Web Hosting Blog

First of all one must understand if your website needs an SSL certificate installed. SSL is an abbreviation of Secure Socket Layer. It is used for transfer of data through a secure channel i.e. between computers and the servers in an encrypted format. A website that involves online transactions, or share sensitive data, then it is highly recommended to install an SSL certificate onto the domain. A web hosting provider does offer SSL certificates or one can even purchase an SSL directly from the manufacturers. One thing to be highlighted is that, SSL is a third party offering, so the web hosting provider has nothing to do with it. They would just get the SSL installed as a part of customer service. Inorder to have an SSL certificate installed onto the domain, you require a dedicated IP. Depending on the web hosting service provider, they would offer it for free alongwith the SSL certificate.

Prior to the installation of the SSL certificate, you are required to generate the key for SSL certificate and a CSR. If you haven’t done so, below are the steps for the same.

Procedure to Generate Private Key for SSL Certificate

You are required to have a Dedicated IP, inorder to generate a Key for SSL certificate. You cannot proceed further without the IP address known. Once you have it, below is the procedure to generate the key:

1. Log into your control panel

2. Click the SSL MANAGER Icon (or “SSL/TLS Manager”)

3. Click the Private Key icon (or “Generate, view, upload or delete your private keys”) Scroll down to Generate a New Key and select the domain you wish to use with the SSL certificate.

4. Make sure you enter “www” in the box preceding the domain name if you want the certificate to be on www.domainname.com, as a domain without www. is considered as a different domain altogether, and you would face errors.

5. If you want the SSL Certificate to be on a subdomain, you are required to create it in cpanel, then enter the subdomain when generating the key.

6. Once the selection of the domain you wish to use is done, click on “Generate” this would generate the public key file.

7. You are required to save this information for future use. Though you can retrieve the Key file from the server whenever required, but in case somehow due to an unexpected error the information on the server is lost or the key file is lost, you may need to purchase a new SSL Certificate. Hence, to be on the safer side, it is advisable to save the information.

The next stage is to generate the CSR. Below is the procedure for the same.

Procedure to Generate CSR

CSR is an abbreviation of Certificate Signing Request. Here again, a dedicated IP and the Key file is required.

1. Click “SSL Manager” (or “SSL/TLS Manager”) to generate the CSR

2. Click on Certificate Signing Requests (CSR) (or “Generate, view, or delete SSL certificate signing requests”)

3. For the HOST, choose the domain name that you’ve generated the KEY for. Make sure that you select the www version if you wish to install the certificate using www.

Note that, if you have made a key for www.domainname.com, you will need to include the www too. Its essential to enter the same domain name that was used for generation of the key file.

Incase you are unable to select www.domainname.com from the list, it might be possible that you probably did not add (www) to the key you generated. If you need www in the certificate and can’t select your www.domain.com from the list, you are required to repeat the procedure of key generation, make sure you include www.

4. Having done so, you are required to complete with filling the information in the form.

5. Click on Generate

Here again you must save this information.

Once you have your SSL certificate, get your generated Key, CA bundle & CRT files, follow the below steps to Install the SSL Certificate.

1. You must be logged in to your control panel of your domain.

2. Click SSL Installer OR
Click on SSL/TLS Manager icon (it various with the version of the control panel), then click Setup a SSL Certificate.

3. Choose the domain name from the drop down menu at the top

It is required to uninstall any previous certificate by clicking the Delete Host button for installing a new certificate.

4. Now, you need to paste the CRT file provided to you by the company from whom you’ve purchased the SSL Certificate.

5. The KEY file must have automatically appeared, incase its not, then click FETCH to import it. If it still does not appear, you should paste a copy of your KEY.

6. The Certificate Authority (CA) file is the last step. Some SSL Companies provide this. You will need to paste the contents of the CA file now

7. Now click the “Do It” button (or “Install Certificate”) and wait.

This ends the process of your SSL Certificate on your desired domain.

The web hosting provider can help you in the installation of the SSL certificate.

For further information, you can check Steps to enable SSL for all customers Interacting with your Web site in Internet Information Services

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.

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.

To create web presence, one needs to submit a web-site on the Internet and for this purpose some space is required. The amount and nature of server space featured in the website determines the size of the web page. A web hosting provider can be the best guide for determining the space and service that would best suite the web-sites requirements.

