USB flash drives are common place in the work place and home and have almost become a necessity like the desktop . But, however handy these devices may be, they can also serve as a tremendous source of data leakage. USB flash drives have become as common as writable CD-ROM drives in most organizations. The problem is that some users have access to sensitive information, and want to have access to it no matter when or where they are. I can’t tell you how many people store sensitive information on USB flash drives. Information such as passwords, corporate secrets, and sensitive personal information just sitting on the USB flash devices is not secure.

And with the easy of use (plug and play) anyone can just plop the USB flash drive in and they can store about 16 GB as of January 2009 ish. 16 GB of data on a flash drive is insane! Image the amount of data one could leak with all that disk space! Disgruntled employee’s could copy data to the drive and sell it to a competitor, by the GB, LOL. How about thieves? They can steal the drive easy as 1,2,3 and no one will ever know who did it. Stealing it would be easy due to it’s size, think about it.

But don’t worry there are many ways to secure the data on a flash drive:

Password Protection

Encryption

Buried under a concrete slab

Password protection will stop the most elementary user from gaining access to your device. The data however is not fully protected and needs to be secured from more technically apt user. To secure the data from this type user we will use

Encryption, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) symmetric encryption is an encryption standard adopted by the U.S. government. AES jumbles up the data and makes it’s virtually impossible for anyone to read the information on that disk.

Buried under a concrete slab would be one extra step… ha ha?

From my experience I recommend both the Lexar JumpDrive Secure USB Flash Drive and the Kingston DataTraveler. Both of these devices use AES and are simple to understand and use. USB Flash drive security can also be accomplished with free software available online.

If you have already invested in a jump drive you could encrypt it with TrueCrypt, free open source encryption software. TrueCrypt creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk. Provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case you’re forced you to reveal the password:

1) Hidden volume (steganography) and hidden operating system.

2) No TrueCrypt volume can be identified (volumes cannot be distinguished from random data).

TrueCrypt also user ASE 256 encryption.

Author: Kim Lung
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Creditcard Currency Conversion Fee

Chrome, Google’s vision of the web browser of the future, has some unique features that are sure to make your browsing experience a fun one. With customizable looks, dozens of keyboard shortcuts, and an intuitive interface, Chrome users will be enjoying the eccentricities for a long time to come. Starting with the address bar…The Address Bar

The navigation bar, where you enter the URL of a web page, serves a dual-purpose, giving users the options to type a URL or a search term. You can type a URL just like in any other browser and hit “Enter.” Or type your search phrase and hit “Enter.”

You also have the option of choosing what search engine to use while searching in the address URL bar.

1. Type the name of the search engine you want to use like “Google” or “Yahoo” or even “Wiki” then a space.
2. Type your search phrase and hit “Enter.”

You can do the same thing but with search engine URLs.

1. Type the URL of the search engine you want to use and hit “Tab.”
2. Type your search phrase and hit “Enter.”

Shortcuts

Your reliance on your mouse will begin to dwindle after a few sessions with Chrome thanks to several convenient keyboard shortcuts the Google innovators developed.

Google Shortcut Keys
Ctrl+L- To get to the address bar without clicking, just type the “Control” button and “L”. This will highlight the address bar text regardless of where you were on the page before.
Ctrl+Left Arrow- This command will take the cursor to the beginning of the previous word in the address bar, so no more scrolling or selecting with a mouse!
Ctrl+Right Arrow- This command takes your cursor to the beginning of the next word in the address bar.
Ctrl+Shift+Left Arrow- This combination of key strikes will highlight the entire previous word in the address bar text.
Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow- Use this command to highlight the entire next word in the address bar text.
Ctrl+Enter- This combination automatically adds

” http://www.” [http://www.] and “.com”

to your search query to take you to the web site. You could just type “microsoft” in the address bar and then hit “Ctrl” and “Enter” and “CNN” will turn into http://www.microsoft.com.

Ctrl+Enter- This combination works differently when you hit it after typing a URL rather than a search query. Type www.microsoft.com and hit “Ctrl” and “Enter” and you the link will open in a new background tab.

For more information on Optimizing your PC, visit our extensive information blog at http://www.fixcleaner.com/blog Here, you can find easy access to articles on fixing errors and optimizing all sorts of Windows functions. You can even get tips and tricks on how to navigate your way across the new frontier of Internet Social Media.

Moses K. is an analyst and contributing writer for SlimWare Utilities. He specializes in issues that relate to PC usability and consumer safety.

Author: Moses K.
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Benefits of electric pressure cooker

One of the more popular hosting plans is linux reseller hosting. You can host unlimited domains on many Hi Speed Linux Servers. With every Linux plan you get tons of loaded features and some of the most popular control panels. If your customer segment is focused over simple showcase sites or for requirements such as PHP / My SQL then our Linux based Plans may be a good choice.

There are many businesses around the world that use linux reseller hosting as they give quality in their systems. There are many different types of plans that use linux from multi-billion dollar businesses to individuals. Linux is a very dedicated service that is known world over. Many different reseller hosting plans cue linux in their systems.

Linux – The basics

Linux is a common name for various operating systems. A variety of companies market linux such as Red Hat and Debian. Linux is good as it is compatible with PHP, which is a popular programming language. One good thing about linux is that the security record and has a stable operating system. This is good for customers who are looking into linux reseller hosting as it is secure for the customer.

Free or low cost software

Another good thing for using linux reseller hosting is the fact that they have a lot of slow cost or free software such as APF, Firewall, Apache, Sendmail, BIND and many others. The drawback for using linux can be that the servers are not easy to administer like the ones windows uses. There are not attractive interfaces or buttons to click on; there is just a large amount of commands. But with the power that linux gives you have more control of the actual sever compared to windows.

Linux Hosting Benefits

PHP and MySQL Support

Apache Web Server

Mod Rewrite Support

Chmod file permissions

A linux reseller hosting plan can be a good option as they are a respected company with a good track record. There are other plans out there that are cheap and can be had at a discount. It can be a good idea to go to an Internet forum that deals with reseller hosting and see if linux reseller hosting is right for you.

Dean Iggo is the webmaster of a Cheap Hosting Reseller [http://www.hostingreseller4u.com] review site where you can find ratings and information on web hosting including Hostgator Reseller Hosting [http://www.hostingreseller4u.com/Hostgator-Reseller-Hosting.html] and more.

Author: Steve Mathews
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Low-volume PCB maker

So you’re looking to learn about web hosting and what it has to offer or you may not know much about web hosting? There is no shame in not knowing this information. Everyone has to start at the beginning at some point. On that note, lets begin learning about web hosting.

