There are a great many web hosting service providers out there today, so it goes without saying that there has to be a large market for these services in order to warrant so many companies.

But how does all of this affect you and your business. Why do you need a web hosting service and why can you not just do it all on your own? The answer is simple; it is plain common sense to outsource your web hosting needs instead of handling them yourself.

Making sense of it all

Setting up your own server, purchasing all the equipment and software and then hiring expert professionals to run your web hosting in house is a very costly business indeed. The bills for the equipment and software alone should be enough to shock you senseless. Then you are still stuck with extra staff that you need to pay every month. All of this can put you badly out of pocket and that is why many people choose to hire a web hosting company for the job.

These companies have invested in the technology and the software already. They have also got permanent staff on their books to tend to your web hosting needs. Now, share those expenses over a large client base and it is easy to see why outsourcing your web hosting is so much more cost effective.

Another reason to outsource your web hosting is that you cannot run your business and look after your web hosting alone. No business is an island and you need professional help to run your web hosting competently and effectively.

Outsourcing your web hosting affords you the knowledge and expertise of professionals. They can therefore cater to all your unique business web hosting needs. CWCS can offer you the personalised and competent web hosting services you need to help increase your profits.

When you first look at web hosting you will see that you have two options. The first and least expensive option if shared hosting. This is where your website will share a server with many other websites. The second and more expensive option is to look into dedicated servers.

This is where you will have the run of an entire server to yourself. That server will be dedicated entirely to your website. Now, both of these hosting options have their perks and their drawbacks. So, why should you choose dedicated servers over shared servers?

Sharing isn’t always ideal

Although opting for dedicated servers is a costly business, it has many advantages that need to be considered before the idea is thrown aside. CWCS can offer you professional consultation about moving from shared to dedicated hosting and offer you comprehensive packages to choose from. The obvious advantage of dedicated servers is that the bandwidth and transfer speed will increase for your website.

Running a professional website that attracts customers depends on good bandwidth allotment and high transfer speeds. Your website will run more efficiently and download faster on dedicated servers. An abundance of storage space is another perk of dedicated servers. If your website is going to make use of images and videos it is wise to invest in dedication for higher speeds and greater storage space.

You will not be sharing your bandwidth, speed or storage space with anyone else. Another huge advantage of dedicated servers is increased privacy and better security. There is no chance of any other websites endangering your security or accessing your data. Hackers and viruses from other websites will not affect you as on a shared server.

Picking a web hosting UK company is not as easy as simply choosing the cheapest one available or the one with the best technological advancements. You need to look at an overall picture of reliability. CWCS can offer you everything you want and need in a web hosting UK company. We have knowledgable staff, excellent customer care and highly competitive rates.

Web hosting isn’t a ‘one-size-fits-all’ industry. Every website has its own needs and a good web host has a range of packages so that there is a great fit available to meet all of your requirements.

Getting the bigger picture

Web hosting UK companies are not just about what can be offered on the cheap, they are also no good if all they are is the best and latest technology. What you need is a combination of competitive pricing, prompt and responsive customer care and cutting edge technology and software.

Only with a good combination of all three of those elements can a web hosting UK company offer you reliability. You need to be able to depend on them to keep you up and running and to see to your problems as they arise so that your business stays online and available.

It is not unusual for people to ask whether shared web hosting or dedicated server hosting is the best for their specific circumstances. The main thing to remember is that what is suitable for one person is not necessary the best for another.

Shared hosting and dedicated servers are the two most popular types of web hosting today. Shared web hosting is used by a huge percentage of website owners. The reasons are easy to see; shared hosting is the cheapest web hosting available. For those with a very constrictive budget and for non-commercial websites shared web hosting is normally adequate. The drawbacks of shared web hosting are lack of privacy, much slower connection and higher downtime and shared IP address.

Commercial needs differ

Dedicated servers give commercial websites a direct connection. This means that you have the responsibilities of backups and maintenance and updates that can be a drawback. The benefits are that extra server software can be easily installed as needed. You are the only one using that dedicated server.

