Web Hosting Blog

• 01Jun

  An Explanation on Managed Dedicated Web Hosting

  Customer Service, Dedicated Server Hosting, E-Commerce Hosting, Linux Hosting, Linux web hosting, Micfo Web Hosting, Web Hosting, Windows Web Hosting, cPanel Hosting, data security No Comments

  A managed web hosting is a smarter alternative for any small to medium sized business, who wants to make an effective web presence but do not have the time, budget and other required resources of IT. Neither you want to invest in costly hardware required to host a website.

  With a managed web hosting solution, an individual leases bandwidth, diskspace and other resources from a web hosting provider. The website is then placed on one of their servers chosen by you. Apart from web hosting, the web hosting provider provides you with number of other features which can prove to be beneficial for companies/organizations using Internet as a medium to accelerate the revenue generation plus attract new customers, which I believe is the main objective of any business.

  There are various benefits of Managed Web Hosting for a business, some of them are listed below:

  Professionals Take Care of One’s Website

  When it comes to any business, as we all are aware, its better to let experts handle critical responsibilities for you. Failure to do so, would spend a lot of  amount of time and resources and ultimately add to the loss incurred by an organisation.

  By, letting a professional web hosting provider host a site for you, you are getting rid of waste of time and resource required to maintain the website and related tasks. Their staffs consists of professionals and have good experience in maintaining the hardware and programming necessary for keeping one’s website up and running all the time. The uptime of a website is most crucial for any online business. A web hosts knowledge and experience can suffice your business additionally and you can direct your resources to other crucial tasks of business.

  Save Crucial Resources by opting for Managed Web Hosting

  Applying cost-effective techniques to any business is crucial in terms of its growth. Managed hosting has proven to be one such wise decision and has added exponentially for businesses profits.

  If one plans to host a website and related components in-house, the hardware required isn’t cheap. Then, you would need professionals for setting up the server and the website. The costs charged by these professionals aren’t cheap. After the set-up is done, you’d later need them again for maintenance and resolving other problems, which means you would once again need to put hands in your pocket in order to make them payment.

  This expenditure can be avoided by opting to submit your website to be managed by a third party professional, who charge nominal fees to execute the crucial tasks. The web hosts also offer range of different plans suitable for your requirements. They offer cheap web hosting solutions with Good Quality Branded Hardware with latest and up-to-date technologies. They take complete responsibility of keeping the servers up and running, incase a problem does occur, they can get that sorted within few minutes. You can get an option of switching between plans , depending on the provider they offer Windows Web Hosting as well as Linux Web Hosting solutions. Incase you run out of resources you have the privilege of upgrading to a higher plan within minutes. The only task that you or the owner of the website needs to do is to keep the website updated for the visitor. Varying from web host to web host, come provide back-ups of the sites and applications.

  Tags: affordable web hosting, cheap web hosting, Linux web hosting, Managed Web Hosting, online business, Web Hosting, Windows Web Hosting

• 21May

  Functioning Of Online Payment Gateways.

  Customer Service, E-Commerce Hosting, Micfo Web Hosting, data security No Comments

  Secure payment gateways play an important role in any online business that involves online transactions. E-commerce websites, web hosting are few of such businesses where Payment Gateways are often required.

  A payment gateway facilitates the transfer of information between a payment portal (such as a website ) and the Front End Processor or acquiring bank.

  When a customer orders a product from a payment gateway enabled merchant, the payment gateway performs a variety of tasks to process the transaction:

  1. A customer submits an order on website .

  2. The web browser on the customers end, encrypts the information to be sent to the merchant’s web server. This is done via SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption.
  3. The transaction details are then forwarded to their payment gateway. This is again an encrypted connection.
  4. The transaction information from payment gateway is forwardee to the processor used by the merchant’s acquiring bank.
  5. The processor then forwards the transaction information to the card association (For example: Visa/MasterCard)
  6. If an American Express or Discover Card was used, then the processor acts as the acquiring bank and directly provides a response of approved or declined to the payment gateway.
  7. The card association routes the transaction to the correct card issuing bank.
  8. The credit card issuing bank receives the authorization request and sends a response back to the processor with a response code. In addition to determining the fate of the payment, (i.e. approved or declined) the response code is used to define the reason why the transaction failed (such as insufficient funds, or bank link not available)
  9. The processor forwards the response to the payment gateway.
  10.The payment gateway receives the response, and forwards it on to the website (or whatever interface was used to process the payment) where it is interpreted and a relevant response is relayed back to the card holder and the merchant.
  11. All this procedure usually gets completed in 2-3 seconds.

