After the registration of domain name selection of web host is another rational step a user need to consider. Though, finding an ideal host is a daunting task. One can find several companies offering web-hosting services to the clients. While locating keyword web hosting in the search engines one will find more than 100 million outputs!
One cannot deny the fact, for a successful online presence a dependable web hosting is must. Online presence and accessibility of a web site is must. If not, one should remain ready to loose clients and prospects. For an instance, if one compare this with a traditional business.
CATEGORIES OF WEB HOSTING:
One should select a web hosting deal according to his/her site. One cannot fulfill his/her requirements from same hosting deal for a personal web site, web site meant for email newsletter subscription and archives, e-commerce site or web forum. Web hosting can be divided into four prime categories:
1. Virtual (shared) hosting,
2. Dedicated server,
3. Collocation server and
4. Reseller hosting.
Two most applicable hosting are virtual (shared) hosting and dedicated server.
What is Virtual (shared) hosting? It is a condition in which several web sites share one server. It is a low cost hosting because price is divided between several users. One can locate a standard virtual hosting at a rate of $100 a year.
In a Dedicated server hosting company lease the whole web server from a particular web hosting company. The site of web server is the web hosting company. One can opt dedicated server as a suitable option who does not wish to share a server with other web masters. One can find a dedicated server in two forms managed and un-managed. If one talk about managed server, company will take care of all the setups of user’s server. However, in unmanaged server user needs to take care of all these by him/her self. The benefit of this sort of hosting is that one can fully lodge web hosting as per his/her requirements. Moreover, for a site with ample amount of visitors a dedicated server is the only rational choice. Due to higher cost, starting from $100 per month, those companies that know the worth of Internet business generally use it.
One can say that Collocation server is quite identical to dedicated server. Disparity lies in the fact that company doesn’t take the web server on lease. Their own web server is placed in the web hosting company. In addition to it, company has material access to their web server, which is not available while talking about a dedicated server.
If one mention about Reseller hosting it is aimed to those companies only wishes to begin their own web hosting business.
ASPECTS, WHICH ONE NEEDS TO CONSIDER:
There are many factors which a user needs to consider to prevent any future miss happens:
Web space:
Requirement of Web space vary from site to site. Off course, if user requirement is only a web site containing basic information about him/her and his/her work excluding the use of web applications, then space of 50 MB is quite sufficient. However, a complex e-commerce site along with numerous products in one’s database demands a capacity of 1 GB.
Bandwidth:
The term Bandwidth refers to data transferred from user’s web site and that comprise of graphic details, images, banners and files for download. One should have accurate knowledge of Content before going for an amount of bandwidth. When one talks about the majority of sites, bandwidth of 10 GB a month is quite sufficient, though for few other sites like sites related to desktop wallpapers can frequently consumes even hundreds of GB a month.
Up time or visibility:
It symbolizes time articulated in percents displaying the period a site remained online. One should not be cheerful because someone assured him/her to provide say for 98% up time because it is not going to fulfill his/her requirement. One should get at least 99.7% uptime. Believe it or not, it definitely matters.
Email accounts:
Email accounts are an integrated and crucial part of web hosting package. It is quite interesting to know for how much will one get only a so called catch –all forwarding which means that all emails sent to somewhere@mydomain.com will arrive to one’s email address or one can set-up email accounts for several users? Also the thing is for how much? Is it intended for 5, 10, 100 or limitless email accounts? In addition to it, there is no harm to verify whether user get a so-called POP3 email address (“real” email address), web mail or rather both? If one has a POP3 email address then he/she can check his/her emails via favorite email client and web mail facilitate the user to inquire his/her emails at any place demanding just a computer and Internet connection.
Form of Server, tools and control panel:
When one mention the two generally utilized hosting then the name of Unix-based or Windows platform comes first. It matters for the result program languages, databases and scripts that one can apply. When one talks about Unix-based platform, general selection is relayed to PHP language along with MySQL, however, when it comes to Windows platform ASP or ASP.NET language will be along with SQL Server. One should enquire that is database is available with package or not, if yes, then how many? Nowadays, contemporary web site must be database-driven.
