of traffic? How thousands of businesses worldwide are facing challenges everyday to make sure there are no connection failures due to heavy load or congestion of traffic at the website.

The answer is straight, every organization will have to monitor and baseline amount of traffic by going for stress test to find out if the current hardware could be supportive enough to handle a specific amount of load. One such great software is the ?Web Application Testing? or WAPT, which is a great utility for any website?s sustainability. This software is load, stress and performance testing tool for web sites and intranet applications with web interface. WAPT is designed for MS Windows 2000/XP/2003 and Windows 98/Me operating systems. The question that should be asked is why should we consider WAPT or why should the organization consider Load or stress testing? We certainly believe, major performance issues would arise if stress test has not been performed. This could very well mean that after the server reaches a certain level of concurrent connection made by visitors, it would consume its hardware resources to process every visitor?s request. If there is a lot to process, the server might give priority to web application than its local resource ending up in a system crash.

Thus, the goal of WAPT is very simple; it helps the organization?s web servers to become active at every stage of stress, whether it?s a web development or website traffic processing power. WAPT can perform a stress test by simulating several thousands of concurrent connections to check the web server/website performance and if it finds any bottlenecks it would warn and suggest fixing this issue by recommending the very next thing.

There are lots of new features added in WAPT 4.0

- You can use multiple virtual profiles to test a single scenario

- There is support for IP spoofing where each virtual user can run with individual and unique IP address

- Each Virtual can be configured with different username and password and is compatible with Windows Integrated Authentication or Basic Configuration.

- You can see and configure the type of reports even a test run summary report is generated

- There is command line interface available

- There is a support for persistent cookies

- All the test scenario and profiles are stored in XML format

The Main features of WAPT 4.0

- You can have the application run and understand multiple languages

- There is cool recording feature which you can use to record any configuration and stress test simulations for later review or demonstrations as it supports playback of HTTPS/SSL 2.0 & 3.0 pages. You can also record the user connection speed using the keep-alive connections to a HTTP 1.0 or HTTP 1.1 pages or even HTTPS/SSL pages.

- You can generate data for run-times on specific scheduled intervals by randomizing the delay between the page hits.

- It also has a support for proxy servers for HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4 & 5 and supports cookies as well.

- All the authentication request can be handled using NTLM (windows Integrated Authentication) or using the basic authentication.

- If you would like to call the website by a different name, then you also have the facility to add custom host headers

- All this the scenarios can be configured using the user friendly Wizard

- You can choose the reports to be either graphical or in plain text along with full virtual server logs

A must tool for administrator or other user who would to maintain their website efficiently.

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

Mircea Ionescu writes for CoreDownload, a shareware archive where you can find utilities like WAPT to test your server.

Virtual Web Servers: Perfect For Mid-sized Web Hosting Needs, Part 1

The internet has exploded over the last ten years with many people doing more and more tasks online everyday. As the internet continues to grow, the amount of space available for web sites to expand will shrink. Another very important fact that needs to be considered when creating a web site is how you are going to host the web site.

Large companies can afford to have a dedicated web server or servers, but smaller companies and individuals usually can not afford to have a dedicated server for their web site. For these individuals there are a few alternatives available. They can either use a web hosting service to host their web sites, or they can use a virtual web server to host their web site. Both of these alternatives have strengths and weaknesses.

A web hosting plan usually allows you to upload your web files to their server and then they configure everything so that anyone on the internet can access it. These plans are usually fairly inexpensive, but they are also limited in the amount of options that you can configure on your own.

However since the configuration of these plans are very easy, you do not need to have a large internal I.T. department to implement your plans. Web hosting plans are also a very good fit for your web site if you do not need to have access to a database.

Virtual web servers are a great way to maximize the use of a single server to service many web sites across several domains. The virtual web server uses one server and one operating system to host many different web sites. The difference between virtual web servers and hosting plans is that you have access to mail, FTP, and all of the configuration files on the virtual server.

This gives you quite a bit more control over all of the functions that a normal web server would allow you to do. However you need to know more about configuring a web site if you use a virtual web server. The best thing about a virtual web server is that you have much more control and the ability to do many different things that you can not do with a web hosting plan.

Learn how to get a virtual web server at http://www.webserversintl.com/

Virtual Web Servers: Perfect For Mid-sized Web Hosting Needs, Part 2

Usually it takes a person with quite a bit of experience to be able to successfully setup, maintain, and configure a web server. The problem with this is that there are not enough of these experienced people to prepare a web server for all of the individual web sites on the internet today.

One way to help fix this problem is to use virtual web servers. A virtual web server allows one very experienced person to setup a single server that will be able to host many different web sites across many domains. This also allows different web sites to be configured individually and be able to use more resources than they would be able to use if they were not hosted on a virtual web server.

Since each web site can be fully configured, you will have quite a bit of control over all of the different features of your web site.

A virtual web server allows each web site to have its email, FTP access, and many other configuration files to be configured exactly the way you want them to be. Also a virtual web server allows access to different types of databases which can make your web site more dynamic.

Many virtual web server plans allow unlimited email addresses and built-in spam filters and virus protection. They also allow unlimited anonymous and non-anonymous FTP sites, so that you can offer file upload and downloads to your clients.

However the best feature of a virtual web server is that you have complete control over how your web site is configured to run, so you can do almost anything that you want to do. You do not have to be an expert, because many of these services offer a management tool, so that you can do all of the configurations without knowing exactly how to do it by hand.

Learn how to get a virtual web server at http://www.webserversintl.com

Running Your Own Web Server

This article will cover the basics about running your own web server out of your home. However, before I provide some direction on how to go about doing this I am going to give you the "pain points". I am also going to give you some reasons why running your own web server might not be for you.

Why you don't want to run your own web server?

