Cron is a Linux/UNIX daemon that is designed to execute a command at a predefined time. Since cron is a daemon, once it is executed it does not require any administration from the user. Cron is controlled by a set of files called “cronfiles”, below is a list of common cron commands.

Each entry into the crontab file will consist of the following six fields separated by a space. The order of the fields along with a brief description of each one is listed below.
minute(s) hour(s) day(s) month(s) weekday(s) command(s)

You can also use an * in place of the numerical character of the first five fields to indicate all legal values. For example, 0 0 * * 1 command, would run a script on every Monday.
Most of this section is only relevant if you are running scripts from the command terminal in Linux/UNIX, if you are using a cPanel please view the “How do I run a cron script from my cPanel” section.

How can I save time with cron?

There are many ways you can use cron to save some but to me the most useful tasks you can schedule are running database and website backup scripts. Both of these jobs can easily be done manually but they are often over looked. With cron you can set them up once and know it will get done.

Below are sample scripts you can use to setup these jobs with cron.

Automatic WordPress Database Backups (Script provided by T2)

#Set the 4 variables
#Replace what is AFTER the = with the information from your wp-config.php file

DBNAME=DB_NAME

DBPASS=DB_PASSWORD

DBUSER=DB_USER

#Keep the " around your address
EMAIL="you@your_email.com"

mysqldump –opt -u $DBUSER -p$DBPASS $DBNAME > backup.sql
gzip backup.sql
DATE=`date +%Y%m%d` ; mv backup.sql.gz $DBNAME-backup-$DATE.sql.gz
echo ‘Blog Name:Your mySQL Backup is attached’ | mutt -a $DBNAME-backup-$DATE.sql.gz $EMAIL -s "MySQL Backup"
rm $DBNAME-backup-$DATE.sql.gz

Automated Website Backups (Script provided by Ubuntu)

#!/bin/sh

####################################

#

# Backup to NFS mount script.

#

####################################

# What to backup.

backup_files="/home /var/spool/mail /etc /root /boot /opt"

# Where to backup to.

dest="/mnt/backup"

# Create archive filename.

day=$(date +%A)

hostname=$(hostname -s)

archive_file="$hostname-$day.tgz"

# Print start status message.

echo "Backing up $backup_files to $dest/$archive_file"

date

echo

# Backup the files using tar.

tar czf $dest/$archive_file $backup_files

# Print end status message.

echo

echo "Backup finished"

date

# Long listing of files in $dest to check file sizes.

ls -lh $dest

*Disclaimer: We are not a responsible if the script fails to run correctly or if you set it up incorrectly. If you have any questions or concerns about the script or how to set it up the best contact will be your host provider.

How do I run a cron script from my cPanel?

1. Log into you cPanlel

2. Locate the “cron jobs” icon (This is generally in the advanced section).

3. Enter your E-Mail address if you would like a copy of the crop output to be emailed to you.

4. Choose when you would like your cron script to run. (Choosing an item from the “Common Settings” dropdown box will fill in the fields for you.)

5. Enter the path of the script you would like to run. (Note: You will need to upload your script file to your server, for more information please see below – “How do I upload my script file” section for details.)

6. Click “Add New Cron Job”

7. Your cron job should now be listed under “Current Cron Jobs”.

How do I upload my script file?

1. From your cPanel choose “File Manager”
2. Next choose “Home Directory” then click “Go”
3. Now choose “Upload”.
4. Set your File Permissions to 755
5. Click “Browse”
6. Browse to the folder that has your script and click on it, and then click “Open”.

Note: Your cPanel may be setup differently than the one shown above but the overall concepts should still be the same.

Image Courtesy: Flickr – Kumaravel

When people look for web hosting services, they consider several parameters like the specifications of the server, the storage space, the processor speed, the bandwidth and performance. There is however another important factor that needs to be considered, but often gets omitted from the list of requirements – that is – how green the web hosting service is? When people think of performance, they only think in terms of computational performance. The ecological effects or green performance is never really thought about.

How Web Hosting Affects the Environment?

Now you might wonder how can running a web hosting company probably affect the environment. Maintaining web hosting servers requires tremendous amount of energy. First of all, electricity is required to power up the server computers. In-order to keep these servers cool, a cooling system is required. These cooling systems themselves run on electricity and are said to consume almost 50% of the total power needed for running the set-up. Apart from high power consumption, there is the growing concern of heat and greenhouse gas emissions from these set-ups, which is taking a toll on the environment.

You will be surprised to know how every single activity on the internet can cause an impact to our environment. A research conducted a couple of years ago has revealed that simply doing 2 Google searches can produce as much carbon dioxide as a boiling kettle, which is estimated to be about 7g per search. This might seem trivial. However, considering the global usage of the internet, the total amount of CO2 produced can be tremendous. Industry analyst, Gartner, has mentioned in a report that the entire IT industry generates greenhouse gases comparable to that of the airline industry; which is about 2% of the global carbon dioxide emissions. Some may argue that web hosting forms only a small subset of the global IT industry. Plus, as you read on you will find that the steps taken by such hosts in turning green is more of a counterbalance effort, rather than a real one. Therefore, considering subscriptions with a green host, will not really make a big difference. However, it must be noted that a single web server can produce 12.5 tonnes of CO2 in a year. And any eco-friendly effort taken reducing or even offsetting this, must be encouraged and supported.

How do Web Hosting Companies Turn Green?

