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

cPanel, Plesk and DotNet Panel are the control panels offered by most of the professional web hosting service providers. These control panels provided by the hosting firms, help users to manage different tasks of web hosting. These panels simplifies the tasks for the support staff too, as clients are able to carry out majority of the tasks on their own. Tasks that can be simplified with the use of these control panels, are management of web services, E-mails, DNS and Database on both half’s i.e. client and administrator. Most web hosting service providers offer control panel access as a standard feature for the web hosting accounts. These control panels are simple to use, a person with no webmaster skills can operate it too, and hence this is one of the major reasons why these control panels have been widely preferred by web hosting service providers and their users.

cPanel offers support for Linux Servers only. That limits web hosts to offer cPanel with Linux Servers only. Whereas, DotNet Panel supports Windows Servers only. DotNet Panel Windows Hosting is another type of web hosting solution offered by web hosting providers. While Plesk control panel is compatible with Linux as well as with Windows web hosting platforms. But, DotNet Panel is more preferred for managing Windows Hosting accounts than Plesk due to its stability.

cPanel, Plesk and DotNet Panel all have their own advantages when used by customers and administrators of Web hosting services. Usually, Plesk and DotNet Panel are more preferred and offered with Windows Web Hosting service and cPanel with Linux Web Hosting solutions.

PLESK

Advantages of Plesk control panel.

• Windows Support : Plesk works with Windows Web hosting which enables web hosting service providers to offer Windows based web hosting packages to the customers. Websites designed using ASP and ASP.NET works only on Windows servers, so you are not left with any option other than choosing Windows Web Hosting services. Customers usually prefer DotNet Panel instead of Plesk for managing Windows Web Hosting accounts. But, if DNP isn’t available then Plesk too is a good alternative.

• Windows Service Support : As Plesk can be used on Windows based servers it has the capability to integrate with multiple Windows based programs. It has an advanced feature support for some Windows programs such as Microsoft SQL Server which can be managed by Plesk by server administrators and clients with their own databases which makes it an ideal control panel solution for Windows.

• Cross Platform Compatibility : From a system administrator’s point of view,  one may find it more beneficial having a single control panel on all the servers. Mastering a single control panel is much simpler than mastering two. As a customer one may find it easy since it means that one should be able to get the same sort of features from both Linux as well as from Windows web hosting solutions.

Though Plesk seems to be perfect for Windows web hosting packages, it can also be used for Linux packages.

DOTNET PANEL (DNP)

DNP is probably the best available solution that is developed for simplifying Windows Hosting management operations. It offers its users with greater flexibility. It is written in C# and comprises with the latest technologies such as WMI, ADSI, SOAP Web Services with Web enhancements and N velocity Templates engine.

DNP offers support for Exchange Server 2007, Windows Share Point Services, IIS 7.0, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and a new VPS solution for complete Enterprise level automation of virtualization. It is reputed as the fastest AJAX enabled control panel.

Features of DotNet Panel:

• Easy Usability: The installation process is fairly simple and easy. You are not required to waste days for making the control panel work for you.

• Security: Most advanced security technology such as asymmetric cryptography, process isolation and Web Services messages signing is used in DNP.

• Multi-Server: DNP is remarkably scalable, distributed n-tier application.

cPANEL

cPanel is a preferred control panel for Linux web hosting services. Benefits of cPanel are as follows.

• More Features of Linux : cPanel encompasses more features for Linux web hosting solutions than Plesk control panel. cPanel can be used in combination with different add-ons such as Fantastico script installer and CFS firewall to provide customers a wide range of services which can be used from their web hosting accounts control panel, such features can’t be used on Plesk Linux Web Hosting servers.

• Reseller Support : Apart from Plesk 9.0 version, other versions does not provide support for reseller web hosting accounts whereas cPanel offers good support for resellers. cPanel is available with the Web Host Manager (WHM) panel which allows resellers to control all different aspects of their reseller accounts including the configuring of their own packages and the setting up of client web hosting accounts.

• Faster Loading : cPanel’s internal pages load more faster than those of Plesk and certain tasks are carried out quicker than they would be with the Plesk control panel. cPanel does not rely on external databases in much cases, this is one of the reasons of the smooth functioning. cPanel has proven to be more reliable than Plesk on Linux.
  

Unmanaged web hosting is one of the other type of web hosting solution. One can choose the unmanaged dedicated server plan inorder to avail the unmanaged server. A customer is provided with the hardware and the Operating System installed on the server. Other tasks such as installation of applications and server maintenance, needs to be taken care by the user himself.

All the executive files and the dynamic link libraries files necessary for the website needs to be installed by oneself. The user is free to choose and install the applications and softwares required for the website as s/he is the sole controller of the dedicated server.

The user posses the rights to resell the server space at any point of time to others. This can help you cover the cost of the dedicated server in the meantime server your purpose.

A dedicated web server hosting is the best suitable web hosting solution for businesses and large enterprises. An unmanaged dedicated server hosting can prove to be profitable if you posses the required server management skills. There are number of users who have transformed their businesses into huge profit gaining business by opting for an unmanaged dedicated server hosting solution.

However, one needs to carefully select the such a dedicated web hosting provider. The appropriate web hosting server can help the website’s success and in-turn growth in the business.

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.

As an amateur, any webmaster can get confused with the common web hosting terms which can make things complicated. Therefore, below is a list of commonly used terms in the business of Web Hosting.

Bandwidth : Bandwidth is the term that is used to describe the amount of data that is passed or is estimated to travel across a communication channel in an estimated period of time. It can be measured monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or Annually. It depends on the plan a client signs-up for.

