Work at Home Internet Marketing Business

The phrase in the title does not, unfortunately for most of us, refer to a butler who brings coffee to your desk in the morning. It refers to a computer in the office that has a few special tasks to perform on behalf of others. So, perhaps in a different way it’s a little like a butler.

You could store all your files, emails, photos and more on your own computer. You could use only your computer for access to the Internet, printing, faxing and more. But that setup has some potential downsides, especially when your office grows to hold multiple desktops.

If your personal machine goes south, you could be out of business (at least for a while). Even if your machine doesn’t completely crash and burn, you could still be in serious trouble just by losing one file. You could make backups locally, say on a USB flash drive. But storing and using those small devices could lead to complicated and duplicate effort if your office has multiple computers.

If your machine is directly connected to a DSL, cable or satellite modem anyone else on your office network accessing the Internet has to go through your machine to get to the web. That drags down the performance of your machine while you’re using it, and slows down Internet access for the others.

All these problems and more can be solved by investing in a single computer that performs services on behalf of others. That’s the role of an office server. It centralizes your local email system, so everyone can take advantage of it without slowing down anyone else. It gives you a place to attach a printer, network fax machine and more so that everyone can use them without slowing down or relying on anyone else. Most importantly, it gives you a central storehouse for file backups and - heaven forbid - restores, if and when they’re needed.

With the enormous hard drives available on even ordinary computers today, servers are no longer critical for housing raw space. But their role is still important. They provide a convenient place to centralize documents, images and more that is accessible by every computer on the network with the security rights to get to them.

The alternative is what’s known as a peer-to-peer system, in which all machines on the network are equal. The Internet and all the personal computers that use it are somewhat like that (although, it also uses millions of servers).

For example, you may store your email, files and more on Google, which acts like a central server for you. Or, you may just pass files back and forth with other users, each one acting as a peer to the other. That method has its benefits and drawbacks as well. But for those who maintain an office of anywhere from two to two thousand computers a central server provides numerous values. You gain reliability, security and performance benefits from having a central system that does work on behalf of others in the office.

Now if you could only train one to bring coffee in the morning…

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In reviewing web hosting plans, many web site owners are faced at some point with the decision of whether or not to pay for a dedicated server. A dedicated server is one which holds your site(s) exclusively. It’s not shared with other sites. You then have the option to put one site or many on that piece of hardware.

But the decision is never easy. There are multiple considerations to take into account, far beyond just the higher dollar outlay that inevitably accompanies a dedicated server option.

Performance is (or should be) a prime consideration for the majority of site owners. Studies show that when a page doesn’t load within about 10 seconds or less, almost everyone will give up and go elsewhere. The delay may be caused at any of a hundred different points in the chain between the server and the user. But often, it’s the server itself.

In any case, it’s important to eliminate the server as a possible bottleneck, since it’s one of the few points over which the site owner can exercise some control.

That need for control extends further than just performance, however. Other aspects of the user experience can benefit or suffer from server behavior. Security is a prime example. With the continuing prevalence of spam and viruses, a server can easily get infected. Having only your site(s) on a single server makes that issue much easier to deal with.

With fewer sites on a server, there is less likelihood of getting infected in the first place. Also, since you will place a higher value on security than many others, it’s easier to keep a dedicated server clean and your site well protected. You can use best practices in security to fortify your site. Having other sites on the server that you don’t control raises the odds that your efforts are for nothing.

One way your efforts can get watered down is through IP address sharing. Less sophisticated hosting services will often assign a single IP address to a single server and multipe sites. That means your site is sharing the same IP address with other domains. That leaves you vulnerable in several ways.

Virus or spam attacks may target a particular IP address. If you have the same one as another site, one that is more likely to attract hostile intentions, you suffer for and with someone else.

In other cases an IP address range is assigned to the server, with each site receiving its own address from within that range. Though better than the one IP:server scenario, this still presents a vulnerability. Many attacks try a range of IP addresses, not just a single one.