Too, one should have full knowledge related to tools coming along with web hosting package, if there is only applications for web statistics, file manager and things it is not an concern issue.
Technical support:
A crucial aspect while selecting a web hosting particularly for a user without having adequate technical skills is technical support. A proper technical support does not take a responsive time more then a day. This is not liable only to selection of web hosting company, but, crucial to any of the company selling products and services, Software Company can be one of the examples.
The coordination of few of the companies is so well thought-out that it takes only 1 hour to give response to user’s queries! Through their source of contact one can predict about the future response. Do the concern company has only email support or also have phone support? Does they provide a toll-free number? Do they offer the facility of trouble-ticket system? Working time is another crucial aspect. What is their strategy of providing technical support is it during working hours only i.e. 9 to 17 or does they provide the facility of 24x7 technical support? An ideal way to detect their professionalism one can create a list of fake queries, drop a line to them and hang around to know their reply time.
Testimonials:
Several web hosting and software companies have this smart way to increase their customer strength. Testimonials section contains the approval of satisfied customers, attracting more people to their service. This section is not completely reliable. Several hosting companies offer their clients to analyze their portfolio, instead of doing that one should contact webmasters who are taking the service of concern host and register their opinions. One can take help of several sites for further information regarding best web hosting deals and suggestions.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Basic Concepts of Web Hosts
The one who wants to enter in this web world and desires for a long time survival, then he/she should be familiar with each and every terminology used in this field. If user considers all the important factors before choosing a hosting plan then only he/she will be able to have a successful future in this world .User should not choose any of the plan, rather he/she should opt the best and most suitable one and this can only be made possible by fetching more and more informations and also by studying properly all the requirements. New comers should start from the basics .They should learn the meaning of each and every term used and also in addition those factors that can affect his/her selection.
Web Host
Web host refers to a computer connected to the internet. Web host can also be termed as ‘web server’. The computer that is playing the role of the web server needs to be more powerful than normal PCs and the function of this web server is to serve up websites.
The website content of the user will remain will on this computer, so as the people who are surfing on the internet can get a way to access his/her website.
There can be three main categories in which the web host can be classified based on the economic factor and common features:
1. Free Hosts:
The users who are not professional but are making website only as a hobby then for them free hosting can be a good option. In free hosting space, bandwidth and other features provided are very limited. With free web hosting one can not only make his/her website successful but is also suitable for personal websites or for temporary usage. Generally free hosting enforces pop-up, text or banner ads. Reliability, best performance and customer support lacks in case of free hosting as well. When a user registers for a free host then the word free host gets added with the user’s domain name that gives an adverse effect in the eye of the visitors.
2. Shared Hosts:
The next type of the web hosting to be discussed is shared hosting. This hosting service is used by many of the web sites .This type of hosting service is Suitable for personal, small and medium businesses. This service can be used by paying $1 to $25 per month. The features provided by this service vary from very limited space/bandwidth to semi-dedicated servers. The users host their website by this type of hosting service and it has its own top level domain facility. No doubt that shared web hosting is quite better than free hosting but still it does not provide 100% satisfactory services. In case of shared hosting one server is shared by the number of websites so its performance and availability gets affected. More websites usually means less performance. If less number of websites are hosted by one server then it will be more expensive, but in this case there are more chances of reliability. There are many companies allowing customers to host multiple websites with different domains under a single account.
3. Dedicated Hosts:
The next type of hosting is dedicated hosting. This type of hosting is most reliable hosting. In this type of hosting a full server is dedicated to a single customer. Generally this type of hosting is used by large businesses, professionals and very active websites dealing with thousands of visitors daily. The customers having dedicated hosting can have their total control over the server as well as able to create as many websites as they like. Customers can run their own hosting company on a rented dedicated server. Payment module is mentioned according to specifications and services provided with the server, which varies from $100 up to about $800 dollars per month.