  Most of the payment gateways provide tools that automatically screen orders for fraud and calculate tax in real time prior to the authorization request being sent to the processor.

  List of different Payment Gateways :

  PayPal : PayPal is one of the highly used payment gateways in any online business for money transfer. PayPal performs payment processing for online vendors, auction sites, and other commercial users, for which it charges a fee. There is a nominal transaction fee charged for receiving money.

  Google Checkout : Google Checkout is another online payment gateway service provided by Google. It aims to simplify the process of online payment. Users can store their credit/debit card and shipping information in their Google Account, so that they can purchase at participating stores at a single click of a button. Google Checkout also offers fraud protection as well.
  

  2Checkout : 2CheckOut provides you with a customizable transaction interface, multi-level customer service interaction and a satisfaction survey system that is completely voluntary and, in most cases, customer initiated.
  Money Bookers : Moneybookers is an e-commerce business that allows payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. It serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders. Moneybookers performs payment processing for websites, online auction sites, and other corporate users. Moneybookers requires identity verification before using their service to minimize fraud and prevent money laundering. This gateway does not usually get involved in merchandise disputes and the availability of credit card chargebacks may be limited.

  Most of the reputed large web hosting providers use any or all of the above mentioned payment gateways for their online transactions.

  Tags: 2Checkout, e-Commerce, Google Checkout, Moneybookers, online business, PayPal, Secure payment gateways, Secure Socket Layer, SSL Encryption, Web Hosting

• 21Jan

  Multi-Domain Web Hosting: An Overview

  Customer Service, E-Commerce Hosting, Micfo Web Hosting, Web Hosting No Comments

  Multi Domain Hosting as the name suggests is a service provided Web Hosting companies or IP address service providers. Till recently only one domain name per account was provided for a website, but with the increase in the demand and the spread of businesses companies have started providing multiple domain hosting per account.

  

  Advantages and Disadvantages of Multiple Domain Hosting

  In Multiple Domain Hosting the disk space that is provided is more hence users can opt to put large number of domains, addresses, each working through a single account. Multiple Domain hosting can be described as a tree with its branches which describe the fact that the main service provider does not change. All the domains share the same services provided by the hosting company or the service provider. Users need to pay for a single account and pay the rest of the addresses as add-ons. Usually the add-ons costs are nominal as compared with the main account cost. With the registration of an extra website with the same service provider user need not worry as the quality of the services offered are already tested.

  In any Internet related / web hosting business, Server is a major factor for income. Time is gaining more and more important, if the time taken by the website is high, visitors to the website simply close the window and look for another website. Hence, if the server goes down or is malfunctioning then it be a major blow for the business. This is one of the major disadvantage is all the domains are taken from a single service provider. Therefore, it becomes extremely crucial when selecting the correct Web Hosting firm or service provider for Multiple Domain Hosting.

  Tags: Domain Hosting, Multiple Domain hosting, Web Hosting, web hosting business

• 08Dec

  Tips To Choose A Perfect Web Hosting Service Provider.

  Customer Service, Micfo Web Hosting, Web Hosting No Comments

  A Web Hosting service provider provides the necessary web space and the preferred domain name. There are certain things that must be kept in mind while choosing a Web Hosting firm. One should look for the credibility in providing the hosting services, hardware details and services offered, existing clients feedback, the exact server uptime.

  There are several things that are provided with the hosting package when hosting a website with a particular Web Hosting service provider such as control panel for website, e-mail account, Domain management tools, SSL certificate if the website offers e-commerce facility, FTP accounts, databases and security of the website. The web hosting company should be competent to support technologies used by you in developing the website.

  The Web Hosting firm should allow customization of the hosting package as it may happen that you need extra web space in future. Check if the hosting firm provides static IP or shared IP address for the customers. Static IP address always acts as a boon for the website.

  A perfect Web Hosting company is reputed to give best customer service, hence one must check if the service provider provides 24*7 and 365 days support. Their services should be prompt and must have a friendly customer support staff. The technical staff too should be able to solve any technical problems faced by your website. One must check the Web Hosting companies customer testimonials and their past profile.

  These are some of the very basic factors that must be kept in mind while choosing a Web Hosting service provider. After finalizing on the Web Hosting service provider, one must check for the time taken for the activation of the services, the geographical location of the servers and the renewal charges for the domain name and entire hosting package

  Tags: Customer Service, Domain management tools, SSL certificate, Web Hosting, web hosting service provider, Windows Web Hosting

• 23Nov

  Steps To Change The Web Hosting Service Provider.

