Handling Your Email Addresses.

Handling Your Email Addresses

--Company Email Addresses--

Web hosting companies should provide company email accounts for each person in your company. Email addresses should appear like this:

yourname@domain.com

lester@definiteweb.com

myname@companyname.com

--Web Mails--

Most websites work with web mails. Web-based email enable you to access email via a web browser such as Internet Explorer. You log into your email account via the Web to send and retrieve email. You are able to access your emails from anywhere in the world and it makes checking of emails convenient and portable. Web mails for your company will most probably be accessed at www.yourcompanyname.com/webmail

There are other forms of web mail options available such as Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail and Gmail.

--Email Forwarding--

Email forwarding allows you to have multiple email personalities. With email forwarding, you can setup aliases for other email accounts like

joe@mycompany.com forwarded to web-designs@definiteweb.com

joe@myothercompany.com forwarded to web-designs@definiteweb.com

joe@personalwebsite.com forwarded to web-designs@definiteweb.com

It makes tracking of emails easy; especially when you have multiple email accounts to check on.

--Mailing Lists--

It will be userful if you can send out emails to a large number of users. Start up with collecting opt-in email addresses from interested parties and send monthly promotions of your business products and services. Before long, your mailing list will be your another marketing channel of your business.

Lester Boey works in an Australian SEO and Web Design company (Australian Search Engine Optimization and Web Designs Company). His life revolves around SEO; providing full-time and freelance seo services to US and Australian businesses. Email: projects@definiteweb.com

Setting up Your Personal Server

Setting up Your Personal Server

There are many things to consider when setting up your own server. We wouln't encourage a novice for the job. Seek help from web professionals if you have any queries. Here are some web hosting factors to consider when setting up your personal server:

- A server license is needed and they are not cheap

- Virus, bugs and spam attacks

- 24-hour maintenance and support

Your website doesn't sleep but you do need your sleep! Who is going to take care of your website that is hosted in your personal computer while you are sleeping? Getting 24 hour up- time and support is necessary for your website; especially if it is a business website! The main advantage Internet Service Providers have over personal servers is: having web professional maintenance crew working 24/7 to ensure that web hosting is running smooth for websites.

Many people will think setting up server hosting is cheaper than getting a web hosting package. Buying hosting equipment is not cheap for an individual and just like any other computer equipment, it becomes outdated after a while. Server companies spend hundreds of thousands on equipment and keeping up with technology. They buy in bulk, hence having bulk savings. Hence, web hosting packages are competitive and affordable.

If you are genuinely interested in setting up your own server, do it out of interest's sake. Otherwise, you will be financially better off getting hosting packages off bulk- buying server companies.

Lester Boey works in an Australian SEO and Web Design company (Australian Search Engine Optimization and Web Designs Company). His life revolves around SEO; providing full-time and freelance seo services to US and Australian businesses. Email: projects@definiteweb.com

CHMOD - Undertanding File Permissions on a Unix-Based Server

CHMOD - Undertanding File Permissions on a Unix-Based Server

The basic command for changing file permissions in unix based operating systems is the 'chmod' command. This command is executed with a set of parameters after it. With most FTP clients, you can simply select the filename you want to change the permissions of, right click, and choose the chmod command.

There are three main groups of permissions when dealing with the chmod command. The three groups are yourself or owner, your unix group, and everyone else. A typical chmod command would look like this - 'chmod 755' This allows you to add, remove or rename files as well as read or edit a file. It also specifies that your unix group and everyone else can only read and edit the file in question. They can't add, delete, or rename the file.

How the numbers in the chmod command work

There are three types of permissions that can be given to a file. They are read, write, and execute. The read permission is assigned a value of 4, the write permission is assigned a value of 2 and the execute permission is assigned a value of 1. So when a chmod command specified the digit 7 as the first number, it means that all three types of permissions are to be assigned to it. If a party is assigned a value of '0' then it means it has no rights whatsoever to a file. '6' tells the server that the user can read and write to the file but can't execute it. I think you get the idea.

Common permissions to set

Most of your html files will do fine with a permission of 644. Most script files will need a permission of 755. Any configuration files in a script package will often need a file permission of 777. Be very careful about assigning a file permission of '777' for everyone. With this permission, it means that anyone who gains access to your server will be able to add, remove, rename, read or edit the file. It is always a good idea with security in mind to assign the least amount of permissions necessary to get the job done.

An FTP client can keep things simple

Most people on shared servers will not have access to a command line to be able to use the chmod command. For most people, changing file permissions will be done through an FTP client. To do this, right click on the file you want to alter, and choose the chmod command. You will usually get a popup that will show nine checkboxes. The will be arranged in three rows. On the left you will usually see Read, Write, and Execute for the row headings. You can accomplish the same thing as typing in the numbers above by clicking on one, two or three boxes for each party. Once you're done, you click the apply or ok button and the file permissions will be changed.