First off, what is web hosting and how does it work?

Web hosting is the business practice of providing space and bandwidth on a high-powered computer server that is connected to the Internet at very high speeds. Hosting companies maintain large networks of high-powered web server computers in a physical location known as a data center. These computer servers are connected to a very fast, and generally redundant, Internet connection. The data centers have primary and backup power, a fast connection to the Internet, and a security monitoring staff.

The web hosting companies provide a share of disk space and available bandwidth to a customer for a monthly fee. Once the customer is signed up, they can upload files to their personal space on the web server and the information is then viewable to anyone interested on the Internet. The monthly fee the web hosting company charges is much less than what it would cost to run a server out of your own home or data center. This is the reason these companies exist. They take care of all the hardware, software, and other technical needs for you.

Types of web hosting

There are many different types of web hosting offers, but the main three are shared, reseller, and dedicated. Each type of hosting is for a different purpose.

Shared Web Hosting

Shared web hosting is the most popular form of hosting. Shared hosting is a portion of disk space and bandwidth provided to you by the web hosting company on a high-powered server. There are many other web sites hosted on this server, and the hosting company is likely to have quite a few of these servers in a large data center. The resources of the server are shared by as many other websites as are allocated to that computer.

Shared web hosting is the best form of web hosting if you are looking for a great price and don’t have more than a couple thousand daily visitors to your site.

Reseller Web Hosting

Reseller web hosting is a popular, low-cost solution to starting your own web hosting business. There are two types of reseller hosting, private-label and a reseller of services.

The private-label is the best type of reseller plan because it allows you to retain full control over your customer’s websites. A private-label plan allows the reseller to keep the full monthly payment of the web-hosting customer, but the reseller must pay a monthly fee to the larger hosting company for the reseller space. The more hosting accounts a private-label reseller can sell, the higher the profit for them. Private-label hosting allows you to host many more websites than if you were using shared hosting for each. This is a great solution for someone who has many sites they need to host in one location to save money.

The reseller of services plans resell the regular web hosting plans of a larger web hosting company, but you get a discounted price for providing the customer and earn a monthly fee for as long as they remain a customer. This plan does not allow control over customer web sites and you only keep a portion of the potentially monthly revenue.

Dedicated Web Hosting

Dedicated web hosting is the most powerful and cost effective solution of hosting a busy web site without resorting to buying your own equipment and paying hundreds of dollars per month for a fast Internet connection. Dedicated hosting consists of single server with no one else hosting on that computer. This allows for the greatest of configuration options. Anyone who has a busy website will find dedicated hosting is the necessary choice.

Web Hosting Considerations

Wondering about all the other information listed in web hosting plans? In this section, I will explain the most important considerations in choosing a good web host.

Price

The price of web hosting services is one of the most important. There are many hosting companies out there with cheap hosting packages, but they may be lacking in other areas. Don’t let the price of a hosting package fool you. There are some hosting companies out there who have great prices and the other features are just as good. Price may be one of the most important decisions of a web hosting plan, but there is much more to consider in choosing a quality web host.

Disk Space / Storage Space

Disk space is the amount of physical storage space a web host gives to you to store your web files. Hosting companies these days have plans with disk space being measured mostly in terms of gigabytes, but some are still offering plans in the megabytes for storage space. Depending on your needs for file storage space, you may need more or less. Generally the more disk space offered, the better.

Bandwidth / Data Transfer

The amount of bandwidth available can make a big difference in choosing a quality hosting plan. In general, the more bandwidth a hosting company makes available to you, the better. This means you can support more traffic to your web site as your business grows. Be wary of web hosting companies that offer unlimited or unmetered bandwidth. While many of these are legitimate offers, there are some out there who are overselling their bandwidth in hopes the average user won’t use much.

Customer Support

In any business, it is very important to provide exception customer service. Web hosting is no exception to this. Many of the hosting companies are available all day and night in case you have a problem with your web site, but there are some who are just available specific hours of the day. If your web site goes down in the middle of the night when they’re not available, this means lost revenue for a business. You should make sure the web host you select is always available for support.

Money Back Guarantee

Most web hosting companies will provide a thirty-day money back guarantee. Some will provide one even long, but be wary of the ones who offer no money back guarantee. I would not purchase web hosting services from a company who does not offer at least a 30 day money back guarantee, unless they have proven themselves to be a leader in the industry and have an excellent reputation.

Operating System

An operating system is a piece of software that controls the interaction between the computer user and the physical hardware of the machine. A vast majority of all web sites on the Internet run on the Linux operation system. Linux is generally much more stable than Windows. Stability is critical in running a web site. For this reason, I prefer to host my web sites on the Linux operating system. Some sites have specific requirements that only the Windows operating system can satisfy, but there are always alternatives to those requirements.

Backup

A good web hosting company will have a regular schedule to backup the data on all the web servers. The more often the data is backed up, the better. At the very least, a web hosting company should backup web site files daily.

Control Panel

The control panel is the point of contact the web site administrator will have between the host server and their own machine connected via the Internet. It is essential to have a well organized and easy to use control panel interface. My favorite control panel is cPanel, which is one of the leading web hosting control panels out there today. Plesk is another good one, and many companies will create their own control panel for you to use. Most web hosting companies will provide a link to a demo of the control panel they use with their hosting plans. The control panel used is a matter of preference, but it should be user friendly.

Email

Email is essential part of communication on the Internet. Most web hosting companies out there will give you more email addresses and more space to hold email messages than you will ever need. What you need to watch out for is the companies that have decided to be a little strict on their email accounts and only offer a small number or a small amount of message space.

Uptime

Uptime is a term used to describe how often the average web site hosted by a company is available online. No company should be expected to provide an exact 100% uptime. This is impossible due to things such as hardware, software, and power failures. A vast majority of the companies are very good with uptime, and they guarantee it. It is still a good idea to be conscious of the uptimes posted by the company. If it is not at least 99.5%, it is probably not worth hosting with that company.

Statistics

As a webmaster, it is nice to know how many visitors you’ve had, where they came from, how long they stay on your site, and how much bandwidth they’ve used. This information is collected by the web server and is placed in a log file. A statistics software package can read this data and provide meaningful information to the webmaster. The information gathered from these logs can be very valuable in improved services to the viewers of the web site.

FTP

FTP stands for file transfer protocol. It is a way of quickly uploading or downloading many files to and from a web server. Most web hosting companies will allow their customers access to their web hosting accounts via FTP. FTP is very useful and is a great feature to have when paying for a web hosting account.

