Server Security

Server security is an important aspect of a web host. Some of the common network attacks are DDoS attacks. Its distributed denial or service attack that won’t let your website process any forms on web page. It can affect a single or multiple websites across the web server.

A web hosting company must have an appliance to prevent such network attacks. This device is expensive and needs to be connected to the server to prevent DDoS attacks. Many small scale web hosting providers might not have this appliances, so it is necessary to ask the company if they have any preventive measures set up for DDoS or network related attacks.

Invisible iFrame attacks

Invisible iFrame attacks are when your website starts shifting down and a white empty space keeps adding at the top. When you see the source of the web page you find an iFrame getting added on top of the page. Even if you remove the code, upload the new file again it will keep adding there. As time goes this space will keep increasing and your website will keep shifting down. This had happened to be with my previous web host.

Invisible iFrame attacks have got nothing to do with any web hosting provider or the server. But these attacks are normally caused when a rogue automated script or a hacker happens to know our FTP password. I was told by the web hosting provider to change the FTP password and those attacks stopped happening.

Website Up-time

No one can guarantee you 100% up time but most of the big websites are up and running just fine 100% of the time at any given time. There are some established and successful web hosting providers that have worst up time reports.

You can always use free site up time monitoring services to check your website up time. It might be possible that your site is down when you are sleeping.

Get Reviews

Search for reviews about a web hosting company on internet. Read other people experiences to get an idea if it is the right server for you. You might not know about an issue unless you face it.

You need to be very careful while finding and reading reviews because i have read negative reviews about some of the fully established companies like Go Daddy too.

Hidden Features and limitations

Some of the web hosts i worked in past had hidden features and limitations not mentioned by them in public on their list of features page. For example, i was able to send only 400 emails per hour. I never knew it unless i started getting ‘mail not sent’ errors. I was later told that i am not allowed to send any more than 400 mails per hour.

Join Discussion Boards and Forums

Join forums related to web hosting talk and start a discussion about a web host you want to open an account with. It is a good way to get reviews about it and to find about other people experiences with it.

Web Hosting Talk

Type of website and server configuration

If you have a website that needs a lot of server resources, then you might want to go for dedicated web server. Suppose if you have a file sharing, photo sharing or videos related website that can consume a lot of server resources, then make sure you have enough bandwidth. On dedicated servers you have enough but limited bandwidth, you should be aware of your bandwidth limits and usage to prevent site getting off due to over usage.

Web Host

You have a fully established website that gets a lot of traffic and generates a lot of revenues. But what if you feel a need to change your web host due to any reason whether poor up time, bad service or simply changing platform from Linux to Windows?

Many bloggers or online business owners have no such technical knowledge of transferring entire CMS based website from one web host to another server. You can often find such projects on freelancer.com or other such services asking to help them with the transfer.

So here are the simple steps to make it happen.

Backup website Files

Go to your control panel and simply compress all the web pages, folder structure and any downloadable files that you provide through file manager. You can easily find the file manager option right on front page when you log in to the control panel. In file manager you can find an option for “Compress” on header section. You need to select all the files and folder that you want to transfer in order to compress.

This will simply create a ZIP file of all the files on your current web server. Just download that file and keep it safe on your local computer.

Database Backup – Dump File

If you are using dynamic website that stores all the data in a database, you will need to take the database back up too.

In your control panel front page, click on PHPMyAdmin icon under Databases section and select the database that you are using for the website you want to transfer.

Simply click on “Export” button after selecting the database and you will be provided an option for various file formats before downloading. Select any desired format and save it on your local computer.

Now you have all the important things to make the transfer happen. There are only these two important things that you need to have with you.

Moving to a new web server

Now upload the ZIP file that contains compressed files and folders from your old web host on to your new web server account. If you do this through an FTP, most probably you will not find an option to extract the ZIP file. So do it from your file manager in control panel.

Once you extract all the files, you will be able to view your website already, but you will see a database error on the home page.

Nothing is wrong with that, now you just need to create a database and import the Dump file.

Creating Database and Tables

Go to database section in your control panel front page. Click on Mysql Databases button and simply create a new database. Note down the database name on a temperory notepad file.

Create a user for that database. Add the newly created user to that database. You will find all these options right on the same page under MySql Databases.

Then open PHPMyAdmin and go the the newly created database. Simply import the Dump file that you have from your old server and all the tables will be automatically created like before on your new database.

Configuring

Now you need to configure your website to use the new database. This is pretty simple because normally in most of the open source CMS you will find a separate config file that has details about database, its user and password.

You just need to enter the new details, new database name, new user and password.

Warning

The whole process above is simple and have been tried many a times by me and hence it works. But about the configuration file, if you are using some odd open source CMS then it might not have a config file right out of the box for you to edit. If you are using a custom PHP script then it can have a config file.

So before transferring, make sure that you find a configuration file which is important to configure new details.