Archive for the ‘Website Hosting’ Category

Happy IPv6 Day

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

Happy IPv6 DayEveryday seems to be designated a special day. There are literally hundreds of them with greater or lesser importance, there’s probably an” International Eat A Cake Day”. Today has been designated International IPv6 Day, which may sound a lot less interesting but will have a much greater effect on you than you may realise.

What’s IPv6 and why are we having a special day for it you may well be asking. Well it is one of those moments in time when we realise that we have totally underestimated something, a bit like when Bill Gates allegedly said “640K of RAM ought to be enough for anybody”. In this case we are talking about the number of IP addresses that can exist. An IP address is a unique number that is assigned to an individual device that is connected to the Internet, “IP” stands for Internet Protocol. The reason that we need IP addresses is so that individual devices can communicate with each other. If you send an email to me then you, and I, want to know that it will arrive on my machine and not somebody else’s. The IP address helps to alleviate this problem.

A good analogy would be the telephone system. Your house will probably have a landline. Notice I have said “probably”, I have been careful to use that word so some of my more pedantic friends do not start bombarding me with emails to say that they don’t have a landline and simply use their mobile device to do everything.  I’m starting to ramble, so let’s get back to the gripping subject of IP addresses…

You probably have a landline in your house and that telephone is assigned a specific telephone number so when I dial your number I know that the phone in your house will ring. IP addresses are very similar in nature. Websites are all assigned an IP address that will look something like 192.185.75.12, now trying to remember that type of number for every website you visit would not be easy so we instead use domain names and every domain name maps to a specific IP address. These are more like the way you store telephone numbers in your mobile, you don’t need to know the number we just choose the name because we remember names more easily than telephone numbers.

The problem that we currently have is that we are running out of IP addresses. IPv4, the current version can support approximately 4.3 billion addresses, which may sound like a lot but when you think that every device that is connected to the internet is allocated an IP address then you might be surprised that they have lasted this long. Think about how many devices you have? PC’s, Mac’s, Tablets, Netbooks, Printers, iPads, smartphones and more devices are able to connect to the Internet on a daily basis and all the IPv4 addresses are now accounted for, though they have not yet all been allocated. With the emerging technology markets of China and Africa meaning that literally billions of new devices will go online in the next few years then it is apparent that something needs to change and change fast.

Enter IPv6. This is a protocol that will allow far more items to be allocated IP addresses 3.4 trillion trillion trillion to be exact and they should keep us going for a good while longer. The purpose of today was to test the new system. Many major players on the web including Facebook, Google and Yahoo have signed up to take part in the day. Taking part means that these sites will provide versions of their sites that can be accessed either using IPv4 or IPv6. Most browsers and PC’s should have no problem accessing sites that use IPv6 but some routers may do. You can see if you will be affected by running the test that can be found at test-ipv6.com.

The test will run from 01:00 BST on 08 June 2011 until 01:00 BST on 09 June 2011. The time now is 18:19 and so far no major issues have been reported, but we may not know for sure until the techies have poured over their stats in the next couple of days.

In reality this is probably less exciting than the supposed Rapture that was supposed to happen a couple of weeks ago but potentially this could have more of an impact on you, me and everybody else in the online world.

If you have experienced anything, good or bad, regarding IPv6 Day then why not leave me a comment?

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Internet World 2011 (Day 3) and Show Round Up

Monday, May 16th, 2011

First of all apologies for the delay in posting my round up of day three of Internet World 2011. Those that have read the previous two instalments of this trilogy will notice that might site has gone through something of a redesign. This was meant to be all completed prior to the show but other work commitments prevented this from happening and so I have been working all weekend to get the site in a suitable shape to accept visitors! OK, that’s enough from me let’s get back to the reason that you are reading this post.

As I say day three was the final day of this years Internet World and sadly I had to leave a little earlier than I would have liked in order to catch a train. I was only able to attend one talk but it was definitely one to attend.

Advanced SEO for Ecommerce – Patrick Altoft, Director of Search, Branded 3

Patrick delivered a really great talk on ways that you can optimise an Ecommerce website. He started with the initial premise that ecommerce sites can have hundreds or even thousands of products all of which need their pages optimising and that this can be a daunting task that will require a complicated strategy.

Patrick then ran through a roadmap of how you can optimise an ecommerce site. Patrick was also kind enough to make his slides available on his blog which you can access at www.blogstorm.co.uk.

I spent the rest of my limited time speaking to a variety of exhibitors and deciding on who my personal show awards would go to. Here are the winners:

Peer 1, Fabio, Donya and GaryMost Noticeable Stand

This award had to go to Peer 1, the hosting company. You could hardly fail to notice the eight foot, inflatables, Gary and Fabio who were enticing people to see what was on offer. I was advised by an insider that one of the pair was actually a female. Oh, and when I say it was an insider I do not mean it was the person inside the suit.