If you keep in mind that you need to always go with the most restrictive file permissions possible that still allows your files to execute, and that there are three parties to define permissions for, you'll do fine. The three parties again are the owner, group, and everyone else.

This article was written by Joe Duchesne, president of http://www.yowling.com/, a web hosting company that specializes in helping online business owners increase their website traffic. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely as long as you link back to my website from this resource box.

Web Hosting Bandwidth -- How Much Bandwidth Is Enough?

Web Hosting Bandwidth -- How Much Bandwidth Is Enough?

Bandwidth in its simplest terms refers to the amount of data that flows across a network wire in a given time period. For most web hosting providers, that time period is measured in a month. Web hosting providers are charged a certain amount per month or per year for an allocated amount of bandwidth from backbone providers and wholesale data centers. That cost is then passed on to the consumer in the form of web hosting plans.

How much bandwidth will your website use?

With so much variation among web hosting companies, it can sometimes be difficult to know how much bandwidth your website will need. So, how much is a gigabyte of bandwidth anyway? Let's put it in perspective. If an average web page, images and all is 50 kilobytes in size, your website could be viewed 20,000 times! For the average hobby website, that is more than enough. Let's further put that 20,000 in perspective. If each visitor to your website viewed an average of 4 pages per month, it would still represent over 5,000 unique visitors to your website every month. Now if your website has lots of pictures on it though, then one gigabyte of bandwidth will allow for fewer visitors.

Beware of bandwidth usage when offering file downloads

While offering simple web pages doesn't use up much bandwidth, the same can't be said about downloading files. If you plan on allowing people to download music files, pdf files, flash files, or video files, you can eat up bandwidth in a hurry even with a relatively small number of people visiting your website. If your website offers an adobe .pdf file that is 1 megabyte in size, with one gigabyte of bandwidth, you will only be able to serve up one thousand downloads. This does not including the html needed to get people to download the pdf in the first place.

Video files eat up even more space. A one megabyte video file represents only seconds of video. For a half hour presentation, your video file could easily be over two hundred megabytes in size! At that size, one gigabyte would only allow you to offer five downloads to your visitors. What you plan to do with your website most definitely will affect how much monthly bandwidth you anticipate needing.

Overselling bandwidth is common in the web hosting industry

Because more people use only a fraction of their allotted bandwidth per month, most web hosting providers price their plans knowing that most people will only use a fraction of the resources available to them. In fact, with most companies, if you did use the maximum bandwidth available to you each month, you would most likely be shut down. If you go with a shared hosting account, your website can be hosted with hundreds or thousands of other websites. If your website starts to use a significant portion of the server's resources, you may find them pulling the plug on your website. If you know your website is going to need significant resources, you should probably consider getting yourself a dedicated server or at the very least look for assurances in writing that your web hosting provider will honor your bandwidth needs.

Knowing what you plan to do will allow you to know how much you need

By knowing what you plan to do with your hosting account, you can have a pretty good idea of how much bandwidth you're going to need. If you anticipate that you will be needing to serve lots of multimedia including video, music and large amounts of flash powered pages, you may need to consider going with a dedicated server. If your website is just starting out and you have little money and no real idea of how much bandwidth you're going to need, pick a company that gives you more than you think you'll need at a reasonable price. Make sure you also find out how much they will charge you for any bandwidth you use above and beyond what comes in your hosting package. If it is one dollar per megabyte and you've already exceeded a twenty gigabyte bandwidth limit, changes are, you'll get one hefty bill at the end of the month. When shopping around and looking at bandwidth, keep the overage cost in mind as well and you'll do fine.

This article was written by Joe Duchesne, president of http://www.yowling.com/, a web hosting company that strives to make it easy to setup and maintain your website. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely as long as you link back to my website from this resource box.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) ? How to use it to Fight Email Forgery

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) ? How to use it to Fight Email Forgery

Spam is a real problem today. Forged email is a big part of the spam problem. Have you ever received a spam email from yourself? How many times have you received an email you know to be spam from someone only to find out it came from an invalid email address? When you try to block the email by choosing block sender, the spammer simply changes the email address to another variation and gets through the block. Until recently, there wasn't much you could do about it. Now there is.

What is Sender Policy Framework (SPF)?

SPF makes it easy for a domain, whether it's an ISP, a business, or a school to say that they only send mail from certain machines. If any other machine is claiming to send mail, they are lying. SPF aims to prevent spammers from ruining other people's reputation. When your machine receives an email from another server that has implemented SPF, your machine can easily tell if the incoming email really comes from the server it says it belongs to. More information about SPF can be found at http://spf.pobox.com/

By implementing SPF in your favorite application or on your server, you can be sure that a spammer will never be able to impersonate you when spamming others. Most well known domains and email applications have already implemented SPF on their servers and products. Some examples of vendors that are already implementing SPF into their products include Sophos, Symantec, Declude Junkmail, Brightmail, IronPort, Ciphertrust, MailArmory, MailFrontier, Roaring Penguin Software, Communigate Pro, and others.

