Most people are familiar with email viruses and the need for protecting a personal computer against infection. But what are you doing to ensure the safety and security of your website? Most often, business owners leave this side of things up to their web designers and web hosting company. But how do you know that what they are doing is enough to protect your website and business? Let’s look at a few basic things regarding web hosting security that you need to know about.

What Cyber Criminals Are Doing

Hackers and cyber criminals really don’t have a conscience; they aren’t worried that they may be destroying your business or livelihood. Sometimes it is just a game to them to see if they can access and destroy the information held on your website. Other times, they may be after your customer data or business information so they can commit fraud and make online purchases with your customers’ credit cards. They do this by planting malicious code into your website. This code can then run undetected while they harvest the information they want. This is usually referred to as spyware, malware, trojan horses and key loggers. If your website is not protected against these programs, you could find yourself becoming a virtual victim to these hackers.

What Part Does Your Web Hosting Provider Play?

Many business owners will tell you that while they have some basic knowledge about combating spyware and malware, they do not have the time to keep up to date with all the latest information. This is understandable. You have a business to run which involves keeping customers happy. However, you can never afford to just ignore the problem. One of your best options is to make sure that your web hosting providers are the experts. Check with them regarding what protection methods they have on the servers to ensure your website’s security. Make sure that the programs they are using are verified in the computer industry and that they are run on a basis where they receive regular daily updates.

Protecting Your Website Content

The most common way that information is uploaded onto a website is through FTP, also known as File Transfer Protocol. While this is the most widely used method of uploading information, it is not particularly secure. Hackers can intercept the transfer, and add, delete or change information. They then send it on its way to your website without you even being aware of it. They could put malicious code into the content which could capture your business or company details, depending on the nature of your site. Even the content of your website is valuable. No doubt you took many hours to write it so you will want to protect it. A more secure way of transferring information is known as SFTP. It is a similar protocol to FTP except that it has added security features so the transfer cannot be accessed by hackers as easily.

Protecting Your Customers’ Information

If you have an ecommerce site, it is absolutely essential that you make use of SSL to protect your customer information. SSL is known as Secure Sockets Layer. What this does is encode and hide information such as customers’ credit card numbers, customers’ billing addresses and other pertinent information. If you do not have this in place on your website, you are leaving your customers vulnerable to identity theft and credit card fraud. Hackers are pretty efficient when it comes to getting their hands on that information if it is not encoded. They could be making purchases online and using your customers’ credit cards long before they become aware of it. If you run an e-commerce site, make sure that your hosting provider has SSL. In addition, they should be able to provide you with an SSL certificate which you can place on your website to show customers you have a secure website for them to transact on.

How Diligent Is Your Hosting Provider About Website Security?

Any good web hosting provider will know how essential it is to have good security. Hackers are constantly coming up with creative new ways to access your website information and send out viruses. No hosting provider can afford to be anything but proactive in their approach to combating cyber criminals. If when speaking to your hosting provider, you get the impression that they are not terribly concerned about keeping up-to-date security measures then it is time to look around for another hosting provider. They should be the experts and able to provide you with the latest protection available.

Your Host is Your Foundation

Online business operators have a tendency to forget that the company hosting their store is the foundation of their business and a successful business needs a strong and reliable foundation. When looking for a web host, remember that finding the company with the cheapest price is not the goal. Paying a higher fee for better service and more dependability is ultimately the smartest decision. Conversely, the most expensive company is by no means going to be the best either.

When launching a new e-commerce business, finding the best web host for your needs can be a tremendously daunting task. There are simply so many web hosts out there and it is a tiresome and grueling process to separate the good guys from the bad. Many folks looking to start a website begin by checking out web hosting review sites and directories. On these sites, you can read what clients have to say about their current and former web hosts.