4. Collocated Hosts:
Now the other type of hosting service to be discussed is collocated hosting. This service is very much similar to dedicated hosting. The difference between collocated hosting and dedicated hosting is that in collocated hosting the customer owns the server hardware instead of renting it. In this service the server will be placed in provider’s data center. This service is more expensive than dedicated hosting.
5. Reseller Hosts:
In reseller hosting the providers offers web server storage to their customers, and resells the web server storage to them. Generally providers offer resellers a discount price.
6. Other Hosts:
Including the above type of hosts there are also many other hosts such as email hosts, media hosts, data hosts, etc but these hosts will not be discussed in this article.
Domain Name
Domain name is the name which shows the place where one’s website is located. The actual address of the website is a set of numbers. Each and every web server has its own unique address. Domain name indicates the real addresses of every websites. One can easily remember the domain name of any of the website. Remembering domain name is easier than recalling the IP addresses.
Space / Storage
Space is one of the services provided by the web host. It plays a very important role in the website development. It happens many times that the customer requires more space but the host fails to provide it, so customer should be very careful while choosing the web host. Storage is the amount of web server’s disk space available for customer’s website files, images and databases. Space can be according to the requirement; it can be as small as 5MB in some free hosts and as big as 300GB for some dedicated servers. Earlier prices of the space were very high but prices reduced significantly during the last few years. The hosting plans offering 3GB of space for less than $10 a month can be easily available.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth can be defined as the amount of data transferred from web server to clients’ internet browsers. When ever a person outlook a page the data is transmitted from the server to that person’ PC. If any one is having audio, video and images in his/her website then the bandwidth consumed is more in comparison of the website having only text contents. The bandwidth available in free hosting can be as low as 100MB per month where as in some dedicated servers the bandwidth available is as high as 2000GB a month. The customers who don’t want to pay more for bandwidth can easily find hosting plans offering 75GB of monthly data transfer for less than $10.
Server Type
Generally server means the operating system than runs the web server. Some common types are Windows, Linux and UNIX. Server type refers the server side scripting and database types. The difference between Windows server and Linux/UNIX is that Windows runs ASP and ASP.NET with Access or SQL Server databases where as Linux/UNIX servers usually runs CGI, PHP or JSP with MySQL or Oracle databases. The other difference is that Windows servers are more expensive than Linux/UNIX servers.
Databases
As server type is discussed earlier also, we are able to know that there are different types of databases available. The mostly used is MySQL as it is open source GPL (free) software and can serve a lot of online applications’ requirements such as forums, content management, mailing lists, etc. MySQL, rather its features are limited. MySQL is sufficient for small concern but it is not powerful for the complicated large business sites. Large business requires more powerful databases such as Oracle or SQL Server.
.
Server Side Scripting
Usually the new comers prefer to use PHP as server side scripting. The reason behind this is that there are hundreds of open source (GPL) PHP scripts that are able to fulfill the webmaster’s requirements. However PHP also has some limitations in features required by advanced websites same as in the case of MySQL, due to this limitation some professional web developers prefer to use ASP.NET or JSP. Some other developers still prefer to use Cold Fusion, CGI, ASP or PERL.
Email
Now the next very important aspect to be talked about is Email. At present no one can move further in this computer world with having his/her Email account. The one who is planning to do any kind of activity through computer such as to run a business or to provide any kind of service, then the first thing he/she need to do is to open an Email account. There are many hosting plans that include the feature of having some email accounts with customer’s domain. The availability of number and size of email accounts totally depends on the hosting plan one opted. Generally this feature is not included in free hosting. Small plans provide only about 10 accounts where as big plans do not have the limited number. Usually those email accounts are web based and accessible through POP3 clients as well.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
The other service is FTP. File Transfer Protocol is a usual way of transferring files across the Internet. Most of the webmasters used to upload and download their websites contents through FTP. The process of uploading or downloading is performed by using FTP client software. Webmasters require FTP username and password so as to access their web server. There are any hosts who use to provide more than one FTP account to their customers as per their requirement. Rather FTP is unspecified; it is not advisable as per the security reasons.