Scripting

Since the World Wide Web began, many scripting languages have been created and have evolved into the dynamic and interactive environment we enjoy today. A scripting language is a way of adding functionality to a web site, whether it be to calculate numbers or to load information from an external database. Scripting languages have made electronic commerce possible. Some of these languages include PHP, ASP, JSP, Coldfusion, VBscript, Javascript, and Perl. I won’t go into the details of these in this article for the sake of complexity. If you know how to use these languages, you should know what to look for in a web server for them.

Databases

A database is a place to store data that can be used in a large variety of ways. Databases are used on the Internet for applications such as shopping carts, message boards, and product catalogues. The more databases the web hosting provider allows you to create, the most applications you can deploy on your web server. Databases are used by the more advanced web master, but information is freely available online should you be interested.

Conclusions

Web hosting can be a very difficult decision with the many thousands of hosting companies out there. It is critical to find a plan that fits your needs and to have a good hosting company. I hope this article was useful in making your decision about which company to host with. Happy Hosting!

For more information, visit my web development blog.

Author: James Swainston
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Pressure cooker

You’ve got your new business all established now and you’re ready to take the next step and set up a website to tell the online world that you’re here and you’ve got something to offer. You’ve found a catchy domain name to call your own and now… what next? Well, the answer is that you need to find web hosting for the website you’re going to build. So what does that mean and how do you figure out what kind of web hosting you need? First let’s start with the basics.

Just what is web hosting anyway?

In simple terms, web hosting is renting space on a web server. A website is not simply a domain name, it is a collection of files linked together by HTML code to display text and graphics on a computer. In order for anybody to see this collection of files you’ve created, it has to be housed on a computer somewhere that has access to the internet. Not just any computer will do, of course. A web server is a computer set up with special software that allows it to receive requests from the internet for the website files it has stored on it and to send those files out over the internet so that the requesting computer can display them. It is very much like a waiter in a restaurant taking your order and bringing the food that you ask for from the kitchen, hence the name “server.”

Along with making sure your files can be seen by internet users around the world, a web server provides other important services as well. First and foremost is the ability to create email addresses based on your domain name and to send and receive email with them. The web server also has various types of software installed on it that allow your website to run programs, create and manage databases, display video, and many other functions you might find useful. Almost any type of computer can function as a web server, but it’s the software that’s on it that makes it a server.

When you buy webhosting, the monthly fee you pay goes to the continued maintenance and upgrading of the server’s hardware and software, the cost of keeping it online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in a secure data center with a fast and powerful internet connection, and to pay for the expertise of the people who do all that work. It is completely possible to turn your own home or office computer into a web server if you really want to, but in most cases it is far more economical to pay someone else who is dedicated to providing this service in a properly reliable manner than it is to try and do it yourself.

What kinds of web hosting are there?

Shared Hosting – Most websites are not huge affairs with hundreds of pages and thousands of files and graphics, and they are targeted toward a particular audience, so they will not get as many visitors as the large general sites like Yahoo! that are targeted at everybody who uses the internet. As such, the average website therefore is not going to require the full resources of an entire web server to run it. Web servers are designed to be able to handle dozens, even hundreds of websites at once because they are powerful machines.

Shared hosting is simply the concept of hosting more than one website on a particular server. Over 95% of all websites on the internet are being run in a shared hosting environment. Since the resources of the server can be split among the clients hosted on it, so can the costs of operating the server, so shared hosting is universally cheaper than any other type. Shared hosting packages are generally designed so that each client is allotted a certain amount of each resource, with different payment levels representing different amounts of resources such as disk space, bandwidth, email addresses, and so on. Shared hosting is also known as virtual hosting.

Dedicated Hosting – If you do have a big, powerful website that gets lots of visitors and has a tendency to hog resources, then you might want to have a web server all to yourself. Some companies also prefer the extra security of not having to share the server with anyone else who could do something accidentally or on purpose to crash it. Renting the use of an entire server is known as dedicated hosting. The web hosting company still owns the machine and takes responsibility for maintaining the hardware and the web hosting software, but you have greater control over the configuration and use of the server. There is also such a thing as semi-dedicated hosting, in which a web server is only split between a very small number of clients, such as 2 to 4, with strong partitions between each to prevent them from interfering with one another. Since the hosting company is still responsible for the upkeep of the server, this type of hosting is also known as managed hosting. For obvious reasons, dedicated hosting always costs significantly more than shared hosting.

Server Co-Location – If you really want complete control over every aspect of your web server, you might very well choose to buy one and maintain it yourself if you have sufficient knowledge. However, chances are that you still don’t have the resources to keep your server completely safe from power outages, roof leaks, thieves, unwary employees and other hazards and keep it on the internet on a fast, high-bandwidth connection at all times. You need a data center to provide those services for you. Co-location is the rental of physical security, continuous electrical power and a fast, reliable internet connection for a server that you own. The data center is not responsible for any of the hardware or software maintenance of a co-located server, you are. This can be a cheaper alternative to dedicated hosting if you have the necessary expertise and time to run a web server yourself.

Some web hosts are offering UNIX hosting and Windows hosting. What’s the difference?

The terms UNIX hosting and Windows hosting refer to the operating system (OS) that is running on the server. The operating system, of course, is the software that allows the computer to function and manage all of the other hardware and software that is installed on it. Chances are good that you are reading this on a computer running a version of the Windows operating system, the most popular operating system in the world for personal and business computers. Other operating systems that are growing in popularity are Macintosh and various versions of Linux. However, the operating system you use on your computer is irrelevant to which type of hosting you choose. Here are some of the main features of UNIX and Windows:

UNIX Hosting

Most of the web servers in the world today run on one of the many variants of UNIX. The UNIX operating system was originally developed by universities for servers and networking, and many different versions have been written by programmers around the world under the open-source protocol, which means that the code for the operating system is openly available for programmers to customize and make improvements. Linux and BSD are the most popular forms of UNIX and come in many varieties, such as Red Hat Linux, Debian, SuSE, and FreeBSD. Most of these different versions (and much of the software that runs on them) can be obtained for free, which makes UNIX hosting cheaper for a web host than other operating systems and allows them to offer lower prices. UNIX hosting platforms are generally considered to be stable, secure, powerful and fast. Most web programming applications can be performed by software that is available for a UNIX platform. “UNIX hosting” has become a generic term to refer to any platform that is derived from the original UNIX.

Windows Hosting

Microsoft has developed its own operating system for servers as a special version of its Windows operating system, Windows Server 2003. It is a commercial product which requires the operator to purchase a license, which increases the cost of operation for the web host and usually results in higher hosting prices. Windows is designed to be user friendly, but it is generally considered to be less powerful and secure than UNIX for operating in a network environment. ASP, ASP.NET, and ColdFusion are scripting languages which will only run on a Windows server, as will the Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Access database programs. These are popular for certain web programming applications, and if you are planning on using them to build your website, you will need to find a Windows host.