If you are looking to sell something online you should look at a business web hosting solution. Two reasons. One, you are not going to be able to harden your server enough to make it secure for conducting business transactions. Second, you need to ensure that your site is available to your customers 24/7/365 or as close to 100% uptime as you can get. With web hosting you can typically get 99% uptime. You are very unlikely to come close to this trying to run your own server. Your uptime will be based on the uptime of your internet service provider. Plus every time you update Windows you will likely need to reboot your machine. And, are you familiar with...

- How to setup and configure a router?
- The difference between a physical and a software firewall?
- Do you know how to setup, configure, and secure a web server?
- Do you know enough about networking to run and maintain a server?

It is certainly within the realm of a fairly technically savvy person to setup and administer their own web server on the internet, but it takes some work, and any claims that it is easy to do should be met with guarded skepticism. This advice is coming to you from someone that ran their own web server on the internet for almost two years.

On the other hand it is pretty easy to (relatively speaking) setup and run a web server against your localhost (127.0.0.1) address. This web server will only be available to you local PC, but can serve as the test platform for your web site.

Some direction on running your own web server

Well, if you have read the last section and are still reading then you are looking for some direction. I am going to be offering information from the perspective that you are somewhat familiar already with the terms I am throwing about. The links I have provided here will go into more detail. Again, setting up and maintaining your own web server is not easy and requires a broad range of technical knowledge.

I will be showing you how to setup the Apache web server on your PC running under Windows. I am running Windows XP - Professional. You can run a web server using Windows XP - Home or Windows 2000. I mention this as any specific guidance I am giving you might vary if you are using something other than XP Professional. Also, I have not tried doing this on any other version of Windows.

Getting the software

You can go directly to Apache and get the webserver. But, what if you want to add blog software, forum software, Php, and other packages that do not come standard with the web server itself? Like I said this stuff is not easy. But wait, I am about to turn you on to one of the most comprehensive web packages available. This web package could probably be installed by your Grandmother without difficulty! All you need to do is download the file (it is a huge 186mb file). Once you download it installation is so simple it is ridiculous. The folks that did this are just brilliant. Most software shops could take a lesson from them in installation and configuration management.

This software comes bundled with blog software, forum software, MySQL database, apache security module and much more. The price is right as well. This site is not really easy to find in the search engines which goes to show that sometimes some of the best stuff on the web is buried quite deep. The url is http://www.devside.net/

Figuring out if IIS (Internet Information Server) is enabled?

I am assuming that you are going to install and use Apache as your web server. As such you need to see if IIS is running on your machine as there might be a port conflict as port 80 is the default port.

Some misc. advice (You may likely need to do a bit more digging to deal with the advice given here.)

Setting up your router

- DO NOT open up your entire DMZ to the internet are you will be toast!!!
- Only open up port 80 and port 23 (if you plan on letting people download stuff using FTP. Note, they can download files using http which runs on port 80).

Port Forwarding
- Find a service like ZoneEdit. This is what I use. It is free for low to medium traffic sites.

Your ISP

- Some ISP's block port 80. You can still run your webserver, but it will have to be done on another port (81, 82, etc...)
- Some ISP's have policies that do not allow their customers to run websites. You should read your internet service agreement for details.

For another decent link to a site with good information on setting up a web server go to http://www.diywebserver.com/

Eric Matthews is the owner of http://www.anglesanddangles.com which provides information on web development covering technologies like PHP, Html, Perl CGI, as well as other resources to assist you with your website.

Web-Based SMTP Server Monitoring

Web-based monitoring of SMTP email servers is normally conducted using one of two different approaches. The first uses a socket level connection to verify whether or not the target server is operational. The second more comprehensive method involves sending round-robin messages to your email system and its subcomponents. Depending on your needs, hardware, and company size both have validity and a rightful place. To determine what is best for your company, let's examine both in more detail and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Socket connection is the most prevalent method used by web-based monitoring companies due to its simplicity. A DNS check is normally conducted, then a socket level connection to port 25 of your email server is attempted. If DNS is ok and SMTP port 25 handshaking occurs, the server is viewed as operational. If not, the appropriate notification methods are triggered. The socket connection method advantages are: speed, low bandwidth, and no agent or server changes are required. Because of its simplistic design, socket connection monitoring can be used to monitor SMTP servers your company does not own or manage. The disadvantage to this approach is accuracy. Just because DNS is operational and handshaking occurs, it does not mean the server or subcomponents are actually processing messages.

The second, less used, method involves a round-robin process that actually sends test messages to your email systems and waits for the message to be returned. As with the socket connection method, a DNS check is normally performed first. A test message is then sent by the monitoring company to your email system. The message travels through your gateways, any subcomponents such as antivirus and content/spam filters, through the firewall to the designated internal server. The internal server, based on a pre-established server-based rule, returns the message back to the monitoring company. If the message is received by the monitoring company within the preset time, 15 or 30 minutes for example, the email system and subcomponents are viewed as operational. If not, the appropriate notification methods are triggered.

If you are using Microsoft Outlook & Exchange, a server-based rule would look something like this: Apply this rule after the message arrives from EmailVerify@SiteRecon.com and with "Email Verification for" in the subject forward it to "Webmaster@SiteRecon.com

The advantage of this approach includes the ability to check the complete message process for failures. For example, a gateway checked using the socket connection method could be fully operational, yet a connected spam filtering appliance or antivirus process could be hung halting message processing. Depending on the monitoring company, the ability to include a specific type of attachment to the round-robin process is also available. Including an attachment such as the Eicar.Txt text pattern for example, permits subcomponents such as antivirus to be fully tested. The disadvantages to this approach are: increased processing by your servers as this testing method sends 96 messages per day using a 15 minute monitoring interval; creation of an email account to receive the test message; and establishment of a server based rule.

The diagram outlines the process for both round-robin and socket connect monitoring methods.

Clearly, the round-robin method offers a more comprehensive testing process than the socket connection method. However, depending upon your needs both process have a rightful place in verifying your email systems are up and operational.

