Republic of the Philippines

SORSOGON STATE COLLEGE

BULAN CAMPUS
Information and Communication Technology Department

IS INNOVATIONS and
NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Module 3 – STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF THE WEB
AS A PLATFORM
(Hosting Concepts)

Description
This course is designed to introduce students to new and innovative
technologies and examine how these powerful systems have
fundamentally reshaped modern organizations along with our
society. Using online collaborative technologies that were developed
in the context of social networking and online communities,
corporations are reengineering both internal business processes and
those related to customers, suppliers, and business partners.
Developing innovative ways to communicate and collaborate can
lead to new business opportunities, and new efficiencies.

Subject Instructor: DAVID JOHN S. CAYETANO, MIT

Module for: BSIS 2A & 2B

Module 3 – STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF THE WEB AS A PLATFORM (Hosting Concepts) (2 Weeks Duration)

I. Learning Activities Assignment and Assessment

Hosting Concepts
Web hosting deals with putting the contents of your website on a Web server. Hosting your website on your
own server could be an option. But this will become very much expensive unless you are hosting a site like
yahoo.com or google.com. So this tutorials does not cover how to set up your own hosting server.

Remember: Buying a server space or renting a complete server from an Internet Service Provider (ISP)
is the most widely used option. This section guides you to choose a hosting type and makes you aware
of other related concepts.

Hosting Platforms
You can go for any of the following two most widely used hosting platforms

Windows Hosting Servers − If you are a Windows lover then you will find many hosting servers running
different flavors of Windows and you can buy space from these servers. Normally Windows hosting
servers are more expensive because of lot of software licensing costs are involved with these servers.

Linux Hosting Servers − If you want to go for Linux then opportunities are unlimited and they will have
to pay less then what you will pay for Windows Hosting Server. There are many ISP who provides
Hosting Servers with different flavors of Unix.

Hosting Types
There are many options available and you can select any hosting type based on your requirement and budget.
Following are most widely used hosting types:

Free Hosting
Yes, this is true there are many service providers who will give you free space on their web server with
a condition that you will allow them to run their advertisement at your web pages. So if you are OK with
this option, then you have nothing to pay for a space. There are some websites like geocities.com,
lycos.com, myspace.com, etc. that give you space to build your web pages.

Shared Hosting
With shared hosting, your website is hosted on a powerful server along with other websites. On a shared
host, you will have your own user ID and password to login to the shared host and you will be allowed
to work in your work area. You would not be able to touch any file or directory belonging to other host
partner. Even you would not know how many sites are hosted on your shared host. This type of hosting
is very cost effective and good for small websites where your space and speed are not very important.
Here traffic on one site will affect the speed of all other hosted sites.

Virtual Dedicated Hosting

This type of hosting is better for medium size business. With virtual dedicated hosting, you will have a
dedicated bandwidth and dedicated RAM for your site. You will be given a root ID and password to
maintain your Web server. You will be the complete owner of your virtual dedicated server and will be
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 able to install or de-install any software. This type of hosting is created on a single server, but it is
managed in such a way that every user will have dedicated speed and bandwidth. This is bit more
expensive but really good one for medium size business.

Dedicated Hosting
This type of hosting is very similar to virtual dedicated hosting, but here, a complete machine will be
allotted for you. They are more expensive than virtual dedicated hosting and should be considered
when you have a very high traffic requirement.

Collocated Hosting
It is very difficult to set dedicated resources such as high-security against fire and vandalism, regulated
backup power, dedicated Internet connections and more. Collocation is the option which allows you to
put your machine in a service provider's premises to avail all the available facilities. This is also a very
expensive option and should be opted when you have very high traffic requirement.

Progress Assessment (Hosting Types)

• Give two (2) Hosting site examples of each that offers the most widely used hosting
types such as (Free Hosting, Shared Hosting, Virtual Dedicated Hosting, Dedicated
Hosting, and Collocated Hosting).

Answer the Progress Assessment question on the Learning

Management System.

Hosting Components
When you buy a Web server space, then you should be clear about the follows. You should do a price
comparison between different service providers based on the following components

Disc Space
A small or medium website will require between 10 and 100MB of disk space. If you plan to keep a lot
of audio and video on your website, then you need plan to buy more space. Before buying server
space, you should check the options available to expand your disc space if you need it in future.

