web hosting

Advanced Web Hosting Technology

Along with the web hosting industry comes a lot of unfamiliar terms and technical jargon.  While some are self explanatory and a bit easier to process, others are downright confusing, especially to the newcomer who knows little to nothing about the industry.  This article will introduce you to some of the more advanced terms and explain their meanings.

Availability

Often referred to as uptime, the availability of a system describes its accessibility and ability to provide a level of redundancy that works to prevent failure at any single point.  For instance, if only one server is responding to HTTP requests, the server qualifies as a single point of failure.  If there are two web servers in a load balancing scheme, then the load balancer itself is the single point of failure.  Most high availability systems are equipped with efficient fault-tolerance mechanisms to ensure the necessary redundancies.  Because 100% availability is costly and rather difficult to achieve, the industry standard in the web hosting business is at around 99.9%.

Load Balancing

Load balancing is a method web hosting providers employ to more evenly distribute the system load over a group of available servers.  This technology is used to ensure that all servers process their fair share of requests without being overworked and more susceptible to failing.  There are many types of load balancers and these mechanisms come in both software and hardware varieties.

Response time and Transaction Load

The performance of a server is associated with the response time of a given transaction load.  In regard to a website, it is measured by the time it takes to load web pages and process requests to the web server.  The performance of large, high traffic websites can be greatly enhanced by upgrading hardware, residing on a dedicated server or utilizing load balancing technology.  In many cases, fine tuning software packages such as MySQL and PHP can also increase response times.

Scalability

The scalability of a system generally refers to the property that enables it to service any given load by upgrading hardware or incorporating additional services in a predetermined manner.  It essentially describes an instance in which performance and throughput can still be maintained once the load increases.  Scalability is a great quality to have in a web hosting solution as it can support the growth and increasing needs of your website.

Session State

Session state is often needed to maintain the connection of a client program and a given server.  This typically needs to be done to accommodate a user who is logged into the system.  If the topology consists of multiple servers, maintaining session state is crucial and something that must be taken care.  Most load balancing software applications on the market provide facilities that enable this to done.  The most common methods are implementing cookies and rewriting URLs with the server details included.  load_balance.htm

Throughput

Though closely tied to performance, throughput is best described as the number of concurrent transactions the server is able to process.  The higher the throughput, the more processing power to the system.

Know What to Look for in a Shopping Cart

The shopping cart you choose is a decision that can either make or break your online business.  In many instances, the difference between a successful e-commerce store and a failure is not the actual products or services, but how the products and services are sold.  To keep you from falling on the unfavorable side of things, we have provided some important features to look for in your shopping cart application.

SEO-Friendly

As an online business owner, SEO (search engine optimization) should be one of your top priorities.  While most site owners have a part in creating intriguing content, they often have less impact on the design and search engine indexing.  If this sounds like your situation, then choosing an SEO-friendly shopping cart is essential.  Signs of a good cart with these qualities is one that automatically produces keyword-rich URLs relative to your site or items.

Coupon Support

It doesn’t matter what you sell, it is almost guaranteed that your customers are looking for a deal.  The best way to attract this type of audience is with coupons.  Numerous reports show that customers are increasingly on the hunt for online coupons, so a shopping cart that supports coupon codes will likely do you some good.  Without this feature, you are doing nothing but limiting your potential.

Cross-Selling Functionality

Cross-selling is the concept of selling customers additional related products to increase your total per-checkout revenue.  A perfect example would be recommending accessories to go along with the PC hardware you sell.  The shopping cart you choose should offer cross-selling functionality as an either a semi or fully automated process.  The best e-commerce platforms have systems that associate products and dynamically place related items on the corresponding product and checkout pages.

Customer Reviews

Genuine customer reviews make a great way to encourage more sales.  These reviews are like having a peer recommend your store to potential customers.  Think of it as a way of allowing your customers to market for you.  A shopping cart equipped with this feature should either support a review system from within, or allow you to connect to a third-party tool such as PowerReviews or similar.

Sharing and Recommendations

Any potential customer visiting your website should have the ability to share product details via email or in other ways.  Let’s say a teen is interested in one of your products and wants to let their mom or dad know they really want this particular item as a birthday gift.  To make this a seamless process, your store should provide the teen with any easy way to send notification to their parents without having to cut and paste the details.  A good shopping cart application will include a sharing feature, typically as a part of wish list system that calls for the customer to complete some type of registration in order to use it.

Today’s e-commerce shopping carts are loaded with features and these are just a few of many that we believe are absolute deal breakers.  The good thing is that with hundreds of applications to choose from, you have the luxury to be very selective.

Park Your Domain or Build a Site – That is the Question

There are numerous ways to make money with a domain name.  Two of the most common methods involve developing a website for business purposes, or parking it for profit.  Which method should you choose?  This article will help you decide.

The Allure Behind Domain Parking

Many ambitious registrants elect to monetize their domain names by parking them on popular sites like GoDaddy and Sedo.  Others build websites that are strictly designed to generate revenue from programs such as Google AdSense.  These type of sites hold little value other than trying to get visitors to click on the AdSense ads.  Why do this instead of developing a real website or blog to go with the domain?  Even though these individuals have all the intentions of turning around and selling the names, most realize that this process usually takes a considerable amount of time.  In fact, it could actually take years for you to sell a single domain.  By parking them, owners can quickly recover their registration costs and also get a shot at steady revenues until that dream sale comes along.

When it Backfires

There is definitely potential in domain name parking, but there also many drawbacks to this method.  Instead of waiting for a big sale that may or may not come, they could be investing their time and effort into developing and marketing that domain through a website.  Of course this takes hard work but as they say, hard work pays off.

