Web Hosting Blog

Why You Should Never Rely On Your HSP For Your Backups

However small your site is or however large it is, you need to back up your site. This could save you years or even days of hard work and advertisement revenues. There are different methods of ensuring you information is safe. They include site backup, infrastructure backups and online back ups. However, many people do not know much about either of the above because most of the platforms they host their sites on automatically back them up. However the files backed up by your hosts might not be accessible to you if you decide to change hosts, for some reason their infrastructure backup doesn’t quite work. That is the sole reason why you should back up your own files regardless of your hosts back up.
A HSP backup also known as Hosting Service Provider is a hosting company that provides hosting and at the same time creates a regular back up of your site. This is one of the three major ways through which you can back up your site. However it is less popular than the other two because of the benefits that come with backing up your own site and storing the information yourself.

1. Benefits of online and site backups as compared to HSP or infrastructural back ups
2. This kind of backup gives you the flexibility and versatility to back up your site in any place, on any server and under secure passwords to prevent access by hackers and other malicious people.
3. They are accessible from anywhere in the world since the servers on which the information is stored. Therefore you are able to move around without fear of losing all your data.
4. The space taken up by your backed up site on a hard disk or drive may be too much therefore forcing you to use two or more disks. However, with online back ups you have enough space on a server to back up your full site at least five times.
5. Online back ups are also easy to perform and can be scheduled for daily, weekly or monthly back ups.
6. With online backups, you can keep track of all the versions of any backed up files you have. From the first back up to the very last one.
7. The online back ups are more secure since the information is stored far away from the main site and pose less danger in the case of a hacking attack.
8. The backed up data is not saved as it is but is stored in a compressed format that takes up less space on the server.
9. With site and online backups, there is a sense of comfort for the site owner since the encrypted data is readily available to them at all times.

With all these advantages at your disposal there is absolutely no need to rely on HSP backups. In any case, there are other better options that give you full rights over your own data and where you store it. It is also possible to use a staging server or a paid back up service that gives you all the space you need to back up all the changing files on your site.

Posted in Dedicated Hosting, Misc Web Hosting, Online Backup, UK Web Hosting, Web Hosting FAQs | No Comments »

What Are the Advantages of Online Backup Versus Old Fashioned Tape Back Up?

There are several different ways you can employ to back up your site but the two most popular are the online backups and tape backup. However many people have shifted to backing up online from tape because of some of the following benefits that come with the former.

Online backups are very easy to do. This is probably the biggest advantage of online backups to the old fashioned tape backups. Online backups are entirely mechanized and run daily at a programmed time or run on a regularity that you determine. In fact, an online backup can run routinely numerous times in a day. This reduces the hustle of monitoring tapes and making sure they are well kept and free of dust or damage.

Simplicity
Another advantage that comes with online backups is that they are safer to complete and offer higher security for your information. With online backup systems, you always receive a confirmation email upon completion of the backup. This email contains the details of the whole backup including anything new, anything that was changed in between backups (the backup differential) and all the details of any deleted items. This, unlike when backing up on tapes, keeps you in the loop and ensures the safety of all your information.

Data Security
The encryption of online backups at source is another advantage of online backup. This means that your data is only accessible via a personal password. There is absolutely no way anyone other than you can access this information without you allowing them to. On the other hand, you are guaranteed no such privacy with tape backups since once anyone else gets hold of the tape(s), this information is in their hands and can be viewed at any time. With tapes, it is easy to get compromised and lose valuable information.

Geographic Data Security
Online backups can be stored in different places all over the internet. This provides added security to your files and makes it close to impossible to lose records as a result of natural disasters or mere carelessness. It is even possible to transfer this data back onto your Personal computer or some other system for use later on. For many people online backup UK is a great geographic data security.

Flexibility
With online backups you can select from a wide array of files from an even wider range of versions stored all over the web on different servers. The advantage here is that unlike tapes which can get lost or misplaced during storage, online backups allow you to access files saved from as long ago as 30 or more previous ‘iterations’ or savings. You can therefore easily restore them anywhere on your hard drive or secured network.

Apart from being able to choose between a wide variety of files saved at different times and in different places, it is also very easy to restore files saved using online backups for disaster management.
Other advantages that online backing up of data has over conventional means are the affordability and the efficiency. It saves a lot of time as you can carry out other tasks and at the same time, back up your files.
This is why more and more people are choosing to forgo tape backups for the simplicity and security of online backups.