Control Panel
Control panel is the service available by many of the web hosting companies to their customers. It is a web based application that helps in managing websites. Some important functions performed by the control panel are that it used to manage email accounts, providing statistics, managing FTP accounts, managing domains and sub-domains and managing databases. The control panel application that is mostly used by the user is cPanel. There are many companies who use to develop their own control panel application.
Uptime
Now after having all the services, the thing of concern which remains is how the user keeps his/her website uptime most of the time. If anyone is having a website with excellent features but it remains down most of the time it will be of no use, as when ever the visitors visit his/her website and found it down then later on they will think twice before visiting it. In result he/she will suffer the loss of visitors. Uptime is very important feature of web hosts and that is usually measured in percentage. If a server remains down near about 30 minutes a day will have an uptime percentage of about 99.98%, which is acceptable for most small to medium business websites. If any of the business website is not having at least this percentage of uptime then that website is not suitable for a business website. Mission critical sites cannot tolerate frequent outages, thus they may use web monitoring services to notify web administrators immediately when an outage happens.
Price
Finally the factor left is price. In this option also there is a great variability found like for example customer is having option to choose between the prices ranging from 0 to $1000 per month. For most personal, small and medium websites the total amount of cost involved is just $15 per month. Thus its not at all advisable for business website owners to select very cheap plans let say less than $5 because this price can lead to huge cost indirectly afterwards.
Web Host
Web host refers to a computer connected to the internet. Web host can also be termed as ‘web server’. The computer that is playing the role of the web server needs to be more powerful than normal PCs and the function of this web server is to serve up websites.
The website content of the user will remain will on this computer, so as the people who are surfing on the internet can get a way to access his/her website.
There can be three main categories in which the web host can be classified based on the economic factor and common features:
1. Free Hosts:
The users who are not professional but are making website only as a hobby then for them free hosting can be a good option. In free hosting space, bandwidth and other features provided are very limited. With free web hosting one can not only make his/her website successful but is also suitable for personal websites or for temporary usage. Generally free hosting enforces pop-up, text or banner ads. Reliability, best performance and customer support lacks in case of free hosting as well. When a user registers for a free host then the word free host gets added with the user’s domain name that gives an adverse effect in the eye of the visitors.
2. Shared Hosts:
The next type of the web hosting to be discussed is shared hosting. This hosting service is used by many of the web sites .This type of hosting service is Suitable for personal, small and medium businesses. This service can be used by paying $1 to $25 per month. The features provided by this service vary from very limited space/bandwidth to semi-dedicated servers. The users host their website by this type of hosting service and it has its own top level domain facility. No doubt that shared web hosting is quite better than free hosting but still it does not provide 100% satisfactory services. In case of shared hosting one server is shared by the number of websites so its performance and availability gets affected. More websites usually means less performance. If less number of websites are hosted by one server then it will be more expensive, but in this case there are more chances of reliability. There are many companies allowing customers to host multiple websites with different domains under a single account.
3. Dedicated Hosts:
The next type of hosting is dedicated hosting. This type of hosting is most reliable hosting. In this type of hosting a full server is dedicated to a single customer. Generally this type of hosting is used by large businesses, professionals and very active websites dealing with thousands of visitors daily. The customers having dedicated hosting can have their total control over the server as well as able to create as many websites as they like. Customers can run their own hosting company on a rented dedicated server. Payment module is mentioned according to specifications and services provided with the server, which varies from $100 up to about $800 dollars per month.
4. Collocated Hosts:
Now the other type of hosting service to be discussed is collocated hosting. This service is very much similar to dedicated hosting. The difference between collocated hosting and dedicated hosting is that in collocated hosting the customer owns the server hardware instead of renting it. In this service the server will be placed in provider’s data center. This service is more expensive than dedicated hosting.
5. Reseller Hosts:
In reseller hosting the providers offers web server storage to their customers, and resells the web server storage to them. Generally providers offer resellers a discount price.
6. Other Hosts:
Including the above type of hosts there are also many other hosts such as email hosts, media hosts, data hosts, etc but these hosts will not be discussed in this article.
