February
10
2010
Unless overtly listed otherwise, most web hosting packages you’ll come across in your search are what are called shared hosting providers. What this means is that the server or servers that host your website are simultaneously hosting numerous other websites also. This gives you a discounted rate on web hosting services in exchange for tolerating certain technical constraints, like bandwidth, disk space, upload and download speeds, security and privacy, traffic, and probably the most notable restriction — total control.
If you want total control not only over the administration of your website but also over the very hardware and software used to run it, then you should be evaluating not shared hosting providers, but dedicated hosting providers. If your business is large enough or growing fast enough that it requires its own internet connection and server, you may need a dedicated web host.
What’s the downside to going with dedicated hosting providers? In a word: responsibility. In most areas of life, with total control comes total responsibility, and it’s no different with hosting providers. With a dedicated server, the onus is on you to buy, install, and maintain the actual equipment — the server itself — mounted in the dedicated hosting provider’s data center.
Fortunately, you still get the benefit of their presumably top-notch, around-the-clock security over the physical premises, but you remain fully responsible for the security of your cyber-premises. Likewise, dedicated hosting providers will ensure that the systems in the building are all provided with redundant uninterruptible and backup power and environmental controls, but it’s you who must keep your machines and cables maintained and functioning in this idyll environment.
How do you identify whether it’s time to switch from a shared host to a dedicated host? There are 3 main indicators to stay alert for:
Speed
If the traffic streaming through your shared server is slowing down your customers pace as they browse your site (or your employees, if an in-house site), it may simply be time to look for more unencumbered shared hosting. But if you’ve tried several shared hosting providers with the same results, then it may be time to remind yourself how impatient the average web surfer is. While you’re jumping from shared host to shared host trying to save a buck, your customers are jumping ship. Your ability to respond promptly and effectively to customer transactions and inquiries cannot be overemphasized either.
Reliability
The limits to your control are nowhere more apparent than in the areas of reliability and security. It’s not simply that problems can arise: problems do arise. It’s the nature of the biz. And if you don’t have unlimited access to your own operating system, software and database apps, etc., there’s not much you can do when one arises.
Customizability
If your company is growing fast, you’re going to be changing many aspects of your web presence along with it. You may regularly need to tweak your disk space and bandwidth and experiment with using different applications to better serve your changing needs. On a shared host, upgrading in such a way usually involves leaping from one package or plan to another. These packages are generally preset and may or may not serve your immediate needs. They may be riddled with programs you don’t yet need, for example, yet lack in the one singular program you do. Or the next leap up from your current plan has way more disk space and bandwidth than you need at the moment. With a dedicated server, you can make changes incrementally, step forward, step back, heck, step sideways if you need to — and when you need to.
In large part, it’s the size and growth rate of your business that will dictate whether you need a shared or dedicated host. Affordability and personal time commitment are nice secondary considerations, but if your business is booming, you would do it a great injustice to try and save on a few bucks and few extra hours per week of your time in exchange for slower and poorer quality of service for your customers.
By the same token, however, if your business is small enough to function quite smoothly on any of the shared hosting providers out there, don’t squander your precious capital on a dedicated server just so you can have total control. Because sometimes total control isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
February
9
2010
Web site hosting service companies on the Internet permit the user to make their web site accessible through the World Wide Web. There are huge numbers of companies that offer web space on their server for their customers and also offer Internet connectivity in general in a data center. There can be various types of web site hosting companies. The main classification is the free web site hosting and the paid web site hosting service companies. In case of free web site hosting, the user has the right to upload his or her web site content on the server space that is provided by the web site hosting company without any cost. This type of web site hosting service is great for people who are new to to internet and plan to get familiar with web site creation and functionality of web servers. On the other hand, to get your web site uploaded on a web space that is provided by a paid web site hosting company, you need to pay the company periodic fees. The fee amount may vary from company to company. The paid web site hosting companies are best suited for professional web site owners. People who need large web space to upload their web sites and who expect a certain amount of web site visitors which is restricted on free hosting accounts to a minimum.