If you do not have the ability to establish server based rules, your only choice is to use monitoring based on the socket connection method. If you have the ability to establish rules, the round robin process offers a much more comprehensive testing method.

Socket connection type monitoring is offered by a wide range of companies and prices vary widely. Round-robin processing is offered by SiteRecon and Websitepulse and range from $11 to $29 per month depending on the monitoring frequency.

Lew Newlin?is CTO of Information Solutions, Inc. that operates SiteRecon.com. SiteRecon specializes in email monitoring?and web site monitoring?for Internet service providers and businesses

Web Server And Web Hosting Services - An Overview

Web hosting providers provide the following basic services for web servers - anything else can be considered add-on features in theory, although in practice they are rather essential to run a successful Internet business or business website. A web hosting provider should provide the following as part of the functionality of the web server:

1. Hard Disk Space.
This is what you are actually renting, for all practical purposes. You need hard disk space on a web server to host your website. A website really consists of a lot of files, much like MSWord documents, or Excel spreadsheets. These files take up hard disk space. The web hosting provider provides you with space so that people around the world who has access to the Internet can access those files on that web server.

The price or hard disks have come down dramatically over the past year or so and it is not unknown for a hosting provider to make provision for packages from 250Megabytes up to 2000 Megabytes and even more.

How much would you need? The average web site that just makes use of static HTML pages need about 5 MB to 10 MB of space. If you use a dynamic website where some of your data is stored in a MySQL database the database will also take up space. These types of sites require more space and anything between 100MB and 250MB should be enough.

If you are going to store emails on your server you need to add these into your calculations. Emails can take up a lot of web space very quickly if people send you large files. You will need to monitor the space taken up by Emails very carefully since I've seen individual mailboxes go up to 50 or 60 MBs very quickly.

If you want to host video or audio files on your server, you will have to make provision for quite a lot more disk space. One audio file can easily take up 30 to 40MB.

2. Bandwidth
Bandwidth depends on your traffic. Every visitor to your website will consume bandwidth since this is what they will use when they open any pages on your site. Once again, if you have video and audio files on your site you will require more bandwidth. A good rule of thumb is to have an allocation of about 100KB (Kilobytes) for every visitor. This means that 500 visitors per month will consume about 50MB of bandwidth - although this is only true for an average site with mostly text and a few pictures. If you have large picture galleries, audio and/or video files you should rather work on 150KB per visitor or even more. Search engine spiders also consume bandwidth! You should monitor your bandwidth usage through your CPanel control panel or your website statistics and make sure that you communicate early enough with your hosting provider in case you need to purchase more bandwidth to prevent penalties and/or lockouts.

3. Access to your site
Under this can be counted access to a control panel, such as CPanel, Plesk or Helm, that will help you with setting up of emails, sub-domains, software installations and your MySQL database if you are running dynamic functionality such as shopping carts, forums, Content Management Systems etc.

You are also going to need FTP access to upload files to your web server. Without being able to use FTP you will not be able to maintain the content on your site (unless you make use of a Content Management System). FTP access is still required even in that case since you will definitely have occasion to have to upload files such as pictures, audio, video and other files to your server.

These are the very basic functionality that a web hosting provider should provide!

Christine Anderssen is the owner of Tailormade4You Web Design and Web Development Services and Internet Web Hosting for South Africa. Visit our site for free Joomla tutorials and tips on how to get the best performance out of your website

Is Your Website Secure On A Shared Server? Part 1

Security aspects of a shared web hosting server have always on the forefront. And, with almost 90% of websites being hosted on shared servers, the security considerations are not uncalled for.

Also know as virtual hosting, shared hosting has been the favorite of small and medium size enterprises. Owing to the fact that shared web hosting works out to be cheaper than hosting on dedicated servers. That?s because a website shares a server with other websites in a virtual environment. But, does that make it vulnerable to hacking? That?s the million dollar question. To understand the security aspects of hosting on shared servers, we will have to first understand the different modes of shared hosting.

Types of shared hosting

• Domain based shared hosting:

It works on the Virtual Private Server (VPS) technology and provides each website with a unique URL, even though they are hosted on a single server. The VPS technology achieves by creating effective partitions in the server and gets them to act as individual servers.

• Name based shared hosting:

In name based shared hosting, a websites name appears as a subset of the service providers name. Example of such service providers are geocities, blogspot etc.

• Directory based shared hosting:

With respect to directory based shared hosting, the customers website will be mentioned as a directory in the host domain name. The most important point that comes through with shared hosting is the relative lack of a dedicated IP address. That?s because most of the web security apparatus are applicable on the IP address level. That?s the reason why, dedicated severs are capable of providing a more secure environment; as they guarantee a unique IP address.

The other blockade with shared server security is the relative difficulty encountered in implementing SSL certificates.

Search Engine marketing expert, Tarun Gupta is one of the most prolific writers in the internet marketing domain with his articles being published in numerous search related websites and newsletters. He is the founder director of web development and web hosting services company BrainPulse.com.

Is Your Website Secure On A Shared Server? Part 2

SSL certificates The secured socket layer (SSL) technology provides strong encryption of HTTP packets during their transfer through the World Wide Web. However, in order to encrypt; a SSL certificate from a trusted certification authority like Verisign or Twate is necessary.

Shared hosting and SSL certificates SSL can undoubtedly provide a lot of security on the server side. Most of the encryption done is on the 128 bit level, which in its own right is very secure. But, when it comes to securing websites on shared hosts the real problems surface as the SSL technology requires an IP address ( with port number) and most shared websites don?t have one!

To overcome this problem many ISP?s have come-up with shared SSL certificates. But, this quick fix solution actually undermines the importance of SSL certificates as, with a shares SSL certificate the credibility and trustworthiness of a certificate comes under the scanner.

However new methods are being developed at a rapid pace whereby Genuine SSL certificates would be provided to websites operating on shared hosts and with the evolution of IPv6 (The new generation of Internet Protocol) the scarcity of public IP?s would also be addressed to a certain extent).

