Webhosting
Webhosting Basics
When you buy webhosting, you buy 'space' on a computer. Space being: disk space, memory, CPU usage and network bandwidth... the whole package.
Your webhosting machine is likely to be a rack mounted PC with loads of memory and disk space, stuck in a big air-conditioned 'server farm' with tens or hundreds or similar machines. They'll all be connected via a high-speed link to the Internet.
There are 3 basic webhosting options:
- Simple Webhosting - you get some webspace and a URL like:
"www.yahoo.com/members/~mypages/".
- Virtual Server - you get a 'virtual' machine to yourself - this allow you to have a URL like: "www.mydomain.com", but you're actually sharing the computer.
- Dedicated Server - You get a real machine all to yourself.
The 'virtual server' option is the most cost-efficient if you want your own domain name.
TIP: You may have webspace available to you through your ISP. It may be good enough for your first website (or it's development).
You'll have to decide if it meets your requirements... i.e. do you need your own domain name, to run cgi programs, or have a customer database? Does your existing account provide those things?... If it's good enough then you may not need a separate account. |
You'll be using a Unix based webhost. It's a stable, mature and well designed operating system that comes free, in the form of Linux... This means linux webhosting can be cheap.
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INFO: Each web server machine will be running 'webserver' software (like Apache that does the work of responding to request from browsers and serving out the web pages. They'll also be running email software like qmail or sendmail. |
Some webhosting companies allow you to host multiple domains in one account. If you're definitely planning a number of sites, then it's an option you should consider. Most of these accounts are aimed at developers and webhosting resellers.
The most common webhosting features... |
| Support | Free email support is essential. You're bound to have a few questions or problems. The really desirable feature is to get quick, accurate responses, whether it's by phone or email - it shouldn't matter. It's very difficult to judge this by someone's ad though.
Once your site is up and running, you shouldn't need to talk to them much so I'm not sure it's worth paying a premium for fantastic support. |
| Uptime/Reliability | Is there any guarantee that your server will be working properly? This is usually given as a percentage of time. Your webhost should offer uptime of at least 99%. Checking they deliver on this, and penalising them if they don't is tricky however. |
| Disk Space | How much disk space your website and other files can occupy. You want to get as much of this as possible. It's easy to fill up disk space when you start writing things into a database. Even if your pages aren't very big, storing info on your hits / leads / customers / activities can use up more space than you might think. |
| Bandwidth | How much data the webserver can send from your domain to browsers. i.e. if your home page is 10K and it's viewed 10 times a day, that's 3000K(3Mb)/30days. Once again - get as much as you can. Most hosts - if the limit is breached - will charge you extra. |
| Control Panel | Gives you access to your account via a 'friendly' interface. It's quite possible to operate your account without one of these, but a good control panel makes administration of your account a lot easier. You can up/download files, change permissions, password protect directories, administer your databases etc... |
| Mailboxes | How many email addresses can you have @yourdomain.com. Unless you're planning on giving lots of people their own mailbox, you only really need one or two - i.e. sales@ or webmaster@yourdomain.com |
| Email aliases | Not real addresses - they forward to a real address of your choice. |
| Autoresponders | Robots that send a fixed response to emails received and store the incoming address. These are useful for marketing purposes. By the end of the course, you should have enough experience to write your own autoresponders! |
| Sub-domains | How many something.yourdomain.com addresses you can have. |
| Multiple Domains | How many www.somedomain.com addresses you can have. |
| PHP | PHP is a programming language that you embed in your HTML code. It can do anything a CGI program can do, it's easy to learn and has good support for lots of useful features like mail, cookies and databases. Essential. |
| MySQL | This is a super-fast SQL relational database. You store your data in here, then you can retrieve it using SQL (Structured Query Language). See the page on MySQL for more details. Essential. |
| CGI-Bin | (Common Gateway Interface. Bin means 'binary' which means an executable program in Unix). With your own cgi-bin directory, you can write and run Perl scripts to do almost anything you can think of. Many of the big email systems, databases and search engines on the Web were built using CGI and Perl. |
| Example Perl scripts etc. | Common ones are hit counters, guest books. These may be of some use, but are unnecessary. All the scripts you need are included in this course. |
| Telnet / SSH | Telnet allows you to login to your webhosting computer - see the page on Telnet and Unix for more info. Essential. |
| The following are Microsoft products, and may not be available on a Unix machine... |
| SQLServer | This is a commercial database. |
| ASP | Active Server Pages - Allows dynamic content. Similar to PHP or CGI. |
| FrontPage Extensions | Allows some extra features in Internet Explorer browsers. |
Your Webhosting Account
There are over 10,000 different webhosting packages available worldwide! Most of them will be offering far less, for far more than the recommended accounts. Go for the best deal you can, paying more is no guarantee of anything.