The revenue that the paid web hosting service companies get is through the fee that is paid to the company by the web site owners. In case of free web site hosting companies, the main source of income are the ads and banners that can be placed on their clients web pages.
The main advantage of using a free web site hosting service is that they are free of cost and hence make a perfect choice for people who are new into the business and are just looking to start out. They are perfect for people who just want to display a minimum
content on the World Wide Web in small amount of web space. The other advantage of using the free web site hosting service is that most of these companies provide integrated, easy tools to upload the pages on to the hosting account. They do this realizing the fact that the free web site hosting services are generally utilized by the newbies.
There are also certain disadvantages of using the free web site hosting services. When using the free web site hosting service, you are forced to place the ads and banners by the web site hosting company on your web pages. Also the revenue that is obtained by the ads goes to the web site company. In case of paid web site hosting service, ads and banners placed on your web site are according to your will and the revenue of the banners and ads placed on your web site goes in your pocket. Also in some case of free web site hosting, the domain name of your web site starts with the web site hosting company name followed by your web site name. This is not the case of paid web site hosting service. You get a unique web site domain. The web space provided by free web site hosting service is limited whereas in case of paid web site hosting service you can buy the web space according to your requirements.
February
8
2010
CPanel is an easy user-interface site that lets you control your host account environment. The main peculiarity of this operating system is that it so simple to use that your below average computer user can�t mess it up. It�s got great features embedded into its panel and some of the features are listed below.Site Tools There are such tools available for your use, which are Web Protect (.htaccess editor), Custom error pages, Redirects, Ability to edit MIME types, Ability to edit Apache handlers, Install/Uninstall FrontPage Extensions, Search engine tool submitting and File Manager.
The email program provides you with the possibility to add, remove, and change passwords while managing email accounts. CPanel is also provided by Webmail for the accounts, Auto responders, Forwarders, Mailing Lists, Spam filtering and some more.
Backup
Backup allows you to create copies of account files and databases. The backup menu also allows you to download any automatic backups that were downloaded by your CPanel administrator.
Stats
Here are different tools to survey your site popularity and efficiency. Those are Webalizer web stats, Webalizer FTP stats, Analog stats, AWStats, View latest visitors, View bandwidth usage and View error log modules.
FTP
There is a module that controls FTP accounts (add, remove, change password for its access), Anonymous FTP controls; Ability to change FTP login message and Ability to kill FTP sessions.
Advanced Stuff
You have an ability to add or remove subdomains, Subdomain Redirects and its Stats.
Advanced Tools
You are provided with tools of SSH access tools, Manage GPG keys and Cron jobs.
There are also Pre-Installed CGI Scripts. Those are Interchange Cart, Agora Cart, Bulletin Board, Java Chat, HTML Chat, phpMyChat, CGI Wrapper (for non-suexec installs), Random HTML generator, Advanced Guestbook, Counter Generator, Java Clock Generator, Java Countdown Generator, Secure FormMail clone, CGIEmail, Entropy Search, Entropy Banner. Network Tools are DNS Lookup and Traceroute. Database Management tools includes Managing MySQL databases and phpMyAdmin access.
January
29
2010
Online presence is the prime cause of profits in this era of electronic commerce, and for every business it is now a challenge to search out a cheap web hosting company. It is prudent to note that in terms of e-commerce Australia has been the frontrunner, the Australian businesses initiated online trading in the time of communication convergence and finally have come up with colors.
In this highly competitive market online presence is must to gain an edge over the competitors. Even if the competitors have web portals, with better quality and performance of the sites you can easily run leap ahead. Millions of consumers hunt for desired products and services and only a proper Australian web hosting company can help a business to focus up products and services. Actually as Australia led in e-commerce implementation, the web developers of the nation bagged huge experiences. Now they just execute their skills to prevail better.
A proper web hosting company develops and hosts a web portal to make a business up and successful. In this time of recession, many online trades are not largely affected. This is another good reason of making online presence prominent. Internet and communication convergence have revolutionized the world and now conducting business transactions over the net is in vogue. To ensure secure online transactions it is advisable to go for the reputed web hosting company.