  Customer Service, Dedicated Server Hosting, Micfo Web Hosting, Web Hosting No Comments

  At some point of time when the service offered by the current Web hosting service provider starts falling short of the requirements of the user or the website owner, users tend to seek some other Hosting company. But switching onto another Hosting company might be a little messy. So here are a few steps that might be helpful when switching to another service provider.

  Taking Backup Is most Important:

  Users should ritually taking back-ups, it always helps when they want to switch the service providers. Users should take the backup of every data on the server. It is recommended that two copies of back up should be taken and stored in different locations.

  There is a possibility that the new service provider has a different control panel. Then a manual backup must be done by downloading all the files as a different control panel might not be able to restore the backups taken by the old host. They might or they do have different directory structures so it might be a messy job to get all the files with the new service provider. Also the old server configuration must be noted. This helps when as you make changes on the new host server. Users should make the correct transfer type as the download initiates. If the download does not happen, then there are wide possibilities that the website might not work properly or may not even work.

  The server logs too should be backed up. The best thing to do is to download it and use a log analyzer on your computer to make references to later on.

  Gathering Odds & Ends Is Essential

  1. A Good FTP program you should have.

  2. Get your new host server’s DNS
  3. It’s also helpful to have a script that tells you the server environments installed on your new host server for quick reference.
  4. Get the temporary URL on your new host so you can check your site before you make a DNS change.
  5. If you have your host control the domain inform them not to change your DNS until you tell them to.
  6. If you run scripts:
  - Get a copy of the original installation guide and the script. Sometimes after moving the scripts just do not work right so you might need to install the script from scratch.
  - Get a list of all the server paths such as Perl, Send mail and home directory on your new server.
  - If your script needs special server modules or programs ensure they are installed and where. Even though these might be covered before you ordered the account with the host but sometimes your host has removed it or haven’t installed it yet.

  Visitors Must Be Kept Informed:

  This is always proven to be a very good practice of informing the visitors of the server move. This helps building trust and awaring them of the possible downtime. This results in retaining the customers with your web hosting service. There should always be an alternate e-mail id so that no mails get lost at the time of transfer. If the web-site is large then doing periodic update can be helpful as visitors can inform you if any part of the web-site isn’t functional.

  Day Of the Movement:

  The time of movement must be when there is least traffic on the web-site. Latest back-up must be taken just before the movement. The most visible parts of the site must be backed up. If the web-site is large and are moving to a new web hosting service provider then, the pages must be split and must be moved on different days with moving the critical parts first then the less. Take care of taking the back-up before every move. The temporary URL must be checked of the site.

  DNS Change:

  Once everything is fine, change the DNS. Usually it takes 24-48 hours so users have ample time to make some minor adjustments (If required). Make small changes onto the new page to differentiate between the old and new to help determine if the DNS has been resolved.

  Now Comes The Part Of Monitoring:

  After the movement is successful and the DNS is resolved, don’t release the old account immediately. Parallely keep it running for atleast two weeks. Check the activity on the old server. Checking the old e-mail account is always beneficial to see if any communication has been left unseen.

  Once everything is in place, user can cancel the account from the old service provider.

  Tags: control panel, DNS, hosting service, Server, server configuration, service provider, Web Hosting

• 13Nov

  Steps To Add an E-mail Filter (Blocking Spam).

  Customer Service, General, Internet Security, Micfo Web Hosting No Comments

  Internet users can block unwanted Spam mails using simple steps.

  Follow the below procedure to activate the E-mail filter.

  1. Select the E-mail filtering link in the mail area.
  2. Click on Add Filter
  3. From the drop down list select the header field. They are the different fields in any e-mail message’s.
  4. From the second drop down list select the required filter. The action will take effect on the text entered in the third field.

  • Equals- Match the text exactly
  • Matches regex- It matches the text based on regular expression rules. These expressions are powerful but complex.
  • Contains- It matches certain text in any circumstance. Example- porn would block pornography and porn.
  • Begins with- It matches the specified text in the beginning of the word.

  5. Now enter the filter text in the third field. Be careful as the text is case sensitive.

  6.  Now one needs to enter the destination for the filtered e-mail address in the Destination field. The destination fields are of three types :

  • Destroy the E-mail : In the field enter Discard.
  • Redirect To another address : Enter the email address where the spam needs to be directed.
  • Redirect to a script : Enter the complete script path on the machine that hosts the website.

