Online trading is a serious business and competition is incredibly stiff. Hosting your business on a shared server is cheaper, but can restrict your business endeavours if your traffic grows quickly. If you want to secure enough bandwidth for your expanding business website, the way to go is a CWCS dedicated server. Having a dedicated server at your disposal means you do not share your server with any other websites. You have the whole server for your use only. You are in control of everything and can decide what hardware and which operating system you want. You have the ability to customise all aspects of your website to suit your business needs. At the same time CWCS will take care of all your administrative needs for you, exclusivity for top performance. The biggest appeal of a dedicated server is the fact that the performance of your website cannot be affected at all by other websites sharing your server. This would have been the case with a shared hosting option and if another website sharing your hosting needed rebooting – yours could suffer as a result. With modern dedicated server options you can customise to suit your personal needs as to databases. Many businesses start out with the standard shared web hosting option. They switch to CWCS dedicated servers when their business has expanded and the space and bandwidth of shared hosting becomes insufficient. Realistically though, if shared hosting, which is cheaper, is no longer adequate, it is time to secure your business future with a CWCS dedicated server. The continued smooth running of your business is worth the higher price of a dedicated server.

NX server:-




One common misconception regarding Linux is that there is no simple way of using a remote desktop – (RDP). Linux has always had the capabilities of remote desktop functionality since it has had X support, however compared to RDP on Windows, it was always slow. VNC is an option however again it has speed drawbacks.




There are now several ways of remotely connecting to a Linux server’s desktop using NX technology (See the list at the bottom of the article) the speed of which outperforms terminal services / VNC – it is even acceptable on a dial-up modem, for those who are not yet on broadband.




Some of these apps also have the ability of free unlimited simultaneous users, compared to the 2 simultaneous users allowed on a standard version of Windows RDP.




Connecting remotely to a Linux server will allow you to access a wealth of useful, mainly free, GUI tools in Linux, you can install the Ubuntu-desktop environment, this would give you access to the OpenOfffice suite, you can use OpenOffice base with MySQL to have an Access style GUI asn an example. Some people also find it far easier to work in a desktop environment to perform server admin tasks then using the traditional and very tricky command line method (telnet/SSH).




There are various other useful network/server admin GUI tools available and countless tools of developers e.g., Eclipse:-




http://www.eclipse.org/screenshots/ A powerful GUI tool that has IDE’s for programming in C++, PHP, JAVA,




You will have to make sure that you install a desktop environment on your server to connect to it– Gnome/KDE are the most common this can be done using your distributions package manager.




There are 3 main versions of the NX technology:




1) Nomachine Nxserver

http://www.nomachine.com/


This is the original version (the company created the technology)


Advantages:


- Very simple to setup and very stable


Disadvantages:


- Free version has only 2 users allowed – Unlimited users requires a license.





2) FreeNx

http://freenx.berlios.de/


A 100% free opensource implementation of NX Server


Advantages:


- There are no license changes


- Can have unlimited users free of charge


Disadvantages:


- setup/config is less user friendly than Nomachine Nxserver





3)Neatx (google.com)



The ‘new kid on the block’ has been created by google – see blog post:-

http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2009/07/releasing-neatx-open-source-nx-servier.html


Advantages:


- Designed to be more user friendly and faster than the original


- Supported by the Google.com corporation.


Disadvantages:


- Very early project (released 7th July 2009), missing several features presently





If you would like support to install any of these technologies on your dedicated server (Virtual dedicated servers are not appropriate) please contact sales@cwcs.co.uk for a quote. We would advise against Neatx due to the very early stage of the project.

Web hosting is a very serious business; it literally takes the prosperity and well being of your website and your company into its hands. Poor web hosting services offered from less than desirable web hosting UK companies could see your company struggle with its online presence and reliability. You need to prevent this by looking for a few key features from good web hosting UK companies.

What to look for in greatness

There are a great number of web hosting UK companies. Because this overabundance of choice includes bad companies, you need to make your choices very carefully. Suss out the companies with good reputations and make a list of the best ones. Once you have a list of reputable web hosting UK companies you need to scale it down to a shortlist. The first thing to look for in a prospective hosting company is quality service all-round. That means that customer care and technical support needs to be top notch as it is with CWCS. Your questions should be answered promptly, issues should be seen to and you shouldn’t have to wait a week for help. Look for a company like CWCS that offers you options. Always look for the option to tweak things, upgrade and change features that are highly variable. The third thing to look for is uptime. Look at the percentage uptime versus the percentage of downtime websites from that host experience. You want a web hosting UK company like CWCS that will offer you uptime percentages that you can depend on to ensure your website is accessible to clients at all times.