While providing the specifications to the web hosting companies, each requirement should be clarified to get the web site exactly as desired. For facilitating the visitors with online shopping, nowadays online shopping carts are used. A customizable page layout along with a soothing look and feel of the web page is always nice. Besides these, the payment processing tools should also be created considering the security issues. Highly secured payment gateways provide security and in addition this makes the purchaser’s confidence high. Australian web hosting providers are aware of all these details.
There remain several packages and it is possible to select a suitable one. There are different uses of technologies and while developing a web site several specifications can be done regarding the use of technology and tools. The renowned web hosting company may provide effective suggestions and guidelines related to usage of specific software and tools. Performance of the site largely depends on use of tools during development and launch of the site.
It is a proven fact that with an up to date website it is possible to increase profits. Instead of procrastination it is best to search out a cheap web hosting company. Local yellow pages and community newspapers offer classifieds of different website hosting firms. A comparative analysis among the various sites helps in finding quality web development firms who offer affordable rates.
January
29
2010
‘World Wide Web’ is simply an excellent place for sharing information. Those interested in owning a little ‘web space’ must have a clear conception about the term ‘Web Hosting’.
The information that we view from the web browser is basically contained in a number of web pages. The computers that contain these web pages are known as ‘Web Servers’. Australian web hosting is all about storing these web pages for the viewer’s to easily access them. Many people plan to host their websites themselves but usually they find themselves fighting with countless issues related to the right kind of software and hardware in order to host the web pages successfully. Using a web hosting company that offers excellent capabilities on its web server can save you from most of these worries.
These days there has been a significant elevation in the number of website hosting providers in Australia. When it comes to choosing a web hosting company, we usually find ourselves in a fix with so many cheap web hosting companies available in the market.
There are several kinds of cheap web hosting companies but Australian web hosting can be broadly divided into following categories:
- Virtual web hosting: It is also known as ‘Shared Hosting’. As the name very well suggests, innumerable websites share the same space on one or more physical web servers.
- Dedicated web hosting: In contrast to Virtual website hosting Australia, dedicated hosting allocates a particular web server that can be used only by a particular customer. A dedicated web hosting company provides several benefits to the customer. The customer can host even multiple websites from that particular server, change the software configuration, modify the bandwidth and handle greater traffic on the website.
- Co-location Website hosting: In dedicated web hosting Australia the customer rents the web server, which basically belongs to the web hosting company. But in co-location website hosting the customer can own the web server and hence have a full control over it. The charges vary depending upon the rack space and the monthly bandwidth.
- Reseller web hosting: In this type of website hosting, a web hosting company provides web server storage to the reseller (i.e. the third-party) at reasonable rates, who then again resell this particular web server to a number of customers. To these customers, it is the reseller who acts as the web host provider.
Undoubtedly, a website plays an important role in building-up any business. Australian web hosting companies can easily be found on internet and you can go through the terms and features of their hosting plans before going for one of them. It is important to note that cheap and reliable often do not go hand in hand, you must evaluate your website hosting options thoroughly.
January
29
2010
Network Time Protocol (NTP) provides algorithms and defines messages for the synchronisation of time clients to an accurate time reference. This article discusses how to configure a Linux NTP Time Server to synchronise time with an Internet based public NTP Server.
NTP server systems fall into two categories: primary reference servers and secondary reference servers. Primary reference servers use an external timing reference to provide time, such as GPS or radio clocks. Secondary reference servers synchronise with primary reference NTP servers and offer slightly reduced accuracy. Primary reference servers are designated stratum 1 servers, while secondary servers have a stratum greater than 1.
The NTP Distribution
The NTP source code is freely available from the Network Time Protocol web site. The current version available for download is 4.2.4. NTP is available for the Linux operating systems with ports available for Windows NT. Once the source code is downloaded, it should be configured, compiled and installed on the host machine. Many Linux operating systems, such as RedHat, offer NTP RPM packages.
