August 18th, 2008 DJB
A free web hosting service is a web hosting service that is free, usually advertisement-supported. Free web hosts will usually provide a subdomain (yoursite.example.com) or a directory (www.example.com/~yourname). In contrast, paid web hosts will usually provide a second-level domain along with the hosting (www.yourname.com). Many free hosts do allow use of separately-purchased domains. Rarely, a free host may also operate as a domain name registrar.
Features and limitations
Only a few free web hosts offer basic package for free. Enhanced packages (with more features) are usually available for a cost. This allows users to try the service for an initial trial (see how it performs compared to other hosts), and then upgrade when (and if) needed.
Free hosting may have the following limitations:
- Limitation on the size of each hosted file
- Very small bandwidth per month compared to paid hosting
- Disabling on hotlinking of files
- File type restrictions (for example MP3, MPEG, ZIP etc.)
- Compulsory placement of the Webhosts’ Banner or Popup ads into all web pages
- No provided uptime guarantee
- No allowance of custom URLS, such as “http://www.domain.com“. It has to be “http://www.provider.com/domain” or “http://domain.provider.com/“.
Some free host may provide these extra features:
- A web based control panel
- Free email accounts for the domain or subdomain hosted
- File transfer via FTP
- Scripting languages: PHP, ASP, Perl etc.
- Relational databases such as MySQL
- Scheduled processes, known as cronjobs
- Other features such as guestbooks
- Forums and community resources not typical of paid hosts
- Reward systems which provide extra free products and services
- Have no data limitations offering unlimited space
Monetizing free webhosting
The majority of the hosting companies use free hosting to introduce their services, and as an entry point to their more expensive offerings. Generally they recoup their costs in one of two ways:
- Advertising - Selling online advertising on the customer sites is generally considered a fair trade - the reasoning is that high traffic sites are more expensive to host, but the additional traffic allows for additional ad impressions therefore covering the cost. For the web master, it can be a good trade if the advertising is of good quality and non-competitive. This is one of the main reasons that businesses do not use free hosting for their website. The majority of free hosting companies use this method.
- Referrals - Using a simple form of viral marketing, these providers rely on the users to spread the offer. The ratio of free to paid accounts is known, and by having each free user refer a number of friends, the hosting provider is able to get enough paid accounts to cover the cost.
- Resell Hosting - This is where someone starts up a hosting company, attracts lots of visitors, then sells the hosting company to someone else once it can no longer support itself. Once sold, this individual uses the money to start up multiple hosting ventures and sells each in turn.
Some hosting companies are using hybrid approaches that mix these tactics.
Methods of giving out web hosting
A few methods of giving out Free Webhosting to people by Webhosts
Instant Activation
Due to the risks of illegal, inappropriate, and abusive website, hosts with instant activation usually give very little storage space and monthly bandwidth. Other restrictions will likely also be in effect. The webhosts usually either require the users’ web pages to display their banner ads, textlink ads, or popups; or else the users’ files to be uploaded through a web-based file manager that display ads to the user uploading files.
Hosts with instant activation are often abused, such as link spamming.
Approval Activation
It is important for a hosting company to have checks and balances in place to prevent the creation of illegal, inappropriate, or abusive websites. By individually validating each website, the hosting company can provide greater storage, bandwidth, and features for their clients.
Different hosts have different policies for approval and activation, and acceptance time can range from minutes to weeks. Generally, hosts will require personal information or information about your website. The more information you provide, the greater your chances of being accepted. The more information that is required, and the longer you have to wait, the greater the server security and stability because it is harder for illegal, inappropriate, or abusive websites to gain access. A shorter wait will generally mean there are more active support staff on hand to help you.
Post for Hosting
Some free hosts require posting in a forum. Forum-based free hosting requires users to either reach a certain amount of posts before getting a free hosting account, or be an active contributor in the forum. Forum-based free hosting often work on a system of points where posts give points to a user and can be used as credits toward getting a hosting account or more resources. Typically, the forum where users have to post contains advertising as the hosts way of making a profit.
[edit] Forum applications
This method is popular, as the hosts can decide which applications to deny and allow. This is common when a popular forum has free hosting as an add-on service, rather than the other way around.
File hosting on webhosts
Most free web hosts discourage using their services for file or image hosting only, with no web page, since advertising is displayed on the web page. Because of this, hotlinking is usually disallowed on free hosts. Some free webhosts will also disallow files over a certain size (for example, 5 MB). However, there are free file hosting services which allow large files as well as hotlinking.
