Linux Community Magazine

Almost every one has the knowledge of present internet scenario! How fast it is!!? A bud of web pages nurture to trillions of pages on the Internet, providing several hosting plans to choose from under which comes affordable web hosting, Cheap Web hosting, ASP Web Hosting, Budget Hosting, Dedicated Servers, eCommerce Hosting, FrontPage Web Hosting, Hosting With Templates, Managed Web Hosting, PHP Web Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Shared Hosting, Unix / Linux Hosting, Virtual Private Servers, Windows Hosting, Co-location Hosting and few others.

Above mentioned are the few web hosting terms which reflects several faces of web hosting. The entire highlighted web hosting plans and terminologies can be categorized in terms of cost, programming languages, operation systems, Web servers, and functionality.

Broad description is given below:

1. Cost:

Web hosting plans are mentioned and divided between affordable web hosting, budget hosting and cheap web hosting. Cost of web hosting is the prime aspect that several small budget site holders are looking for. On displaying the cost of Affordable web hosting, budget hosting or cheap web hosting plan one will come to know that it is less than $5 a month.
2. Programming Languages:

When a user wants to make his/her site dynamic and interactive, he/she should search for hosting plans that support the programming languages that user have command over. Usually applicable languages are PHP, ASP, JSP, PERL etc. Hosting plans assisting such programming languages are called PHP Web hosting, ASP Web hosting, JSP Web hosting or PERL Web hosting.

3. Operating Systems:

After selecting suitable programming language(s), user still has sovereignty to choose the operating system that can host the concern websites. Moreover, as everybody that ASP is restricted to Microsoft Windows, further programming languages, PHP, JSP and PERL; work not only on Windows, but also on UNIX and Linux. Hosting plans assisting particular operating system is termed as Window Hosting, UNIX hosting or rather Linux hosting.

4. Web Servers:

Talking about web servers, Apache is the most widely supported Web server in Web hosting industry. It operates only on Microsoft Internet Information Server or IIS server. For JSP hosting, Web logic or Web sphere is the main requirement. When ever there is any discussion related to Web servers, the main attraction is server performance. There are several solutions available like Managed Web Hosting, Shared Hosting, Dedicated Servers, or Virtual Private Servers (VPS). Out of these shared hosting is the cheapest plan, and one can host as many sites as he/she likes with a Reseller Hosting option. The cost of VPS is just $50 a month, and Dedicated Server plan costs from $50 - $100 or more per month depending upon storage space and bandwidth of the hosting plan.

5. Functionality:

In the market, one can find several hosting plans which either makes the site creation simple or rather offer assistance for the protection of online transactions. Creating a simple website can be a game of certain hours if the hosting plan selected by user supports assorted templates.

Thus on the hope that this article will definitely serve its users we wish best of luck.

The one who wants to enter in this web world and desires for a long time survival, then he/she should be familiar with each and every terminology used in this field. If user considers all the important factors before choosing a hosting plan then only he/she will be able to have a successful future in this world .User should not choose any of the plan, rather he/she should opt the best and most suitable one and this can only be made possible by fetching more and more informations and also by studying properly all the requirements. New comers should start from the basics .They should learn the meaning of each and every term used and also in addition those factors that can affect his/her selection.

Web Host

Web host refers to a computer connected to the internet. Web host can also be termed as web server. The computer that is playing the role of the web server needs to be more powerful than normal PCs and the function of this web server is to serve up websites.
The website content of the user will remain will on this computer, so as the people who are surfing on the internet can get a way to access his/her website.

There can be three main categories in which the web host can be classified based on the economic factor and common features:

1. Free Hosts:

The users who are not professional but are making website only as a hobby then for them free hosting can be a good option. In free hosting space, bandwidth and other features provided are very limited. With free web hosting one can not only make his/her website successful but is also suitable for personal websites or for temporary usage. Generally free hosting enforces pop-up, text or banner ads. Reliability, best performance and customer support lacks in case of free hosting as well. When a user registers for a free host then the word free host gets added with the users domain name that gives an adverse effect in the eye of the visitors.

