|
Web Hosting, Web Hosting UK, Dedicated Servers, Managed Hosting, Dedicated Server | CWCS
Until a few years ago, you had your desktop machine and a mobile phone; some people had a PDA which would (kind of) sync with their desktop machine. Companies had back-end Windows dedicated servers or linux dedicated servers too. Then came the iPod/iPhone and the Blackberry and we had more things to carry with us and more things for our internal IT departments to have to support (and more things that could go wrong!).
Fast forward to today and the mobile Smartphone is almost, but not quite, there as far as being an all-in-one device which can do everything that you need when out and about, without the need for additional MP3 player, PDA, laptop, Blackberry – even the most non-technical person can get everything they want on one!
And, believe it or not, the business world is in a similar position with regards to those back-end servers we mentioned earlier. It’s now possible to work with a partner hosting or managed services company who can provide managed or outsourced hosting with dedicated servers in their own data centre for a fraction of the cost of doing it yourself with none of the challenges.
Want your email provided as a managed service with uptime and availability guarantees? No problem.
Want your servers to be available 24 hours, 7 days a week? Easy peasy.
Technology has advanced so quickly in the last five years that there’s really no need to invest in your own IT systems, when managed hosting companies can do a better job for you, at a considerably cheaper price.
Any guess what? You can even access all of these managed services on dedicated servers via your Smartphone, wherever you are on the planet!
“Spam” is the common word for unsolicited emails usually sent in bulk to unwitting recipients. Spam is the email equivalent of the leaflet through the door selling promising pizzas made with an amazing new type of crust. You won’t know the sender of these mails and at times they can be sleazy and offensive in nature.
There is one effective step you can take, at least as a starting point, towards ridding your life of spam. This is to switch on the spam filter that comes with the mailbox provided by your web hosting company. This switch can usually be found in your site’s “Control Panel” interface.
At web hosting company CWCS for example, we provide a spam filter for free with the Starter Package, so that you can rid yourself of spam emails.
The advantage of enabling the dedicated server spam filter is that unwanted emails get “headed off at the pass” before even being downloaded on to your home computer’s email programme.
What’s more, there should be no fears about losing emails which get mistakenly labelled as spam. All spam software suffers these “false positives” occasionally. Using the Control Panel you can set your spam not to be deleted automatically, so it will be stored in a “junk mail” folder in your webmail software. Then you can set yourself a reminder every few days to review that junk mail for just these false positives.
Taking this action will give you a great first line of defence in the battle against spam.
A dedicated server is a single server devoted entirely to hosting your website.
Renting server space from a hosting company is akin to renting property. You can either go for the one-bedroom flat in a sizeable block or the five-bedroom house, with a beautiful garden all to yourself.
The one-bed flat is the shared website hosting option: your website occupies space on a server shared by numerous other users. The five-bedroom house is the dedicated server: you have the place to yourself; there’s more space, and room for many more visitors at a time.
For many companies, the shared hosting option will be absolutely fine. It’s typically a reasonably priced setup which matches their cost, size, traffic and bandwidth requirements perfectly.
However, for some companies, their websites may have expanded in size, complexity and traffic demands to such an extent that they have to go for that sumptuous five-bedroom house, especially if their website is now “mission critical”.
However, you should budget for a cost increase if you are moving from shared to dedicated website hosting. The monthly rental for a dedicated server can be significantly more than the cost of the shared option.
The decision on shared hosting should not be taken lightly, but can yield peace of mind and eventually “Return on Investment”.
Here at CWCS we offer a range of unbeatable managed hosting packages for your dedicated server, with benefits such as a brand new server, unlimited bandwidth, 24/7 expert technical support and an assigned project manager.
With almost any web hosting package, you’ll be offered a number of email mailboxes as part of the deal. A hosting package with CWCS will give you up to 200 mailboxes as standard.
A mailbox provides you with an email address that matches your company’s domain name, such as peter@example.co.uk – which becomes the email address for an employee at “example.co.uk”. Your email address then becomes an instant, remarkably simple marketing tool that promotes your business whenever you email someone.
You should also explore webmail. This is a way of viewing, writing and sending emails through your web browser, and it’s provided as standard by most web hosting companies.
If you intend to use a lot of email, you should avoid treating your webmail as your main email programme, because the amount of mails the mailbox can hold at any one time is restricted by the amount of dedicated server space you’re renting.
A tip is to set your home email to “always delete from the dedicated server” when retrieving from your domain’s mailbox. That way you keep the size of your rented mailbox under control.
However, as a method of viewing your new emails whilst you are on the road, webmail has some big pluses: it’s an advert-free zone, unlike some mass-market, browser-based email programmes.
Furthermore, by using webmail you are looking directly at incoming emails in real time, the very second they arrive. Most desktop home email programmes cannot match this level of immediate access. Webmail is a great way to catch those business-critical emails you need to see “like yesterday”.
Colocation hosting is a form of hosting in which a third party data centre houses your company’s server for you. E.g., your company’s web server could be securely sited off your premises.
However, the usual arrangement is that your company’s own IT staff will continue to manage your server via remote access – this is the “co” part of “colocation”.