However, there is a bit of a problem with many of these hosting review sites – bias. The majority of these websites are actually owned by web hosting companies and most, if not all, sell advertising space. In theory, if a host has a big marketing budget then they can buy their way into the marketplace. A review site is not generally going to give a negative review to a company that is spending thousands of marketing dollars with them.

However few and far between they may be, unbiased review sites do exist. A great place to start when searching for a new web host is Web Hosting Talk, a very informative site with great, impartial forums. On this site, you can gain priceless, valuable insight into the web hosting and e-commerce industries by discussing, conversing and learning the opinions of the experts. Another review site that has been noted for its impartiality is HostJury.com.

When searching for a host, do not be suckered into buying into gimmicks. Things like “unlimíted” plans may sound appealing, but there is really no such thing as “unlimíted.” When a company says that, they mean that your site will be generally placed on an overcrowded server where you will be forgotten about. It’s important to research the history of the company and find a reliable host with great technical support.

Your Host Dramatically Impacts the Performance of Your Store

There are a variety of major ways that your web host impacts the performance of your online store including:

1. Uptime and Downtime
2. Technical Support
3. Site Speed and Page Load Times
4. Management of your account including data, email, backups
5. Virus Protection
6. Defense from Hackers and Malware
7. The ability of your hosting to grow with your business (you should be able to acquire hard drive
space with one quick, simple call)
8. Your host should aid with the technical aspects of accepting credít card orders, including setting
up a payment processing system.
9. Hosts should help you find developers or modules to make your site function properly.

No Such Thing As Good Downtime

Choosing a reliable web host and the correct plan for the amount of traffic your site will generate is of the utmost importance to the success of your online business. Site uptime and downtime are perhaps the most important components of how web hosting affects an online store’s performance. Downtime can really break an online business quickly.

Simply speaking, when your site is down and inaccessible then customers cannot make purchases and you cannot earn revenue. Furthermore, potential customers cannot peruse your site. Let’s face it – people shop online to save time and money. If your site is continuously down, then you will not be able to make it in the competitive marketplace of the Internet.

The industry standard for web hosts regarding downtime is a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Don’t sign up for a hosting package that does not guarantee at least 99.9% uptime because this will surely negatively impact the performance of your store. To put it in more practical terms, with 99.9% uptime, your site shouldn’t ever encounter more than around 45 minutes of total downtime per month.

Sometimes there might be a situation where your server has a critical error and your site may not be online for 99.9% of the month. In any such case, it is your host’s responsibility to reimburse your account with the pro-rated amount you owe for that month’s charges.

Quality Support is a Must

Reliability and good technical support go hand in hand. When choosing a new host, make sure that they have an excellent support staff. When you first call them, go with your gut instinct. Do they sound knowledgeable and easy to understand? Are they polite? Ask detailed questions and make sure you get well-informed responses. You want to have the comfort of knowing that in any instances of malfunction your issues will be resolved quickly and correctly. A solid web host will have email and phone support available 24/7/365.

Looking, feeling and operating professionally are critical components to running an e-commerce business. Having a sub par web host will toss professionalism out the window rather quickly. It is imperative to establish trust between you and your customers in order to successfully sell online. Customers will not feel safe spending their money with a site that seems unprofessional in any manner.

A Speedy Site is Essential

Another manner in which your web host can impact your store’s performance is your page load times. This can even affect your ranking within Google and the other search engines as they begin using site speed as a factor to determine page rank on the results pages. Having fast load times is imperative not only for the sake of ranking well with search engines but to make your customers happy. No customers like a slow site and chances are that if your site is not performing well, they might just click on over to your competition.

A Solid Web Host + A Good Business Model = Happy Customers + Success

Unsatisfactory web hosting can directly impact the customers of your store. Therefore, it is imperative that you choose a quality web host that will not play a part in your store functioning inadequately. Studies have shown that approximately fifty percent of consumers will leave a preferred site if they are experiencing technical problems. All it takes is one unhappy customer to begin the process of bringing down your business. If a customer is not happy, the following results could occur:
1. They may not ever return to your store as a shopper again (this is especially traumatic to your business if they are repeat customers)

2. Word of mouth is a big deal. Unhappy customers have big mouths and they will most likely vent their frustrations with others.