More often than not, domain name parkers end up waiting longer they would like, just hoping they miraculously fall into a thousand dollar sale with very little effort.  The ones who thought they were clever by registering multiple domain names with the hopes of parking for profit are usually the most disappointed when things don’t go as planned.

What most domain parkers don’t realize is that a domain’s true value lies in the popularity it builds and the traffic it generates.  The hard truth is that a domain typically does not increase any more in value than when you registered it, regardless of your status within a particular market.  A popular website doesn’t necessarily translate into a million dollar domain name.  This is especially the case when the name is simply sitting there boasting Google ads. Thus, if you are just parking it to get a few clicks for some measly ads, then your domain is only worth a couple of pennies over the price of registration.  This is something you need to take into consideration before you buy into all the prosperous stories about domain name parking.

Your Best Bet

If you can come up with a business plan that includes your domain name, you will have a much better chance of adding to its value.  This means you are generating traffic and bringing in visitors who actually subscribe for a newsletter, join your membership site or buy products or services.  If you really want to sell your domain name for big money, this is the best way to show that it has real business potential.  Even if you have no plans of selling the name at all, you are more likely to profit by putting it to use than letting it sit collecting dust in an overcrowded corner of the net.

4 Critical Factors to Consider Before Choosing a Cheap Host

Even though cheap hosting has become more prevalent in recent times, there are many factors you need to consider before signing up for service.  Because you never know what is behind that unbelievably low price, here are four critical factors you should keep in mind:

Downtime

A web host could provide you with all the tools needed to create a professional, feature-rich website that garners the attention of your audience.  However, if your site is constantly unavailable, its beauty will not mean a thing to the users who cannot access it.  Realizing that excessive downtime is one of the easiest ways to kills your online popularity, it is critical to find a cheap host that is more committed to reliability than a low price.

Limited Bandwidth

Before entering any type of hosting arrangement, it is vital that you consider the monthly bandwidth allocated to your account.  It is a known fact that bandwidth is a key component needed to support website traffic and plays a huge role in its success.  If your site has a large number of visitors, it will obviously require more bandwidth.  The challenging part of it all is that you may experience traffic spikes when least expected and be left with a sudden shortage of resources.  This is definitely a situation you don’t want to find yourself in as it could once again lead to dreaded periods of downtime.  If traffic is of any importance, make sure your cheap hosting plan comes included with enough bandwidth to support your current and future traffic requirements.

Technical Expertise

The technical expertise of the hosting provider is one area that doesn’t get enough attention.  This doesn’t necessarily refer to the company’s infrastructure or hardware, but the people behind all the technology.  Web hosting providers must be technically inclined for the simple fact that many of their customers are not.  This expertise will be needed to provide you with support and encounter all the technical issues that might arise.  You may not know a thing about servers but there is no excuse for your web host, cheap service or not.

Level of Support

One of the biggest drawbacks of cheap hosting services has been the lack of support.  It seems as if some companies are cutting cost in various areas to provide affordable service and the critical department of support is often the one to suffer.  Support is very important and should come at no additional cost.  Even if you are only paying a couple of dollars per month, ensure that your plan comes with world-class support that makes you feel like a million dollar customer.

At the end of the day, it is not impossible to find a company that provides a cheap service yet works hard to keep up the reliability.  However, it may take you a little extra time so exercise a bit of patience and make your selection wisely.  After doing your research, it should be much easier to find a premium service that comes at a bargain price.

How to Select the Approprite Load Balancing Technology

Load balancing is a hot topic in the web hosting industry as the technology is being increasingly used in server farms and shared hosting environments.  Its purpose is to fine tune computer systems and networks in a manner that better evenly distributes data and processing across available resources to prevent a single device from being overloaded.  Some of the busier websites utilize two or more servers in a load balancing scheme. Therefore, if one is overwhelmed, traffic is forwarded to another with more capacity.

Common Types of Load Balancing

The process of load balancing is one that can be achieved in a variety of ways.  If this is a technology you are interested in, it is best to know what methods are available to you.   After learning a little more about the types of load balancing, you will should be able to better determine which option works best.

Round Robin DNS Load Balancing

One of the earliest adopted techniques, round robin DNS load balancing uses the round robin feature built into the BIND DNS server to facilitate cycles through the IP addresses corresponding to a farm of servers  This is one of the easiest and most inexpensive methods to implement.  The downside to this type of load balancing is that the DNS server doesn’t have any knowledge of the server’s availability.  Therefore, there is a possibility that data could be continuously forwarded to an unavailable server.  There is also a chance that an IP address will be cached by other nameservers and not sent to the server designated for load balancing.

Hardware Load Balancing

With hardware load balancing, TCP/IP packets are routed by a device to numerous servers in a cluster, a method that leverages circuit level gateway to route traffic.  This method is said to create a powerful topology with a high level of availability.  The one big drawback is a cost that is often considerably higher than other methods.

Software-based Load Balancing

The software-based variation is the most commonly used load balancing method.  These type of load balancers are typically integrated as components in proprietary web servers and application server platforms.  This technique is more configurable and offers the ability to implement intelligent routing based on various input parameters.  In many cases, software-based load balancing requires additional hardware be provided to isolate the load balancers.

Narrowing Your Options

The decision of choosing a load balancing configuration based on hardware or software should be made on one’s particular needs.  For instance, if your website only requires load balancing to serve HTML pages or lightweight dynamic, data-driven pages, the round robin method should be sufficient.  On the other hand, if your traffic and data processes are more demanding, you would probably get the best performance out of the more advanced software or hardware methods.  Whatever method you take, keep in mind that the load balancer should be able to deliver intelligent monitoring to evenly distribute the load.  Depending on your situation, different techniques can better direct the loads to the servers that are more capable of handling them than others in the cluster.