Other practical methods to ensure security on shared servers

• You should have complete information about the types of scripts and software installed on the server. As applying unproven or substandard codes by others using the server might affect you too.
• Enquire about the security audit procedure employed by your host. That?s because the frequency of review can be the deciding factor between succumbing to a security threat and overcoming it.
• The most important action you can take on your part is to use very strong password for your website. As using easy to crack password would make your website as open as a stadium in front of hackers.

When we talk of the World Wide Web and its secure nature, we have to understand that nothing is fool-proof. Recent times have seen hackers breaking in to some of the most secure websites. That?s why, the trick here lies in keeping up with the times and heeding to the latest of security updates. A web hosting provider who does that can provide a great deal of security to your website even if it?s hosted on a shared server.

The Author Search Engine marketing expert, Tarun Gupta is one of the most prolific writers in the internet marketing domain with his articles being published in numerous search related websites and newsletters.

He is the founder director of web development and web hosting services company BrainPulse.com.

Monitor the Uptime of Your Websites and Servers. Downtime is Expensive!

There are companies, which websites are essential for their business success, as they are generating the most or the whole of the company?s revenue. Maybe also you belong to them. When this kind of website (server) is down, your business is affected. If your website is hosted by another company, you probably have some sort of ?uptime? guarantee. Nevertheless, what exactly is uptime and how do you measure it. The basic definition of uptime is the period of time when your site is up and running, being accessible and able to satisfy customers.

The opposite, when your site is not accessible, it is down. And that is how you measure downtime. Faulty routers, malfunctioning LANs, or a loss of electrical power typically causes most of the downtimes; only rarely are caused by a natural disaster. Most often, it is caused by failures from the telecommunications company or an application failure, not a fire, flood or other catastrophe.

The cost of downtime calculation of course depends on many factors, like the products and services you provide, the size of your company, the number of online sales, etc. Even if you do not sell any products or services online, there is still a cost of downtime, but then in terms of damage of reputation etc. Calculate the cost of downtime is difficult and varies from one company to another. There is no ?average business?, so the statistics that quantify the cost of downtime for average businesses are not helpful.

The cost of downtime include direct costs such as the labor charges for a team of technologists who had to resolve the outages. The indirect costs are much more difficult to calculate and include potential lost revenue, reductions in worker productivity, damaged reputation with customers and in the marketplace, lost future sales and the cost of storing unsold goods. Financial analysts and accountants at your company can help you come up with the factors for your particular business.

If your website is generating profit for your business, you will for sure monitor it by an external monitoring service. The on-line market offers you to choose from different services to get uptime reports, statistics and get notifications as soon as your website is down. You can not let your customers to inform you about your own downtime.

To understand the importance of being aware of downtime, and to be alerted as soon as possible when a problem occurs, have a look at these numbers:

• According to a report by Cumulus Research Partners website downtime, caused by problems such as network failures, costs European businesses more than ? 5 billion a year.
• In the automotive industry downtime is often worth some $1.000 a minute.
• According to a recent study conducted by ARC Advisory Group, accounting for nearly five percent of total North American production, more than $20 billion is lost each year due to unscheduled downtime. Clearly, the traditional "fail and fix" approach to maintenance is no longer a viable MRO strategy.

Many hosting providers guarantee 99 % uptime. 99 % uptime sounds good, but means that your site could be down more than 3.5 days a year, and in today's Internet that is unacceptable. Comparing to that, 99.9 % uptime is much better, but with 8 hours and 45 minutes of possible downtime do not have to be always enough. The table below shows the percentage of uptime and the related downtime per year.

99 % .......... 87 hours, 36 minutes (more than 3.5 days) 99.9 % ....... 8 hours, 45 minutes, 36 seconds 99.99 % ..... 52 minutes, 33.6 seconds 99.999 % .... 5 minutes, 15.36 seconds 99.9999 % .. 31.68 seconds

As you can see, a 99 % uptime may not sound too bad, but it can cost you quite a lot of loss in revenues.

There are more than 30 uptime monitoring websites worldwide, while some of those have also affiliate partners. Among those are: Alertra, AlertSite, Dotcom monitor, InternetSeer, Jaguard, RedAlert, SiteUptime, WatchMouse, WebsitePulse and others. Almost all of them offer some prepaid packages based on monthly fees, varying by number of possible monitored sites (servers), additional services and by the complexity of the service. The price of their basic prepaid package is $5 - $40 per month. For this price you can monitor only 1, or maximum of 3 devices, choose from quite a lot of protocols, allow to send notifications to multiple contacts via e-mail, IM, pager or SMS, allow to choose between daily, weekly, or monthly reports by email and of course uptime performance and statistics available on-line. The Professional packages can go up to $180 per month or even higher.

There are just two completely free 24/7 monitoring services: Montastic and mon.itor.us.

Montastic?s biggest advantage is simplicity of the service, while it offers just basic service including real time monitoring and alerting by e-mail one contact person ? the registred user, or by RSS feed, when the website is down and when it is back again. It allows to monitor only http websites, limited to the number of 100 (what is not a limit at all), checking it every 10 minutes from two different locations.

Meanwhile mon.itor.us provides network, website and server monitoring service supporting 11 protocols with possibility to monitor unlimited number of devices and alert unlimited number of contact persons by e-mail, RSS feed, IM message, pager or SMS. There are also other remarkable features as personalized interactive interface, where you can add server performance and availability tests, set daily, weekly or monthly reports sent by e-mail. Tests are performed from 3 geographically distributed servers, and they are always adding more interesting features as they are still in beta version.

Peter Cernak works at Sourcio. The company develops mon.itor.us and offers a wide range of IT services and Open Source solutions for small and medium-size businesses.

Monitor the Uptime of Your Websites and Servers

Websites are nowadays used to do business and earn profit. If you belong to those who own such a website or just planning to start on-line business, you will have to monitor the uptime of your websites or servers. Do not let your clients to let you know about your downtime.