When you think “turning green” you think “employing natural and renewable energy sources”. So when we say “green hosting”, the logical conclusion is that the web hosting companies are using electricity that is generated from natural resources. There is however a slight variation to this description. Most green web hosting companies merely buy Green Tags or Renewable Energy Certificates in their eco-friendly efforts. At this point of time, this is the most feasible green effort that such companies can put in. Web hosts that actually generate the energy they use on-site, are very rare.

What are Green Tags All About?

There are several renewable energy generators that have been set up for generating energy from natural resources, like wind, water, sun, bio-gas etc. Some of these generators are tied up with the main grids that supply electricity to cities and towns. Thus the grid supplies electricity generated from both regular means (like fuel) as well as natural resources. The organization in charge of generating electricity from renewable resources offers a Green Tag or a Renewable Energy Certificate for every 1000 kWh (kilowatt hour) or 1 MWh (Megawatt hour) of electricity that is fed into the grid. Any company that buys these certificates is thus contributing to the eco-friendly generation of power, and is considered ‘green’. However, the electricity that they consume comes from the grid, which is a mixture of both renewable energy power and fuel power. While the use of fuel has been considerably reduced, it is not totally eliminated.

Other Ways of Green Contributions

There are a few more ways in which web hosting companies can contribute additionally in their eco-friendly efforts.

Using energy efficient hardware – Employing energy efficient hardware can be a small step towards greener hosting.

Planning – The carbon footprint produced by servers is not just inherent during the usage of the hardware and other equipment in a web hosting center. An important thing to note is that all equipment already have their own embedded carbon footprints which was produced during their manufacture and shipping. Moreover, after they get outdated or damaged, their disposal, if not done the right way can cause environmental hazards. Therefore, a lot of planning has to go into setting up a web hosting environment. The entire life cycle of the equipment has to be considered. While the embedded CO2 footprint is not in the control of the hosting company, their usage and disposal can definitely be taken care of. First and foremost, it is essential that the equipment being bought must allow for future expansion, for the integration of newer and more efficient technologies. Virtualization, for example, saves energy and its tiered architecture allows for integration of newer technologies. In case an equipment does get outdated, it must be disposed in an eco-friendly manner. The “re-use, reduce and recycle” policy can be applied here. Certain components can be re-used or recycled. Plus, organizations which undertake the disposal of electronic equipment in a safe, green way must be contacted. 

Using eco-friendly coolers – Energy efficient coolers with as long a life as possible must be used. High performance liquid coolers have been found to absorb 4000 times more heat than air coolers, for the same amount of energy used.

Re-using the waste – The heat produced by the web hosting and data center set-ups can be used for constructive purposes, rather than letting it escape into the atmosphere. For instance, this heat could be used to warm up a living space in cold countries.

How do you find out if a web hosting company is green or not?

Some web hosting companies ‘greenwash’ consumers, faking their green efforts. Thus consumers need to exercise caution when choosing a web hosting service. Several web hosts mention in their website about their environmental-friendly operations. In-order to find trustworthy green hosting services, you can look for certification or badges (like the Green Tags). You can as well check online reviews from credible sources to find out about their green efforts.

Does computational performance get affected by employing energy from natural resources?

According to experts in the field, many green web hosting companies provide all the standard services to their customers, without any issues. While reviewing web hosts, Jerry himself has observed that people who subscribe to such green hosts have full access to their systems at all times. Even server downtimes are quite comparable to that of the regular web hosting companies. Therefore performance-wise, website owners and their users will not really notice any difference.

At present many web hosts have ventured on the green path. While they may not be 100% eco-friendly, they do their best to come as close as possible. Many of them have even taken up the responsibility of planting trees, educating their staff regarding green practices, re-using and recycling office materials like paper, or even going paperless, encouraging carpooling among employees and more. While these steps may seem trivial, they definitely do contribute toward the global green efforts.

About the author: Trinity Nick

This article has been compiled by Trinity Nick, a blogger who is fascinated by technology. She has contributed several technical articles to various websites. Currently, she is working on a project on minecraftserverhosting.org.

Recently even industries in highly commercialized countries have held meetings regarding the impact of Global Warming. The harmful gases produced from industries in clouds of dark black gases and ashes have caused a lot of ecological disasters. Therefore, industries have been asked to take measures in order to reduce the destruction caused by heavy industrialization world wide. Similarly some web hosting companies have decided to play their part in preserving the ecosystem. When they join this cause – they are called “Green Web Hosts”.

The main concept behind Green Web Hosting is using renewable resources for energy. Previously fuels and coal were used to produce electricity (the so-call ‘Dirty Power) which industries use at a very high rate. The normal electricity consumption by industries causes production of a lot of harmful fuel gases which go into the surrounding environment. These harmful gases affect all life forms and destroy the ecological balance.

An increase in air pollution has caused acid rains, increased air borne diseases and even extinction of some animal species in various countries. As an attempt to reduce these negative impacts on our natural environments (and also, to use this as a marketing strategy), web hosts have decided to use other energy sources.

These Green web hosting companies  are as good as the regular web hosting services. In fact, half of the web hosting companies that I reviewed here are using green energy: iPage, Hostgator, FatCow, Hostpapa, GreenGeeks, SiteCloud. All these Green Web Hosts offer all the standard services to their customers without any hitches. There are no limitations and people using Green web hosting services have full access to their accounts all the time. They can easily make use of the POP accounts, Sub-domains, MySQL, and even use extra FTP accounts. There are no limitations. Green web hosting have faster operating systems and their servers are driven by FreeBSD, making them more stable and reliable.