Domain Name
Domain name is the name which shows the place where one’s website is located. The actual address of the website is a set of numbers. Each and every web server has its own unique address. Domain name indicates the real addresses of every websites. One can easily remember the domain name of any of the website. Remembering domain name is easier than recalling the IP addresses.
Space / Storage
Space is one of the services provided by the web host. It plays a very important role in the website development. It happens many times that the customer requires more space but the host fails to provide it, so customer should be very careful while choosing the web host. Storage is the amount of web server’s disk space available for customer’s website files, images and databases. Space can be according to the requirement; it can be as small as 5MB in some free hosts and as big as 300GB for some dedicated servers. Earlier prices of the space were very high but prices reduced significantly during the last few years. The hosting plans offering 3GB of space for less than $10 a month can be easily available.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth can be defined as the amount of data transferred from web server to clients’ internet browsers. When ever a person outlook a page the data is transmitted from the server to that person’ PC. If any one is having audio, video and images in his/her website then the bandwidth consumed is more in comparison of the website having only text contents. The bandwidth available in free hosting can be as low as 100MB per month where as in some dedicated servers the bandwidth available is as high as 2000GB a month. The customers who don’t want to pay more for bandwidth can easily find hosting plans offering 75GB of monthly data transfer for less than $10.
Server Type
Generally server means the operating system than runs the web server. Some common types are Windows, Linux and UNIX. Server type refers the server side scripting and database types. The difference between Windows server and Linux/UNIX is that Windows runs ASP and ASP.NET with Access or SQL Server databases where as Linux/UNIX servers usually runs CGI, PHP or JSP with MySQL or Oracle databases. The other difference is that Windows servers are more expensive than Linux/UNIX servers.
Databases
As server type is discussed earlier also, we are able to know that there are different types of databases available. The mostly used is MySQL as it is open source GPL (free) software and can serve a lot of online applications’ requirements such as forums, content management, mailing lists, etc. MySQL, rather its features are limited. MySQL is sufficient for small concern but it is not powerful for the complicated large business sites. Large business requires more powerful databases such as Oracle or SQL Server.
.
Server Side Scripting
Usually the new comers prefer to use PHP as server side scripting. The reason behind this is that there are hundreds of open source (GPL) PHP scripts that are able to fulfill the webmaster’s requirements. However PHP also has some limitations in features required by advanced websites same as in the case of MySQL, due to this limitation some professional web developers prefer to use ASP.NET or JSP. Some other developers still prefer to use Cold Fusion, CGI, ASP or PERL.
Now the next very important aspect to be talked about is Email. At present no one can move further in this computer world with having his/her Email account. The one who is planning to do any kind of activity through computer such as to run a business or to provide any kind of service, then the first thing he/she need to do is to open an Email account. There are many hosting plans that include the feature of having some email accounts with customer’s domain. The availability of number and size of email accounts totally depends on the hosting plan one opted. Generally this feature is not included in free hosting. Small plans provide only about 10 accounts where as big plans do not have the limited number. Usually those email accounts are web based and accessible through POP3 clients as well.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
The other service is FTP. File Transfer Protocol is a usual way of transferring files across the Internet. Most of the webmasters used to upload and download their websites contents through FTP. The process of uploading or downloading is performed by using FTP client software. Webmasters require FTP username and password so as to access their web server. There are any hosts who use to provide more than one FTP account to their customers as per their requirement. Rather FTP is unspecified; it is not advisable as per the security reasons.
Control Panel
Control panel is the service available by many of the web hosting companies to their customers. It is a web based application that helps in managing websites. Some important functions performed by the control panel are that it used to manage email accounts, providing statistics, managing FTP accounts, managing domains and sub-domains and managing databases. The control panel application that is mostly used by the user is cPanel. There are many companies who use to develop their own control panel application.