There are companies, which websites are essential for their business success, as they are generating the most or the whole of the company's revenue. Maybe also you belong to them. When this kind of website (server) is down, your business is affected. If your website is hosted by another company, you probably have some sort of "uptime" guarantee. Nevertheless, what exactly is uptime and how do you measure it. The basic definition of uptime is the period of time when your site is up and running, being accessible and able to satisfy customers.

The opposite, when your site is not accessible, it is down. And that is how you measure downtime. Faulty routers, malfunctioning LANs, or a loss of electrical power typically causes most of the downtimes; only rarely are caused by a natural disaster. Most often, it is caused by failures from the telecommunications company or an application failure, not a fire, flood or other catastrophe.

The cost of downtime calculation of course depends on many factors, like the products and services you provide, the size of your company, the number of online sales, etc. Even if you do not sell any products or services online, there is still a cost of downtime, but then in terms of damage of reputation etc. Calculate the cost of downtime is difficult and varies from one company to another. There is no "average business", so the statistics that quantify the cost of downtime for average businesses are not helpful.

The cost of downtime include direct costs such as the labor charges for a team of technologists who had to resolve the outages. The indirect costs are much more difficult to calculate and include potential lost revenue, reductions in worker productivity, damaged reputation with customers and in the marketplace, lost future sales and the cost of storing unsold goods. Financial analysts and accountants at your company can help you come up with the factors for your particular business.

If your website is generating profit for your business, you will for sure monitor it by an external monitoring service. The on-line market offers you to choose from different services to get uptime reports, statistics and get notifications as soon as your website is down. You can not let your customers to inform you about your own downtime.

To understand the importance of being aware of downtime, and to be alerted as soon as possible when a problem occurs, have a look at these numbers:
- According to a report by Cumulus Research Partners website downtime, caused by problems such as network failures, costs European businesses more than ? 5 billion a year.
- In the automotive industry downtime is often worth some $1.000 a minute.
- According to a recent study conducted by ARC Advisory Group, accounting for nearly five percent of total North American production, more than $20 billion is lost each year due to unscheduled downtime. Clearly, the traditional "fail and fix" approach to maintenance is no longer a viable MRO strategy.

Many hosting providers guarantee 99 % uptime. 99 % uptime sounds good, but means that your site could be down more than 3.5 days a year, and in today's Internet that is unacceptable. Comparing to that, 99.9 % uptime is much better, but with 8 hours and 45 minutes of possible downtime do not have to be always enough. The table below shows the percentage of uptime and the related downtime per year.

99 % ........ 87 hours, 36 minutes (more than 3.5 days)
99.9 % ...... 8 hours, 45 minutes, 36 seconds
99.99 % ..... 52 minutes, 33.6 seconds
99.999 % .... 5 minutes, 15.36 seconds
99.9999 % ... 31.68 seconds

As you can see, a 99 % uptime may not sound too bad, but it can cost you quite a lot of loss in revenues.

There are more than 30 uptime monitoring websites worldwide, while some of those have also affiliate partners. Among those are: Alertra, AlertSite, Dotcom monitor, InternetSeer, Jaguard, RedAlert, SiteUptime, WatchMouse, WebsitePulse and others. Almost all of them offer some prepaid packages based on monthly fees, varying by number of possible monitored sites (servers), additional services and by the complexity of the service. The price of their basic prepaid package is $5 - $40 per month. For this price you can monitor only 1, or maximum of 3 devices, choose from quite a lot of protocols, allow to send notifications to multiple contacts via e-mail, IM, pager or SMS, allow to choose between daily, weekly, or monthly reports by email and of course uptime performance and statistics available on-line. The Professional packages can go up to $180 per month or even higher.

There are just two completely free 24/7 monitoring services: Montastic and mon.itor.us.

Montastic's (http://www.montastic.com) biggest advantage is simplicity of the service, while it offers just basic service including real time monitoring and alerting by e-mail one contact person - the registred user, or by RSS feed, when the website is down and when it is back again. It allows to monitor only http websites, limited to the number of 100 (what is not a limit at all), checking it every 10 minutes from two different locations.

Meanwhile mon.itor.us (http://mon.itor.us) provides network, website and server monitoring service supporting 11 protocols with possibility to monitor unlimited number of devices and alert unlimited number of contact persons by e-mail, RSS feed, IM message, pager or SMS. There are also other remarkable features as personalized interactive interface, where you can add server performance and availability tests, set daily, weekly or monthly reports sent by e-mail. Tests are performed from 3 geographically distributed servers, and they are always adding more interesting features as they are still in beta version.

Peter Cernak works at Sourcio (http://www.sourcio.com). The company develops mon.itor.us and offers a wide range of IT services and Open Source solutions for small and medium-size businesses

Dedicated Web Server Hosting

Web hosting is one of the revolutionary breakthroughs brought to us by the advent of cyber technology. Now you can learn, play, interact, make friends, draw, or compose music on the Net. Dedicated hosting means creating a site and making it available on the internet. Nonetheless, Websites with multiple numbers of pages, or Websites which are commercial and business oriented, are hosted at various prices. Obviously, for that there has to be a registered domain name to run the related Website. Dedicated servers are meant for faster processing and more disk space and RAM than shared hosting. A dedicated server not only allows an individual to customize and individualize server settings for his unique requirements, but also augments all kinds of Web-based works with faster delivery and maximum performance. Service Level Agreements (SLA's) are another important part of the dedicated Web hosting server requirement systems.

A combination of highly technical characteristics contributes a lot to the optimal performance of a dedicated Web hosting server, to exercise total control over the Web and its other affiliated programs and other things.