Tags: data security, offsite backup, offsite backup UK, Online Backup, Online Backup UK, tape backup

Posted in Misc Web Hosting, Online Backup | No Comments »

Benefits of Googles Urchin Analytics

Google Urchin Analytics Web Stats

SEO developers have been looking for the best kind of utilities which they could use for their goals in optimizing visibility of their client’s websites. Some have undergone traditional methods of optimization which usually required large teams responsible in integrating several kinds of ideas. Since SEO is a complex field, developers have come up with consolidated tools which could help in terms of optimizing search visibility of websites. Marketing tools such as Google Urchin Analytics a web stats software has a big role to play in the activities of SEO developers, provided that those people also need demographics in order to keep their pace in the field of SEO.

Urchin Gives the Right Marketing Information

SEO developers should know what people want in order for them to be successful in marketing their websites. In that case, information about the things people want, the things people are attracted to, the things people dislike and all those things have to be known by SEO developers and usually, those things are often measured through numbers. In that case, if you are into SEO, Google Urchin Analytics could totally give you the right information about things that you need to know about marketing your website. For sure, the website that you are optimizing has largely something to do with a certain product of service. Google Urchin Analytics could help you identify the main factors that you need to know about marketing your website.

Accuracy, Innovation and Reputation

Google Urchin Analytics employs a lot of innovations in the field of providing marketing tools and indicators to SEO developers. Given those innovations, you are ensured that you get the right information that you need for marketing your website. Widening your range in identifying your market through the help of Google Urchin Analytics could ensure your success in making your website highly visible. Also, with constant innovation comes a strong sense of accuracy. Google Urchin Analytics makes sure that you get the most accurate data for your website, which puts it at the top of the list of the most preferred online marketing tools.

Tags: Benefits of Googles Urchin Analytics, Google Urchin Analytics, SEO Developers, Urchin Analytics, Web Stats

Posted in Misc Web Hosting, Miscellaneous, Online Backup, Plesk, Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, Web Hosting FAQs, Windows Hosting | No Comments »

Web Hosting 101; What You Need To Know About Your Webhost But Were Afraid To Ask

Looking for the best web hosting company to host your site for you is a daunting task, thanks to the amount of information out there and the hundreds of web hosts available today. Therefore, once you narrow down your search, there are some things you need to know before making that commitment. These are very important questions that many people, especially new comers or first timers, fear to ask for a variety of reasons.

First, you need to know a few basics of hosting. Web hosting is a service that offers a physical location for you to store your files and web pages. In lay man’s language, hosting is simply purchasing space on the internet to put up your website. The rates paid to the service provider resemble rent to a landlord. These files are stored online and are available to you at any one time from any location in the world.

Secondly, there are different kinds of hosting packages offered by these providers. They are categorized in terms of the amount of bandwidth and disk space made available to you. These products or categories also have varying memory power. The more you pay for a hosting package, the more the features you have access to, and most probably, the bigger the site is. Smaller sites take up very little space on the server and therefore need not to be hosted on a lot of space.

Webhosting UK companies always offer a number of services including reseller hosting packages, shared hosting, Business Hosting, Virtual Private server hosting and Dedicated server hosting. They all differ from each other and are made to suit different preferences.

Questions you should ask your web host provider

What Technical Requirements Do You Offer?

It is very important to ascertain that this web host can handle the amount of data your site contains. What extra costs do they have for additional storage space and how much space do they offer in a standard package? What are their limits on bandwidth per month? What happens when you run out of the bandwidth in the middle of the month? What are the rates per month, and annually? All these questions are bound to yield answers that will inform your decision to use or not use a particular service.

How Flexible Are Their Expansion Options?

Many websites can easily fit on the smallest available web hosting package the first time they are uploaded. However, as the site grows and more content is uploaded, there is need for more space. Find out if your hosting provider has enough capacity to support your growth needs when this time comes. You should only pick a host that guarantees you the room to expand. If you started off on a shared hosting package, you may want to upgrade to a VPS server or even your own dedicated machine in future. How seamless will the move be?

Will I Be Able To Upload Changes Myself?

It is important to note that even though the web host company owns the server on which your site is hosted, the website is still yours and you should have all the rights to upload and make any content changes. Any web host that reserves the right to make those changes for you is absolutely not worth your while. In some platforms like dedicated servers, you may be entirely responsible for the operation and maintenance of the server. If you lack the capacity, do they offer managed dedicated servers?

Do You Track Statistics?