Ready to fight email forgery? Install applications that support SPF today and get protected from email forgery!

This article was written by Joe Duchesne, president of http://www.yowling.com/, a web hosting company that specializes in helping online business owners increase their website traffic. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely as long as you link back to my website from this resource box.

Web Hosting Service ? What you Need to Know to Change Web Hosting Providers

Web Hosting Service ? What you Need to Know to Change Web Hosting Providers

When service at your web hosting company is lacking, or your web site grows in traffic so much that you outgrow your current account, you may find yourself needing to change hosting providers. It can be scary to think about everything you need to do. Here are some things you should keep in mind that will help make the transition to the new host much easier.

1. Backup all of your files and databases

Before you decide to transfer anything over, you need to create a backup of every file and database you have on the current hosting provider's server. FTP into your current hosting account and copy all of the files from your public_html directory into a directory on your local hard drive that you'll find easy to remember later.

As for the database, backup methods will vary according to the database vendor, the control panel being used by the host if any, and the operating system of the server. Most providers provide a backup utility that allows you to save a copy of the contents of all of your database tables. If there isn't a simple backup utility available, you will need to export the contents of your database in a comma delimited file or the standard file format for the particular database you use. Most backup utilities will convert the database into one long SQL file that is then easy for any compatible database engine to reconstruct.

2. Transfering to the new server

Make sure that your website is functioning properly at the new location before you change the DNS information of your domain name. While it may not be possible to fully navigate the site without the domain name pointing to it, you can still point to some individual pages to be sure they will come up. For this though, you'll need to use the IP address of your hosting account along with your username if you have a shared IP address. On a Cpanel server, you would enter http://61.36.149.221/~username and your main website will come up. You can use this address until the DNS information from the domain propagates throughout the web.

3. Tidy up the loose ends

Upload the backup file of your databases or execute the SQL file you generated in the backup. This should restore your database back to what it was on the old server. Change the nameserver information for your domain name. This is almost always found with the registrar that you registered your domain with or with your old web hosting provider. They almost always assign you a username and password that allows you to log into an account that allows you to change the nameservers. If you don't have a control panel, then simply email the company that registered your domain for you and ask them to change the nameservers to the new servers. Within 24 to 48 hours, your website will be served from the new server and not the old one. Once you can confirm this, it is safe to ask the old web hosting company to delete and discontinue your old account.

This article was written by Joe Duchesne, president of http://www.yowling.com/, a web hosting company that specializes in helping online business owners increase their website traffic. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely as long as you link back to my website from this resource box.

Where to Get Cheap Web Hosting?

Where to Get Cheap Web Hosting

First, to see if you can use cheap web hosting you need to know how much disk space you will need. How large is your website? How many pages, video files, music files, etc. do you need? Second, a cheap web hosting company will need to know how busy your sight will be. If your site is going to have a lot of visitors, cheap web hosting may not be for you. Third, how many email accounts do you need? Cheap web hosting companies do not usually provide many. Lastly, how much are you willing to spend? Cheap web hosting is not as technical as the more expensive web hosting.

If you go online, you can find a list of the top 10 cheap web hosting companies. The top 10 cheap web hosting companies are rated by their price, quality, and service provided. The cheap web hosting companies are priced between $4.95 and $19.95 a month. The cheap web hosting company's price varies on what kind of things you need. The disk space provided can be from 3000MB to 5000MB. The bandwidth varies from 40GB to 300GB. If this is not enough for you, then a cheap web hosting company is not an option for you. Most of these cheap web hosting companies offer free set up. This will make things much easier for you. Be aware of cheap web hosting that offers unlimited disk space. If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

The top 10 web hosting companies reviewed are: Blue Host, Power Hosting, Pages Garden, Pro Logic Hosting, Easy CGI, Gigabyte Package, Yahoo! Hosting, iPower Web, Lunar pages, and Dot5 Web Hosting. All of these are very cheap web hosting companies. You will find them listed at top10webhosting.com. At this website you will also find customer testimonials and thorough listings about the cheap web hosting company's services they offer to you.

For those of you who still think that this is not cheap web hosting, you can also find free web hosting. It still comes with a price, however. Comcast offers free web hosting to anyone who subscribes to their internet service. You still have to pay for the internet service, but the web hosting is free. That's the best that can be done about cheap web hosting. Weigh the odds, and see which route is best for you.

Jay Moncliff is the founder of http://www.cheaphosting-center.info a blog focusing on the Web Hosting, resources and articles. This site provides detailed information on Web Hosting. For more info visit his site at: Web Hosting