Web Hosting Today

edicated hosting is a smart choice if you have determined that you need an entire server and Internet connection specifically reserved for your business activity. Shared servers may be cheaper and less of a commitment than dedicated hosting, but these advantages will quickly fade in comparison to the problems you might experience. Without a dedicated host, you could have problems with speed, reliability, and the ability to customize your web site environment.

Speed: Server response times in a shared hosting environment depend highly on the activity of the other sites your company is sharing with. Dedicated web hosting enables you to better control your server response times and more efficiently manage any related issues that arise.

Reliability: With a dedicated hosting environment, you have unlimited access to the operating system, software applications, and database applications. This allows you a reliable way to meet the needs of your customers - it’s all there when you need it. A dedicated server can also provide better security for your site, shielding you from the problems that can develop when others are using the same server.

Customization: As your company grows, your web site will have to keep up with it. The dedicated hosting option allows you to adapt your applications, increase bandwidth, and upgrade your hard drive as needed.

Dedicated hosting is available with Unix, Windows, and Mac based servers. Take time to look closely at the various companies out there that offer dedicated hosting.

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Doing successfully business on the Internet requires some sort of automated payment processing in place. Imagine a customer ready to buy your services but then not being able to sign up and pay because there is no payment (credit card) processing in place. Don’t let this happen.

During the process of building/starting a business there are several stages of payment processing that you can implement. When you are starting out your own credit card merchant account might be hard to get. Your business has to establish credit first. It might also be way too expensive for you. A real merchant account adds a monthly fee of at least $30.00 to your budget. You also have to sign a contractual agreement requiring at least 1 year of commitment + the payment of a hefty application fee. Many newcomers do consider this a burden they do not want to carry right away. And they are correct. Especially in the beginning it is very important to keep a close look at your expenses. Do not spend money when not really needed.

You can look at a few low-cost alternatives. They require only a small application fee (if at all) and no monthly or yearly commitment. If you do not have anything to process there won’t be any fees. Can’t beat that. What are your low-cost options at all?

Take a look at…

http://www.2checkout.com, http://www.payquake.com/, or at http://www.PayPal.com.

These low-cost payment processors offer everything you need when starting out. No monthly fees are required to pay ? though PayPal offers a full-blown merchant account nowadays. These companies usually offer payment processing for slightly higher transaction fees than it would cost you having your own merchant account, but that is a fair trade-off. They also offer fraud checking on orders, which you would not have when operating on your own merchant account.

So, why is not everyone using these services? What is the catch? We already mentioned the higher fees for the transaction. Reliability is another issue. Your business depends on the reliability of the partner chosen. A 3rd party processing company named Paysystems delivered the perfect example of being unreliable and later even shutting down business and leaving its customers out in the rain. Either Paysystems (Update: Paysystems is no longer doing business as a 3rd party payment processor) or 2Checkout were having problems occasionally. Their sites do not respond properly during these times and you were basically stuck - no payments could be processed. A business might lose a customer in a situation where you are unable to close the deal. Fortunately these things do not happen too often and especially newcomers do not have to expect new customers every minute. Still, this is something to keep an eye on. Due to legal requirements by the large credit companies your customers will technically not be your customers when it comes to the payment processing with these 3rd party providers. 2Checkout requires you to post a message accompanying the sale that your clients are buying your services from them and not from you. This can be very confusing and misleading to the potential customer. Your are also depending on the payout schedule and procedure of the payment processor. Not every business owner feels confident when using a 3rd party provider and trusting them the majority of their business cash flow. By using the 3rd party providers your clients will also not see your business name on their credit card statements but the name of the 3rd party provider. This can be confusing and problematic (possible charge-backs because the client does not associate the business name of the 3rd party provider with the services bought from you.

A good strategy for the new business owner can be to use more than one 3rd party provider. Sign-up fees are low (around $50.00) or non-existing (PayPal). You can rotate through the providers on a weekly base. Therefore your monthly sign-ups would go through different providers on average and you would be spreading the risk accordingly. If one provider goes out of business, you would only lose part of your money until all clients are switched to a different provider. Plan your credit card processing procedure carefully. If you buy 3rd party software for credit card processing - make sure you leave a backdoor open for the time when you switch to your own merchant account.