One may wonder if there will be more server-down scenarios as compared to that of the normal web hosting services. It is in fact better than what most normal web hosting services offer. This is because they are less prone to over loads and fluctuations being independent from the main electricity providers. Even if they have power outages they can quickly revert to reserves.  So they are targeted toward offering 99.9% uptime service guarantees. Hostgator, for example, is doing remarkably well in term of server uptime.

How Hosting Companies Go Green: The Basic Idea

Green Web Hosts have started using alternative energy sources such as, solar panels, bio-gas, wind electricity and hydro-electricity. The benefits of these forms of energy has been a marked reduction in air pollution and improved climate. This is because using these alternative sources of energy has reduced carbon emission.

Web hosting requires non stop working of servers to provide good and reliable internet services to their clients. Therefore constant electricity supply is non-negotiable, and it is important to have a good source of energy. This is why web hosting companies interested in going green have started installing solar panels to support their servers using solar energy. Wind mills too have become important for those who choose to use the wind as a source of carbon free energy. The solar energy and wind energy sources are almost 90% recycled, however hydro-electricity is not as efficient as the first two. Nonetheless it has also been adopted my most web hosting companies in an attempt to preserve the environment.

These companies need to install these machineries. In most countries the government has started providing solar panels for interested companies and industries. All they need to do is inform the appropriate authorities of their interest in going green.

The Real Deal: How Hosting Companies Actually Go Green

BUT WAIT! Web hosting companies installing solar panel and wind mills? This does not sound financial-wise for a web host that sells green hosting at $4.50/mo.

Okay, this proves that you are actually reading my words. Yes, in fact it is (almost) impossible for a hosting companies to build wind mills and solar panels (think about the extra maintenance cost and the extra technical expertise!).

So how, actually, Green Web Hosting go green?

Short answer: Energy Credits Certificate. These are best explained as non-tangible commodities which serve as proof that solar panels or solar energy is being used. A renewing of energy credits certificate is bought for every 1megawatt per hour of energy generated and returned to the power grid. This means that any company can generate 100% clean electricity without the hassles to build wind mills and solar panel (so to say).

My choice of Best Green Hosting, GreenGeeks for example, replace, with wind power, 3 times the amount of energy used by their servers. So if their servers pull 1X of power from the grid; the company purchase enough wind energy credits to put back into the grid 3X of power having been produced by wind power. For reference, figure on your right is the certificate of purchase of 2.3 million MW of clean, renewable energy of GreenGeeks. That’s how Green Web Hosting go green.

A Few Other Ways To Go Green

In case you wonder, yes, there are still other ways to go green but I don’t see it being used by any hosting company. One of the options that I read online is the Cold aisle containment. This option helps companies minimize the carbon footprints. Leakage of cold air into the warm air is prevented. This works by reducing the consumption of power by improving the cooling system. Similarly, the chloride power protection system is also as a good source of uninterrupted power supply. This is a chemical mixture which conserved power up to 100% and recycling the resources. Thereby it is very profitable and economical.

Green – A Factor In Web Host Shopping?

The idea of Green Web Hosting  is aimed at convincing internet users that there are no negative effects on their natural environment. Yes, theoretically, it does reduce your carbon footprint and perhaps make you feel better, that you have done some good for the earth. But in reality, I believe (read: personal opinions with no fact support) the impact (of using a Green Web Host) is rather small. Hey, these hosting companies actually did not reduce ‘dirty’ energy consumption directly. These hosting companies are just purchasing Energy Credits Certificate and offsetting their power consumption. It feels like the same argument of Is E-Reading Really Greener?, don’t you think?

Personally, I do not take in the ‘green factor’ when I am searching for a web host. Rather, I am more concern with the server uptime, response rate, prices, and so on. If the web host is green, great; if it is not, I’ll live with it. There are tons of better ways to make our earth a better place and I would say going green on web hosting is not the most effective ways.

But then again, that’s me. Should you factor ‘Green’ in the checklist when shopping for a web host? Well, that’s up to you!

Cloud computing has officially moved on from being just a buzz word. Start ups, ecommerce giants and freelancer web designers have all embraced cloud technology in some form – from Google Apps to Basecamp.

Benefits of Cloud Hosting

Cloud computing (or, cloud hosting) offers some pretty exciting opportunities to web designers and web developers. In particular cloud servers and hosting enable web developers to develop scalable web apps and create websites backed by large environments that traditionally were only available as expensive high-end dedicated server clusters.

Why Cloud Hosting is becoming more important for developers and web designers?

Cloud hosting provides users with a scalable, on-demand server infrastructure on which to build web based apps and websites. The user can grow capacity or scale it back depending on their requirements – a feature that could potentially change the way web developers (in particular web app developers) use hosting. Web designers will also find this factor useful for controlling & handling peaks in traffic that might result from "Slashdot" effects or website testing.

Cloud Hosting – VPS Hosting With Better Flexibility

Cloud hosting is based on virtualization technology which is similar in principle to that which was used by Virtual Private Servers (VPS). The benefit of traditional VPS servers was that it provided a fraction of a physical machine at lower cost than buying a complete dedicated server. Performance was acceptable and each VPS had its own degree of configuration independence.