Co-branding and resellers
Some services offer co-branding services. These let you brand fixed plans with your own company. Other services, offer WHM or panel reselling. This allows the client to develop his or her own web hosting plans and business.
At Stonerocket most of these rules/idea`s do not apply, we do it our own way.
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August 2nd, 2008 DJB
About cPanel - What is cPanel?
cPanel (”Control Panel”) is a graphical web-based web-hosting control panel, designed to make administration of websites easy. cPanel handles all aspects of website administration in its interface. The software, which is proprietary and distributed by cPanel Inc., is designed for use by commercial web hosting services, so the company does not offer a reduced-cost personal use license; however, owners of non-profit organisations such as educational institutions and charities can request a license at a reduced cost. Reduced prices are frequently available from dedicated-server companies, who install it along with the operating system.cPanel runs on a number of popular RPM-based Linux distributions, such as SUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and cAos, as well as FreeBSD. Preliminary support for Debian is claimed, although this version has been in “beta” state for several years, and is not supported. cPanel is commonly accessed on ports 2082 and 2083 (for an SSL version). Authentication is either via HTTP or web page login.
cPanel System Requirements
Processor: 266 MHZ or faster
RAM: 66MB+, 1GB+ when hosting many sites
HDD space: 9.95GB plus
cPanel also requires a fresh operating system installation if you do not want data to be formatted
Features
To the client, cPanel provides front-ends for a number of common operations, including the management of PGP keys, crontab tasks, mail and FTP accounts, and mailing lists.
Several add-ons exist for an additional fee, the most notable being Fantastico, a bundle of scripts which automate the installation of, but not the update of (see article), web applications such as SMF, phpBB, Drupal, Joomla, TikiWiki, Moodle and over 50 others.
Unlike some other web hosting control panels, cPanel manages some software packages separately from the underlying operating system, applying upgrades to Apache, PHP, MySQL, and related software packages automatically. This ensures that these packages are kept up-to-date and compatible with cPanel, but has become a cause for consternation to some, as it becomes difficult to easily install newer versions of these packages.
WHM (Web Host Manager)
WebHost Manager (WHM) is a web-based tool used by server administrators and resellers to manage hosting accounts on a web server. WHM listens on ports 2086 and 2087 by default.
As well as being accessible by the root admin, WHM is also accessible to users with reseller privileges. Reseller users of cPanel have a smaller set of features than the root user, generally limited by the server administrator, to features which they determine will affect their customers’ accounts rather than the server as a whole. From WHM, the server administrator can perform maintenance operations such as compile Apache and upgrade RPMs installed on the system
Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPanel
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August 2nd, 2008 DJB
What you need to know about domain names
Your address on the Internet
The Internet is like an extremely long High Street with every enterprise and member of the public living on it. Each enterprise and member of the public is assigned a number on that High Street - it’s their address.
This numerical address is known as an IP (Internet Protocol) address. You need to know about IP addresses because they will appear in documentation relating to your Internet connectivity, ie the method by which you connect to the Internet whether via BT or a third party Internet Service Provider (ISP). IP is part of the fundamental communications protocol of the Internet.
An IP address takes the form xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx for example 195.10.235.16. Your IP address is assigned by your ISP. The ISP has acquired a range of IP addresses from a higher authority up the Internet management chain. If you change ISP then you will receive a different IP address from the new provider.
The domain name system
Even with (say) a billion addresses, having to give out your Internet address as 233.192.9.23 would be fraught with difficulty. Not only is it difficult to tap in correctly, should you change ISP the number will change. To get around this the domain name system was invented to give a ‘friendly’ name to your current IP address.
In principle, what happens is that a numerical IP address on the Internet is assigned a friendly name eg mycompany. This friendly name is known as the domain name.
However, we immediately run into a problem: how do we stop two or more people having the same name? This is solved by organisations called domain registrars which exist for each country in the world.
Domain registrars
In order to manage your own domains, it’s enough to know that there are a number of international and national organisations that deal with it. In Europe, domains are managed by national organisations. In Britain, a company called Nominet has been assigned the task of UK domain management by the Government.
You probably spotted earlier that the example domain name mycompany was incomplete because it didn’t have the familiar .com or .co.uk ending. Apart from the USA, all national organisations manage just their particular top level domains (TLDs) on the Internet eg uk, fr, de, it, es for Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain respectively.