What are some of the terms I need to know when I choose a web host?

Disk Space or Storage – Because your website is a collection of files being offered on the internet for viewing, they have to be stored somewhere for retrieval and take up space. Each web server has a finite amount of hard disk memory to divide up and offer to hosting customers. Typically that space is divided up by different package levels so that the more you pay, the more space you are allowed to store pictures, web pages, videos and whatever other files you like on the web server’s hard drive. If your website gets bigger than the space you are given, you will need to purchase more disk space from the web host.

Bandwidth or Data Transfer – Whenever you visit a website and view a page, you are transfering a copy of the files that make up that page over the internet from the web server to your computer. If the page you are viewing consists of an HTML file that is 3KB in size and three pictures of 47KB, 100KB and 250 KB, then you have just used 400KB of bandwidth or data transfer, because that is the total amount of data you just downloaded from the web server to view that page. Bandwidth is a commodity like disk space that the web host has to buy from its internet service provider, so it too is divided up and offered to the customers in specific amounts. Bandwidth amounts are usually measured in gigabytes (GB), because while only one copy of your files needs to be stored on the server, thousands or even millions of copies may be downloaded for viewing. If your website is viewed more times than the amount of bandwidth you are allowed can handle, your website may be turned off until the next billing period starts, or you may simply be billed for the excess amount used, depending on your host’s policies. You can always purchase more bandwidth as your site’s traffic increases.

Uptime – In an ideal world, every web server would be up and running and offering your web pages to the world 24 hours a day, 7 days a week forever. However, web servers are computers, and like any other computer, things happen to make them fail, or they get old and out of date and require maintenance and repair. When a web host gives you a 99% uptime guarantee, they are saying that the web server will be up and running for 99% of the billing period. If they fail to meet this guarantee, most web hosts will refund a certain portion of your money depending on the amount of excess downtime they experienced.

Traffic Statistics – Website traffic statistics programs try to track visitors to your website. They can track how many times your site was visited, how many visitors were unique and how many returned more than once, which pages were most popular, where the visitors came to your site from, what search terms they used in the search engines, and many other types of information which could be useful to you in marketing your website to a target audience. These statistics can be displayed in tables, graphs and charts by hour, day, week, month or year. Some statistics programs are better than others and offer more types of data, better displays, easier navigation or other useful features. Most web hosts today offer some sort of traffic statistics software with their hosting packages.

CGI Scripts – Many web hosts offer a variety of free CGI scripts with their packages. These are things like hit counters, guestbooks, form mail programs, message boards, and other programs that allow your website to perform commonly desired functions. You can use the ones your host provides you with or you can upload and run custom CGI scripts written by yourself or somebody else to perform different tasks like conducting a survey or processing customer information to produce an automatic price quote. Most CGI scripts are written in common programming languages like Perl, PHP or ASP.

You could spend a long time trying to learn everything there is to know about web hosting, but if you’ve read this far then you should be armed with the basic knowledge you need to understand what different web hosts are offering you. Your next task is to figure out what you need and go out and find a host that wants to give it to you at a great price!

Copyright 2005-2008 by Stacy Clifford
Stacy Clifford is the founder of ChiliPepperWeb.net and has been assisting customers in understanding how their web services work since 2001.

Author: Stacy Clifford
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
How Electric Pressure Cookers Work

As a web host reseller, one of your most important business decisions is your choice of web hosting control panel software. The web hosting software you use will save or cost you time, money, and frustration. What reseller control panel features will reduce your workload? What hosting software programs are integrated with the reseller control panel or work with it? What website control panel features will your clients like? In this article, we’ve compared four quality web hosting reseller software programs:

Alabanza

cPanel

H-Sphere

Plesk

All of these reseller control panels come with control panels for your clients. They all have numerous features — advanced email management, web statistics, pre-installed scripts, multi-language support, and more. They all work on Linux platforms, while H-Sphere and Plesk also work with Windows. According to the cPanel website, a Windows version of cPanel is in development.

Other features that set these control panels apart are their degree of automation, the number of features and ease of use for the end user, and the features and ease of use for you, the reseller.

Alabanza When you become an Alabanza reseller, you don’t just have a reseller account — you lease a dedicated server from Alabanza. Alabanza owns the control panel and the server, and you resell directly for Alabanza. If you lease a dedicated Alabanza server, you can create your own reseller accounts. However, only you can set up hosting plans; resellers below you will be limited to hosting plans that you create.

Alabanza offers resellers a high degree of automation with its Domain System Manager (DSM), which can significantly reduce overhead and time spent on routine tasks:

- Account creation

- Billing and invoice management

- Credit card processing

- Domain registration

- Email notifications

- Ordering fraud protection

Even novices can sell hosting with this level of automation.

DSM also integrates with bulkregister.com for domain name registration. It does not easily integrate with other domain registrars, though.

A key Alabanza feature that resellers can offer their clients is the Xpress Product Suite, which provides web development and email management tools. The Xpress Product Suite includes SiteXpress, a website-building program that features over 300 templates and requires no web design skills.

cPanel For resellers and end users, cPanel is known for its ease of use and range of features. cPanel’s collection of over 50 pre-installed scripts and Fantastico auto installer help clients set up their sites with little web development knowledge.

A basic cPanel reseller account comes with two separate programs for resellers to manage their business:

WHM (Web Host Manager) is used to create accounts and packages, add and suspend sites, modify passwords, view bandwidth usage, park domains, install SSL certificates, and perform other administrative functions.

From the reseller’s cPanel control panel, a drop-down menu takes the reseller to the control panels for each of the sites on the reseller account, including the reseller’s site.

With the addition of an optional program, WHM AutoPilot, you can automate account creation and suspension, email notifications, and other tasks. WHM AutoPilot also integrates with common payment gateways and has a helpdesk, an invoice module, and other tools.

H-Sphere H-Sphere is designed for both Linux and Windows platforms. Moreover, resellers can set up plans for both Linux and Windows and administer sites on different servers from the same control panel. The control panel, actually a separate server, also provides administrative access to the integrated helpdesk.

The H-Sphere control panel server automates account configuration, credit card processing, domain registration, and email notifications. It also includes a built-in billing module and supports over 20 payment gateways.

From the reseller’s point of view, H-Sphere has a higher learning curve than most other control panels because of its numerous features. For example, when setting up a new plan, the administrator has two pages of features to choose from, including setup and monthly pricing for optional services.