The development of processor power and virtualization hypervisors now means that virtualization flexibility and performance is now significantly better than ever before. For example Linux KVM (a virtualization engine) can now support many virtual servers running unmodified versions of Linux, Windows, FreeBSD etc on one physical machine with minimal virtualization overhead. The true benefit of cloud hosting and virtualization is the ability to create and resize servers without the need to buy additional hardware or waste time on taking the physical machine apart for an upgrade. With a cloud server you can create extra servers for your site, increase the size of your existing servers or delete redundant servers and see the effect immediately.

Cloud Hosting – Easy To Manage

The benefit with today’s virtualization services, in particular cloud hosting, is that the process of managing your cloud server is easy. You get a web control panel to adjust your capacity, APIs to automatically scale capacity and on-demand hourly billing so that you only pay for the capacity which you actually use when you are actually using it.

There are many types of web site and web application where the flexible, scalable capacity offered by cloud hosting makes sense. Peaks and troughs are the most obvious reason to invest in a scalable cloud server. Ecommerce sites that get hit during the busier holidays, sites that have high value offers or product discounts, high profile PR and the natural increase of site popularity are all cases where cloud hosting can keep sites running and grow with demand (and fluctuate when demand returns to normal).

For web developers, the best technical fit for cloud hosting is when a web application has a substantial computational requirement on the server. Whilst CDNs can cover large-scale high-bandwidth distribution of static files, and dedicated RAID arrays can be used for heavy disk uses such as video streaming, neither of these can scale to handle high-volume complex server-side processing. In this instance, hybrid clusters of cloud servers together with some dedicated machines can be used where a dedicated redundant database server can be used in conjunction with a scalable front-end web server.

Wrapping Things Up

In summary, cloud hosting offers new capabilities to both developers and designers that combines the benefits of a dedicated server with the flexibility of the cloud. Cloud servers are also a great opportunity to simply test server and hosting configurations. At ElasticHosts we have a free cloud hosting trial where you can set up your own cloud server to test the technology. Cloud hosting is becoming more important to the hosting mix and the ability to offer web apps that use cloud based technology is also becoming a key selling point of many applications.

About the Author: Mike Doyle
Mike currently writes for ElasticHosts – a cloud hosting & server provider based in both the UK & US.

Undoubtedly, if you have ever contacted or used hosting sites, you’ve noticed the 98.9%, 99.9% and even 100% server uptime labels there. Normally, you would think “Well, 99.9% sounds very good indeed, 0.01% downtime is no big deal” and you would be right. What many people are missing, however, is that even if the server is reachable, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is functioning properly. In fact, there are a lot of other things that can go wrong with a server. The 99.99% uptime sticker does not provide any guarantee that your business will not encounter other problems while the server is up. Hosting providers often calculate uptime in ways that are not so intuitive from a user’s point of view and in some cases they do not take into account certain website downtime.

Not All Downtime Is Counted!

In the first place, you have to keep in mind that not all downtime is counted (e.g. in most cases the scheduled downtime is not even considered). Hosting companies will not willingly include these several hours of downtime to their statistics. When they calculate the monthly server uptime the planned services interruptions are not deducted.

(Jerry’s note: Trust me, that’s true for certain web host! This is why hosting shoppers are advised to read third-party hosting reviews and regular updates on server uptime.)

Moreover, some hosting companies are also inclined to overlook shorter downtime periods. Outages of 3-5 minutes are not considered significant and are also not included in the 99.9% stats. But, in the end of the day, multiple short downtime periods can actually add up and make a difference.

One more thing to consider – a 1% difference means twice the trouble. 99.9% uptime in fact shows a downtime of 8 hours and 45 minutes per year. So, if the sticker reads 98.9%, the downtime value reaches 17 hours and 30 minutes.

You have to accept the universal truth that resources are limited. “Unlimited” is just a euphemism for “enough for the majority of the common users”. But what if your business is not a common one and demand is high? There may be other significant sites that share the same hosting hardware with you. Sooner or later, this may lead to a server overload and thus result in high loading times, broken transactions, etc. In a case like this, the server will still be online, but the performance will be far below your needs. One good way to detect such problems quickly is application monitoring.

Bottom Line

Let’s face it – 100% is not easily achievable. Something is bound to go wrong eventually. There will be problems with network backbones, power failures, software and hardware issues and even human errors. So, instead of trying to find the ultimate hosting provider, get a decent one with good server uptime and performance, 24-hour technical support and frequent backups. And make sure to get a reliable remote website monitoring service, just in case. It might just turn out to be the best money you ever spent.

About The Author: Boyana Peeva

Boqna Peeva studied journalism at the Valdosta State University in Valdosta, GA, USA, and graduated with a Bachelor degree in 2009. She is currently studying an MBA at the International University College in Bulgaria, Europe where she is originally from. While she was in the United States (2004-2009), she worked at the local newspaper The Valdosta Daily Times, where she did freelance writing at first, and then became a business writer for the Sunday business section of the newspaper.

After Boqna Peeva returned to Bulgaria, she started working for an Irish company called Taxback, where she was teamed up with the SEO guru of the company. She was a blogger for a while there and learned more about  SEO, blogging, online journalism and marketing.

Boqna Peeva is currently a marketing specialist at WebSite Pulse and a PR specialist at the International University College. She enjoys both jobs equally as shee the opportunity to communicate with a lot of people, to write and to further explore how to optimize the Internet for any purpose. WebSite Pulse offers web server and website monitoring services that have helped thousands of customers to save a lot of money and to save their e- businesses through increasing their websites’ efficiency.

