Server Hosting Tips

Web hosting is a vast subject, and we have covered many areas of the topic over the past year. Here are a few tips to help you keep your server in the best web hosting shape possible.

1. Keep backups of all data, both account storage and databases. If possible, keep the backups on a remote server and schedule regular incremental updates

2. Update the kernel and other software regularly.

3. Use a script installation service to help users install web applications

4. Provide a web-based control panel to help users manage their sites

5. Enforce strong passwords and encourage users to update their passwords regularly

6. Use a monitoring service for the web server, mail server, database server, and any other critical services

7. Maximize disk and memory usage only to the point of ideal performance and do not over exert the server

8. Always announce any changes, updates, reboots, or maintenance, giving users plenty of time adjust.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

Hosting Company Shuts Down Blogging Service

The incident apparently began with the FBI monitoring certain web blogs for terrorist activity. Al-Qaeda is known to operate and spread their communication through the Internet, but the odd part about this shut down is that it was a community web service with many users.

The blogging service, Blogetery, reportedly hosted over 70,000 blogs, and most of those users had nothing to do with terrorism. Furthermore, the owner of the service is not being accused of terrorist activity either. The hosting company, Burst.net sent a warning to Alexander Yusupov to take down the sites but did not supply any official evidence of the FBI investigation. The FBI says that it did not order the service to be shut down and that Burst.net took that action on its own.

The sad part of all of this is that possibly thousands of blogs have just been erased from the Web with little regard for the innocent people who used them. The lesson to be learned, however, is that any website or service should have backups, even if the content is created by other users. Furthermore, with as many as 70,000 blogs, they also should have had some type of redundancy in place to prevent total data loss, even if it were accidental.

Source: Times Newsline

Google Boosts Its Servers with Caffeine

Although I am sure plenty of Google employees dope up on gallons of coffee per day, this is not about that kind of caffeine. Google announced on their blog that they are changing the way their servers index sites. As with anything related to Google searching, this is particularly relevant to webmasters who want their websites in the top of Google search results.

Without delving too deeply into the new technology, it is sufficient to note that Google’s indexing just got faster…a lot faster. They are currently refreshing their indexes 50 percent faster than their previous search index technology. The new tech is called Caffeine, and it has a more organic approach to indexing. While the old technology re-indexed the entire web in layers, Caffeine will index small portions more frequently.

I put the new system to the test, just to see how fast it actually was. Yesterday, I posted a new blog entry on one of my other sites. By the time I had saved it and headed over to Google, the new pages were already indexed. When you get things right on your website, this will be a good thing. When you get things wrong, be mindful that Google may index and even cache that page within minutes. Overall, however, it is a good thing, and website owners trying to get information out fast will appreciate it.

Source: Google
Photo: Flickr

Mobile versions of website

Question: Should I have a complete mobile version of my website?

Answer: It is certainly an inconvenience to create a whole new version of your site, but the facts show that more people are accessing website from their mobile devices. For some people, this may even be their only method of regularly getting on the Web.

If your website is specifically geared for desktop users, then maybe making a mobile site is not so important or even not possible. But if your site provides information or a service, it is crucial to make sure people who access it from mobile devices will be able to use it.

There are a few Web companies that will create a mobile version of your site, and there are also plenty of tutorials that teach you how to streamline the conversion process. Moreover, W3C even has a mobileOK service that checks your website to see how mobile-friendly it is. Unfortunately, there is really no mobile standard. Screen sizes differ, as well as operating systems and browsers. Since you cannot test all mobile phones, try to create a site that is mostly text and is of variable size. Your visitors/customers will thank you.

Photo Source: Flickr

First dotcom domain celebrates 25th anniversary

Although it was 1985 with Symbolics computers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA registered the very first .com domain name, it would take nearly 12 years for Web as we know it to really explode with doctoms.

“This birthday is really significant because what we are celebrating here is the internet and dotcom is a good, well known placeholder for the rest of the internet,” said Mark Mclaughlin, chief executive officer of Verisign the company that is responsible for looking after the dotcom domain.

There are now 668,000 .com websites registered every month and over 80 million total. It has become the default choice for most web users. Even new users who do not even know how to perform basic searches often type whatever they want followed by “.com” hoping to score a hit. It is a huge information space and also a huge market for domain registrars and web hosting providers. Even with numerous other top-level domain options (such as .net and .org), it is .com that still reigns supreme and may continue to do so for years to come.

Source: BBC News
Photo: Flickr

Microsoft may soon step up its HTML 5 game

Just days after we posted news about Google’s acquisitions that position it to make a large impact on HTML 5 video development, suspicion is floating around the tech world that Microsoft is planning a big announcement for Internet Explorer 9, the next installment of their declining browser.

If Microsoft intends to keep their commanding share of the browser market, they will need to continue to adapt to web standards. At their MIX 2010 developer conference in Las Vegas, experts predict that Microsoft will unveil a new IE version that takes into account HTML 5 elements, including support for vector graphics like SVG.

Even with IE 8, the current version, Internet Explorer is still far behind competitors like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Opera. If ever there were a time for Microsoft to make a game-changing play, that time is now.

Source: Webmonkey