Beginning webmasters may find H-Sphere too complicated for their needs. More advanced users, however, appreciate the features and control that H-Sphere offers the end user. A key feature is the ability to have control over separate domains with multi-domain hosting.

H-Sphere comes with the website builder Site Studio, which guides users through a variety of style choices and stores content separately from the layout. No HTML or FTP knowledge is required.

Plesk Plesk is known for its stability and security. Resellers and end users like its simple navigation, its clean interface, and its professional appearance. It comes in versions for both Linux and Windows platforms.

With Plesk, all users use the same control panel but with different levels of control:

- Server administrator

- Client / reseller

- Domain owner

- Mail user

Each level of the control panel gives the user control of that level and the level(s) below it. Email users, for example, can log into their mail user control panel to change their password, add autoresponders, and change other personal settings without having access to the domain owner control panel.

Plesk handles SpamAssassin at the mailbox level rather than at the domain level.

This feature enables users to whitelist or blacklist email for each email address, allowing each email user to have individual settings.

SWsoft, the company behind Plesk, also offers Site Builder, a five-step website builder using pre-built templates. SiteBuilder has over 300 templates in different categories to choose from, and users can publish their sites without any HTML or FTP knowledge.

If your Plesk reseller account is with a web host that offers HSPcomplete, you will have some automation available with your account, such as credit card charges and email notification.

About the author: Technical Executive Writer for Website Source, Inc. whose writing skills coupled with experience in the website hosting industry have provided internet professionals with marketing, product and service ideas for many years. Lois continues to do extensive research in the e-commerce industry. For more information, contact http://www.websitesource.com

Author: S. Rosendahl
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Programmable Multi-cooker

Windows Reseller web hosting definitely is more popular among many of its competitors because of the benefits and features which their users can obtain from utilizing their platform as compared to Linux platform. Below please find a list of key benefits of Windows web hosting over its competitors.

1. This platform allows users to use Active Server Pages scripts, one of the greatest Microsoft applications famous in designing websites. Of course, users are allowed to use many other active programming tools and scripts for different needs and objectives as long as they get themselves on Windows reseller web hosting. This also meant that your Windows reseller web hosting software is equipped with the Enterprise level solution right from the beginning.

2. Windows reseller services, RDMS (Relational database management system ) which is a kind of SQL server is used because of its prestigious reputation in providing the greatest level of reliable database management system for many users all over the world, especially those from the enterprise level businesses where reliable is top priority.

3. It is a great candidate for Reseller business because of its high feasibility and excellent compatibility with many other host devices as compared to Linux. One great example would be any web sites that run on UNIX-based system can be hosted by a windows-based server, However, the reversal does not work effectively the same way which had worked for Windows reseller services.

4. Windows platform is preferred because of its higher level of compatibility. Let me quote a good example here: with only one single control panel, the reseller web hosting provider is able to track multiple clients concurrently, unlike Linux reseller web hosting which you would probably need to spread out over various multiple control panels in such case. This not only save you a lot of time, but it is much easier to keep track of your clients as well.

5. It allows the users to use ASP. Net and ASP along with Windows Reseller web host service plan. This is an added benefit to the clients because ASP and ASP.Net are powerful tools especially for web application development which helps to facilitate in designing and developing one’s website for their business attraction.

6. Furthermore, Microsoft is providing SQL Server, a highly reliable and powerful software for data management and analysis which work fine with many existing complex business applications. Microsoft is always there to offer the latest technology to support their customers and a wide cluster of their business in order to stay competitively advantageous in the web hosting industry. Therefore as one gets to partner up with a windows reseller platform provider, you have a huge space and opportunities to grow along with your clients needs to expand their business with the latest features and technology from a windows reseller platform.

When you are searching for web hosting, reverse researching is important where you should find out the complaints about the host. Which field they are weak in? What mistake they always do? This can give you a clear picture on their performance. For more information, check out webhosting reviews.

Darren is a full time web developer attached with a web hosting company.

Author: Darren Thomas
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Electric Pressure Cooker

Today, Linux/Unix and Windows are the two basic platforms, or operating systems available for web hosting services. Unfortunately, if you are new to web design, figuring out which platform to use can be difficult. That said, there are some basic pieces of information that can help you make a decision quickly and easily.

If cost is your main concern, Linux or Unix based web hosting servers are the cheapest. Aside from having a lower monthly cost, you can find almost any programming function for free on the web. As an example, if you want to create a member only area for your website, there are dozens of tutorials for PHP. Not only will these teach you how to design this part of your site, they may even give you code that you can simply copy and paste into the appropriate files.

Next, you will want to consider the amount of time that the server is likely to be offline. Unfortunately, even though Microsoft touts its Windows based platforms, they often have issues that will result in your site not being available to potential customers. Needless to say, if your site is not accessible when the Googlebot comes to visit, it can also a cause a catastrophic drop in your search engine ranking.

Finally, you will need to consider personal comfort, and the possibility that one day you may want to manage the site without a consultant. If you have ever found yourself upset and disturbed by how Microsoft products work on your own computer, it should come as no surprise that the web hosting platforms are no better. On the other hand, Linux and Unix based servers are fairly easy to work with. You can even start with a free Linux based web host and start learning today.

Fabian Tan is the author of the free 51-Page Report:

“Murder Your Job: How To Build Cash Sucking Autopilot Businesses In 30 Days Or Less!”

Head over to http://www.MurderYourJob.com to get your free copy now before it’s gone!

Author: Fabian Tan
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Make PCB Assembly

What Is Web Hosting?

Web hosting is simply a type of hosting service that allows people to provide there site as accessible to the internet. When you have a web hosting service you have a spot on a web server that allows people to view your content. It makes since that everyone who designs web pages has their own hosting space. More often than not when you purchase a domain you get hosting with it, but a lot of the times these are windows based hosting which are not always reliable and don’t always support the latest php scripts, javascripts, etc.

Windows or Linux?

Windows and Linux frequently use two different web server applications. Windows sites use the Windows IIS server, but nearly all Linux sites use Apache. Linux sites focus on PHP, Perl and other open-source script languages for server side scripting. Windows-based sites use, NET and ASP technologies. They might also offer support for PHP. However, Linux sites offer MySQL as the database for backend content storage. Also, Windows sites will offer SQL Server, though some offer the Windows versions of MySQL.

How Do You Pay For Hosting?

Many companies offer a fixed monthly rate for web hosting, which you can host, a limited amount of domain with them under your account. A lot of companies offer you an automatic payment plan, in which you can set up and it will deduct your bill from your checking account every month. You can chose to get a dedicated host which just means that your hosting space is not shared with anyone else. The advantage of this is that you will get much faster load times.