In a world full of and dependent on technology, few could deny that it is always changing, and at a dizzying pace. When it comes to the internet, the demand for portability, quicker connection speeds, and flexible costs has lead to various plans for both limited and unlimited hosting. The purpose for these plans are simple; the delivery of content and the processing of applications are improved, a fact that cannot be overlooked.

With each passing day, open source communities and premium service providers edge increasingly closer to the other, to the point that the gap is almost non-existent. With this benefit comes strengthened server resources, and this new trend is recognized as a member of the long list of internet modifications.

Developed by the company Danga Interactive, Memcache was first used on a website that goes by the name of Live Journal. Soon after this was released, it gained use on other websites due to the fact that the source code was considered a hot commodity. Among more well-known sites that use it regularly, Craigslist, Twitter and YouTube are included.

Open source design has a lot of impressive contributions under its belt; memcache and its attachment to open source code only proves this to be true. Incomplex in nature, it has gained a following of enthusiasts who would consider it one of their favorites. Made of key-value in-memory, it stores data from page rendering, API calls, and database calls. At the end of this series of actions, dynamic applications will experience increased speed.

The Very Definition of Caching

It may be confusing, but with better understanding of caching it is easier to appreciate. At the base of the matter, a cache involves the duplication of data, making it unnecessary to have the original data in order to view something. In other words, it is a special storage area that holds frequently used data temporarily.

If it is still unclear, another way to explain caching is through the use of web data. For many people who frequent the internet, it is standard to have a favorite website that they visit frequently and may even have bookmarked. Whenever they visit these places, if the data of the pages was not saved, it would take a lot longer for everything to load properly. A cache’s job is to store some of the data on the hard drive of the computer so that everything will load quicker. There is no need for the browser to spend extra time going through the database located at the server.

Memcache makes everything run in a more efficient manner. It is sensible in design, helps where it is needed, and is popular as a result. To illustrate, the basic architecture of a memcache-host stack would commonly comprise of the OS, the server layer, the cache layer, the database and  the page script layer. When the data is stored in the memory caching layer, the database of the website receives minimal hits during the attempt to get the information. When a great number of interactive sites house a database that holds their information, this is even more so important.

The Many Functionalities of Memcached As A Service

Beyond the obvious benefit of server load optimization, having memcache in your host opens up a wider range of capabilities for your dynamic website. The following functionalities can be achieved with memcache support:

1. Communication Management - Better spam control, and distributed locking service.

2. Online-member tracking – Member activity transparency and easier maintenance of expired-member purges.

3. Scalable web services – Unrestricted use of resource intensive features such as CRON.

4. Versioning System – More server backup

5. Summarize Db update demographics – Increased accuracy of update analysis

Memcached as a Service is far from perfect though because of its inherent weakness in security, but for high-traffic dynamically generated websites memcached hosting ultimately is a great option to consider.

About the author: Gwen Davis

Gwen Davis is the Site Manager of Hosting Observer and Web Hosting Search – Objective web hosting reviews of popular web hosts. A firm supporter of open source, she also blogs for Tek-Tips.NetHawk and AllForLinux.com. If the article has been helpful to you, you can follow the author @GwenDCipher.

The Infamous Ping Test

Some so call ‘tech shoppers’ like to act smart and run ping test on hosting provider’s website.

“This will show how fast the web host server is.” – that’s what my friend once told me. The ping test method is so popular that even experienced webmasters will think it actually works.

How to do a ping test?

A ping test is done when a short request is sent to the web server via your local machine. For example if I wish to ping-test Bluehost, I simply open my command prompt and hit ‘ping bluehost.com’. The ping results will come back in a time figures (normally in ‘ms’) to show how long it takes to get reply from the web server.

Why pinging the web host website will not work?

First of all a ping test is NEVER a good method to check on a web host server response rate. This is due to the fact that how well a web server response on a ping request depends on many factors that are not controlled by a web host (for example: distance between your computer and the servers).

Most importantly, you are (most of the time) hitting the wrong horse when you ping the web host’s website. Hosting providers are smart nowadays; they simply do not host their website on the same server as their customers. In fact, some web hosts even operate their websites on a different network system! Now tell me, how can you determine server response rate by pinging the web hosts’ websites?

How to check the speed of a web host?

If you would like to know how fast a web host is, the better way is to find a website that’s hosted on the web host instead of the web host’s website. Download a few files and wandering around the website should reveal what’s the web host response rate.

Another good way to check a server response rate is to run a website speed test online. Website speed test tools (like what you have on Top-Web-Hosting.com and WebsiteGoodies.com) are handy to check and compare web hosts’ speed performance.

Example of test results:

A few more words on website load time issue

Who’s responsible for a slow website?

A website’s response rate is dependent on many factors; including the hosting server CPU load, RAM usage, network speeds, and the web program’s efficiency. Do note that not every one of these factors are web host’s responsible.For instance, it’s the web owner’s responsibility to assure that his/her website is coded efficiently to avoid server resources wastage. Sometimes, it can be your ISP that’s responsible for the slow website.

How slow load time will affect your website?

Slow website load time is a problem that you cannot afford to overlook. A few critical consequences with slow website load time, including permanent lost of website traffics and increase of advertising cost are simply destructive.