Uptime
Now after having all the services, the thing of concern which remains is how the user keeps his/her website uptime most of the time. If anyone is having a website with excellent features but it remains down most of the time it will be of no use, as when ever the visitors visit his/her website and found it down then later on they will think twice before visiting it. In result he/she will suffer the loss of visitors. Uptime is very important feature of web hosts and that is usually measured in percentage. If a server remains down near about 30 minutes a day will have an uptime percentage of about 99.98%, which is acceptable for most small to medium business websites. If any of the business website is not having at least this percentage of uptime then that website is not suitable for a business website. Mission critical sites cannot tolerate frequent outages, thus they may use web monitoring services to notify web administrators immediately when an outage happens.
Price
Finally the factor left is price. In this option also there is a great variability found like for example customer is having option to choose between the prices ranging from 0 to $1000 per month. For most personal, small and medium websites the total amount of cost involved is just $15 per month. Thus its not at all advisable for business website owners to select very cheap plans let say less than $5 because this price can lead to huge cost indirectly afterwards.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Web Hosting Through Windows
Microsoft announced the Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting Version 3.0 on Tuesday, touting it as a flexible, modular platform with new out-of-the-box services that enable users to roll out hosted offerings faster and cheaper.
Microsoft also lowered the barriers for its Service Provider License in an attempt to encourage smaller companies to consider adding Windows hosting services.
"Version 3.0 is focused on being easy and fast to deploy," said Mark Jewett, product manager for Windows-based Hosting. "And it can apply to hosting providers of all different sizes, not just the large providers."
Windows-based Hosting Version 3.0 comprises eight modular components, each designed to easily integrate with existing environments, preserving investments while providing the flexibility to add new modules as needed. There are infrastructure modules for building, provisioning, patching and monitoring servers, as well as three new service components.
It also includes templates for service plans to let service providers quickly develop packages of features. There are three out-of-the-box hosted services components for Windows SharePoint Services, data hosting with SQL Server and Web hosting with Internet Information Services. The latter includes support for ASP.NET, SSL, FTP, e-mail and FrontPage Server Extensions.
Version 3.0 automates 85 percent of installation and maintenance tasks for the Microsoft Provisioning System (MPS) Deployment Tool, the company said, with upgraded documentation that includes both scenario-based and graphical-based navigation, demonstration videos and usability improvements. It includes scripts and framework necessary to perform an unattended installation using automated deployment services, which makes for shorter server building times.
The product is licensed under the company's Service Provider License Agreement, which Jewett characterized as aggressively priced and based on actual usage reported on a monthly basis, "so there's nothing sitting on the shelf."
Microsoft removed the licensing requirement of being a Microsoft Certified Partner; to take part in the program, hosting companies merely need to be a registered partner. "Essentially, it's an e-mail address," he said.
Although IT research firm Forrester expects only "modest" growth overall in hosting and managed IT services in 2005, Jewett said that Microsoft is seeing growth in Windows hosting that reflects analysts' estimates of 30 percent year-over-year.
"We're seeing tremendous growth in Windows hosting overall, in terms of revenues for services and server growth," he said. "Service providers are seeing that having a compelling Windows hosting offering out there is important and drives revenue."
At the same time, Microsoft is seeing strong competition from Linux server software. In an August report detailing second-quarter 2004 shipments, research firm Gartner found that, while Windows remained the operating system of choice, its share of the market dropped from 35.1 percent to 34.4 percent. At the same time, Linux shipments increased 61.6 percent and represented 9.5 percent of overall server revenue.
While Jewett denied that lowering the barrier and enhancing community features were specifically intended to combat the Linux threat, he said, "We want to make sure hosting providers have an easy way to meet the demand for Windows hosting. And we want to make sure Windows hosting providers are successful."
Support is based on the Windows Web Hoster Program launched 18 months ago. Its 3,500 members participate in online technical support webcasts, live seminars and bulletin boards. Free technical assistance is available at Microsoft's Windows Hosting Forums within the ASP.NET forums.
"Certainly in the open source world out there, one thing being done that's exciting is building community," Jewett said. "Microsoft is doing a good job of recognizing that we can build a community, support our products and get an excited community out there in much the same way."
Microsoft also lowered the barriers for its Service Provider License in an attempt to encourage smaller companies to consider adding Windows hosting services.