Some say your webserver should be physically located near your customers. It's true that it takes longer if the information has to travel physically further. In the big scheme of things, however, I don't think it really matters. Just writing your webpages efficiently will make the biggest difference to download times. Besides, the best webhosting deals are not in the UK!
It can be tricky finding an account with telnet/SSH access. While it's not strictly necessary for running your website (if you have a good ftp program and control panel), it's essential if you want to get to know Unix. Using telnet to access your account will help you understand Unix, and it gives you to access to lots more useful functionality.
I have purchased accounts from all of the recommended companies (and a few more besides which didn't make the grade.) and assessed the level of service. You shouldn't go wrong with any of them.
| TIP: There are loads of webhosting offers out there - but many are simply reselling space they bought from one of the major providers. While this is no bad thing, it does mean you should be able to get the same deal for less. |
You should get a webhosting account with one of the providers listed in the next module, or another if you want. If you already have a domain name, then go to your registrar, and (if they aren't your intended webhost) either set up a forwarding system, or ask them to transfer it to your webhost.
Both the registrar and webhost should explain the procedure for transfers somewhere on their website. Usually you have to fill in an online form (perhaps pay a little, hopefully not) then sign & post a form you either print yourself. The process should take no more than a month at most, maybe just a few days.
INFO: Multiple Websites Solution Using Domain Forwarding: This is a very cheap and simple solution if you want to have more than one website. It uses domain forwarding, however, so you can only submit the forwarded domain names to some of the search engines.
- Buy your domain names at oneandone.
e.g. you buy: sporty-shoez.biz, funky-flip-flops.com and slinky-sandals.info
- Buy one webhosting account from phpwebhosting.
- Transfer one of the domains to phpwebhosting. This is a 'real' domain and the address can be submitted to all search engines.
e.g. you transfer: sporty-shoez.biz.
- Create one directory for each of the other domains on your webhosting machine. (You can give them any name, but it's better to name them the same as your domain names.)
e.g. you'd type:
[you@self yourname]$ cd www
[you@self yourname]$ mkdir funky-flip-flops.com slinky-sandals.info
- Finally, set up the redirection info for each of your domains at oneandone:
e.g. in your oneandone account, there is a setup page where it says (something like):
Redirection address URL for funky-flip-flops.com: "http://myaccount.phpwebhosting.com/funky-flip-flops.com/index.php"
...There will be one for each domain...
You could now add your web pages to these directories, and they would behave like 3 independent websites - each with unlimited space and traffic. Plus, they're much easier to manage because:
- You only have to login to one webhosting account.
- You only need learn one environment.
- You can put all your data into a single database.
Adding a new website under this scheme only costs as much as the domain name with forwarding - i.e. Really Cheap!
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Initial Set-Up
Once you've signed up for your webhosting account there are a few things we need to get them to do straight away. (You may get the opportunity to ask for these things at signup!) Email them asking for the following:
- Enable Telnet and SSH, and also FTP access to your account.
- If you don't want to use PayPal, ask them if they can forward emails to a script for you.
- If you want any sub-domains set up, let them know.
- Set up any email addresses you want.
More Info
For more info on webhosting, check out:
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