Web hosting is vital to your web site. Without hosting your site on a server no one could view your site. Hostgator is the best web hosting service available. They offer an unlimited amount of hosting space for 7.99/month. With hostgator you are also allowed to own unlimited domains.

There customer service is truly amazing and they offer 24/7 live help. Check out their service here: http://www.the-best-web-hosting-service.com

Author: Garen Arnold
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
PCB Prototype & Manufacturing

There isn’t anything more crucial than uptime while searching for a web host. The host should assure at least 99% uptime to the user. If host is undependable, the sufferer will be client with losing the traffic at regular interval. One can check reliability of a particular host by going through reviews of people for that particular company. A user can easily accomplish it by going to different search engines. If opinions are positive about uptime then one can consider that particular host a dependable one, but one cannot come to actual conclusion without confirming it by own.

Something else to keep in mind is that many hosts offer Linux based plans, so finding a good Linux hosting company might turn out to be easier. Not that there’s a lack of hosts offering Windows hosting but there are thousands of hosts out there and there’s a serious offer of Windows hosting but just not in the numbers that Linux is at present.

And what is Linux, anyway? It’s sometimes called a counterparty, publicly-developed alternative to the desktop predominance of Microsoft Windows. Although Linux is popular among users already familiar with Unix, it remains far behind Windows in numbers of users. However, its use in the business enterprise is growing.

Usually with free web hosting accounts, they’ll require you to use a directory or subdomain. When selecting a web hosting provider, choose one that will allow you to use your own domain name instead of being required to use a subdomain of their domain name. People will be confused and not able to find your site if the web address is not intuitive and unique.

In my own recommendation I for web hosting that’s both affordable and high-quality, I can’t say enough about this service.

Author: Joanne Calipra
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Low-volume PCB Assembly

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own websites accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Webhosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center, called colocation.

Types of Web Hosting:

Free web hosting service: is free, advertisement-supported web hosting, and is often limited when
compared to paid hosting.

Shared web hosting service: one’s Web site is placed on the same server as many other sites,
ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of
server resources, such as RAM and the CPU. A shared website may be hosted with a reseller.

Reseller web hosting: It allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Resellers could function,
for individual domains, under any combination of these listed types of hosting, depending on who
they are affiliated with as a provider. Resellers’ accounts may vary tremendously in size: they
may have their own virtual dedicated server to a colocated server.

Virtual Dedicated Server: slicing up a server into virtual servers. each user feels like they’re
on their own dedicated server, but they’re actually sharing a server with many other users. The
users may have root access to their own virtual space.

Dedicated hosting service: In this hosting the user gets his or her own Web server and gains full
control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, the user
typically does not own the server.

Managed hosting service: In this hosting the user gets his or her own Web server but is not allowed full control over it; however, they are allowed to manage their data via FTP or other remote management tools. The user typically does not own the server. The server is leased to the client.

Colocation web hosting service: It is similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the colo server; the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. This is the most powerful and expensive type of the web hosting service. In most cases, the colocation provider may provide little to no support directly for their client’s machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. In most cases for colo, the client would have his own administrator visit the data center on site to do any hardware upgrades or changes.

Clustered hosting: It is having multiple servers hosting the same content for better resource utilization.

Grid hosting : It is relatively a new web hosting buzz, this form of hosting is when a server cluster acts like a grid and is composed of multiple nodes. Being highly fault tolerant, this system is breaking new grounds when it comes to the network stability factor.

Click on Linux Web Site Hosting to know more about web site hosting.

To find out various linux web site hosting plans visit [http://www.wanttohost.com/linux-hosting.html]

Author: Kshitij Ahuja
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: WordPress plugin Guest Blogger

Choosing a good web host is not difficult. However, there are several important considerations that you must take into account in order to find the right web host.

1.) Disk Space

Disk Space is measured in bytes. 1 megabyte (MB) is roughly 1,000,000 bytes. 1 gigabyte (GB) is about 1000 MB.

It’s not difficult to calculate disk size needed for your web site. First, you must add all your files to find out how much space your site needs now. Then, you must consider future additions and updates to your web site.

Disk Space = Current Files + Future Additions

2.) Data Transfer, Bandwidth

Data Transfer measures how much data was transmitted from your site to the visitor and back.

If the web site consists of several pages for a total of 3MB, and there are 3,000 visitors a month who visit every page, then amount of data transferred is 3,000 * 3 = 9,000 MB. Since probably not every visitor will visit every page of your site, the best formula to calculate monthly data transfer is the following:

Data Transfer = # Of Visitors * Page Size * # Of Pages Viewed Of course, number of visitors and page viewes will differ from month to month, and so is amount of data transferred. Flash, video and music files usually account for most data tranmitted to and from your site.

3.) Operating System

Many web hosting services use Linux or Windows operating systems. Your choice of operating system should be based on what programs you plan to use.

Both Windows & Linux are fine for HTML files. However, Windows is best for ASP while Linux is fine with Perl/CGI. Take a look at what software and databases your prospective host is supporting.

Usually Windows hosting is more expensive. Some people wrongly believe that you must use the host that has the same operating system as your computer. Actually you can use Windows on your computer and have Linux host, and vice versa.

4.) Up Time

Up Time is a percentage of time your site is available online.

Sometimes even the very best web hosts shut down due to numerous reasons (outage, maintenance, human error…). However, your uptime must be at least 99% to 99.5%, and top web host provide it.

5.) Customer Support

It is very important to have professional help if something is wrong with your site. A good web host should offer at least a day time customer support and online support options.

6.) Price

Naturally you want to pay the lowest price possible for web hosting. However, sometimes cheap or free isn’t necessarily good.

You want to make sure that your host offers enough web space, data transfer and good customer support even if it means paying a little more. This is especially true for E-Commerce web sites. If your site is too slow to load or is down for some time, you lose customers and money.

I don’t recommend free hosts because they often place banners and other ads on your web pages. Many of them go out of business on a short notice or no notice at all. Also some free hosts won’t let you use your domain name and you will have to use their domain that can make your address too long and hard to remember.

In most cases you will have to sign up for 1 or 2 year package in order to qualify for best deals that include Free Domain and Set Up. You can always check Web Hosting Services Directory [http://www.webhostchecklist.com] for best available offers.

Archie Lubman

Web Host Checklist – Top Web Hosting Services [http://www.webhostchecklist.com]

Author: Arkady Lubman
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Guest blogger

I have been working in IT field for the last six years. I was always confused about web hosting, specifically about the types of hosting. It always used to get me confused, which one is better Linux or Windows?