Sounds scary?

In fact this is why the practice of using a fake address and registrant name for the WHOISdata is still pretty common nowadays for self protection. However, the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), global regulatory body for the domain name industry) has a policy stating that each and every registrar is required to keep a WHOIS database that contains publicly accessible contact information for all names that have been registered. What make things worse, if you do not submit correct or complete information; your domain name is subject to being deleted from the registry.

I know, it’s depressing to realize how limited is our defense against data miners, spammers, and identity thefts. I bet if people knew that they could be put in such a bind, they would probably think twice about registering a domain name.

But wait, for every problem on the internet there is a solution. This is where domain privacy (also, WHOIS Privacy) comes in. Domain privacy is a type of addon service mainly offered by domain registrars.

How domain privacy works?

A user buys privacy from the company, who in turn replaces the user’s info in the WHOIS with the info of a forwarding service (for email and sometimes postal mail, done by a Proxy server) such as “Domains by Proxy, Inc.” or eNom’s “Whois Privacy Protection Service”.

Is my private info 100% safe after utilizing domain privacy feature?

The domain privacy feature is often seen as the ‘ultimate protection’ on WHOIS info. Just a simple search online would leads you to dozens of articles stating the benefits of domain privacy. Spam protection and info shielding are two of the most trumpeted benefits of a domain privacy feature.

But wait, nothing is completely safe online.

A domain privacy feature is like a firewall in computer network – it simply shields your info from the public but your data is still kept in registrar’s database and there is still risk of info leaking. To many registrars, it takes little persuasion to release the so-called ‘private’ information to the world, requiring only a phone request or cease and desist letter.

This explains why some webmasters will take the hassle of ordering using money order (to avoid exposing credit card info) and registering their domain name offshore (to reduce the chance of local syndicate attacks).

Back to our question: Is private information 100% protected under domain privacy feature? Not really. In many cases, it’s just a feature people buy to help them to sleep better at night.

More readings about domain privacy

I hope this short article will raise your awareness about WHOIS info and the privacy protection you can have against unethical acts. There is an in-depth article (Private Domains Not So Private) by Daniel Terdiman on CNet back in year 2005, I suggest you to read it if you wish to learn more on the topic.

The Rationale Behind Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates – The Value Added Business

Trust is a perennial issue on the Internet – it has always been and (probably) will always be. But the reality is that today’s technology has made online business transactions more the norm rather than the exception.

From the end-user’s point of view, convenience against security presents a dilemma. How do I know I’m looking at a legitimate website? Is that really my bank’s website I’m looking at on my browser? Is there real business behind the site that offers such insanely cheap price? Those questions and other similar ones are common enough – and certainly valid. From the perspective of the E-business website owners on the other hand, such mistrust and ambivalence is bad for business. Understandably, everyone seeks guarantee and assurance when they do business online.

The Basics of SSL Certificate

Secure Sockets Layer or SSL was developed by Netscape in 1994. It’s a worldwide standard security technology which creates encrypted link to ensure all data that passes between the web server and the web browser remains confidential and secure. Millions of consumers recognize and associate the “padlock” displayed on the browser as the icon of trust on the website.
E-business providers protect their customers and guarantee that online transactions are kept safe and private through SSL protocol, which they can only use upon issuance of the required SSL certificate. This certificate, which is issued by the Certification Authorities or CA, provides the opportunity for e-Business website owners to demonstrate their trustworthiness; thus, leverage an increased level of trust among visitors and turn them into paying customers.

What the Customers See

URLs with an SSL connection use https instead of just http. The “s” at the end obviously stands for “secure”. When the customer clicks on the Padlock your SSL Certificate and company details are displayed.

Company details. SSL Certificates typically contain your domain name and company name; your address, inclusive of city, state and country; details of the Certification Authority responsible for the issuance of the Certificate; and the expiry date of the Certificate. Take note that only certificates issued by High Assurance Certification Authorities actually display company details; which is another assurance that customers may be looking for when making an online purchase.

Expiry date. When a browser connects to a secure site, it does three things: It retrieves the SSL Certificate and check that it has been issued by a Certification Authority that the browser trusts, that it is being used by the website for which it has been issued, and that it has not expired. Failing on any one of these checks causes a warning to be displayed to the end user. Some customers also get concerned when they see that the certificate is soon to expire. It is important therefore, to renew your certificate with ample time to spare before the actual expiration date. A smart alternative is to purchase a multi-year certificate to minimize set up costs; plus, your customer will find it reassuring that you will still be around in the years to come.

Why You Need SSL Certificates

Face it; people never buy from salesmen they don’t trust. Majority of consumers these days expect security to be an integral part of any online service they use; they require that details they provide on the Internet are kept private and confidential. For most customers, the only time they will ever consider purchasing products or services online is when they are assured to full satisfaction that their detailed information is safe and secure. Thus, you need to allay consumer apprehensions by providing trust indicators. Just like the real world, it is natural need for people to feel confident before going down an unknown path. The SSL Certificate guarantees your customers that you take their security seriously and this gives them the confidence that you have eliminated the risk usually associated with online transactions.

The EV Certificate – Do you really need one?

Extended Validation or EV Certificate, which was introduced in 2007, is a significant update of the SSL Certificate validation process that introduced substantial changes to verification methods used in authenticating the identity of online businesses. It provides consumers with a higher trust level while online by identifying which websites are legitimate businesses with verifiable credentials. These new certificates are indicated when the address bar on a visitor’s browser turn green.