A good web host should provide you with statistic reports or give you the rights to run those reports yourself. It is important to keep tabs on the number of people visiting your site, how they found your site, what they did while there and which pages they spent more time on. This information is very important during decision making for the future of the business. Today, this shouldn’t be a problem at all.

What Is Their Up Time Guarantee?

Uptime is the period through which the server is up and running with full functionality. Downtime on the other hand is the period in which the server is not connected to the web. During this period all the websites on the server are not available. A web host that suffers a lot of downtime is not good for business websites because it reduces the accessibility and sales converted during those blackout periods. Beware of web hosts that exaggerate their uptime like those claiming 100% uptime. Read through comments and gather testimonials and get your facts right. Shared hosting plans are more prone to down time compared to more advanced platforms like VPS hosted or dedicated servers.

Is Round the Clock Technical Support Guaranteed?

Find out if your preferred web hosting company offers customer care support to its customers. Is the support all day and night, only on business hours or only for specific packages? Do they charge on customer care support and how much does one call cost? Also, it is important to find out the customer care interface they use. Is it chat, email, voice or video calls and how do you get through to them at wee hours of the night? Do you need it? How likely are you to be up and wanting to work on those wee hours of the night?

What Are Your Preferred Payment Options?

There are several payment options available in the world today. Find out which payment method they support and accept. This is very important in the sense that you might have to register with another online payment method in case you do not have an account in their preferred method. However, most web hosting companies support the major payment methods like PayPal, Visa and Mastercard alongside many others.

Do They Have Ecommerce Capabilities?

This is an important feature if you are looking to start an online business. These websites are very different from the usual websites and blogs. In fact they are built on a different platform and have different functionalities from the usual sites. A host that does not provide this service is not worth your while if you had an ecommerce site in mind.

Which Anti Spam Software Do They Have?

There is nothing worse than being spammed. Spamming is a habit that is rampant with very active marketers who broadcast information packed emails to whichever site and email possible. People looking to generate links also make it their business to post comments anywhere and everywhere without necessarily reading the content. These links leaving your site give your traffic gateways out of your site which is not good for your site. If your host doesn’t have appropriate measures to curb this menace then you are in for trouble. This question should go alongside the overall security of the servers.

How secure are their systems

Secure Web hosting, is becoming more and more important, so it is worth asking what security systems do they have in place and how secure are their hosting facilities?

Asking the right questions and demanding for the most appropriate answers is the surest way through which you can make the right choice of a web host. Demand to talk to someone in authority as opposed to the customer care officers who tend to give answers based on script.

Tags: blog hosting, blogs, Business Hosting, dedicated servers, Ecommerce hosting, reseller hosting packages, Shared Hosting, Virtual Private Server Hosting, VPS, VPS Hosting, Web hosting UK, webhosting UK

Posted in Dedicated Hosting, Misc Web Hosting, UK Web Hosting, VPS Hosting, Web Hosting FAQs | No Comments »

Canonicaling your url or To www or not to www that is the question

Ah, the age old domain name question is www.domain.com better than domain.com? To be honest we’re totally agnostic as other than the simple presentation of the site we’re not sure what difference it would make.
However there are too many sites that are compromising their rankings and looking absolutely unprofessional in that they only have their IP address within their DNS A records pointing to one or other but not both. It is a simple fix and one that is well worth doing. So for example if you typed in domain.com rather than www.domain.com you might get one of the following error messages:

• The browser displays an error message such as “Safari can’t open the page “http://domain.com/” because it can’t find the server “domain.com”.”
• The browser finds a server but nothing happens because there is no website configured.
• You are redirected to a parked domain.
• You get a “Directory listing denied” message.

Am sure that you’d rather people didn’t see any of this of course but be directed to your site, as there are an awful lot of people that skip the www. When putting in domain names, let alone people advertising their domain names without the www.  So, I’d say that for a few more seconds of work, you’d get an awfully big pay out!
Now for the more important question of SEO and ranking; Ah, I hear ears pricking up.  What about SEO and canonicalising your url.  Canonicalizing?!? What’s that? Well as you may or may not know technically all these urls are different, and in theory you can return completely different content for all the urls, and Google will try to pick the best url that seems like the best representation for that set.

Well, so as to direct traffic to one of your urls and make sure that’s the one that ranks, and to make sure you don’t get negative effects, it is best to unify to one link and stick to it. For example if you are using both www.domains.com and domains.com Google would think those are two separate sites and may very well penalize you for duplicating text.