But even legitimate sources can give you trouble when you share an IP address or a range. If another site engages in behavior that gets it banned, you can suffer the same fate if they ban the address or range. If the miscreant that shares your server/IP address or range is himself a spammer for example, and gets blacklisted, you can inadvertently be banned along with him. Using a dedicated server can overcome that problem.

There’s a certain comfort level in knowing what is installed on the server you use, and knowing that you alone put it there. But a dedicated server option may require increased administration on your part. If you’re not prepared to deal with that, you may have to pay still more to have your dedicated server managed by someone else.

All these factors have to be weighed carefully when considering a dedicated server plan.

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New domain names are registered all the time, and ones previously registered expired. Sometimes that’s the result of simple neglect. The owner of the name chose not to renew his or her ownership, so the name became available for someone else to use. In rare cases, a highly original mind managed to think of a new one. In the other common scenarios, someone chose to just let it go or sell it.
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Among the more useful innovations in computing, actually invented decades ago, are the twin ideas of redundancy and failover. These fancy words name very common sense concepts. When one computer (or part) fails, switch to another. Doing that seamlessly and quickly versus slowly with disruption defines one difference between good hosting and bad.
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Things To Think About

You can often get a substantial discount off web hosting fees by sharing a server with other sites. Or, you may have multiple sites of your own on the same system. But, just as sharing a house can have benefits and drawbacks, so too with a server.
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The choice of whether or not to try to administer your own web site brings with it a host, pun intended, of issues.

For most web site owners, the primary focus is naturally on creating, maintaining and enhancing the site. That often is just part of managing an entire business, for which the web site is just the means to an end.   Continue Reading »

When you build a web site, you often provide a means for users to communicate with you. One of the most common “add-ons” to a web site is the addition of some kind of email access. Email is used to sign users up for newsletters, provide communication for administrative issues and a hundred other uses. But, as everyone sadly knows, email problems can occur.

Virus infection is among the most common, though the situation is actually better today than in the past. Huge efforts, and some progress, has been made over the past 10 years to reduce the number and severity of virus attacks. Hackers haven”t surrendered, far from it. But they”re on the defensive like never before.

Many of those viruses were (and are) spread through email, usually in the form of email attachments. That’’s the source of the now-common advice never to open an attachment from someone you don”t know. Professionals will often extend that advice to suggest you never open an attachment that’’s unexpected, even if it’’s from someone you know. Well-meaning, but computer-challenged friends often accidentally forward virus infected emails.

Spam has taken over the top spot for email annoyances. It’’s estimated by various different professional sources that 92-97% of all email sent today is spam. While the definition varies, spam is generally regarded as any unwanted commercial email sent by someone whom the recipient doesn”t know or have a business relationship with.

Spam clutters email inboxes, requires people to sift through to find valid messages, and often contains offensive messages in some form. But, it’’s a fact of life and isn’t going away anytime soon. Even though laws are in place, thousands of spammers continue to risk fines or jail for the chance of making money from that small percentage who will open the unwanted email.

Other forms of email problems are even more severe for many web site owners. When the mechanisms fail that they rely on to send and receive messages to and from their users, that’’s a problem. Dealing with those problems can range from sending an email or instant message to an administrator, to tracking down the right person to get your site removed from a blacklist.

Email is the communications vehicle of choice for millions everyday. When the system burps, someone has to take time to do something about it. Often, that means relying on a person who is already overburdened with too many issues to resolve.

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Two key performance metrics will impact every web site owner sooner or later: bandwidth and server load.

Bandwidth is the amount of network capacity available, and the term actually covers two different aspects. ”Bandwidth” can mean the measure of network capacity for web traffic back and forth at a given time. Or, it sometimes is used to mean the amount that is allowed for some interval, such as one month. Both are important.

As files are transferred, emails sent and received, and web pages accessed, network bandwidth is being used. If you want to send water through a pipe, you have to have a pipe. Those pipes can vary in size and the amount of water going through them at any time can also vary.