"Version 3.0 is focused on being easy and fast to deploy," said Mark Jewett, product manager for Windows-based Hosting. "And it can apply to hosting providers of all different sizes, not just the large providers."
Windows-based Hosting Version 3.0 comprises eight modular components, each designed to easily integrate with existing environments, preserving investments while providing the flexibility to add new modules as needed. There are infrastructure modules for building, provisioning, patching and monitoring servers, as well as three new service components.
It also includes templates for service plans to let service providers quickly develop packages of features. There are three out-of-the-box hosted services components for Windows SharePoint Services, data hosting with SQL Server and Web hosting with Internet Information Services. The latter includes support for ASP.NET, SSL, FTP, e-mail and FrontPage Server Extensions.
Version 3.0 automates 85 percent of installation and maintenance tasks for the Microsoft Provisioning System (MPS) Deployment Tool, the company said, with upgraded documentation that includes both scenario-based and graphical-based navigation, demonstration videos and usability improvements. It includes scripts and framework necessary to perform an unattended installation using automated deployment services, which makes for shorter server building times.
The product is licensed under the company's Service Provider License Agreement, which Jewett characterized as aggressively priced and based on actual usage reported on a monthly basis, "so there's nothing sitting on the shelf."
Microsoft removed the licensing requirement of being a Microsoft Certified Partner; to take part in the program, hosting companies merely need to be a registered partner. "Essentially, it's an e-mail address," he said.
Although IT research firm Forrester expects only "modest" growth overall in hosting and managed IT services in 2005, Jewett said that Microsoft is seeing growth in Windows hosting that reflects analysts' estimates of 30 percent year-over-year.
"We're seeing tremendous growth in Windows hosting overall, in terms of revenues for services and server growth," he said. "Service providers are seeing that having a compelling Windows hosting offering out there is important and drives revenue."
At the same time, Microsoft is seeing strong competition from Linux server software. In an August report detailing second-quarter 2004 shipments, research firm Gartner found that, while Windows remained the operating system of choice, its share of the market dropped from 35.1 percent to 34.4 percent. At the same time, Linux shipments increased 61.6 percent and represented 9.5 percent of overall server revenue.
While Jewett denied that lowering the barrier and enhancing community features were specifically intended to combat the Linux threat, he said, "We want to make sure hosting providers have an easy way to meet the demand for Windows hosting. And we want to make sure Windows hosting providers are successful."
Support is based on the Windows Web Hoster Program launched 18 months ago. Its 3,500 members participate in online technical support webcasts, live seminars and bulletin boards. Free technical assistance is available at Microsoft's Windows Hosting Forums within the ASP.NET forums.
"Certainly in the open source world out there, one thing being done that's exciting is building community," Jewett said. "Microsoft is doing a good job of recognizing that we can build a community, support our products and get an excited community out there in much the same way."
Shared-Hosting Perils
Shared hosting can be a cost-efficient solution for many Web sites, but you may end up paying a different sort of price. As always when sharing with strangers, there's a risk of the unknown. A well-designed and -managed operating system along with other system software may be able to protect applications and users from one another, but things do go wrong at times.
Consider what happens when an attacker goes after one of the other sites on your shared server. Vulnerabilities such as the MySQL Password Handler Buffer Overflow Vulnerability or the PHP wordwrap() Heap Corruption Vulnerability may occur. If the attacker gains control of the server or the database, you're all just as vulnerable.
And the attacker may not even be an outsider—it could be another customer.
Mike Prettejohn of the Internet research firm Netcraft Ltd., which follows the hosting market carefully, said he thinks "strongly themed shared hosting—such as the Yahoo storefronts"—are the best type of shared hosting. They define a rigid but easy-to-use environment for the customer, limiting the damage the customer can do accidentally or otherwise, and they scale brilliantly for the hosting company. Such hosts usually focus on product and service sites because they have better potential for sharing facilities, such as a shopping cart program and tax and shipping calculation. In a sense these features may make those sites bigger targets, because there will be customer records with credit card and other valuable data. But good management by the hosting service and restrictions on the customers can limit the exposure.