Rackspace and Peter Wardell, MagicianMost Entertaining Stand

This award had to go to Rackspace, another hosting company. They had employed a magician, Peter Wardell. He used a variety of close hand magic as well as stage magic to attract and entertain.

As you can see from the accompanying photograph he really knew how to dangle a carrot.

Eazy Tiger standMost Innovative Use of Technology on a Stand

This award goes to the guys at Eazy Tiger, the design agency based in Leicester. They used an X Box 360 with Kinnect and invited visitors to take part in a penalty shootout. The overall winner over the three days won champagne and I believe some goodies from the company too.

Patrick Altoft of Branded3

Most Informative Talk

This award went to Patrick Altoft of Branded 3 for his talk on Advanced SEO for Ecommerce sites. The talk was absolutely rammed with hints and tips on how best to promote any ecommerce website.

Dave Edmundson-BirdMost Entertaining Talk

This award goes to Dave Edmondson-Bird for his talk “Emerging Trends in Digital Marketing”. Dave is a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. He imparted a lot of knowledge in his talk, but also left me with things to think about afterwards. He also made me laugh the most of any of the talks I was able to attend.

Vee24 standBest Product at Show

This has to go to Vee24 with their video chat facility for websites. With this product you can have an operator answer visitor questions and even navigate the user round your website. It makes shopping online a whole lot more personal and that has got to have an impact on companies bottom line.

Malcolm Rosier and the Quote To Pay standBest New Product at Show

This goes to Malcolm Rosier with his product QuoteToPay. This is a system that allows tradesmen to manage quotes and payments via text message. They do not need to have a smart phone to carry this out. Malcolm has really researched his market and I am sure that this will be a very successful product when it is fully launched later in the year.

Huddle standBest Cloud Based Product

There were a plethora of cloud based products and services on offer at this years show but the one that really caught my attention was Huddle. This is a project management tool that resides in the cloud. You can assign who has access to the system, set up new projects and track their progress. This seems an ideal product for using cloud systems as it means that you can always access the information even when you are away from your desk.

Know the Net from NominetMost Interesting Website

This award goes to Nominet’s Know TheNet. By first thought was why would Nominet even need to be at a show like this, surely everybody knows who they are and what they do? Wrong! They were promoting a new site that they run called Know The Net (www.knowthenet.org.uk). The site is designed to give free, impartial advice to users on all things web related. One of the features that you can find on the site is a NetCheck. This allows you to compare your online activities against your competitors to give you a snapshot of if you are ahead or behind them. Well worth giving the NetCheck a whirl and you will also find lots of good information about Internet use and best practices.

Final Thoughts

I really enjoyed this years Internet World. There were three things that really seemed to create all the buzz:

  • Cloud Systems
  • Social Media
  • Mobile Apps/sites

If this show is anything to go by then within a couple of years pretty much everybody will be using cloud based services for a whole range of products and hosting. The search to convert social media into a real money spinner is on going and eventually somebody will make a lot of money by using social. Finally it looks like everybody is going to need an iPhone or Android app. The one thing that I did not notice was anybody saying they were developing for Windows Phone 7, which would worry me if I was Microsoft.

If you attended the show why not leave a comment on how you found it?

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What to look for in a Website Hosting Company

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
server rack of the type used by many hosting companies

Example of a Server Rack

A lot of attention and effort is directed at making a website achieve the balance between form and function, in other words does your website look wonderful while at the same time being easy to use. A lot less attention generally goes into choosing the company that will host your website and this could be detrimental to achieving your online objectives. Often the over-riding factor is the price that you will pay for your hosting but as with so many things in life cheap does not always equate to best or best value. Below I will give you a number of issues to consider when deciding on who can host your website.

Disk Space

The first thing that you need to consider is how much disk space (also known as webspace) you will have available to you. Many websites use under 5 MB, but think about the type of media that you will want to use on your site. Do you want to have lots of graphics or video footage, these will all eat into your disk space and the last thing you want is to have a website that is flourishing but does not have the room to expand. You might have a successful online business selling various goods to the public but when you try to add new product ranges you find that you cannot add the images that you would like to use because you have no more disk space to use. Hosting companies will normally allow you to purchase extra disk space but this will obviously be an extra cost. As a rule of thumb take a look at the total MB of the images (optimised for viewing over the web) that you want to use and double it, if the company you are looking at cannot provide this then look for another hosting company.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the amount of data that is transferred from your website to your website visitors and also includes the amount of data that you have uploaded to your website. Add these two figures together and you have the amount of bandwidth that your website has used in a given period.

Bandwidth is usually measured in either MB’s or GB’s and you must ensure that you have enough bandwidth to serve your visitors desires or you may find that you are paying higher fees for the extra bandwidth or perhaps even worse you find that your website is shut down.

An average website will use less than 250 MB’s of bandwidth in a month.