SSL Certificate Authorities are already performing thorough and meticulous checks to validate the legitimacy of businesses. However, various CAs currently using non EV certificates employ varied types and levels of authentication; sometimes creating online security vulnerabilities that are frequently exploited for fraud, identity theft and other Internet crimes.

In contrast, the validation process for EV Certificates requires all CAs to rigorously scrutinize each business, using a prescribed set of sources and methods, before certificates are issued. The new certificates oblige businesses to complete a comprehensive and methodical documentation and verification process of current business licenses and incorporation paperwork. The CAs has to verify the accuracy of the data through additional sources; which may include on-site visits to the business, in some cases. This is aimed at resolving the variations in validation process; thus enhance Internet security features.

To the end users, this means that e-Businesses that have EV SSL certificates are much more likely to be legitimate entities, compared to those that only have the standard SSL certificates, which can be obtained by anyone even without verification.

The bottom line: Extended Validation SSL certificates are the latest secure certificates that offer the highest level of outward security to end users on the market today. So if you ask if it is worth it to have an EV SSL Certificate, the answer is: Absolutely, YES!

About the author

This article was written by Garen Arnold, who is a graphic designer out of Kansas City, Missouri. Garen provides people with the Best Web Hosting Service by using his expertise to help people choose the best web hosting service for their business.

Introduction

The competitive advantage presented by cloud hosting and platform as a service vendors to large scale national and international businesses has been well documented over recent months, with the opportunity for a highly scalable service alongside excellent reliability and near 100% uptime proving to be key factors in such companies uptake of these services. Larger businesses have been able to roll out PaaS and SaaS to their sales forces and other arms of their operations – safe in the knowledge that they are receiving strong reliability, performance guarantees and 24 hour technical support.

However, as knowledge of such services gradually becomes more widespread, it is not only blue chip organizations that can benefit from the advantages that cloud hosting, PaaS and SaaS can bring to a business environment. Indeed, small to medium sized businesses are gradually beginning to take the plunge and begin to embrace these emerging technologies; seeing an opportunity for cost effective and secure solutions for their IT, software, hosting, system backup and electronic communication needs under 1 fully managed roof. Some of the potential advantages of such services for SMB’s are discussed below.

Cost Effective, Manageable and Scalable

By selecting a cloud hosting, PaaS or SaaS package that is tailored to the individual needs of their business, SMB’s can create uniquely bespoke, cost effective solutions that save money on “lump sum” direct costs (such as software licensing, servers etc), and instead replace them with more manageable monthly payments on fixed budgets. Bespoke software packages that are accessed remotely allow also small businesses to pay only for what they need and are easily scalable as a business grows.

Convenient, Secure and Reliable

With near 100% uptime and 24/7/365 expert support, cloud hosting services can allow SME’s to focus on the core aspects of their own operations with a minimum fuss, downtime, maintenance and hassle. With this greater reliability and continuity, there is also no need to call in an IT consultant every time there are any issues with your server – thus allowing for further time and cost saving opportunities and greater productivity.

Space Saving

Many small businesses simply do not have sufficient office space to house a large, bulky, in house server unit. The remote access available through cloud hosting services therefore gives SMB’s a much needed opportunity to save on precious office space and therefore maximise the potential of the small amount of room they have available for other more pertinent purposes relevant to the core aspects of their business.

Eco Friendly

By eliminating the amount of power consumption that may be used by in an house server and other electronic equipment and instead remotely accessing their hosting, data storage and backup facilities via the cloud platform, SMB’s can in essence become much more eco friendly and green in their day to day business operations – diminishing their carbon footprint while simultaneously saving money by reducing associated costs and electricity bills.

About the Author

Chris Shelbourn is a freelance writer who has written on behalf of Commensus PLC – a UK supplier of cloud hosting and platform as a service, with bespoke packages tailored to the needs of both small and medium sized businesses and large scale international organizations.

Everybody in the web hosting industry is obsessed of the words "Clouds", "Cloud computing" and "Cloud hosting". But very few discuss standards that companies use to provide Cloud hosting services.

Actually It is not like there are any standards in Cloud hosting. Most providers who offer some sort of clustered, grid or cloud hosting services do everything from "home". Today’s "Clouds" are home-made technologies! It is like Wild West.

Don’t get me wrong and I do not underestimate anyone’s achievements. RackSpace is great! Other web hosts that run any forms of grid or cloud infrastructures also deserve attention. But all of them (OK, most of them) use proprietary technologies which represent their own approach to cloud computing and virtualization.

Unlike traditional Web Hosting industry, as we know it for years, the emerging Cloud Hosting market looks like jungle. It is not based on standards. Thank god that there are companies like Red Hat (ref: http://www.redhat.com/solutions/cloud/access/guidelines.html) which created standards that can be used as guidelines from Linux development community. Do I forget Microsoft? Of course not! If we should count on Microsoft to help us moving to the clouds it would cost us a fortune and we would fine ourselves tied up to Windows for ages!

In Search of Cloud Hosting Standards

The automation standards of the Cloud hosting industry are about to be established! In traditional Web Hosting industry we have cPanel, Plesk, Direct Admin and other automation software platforms. Web hosts use them for more than a decade and these platforms have become web hosting standards.