Configuring NTP
The ‘ntp.conf’ file is main source of configuration information for a NTP server installation. Amongst other things, it contains a list of reference clocks that the installation is to synchronise. A list of NTP server references is specified with the ’server’ configuration command thus:
server time-a.nist.gov # NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland NTP server
server time-c.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov # NIST, Boulder, Colorado NTP server
Controlling the NTP Server Daemon
Once configured, the NTP daemon can be started, stopped and restarted using the commands: ‘ntpd start’; ‘ntpd stop’ and ‘ntpd restart’. The NTP server daemon can be queried using the ‘ntpq –p’ command. The ntpq command queries the NTP server for synchronisation status and provides a list of servers with synchronisation information for each server.
NTP Access Control
Access to the NTP server can be restricted using the ‘restrict’ directive in the ntp.conf file. You can restrict all access to the NTP server with:
restrict default ignore
To only allow machines on your own network to synchronize with the server use:
restrict 192.168.1.0 mask 255.255.255.0 nomodify notrap
Multiple restrict directives can be specified in the ntp.conf file to restrict access to a specified range of computers.
Authentication Options
Authentication allows a matching passwords to be specified by the NTP server and associated clients. NTP keys are stored in the ntp.keys file in the following format: Key-number M Key (The M stands for MD5 encryption), e.g.:
1 M secret
5 M RaBBit
7 M TiMeLy
10 M MYKEY
In the NTP configuration file ntp.conf, specify which of the keys specified above are trusted, i.e. are secure and you want to use. Any keys specified in the keys file but not trusted will not be used for authentication, e.g.:
trustedkey 1 7 10
The NTP server is now configured for authentication.
Client Configuration for Authentication
The client needs to be configured with similar information as the server, however, you may use a subset of the keys specified on the server. A different subset of keys can be used on different clients, e.g.:
Client A)
1 M secret
7 M TiMeLy
trustedkey 1 7
Client B)
1 M secret
5 M RaBBit
7 M TiMeLy
10 M MYKEY
trustedkey 7 10
Essentially authentication is used by the client to authenticate that the time server is who he says he is, and that no rogue server intervenes. The key is encrypted and sent to the client by the server where it is unencrypted and checked against the client keys to ensure a match.
January
29
2010
I think everyone should look into protecting their computer from unwanted Spyware and Adware, I recently had major problems with my computer which had me investing in better security for my browsing needs, before I was pretty careless with my online browsing and would visit many sites thinking I was safe, but unknown to me my computer was being infected with unwanted programs, all attaching to my browser.
Spyware and Adware is software made by publishers that allow them to snoop on your browsing activity, and invade your privacy, they flood you with those horrible pop-ups. If you are like most users on the internet chances are, you are probably infected with these applications or you have a good program that protects you already and your computer system is safe.
My computer was pretty badly infected and I got myself a good computer program, and ended all the Spyware and Adware attached to my computer, it was pretty easy to do and I know that my browser has no unwanted guests.If you want peace of mind and the knowledge that all your personal and sensitive material you have on your computer is safe, then, maybe this is what you are looking for. This is just one option of many out there. If your computer shows signs of being slow and you are being pestered by those horrible pop-up ads and your homepage keeps changing, then maybe it is time that you looked into protecting your computer. Just don’t leave it too late when you can so easily fix all your worries with a simple program designed to remove these bothersome Spyware and Adware attachments.
January
29
2010
live.besttechie.net – I received a question via my skribit widget on my blog asking “what is the best anti-virus?” My personal favorite is NOD32 for a paid anti-virus and either Anti-Vir or Avast! for a free anti-virus.
January
29
2010
Prices of LCD monitors have dropped significantly in recent years, but that doesn’t mean the quality has too. Today, you can purchase a low-price monitor without sacrificing features, performance, and screen size. In fact, most LCD monitors offer stunning image quality, style, portability, and space-saving convenience. However, there are certain key features that make LCD monitors different from one another. The following are some important factors to consider when evaluating an LCD monitor:
Size/Weight—For the most part, this depends on two different factors: the space available to you and what you commonly use your monitor for. It goes without saying that if you intend to use your computer for graphic intensive work like fashion designing or 3D animation, then having a large monitor would make more sense.