3. A dissatisfied customer may leave a negative review regarding your business on a forum, message board or review site. One bad review can stick with you and your business forever so you must go to all lengths to avoid them.

If it does happen, be proactive about it and try to squash it as soon as possible. Try to explain your side and apologize to the customer (remember, the customer is always right). Provide the person a discount or their money back to appease them. With today’s social networks, news travels fast. One tweet could go viral and your brand and image can be quickly tarnished.

Author: Forrest Yingling

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Webstyles is committed to helping South African businesses.

We all know that even though the recession is “over” people are still holding on to their hard earned cents, so why should you waste yours?. Paying more than you need to.

Our web hosting packages start from as little as R30 per month, This caters for your email accounts, MySQL databases, blogs, forums, website, 1Gb disk space, 1Gb Bandwidth, Fantastico deluxe scripts and more.

There is no cost for the transfer of your domain to our servers and domain name renewals for .co.za domains is only R80 per year.

For more information on our hosting packages visit our website today.

Webstyles is currently creating an application for users to save their hosting account details once and automatically login and manage email accounts,login to Cpanel, upload files, get live chat support, log support tickets or access the knowledge base. Gone are the days of opening an email to find a url and your possible expired password and user-name. Support for multiple domains will also be available shortly and will provide a clients who are new to hosting an easy way to manage their essential domain functions.

We plan to have a stable version by end of February

And if the demand is high will offer it to all cpanel Users Early March 2010

Please Reply to this post with any additional features you would like to see in future builds

Usually when someone contacts me online, one of the most frequent questions I get asked is this: “How do I find a good web host?” or “Which web host do you use?”

This is one of those essential things you will need in order to earn that online income. You will need a web site and you will need a web host – somewhere to place that web site.

Sure there are countless marketers who work without a site but most have at least one main site which acts as their online calling card; where people can find them on the web. Of course, you can always use the social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter… but that’s like operating your office out of Starbucks!

Instead, a well designed site is just more professional and business like. It also means you’re serious about your online business.

Picking a good web host is not easy. I have had numerous different web hosts over the years. Most of them have been very good and served their purpose, but I have had some bad experiences too – what long term webmaster or marketer hasn’t? Something always goes wrong eventually, especially if you have a lot of sites and many different web hosts.

Sometimes having a web host can be downright scary. Several years ago, the web host that I had my main site on was first sold and then went bankrupt. One day your site is running fine and the next day the web host is completely gone. Shut down. Your site and all your files completely gone. Vanished. Your host can’t be reached. Total blackout!

Fortunately, I had my site backed up on several systems and since that experience I always back my sites up on several computers and I go even further by copying them onto DVDs should those computers crash. If you have a site, I always suggest you back up your site files and make it redundant. The very worst can happen to you.

Overall quality and good 24/7 support should be your first objectives in choosing a good web host. You want a site that’s fast, easy to use, rarely down and has good support that you can reach at all times, should something go wrong.

You need to check exactly what features your web host is offering and for what price:

- How much storage space?
- Daily traffic limit or transfer?
- Email system? How many accounts…
- What type of server Linux or Windows?
- How many other sites will be sharing your IP address?
- Do You need SSL or a secure site?
- Are sites/files backed up? How often?
- What are the support hours?
- And of course the Price?

But don’t always try to get the cheapest price hosting, keep in mind, you always get what you pay for. A cheap web host won’t save you money if it’s a poor service and your site is always going down. So don’t always pick the cheapest web host.

Match up your hosting service with the type of site you will be running; a simple HTML site will have or make simple demands on your hosting service. So a shared hosting service may be quite adequate to meet your hosting needs. For SEO reasons, you should always check the location of your site, I have found which country your site is hosted in, plays a role in your rankings, especially in Google.