Monthly Traffic
A small or medium website will need between 1GB and 10GB of data transfer on a monthly basis. If you
plan to keep a lot of audio and video on your website, then you need a plan with more data transfer
capacity. Check different options based on your requirements. What are the other options available in
case you cross the given data transfer limit. Your site should not be stopped in case you exceed given
limit.

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Processing Speed
If you are buying space on a shared machine, then you cannot guess how much speed will be given to
you. In that case, only way is to see other hosted sites with the same service provider to know about
their hosting quality. But if you are buying virtual dedicated server or dedicated server, then you should
consider how much RAM is being allocated to you. Your pricing will depend on the given processing
power to you.

Connection Speed
Nowadays, most service providers allow very fast connection speed. So choose a service provider who
is giving better connection speed in terms of bits per second. You can have a connection speed ranging
from 64Kb per second to 2.488Gb per second.

Email Accounts
Make sure you are going to get sufficient number of e-mail accounts. There are many other options
available which come along with your e-mail account. Like, will you get IMAP, POP and E-mail
Forwarding options available along with your e-mail facilities.

Emailing Support
Apart form having email accounts, it is also very important that your web server should have a facility
to send emails from back-end. In case your site visitors want to contact to you using a form, then you
will be able to use that emailing facility to send emails to your designated account. In simple terms, you
should make sure that the SMTP Server is setup and working on your Web server.

Latest Technologies
You should make sure that your web server is equipped with all the latest technologies. It should have
the latest version support for PHP, PERL, ASP and JAVA, etc.

Databases
There are many databases available MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, etc. You should choose your server
based on your database requirement. If you are buying space on a shared server, then you need to
verify how much space will be allocated for your database. Many ISPs do not give more than a limited
space for databases. If your site needs a lot of database size, then you should go for a virtual dedicated
server.

Server Uptime
It is important that you buy a web server from a reliable and reputed ISP. You should make sure your
ISP is giving you 99.99% server uptime. If the is server down, then there are many service providers
who gives you compensation in case your sites goes down more than a limited number of time.

Backup & FTP

Make sure your Service Provider is giving you more ways of taking regular backup of your website. If
your site is changing everyday, then it becomes very important that you should take regular backup of
your website. Many service providers do it on your behalf by charging a small cost for this service.

Control Panel
Just make sure what type of facilities you will get to maintain your hosting account. Check if your service
provider is providing you an easy-to-use Control Panel or some other similar tool. Using a Control
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Panel, you should be able to maintain basic operations related to your website such as logging your
service request, your reboot request, or any other problem.

Customer Support
Before finalizing a deal with your service provider, you should make sure they provide you the required
support. You can get this information using Internet forums or from your friends. There are many service
providers who give you 24x7 support for any technical or non-technical problem.

Progress Assessment (Hosting Components)

• On your given Hosting site examples on Progress Assessment (Hosting Types) , list
down the Hosting Components Capability of each of the different plan that the hosting
company offers.

Answer the Progress Assessment question on the Learning

Management System.

Ecommerce Hosting

Ecommerce is a way of doing business through Internet. You are doing ecommerce, especially when
you are selling your products or services through Internet. If you planning to put a website which will
have transactions such as buying or selling items or services, then it means you are going to setup an
ecommerce website. If this is the case, then I don't think this guide will help you up to a level where
should be able to setup an ecommerce site because there are many more things which should be
considered while setting up an ecommerce website.

Remember : Still you can start from here − E-commerce hosting is a bit expensive, but
they are not as expensive that you cannot start an ecommerce website. Nowadays, it is
very easy to set up an ecommerce site. All that one needs to do is to get in touch with
any good service provider and start gathering basic information.

There are many service providers who help you set up your virtual store and charge you
unexpectedly very low. Google has also started google account service in which you can sell
your products.

While finalizing your ecommerce hosting setup, you should be very clear on how to handle the
following:

1. Customer Registrations
2. Customer Transactions
3. Product Catalogs
4. Customer Orders

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 5. Order Security
6. Server Security
7. Server Maintenance
8. Server Backup
9. Server downtime
10. Inventory Control
11. Shipment Methods
12. Payment Methods
13. Foreign currency
14. Credit Cards
15. Taxes issues

Remember: You should take this list and discuss it with your service provider as well to understand
how they will support you to handle all these items.

Site Backup

Your server's hard drive crashed. Your site is hacked and the hacker deleted all your files. Your web
host disappeared with your money and your data. Even worse, there was and earth quack and your
ISP building is gone down and everything is lost.