2. Shared Hosts:

The next type of the web hosting to be discussed is shared hosting. This hosting service is used by many of the web sites .This type of hosting service is Suitable for personal, small and medium businesses. This service can be used by paying $1 to $25 per month. The features provided by this service vary from very limited space/bandwidth to semi-dedicated servers. The users host their website by this type of hosting service and it has its own top level domain facility. No doubt that shared web hosting is quite better than free hosting but still it does not provide 100% satisfactory services. In case of shared hosting one server is shared by the number of websites so its performance and availability gets affected. More websites usually means less performance. If less number of websites are hosted by one server then it will be more expensive, but in this case there are more chances of reliability. There are many companies allowing customers to host multiple websites with differ ent domains under a single account.

3. Dedicated Hosts:

The next type of hosting is dedicated hosting. This type of hosting is most reliable hosting. In this type of hosting a full server is dedicated to a single customer. Generally this type of hosting is used by large businesses, professionals and very active websites dealing with thousands of visitors daily. The customers having dedicated hosting can have their total control over the server as well as able to create as many websites as they like. Customers can run their own hosting company on a rented dedicated server. Payment module is mentioned according to specifications and services provided with the server, which varies from $100 up to about $800 dollars per month.
4. Collocated Hosts:

Now the other type of hosting service to be discussed is collocated hosting. This service is very much similar to dedicated hosting. The difference between collocated hosting and dedicated hosting is that in collocated hosting the customer owns the server hardware instead of renting it. In this service the server will be placed in providers data center. This service is more expensive than dedicated hosting.

5. Reseller Hosts:

In reseller hosting the providers offers web server storage to their customers, and resells the web server storage to them. Generally providers offer resellers a discount price.

6. Other Hosts:

Including the above type of hosts there are also many other hosts such as email hosts, media hosts, data hosts, etc but these hosts will not be discussed in this article.

Domain Name

Domain name is the name which shows the place where ones website is located. The actual address of the website is a set of numbers. Each and every web server has its own unique address. Domain name indicates the real addresses of every websites. One can easily remember the domain name of any of the website. Remembering domain name is easier than recalling the IP addresses.

Space / Storage

Space is one of the services provided by the web host. It plays a very important role in the website development. It happens many times that the customer requires more space but the host fails to provide it, so customer should be very careful while choosing the web host. Storage is the amount of web servers disk space available for customers website files, images and databases. Space can be according to the requirement; it can be as small as 5MB in some free hosts and as big as 300GB for some dedicated servers. Earlier prices of the space were very high but prices reduced significantly during the last few years. The hosting plans offering 3GB of space for less than $10 a month can be easily available.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth can be defined as the amount of data transferred from web server to clients internet browsers. When ever a person outlook a page the data is transmitted from the server to that person PC. If any one is having audio, video and images in his/her website then the bandwidth consumed is more in comparison of the website having only text contents. The bandwidth available in free hosting can be as low as 100MB per month where as in some dedicated servers the bandwidth available is as high as 2000GB a month. The customers who dont want to pay more for bandwidth can easily find hosting plans offering 75GB of monthly data transfer for less than $10.

Server Type

Generally server means the operating system than runs the web server. Some common types are Windows, Linux and UNIX. Server type refers the server side scripting and database types. The difference between Windows server and Linux/UNIX is that Windows runs ASP and ASP.NET with Access or SQL Server databases where as Linux/UNIX servers usually runs CGI, PHP or JSP with MySQL or Oracle databases. The other difference is that Windows servers are more expensive than Linux/UNIX servers.