All these work good both for consumers and providers. From a user’s perceptive, using these platforms allows consumers to switch servers or to migrate hosting accounts from one web host to another easily. From the perceptive of hosting providers,standardized hosting plaforms help them to create stable and reliable IT hosting service models Some web hosts, like Hostway, Aplus, etc. use their proprietary software to automate web hosting management.

However for most popular web hosting providers, especially those in shared hosting and virtual private server (VPS) hosting, base their business models on the server automation standards mentined above.

The best we can do is to find a way to continue using these web hosting automation platforms in the new Cloud dominated hosting industry. This should help small and middle-sized hosting providers to keep going and to compete (at a leveled ground) with other major Cloud hosting providers. Consumers will also benefit a lot of standards based Cloud hosting services as it encourages healthy competition among the providers (so you get to choose from hundreds or even thousands of different cloud hosting service providers).

Bottom line

I think that the hosting industry has always begun searching for its Cloud standards. Besides the platforms of VMware (too expensive), Sun, IBM, HP used from  major corporations, there is a growing demand for more affordable cloud hosting automation platforms. I can not project which companies will establish themselves as a providers of automation solutions for the Cloud hosting industry. A platforms like Fuscan Linux Cloud, Cloud Linux, Abicloud, Azati, CloudControl, etc.

About the author: Dimitar Avramov

Dimitar Avramov is the CEO and founder of SingleOS LLC, a producer of Cloud computing generation enterprise automation solutions for the hosting industry. His company’s cloud platform Fuscan LBC is a high availability system for cPanel/WHM based Shared Hosting providers. He is an owner of Daw Web Hosting Blog and used to work as journalist in web hosting industry. You can read more of his writing about cloud hosting here and follow his tweets at DimitarAvramov.

*Side note: Got an idea for this blog – why not write for us? More details about guest posting at W.H.S.R.

The concept behind reseller hosting is simple: A hosting reseller buys a ‘reseller hosting account’ from a service provider (a larger hosting company or a data center owner) and then sells it to others for a profit.

How Reseller Hosting Works?

Its business model is pretty much the same with any offline retailing business – the reseller may purchase the hosting capacities (bandwidth/hard disk space/software/CPU power) themselves at cheaper rates and then sell them at higher "retail" rates. Typically, hosting resellers often operate their business under an independent brand or label. In other words, a hosting reseller will not inform the end users that he/she is selling someone else’s services.

It does not need extensive technical knowledge to be a hosting reseller. In most cases, the data center operator is the responsible party for hardware maintenance and configurations. A hosting reseller is more like an agent where his/her jobs are mainly interfacing with the existing customers and winning more new customers. This is why a hosting reseller firm often spend greatly on advertising campaigns.

The economics of reseller hosting

Let’s do some simple mathematics and see how a reseller host make money.

John purchases Hostgator’s Copper Reseller Package and gets 80GB disk space, 700GB bandwidth at $34.95 per month. He then breaks the package into 10 separate accounts with 8GB storage and 70GB bandwidth each and sells it for $8.99/mo. At the end of the day, John’s profit (assuming that he sold all 10 accounts) will be $89.90 – $34.95 = $54.95/mo. Not much, but it’s still some sweet money considering that there are not much work to be done.

Repeat that for another 9 times and you’ll get a nice $550 passive income per month. In fact, why just stop at doing 10 sales – the Internet is an ever-expanding world, why not buy and resells more? 100 customers earn you $550/mo;  why not go 1,000 or 2,000 or even 5,000!

Well, that seems like a sure-fire business model, why not we just start one!

But wait, the question to ask is why: Why should your customers buy your *limited* hosting package when other larger web hosts are selling cheap *unlimited* hosting?

Having a unique selling point is a must for every successful hosting reseller. Some might offer free CMS and blog installation services; some might help in website design and development; but what most successful resellers do is to focus on profitable niche markets (example: Europe/India/Asia markets, gaming community, specific script user community, etc).

How to choose a good reseller hosting provider?

Here are some important consideration factors when you are searching for the right reseller hosting provider.

Reliability Needless to say, your reputation as a hosting reseller depends a lot on the quality of your provider’s servers and network. Make sure that you stick with reseller hosting provider that has strong uptime record or the sky will be falling on your business.

Customer Supports Efficient customer support is another important characteristic you should be looking for. Remember that you will have a lot of different clients to handle thus chances of things get screwed up are very high. A dedicated team of technical support that are able to respond to your requests is extremely important.

Web Hosting Features Basic hosting features like bandwidth, disk space, and addon domain capacity are vital for hosting resellers as these are the ‘products’ that determine how many accounts you can create and sell. More allocated bandwidth or addon domains means more profits.   

Scalability If you are just starting out reselling hosting services, you may want to pay for only a few domains at a time, and provide a very basic range of applications. However, as your business grows, the number of sites you service will increase and you may also need to increase the range of applications you can provide your customers. Does your host provide a relatively hassle-free way to upgrade? For instance, could you move easily from a shared server arrangement to a dedicated server without needing to change hosts?

Wrapping Things Up…

You probably ended up in this post because that you are new to all these but interested to get your hand wet soon. If so, all I have to say is ‘Just Do It!’. Web hosting is a huge industry and it is far from being saturated – competition is steep but I am pretty sure there is still money to be made!

And, in case my article does not clear your doubts fully. If that is the case, I would suggest further reading at this valuable section of Web Hosting Talk Forum: Reseller Hosting (WHT).