Even with a huge amount of information about modern technologies as well as our daily use of computer equipment and software, most people are unaware of the differences in scripting languages and the variety of web hosting services available. Many may not even understand what web hosting or scripting languages mean!

In the simplest of terms when a business or individual has decided to create a website they will more than likely require the services of a web hosting company. Web hosts own the server equipment that keeps all of the data and files necessary for the site to run, look and perform as the website owner desires. The data and files are all going to be written with special programs and languages which are recognizable by computers around the world. Currently the two most common platforms are Linux and Windows.

There are reasons that a business or individual will need to know which of the platforms their hosting provider uses including the design of an existing site, the need for certain functions or applications and their own budget constraints.

The advantages of using Linux server hosting will generally include:

• Compatibility – Linux web hosting allows for a full range of integration or compatibility with other operating software or applications. The software can run easily on a Windows server, while the reverse is not so easily done. Additionally, many of the most commonly used databases and applications Continue reading »

Before you can talk about differences between clustering and load balancing, and there are more than a few, you’ve got to get the definitions straight. Clustering is often understood to mean the capability of some software to provide load balancing services, and load balancing is often used as a synonym for a hardware- or third-party-software-based solution.
In practice, clustering is usually used with application servers like IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic and Oracle AS (10g). Also being used in that environment are load balancing features found in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) like BIG-IP. (For simplicity, we will talk about clustering versus ADC approaches.)

Scalability, horizontally speaking
There are hardware load balancers, of course, but there we talk about pools or farms, the server groupings where application requests get distributed. It is in the software world that the term cluster is applied to that same group.

Clustering will typically convert one instance of an application server to a master controller, then process/distribute requests to multiple instances using such industry standard algorithms as round robin, weighted round robin or least connections. Clustering is similar to load balancing in that it has horizontal scalability, a nearly transparent way to add additional instances of application servers for increased capacity or response time performance. To ensure that an instance is actually availab Continue reading »

1. Flexibility
A dedicated server gives you control – the flexibility do use the server as you wish. With a shared hosting plan we have to work to be sure that all the clients hosted on a server “play nice” with each other. Not so with a dedicated hosting client – then there’s only you using the server, and we can give you a lot more flexibility to do what you wish!

2. Power
On a shared hosting environment, you have to share the resources of the server with the other hosting clients. While this is fine for a small website, as your website grows in traffic it begins to need greater amounts of bandwidth, disk space, processor time, etc. A dedicated server lets you wring the most use out of the server, since no resources have to be reserved for other clients.

3. Ecommerce
While ecommerce is possible on non-dedicated server, it’s usually a good idea to use a dedicated server for your ecommerce website. This is because with a dedicated server, you have greater security. There are no other clients running websites on your server, only you. Control gives security, and security is always important when doing business online!

4. SEO
SEO or “Search Engine Optimization” is the art of making sure your website is well represented in the search results for search engines like Google and MSN. There Continue reading »