A few of the most desirable features for the ideal dedicated Web-hosting server are:

a) High availability of data processing units

b) High performance data centers for maximum output in minimum time

c) Multiple backup generators along with battery backup

d) Fiber entry on two sides of the facilities

e) Superfluous path fiber to upstream providers through multiple transport providers

f) Total of more than twenty-five gigabyte Internet connections

g) Redundant network cores and total of 30 backbone routers for optimal output mode

h) Two network operations centers staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Dedicated Hosting provides detailed information on Dedicated Hosting, Dedicated Web Hosting, Dedicated Hosting Servers, Dedicated Web Server Hosting and more. Dedicated Hosting is affiliated with FTP Site Hosting

Hard Disks for Web Servers Explained

A web server's hard disk drives are vital because they are where your website data is actually stored. There are several important technical terms to describe hard disk performance. They sound complicated at first, but they are actually very simple. Knowing what these terms mean can help you to choose a hard disk drive, or understand whether a web hosting company is giving you a good deal on a server. Here are the main terms used to describe hard disk drives.

Capacity-- How much data can be stored on the drive. This is measured in Gigabytes (GB). Note that hard disk manufacturers use what is known as a decimal Gigabyte, which is 10 to the power 9 or 1,000,000,000 bytes. Computers use what is known as a binary Gigabyte, which is 2 to the power 30 or 1,073,741,824 bytes. Therefore the hard disk capacity in GB claimed by the manufacturer is smaller than the number your computer will report. This has been standard practise for many years, but it can catch out beginners. You will need to choose a disk with several times more capacity than your website takes up, in order to leave space for future growth.

Spindle Speed-- This is simply how fast the platters (the hard metal disks that store the data) rotate. It is usually between 5,400 and 15,000 rpm. In a low to mid range web server you should be looking for a 7,200 rpm drive. A high end server would have 10,000 or 15,000 rpm drives. The faster the spindle speed, the faster the drive can read and write data, so faster is better.

Seek time-- A measure of how long it takes for a hard disk drive to move its heads to the correct part of the platters to find the data that it is looking for. This is measured in milliseconds (ms). This will be somewhere around 10 ms, give or take 5 ms. The lower the figure, the faster the drive finds the data.

Cache-- The drive stores some data in Random Access Memory known as the cache buffer. It is much faster to access the buffer than it is to find data on the drive. The drive controller keeps data that you have recently used in the cache in case you need it again, and it also reads data from the disk that it thinks you might ask for next. This makes it faster to access data, so long as the data you asked for is in the cache. Otherwise the drive will have to find it on disk. Cache memory is especially important for accessing small, frequently used files. Cache sizes start from around 8 Megabytes, the more the better.

Sustained Transfer Rate-- How fast the drive can transfer large files that do not fit into the cache buffer, or small files that were not in the cache. In other words, this is the maximum rate that the drive can read files from the disk itself. The greater the rate, the better, especially if most of your data is stored in large files.

Interface-- This is the connection between the drive and the computer's processor. Older servers use PATA, also known as Parallel ATA or IDE. Newer servers use SATA, also known as Serial ATA. High-end, expensive servers use SCSI, and very high-end servers use Fibre Channel. If you are just starting out with your first dedicated web server, you will probably want a SATA hard drive.

RAID-- This is where two or more hard disks are connected together, which gives improved speed and/or reliability compared to a single hard disk drive. You should consider RAID hard disks for your web server to improve reliability.

Now you know the vocabulary, you will be better able to choose hard disk drives when you rent or buy a web server.

Jimmy Martin is a writer and webmaster. You can read more of his guides at www.eejitsguides.com

Web Sites, Domain Names, And Name Servers (What's DNS All About?)...

I explain Domain Name Servers and Name Servers to a friend of mine all the time. He builds web sites part time. I know he's not alone; DNS confuses a lot of people.

The internet works by assigning an address to each device attached to it. This address is called an Internet Protocol Address or IP Address for short. It's a 32 bit number that's commonly written as 4 segments or octets (called an octet because each 4th is 8 bits) such as 10.10.1.1 or 216.54.217.22. Each octet can range between 0 and 255. This address works just like your street address: a packet (a chunk of communication between two devices) leaving your computer and heading for Google moves through devices call routers that route traffic on the internet. The router looks at the destination IP Address and knows which way to send the packet. Just like a letter moves through various post offices and delivery vehicles (mail man, mail trucks, airplanes, etc.) your little packet of internet traffic moves across various communication channels (phone lines, cable lines, fiber, etc.) and providers (UUNet, Cogent, Level3, Time-Warner, AT&T, Sprint, AboveNet, etc.). It finally arrives at its destination and is processed and a return packet is sent back... in just the same way, it finds its way back based on your IP Address.

The Internet would be pretty hard to use if you had to remember all those IP Addresses when you wanted to visit a web page, so a naming scheme is used that allows you to enter a name that is easy to remember instead of a sequence of numbers. So, how does your computer get the IP Address of a web site when you type in the name? That's where Domain Name Servers do their job.

Name Servers. A Name Server holds the information that relates the IP Addresses for a web site to the names used to access that web site. If you want to have a web site with a domain name, you have to register or purchase (more like rent) the domain name from a service call a registrar. When I registered the domain name for my web site, I told the registrar what Name Server I was using, Most people will use the Name Servers provided by their hosting facility (where they rent the server space for their web site). That Name Server is configured to have a "zone" for my domain and that zone contains records that relate a name to an IP address, this is called an "A Record". An "MX Record" is used to identify the mail server for that zone, for example, I have an "A Record" for my domain that points to the IP address of the web server, and the "MX Record" points to the mail server for my domain. These may or may not be on the same server. When someone sends me email, their mail server will request the Name Server for my domain and will get it's IP Address, then it can request the MX Record and get it's IP Address, and then it can send packets of mail to the mail server for my domain.

Domain Name Servers. A Domain Name Server stores the domain names and associated IP Addresses for a period of time.