However, if you have a site that’s extremely interactive with forums, discussion groups, get large bursts of traffic or you’re running a lot of server-side scripts and programs – then you may need a more robust hosting service to meet your needs.

In this case, you might need a dedicated server to handle just your site. Many web hosts offer this service and it’s worth looking into if you have a site with extreme amounts of traffic or if you’re running forums, affiliate programs, email services… from your site. Most of my own sites are very simple and I have them on many different web hosts. Mainly because of my own experiences, I just don’t want to have all my sites on one host… the old “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” reasoning.

At the moment I am quite pleased with all my web hosts… many of my sites are on GoDaddy and I find them OK for simple sites like mine. I also find it convenient because they are also a domain registry so I can easily use them to buy my domains. Although many experts suggest you should always keep your domain registration separate from your hosting service because if your host should suddenly vanish, it is only a simple matter of moving your site to a different host. If your host controls your domain, this can be a major problem. Always keep control of your domain in your own hands, but you probably already knew that.

Another web host I use is Bluehost which is very good, can’t remember the last time my site was down. They are very popular with around a million sites and my only concern is that they may become too popular and their services will be spread too thin. However, I have had very few problems with them and you can always reach their support.

I also have a site with Ken Evoy’s SBI (Site Build It), but I created that one mainly to get access to the enormous resources connected with SBI. It is slightly more expensive than some of the ones listed above, but SBI is an overall online marketing system that in my opinion can’t be equaled on the web. Well, perhaps the Warriors group could give them a run for their money, but it’s the community of like-minded webmasters with SBI which makes it special. They are always ready and willing to help you out, doesn’t matter if you’re an experienced pro or a complete newcomer. Several years ago, I took a very close first-hand look at the hosting service provided by SBI. You can find my opinions/review on SBI located in the resource box below.

There are countless webhosts you can choose from when picking a web host. But do your homework, check around to the different forums and see how everyone is rating the web hosts they are using. First-hand experiences are the best judge of whether or not a web host is good and reliable.

Although moving a site from one web host to another can be a real pain, especially if you have a large scale site, but if you’re not totally satisfied with a web host and are having serious problems – simply change your hosting. Just make sure you’re not going from bad to worst.

Still, finding a good quality web host will be a major chore, no matter how you look at it.

Perhaps, in the final analysis, nothing beats checking with your friends and fellow webmasters you trust. Ask them which hosts they’re using and if they’re satisfied with it. Nothing beats first-hand experiences when it comes to choosing a web host. Just make sure you’re comparing oranges to oranges, that is: make sure you have similar site requirements as your webmaster friends. If you both have similar type sites, then finding a good quality web host can be as easy as having a friendly chat over a cup of coffee.

Well this all depends on the content but generally a site needs no more than 5mb if it is just html, if you intend on adding flash to the site then 10-15mb is needed depending on the size of the flash as well as how many flash items you are using. if you intend to add downloads to your site on an ftp account then more is needed, it all depends on your usage needs.

as for bandwidth

This is an age old question that people want 3Gb or unlimited bandwidth

but the website never makes it past 10mb let alone 1 gig.

www.webstyles.co.za is 1mb in size on html alone, and the monthly usage for bandwidth is never over 50 mb with more than 3000 hits a month.

if you require any hosting of an existing site or want to start your own website then visit http://www.webstyles.co.za/starter.html

Webstyles.co.za offers 3 packages for you to choose from

the first of which is the Starter Package.

with this you can use the full 50mb for just your website
or use the additional space for email accounts which can be forwarded to an email you check regularly, you can use the space to setup a blog, forum, ecommerce site, helpdesk or anything you wish.

whether all for email, mailing lists, blogs, ecommerce pages, website or any other use you may find. the space is yours.

the only real difference is the space you choose