Hosting Plan (Dedicated Hosting) : A dedicated hosting is recommended for websites that incur high amounts of traffic. A user gets complete root/administrative access to the server. Same is the benefit with a VPS or Virtual Private Server.

Gigabytes (Hard Disk Space) : It is an unit to measure a computers storage capacity. One Gigabyte equals one billion bytes.

DNS : DNS is an abbreviation of Domain Name Server. It differentiates between different institutes such as .com, .us, etc.

Domain parking : When an individual or any company purchase domain names and keep it unused is known as domain parking. Later when required, they can link those domains to their required old domain. Domain parking has become a common way of business, individuals buy domains in a bulk, park it and then resell it at a higher price.

FTP : FTP or File Transfer Protocol is a common way of transferring files or data across a network in a secure way.

Auto-Responders: While auto-responders are not email accounts in themselves, they are assigned an email address and it auto-respond to anyone who sends them an email. The reply is a pre-formatted email and every response is identical to the corresponding queries.

HTTP and HTML : HTTP or Hyper Text Transfer Protocol is used inorder to request or transmit web pages and components over the Internet and various other computer networks.

HTML is an abbreviation of Hyper Text MarkUp Language which is used to structure the multimedia and text present in a website. It also creates hyper text links between electronic documents.

ISP : One might be aware of this, an ISP is the Internet Service Provider. An ISP is essential if one wishes to connect to their servers.

There are many more terms that I would describe in my later post. The above mentioned terms of Web Hosting are some of the very commonly used one’s and are essential for a webmaster to know.

Active Server Pages or ASP Web Hosting is one of the different Web Hosting solutions. It means that a web hosting provider offers support for ASP. Embedding an ASP code into a website’s HTML page transformers it to a dynamic data driven website. If a visitor browsing a website developed using ASP, the pages can change according to the action of the users.

An ASP code permits oneself to link web pages to a database. A user can interact with the web page by logging in and using their own personal settings or interactively place orders on the website.

Let us understand ASP first. ASP is an abbreviation of Active Server Pages. These are HTML pages which contain ASP scripts embedded into it. That helps in creating dynamic database driven web-pages, a user can access data in a database as well as interact with page objects like Java Components or Active X.

When a user enters a URL in the browser or clicks on a web page one is requesting to send a file to the users computer, it is in a form of normal HTML format. When the users browser receives the web page it would look exactly the same as it did on the server. On the other hand, if an ASP file is received by the users computer, the ASP code could be the current date, or time etc.

One can find number of web hosting providers who offer support for ASP. It is safer to host a website developed in ASP on a Windows 2000 Server, as they are more stable and most of the ASP components work well with Internet Information Services (IIS). One needs to host an ASP web site on Windows Server only, as it is a Microsofts product and does not support Linux. Hence, one can also search for web hosts that offer Windows Web Hosting services.

An individual, when choosing a web hosting company, usually takes into consideration the bandwidth and diskspace that is offered with a particular package. Along with this the uptime is the true point of attraction. Most web hosting companies offer an uptime guarantee. But, it is necessary to understand the true meaning of this.

The web hosting uptime is a measurement of the time a server has been running, the longer the uptime, the better is the service. Uptime is not only crucial for web hosting companies, but to any company or individual having a web-site. It is very important for any website to be functional 24×7, as there might be multiple number of visitors in search of information or services that a particular website offers. And, for that the website should be hosted with a web hosting provider who provides maximum uptime guarantee.

There are various factors that may affect a web hosting uptime. Users too should understand that web hosting providers strive hard to keep the servers up and running smooth, but sometimes there are unavoidable circumstances such as natural calamities/disasters, that might affect the uptime committed by the web hosting provider.

Usually, the downtime is classified in three ways. 1. Planned Downtime, 2. Semi planned Downtime and 3. Unplanned Downtime

1. Planned Downtime can be caused when a server is scheduled for an upgrade or down-grade. Web hosts keep the clients informed about such changes to the server.
2. Semi-Planned Downtime: It may be caused when software providers find a solution to a known loop hole in the application and release a patch to overcome the problem, and it needs to be put into place.
3. Unplanned Downtime: This is the worst and most frustrating (at times) type of downtime, it may be caused due to software or hardware malfunction, server overload and attack the server or a malicious software.

The uptime guarantees provided by a Web Hosting provider, is based on the past information. There are few ways to maintain and monitor the uptime. Also, there are services that provide 24×7 monitoring. But, large web hosting companies usually have a separate department that looks after the uptime and monitor their servers 24×7. Today, there are techniques by which a web hosting company can actually provide 100% uptime. But, this service can be provided by larger companies only, as the hardware required for such architecture is almost double than that of a small web hosting company.

Some companies take the efforts to inform their customers about the possible downtime. Larger hosting providers are able to recover faster from the downtime than the smaller one’s.

An individual should do thorough research when choosing a web hosting company. It can avoid the downtime of a particular website. There are applications available, that are capable of tracking a web hosting companies uptime. One can also visit different forums provided by either web hosting providers or other review forums to learn more about and particular company.

If a website is already hosted with some web hosting provider and is facing downtime, it is recommended to contact their technical support department and lodge a ticket/complaint against the issue. If one faces the same problem frequently, then looking for a better hosting provider is the best possible alternative to avoid downtime.

Hello,

If you want ot create new partition on linux server and mount it to specific directory then you have to follow the following steps

login to your linux server with root user

First of all verify which partition type and how many partitions available on your linux server.

You can get it with

#fdisk -l