Generic shared-hosting accounts, on the other hand—the ones with access to Perl, PHP, and (shudder!) shell accounts—are potential disasters. It's very easy for one customer to impact all of the others with a badly written program. And you know how Linux vulnerabilities are often described as not such a big deal because only local—not remote—users can exploit them? Those shell accounts make the users local! Again, good management can prevent those users from uploading and executing arbitrary and exploitative code, but good management isn't built into the operating system.
Moreover, DoS attacks against hosting services seem to be increasing. If your sites are in the wrong IP range, you get to suffer along with everyone else.
Mail servers aren't immune to death by association, either. If one of the major RBLs (Realtime Blackhole Lists), such as Mail Abuse Prevention System decides to block e-mail from the mail server you share, because some other domain on the same server had been spamming, it won't be your fault, but you'll pay the price all the same.
In general, you should consider your site more vulnerable to attacks from other sites in the same data center than from outside. You know how in the movies the bank robbers rent the basement next door and break in at night? If you want to attack an Internet site, maybe even an Internet bank, rent a logically nearby server.
There's nothing nearer than another site on a shared server. A dedicated server is a good solution, but even if security is a real concern, you may not be able to afford one. Shop around before you sign up. Look for a shared-hosting service that has some malware protection, like antivirus. If you're keeping personal user information, you should also look for one that supports SSL for your site, not shared with everyone else on your server. This means you'll need your own IP address, so it may cost more. But it's better to pay a little more up front to be sure you're safe.
Consider what happens when an attacker goes after one of the other sites on your shared server. Vulnerabilities such as the MySQL Password Handler Buffer Overflow Vulnerability or the PHP wordwrap() Heap Corruption Vulnerability may occur. If the attacker gains control of the server or the database, you're all just as vulnerable.
And the attacker may not even be an outsider—it could be another customer.
Mike Prettejohn of the Internet research firm Netcraft Ltd., which follows the hosting market carefully, said he thinks "strongly themed shared hosting—such as the Yahoo storefronts"—are the best type of shared hosting. They define a rigid but easy-to-use environment for the customer, limiting the damage the customer can do accidentally or otherwise, and they scale brilliantly for the hosting company. Such hosts usually focus on product and service sites because they have better potential for sharing facilities, such as a shopping cart program and tax and shipping calculation. In a sense these features may make those sites bigger targets, because there will be customer records with credit card and other valuable data. But good management by the hosting service and restrictions on the customers can limit the exposure.
Generic shared-hosting accounts, on the other hand—the ones with access to Perl, PHP, and (shudder!) shell accounts—are potential disasters. It's very easy for one customer to impact all of the others with a badly written program. And you know how Linux vulnerabilities are often described as not such a big deal because only local—not remote—users can exploit them? Those shell accounts make the users local! Again, good management can prevent those users from uploading and executing arbitrary and exploitative code, but good management isn't built into the operating system.
Moreover, DoS attacks against hosting services seem to be increasing. If your sites are in the wrong IP range, you get to suffer along with everyone else.
Mail servers aren't immune to death by association, either. If one of the major RBLs (Realtime Blackhole Lists), such as Mail Abuse Prevention System decides to block e-mail from the mail server you share, because some other domain on the same server had been spamming, it won't be your fault, but you'll pay the price all the same.
In general, you should consider your site more vulnerable to attacks from other sites in the same data center than from outside. You know how in the movies the bank robbers rent the basement next door and break in at night? If you want to attack an Internet site, maybe even an Internet bank, rent a logically nearby server.
There's nothing nearer than another site on a shared server. A dedicated server is a good solution, but even if security is a real concern, you may not be able to afford one. Shop around before you sign up. Look for a shared-hosting service that has some malware protection, like antivirus. If you're keeping personal user information, you should also look for one that supports SSL for your site, not shared with everyone else on your server. This means you'll need your own IP address, so it may cost more. But it's better to pay a little more up front to be sure you're safe.
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