web hosting

Seven Basic Ingredients of Unix Hosting

Though often overshadowed by the market dominated Windows and Linux platform, Unix remains a widely used platform and a popular option for web hosting.  This article will introduce you to seven features commonly found in Unix hosting plans.  Though basic, these features are very important and should not be underestimated.

1.) POP3 Email Accounts – An example of a POP3 email account would be “mailto:yourname@yoursite.comyourname@yoursite.com“.  Most hosting companies will provide you with a large number of email accounts to use for yourself or distribute to your employees.

2.) Webmail and SMTP – As soon as your website goes live, email will likely become your main source of communication.  The tool you need to make this an easy process is a webmail program such as Horde or Squirrelmail.  This process can be even faster when downloading your messages to email clients such as Microsoft Outlook or Eudora.  However, in order for this to work, you need a Unix hosting solution that supports messaging protocols such as IMAP and SMTP.

3.) Spam Filter - It doesn’t matter who you are, no email user is immune to spam messages.  In this day and age of the internet, having a reliable spam filter is a must.  These applications are installed on the web server where your site resides and typically offer features such as blacklisting, whitelisting and greylisting to mitigate spam.  The more flexible filters will allow you to make configurations to tag spam and have it delivered straight to a quarantine folder to keep it from cluttering your inbox.

4.) FTP Accounts - FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a method that allows you to upload your files and maintain them on the server.  A Unix host that supports this protocol usually provides the ability to create a certain number of FTP sub-accounts.  This allows you to provide your clients and users with access to password-protected directories, which is very useful for sharing files in a more efficient and secure manner.

5.) Backup Utility - While most web hosts perform automated backups on a regular basis, you should never put the fate of your website in their hands.  There are many ways to backup your website data, but the easiest way is with a utility specifically designed for this task.  Most of today’s control panels come included with built-in utilities that allow you to easily backup your site in minutes.

6.) Web Stats – Analyzing your visitors and traffic can play a crucial role in the success of your site.  Popular web stat software such as AwStats and Webalizer run on the back-end of the server and can provide you with detailed reports on your statistics.  This can give you the knowledge to make the needed adjustments or additions that increase traffic and boost sales.

7.) PHP and MySQL – Similar to Linux, almost all Unix plans come with support for PHP server-side programming and the MySQL database server.  These features are generally provided for no extra costs and can give you the power to create a dynamic, data-driven website.

The Benefits of Email Hosting

Email hosting is designed for businesses that cannot or simply do not want to spend their precious time and resources on setting up and managing an internal messaging infrastructure.  This is very understandable because the continued maintenance and support can raise costs and also greatly increase the probability of virus infections, hardware and software problems.  All of these issues could leave your business without email functionality for hours and possibly days.

There are many benefits to outsourcing your messaging needs to a professional hosting company.  This article will go over some of the most significant.

Secure Webmail Access

Email hosting providers generally equip their mail servers with industry standard 128-bit encryption, which is active during the entire webmail session.  This essentially means that any data sent to and from the server is encrypted from the moment you sign in, until the moment you sign out.  With this proven security protocol, you can ensure that your sensitive messages will not be intercepted or compromised in any way.

Secure IMAP and POP Access

Businesses are increasingly opting for email hosting solutions because they enable secure access to desktop email clients through IMAP or POP.  All email traffic is encrypted, including user names and passwords sent from the email client to the mail server for authentication.  The best hosting providers support all the popular mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, Eudora, Mozilla Thunderbird and Apple Mail.  Some even offer support for Linux and BSD clients as well as PDAs and pocket PCs.  Whether you prefer to manage your mail on or offline, an email hosting plan can ensure that is done in an efficient and secure manner.

Adequate Storage Space

When signing up a for an email hosting account, you typically get a robust amount of storage for each mailbox created.  Some give you MB of storage, others give you GB per mailbox.  All tend to provide you with more than enough to efficiently store tens of thousands of messages.  A more flexible solution will allow you to easily upgrade as your storage needs increase.

Spam and Virus Filtering

A quality email hosting solution blocks potentially harmful mail before it even enters the network.  Anti-virus scanners are usually integrated into the host’s SMTP gateways while spam is dealt with in numerous ways.  A company that truly wants to help keep spam out your life will employ filtering methods such as blacklisting, whitelisting and greylisting, and allow you to make configurations that automatically sends it to a quarantine folder instead of your inbox.

Shared Address Book

The Address Book is a very useful feature in many email clients as it provides the user with a convenient way to store contact data for easy retrieval and use.  Most email hosts offer both a private and shared address book, along with access to public network directory services.  In many cases, the shared address book can be used with any mail client that supports LDAP directory services.

Email is such a prevalent method of communication that it can easily get out of hand over time. If you are no longer able to control your messaging infrastructure from within, it might be time to consider email hosting.