PayPal: PayPal can be confusing to clients, as it is not that obvious to spot where and how to make a payment when not being a PayPal customer. PayPal should not be your only way of processing credit card payments ? unless you choose their full-blown merchant account option. It can be a good idea to offer PayPal as an additional option though. Also - make sure you keep your business and personal stuff separated. ALWAYS have different PayPal accounts for your personal business and for your professional business. PayPal offers great tools to implement everything into your website so that even a beginner has a shopping cart up and running in a short time.

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You’ve probably heard of Ruby on Rails at this point. And you may have seen Web hosts offering support for Ruby on Rails. But perhaps you’re not yet familiar with what Ruby is, what Rails is, and how exactly one happens to be on the other.

If you’re not a developer yourself, then certainly you might be in the dark. Simple explanations of the technology are still pretty scarce online. However, you have almost certainly interacted with an application built using Rails, and it may be that the technology could benefit you or your business.

Ruby itself is a programming language, first introduced in 1995 by Yukihiro Matsumoto, along the lines of Perl or PHP. Ruby’s popularity among developers, say its advocates, has a lot to do with its focus on making programming fast and easy for developers.

Ruby on Rails, also known simply as “Rails” is a Web application framework written in the Ruby language.

A Web application framework is a collection of application building blocks that form a sort of supporting structure for a Web application. Most applications employ somewhat generic pieces of code that can be used repeatedly throughout the main application to perform functions like querying an SQL database and returning data for use by the rest of the application.

According to Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson, the framework was built from the generic parts created as he used Ruby to create Basecamp, the hosted Web-based project management tool from his company, 37signals.

Hansson made the pre-written libraries available as Rails, making the framework available for download at www.rubyonrails.org. Developers say the framework is broad enough to be suitable for building any kind of application, even while being incredibly simple and quick to use.

The tools include functions written for validating form data, application templates, sending and receiving email, formatting date and time, managing sessions and cookies, and building interactive functions into Web pages using AJAX.

AJAX, an acronym for Asynchronous Javascript and XML is a term that describes using a combination of Javascript, the Document Object Model and XML technologies to assemble page content in a browser from remote servers.

Ultimately, Ruby on Rails provides a simple and efficient environment for development using some of the latest technology and techniques for building Web applications. As a result, it is quickly becoming popular with developers, and there is every reason to believe that it will be an important part of application programming for years to come.

Already many hosts have introduced support for rails, and it is safe to assume that more hosts will continue to add their support as Rails becomes one of the key standards for Web development.

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ColdFusion is a product that acts as “middleware between any ODBC database (Access, Oracle, etc.) and Web server for the delivery of “live” data to Web pages. It allows users to develop applications that dynamically input data to and output data from a database via the Internet and the Web.

ColdFusion, which is made up several components, is a powerful application development tool that that enables developers to create interactive, dynamic Web sites. As a ColdFusion developer, you can create CF files by simply extending your existing HTML files with CFML (ColdFusion Mark-up Language - tag-based server-side scripting language) and SQL (Structured Query Language). These pages are processed by the CF server and sent back to the Web server as an HTML page, which is then passed to the browser.

Specifically, ColdFusion allows a developer to: query existing database applications for data; create dynamic queries facilitating more flexible data retrieval; execute stored procedures in databases that support them; execute conditional code on-the-fly to customize responses for specific situations; enhance the standard HTML form capabilities with data validation functions; dynamically populate form elements; customize the display of dates, times and currency values with formatting functions; and ease the creation of data entry and data drill-down applications with wizards.

ColdFusion is available on the NT platform from most reputable Web hosting firms. The most effective ColdFusion deployments are made on managed and dedicated platforms that have been specifically built for the customer. ColdFusion is also available on the UNIX platform, but is not widely available from hosting companies on this platform.

Usually the more inexpensive option for the developer on the UNIX platform is the use of the Hypertext Pre-processor (PHP). PHP is a server-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language that extends HTML so that database information can be queried as well. PHP is quite popular amongst open-source developers, because of its low-cost and speed to implement.

PHP itself is a module that plugs directly into the Apache Web server, the most popular server software in use. Once the PHP module is enabled, authorized users can add PHP code to their Web pages to tie into SQL relational databases. These databases run on open-source databases packages such as “mySQL.”

As with most open-source software, the cost for individual deployments of “mySQL” are free and organizational deployments are nominal. This makes PHP and mySQL a huge value for those deploying dedicated servers with database/Web integration capabilities. Many virtual hosts will offer mySQL and PHP, but performance will vary based on the number of shared hosts deployed on a multiplexed server. The can also be said of ColdFusion application.

Both ColdFusion and PHP however are excellent methods for integrating dynamic database content into your Web presence.

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