There is far less chance of downtime or crashes due to overload. Dedicated servers give commercial websites the much needed flexibility to run an online business reliably. Customers value the benefits they get when they deal with a business that uses a dedicated server as it guarantees them greater information security and of course, reliability.

This adds greatly to the creditability of any business. Credibility with your audience is hugely important for online businesses. CWCS offer all the various web hosting solutions to suit the business needs of all businesses.

Web hosting for businesses and web hosting for consumers are two vastly different options. Making use of consumer web hosting solutions for running a business simply does not work.

The web hosting options for consumer websites, which normally is shared web hosting, has far too many limitations to address the needs of a business. That’s why the norm for businesses is to take a dedicated web hosting option as opposed to a shared web hosting option.

Business needs

Business websites need the reliability factor of using a dedicated web hosting option as it is bad for a business when they have a lot of downtime due to crashes or slowdowns. They not only lose money, but it harms their business image. When customers deal online with any business, their primary concern is the security. They must know that there will be total privacy and security of their information.

An important part of a company’s branding is its assurance to customers that the web hosting and server they use are completely secure. All commerce and enterprise websites need web hosting with a high level of technology. Included is a customisable control panel. And along with that, the highest level of support, record keeping and tracking abilities.

Web hosting business solutions have far more focused needs than the web hosting options that are suitable for private users. A business that uses the wrong or inadequate web hosting solution can seriously jeopardise the future of the company. CWCS all the various web hosting solutions to suit the business needs of all types of businesses.

PCI compliance was introduced as a way to streamline a security standard for online merchants processing transactions over a webpage. In 2006 it was made mandatory for all merchants accepting payments via American Express to be PCI compliant. It’s also mandatory for all merchants with over 20,000 transactions per year to comply with PCI compliance regulations.
VISA have announced they will also require all merchants to be PCI complaint by October this year, its likely many other companies will follow and eventually PCI compliance will become a streamlined security standard.
What happens if you are not PCI compliant?
If you are obliged to become PCI compliant and do not follow the necessary steps required, you will likely find you are unable to process credit card transactions. You could also face large fines from your credit card company if security is breached.
What’s required to become PCI compliant?
There are 12 specific requirements in place which all need to be fulfilled to become fully PCI compliant. The requirements range from a secure network setup and configuration to strict anti-virus policies. A PCI scan is required to assess the potential security risks, the scan is obtained independently and generally there is a cost to evaluate the system. After the evaluation is complete vulnerabilities are resolved by hardening the server and plugging holes by changing configurations.
How do I become PCI compliant?
The initial step is evaluating your business to determine if the test is necessary. If you find it is, source an official PCI evaluation and research the requirements. Contact your hosting company or IT technicians to begin assessing the work required to ensure your setup is entirely PCI compliant.
CWCS Managed Hosting recognises the importance of PCI compliance tests and would like to reassure all customers we are willing to evaluate your setup and take the necessary steps in becoming PCI complaint. If you are already a customer, or thinking about becoming a customer of CWCS Managed Hosting. Contact our sales team directly to see what we can do to secure your hosting setup.
http://www.cwcs.co.uk
Tel: 0845 203 1000

Companies often debate long and hard whether they should settle for a shared hosting option or whether they should use a dedicated server that will cost them more per month. Using shared hosting is usually fine for personal websites, hobbyist websites and such.

When your website is for business purposes and you deal with customers, reliability and having enough hosting resources for your needs is critical. A dedicated server can give you that. No business wants or can afford to have their website taken offline because they have used their monthly bandwidth allocation – it results in lost revenue and customers taking their business elsewhere in future too.

All round benefits

A dedicated server gives a business fast connection without slowdowns such as you would experience while on a shared server, this is as you are the only one using a dedicated server. In contrast to the limited access to software applications and the operating system when using a shared server, a dedicated server allows you flexibility for customization.

You can install specialised and advanced database applications and bespoke e-commerce software. A dedicated server brings with it several upgrade options as your business needs grow. These include platform, software applications, hard drive and Ram processors. Security of information and database security is one of the top appealing factors of a dedicated server.