My curiosity brought me to make a search on the pros and cons of both the hosting types. What I felt is that the whole world is still surrounded in this discussion. If a wide majority supports the Windows Hosting, then there is no plenty of people who find the Linux Hosting better.

Both the platforms have different features, advantages and disadvantages. So I think instead of getting into the debate it is better to discuss their advantages. So that it could help someone in understanding, which one is suitable for his/her requirement?

I am keen to discuss these platforms with you all, but here I am going to discuss Windows Hosting only. I will talk about Linux Hosting in my next article. Here I am with, whatever I gathered from online and other reliable resources.

Advantages of Windows Hosting:

Compatibility with Microsoft applications – Windows is commercially owned by Microsoft, so its main source of power is compatibility with Microsoft applications & software. Because of this it becomes easy for webmasters to develop the websites promptly and interactive too.

Less complicated – Windows Hosting is based on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or 2008 that offers several features that help you to better manage your website. These systems are based on Microsoft NT therefore they provide reliable end to end server management. This is what makes windows hosting less complicated.

Tremendous power – Windows Hosting provides improved security features. It actually provides innovative applications that are required for your website and its user interface is suitable not only for beginners, but for advanced users too. This user interface combines web development environment where.Net Framework and other Microsoft technologies can be deployed to create dynamic web pages and applications. Anyhow the power and features you receive cannot be compared.

Wide ranging support – Besides the compatibility with Microsoft products this platform also works well with open source technologies such as Perl, PHP and MySQL. Support is another significant factor because of which Windows hosting has been becoming so popular. The component that is built from its IIS to SQL server, all are compatible with each other. For instance any web site that runs on UNIX-based system can easily be hosted by a windows-based server, but a web site that is running on Windows-based server may not work successfully on UNIX-base system.

Surprisingly Cost Efficient – Windows reseller hosting offers a great advantage of all in one hosting solution, to the resellers. That means a reseller does not have to host multiple accounts to keep a tab on the number of users. Reseller can manage all his/her clients through a single control panel. In this way it saves time and money both. This feature makes windows hosting surprisingly cost efficient.

Another thing is that windows hosting has always been costlier than Linux because of proprietary software licensing fee charged by Windows. But until someone needs to have his own server, the hosting can be as affordable as Linux hosting.

I know if we get into technical discussion it is going to be very lengthy. However, I feel these points will be helpful to clear the picture of advantages of Windows hosting, to you.

About the Author: Danny Higson is the content writer for New York based Web Hosting Company. This company has been providing its services, all over the world, for last 14 years.

Author: Danny Higson
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
DIY Wind Power

Fantastico Deluxe makes new website creation quick and easy. With over 50 pre-installed scripts to choose from webmasters are only limited by their imagination and creativity.

What Is Fantastico

Netenberg the inventor of Fantastico Deluxe, formerly Cpanelthemes.com is a division of kosmopolis Inc. LLC located in Wilmington Delaware.

They have succeeded in creating one of the most widely used auto installers on the web with over one million users worldwide.

Fantastico Deluxe is a web application included free by many web hosting providers. It contains a collection/library of scripts. Fantastico will auto install the script of your choice on demand.

The task of Installing Content Managers like Word press, Joomla, Drupal, Mambo, and Xoops can be reduced to a few minutes. Furthermore, it is no longer necessary to upload 100′s of files through an ftp client taking 20 Minutes or more.

If you use picture galleries then you will quickly take advantage of Coppermine a full feature photo gallery written in PHP and included with Fantastico.

The Fantastico dashboard is divided into sections with each section having its own category and collection of scripts.

The Primary categories are:

1. Blogs

2. Content Management

3. Customer Relationship (support services, chat and help services)

4. Ecommerce (shopping carts)

5. Discussion Boards

6. Frequently asked questions

7. Billing

8. Image Galleries

9. Polls and Surveys

10. Project Management

11. Wiki

12. Other Scripts

Multiple scripts can be installed to different directories. It is possible to Host one or many websites simultaneously on one account. You are only limited by the amount of web space and bandwidth purchased.

Selecting a web hosting service that provides free Fantastico can save you time and money especially if you plan to host multiple sites on one account. It is not uncommon for some providers to charge a yearly fee of $9 or more to access just one of these pre-installed scripts. Installing all of these scripts without Fantastico can run upwards of $360 year on top of hosting fees.

But one word of caution, some web host do not properly upgrade scripts with current versions, which can be a security risk. With programs like WordPress this may not be a problem if you add the automatic upgrade plug-in when installing the sortware.So before buying make sure scripts are updated frequently.

Fantastico Deluxe provides endless opportunities to get website feedback through live chat, surveys and polls. Develop free website content through discussion boards that help to improve ranking and increase search engine traffic.

Hosts that offer free Fantastico De Luxe

• Hostmonster
• BlueHost
• LunarPages
• Hostgator
• FastDomain

Features

Hostmonster

• $4.95-$6.95 per month
• Quad Processor Performance Servers
• Linux operating system
• Apache Server
• UPS Power Backup/Back-p generator
• OC-48 Backbone connection
• Courtesy Site Backups
• Free Domain
• Unlimited Domain Hosting
• Multimedia Support
• CronJobs
• Ruby On Rails
• Founded 1996
• Location Utah

BlueHost

• $6.95 per month
• Quad Processor Performance Servers
• Linux operating system
• Apache Server
• UPS Power Backup
• Diesel Generator Backup Power
• OC-48 Backbone connection
• Courtesy Site Backups
• Multimedia Features
• Host Unlimited Domains
• Location Utah

LunarPages

• $4.95 per month
• 2000 Mbit Connectivity
• Ddos Protection
• Tape Backup
• Power Generator
• Multimedia Features
• Ruby On Rails
• Dreamweaver Compatible
• MySql Databases Unlimited
• Email Accounts Unlimited
• Email Auto Responders Unlimited
• 4 Data Centers
• Location California
• 100+ Staff Members

HostGator

• $4.95 per month
• Unlimited Disk Space
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• Free Setup
• CronJobs
• Ruby On Rails
• Unlimited Disk Space
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• Host 1 Domain
• Location Texas and Brazil

FastDomain

• $5.95 per month
• Quad Processor Performance Servers
• Linux operating system
• Apache Server
• UPS Power Backup/Back-p generator
• OC-48 Backbone connection
• Courtesy Site Backups
• CronJobs
• Multimedia Features
• Free Domain
• Founded In 2005
• Unlimited Hosting Space
• Unlimited File Transfer
• Unlimited Domains

Glossary

Linux- like Windows XP, 95 is an operating system. Created by Linus Torvalds from the University of Helsinki in Finland 1991. Unlike Windows Linux is free open source software created under the GNU (General Public License).