A managed hosting package will be more costly than a dedicated server package that is unmanaged, self-managed, or shared server-hosting options. However, with the extra costs come extra benefits. How can these benefits help you to create a better website that will ultimately improve your profits? To manage is superior With CWCS managed hosting you don’t and wont experience significant downtime. Downtime is a customer offender, repels visitors and is a headache for your company. Downtime through managed hosting is also usually less than it would be if you were to manage your server yourself. This is because here at CWCS, we have full time staff with a wealth of technical knowledge and experience, dedicated to keeping your hosting active. Your security through CWCS managed hosting is tight, helping protect you from viruses, worms and malicious cyber attacks. With CWCS, your regular data back-up is a vital part of the service. With CWCS, you also get a high level of technical service and support. As they say, more heads are better than one. CWCS managed hosting holds a wealth of benefits for your company, shouldn’t you consider it?

The major search engine Google has had an effect on everyone within the IT and web industry with there successful search engine. Everyone wants to have the top ranked Google search result and even companies have been setup providing optimisation to help gain a better result within the search engine.

In addition to the search engine, Google have branched out and are now competitors with its chrome web browser and even the mobile phone industry. The latest addition Google announced yesterday is an entire new operating system to release on netbooks in 2010. The operating system is expected to have a high focus on security. Built into the operating system is protection against all the Internet’s nastys such as viruses and malware. The users will simply use and work with the operating system rather than keeping it up-to-date and applying patches on a regular basis.

Google have said the operating system was originally designed without the presence of the web. The new operating system will be fast and allow you to start accessing the web within the quickest time possible. Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects for the new browser.

The browser is designed on top of a Linux kernel, Google’s strategy is to allow people to see its source code and show people what it’s trying to achieve. The operating system will be compatible with all existing developer’s web technologies allowing access to applications straight from the OS. New applications can also be developed and will still be compatible with the latest existing browsers to ensure developers reach the entire market.

The new operating system is being developed as a solution to the most common frustrations with existing technology. Google believe they will over come the most common problems experienced today such as

• Slow boot up times and slow internet access
• Slow email retrieval
• Slowdown of the computer from when it was initially purchased.
• Data not being accessible while on the move.
• Configuration of every hardware device added.
• Constant software updates

It seems Google have set high expectations for the new browser. Google have seen success recently with its new technologies and additions being released. Will they continue to be a top competitor and provide an outstanding new operating platform? Or has Google bitten off more than they can chew with this major project….

We will find out..
http://www.cwcs.co.uk
Tel: 0845 203 1000

A scripting language allows you to take your website to the next lever, from a series of static hard coded web pages, to a website that will interact with the user, draw data and history from its database and intelligently calculate what the visitor needs to see. There are many scripting languages out there at the moment and more come on the horizon so we will just discuss the main ones that have become industry standards. When considering a scripting language to learn and use, if you haven’t already used one, should be a mix between your past skills and what you need from your site.

PHP is becoming the main scripting language for most internet sites and scripts. It is based on C and C++ so if you have experience of these it will be of great benefit. Combined with Linux, Apache and MySQL (often called LAMP – LinuxApacheMysqlPhp) it forms a powerful engine which will allow you to do almost anything you need for a dynamic database driven site. You can combine PHP with normal HTML and other languages fairly easily, and the website www.php.net is a very good resource for finding the information you need on functions and variables.

ASP is probably the second biggest scripting language, it can be run in either JAVA (a derivative of C) or VB (Visual Basic) which is of particular interest to those older programmers who grew up using windows. It is a Microsoft scripting language and supported by them. It offers many of the same features as PHP and can combine with MySQL, MS ACCESS or MS SQL to name a few of the databases. Its use is however declining.

ASP.NET is quickly taking over from ASP. It is a much reworked version of ASP and is also released by Microsoft. It allows a greater scope and much cleaner coding practices then the older ASP and includes languages like C#. It would be strongly recommended if you wish to use ASP, that you instead learn ASP.NET. The main restriction is that in order to utilise the full functionality of ASP.NET, you need to run it on a windows IIS4.0 + web server (ideally IIS 6 or 7). Very few Linux servers will support ASP.NET at all, those that do will have limited functionality support.

CGI/Perl used to be the widest used programming language on the internet and is also very similar to C and C++. It is extremely powerful in what it can do but with that power comes a lot of complexity and some users new to scripting might find it a challenge to pick up at first.

ColdFusion is the last language we will discuss, unlike the others this is designed purely to allow those who are less able or willing to learn scripting code to be able to design a powerful site using a WYSIWYG (WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet) editor. Unlike most other web design tools, this allows you to interface directly with a database and perform a large number of powerful features. It does however require your host support ColdFusion so bare this in mind if you decide to go for this option.