Total monthly bandwidth is a cap that hosting companies place on sites in order to share fairly a limited resource. Companies monitor sites in order to keep one site from accidentally or deliberately consuming all the network capacity. Similar considerations apply to instantaneous bandwidth, though companies usually have such large network ”pipes” that it’’s much less common for heavy use by one user to be a problem.

Server load is a more generic concept.

It often refers, in more technical discussions, solely to CPU utilization. The CPU (central processing unit) is the component in a computer that processes instructions from programs, ordering memory to be used a certain way, moving files from one place to the next and more.

Every function you perform consumes some CPU and its role is so central (hence the name) that it has come to be used as a synonym for the computer itself. People point to their case and say ”That is the CPU”. But, the computer actually has memory, disk drive(s) and several other features required in order to do its job.

Server load refers, in more general circumstances, to the amount of use of each of those other components in total.

Disk drives can be busy fetching files which they do in pieces, which are then assembled in memory and presented on the monitor, all controlled by instructions managed by the CPU.

Memory capacity is limited. It’’s often the case that not all programs can use as much as they need at the same time. Special operating system routines control who gets how much, when and for how long, sharing the total ”pool” among competing processes.

So, how ”loaded” the server is at any given time or over time is a matter of how heavily used any one, or all, of these components are.

Why should you care?

Because every web site owner will want to understand why a server becomes slow or unresponsive, and be able to optimize their use of it.

When you share a server with other sites, which is extremely common, the traffic other sites receive creates load on the server that can affect your site. There’’s a limited amount you can do to influence that situation. But if you”re aware of it, you can request the company move you to a less heavily loaded server. Or, if the other site -which you generally have no visibility to- is misbehaving, it’’s possible to get them moved or banned.

But when you have a dedicated server, you have much more control over load issues. You can optimize your own site’’s HTML pages and programs, tune a database and carry out other activities that maximize throughput. Your users will see that as quicker page accesses and a more enjoyable user experience.

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Everyone likes to get something for free. But as the existence of spam shows, free isn”t always good. Sometimes, it’’s downright harmful. Deciding whether it’’s worth the cost to pay for hosting involves a number of complex considerations.

Hosting companies that offer free services obviously can”t stay in business from the money they make from you, since there isn”t any. So why do they offer free hosting and how do they make money? Why should you care, so long as you get yours? Because, in reality, there’’s a price of some kind for everything, even something that’’s free.

Free hosting may come from a company doing a promotion to attract business. They expect to demonstrate their value, then charge an existing customer base fees to make up for what they lost by the (short term) offer. It’’s in essence a form of advertising.

But free hosting is offered by lots of companies that are not dedicated to managing servers for websites. Google, Yahoo and thousands of others provide a modest amount of disk space and a domain name on a server for free. Users are free to do anything they like with it, though if the load becomes excessive you can be shut down.

That introduces one of the more obvious drawbacks to free hosting: resource limitations.

Typically free hosting offers a relatively small amount of space. That’’s often enough to host a few dozen pages. But an active site can quickly run out of room.

A more serious limitation is load.

Free hosting often places strict limitations on the allowed amount of bandwidth consumed. If you become a well-visited site, when users start banging away on the server, you can be asked to leave or simply be blocked for the rest of the month. Or, you may be permitted a certain quantity of total bandwidth use per month. Once it’’s reached, no one else can reach your site until the beginning of a new month.

At the same time, you will certainly be sharing equipment with thousands of other sites. Their load can affect your performance, prompting you to move. Migrating an established site brings with it a number of thorny issues that might be better avoided in the first place.

Free hosting has another potential downside: lack of support. When you pay for hosting you typically get, at least in theory, a certain level of support. Backups in case of disaster recovery from a hack or server failure, assistance in analyzing connection problems… the variety is endless. With free hosting you usually get none of that.