  7. Click Activate tab.

  For any further assistance please feel free to mail us on support@micfo.com

  Tags: E-mail filter, Internet, spam, Spam Filter

• 13Nov

  Quick Preview of Load Balancing

  Computer, Customer Service, Dedicated Server Hosting, General No Comments

  Load balancing is a term in computer networking, it is a technique in which work can be spread between two or more computers, hard drives, other resources or CPU’s. By using the load balancing technique optimum resource utilization can be achieved, the response time too improves. There is an increased reliability achieved through redundancy, if multiple components are used with load balancing instead of one. A multi-layer switch can be used to get the balancing service.

  

  Load balancing can be used as a link between internal communications in computer clusters basically high availability clusters.

  The main application of load balancing is to provide a single Internet service from multiple servers, also called the server farm. The load balanced systems include large Internet relay chat networks, NNTP and DNS servers, popular websites, and high bandwidth FTP (File Transfer Protocols) sites.

  In terms of Internet services a load balancer is a software where external clients connect to a port to access services. The load balancer forwards the request to a backend server which in turn replies back to the load balancer then the load balancer replies to the client. In this complete process the client is unaware of all the process which is carried out in the back-ground. By the load balance technique, the client need not contact the backend servers directly, which is good in terms of server security and attacks on kernel network stack securities.

  A round robin DNS does not require a dedicated software or hardware node, it is also an alternate method of load balancing. In this many IP addresses are associated with single domain name and the client has the option to choose between Dedicated servers. Load balancers use variety of scheduling algorithms to send the request to a particular backend server for processing the request. Load balancers use various factors such as servers reported load, response time up/down status, amount of traffic, number of active connections etc. to chose between backend servers. High performance systems use multiple layers of load balancing.

  Features Of Load Balancer

  There are many special featured offered with Load Balancer’s.

  • SSL Offload and Acceleration : SSL applications can be a heavy burden on resources of a Web Server. The CPU might respond late and the users might get a slow response. To solve such problems, a load balancer which is capable of handling SSL Offloading with a special hardware can be used. The burden on the web servers can be reduced without the performance getting hampered when the load balancer takes care of the SSL connection.
  • HTTP caching : The load balancer has the capability of storing static content hence some requests can be handled without contacting the web servers.
  • HTTP Security : The load balancer can hide the HTTP error pages, remove server identification headers from HTTP responses and also encrypt cookies which prevents users from manipulating them.
  • Asymmetric Load : Ratio can be manually assigned inorder to give greater load on particular servers than others.
  • Priority Activation : The standby servers can be brought online when some of the servers fails or the load on the available servers gets too high.
  • Content aware switching : The load balancers have the capability to send requests to different servers based on the URL been requested.
  • Firewall : From security perspective, direct connection to the backend servers can be prevented by the use of a load balancer.
  • HTTP Compression : It reduces the amount of data to be transferred for HTTP objects by using gzip compression.
  • Priority Queuing : Or rate shipping is the ability to give different priority to different traffic.
  • TCP Buffering : Responses from the server get buffered and fed to clients.
  • Content Filtering : The load balancer can randomly modify the traffic.
  • TCP Offload : Every HTTP request is a different TCP connection. This feature utilizes HTTP/1.1 to combine multiple HTTP requests from multiple clients into a single TCP socketto the back end servers.

  Tags: backend server, Computer Networking, DNS servers, internal communications, Internet service, kernel, load balance technique, Load Balancing, multi-layer switch, optimum resource utilization, round robin DNS, Server Security, servers

• 13Nov

  Joomla Content Management System.

  Customer Service, General, cpanel No Comments

  

  Joomla is a free open source Content Management System. Joomla can be used to publish data on the intranets and World Wide Web. The system includes page caching to improve performance, language internationalization, printable versions of pages, RSS feeds, blogs, polls, forums, news flashes. Joomla is licensed under GPL.

  Joomla is written in PHP programming language and uses MySQL as a default database.

  The Joomla package consists of many different parts. It allows modular extensions and integrations. Plugins provide new functionality to Joomla. Plugins are the background extensions. WikiBot allows users of Joomla to use Wikitags which automatically creates dynamic hyperlinks to Wikipedia articles. Over 3,500 extensions for Joomla are available via extension directory.

  

  In addition to Plugins more wide-ranged extensions are available such as Components. It allows web masters to build a community by expanding user features, create a back up of web site, translate content and create URL’s which are more friendly to search engines. Modules perform the task of displaying calendar or allow custom code such as Google AdSense to be inserted in the base code of Joomla.