Managed hosting is an option many websites need to look into when they choose a dedicated server. However, not all managed hosting services are equal and offer the same. Thus, it is important to choose your dedicated server and the managed hosting thereof carefully.

What are the benefits?

So where do you start looking at why managed hosting is beneficial for your website and why you should invest in it? Managed hosting fees for dedicated servers vary greatly from one hosting company to the next. However, you should take the quality of the service into consideration and not just the price. Managed hosting services obtained from a reputable hosting company like CWCS can be significantly less than the services of an in-house server manager.

This could be a great way for your company to cut costs in the face of a global financial recession. Along with CWCS managed hosting services you get everything you need for your hosting to run smoothly. Getting all your needs met by CWCS reduces costs, and effort, significantly.

Along with CWCS managed hosting services you also get a wealth of features and extras. We offer vital security services as well as services to monitor all aspects of your server with managed hosting. This helps to ensure maximum uptime and hopefully a hassle free server experience.

AJAX is not a new technology, rather a combination of JavaScript and
XML. It allows for rich, dynamic websites built mostly from HTML and
Javascript.

Google popularised it’s use quite a few years ago and since then it has
caught on. So what are the benefits and should you really be going out
your way to incorporate it?

AJAX has two huge benefits.

– Speed and invisibility, makes a web page seem ’smart’ and provides a
realtime user experience
– Less resources used at the server end. Most of the processing is done
by the visitors web browser.

As an example. Imagine having a PHP page that POST’s a username and
password to a server for processing. In this case all the data is sent
and the entire page is returned. Page sizes can range from 20k and
upwards. So in total you would be sending (back and forth) double that,
once for the visitor and once for the server.

By using AJAX the entire page is loaded once, then only the needed data
is pushed back to the server. In the above case once the visitor has
received the page, the only data sent back to the server is the username
and password, probably consisting of around 100 bytes. So as you can
see, the bandwidth and processing time saved is actually quite
substantial, especially when you consider the fact that these requests
are happening all the time.

There are many helpful libraries around to help AJAX developers. In
fact, Google has their own codebase specifically designed for this type
of thing over at http://code.google.com. It’s very easy to incorporate
into your existing website and makes AJAX development a lot easier.

User experience is also very important when visiting a website. AJAX
enables a developer to turn their website into a responsive, real-time
application. Many sites have multiple pages and navigation links,
directing the user to different areas via different methods. Using AJAX
the user can stay on one single page and the data can be fed to them in
real-time without them having to navigate around the place. This also
reduces resource usage on the server and exponentially improves response
times.

Although all new technology should be approach carefully, the fact is
that AJAX is not new, it’s just a clever combination of two existing and
thoroughly tested technologies.

When dedicated server setups are running a critical task and serving your businesses online presence, its important to remember to take precautions just as you would in every day life…

Protecting yourself in a dangerous environment is human instinct, protecting your servers over the Internet requires a smart person to apply the correct level of protection to the amount your online presence is valued. If it’s a small shared hosting package or a large enterprise level clustered server setup you have, you are vulnerable to the internets nasty attacks and intrusions.

Luckily CWCS Managed Hosting has the ideal network infrastructure to eliminate such intrusions way before any potential problems could ever reach your server. With a complex network setup and strict firewall rules, you can rest assure general attacks will be excluded with constant monitoring of the networks traffic.

Larger multiple dedicated server setups and colocation often requires a very strict and custom set of firewall rules, which can be changed and configured on a regular basis. The Internet is changing all the time and network traffic is getting bigger with more advanced attacks and exploits out there. For the extra assurance and full control over the firewall gateway we recommend investing in your own dedicated hardware firewall.

CWCS Managed Hosting always offers the right hardware suitable for your setup, its important to have the right level of security protecting your servers and equipment. Our firewalls are manufactured by Cisco, which offer production level hardware suitable for data centre environments. The cost is kept to the minimum we are able to offer and support for the firewall is included.

How the firewall works?

In a nutshell, the firewall basically filters traffic by separating the good and bad requests. It can be used to separate a public network such as the Internet from a much smaller private network. It also is used to divide different segments of a large network; acting like a fire door in a practical real life situation you can imagine why this device was given the name ‘firewall’.

Different types of firewalls are available including software firewalls, to find out what is required to protect your business. Contact one of our sales advisors who will happily look into what you have and what we can offer to give you the security you need over your equipment.

Tel: 0845 203 1000
Web: http://www.cwcs.co.uk