Resolution—For the sharpest, cleanest image quality, choose only those with the highest number of pixels. But make sure you are comfortable with an LCD’s native resolution before you buy it.
Pixel-Response Rate—The pixel-response rate, also known as response time, is the minimum time necessary to change a pixel’s color or brightness. The time is expressed in milliseconds, and the longer it takes, the slower the monitor’s reactions. Everyone’s preferences on response times are different. If you play a lot of games, it would be worthwhile to invest in one with a much faster response time. However, most people who aren’t gamers cannot tell the difference.
Viewing Angle—The physical structure of LCD pixels can cause a shift in the brightness and color of images if you view them from an angle. Take manufacturer’s specifications with a grain of salt and make your own observations if possible. Also, it’s important to understand that viewing-angle issues become more critical as panel size increases.
Monitor Inputs– The type of inputs found on an LCD monitor dictate the flexibility and multi-use capabilities of the monitor. Some models have both types of input but only accept a signal through one at a time, whereas others can electronically switch between the two.
Buying the right monitor for you is a very personal experience and it requires time to research and evaluate the various models. People have differences on how they angle the monitor, the level of ambient lighting, and some just have different design tastes than others. The trick is to strike the perfect balance between price and functionality, and the best way to begin is to find exactly what your needs are. Hopefully, you now have enough information to make an educated decision.
January
29
2010
Let’s say you just bought a brand new printer for your home or business office. After the initial purchase, you’re probably not too concerned with how long the device will last. However, extending the life of your printer may be easier than you think. In the following guide, we’ll go over some simple steps you can take to ensure that you get the most from your machine.
Proper Placement
Whether you place the printer right beside your computer or on a shelf above your workspace, it’s important that all wiring is tucked away neatly. After purchasing a brand new device, the last you want is to have someone trip over the cables, dragging the printer onto the floor. For your own personal well-being, you might want to consider placing it near an open window. Studies have shown that certain devices emit tiny particles into the air while printing, which usually come from the toner cartridge inside the printer. If these invisible particles don’t adhere to the paper, the chances of you inhaling them are quite high.
Also, make sure the surface you choose for your printer is capable of handling the weight and vibration of the machine. The best way to prevent accidents or mishaps is by purchasing a sturdy, reliable printer stand. Most printer stands are portable, which allows you to move the device to any location in your home or office. If possible, you should try to store the printer in a cool, dry place and avoid humidity at all costs.
Keep it clean
Throughout the life of your printer, it’s important that you properly clean the device to keep it running smoothly for a longer period of time. First, you should take a few minutes to wipe off any dust from the outside of the printer and the printer tray. Most instruction manuals advise owners to use a soft, clean cloth when wiping the exterior. Then, open up your printer and remove any excess particles, such as tiny pieces of paper, with a can of compressed air. When you’re not using the printer, you should keep the tray closed to reduce the amount of dust that gets inside. Also, if your machine experiences a severe jam, make sure you clean up any mess it leaves behind.
Use quality printer supplies
You don’t have to spend large amounts of money on your printer supplies, but make sure you take care of the ones you purchase. Keeping your paper flat and crease-free is an easy way to prevent excessive paper jams. Also, several manufacturers have minimum standards for the paper and toner that’s used in their printer. If you experience any maintenance issues or technical difficulties, they may refuse to help unless you’re using the proper consumables.
Turning off the Printer
As with all modern appliances, leaving your printer on constantly eats a substantial amount of electricity. In addition to using up unnecessary power, the ink cartridge inside the printer tends to dry out easily when not in use. Not only will you have to purchase more cartridges than normal, but your printing quality will suffer as well. Therefore, it’s important that you always turn the device off when you’re not using it. The best way to do this is by using the On/Off switch, which will engage a capping mechanism that prevents ink from drying up. If you unplug it from the wall or flip off your power switch, your cartridge will freeze in its current state, and it will still be at risk for drying out.