  Joomla allows administrators to set global configuration parameters which effects every article.

  Tags: blogs, CMS, Content Management System, Joomla, Joomla Content Management System, MySQL, Open Source, PHP, RSS feeds, WikiBot, Wikipedia, Wikitags

• 04Nov

  Differences between Shared Web Hosting And VPS Hosting.

  Customer Service, Database Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, Linux Hosting, Linux VPS, Linux web hosting, Micfo Web Hosting, Virtual Private Server, Web Hosting, Windows Web Hosting, cPanel Hosting No Comments

  Shared Web Hosting can also be termed as Budget Web Hosting. Shared web hosting is the most common web hosting service. If you have chosen a shared web hosting package then your account shares the same server with many other website accounts. The resources of a single server is shared with multiple customers, hence it becomes economical for both the web hosting company as well as the website owner or customer. Every website shares the same IP (Internet Protocol) address as well as the host name in shared web hosting. This type of hosting can be selected when your website is new and the web traffic is less. But as the traffic increases one should upgrade the web hosting account to a better package which might be dedicated server hosting or semi-dedicated web hosting, because as your website shares the resources of the same server with other websites the speed and performance of your website gets hampered. This in return might affect the traffic to your website.

  VPS web hosting is similar to a dedicated web hosting operationally. It presents users root SSH access, administrative tools, privilege to install software’s and applications. The only difference between VPS hosting and dedicated hosting is the price, VPS is much more cheaper and affordable than dedicated web hosting. VPS is an abbreviation of Virtual Private Server, hence as the name suggests, users get to use a virtual atmosphere with the privileges very similar to dedicated server resources. Choosing a VPS package enables users to create, modify and delete e-mail accounts. They can manage the servers as per their requirements. Users can install whichever software or operating system as per requirements. The resources of the server are not shared with any other customer or website which is the opposite case in shared web hosting. So, indirectly you are the owner of the server and can do any operation you wish to.

  Tags: dedicated server, Dedicated Server Hosting, Internet Protocol, IP, semi-dedicated web hosting, Shared Web Hosting, Virtual Private Server, vps, VPS Web Hosting, Web Hosting, web hosting package, web hosting service, web traffic

• 04Nov

  What is Internet Domain Hosting?

  Customer Service, Database Hosting, Domain Name, Micfo Web Hosting, Web Hosting No Comments

  Internet Domain Hosting can also be called as Web Hosting. Internet domain hosting is a cheaper and simpler way of hosting your web-sites. Selecting an internet domain hosting package helps you set up and run your own websites. You need not spend on hiring or owning large and expensive servers and keep it in a data centre.

  

  CLICK to view the headaches involved in opting for owning your own servers. Internet domain hosting exists almost from the beginning of the internet era, as people need a place where they can host their websites with simplicity. Web hosting providers have to manage domains as well with their internet domain hosting packages offered to customers who have hosted their web-sites with them. Now a days we can find many Internet Domain Hosting providers.

  There are multiple factors that one should take into consideration. The most important factor that you must keep in mind is your requirements, and accordingly you should select a web hosting package. Many times a good and reputed web hosting service provider asks you various questions and accordingly after understanding your requirements, suggests you the best web hosting package. For selecting such a web hosting service, one should do a good research before hosting your website with any of them. Doing this will save your money as well as time.

  A good Internet Domain Hosting company has powerful and fast computers which are also called as servers to host their clients websites onto their servers.

  

  Incase some does not know terms here are few terms that can be seen on any of the web hosting service providers websites :

  RAID : This is a form of server back-ups. On a timely basis the content of your website is backed up, it is helpful incase your website fails or is not funtioning. Using the back-up, it can be restored and your website would be operational again within a very short period of time.

  Bandwidth : It depends on the bandwidth of the server to transfer data to and from your website and the visitor’s computer. The bandwidth is measured in Giga Bytes (GB)

  Disk Space : This is the amount of server space that is allotted to your website. It may vary depending on your web hosting package.

  The success of your website largely depends on the selection of web hosting service provider. If the hardware that the hosting service provider is poor, then the services that you get are definitely going to get hampered. So it’s a crucial decision for you to select the Web Hosting Service providing company.

  Tags: BANDWIDTH, data centre, Disk Space, Domain Hosting, domain hosting package, Internet Domain Hosting, RAID, Server, server space, Web Hosting, Web hosting providers, web hosting service, websites

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