Touch Wood!!! Nobody should face such a situation. But if you are not prepared for these situations,
your hard work might be lost forever. That is why it is of the utmost importance that you keep
regular backups of your data.

Now there are many questions

1. How frequently backup should be taken?

2. Where this backup should be preserved?
3. What type of backup should be taken?
4. Who should take these backup?

How Frequently Backup Should be Taken?

If your site is not changing over a period of time, then it is advisable to take backups only once
and keep it on your hard disc or data disc or DVD wherever you like. In case you need to restore
it, just do it and see if your website is up and running.

But if you are in the habit of making frequent modifications on your site, then it is necessary
that you take regular backup. Websites like amazon.com have very tight backup schedules and
very expensive backup infrastructure.

It depends on your business and you have to see how much data loss you can bear. If you think
it is not affordable to lose even a single day’s data, then I would recommend to schedule daily
backup and similarly, you can decide if weekly or monthly backup are OK for you or not.

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 Where the Backup Should be Preserved?
Most of the times, backups are taken from one machine and saved on another machine or
media. If possible, you should arrange a different backup server where you can FTP your
complete data to be backup up. If this is not too much then you can keep it in data CD or DVD
etc.

Remember: If possible, keep multiple copies of backup but with a managed way to avoid any
confusion. You should have a proper version control over different backups. There are many
service providers who provide you different backup servers with a very nominal cost and it is
recommended that you spend that amount on backup services.

What Type of Backup Should be Taken?

There are two types of backup − incremental and full. It depends on what type of backup tools
you are using. There are many backup tools − for example, Oracle provides its own utilities to
take different types of backup.

Incremental Backup − The backup’s controller compares the existing backup with the
data that you wish to backup. If there is an exact match between the two, then no
additional files will be backed up. However, if you have added or edited any file, these
files will be updated in the backup, thus the name incremental.

Full Backup − Here all files are written to the backup, even if they already exist in the
most current backup.

Who Should Take These Backup?

The simplest case is that you can login to your web server on a monthly or weekly basis and
copy all the website related files on different computer or media. It works only in case you have
limited amount of data on your site.

Remember: If you have a huge database and numerous files, then it is difficult to
manage such backups on an everyday and weekly basis. In such cases, you may need
to have automated scripts to take backup and keep them at another machine or
media.

You can write your shell script or perl script and browse through different directories and collect
all the files and zip them automatically, assign them a unique backup number and then ftp
those files on a designated backup server or media like tap drive.

Site Statistics
Once your site is up and running, it is important that you track your visitors and analyze what they
are using. You should have a detailed information on the following

Who is your visitor? − You should have your site visitor IP address available with you to know
the geographical location and identity of that visitor.

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 Visitors’ Timestamp − You should be aware of the time when your site gets the most number
of visitors so that you can plan a server down easily. Secondly, timestamp and IP address will
help you identify your site visitors in case an investigation is required against a site visitor.

What the visitors prefer? − What pages did the site visitor view on your website will give you an
idea about the importance of various sections of your website.

How visitors came? − This is another important information you should be aware of. How are
you getting your site visitors? Are they coming directly or coming through some other website
or advertising program.

How long do they stay? − How much time a visitor spends on your site? If visitors are leaving
your site just after browsing 1 or 2 pages, then you should come up with some innovative ways
to retain them for a longer duration.

Visitors’ Browser − This information is important to improve your website for that type of web
browsers.

Internet Services

Internet Services allows us to access huge amount of information such as text, graphics, sound and
software over the internet. Following diagram shows the four different categories of Internet Services.

Communication Services

There are various Communication Services available that offer exchange of information with
individuals or groups. The following table gives a brief introduction to these services:

S.N. Service Description

1 Electronic Mail
Used to send electronic message over the internet.

2 Telnet
Used to log on to a remote computer that is attached to internet.

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 3 Newsgroup
Offers a forum for people to discuss topics of common interests.

4 Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

Allows the people from all over the world to communicate in real time.

5 Mailing Lists
Used to organize group of internet users to share common information through e-mail.

6 Internet Telephony (VoIP)

Allows the internet users to talk across internet to any PC equipped to receive the call.

7 Instant Messaging
Offers real time chat between individuals and group of people. Eg. Yahoo messenger,
MSN messenger.

IV. Assessment / Home work

Answer the Assessment (Assignment/Homework) on the

Learning Management System.

Questions or Task
1. On the given various Communication Services available that offer exchange of information with
individuals or groups, Give and Define 3 examples of each of the communication services listed on
the Table.

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