Sometimes the phrase used for a colocation centre is “carrier hotel”: actually “hotel” is a good word to evoke the five-star care we at CWCS guarantee your hardware.
The colocation option is typically favoured by small to medium sized businesses that has a complex telecommunications setup and may be looking to cut the costs of managing their own data centre. This is especially so for companies growing in size and expanding across different locations.
Sometimes companies starting out want to avoid altogether the expense and complexity of setting up their own data centre, so opt for colocation hosting right from the beginning.
Financial considerations aside, it simply gives you peace of mind to know that your vital equipment, equipment that forms the engine-room of your business, is looked after. Also, worry over matters such as minimising fire risk, backup, parts replacement, and air conditioning are out of your hands.
At CWCS we have offer a good selection of colocation packages to suit all budgets. We have system administrators on hand with qualifications in managing Linux and Windows 2003/2008 servers, and we also offer fantastic technical support at reasonable rates.
With more and more dedicated servers being exposed to the world wide web every single day. A wealth of applications are communicating with each other regularly over different ports and protocols, the expectation of 0% data loss and 100% security is essential to the online business operation at all times. The infrastructure needs to be tightened to only allow ‘the expected’ with 0 security vulnerabilities which could potentially allow unauthorised access to a computer hacker.
Data importance
The preferred methods for data exchange has changed massively over the recent years with the world wide web dominating the old methods. Developers are seeking new ways to for information exchange and improving applications and software to make data exchange and storage even more easier and reliable to the user. The actual importance of data is growing with new businesses converting to using online methods, businesses are saving time and life is getting easier for everyone.
However, there is a darker side of the internet which is also growing, a community of people abusing online services by discovering vulnerabilities and exploited loopholes to gain unauthorised access and cause havoc for businesses. This community of people dedicated a lot of time to built themselves as hackers and are always researching new techniques and methods to gain unauthorised access.
Prevention and detection
Keeping your hosted dedicated servers secure enough to block any unwanted traffic but still allow unrestricted communication for all your web applications is what you should try and achieve. The firewall is the essential device required to actively block traffic by restricting ports. There are many firewalls available from expensive hardware firewalls to free software firewalls, you will find the better the firewall is, the higher level of protection you will receive. Small firewalls could fall over if dealing with massive amounts of traffic.
IDS and IPS
Intrusion detection and prevention systems offer a more advanced level of protection by analysing web traffic. Preventing and detecting potential attacks will add an extra level of protection and will be available with advanced web hosting providers. Suricata and snort are open source professional security detections systems available.
Contact CWCS Managed Hosting for a security report and information on how we can offer high security to protect your online business.
CWCS Managed Hosting
0845 203 1000
If you’re a small business setting up a website it’s likely you won’t have a designer in-house, so you are almost inevitably going to find yourself needing a website designer and external dedicated server.
Before speaking to any design companies clear your head and your desk, switch off your mobile and computer, sit down with pen and paper, and think long and hard about what you really want from your company’s website.
The costs for small business websites do vary but can range from £250 to thousands of pounds depending upon complexity. Be aware that adding an e-commerce feature in particular can increase website design costs.
The trick is to find a designer who understands you, your company, its vision, and whom you feel you get on well with, at an affordable price.
Don’t rush this procurement. Consult colleagues, any friends in the web industry, and scour competitors’ websites. Plus, if you find a company you want to work with don’t necessarily be deterred by an expensive first quote. You can always try some amicable negotiation.
Once you’ve found your designer, you should feel confident to let them talk direct to your web hosting company.
At CWCS we are happy, with your authorisation, to talk to third parties. In fact it’s often better to let the experts talk directly, as long as you’re kept informed. We can help your designer decide such matters as the best hosting package for you, and whether to go for a Linux server or Windows server.
If you’re thinking of setting up a website for the first time, here are some tips to help you along the way.
First, you need a good domain name; this is the address you type into the search engine, starting with ‘www’. Ideally you want it to be short, memorable, and distinctive. It should be both pleasant to the eye and roll off the tongue. Having the right domain name will work wonders for word-of-mouth marketing.
Don’t be afraid of being abstract. Famously “Amazon” seems little to do with online retailing, but – it’s been a hit. Domain name coinage is one of those areas where the dreaded cliche “blue sky thinking” is actually vital. Examples of effective domain names like these are: flickr, digg, and Yahoo.
Your domain name should dovetail neatly with your company name. Yet avoid unintended consequences as in this domain name for a technology company: “ipanywhere”. You need a friend with a good eye to help you avoid such pitfalls.
Second, you need a good web hosting company. Hosting companies take the headaches out of managing your site within your own IT infrastructure. Look out for a high percentage of uptime, rock-solid security, fair pricing and stellar technical support.
At CWCS we provide a 99.99% operational guarantee for even our lowest priced website hosting packages, and our technical support is of the high quality.
Finally, make sure the web hosting company will provide you with statistics on usage of your site. Web statistics can be both underused and misunderstood, but, if interpreted correctly, are crucial for gauging the success of your site.
« Newer Posts
|
Blog
