Web Hosting Box

PHP, Perl, Python and Ruby on Rails are all WEB PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES also known as scripting languages.

PHP is the most commonly used and available for web hosting, followed by Perl (which is what is used most of the time when you see the phrase CGI or cgi-bin).

Which language is used to code web software doesn’t really matter, as long as your web host supports the language. In addition to PHP and Perl, many hosts are starting to offer support for Python and Ruby on Rails.

From a security standpoint, poorly coded can potentially be a nightmare for any server admin or website owner. There are many security flaws in PHP that a hacker can exploit, and those are only worsened when a PHP script is written badly.

There are several very important things you should always remember when experimenting with web software.

First of all, you should only use web software if you’ve read a lot about it and found out other people’s opinions of the software.

Anytime you upload or install software to your hosting account, you’re giving the program free reign to do just about anything within your web space or possibly even the whole server. You should only install trusted software.

Second, you should always make sure that all your web software is kept as up to date as possible. The more time that passes after a software is released, the more time a hacker or some other malicious person has to examine the code and find a way to exploit it.

Third, no matter how much you trust the software and keep it up to date, it still may run inefficiently. If it frequently uses up too much of the servers resources, your hosting provider may suspend your account or at least ask you to remove the software.

Finally, in case something bad happens, you should always remember to take complete backups of your account on a regular basis. For advice on backups, watch the tutorial later on in this series.

PHP, PERL, PYTHON AND RUBY ON RAILS

SHARED HOSTING is probably what you’re most interested in, especially if you’re just starting out in web hosting. With shared hosting, you’ll be on a server with potentially hundreds of other accounts. This is the cheapest form of hosting, for the hosting provider and for you.

If your account frequently uses up a lot of server resources your hosting provider will probably ask you to upgrade to something more suited to your website’s needs.

One option is another type of “shared’ hosting called RESELLER HOSTING. This basically allows you to sell shared hosting accounts to other people. Sometimes a reseller server will be less crowded and better suited to websites with high resource usage.

Another option is a DEDICATED SERVER. This is the most expensive form of web hosting and will cost you at the very least $40 a month, but probably closer to $100. Since you probably won’t know how to manage the server yourself, it would probably cost closer to $200 per month, total, for an entry level managed server.

A MANAGED DEDICATED SERVER leaves the hardest parts of operating a server to experienced technicians, letting you focus on the website side of things.

On a slightly smaller scale, the VIRTUAL DEDICATED SERVER also known as VIRTUAL PRIVATE SERVER and commonly shortened to VDS and VPS, respectively. What hosting companies do is divide a very powerful dedicated server up into separate “virtual” servers, using virtualization software. Each virtual server gets its own operating system, and acts almost exactly like a real dedicated server.

Depending on the hosting provider and the plan you choose, VDS’s may not be anywhere near as powerful as a real dedicated server.

It takes just as much work to manage a VDS as it does an actual dedicated server, though, so really the only benefit is decreased cost. A VDS can typically be purchased for anywhere from $10 monthly up to the price of a small dedicated server.

These are the most common types of web hosting. There are a few others, including cloud hosting, clustered hosting and grid hosting but we wont go into those here.

Different types of hosting accounts

EMAIL FORWARDERS allow you to forward a copy of all mail from one address to another. For example, you could set up a forwarder to forward all mail received on info@mysite.com to admin@mysite.com.

The address info@mysite.com will still keep the original version of all messages it receives, and admin@mysite.com gets forwarded a copy.

It’s worth noting that this relationship doesn’t work in two directions. Mail received by admin will not go to info.

Another type of forwarding is a domain forwarder. This will forward all mail received on a specific domain to another domain. If we forward mysite.com to demosite.com, admin@mysite.com and info@mysite.com would be forwarded to admin@demosite.com and info@demostie.com, respectively.

The last kind of forwarder mentioned is a catch-all or default email address. With this kind of forwarder, mail sent to an email address that doesn’t’ exist will be forwarded to the email address you specify.

What are email forwarders?

WEB SERVERS are computers that have been set up by a hosting company, usually in a facility called a datacenter. A web server’s sole purpose is to store websites until someone wants to visit them, and then to quickly respond to the visitor’s browser with the site’s content.

A server should be able to respond to at least several dozen, if not hundreds of requests at a time. How many websites a server can comfortably host depends on a wide variety of factors including server hardware and how popular the websites are.

Even the most expensive server hardware isnt’ going to be very useful without the software to actually get things done. The key software programs of a web server are also themselves called servers, or daemons.

Most servers used for web hosting have at least these kinds of software servers running at all times:

• An HTTP or web server (to provide the website)
• An FTP server (for uploading files)
• And E-MAIL server or two
• A DATABASE server (for storing information essential to the operation of a website)

You might be wondering: are web servers even necessary? Why can’t I just run my websites from a computer at home? There are several reasons why web servers are necessary.

Most ISPs (Internet Service Providers) specifically disallow people from running any type of web-related server on their networks. Doing so can potentially get your internet account suspended or terminated.

But, even if that weren’t the case, you have to take into account the upload speed of your connection. While broadband connections are getting faster and faster, upload speeds are usually about 10-20 times slower than download speeds.

When running a server on your computer, your upload speed would directly determine the total download speed shared across everyone accessing your sites. Most likely you’ll only be able to offer up a megabit or two, and even if you’re just hosting a website with pictures on it, that will quickly be used up by only a few people.

A professional server with a hosting provider, on the other hand, could have a connection as fast as 10,000 megabits. YOU’D HAVE TO PAY A FORTUNE TO GET EVEN A 100 Mbit connection to your house. Whereas a hosting provider can offer you space on a server with an ultra-high speed connection for a fraction of the cost!

Moreover, most consumer broadband ISPs aren’t’ reliable enough to host a website. You’ll probably want people to be able to visit your site at all hours of the day, and that won’t be possible if your internet connection is acting up or your ISP is performing maintenance.

What are webservers and are they necessary

Domain names can be purchased at any accredited domain registrar. A domain registrar is a company whose main purpose is to register domain names for people.

Most hosting providers can also obtain a domain name for you, but domains can be more expensive this way, due to the added overhead.

There are several very popular domain registrars including GoDaddy.com, Enom.com and Dotster.com. Most of their prices should be about the same.

All three of the above listed sites do, of course, have a way for you to check if a domain name is available for purchase. This tutorial uses GoDaddy.com as an example.

On the main page, you’ll see START A DOMAIN NAME SEARCH. In the box provided, enter the domain name you’re interested in, then select the desired extension (for example: .com) and click GO.

The next screen will indicate whether or not the domain name you’ve chosen is available. If the name is unavailable, a list of suggestions will also appear.

Purchasing a domain name