Server Type

Servers basically come in two flavours Windows and Linux. What’s the difference? In terms of whether one is better than the other there is no definitive answer. Windows and Linux are two operating systems. Windows, as you probably are already aware is provided by Microsoft and costs money to install while Linux is Open Source software. Open Source means that it has been developed by collaboration and all work carried out to develop it is done so free of charge. So the first major difference between a Windows and Linux server may well be price. However, many hosting companies charge the same amount for a Linux server as for a Windows server. The next difference between the two is the type of software that you would like to run on your site. If your site is going to be interactive, i.e. the site responds to information the user supplies and you want to use Active Server Pages (ASP) or .Net pages then you will have to host of a Windows website. PHP pages can achieve the same results as the ASP and .Net but is open source. PHP can run on either a Windows or Linux server.

Database

Does your site require a database? If the answer is yes then you have two real choices, SQL or MySQL. Once again one of these products is a Microsoft product and the other is Open Source. Both products are extremely robust and will be able to handle heavy traffic to your site. If you are thinking about using Access for your website I would tend to advise you not to bother. Access is a perfectly good database but where it falls down is the number of users that can access it simultaneously. Microsoft do not post hard numbers on this, but it is reckoned that anything over than 12 users of an Access database at the same time is likely to cause it, and therefore your site, to crash.

Email Accounts

Another factor to take into consideration is the number of email accounts that you will receive when you sign up to your new website package. You must ensure that you will be able to have enough accounts for your needs. You might also want to consider the resources that each email account will have and how you will access them. If you are planning on using some form of webmail (that is accessing your emails through a web browser rather than through a dedicated mail program like Outlook) to access your emails then you will need plenty of space on the server to store your emails.

In addition you might want to consider how important it is to be kept informed of developments when you are away from your desk. Using Push technology you can have emails routed straight to your phone. While typing this I have received a couple of mails on my phone and then a few seconds later they have arrived on my PC.

FTP Access

You may need to be able to gain access to your webspace in order to be able to upload web pages, images, documents or other forms of site content. The usual way of doing this is to use FTP (File Transfer Protocol). If you do need FTP access make sure that your host will allow it and also check whether they will give you access to the root directory of your web space.

Domain Name Services

Will your host allow you to host multiple domains under the same account? For example you may have a .co.uk and a .com domain, you want the .com domain to alias (point to) the .co.uk website will your hosting company allow this and if so will they charge you anything extra?

As you can see choosing the host is not as simple as it may at first seem. Make sure that before you start looking for a host you first of all know what you are looking for in a host. Not all hosts are the same and errors made choosing a host could prove costly both in terms of the quality of the service that you are offering to your potential customers and even more so if you have to lose your site for a few days while you transfer to a more suitable host.

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Best of The Web This Week

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Here are my top three stories from the web this last week:

Use Your iPhone Like a Credit Card
In this article from walletpop.com is news that Visa and DeviceFidelity have teamed up to produce a case for an iPhone that also acts as a credit card. This looks like a very exciting development not only for the iPhone but also in terms of payment technology. Full details are available via the title link but in a nutshell you open an app, click pay and wave your phone near the terminal. If this sort of technology takes off, and I think over time that it will then it will be one less item for you to need to carry around in your pocket. It seems to me that as each month comes round we see a greater convergence of technology that make our smart phones more and more indispensible.

Is This The Coolest Place For An IT Person To Work?
This article comes from pigdom.com and gives us a sneak peek inside a new data centre in Sweden. It really is like something out of a James Bond movie. The building itself was originally a nuclear shelter and among the many things that it contains are a pair of German submarine engines to act as a back up power supply. It can allegedly survive a near hit by an atomic bomb, I question how they are able to quantify this. During the height of the Cold War in the 1980′s you would often see adverts for “Nuclear Shelters” in Sunday newspaper colour supplements, these always claimed to be 100% guaranteed to work though I often wondered who you would complain to if, after a nuclear attack, you discovered that your shelter was as much use as jokebook at a funeral. I digress, going back to this data centre I am sure that there are many Swedes who will rest more easily knowing that in the event of a nuclear attack they will still be able to Tweet about it.

Facebook Issues New Privacy Policy
This is an article taken from BBC News concerning the new simplified privacy policy from Facebook. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says that the new policy is to help simplify things for Facebook users. Many Facebook users do not seem to be too bothered about how their data is processed but there is a growing minority who do object to their personal data being used in personalised ads without either their knowldege or consent. It will be interesting to see what happens next Monday 31st May 2010 that has been dubbed Quit Facebook Day when people are being asked to delete their Facebook profiles as a mark of protest to what the founders of the site see as Facebooks over complication of privacy settings. While writing this I checked the page and found that 23, 003 people had taken the pledge. This is dwarfed by the estimated 400 million active users that Facebook has.

I will be giving another round up of my Best of the Web next Thursday. If you want to keep up to date with other Internet news why not follow me on Twitter for “three from me” every day.

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