UK domain name registration
In the case of the UK, the top level domain space (uk) is divided into secondary levels to indicate the kind of organisation that is being represented by the domain name.
The second level domains (SLDs) are co, me, org, ltd, net, plc and sch - for commercial enterprises, individuals, non-commercial organisations, limited companies, public limited companies, internet service providers and schools respectively, and there are others such as ac, gov, nhs, police and mod. For more information on SLDs go to www.nic.uk and select Second Level Domains from the menu.
Nominet has a membership scheme to allow third parties to act as domain name agencies for enterprises and the general public. Caz Limited is a paid-up member of Nominet which means we can do this.
US domain name registration
The top level domains (TLDs) that don’t have a country code are American but most people treat them as global. The US authorities have licensed a number of private enterprises both within the US and outside to manage these TLDs which include com, net, org, info, biz, etc.
Examples of registrars in the US are Network Solutions and Register.com. Outside the US we have joker.com in Germany and even France Telecom.
At Caz Limited we have an account with the registrar Network Solutions. We try to keep all our US domains under one roof in order to simplify management (they have the best management interface at the moment). However some domain agencies make it difficult to transfer between registrars, so we have to do the best we can.
Registering a domain name
Domains can be registered directly through a registrar or using an agent (like Caz Limited). With the DIY approach you have to manage the technical issues of the domain name service (more on this later), ensure that the domain name is properly renewed every two or three years and not fall foul of scams relating to domain name renewal - the latter are all too frequent.
UK domain names expire after two years unless positively renewed. We renew all the UK domains under our control by default. If we reckon that a domain has had its day, then we discuss this with you before letting it go.
US domains (eg com, net) may be registered for between one and nine years. We usually choose three years.
Multiple domains
For UK customers, it makes sense to have both a dot com and a dot co dot uk (or whatever is appropriate in the global and national stakes). This domain name is mapped onto the same website.
For commercial reasons, it may be appropriate to have more than one domain name ie not just mycompany.com and mycompany.co.uk but also agoodcommercialname.com. One reason for doing this may be to prevent cyber squatting - the practice of some individuals and organisations for taking similar names to yours with the express intent of capturing your business. One of our clients has had this problem, so we believe the threat is real but shouldn’t be overstated. There are also various scams running where people threaten to take a name or indicate that ’someone has approached them to take a name’ but offer it to you instead (for a price). Sometimes you may have to treat this threat seriously, but the chances are we can register the name for less and, if need be, quickly.
How do people find your website or send you email?
The answer is by using a giant address book called the domain name service which keeps tabs on all the domain names and numbers on the Internet. This service is provided by computers called DNS servers. However, DNS is also used to underpin the logical structure of computers on local area networks as well, particularly for Windows 2000 and later operating systems.
The only time DNS will become important to you is when you move your website or mail between ISPs.
When you put in a web address into your browser, your computer looks up the name in the nearest DNS server. The ‘nearest’ has either been set by your computer system administrator or your ISP has made it automatically look at its own - every ISP has at least two DNS servers. If the address cannot be resolved (ie found) then the DNS server looks further upstream (to the DNS server it’s been set to look at) and so on until the root DNS server is found - this will have the correct IP address for a domain name. Once found, a DNS server (wherever it is in the chain) will cache (ie store) the name and matching address for (usually) 48 hours. This means that if it gets another query for the same domain name, it doesn’t have to go looking.
The cached record in the DNS server has a Time To Live (TTL) counting down from the aforementioned 48 hours and besides some big DNS servers only update twice a day. Since we don’t know how many DNS servers are sitting between the requesting computer and the top of the tree, it’s impossible to know how long it will be before a transferred website or mail service will be off-air because the cache time on each DNS server is unknown.
The last leg
Once the visitor to your website has arrived at our servers our DNS directs them to it using the www part of the domain name which, in Internet-speak, is called the host name. Note that www is just a convention: one can have anything (or nothing) but since most visitors are used to www it’s not particularly sensible to change.
Email goes to a separate mail server, most commonly redirected to one on your premises (by the IP address alone, so friendly names required). This requires you to have SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) mail server software on your server hardware. This mail server resolves user names (eg the john in john@mycompany.co.uk) and puts the mail in their mailbox.
We can also send your email to POP (Post Office Protocol) mailboxes from which you collect it but this is a much less efficient way of operating.
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