For the purpose of bring a company or products/services to the knowledge of the world, web hosting proves to be an essential entity. By making a web presence people come to know about one’s company and its objectives. The information or services offered by one’s company can be viewed by people whenever required on the internet. To make a good impact on the web or Internet world, the web-site should be logically and professionally developed. The website must have a quality of catching the attention of readers. Relevant content is extremely important if the website is designed for targeting particular audience. Selecting the correct domain name too plays an important role in the success of the web-site. If the purpose of the website is clear then it simplifies the task of the web host to suggest the appropriate service to be offered. All this is essential because web space is required for hosting the website on an appropriate server. The information provided by you can be accessed by anyone who has an Internet connection. The web hosting companies provide server space with some monthly, quarterly, half yearly, yearly, etc. for dedicated, shared, VPS, co-located etc. server hosting packages. One of these packages can be selected depending on the budget and the purpose of the web site. Before opting to host the web-site on the space offered by web hosting company, one needs to be cautious and careful at selecting a web hosting company.

Many might think that, is hosting the web site with a web hosting provider really important or is it really required? Then I would say that its not must but is always helpful and convenient as there are a lot of other critical factors involved in hosting the web site. ­­­­­­ For example: Hosting an eCommerce web-site requires additional security and upto-date technical services. Even if the web-site owner is thorough with web hosting techniques yet hosting a web-site with a web hosting company is always recommended. They have profession crew to take care of technical or other issues related to the web-site. They are well acquainted with web hosting services. They are dedicated towards delivering quality services. They are the best people to guide you to understand the actual amount of web hosting necessary.

Depending on the purpose of the website, the number and size of web pages may vary. The web host may come handy in suggesting the exact web space that might be essential for hosting the web-site. But the final decision is always upto the owner of the web-site. It’s a simple equation: More the web space = More Information can be stored on the website. As the site grows older and the traffic to the web site increases more server space becomes necessary.

Server space for Personal web-sites: 2 Mb to 10 Mb is required for personal web sites. The reason for suggesting this much space is because after considering that personal web pages are developed in a very simple way without much input. Usually such web sites need least space and bandwidth hence cheap web hosting packages can be opted.

Server space for Commercial web-sites: 50Mb disk space can be opted for commercial and business websites considering the fact that they contain larger number of variety web pages.

Server space for Corporate web-sites: 500 Mb space is recommended as such sites contain ample information and also require large web space for e-mails. Documents, press releases and news items are also covered in this website and hence consume lots of server space.

SUMMARY

Server space is the primary factor based on which an appropriate web hosting company is selected. It must be confirmed with the web hosting company that they can provide with the necessary web server space or not. Reliable web hosting firm is one of the most important factors affecting the success of the web-site.

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.

E-commerce web hosting is the type of web hosting which a business uses in order to sell products directly from their websites. Typically an E-commerce web hosts offer SSL certificates. SSL certificates are important for the protection of the private data and identity of potential customers. Business web hosting supports different variety of shopping carts for example: Cube Cart, Zen Cart, OsCommerce Shopping cart etc. Payment can be accepted online in many different ways. Usually Ecommerce sites support merchant accounts and Google checkout.

For carrying out such online trade, it is essential to have an account with a web hosting company which supports online shopping and has the latest trends and technology. The web hosting firm should have the capability of matching the plan ti the actual needs. Depending on the budget, many different packages offered by web hosting companies.

E-commerce is growing with a rapid pace hence E-commerce hosting companies have designed their plan to meet specific needs of the customers. There are few things that should be taken into consideration before choosing a web hosting company which are as follows:

1. Internet Speed: One needs to make sure that the E-commerce web-site is hosted on a fast data center.
2. Security: The environment in which the site is hosted must be extremely secure.
3. Support: The web hosting service provider must provide 24×7x365 days service.
4. Data Back-Ups: One needs to be aware of the schedule of data back-ups done by the web hosting company.
5. PHP/ CGI Perl Support: The support for this should be included by the web host.
6. Secure Socket Layer (SSL): E-commerce web-sites involve financial transactions, hence the web hosting provider should support SSL secure servers encryption.
7. Support For Database: Database support such as MySQL must be provided should be offered by the web hosts.
8. Server Uptime: The E-commerce business depends on the uptime as customers might visit anytime to the website and purchase the products offered by you. It is very important to make sure that the host provides atleast 99.99% uptime.
9. Unique IP Address: One should atleast ask the web hosts to provide minimum 2 unique IP addresses for the website to be hosted.
10. Automation: For the E-commerce web-site to be successful, one need access to powerful tools which automate various critical processes/tasks.

The E-commerce web-site should be designed in such a way that the visitor should be comfortable in searching the products or services offered by you. The web-site must have a Shopping Cart software or application without which an E-commerce web-site is incomplete. Flexibility is another major thing while choosing a web host. The web host must be capable of supporting the changing requirements of the web-site. Proper selection of payment gateways is important.