This is stored or cached on a server called a Domain Name Server, or DNS server for short. If the time specified for caching a domain name / IP Address relationship has passed the DNS server will remove it from its cache. When a request for an IP Address is made, and the DNS server does not have that address in its cache, the DNS Server will make a request to a set of special servers on the internet that hold the addresses for all the Name Servers and which domain names each one controls. It can then send a request to the name server for that domain to get the IP Address for the domain name and return it to the computer or device making the original request. All Internet Providers have several DNS servers and as you browse the internet your computer is constantly sending requests to these DNS servers to get (or resolve) IP Addresses for the domain names you type in or links you click on.

A web site's name to address relationships are stored on Name Servers, as you browse the Internet, DNS servers either provide the address back to your computer from cache, or, look up the Name Server for your domain and then gets the correct Name Server to get the IP Address.

Now you too understand DNS and Name Servers!

Fred Black is an experienced web developer offering instructional videos at www.WebSiteTrainingOnline.com, An Introduction to Creating Web Sites.

Choosing The Best Web Server For Your Online Business

What is a web server? Basically, a web server embodies the theory of supply and demand: it supplies your website when the people demand it. When a user wants to view your website, the server finds the URL?s file and uploads it to the user?s browser. However, there are many different kinds of servers to choose from, so how do you find the right one?

The Virtual Private Server is a great choice for larger businesses that have complicated needs. It?s best if you have some experience working the program, because you have to know how to control the settings, but if you can read and understand the manual, you?ll be fine. The plus to a Virtual Private Server is that it?s a single server that branches out, letting you work independently while paying with the other host customers. You can also have up to 50 websites. It can be costly at over 100 dollars a month, but if you?re concerned about security and control, a Virtual Private Server is probably the way to go.

The more popular server is Virtual Hosting. This is a single server that is shared with many users. Because it?s controlled by an administrator, you don?t need to worry about technical skills. However, you don?t have as much control as you would with a Virtual Private Server, because every time you want to change something in your settings, you have to contact the admininstrator. Secondly, you?re only allowed one website, so if you want to start a second site, you have to create a new account. The good news is, it?s a great deal at only about 20 to 50 dollars per month. So if you have a small business with just one or two websites, and you don?t want to worry about technical skills , Virtual Hosting is the best choice.

You also have to think about web server software. One type is Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). It only works with NT-based server systems, as NT is a Microsoft product. It has crash protection and plenty of support, so you don?t have to worry about viruses. Also, if you use NT, you get IIS free with it.

However, the most popular type is Apache. It?s always free, and while it isn?t supported like IIS, it?s always updated and easy to use. So if you?re looking for something safe, IIS is a great choice, but Apache is more popular for a reason.

These are only a few of the servers and software you have to choose from, but they?re a start. If you do your research and think of what will best benefit your business or webpage, you can make a well-informed decision that will let you be a successful host.

Robert Michael is a writer for Daily Servers which is an excellent place to find servers links, resources and articles. For more information go to: http://www.dailyservers.com

How To Set Up A Web Hosting Server

How to set up a web hosting server.

First a webserver is the computer that will be responisible for accepting HTTP(Hypertext Transfer Protocol) requests from web browsers and sending them webpages which are html documents and images. A computer software program that is installed on the webserver is what functions the server and manages the web pages. The most common server programs used are:

1. Apache Http Server from Apache Software Foundation

2. Sun Java System Web Server from Microsystems

3. (IIS) Internet Information Services from Microsoft

4. Zeus Web Server from Zeus Technology

Ok get a computer with sufficient memory and lots of hard drive space that has Win 2000,Linux,XP ect...on it. Next install one of the server programs on it.Secure your server by installing a firewall on it for servers. Then subscribe to a cable or dsl ISP(Internet Service Provider) that allows servers. Get a hardware router(a device that shares a single connection with one or more computers to the internet. Hook the cable or dsl up to the router and set the router to work with it. Then give your server a static local IP number you can do this manually.

Obtain a DNS account. A DNS is a name server that translates a domain name(www.web.com) into a IP address.There are a few free DNS Services but most are run by large webhosts ISP's. Enter the IP number, primary and secondary name servers into the router and your server is pretty much setup for more in-depth help Click Here!

WebDesigner that researches and writes about many topics

Web Hosting - Virtual Private Servers (VPS) Explained

Shared hosting is a great option for a lot of websites as it brings the cost down considerably. It does have some disadvantages, however. Your site's CPU, disk space and bandwidth can be affected by other sites on the same server.

If your site is relatively small, these resource issues may not be a problem. Another downside to shared hosting is lack of system-level control. You may not have any control over things such as system software and scripts.

While many webmasters don't need to worry about these things, there are some that do. If you fall into that category, you might want to look at a Virtual Private Server (VPS) for your hosting.

A VPS is a single physical server that has been divided into a few "virtual machines" through software running on the server. The server's resources - RAM, disk space, etc. - are still shared, but each VPS gets its own allotment and operated completely independently from the others.

This independence lets you run scripts or software - even install a different operating system - without having any effect on the other virtual servers on the same machine.

One of the biggest advantages of a VPS is the fact that you get "root" level access to your server. This means you can install or delete any software you want, create any accounts you want, set permissions the way you want - effectively all the same things you can do on a dedicated server, only at a lower cost.

A VPS is also more secure than shared hosting. On a shared server, all the websites are running within the same operating system. If the server gets hacked, all the sites will be vulnerable.

With a VPS, because of the way the virtual servers are divided, if one of them gets hacked none of the others are visible to the hacker. They're effectively like different computers.

Virtual Private Servers can be configured in a number of ways so you should be sure that you find out how any particular host has set them up.

In most cases, the server's total resources are divided evenly by the number of VPS's on the machine. ie. If there are 10 virtual servers, the total RAM, disk space, etc. is simply divided by 10 and each VPS gets 10% of the total.

The disadvantages of a VPS are related to the same things as the advantages. Because you have complete control over the system, you can run into problems if you don't know what you're doing.

You can delete the wrong files, set permissions incorrectly, create security vulnerabilities and more if you're not careful.