A company or site that offers free hosting will usually recover a disk or server that fails completely and you”ll be back up when they do. But if only selected portions of the drive fail, or you lose a few files through a virus attack or accidental deletion, you have to rely on backups to recover. A free service will usually come with no such option.

That may not be a problem if you have a small site. You can make copies of everything at another location and simply recover the site yourself - if you have the discipline to keep it current and the skills to make and restore the copy.

Free hosting will typically come with a few email addresses, intended to be used for administration and other tasks. But if your needs grow beyond that, you”ll need to seek another option. The email service also comes with minimal oversight. The server may be protected against spam attacks and provide virus scanning. But few free services will provide even minimal help with any issues that arise.

But the most serious limitation may have nothing to do with any technical issues. Free hosting services often require that your site’’s pages carry some form of advertising that pays the host, not you. That may be fine for you, or it may not. Individual circumstances vary.

On the other hand, if you”re just starting out, a free hosting option can be a great way to learn needed skills and a few of the potential pitfalls. You can set up a site, learn how to maintain and improve it, and not care too much if it gets hacked. Freely hosted sites can be a great platform for learning the ropes.

Free services don”t usually offer any of the features that an active, commercial site will need sooner or later. So if you plan to grow, it may be reasonable to get the free service for a while, knowing you”ll have to migrate when you become popular. But in the long run, you get what you pay for and you may need to pay for what you want.

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“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare asks in Romeo and Juliet. In the case of your web site the answer is: quite a lot.

A domain name is the English (or other) language designator for your site. Because of the way the Internet functions, that name is associated with an IP address, a numeric identifier that computers and network components use to connect a browser to a web site.

It’’s not mandatory that a site has a name. But directing visitors by IP address can quickly generate difficulties. Having an IP address IS mandatory, since it’’s ultimately the way a web site is located by other computers and network software.

In the early days of the Internet the name was chosen carefully in order to help a person remember the URL. That made it easier to type, too. With hotspots on a page, great search engines, social networking and other contemporary tools, that’’s not as important now.

But from a marketing perspective, it still helps to have a good name. It’’s still beneficial to have a site called ”CheapTVs.com” if what you sell are inexpensive TV sets. Calling your site, ”InexpensiveElectronicVisualDisplayDevices.com” may describe your business in some way, but it’’s a little harder to refer a new person to your site.

Which name you choose can, therefore, affect how much traffic your site gets, how soon. Sooner or later, if you have information and/or products/services that people want, word will get around. But having a good name can certainly help. Love them or hate them, the Google company chose well.

Of course, the fact is that there are millions of web sites around the world. That means, you don”t necessarily get the name of your first choice.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is the internationally recognized authority for managing IP addresses across the worldwide Internet, along with the top-level domain name-parts (.com, .net, .org, .edu, and so forth). But registering a name is done by simply contacting any of a hundred organizations that work as intermediaries to establish and track the names.

GoDaddy, Register.com, Network Solutions and a great many others provide the service for anywhere from free to a few dollars per month or year. You contact them by navigating to their web site. Then, using a feature they all provide, you can select a possible name. They use something called whois and other software to determine if the name is already claimed. Or, you can check yourself at www.whois.com. Registration is for a limited time, but typically renewable in perpetuity provided you pay the (usually annual) fee.

You may have to go through several choices to find a domain name that isn”t already in use. With so many millions of sites, the odds of you getting your first choice is slim, unless you have a highly unusual imagination. But, it’’s also true that domains tend to die or expire. As they do, the name becomes available for use by someone new.

A method for getting on a ”waiting list” is available. You register the name you want and if and when the name becomes available, you are offered the chance to claim it. Naturally, there’’s competition even on the waiting list for ”good” names. There are many different ways of establishing priority that vary by company. At any given time there are thousands of so-called auctions going on to bid on names.

Give some thought to your new domain name and research its availability, but don”t stress over it. The name isn”t everything. After all, if Google had built a search engine that delivered usable results only 10% of the time, their name would be mud.

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