Databases

As server type is discussed earlier also, we are able to know that there are different types of databases available. The mostly used is MySQL as it is open source GPL (free) software and can serve a lot of online applications requirements such as forums, content management, mailing lists, etc. MySQL, rather its features are limited. MySQL is sufficient for small concern but it is not powerful for the complicated large business sites. Large business requires more powerful databases such as Oracle or SQL Server.
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Server Side Scripting

Usually the new comers prefer to use PHP as server side scripting. The reason behind this is that there are hundreds of open source (GPL) PHP scripts that are able to fulfill the webmasters requirements. However PHP also has some limitations in features required by advanced websites same as in the case of MySQL, due to this limitation some professional web developers prefer to use ASP.NET or JSP. Some other developers still prefer to use Cold Fusion, CGI, ASP or PERL.

Email

Now the next very important aspect to be talked about is Email. At present no one can move further in this computer world with having his/her Email account. The one who is planning to do any kind of activity through computer such as to run a business or to provide any kind of service, then the first thing he/she need to do is to open an Email account. There are many hosting plans that include the feature of having some email accounts with customers domain. The availability of number and size of email accounts totally depends on the hosting plan one opted. Generally this feature is not included in free hosting. Small plans provide only about 10 accounts where as big plans do not have the limited number. Usually those email accounts are web based and accessible through POP3 clients as well.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

The other service is FTP. File Transfer Protocol is a usual way of transferring files across the Internet. Most of the webmasters used to upload and download their websites contents through FTP. The process of uploading or downloading is performed by using FTP client software. Webmasters require FTP username and password so as to access their web server. There are any hosts who use to provide more than one FTP account to their customers as per their requirement. Rather FTP is unspecified; it is not advisable as per the security reasons.

Control Panel

Control panel is the service available by many of the web hosting companies to their customers. It is a web based application that helps in managing websites. Some important functions performed by the control panel are that it used to manage email accounts, providing statistics, managing FTP accounts, managing domains and sub-domains and managing databases. The control panel application that is mostly used by the user is cPanel. There are many companies who use to develop their own control panel application.

Uptime

Now after having all the services, the thing of concern which remains is how the user keeps his/her website uptime most of the time. If anyone is having a website with excellent features but it remains down most of the time it will be of no use, as when ever the visitors visit his/her website and found it down then later on they will think twice before visiting it. In result he/she will suffer the loss of visitors. Uptime is very important feature of web hosts and that is usually measured in percentage. If a server remains down near about 30 minutes a day will have an uptime percentage of about 99.98%, which is acceptable for most small to medium business websites. If any of the business website is not having at least this percentage of uptime then that website is not suitable for a business website. Mission critical sites cannot tolerate frequent outages, thus they may use web monitoring services to notify web administrators immediately when an outage happens.

Price

Finally the factor left is price. In this option also there is a great variability found like for example customer is having option to choose between the prices ranging from 0 to $1000 per month. For most personal, small and medium websites the total amount of cost involved is just $15 per month. Thus its not at all advisable for business website owners to select very cheap plans let say less than $5 because this price can lead to huge cost indirectly afterwards.

In web hosting reseller business, the most important decision is choice of web hosting control panel software. Good web hosting software not only saves time or money but also it saves one from lot of frustration. There are several questions which are quite important while considering about the type of reseller web host. They are -What reseller control panel features should one chooses that reduces ones workload? What are the hosting software programs that are integrated with the reseller control panel or work with it? What are the website control panel features that ones client will like? Given below the comparison of 4 types of quality web hosting reseller software programs is given- Alabanza

cPanel

H-Sphere

Plesk

All of the above are the 4 types of reseller control panels that come with control panels for ones clients. They all are well equipped with several numerous features like advanced email management, web statistics, pre-installed scripts, multi-language support etc. All the above mainly work on Linux platforms, while H-Sphere and Plesk also work with Windows. As per cPanel website, a Windows version of cPanel is in development phase.

Other features that set these control panels apart are their degree of automation, the number of features and ease of use for the end user.

Alabanza:

When user becomes an Alabanza reseller, he/she not only gets the facility of a reseller account but he/she even can lease a dedicated server from Alabanza. Alabanza owns the control panel and the server, and one can easily resell directly for Alabanza. If one leases a dedicated Alabanza server, he/she can create his/her own reseller accounts. However, only the user can set up hosting plans; resellers below him/her will be confined only to hosting plans that user creates.

