Hosting FAQ

1. What is web hosting?
Web hosting is a service that stores web pages, image files, or any other content, and makes them accessible on the Internet. For a monthly fee, you can have a website hosted on a server.

 

 

2. What is domain parking?
Domain parking is an inexpensive way to secure a domain for later development, redirection of Web traffic, or re-sale without hosting.
 

 

3. What is data center?
A data center (sometimes spelled datacenter) is a centralized repository, either physical or virtual, for the storage, management, and dissemination of data and information organized around a particular body of knowledge or pertaining to a particular business. The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), for example, is a public data center that maintains the world's largest archive of weather information. A private data center may exist within an organization's facilities or may be maintained as a specialized facility. According to Carrie Higbie, of Global Network Applications, every organization has a data center, although it might be referred to as a server room or even a computer closet. In that sense, data center may be synonymous with network operations center (NOC), a restricted access area containing automated systems that constantly monitor server activity, Web traffic, and network performance.
 

 

4. Which data center will my information be located ?
If you are hosting with a website, your data and images will be located on server of your hosting company. Your hosting company may have their own server or servers located at a third party data center. Please check with your hosting provider on the geographical location of your server.
 

 

5. What is Uptime?
Uptime is the time that your server is online. It is usually measured on monthly basis. It is good to have 100% uptime although often it is not possible due to power issues or sometimes server must be restarted etc.
 

 

6. What is FrontPage?
Frontpage is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor created by Microsoft that allows you to create and manage your web pages. It helps you to manage the pages in your web as well as create and edit web pages in WYSIWYG style very easy.
 

 

7. What is Control Panel?
Control Panel is a page given you by the hosting provider where you can manage your web site. In the control panel you can manage domains, subdomains, files, databases etc. The control panel is easy way to manage your web site even if you don't have much web skills.
 

 

 
8. What is shared or virtual web hosting?
Shared web hosting is when several web site are being hosted on the same hosting server. This is the common way to host multiple websites on one and the same physical server. Unless your site is resource heavy and consumes a lot of bandwidth, space and CPU usage a shared hosting plan will be just fine for you. Although on a shared hosting server you will still be able to have your own IP if needed. Other options to host your site is going for a dedicated, manager or co-location hosting services.
 

 

9. What is dedicated server or dedicated hosting?
A dedicated server is a hosting server that is leased to a single customer as opposed to shared between more than one customer. Having a dedicated server increases the efficiency and performance of the website. This is because all the resources of the server are being used by the same customer or website. Most

dedicated servers are managed by the hosting companies and web users are given full adminsitration control to use the website.

10. Can I request for a 30 days free trial?
Most hosting companies offer a 30-day tree trial offer to market their hosting services.
 

11. How do I edit and upload my content to the website or blog?
The main method of uploading files to your site's account is by using FTP. UsersWhen you sign up with any hosting companies, you will get an FTP account that lets you access files in your account that is usually ftp://yoursitename.com, your main account name and password. Then you can use a built-in Windows or Internet Explorer FTP client, or other software that supports FTP to transfer files from your hard drive to your account. If you prefer a Web interface, you can use your account control panel's File Manager instead. Actual Drawing, Cute FTP, CoffeeCup, and UltraEdit are some of the many reliable HTML editing software that you can use to edit and upload your files efficiently. Depending on the content of your website, you may need to install scripts so that you can manage your content effectively from time to time.
 

12. What if I don't have any experience in creating a site. Who can help me create and host my site?
There are may companies that offer web design services out there. So if you need professionally looking site you'd better go and find one to create the site for you. As the web hosting stuff gets more and more easy you can just pickup an WYSIWYG HTML program like Actual Drawing, Dream Weaver, MS Front Page, and start creating your site. Go to elance.com to find a lost of professional web designers to help you with your website design. If you need to find a reliable host, please go to www.hostpulse.com
 

13. What is an SSL certificate?
An SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certificate encrypts data as it travels between the web browser and your web site. With concerns about credit card liability, an SSL certificate is essential for any online store. Without SSL, credit card information is completely unprotected in transit. Indiana Data Center offers SSL certificates that fit an array of individual needs.
 

14. What is PHP and MYSQL?
PHP stands for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor. PHP is server side language. You can't execute a PHP script without a web server such as Apache, Microsoft IIS, GWS (Google Web Server) or Oversee. PHP is used for connecting web site with a database server such as MySQL or PostGreSQL. MySQL is relational database system. Databases are used for storing information. In databases you can store any kind of information from simple text to files. Relational database stores the information in separate tables instead of putting all the information in one place. This separating allows very easy data management.
 

15. Which hosting platform should I host, a Linux or a Windows?
Most of the hosting services in the year 2008 are Linux based hosting. Linux hosting open platform system which makes it affordable to own and maintain. PHP and MY SQL operates on a Linux platform. These software can operate in Windows platform as well. Windows hosting has good options as well but does not support as much third party scripts and components compare to Linux. If you want to develop applications in ASP.Net and MS SQL Server, you need you have Windows hosting.
 

16. Do I need a static IP address for my site?
Well, it depends on what your site will be. If you are planning to start an ecommerce site, you will most probably need SSL certificate, which requires dedicated IP. Please note that some hosting companies do not offer dedicated IP, but you will have one if you purchase and install SSL certificate there. It is just because the SSL technology requires that. So in our opinion dedicated IP is not the most important thing that you should be looking for when picking up a web hosting provider.
 

17. Do I need web site statistics?
You do not need it to run a website, but website statistics helps you to understanding the activity of your website visitors which is very important. These analysis of your visitors, traffic and behavioral insight can help you to identify problems and opportunities quickly and eventually determine the success of your website. Some of the free web statistics that you can reliably try are, Google Analytics, GoStats.com, StatCounter.com, and ShinyStat.com
 

 
18. How much data transfer will I need?
How much data transfer you will need depends on the amount of visitors that comes to your website. For predominantly text based web sites, this is significantly less than the amount required for websites with video or image content. Most hosting plans have abundant bandwidth for your website and hence this is not a significant problem. However, if you are really hosting high disk space content like videos, images and downloads, please get advise a suitable hosting company before launching the website. Look at the statistics of your website. You can find out roughly how much data transfer or bandwidth that you need.