So to make sure that Google sticks to the URL you want is to stick to one url; for example www.domains.com and use that consistently across your site as the format for your links and for your internal links.  You could also set up a 301 (permanent) redirect to your preferred link; in this case domains.com. That helps Google know which url you prefer to be canonical. This is especially useful if your site changes often because it has dynamic text, is a blog or some combination of the above.

So as you can see, a little time spent organising your site(s) can have a very large payoff.

Tags: canoncial url, canonicializing your url, Domain name, Domain name purchase, SEO and Ranking

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For all those budding techies out there why not try something new

Code Academy or as its known Codecademy is a wonderful new site that we’ve come across that helps all you budding web developers hone your programming skills. Well that’s probably a slight exaggeration as it is aimed at all those non techie Techies that want to brush up on their programming skills.

Codecademy right now focuses on JavaScript, Python and Ruby but through extensive feedback their working on further requested languages to help people learn. Since January 1^st 2012 they’ve had over 400,000 people signed up according to their co-founder Zach Sims. They’re working on improving their offering and have engineers and professors from NY University and Columbia as well as former Teach for America instructors to work on their curriculum structure and language.

So, for all those people who’ve missed their new year’s resolution then it is not too late. This site is great to brush up and sort out what’s what in your coding, or even just give those aspiring programmers to manage and understand what us techie’s are on about! If you join Code Year you’ll be able to receive interactive programming lessons every Monday. So if you want to visit or just brush up on your JavaScript have a go.

Tags: codecademy, javascript, learn programming, python, ruby

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Wiki goes offline

Wikipedia goes Offline in protest at PIPA and SOPA bills

Today the English version of Wikipedia is down (Wednesday 18^th January), for the first time ever, in protest at the SOPA/PIPA bills.

Visitors to http://en.wikipedia.org today will see a message explaining the reasons behind the blackout, which says:

“For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.”

A ‘Learn More’ button further explains that “Wikipedia is protesting against SOPA and PIPA by blacking out the English Wikipedia for 24 hours, beginning at midnight January 18, Eastern Time. Readers who come to English Wikipedia during the blackout will not be able to read the encyclopedia: instead, they will see messages intended to raise awareness about SOPA and PIPA, and encouraging them to share their views with their elected representatives, and via social media.”

Click the Learn More link to see how you can help stop SOPA.

Demonoid.me is also down today in protest - http://www.demonoid.me/

Reddit.com will also be down for 12 hours - http://www.reddit.com/

Google has blacked out its logo and added a Take Action link - https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

WordPress.com has censored its homepage - http://wordpress.com/

TuCows.com is protesting through its homepage - http://www.tucows.com

MIchaelMoore.com also down - http://www.michaelmoore.com/

As are countless other less known sites as you can see from the list of blackout sites found on Etsy.com, many aren’t black yet but are likely to go down later on in the day - http://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/business-topics/discuss/9631420/page/1/

As responsible netizens we strongly believe that although we are a UK Web Hosting provider we feel that it is our duty to inform the wider web community and allow them to take the actions that they see fit.

Do you agree with these organisations or do you feel that this issues are valid and Congress should implement these laws?

Tags: netizens, PIPA, SOPA, UK Web Hosting, Wikipedia

Posted in Miscellaneous, UK Web Hosting | No Comments »

The power of the internet!

Rupert Murdoch the outspoken and controversial octogenarian Media Mogul and owner of the late News of the World has entered the world of Twitter.

In just over two days he has revamped his image, sent out over 24 - some politically unfriendly — Tweets ranging from criticisms of the British economy, Obama’s stance on terrorist detentions to Iowa’s Secretary of State elections.

Naturally some of these tweets have been ‘withdrawn’ but Twitter being twitter, there has been no shortage of people re-tweeting them.

The democratisation of the web, and the levelling of the playing field is what makes the web such a viable and powerful tool.

Happy tweeting Rupert.

Octagenarian Tweeter

Follow us on twitter @bytehousehost

Tags: Internet, Media Mogul, Rupert Murdoch, twitter

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Benefits Of Hosted Sharepoint

Team collaboration is one of the most important determinants of an organization’s success. It is for this reason that sharepoint services offer corporations and teams with a platform that is secure and scalable for easy, quick and efficient access of information.  There are very many reasons why many companies in this day opt to outsource almost every aspect of their work that is not their core business. This is simply because the amount of investment required to have those duties performed in house is rather high especially for companies that are just starting out. More companies are looking to hosted application delivery software like hosting Sharepoint to handle their data and smooth flow of their business communication.