Alabanza offers resellers a very high degree of mechanization with its Domain System Manager (DSM), which can radically reduce overhead and time spent on routine tasks like Account creation, Billing and invoice management, Credit card processing, Domain registration, Email notifications and ordering fraud protection etc.
Even the beginners can sell hosting with this level of mechanization.

For domain name registration, DSM also integrates with bulkregister.com. However it does not integrate easily with other domain registrars.

A very important main feature that resellers use to offer to their client is the Xpress Product Suite, which serves as an important tool for web development and also works well as an email management tools. The Xpress Product Suite includes SiteXpress, which is a website-building program featuring more than 300 templates and even does not require web design skills.

Control panel for resellers and end users- cPanel is well known for its easiness of use and range of features. It consists of collection of more than 50 pre-installed scripts and Fantastico auto installer that assists clients to set up their sites even if they do not possess good web development knowledge.

A basic cPanel reseller account comes with two separate programs for resellers to manage their business:

Web Host Manager (WHM) is used to create accounts and packages, add and suspend sites, modify passwords, view bandwidth usage, park domains, install SSL certificates, and perform other administrative functions.

Now, from the resellers cPanel control panel, a drop-down menu takes the reseller to the control panels for each of the sites on the reseller account, including the resellers site.
WHM Autopilot is an additional optional program, by which one can automate account creation and suspension, email notifications, and other tasks. WHM Autopilot also integrates with common payment gateways and has a helpdesk, an invoice module, and other tools.

H-Sphere:-It is designed for both Linux and Windows platforms. Not only those resellers can even set t up plans for both Linux and Windows and administer sites on different servers from the same control panel. The control panel, which is actually a separate server, also provides administrative access to the integrated helpdesk.

The H-Sphere control panel provides utility in several forms like it enables server automates account configuration, credit card processing, domain registration, and email notifications etc. It also includes a built-in billing module and supports over 20 payment gateways.

From the resellers point of view, H-Sphere is equipped with a higher learning curve in comparison to other control panels because of its plentiful features example , when user is setting up a new plan, the administrator has two pages of features to select from, including setup and monthly pricing for optional services.

For beginners H-Sphere may look very much complicated for their needs. However for skilled users H-Sphere is like a complimentary feature. Main feature of H-Sphere is the ability to have control over separate domains with multi-domain hosting.

H-Sphere usually comes along with the website builder Site Studio, which guides users through a variety of style choices and stores content separately from the layout. Best part is for this no HTML or FTP knowledge is required.

Plesk:

Demand of Plesk is increasing day by day among users and resellers not only because of its quality of providing stability and security but also due to its simple navigation, clean interface, and its professional appearance. Moreover Plesk is available in versions for both Linux and Windows platforms.

With Plesk, all users like Server administrator , Client / reseller , Domain owner , Mail user etc use the same control panel but with different levels of control.

Each level of the control panel enables user control over both that level and the level(s) below it. It provides facility to Email users, to log into their mail user control panel so as to enable them to change their password, add auto responders, and change other personal settings without having access to the domain owner control panel etc.

Plesk handles Spam Assassin not at the domain level but at the mailbox level.
With this facility users are able to categorize email into white list or blacklist for each email address, which allows each email user to have individual settings.

One should have some automation available with his/her account, such as credit card charges, email notification etc. If ones Plesk reseller account is with a web host who offers HSP completely

 

Top 5 Linux Developments: Groklaw Calls It a Day, GNOME Unifies
Apr 13, 2011, 13 :22 UTC (2 Talkback[s]) (2202 reads)

"The Linux Planet never stops spinning, and this past week was no exception. We saw the end of an era at Groklaw, the beginning of a new era at GNOME and Linux continuing to push forward in the embedded market.

"We also saw more Android FUD being resolved this past week as Google once again reconfirmed its commitment to open source and Linux."

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