Apache- is a web server used to display web pages on the World Wide Web.

UPS- called an uninterrupted power supply better known as a battery back-up.

CronJobs- is an automated program allowing the user to repeatedly run a scheduled task on a specific date and time.

OC-48- A fiber optic backbone used in large networks OC stands for optical carrier. The speed of an OC-48 is equivalent to 1344 T1 lines or 43 T3′s.

Ddos Attack- stands for distributed denial of service.

Ddos- Attacks are can be initiated by Trojans that search out and install themselves on computers with outdated virus protection and patches. These computers collectively form a network of systems that can execute an attack on an a website by sending massive amounts of traffic which overload bandwith rendering the site unusable to visitors who try to access the site or service.

Ddos- attacks can also be exploited by software bugs.

Hosts with Ddos Protection

1. Lunar Pages

2. HostICan

3. Host Department

In Summary

This list of features is by no means exhaustive. It is recommended that you visit each webhost for a complete list of products included with each web hosting account and any reduce pricing associated with special offers.

Nick Kaplan article writer offering useful webmaster tips helping you find out more about Fantastico pre-installed scripts at http://www.fantastico-webhosting.info/web-hosts/fantastico/ featuring web hosts that include Free Fantastico with every account.

Author: Nick Kaplan
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Home Solar

1.Choose an Established Web Hosting Company – Perform a WHOIS search for the domain name of the web hosting company you plan to use, discard any potential web hosting companies who have not been established for at least a year – most web hosting companies fold during their fist year of service, leaving their few clients out in the cold.

2.Customer Support/Service – This is repeatedly and quite rightly recognised as the most important factor in choosing a web host, it doesn’t matter if you are the Bill Gates of server administration – if your host goes down and you cant get hold of them when you need to you are loosing money. Ensure you are getting 24/7 customer support – phone a potential host on a Sunday evening and ask them some technical questions, if you are happy with their response, move on to the next stage.

3.Domain Name – Only ever choose a web hosting company which will allow you to have your own domain name, many free web hosts will give you a sub domain eg. yourcompany.freehost.com when you really want yourcompany.com free hosting may sound great but connection speeds will be slow and you will loose credibility with your customers – it just looks unprofessional.

4.Uptime – Most web hosting companies will publish server up-times. Don’t be fooled by an up-time of 99%, this means the server is down for an average 7.2hrs per month or 3.6 days per year – that’s 3days 14 ½ hours that you are not making money. It is therefore imperative that you choose a webhosting company, which has a 99.99% uptime guarantee.

5.Bandwidth – Bandwidth i.e the speed of your connection should not be confused with web hosting data transfer allowance, which is the amount of data that can be transferred too and from your server or website per month and is measured in Gb. Most web hosts actually incorrectly use the term web hosting bandwidth in place of data transfer allowance, and it is important when choosing a web host, you choose one with a quick connection. Most web surfers will give up on a page if it takes more than 20 seconds to load – ask web hosting companies about their connection speed, at least 30MBit should be what you are aiming for. If you can’t find published data, then visit the host’s site at peak times and rapidly surf through it’s pages – they will be using the same connection to the web, if you are happy move on.

6.Type of Hosting – Do you need a dedicated server, or will you be better of with shared web hosting, this comes down to certain factors such as expected traffic and security. Dedicated web hosting is much more secure and will give customers much more confidence when using your site in addition your bandwidth will not be effected by the traffic of other sites hosted on the same server – cost will be the major factor in this decision as dedicated hosting is substantially more expensive.

7.Security – do the web hosting company you are looking at offer an SSL, Secure Socket Layer security is a must have for anyone intending to take payments over the internet, it is a way of encrypting transfers that makes paying on line safer and more attractive for your customers.

8.Platform – Linux or Windows, making the decision as to which is best comes down to what you want to do with your web space. Both Systems can host Multimedia both can host dynamic content, but the question becomes you need to run Windows based applications on your server? If so then you have no choice but to use a Windows Hosting solution, if the answer is no then can make your decision based on other factors such as choice of host, cost and reliability. Linux is cheaper, as you have no licensing fees to pay Microsoft, Linux is generally more reliable as it was designed for server use and being open source has been developed to the stage where it is almost bug free. The Linux based database applications are much more powerful and allow much greater flexibility in creating your site.

9.Disk Space – you should see how much space your web files take up on your computer before deciding upon a package, taking into consideration the fact that as the business grows so too will the web site.

10.Data Transfer Allowance – the maximum amount of data transfer that visitors on the site can achieve each month measured in gigabytes. If you choose a package with an inadequate amount of bandwidth, your web hosting company may charge you to access more.

11.Backups – How often is your data backed up what happens if there is a server failure.

Money Back Guarantee – Most hosts will have some form of 30 day money back guarantee.

12.Statistics – These tell you who is visiting your site, when they are doing it and which pages they are looking at, it will also tell you which page they land on first, all of which help you to market you site more efficiently most even record which browser visitors to your site are using which can be invaluable information for targeting software for example.

13.SEO – Search Engine Optimisation is the process of getting your website indexed and then ranked by the top search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN, for the uninitiated this can be a very daunting and time consuming process and many good web hosts provide a Free rudimentary SEO service, in any event nearly all will submit your site to all of the top search engines for indexing. An additional incentive being offered although not really SEO ,is the inclusion of Free Google Adwords or similar coupons which help to get you started with one of the many pay per click ad campaign providers.

14.Databases (Number & type) – If you intend to host a blog, or use any form of content management system (CMS) you will need database functionality, the best supported and most widely used is MySQL, you will generally need 2-4 per domain name, for blogs, product catalogs, CMS, banner rotation etc.

15.Scripting – What do you wish to use? CGI, PHP, Perl, Python, SSI, the type will depend on the databases you wish to use and the level of server side scripting you wish to perform.

16.Number of Email accounts – Ensure you have enough.

17.Sub-domains – Ensure your host will allow you a sufficient amount of sub-domains, for blogs, faqs, etc, these allow you to use different content management and security systems for each as well as many more email options.

18.Price – With Web Hosting as with anything else you are going to get what you pay for, that said there are some great bargains out there and so long as you follow these steps and the plan you are looking for meets your requirements (above) then go for it, just beware of some of the completely free hosts as they will lack certain functionality. Conversely avoid paying too much, or choosing features you know you will never use.

James is a web hosting expert, specializing in web hosting discounts and green web hosting.

Author: James Betchley
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Solar panel DIY