If you aren't familiar with server administration and don't have time to learn, you should either hire someone to do it for you or find a host who manages the server for you.

John Lenaghan writes about web hosting and other related topics for the Hosting Report website. To find out more about hosting your website, visit http://www.hostingreport.org

How To Set Up Web Hosting Server

How to set up web hosting server.

First a webserver is the computer that will be responisible for accepting HTTP(Hypertext Transfer Protocol) requests from web browsers and sending them webpages which are html documents and images.A computer software program that is installed on the webserver is what functions the server and manages the web pages.The most common server programs used are:

1. Apache Http Server from Apache Software Foundation

2. Sun Java System Web Server from Microsystems

3. (IIS) Internet Information Services from Microsoft

4. Zeus Web Server from Zeus Technology

Ok get a computer with sufficient memory and lots of hard drive space that has Win 2000,Linux,XP ect...on it.Next install one of the server programs on it.Secure your server by installing a firewall on it for servers.Then subscribe to a cable or dsl ISP(Internet Service Provider) that allows servers.Get a hardware router(a device that shares a single connection with one or more computers to the internet.Hook the cable or dsl up to the router and set the router to work with it.Then give your server a static local IP number you can do this manually. Obtain a DNS account.A DNS is a name server that translates a domain name(www.web.com) into a IP address.There are a few free DNS Services but most are run by large webhosts ISP's.Enter the IP number,primary and secondary name servers into the router and your server is pretty much setup for more indepth help Click Here!

WebDesigner that researches and writes about many topics.

Embedded web server-more than just an operating system

Embedded web server isn't new term. Web server is jus a method of delivering web pages (or other contents) to the user. Market is full of such systems allowing interconnection of domestic devices and other web-enabled appliances. It is hard to understand how microcontroller can drive web server. Embedded web server usually is highly optimized machine code. Usually implemented in the C language. In order to write optimized embedded web server it is necessary to write code from scratch. What parts need to be implemented while creating embedded web server:; Microcontroller hardware; Network protocols for embedded web server; Implementation and optimisation techniques. Microcontroller hardware is a computer on a chip which has program memory for code storage, EEPROM, RAM, I/O and other peripherals. Network protocols can be used for embedded web server: HTTP-document request/response TCP-reliable communications IP-low-level data transport ICMP-diagnostics (ping) SLIP-serial interface Modem emulation HTTP request is Hyper Transfer Protocol which defines a request - response mechanism for obtaining documents from web server. Web browse sends request to web server in multiline string format like: GET /index.htm HTTP/1.0 User-Agent: Mozilla/4.5 [en] (Win95; I) Pragma: no-cache Host: 10.1.1.11 Accept: image/gif, image/x- xbitmap, image/jpeg, */* Accept-Encoding: gzip Accept-Language: en Accept-Charset: iso-8859-1,*,utf-8 In embedded systems all this information isn't needed. For instance we don't care about browser information, HTTP version isn't important because usually simplest HTTP interface is used. Simply you can trim the rest part of message and send line: GET / HTTP/1.0 because most web servers interpret this as request of index.htm.

Http://www.scienceprog.com - embedded related info. Scientific, embedded, biomedical, electronics articles. Interesting electronics and embedded projects

Web Server Monitoring Goes to Australia

January 31, 2006, Plymouth, Minnesota -- Dotcom-Monitor has just added Sydney as its newest web server monitoring location, bringing executive class monitoring to Australia.

"Companies need to know how their web sites respond to customer usage," says Vadim Mazo, CEO of Dotcom-Monitor. "Adding the Sydney monitoring station means they will now be alerted if their web site is inaccessible or slow to Australian customers."

The Sydney's monitoring station is a robot that visits a company's web site, simulating a human visitor, and performs various functions, including surfing, form-testing, shopping cart usage, etc. Performance speed, accessibility and response times simulate a human user's experience.

Companies depend on remote web server performance monitoring to respond quickly to emergencies (such as an order form no working), as well as to plan for long term upgrades to ensure maximum satisfaction for customers. It is estimated that $20 to $40 billion is lost each year from users who abandon slow loading web sites.

Global web site monitoring secures customers world-wide

Global marketers understand that web sites respond differently in different parts of the world due to trans-Atlantic connections, bottlenecks, the quality of local connections, etc. "Just because a web site performs well in New Jersey, does not mean a customer in Sydney or London benefits from the same performance," Mr. Mazo says. "Monitoring your web servers from Sydney will tell you if you need to make changes to better serve your Australian market."

While only 13% of U.S. home users still use sub-56K Internet connections, that number is much higher in less developed countries, meaning web sites optimized for U.S. customers might not perform well overseas.

Sydney is the tenths monitoring station in Dotcom-Monitor's global network. The other five sites are:

- London, UK - Minnesota, USA - New York, USA - California, USA - Florida, USA - Calgary, Canada - Colorado, USA - Frankfurt, Germany - Honk Kong, China

Dotcom Monitor is an executive class website monitoring company, offering top performance services above and beyond the norm in the industry. Since 1998, its goal remains to protect the reputation and profitability of online business by bringing together monitoring, reporting, notification, escalation and analysis in the combination best suited to a company's needs.

About Dotcom Monitor: Dotcom Monitor is an executive class website and network monitoring company, offering top performance services above and beyond the norm in the industry, including website load stress testing introduced in 2004 (offered by very few monitoring companies). Since 1998, Dotcom Monitor has been protecting the reputation and profitability of businesses online by bringing together monitoring, reporting, notification, escalation and analysis in the combination best suited to a company's needs. Visit the website at www.dotcom-monitor.com or get more details about website monitoring services at www.dotcom-monitor.com/web-site-monitoring.asp. Get information on network monitoring at www.dotcom-monitor.com/network-monitoring.asp.

Johan Jacobsson is a marketing and SEO consultant at Dotcom-Monitor.com, a web-server monitoring company.