Businesses cannot take the risks of losing clients to excessive downtime or the limitations of shared web hosting. The money saved by using a shared server will mean nothing if clients cannot access the business website due to slowdowns or crashes. It will also harm the business’s reputation. Here at CWCS, we offer top-notch dedicated server solutions to suit the business needs of all companies, no matter how big or small.

Web hosting is an important part of your company if you have an online presence. Without a website you cannot hope to attain the maximal amount of exposure to your target market. Without an efficient web hosting UK company on your side you cannot hope to have a successful and flourishing website.

A poor website or badly managed hosting equals only one thing and that is poor web presence. You need a good, strong web presence in order to benefit fully from having a website. So when you are hunting for good web hosting UK services, you need to consider these two factors. You need to look at customer service and the flexibility of packages available, as well as reliability. Does your prospective web hosting company offer shared hosting, dedicated servers, virtual private servers or all of the above and more?

Customers come first

CWCS is a web hosting company that offers you the position as number one priority. Customers should always come first. The equation for this is simple; poor customer service results in unhappy clients. Unhappy clients will move on and find another host elsewhere. You need to make sure that the company you choose offers you not just good but great customer service that puts you first.

Your problems should be dealt with promptly and efficiently. The second thing to look for in a good web hosting UK company is reliability. Can you rely on them to keep your website up and running with little down time? Can you rely on them to fix any problems before they snowball into catastrophes?

And does the company in question upgrade their hardware and software regularly so that they are always on the ball? If the answer to any one of these questions is no, then you need to look for another hosting service that will provide you with the service you require.

The sending of spam emails is still a major problem on the internet. Those who send spam are constantly finding new ways to make money from it and developing new techniques to send it. As a result ISP’s and anti-spam providers are constantly working to reduce spam being sent and received.
Many providers operate or use RBL lists. These are dynamic lists which have the IPs of servers that are known to send spam, or ISP’s that are known to allow the sending of spam. Being on one of these lists can damage your reputation and result in your server or account being “blacklisted” and your customers/suppliers being unable to receive your emails.
There are 3 main ways that a spammer can use your service to send spam. The first is the most common and that is to have an easy to guess email username and password. Try to keep all passwords at least 8 characters and as complex as possible. If you start to suspect your server is sending spam, change as many email passwords as you can to see if it makes a difference.
Many sites have customer feedback or contact forms to allow email interaction from the site. If you employ these, ensure that it is hard coded into the script that emails will only go to yourself and if an email is send as a confirmation, that it has a hard coded content. The second largest cause of spam is from badly designed contact forms which spammers can exploit.
Finally, always keep your server up to date and make sure no out dated software is used which might contain exploits. Many spammers use compromised servers or web scripts to send out much of the unsolicited emails.

First off, it’s good to know the advantages of using a SAN storage device. Although before considering any type of shared storage, you should know exactly what you are actually paying for.
What is SAN?
SAN stands for Storage Area Networks; it can be a combination of hard drives grouped together which is accessed by multiple dedicated servers across a high speed channel. A switch is also required to route information requests directly to the SAN device. SAN is considered as not only a single storage device but a dedicated storage network which offers high availability and high access.
Different types of SAN…
Traditionally all SAN devices operated over a fibre channel, this type of SAN has proved to be popular within enterprise level networks. However, fibre channel does not utilise any existing technology. Which means to implement a SAN device, you require additional hardware to ensure compatibility with your existing dedicated servers. A fibre switch may be required for the routing and host adapter cards will be required in each dedicated server. ICSCI SAN was introduced as an alternative to Fibre channel, is uses the existing technology of IP/TCP networks for access requests to the SAN. ISCSI is considered as a cheaper alternative which maintains the benefits of using a SAN device.
The advantages of using SAN
Reliability, redundancy, and performance are the main reasons for choosing SAN as the ideal storage solution. SAN gives your dedicated servers access to a massive amount of shared data almost instantly as soon as the requests are made. With a shared storage array multiple applications can access data continuously without and lag.
CWCS Managed Hosting has over 10 years experience in providing tailored hosting solutions to large corporative businesses world wide. Need a quotation on a high availability network of dedicated servers?
Contact us directly.
http://www.cwcs.co.uk
Tel: 0845 203 1000