Some of the benefits that hosting sharepoint offers to its clients include;

No initial capital costs
With hosted sharepoint, there is absolutely no reason to crack your head looking for and purchasing servers, hardware and software or even hiring personnel to run them. All these are catered for by the hosted sharepoint company UK to which you will outsource your work. Usually, outsourcing companies have well laid out infrastructure to handle even the most complex work in their industry.

No ongoing maintenance costs
The number of servers a company needs to support all the information and data it handles on a daily basis usually costs a lot of money in maintenance and installation of new software. Outsourcing lifts the headache of installation and maintenance from the company and puts it squarely on the hosted sharepoint provider. Other benefits that come with such an arrangement are backups, anti virus, anti spam filters and a free help desk.
International 24/7/365 access
Since servers are hosted online, all you need is an internet connection and the right password combination to access the information. With hosted sharepoint, you have the advantage of flexibility in the sense that you can modify client’s documents during a lunch meeting from anywhere in the world.

Easy to use collaborative tools
Hosted sharepoint companies offer the necessary tools to connect your workforce with all the necessary information for a smooth running of the company affairs. These tools allow them to share minutes of meetings, share documents and reports from the comfort of their offices. This reduces the amount of time spent walking from one office to the other delivering these documents. These tools make it possible to synchronize your mobile phone for offline use.

Very low start up time
If you were to start up your own in house IT support branch, it would take you a month or more to do it. However, once you decide on the hosting sharepoint company to go with, it will only take between a few minutes and an hour to get the ‘department’ up and running.

Finally, a breach in security can be devastating to a company and can even cripple large companies. Therefore, it is one of the most sensitive areas that outsourcing companies need to focus on. With hosting sharepoint, there are advanced administrative controls that increase the information security on the servers where your information is stored. This means that you can reduce the permissions or rights given to different people in the company to prevent a breach or a leak to unnecessary parties.

Tags: hosted application, hosted sharepoint, hosted sharepoint company UK, hosting sharepoint

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How to sell advertising on your website

There are many reasons why people start websites. Some create websites for selling their products, others for affiliate marketing and others for advertising. When creating a site for advertising purposes, there are some things you need to set right. You have to ensure that all your groundwork is done almost to perfection. That simply means that you have a well structured website that has a constant flow of traffic. However this groundwork sometimes takes a much longer time to complete than initially expected and you still need to accomplish your goals. In such cases there are ways to still get advertising even though your traffic is not as high.

Getting advertising on a low traffic website

Even with little traffic, it is possible to get advertisers on board. First, you need to know exactly who your target readers are and the readers that actually visit your site. Determine what it is they do while on your site that is the pages that they frequent and the kind of articles they read. Using data from any online source tracker, find out which pages are visited most often and the ones that people stay longest on. Next up, get the keywords they used to find your website and maximize on them.

This information will help you analyze the traffic that comes to your site, you will also get a rough idea of what they like based on the pages they linger on and what they were looking for when they stumbled upon your site. Once you have this information you can now approach advertisers with it and blow them off with few but dedicated readers rather than many uninterested ones.

Getting advertising for your website

This is the trickiest part of advertising is actually getting the advertisers line, hook and sinker. Whether you have 100 hits a day or 50,000 hits the drill is the same. First off you have to analyze your website, gather all statistical information and translate the information into an understandable format for the advertisers.

The next step is to find out where to look for advertisers. This can be done in various ways including

· Monitoring outbound links

· Find out what websites link to your website

· Monitor who is commenting on your site

· Snoop around similar websites and find out who advertises on them

All this information will lead you to several options. They will lead you to people who have an interest in the same field as you or a related one.

Once you have landed a list of potential advertisers, there are a few things you should remember to do and others you should avoid.

· When approaching them, remember to disclose information that will trigger their interest. These include your monthly statistics, average time spent on your site and outbound links.

· Personalize your approach. Advertisers have had to deal with several website owners and are probably tired of hearing the same kind of sales pitch. Take a different approach and reach out to their needs with a personal touch. After that it will not matter if you have 100 or 1000 hits per day.

· Finally, keep your advertisers happy. There is no better way to put off an advertiser than to show them seven empty advertising slots. This reduces their importance and makes it evident that you are desperate to bag this first advertisement.

Tags: advertising on your website

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