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This web hosting
guide provides everything necessary to make an informed decision
about your web hosting requirements. Here we will list the key
components of a website hosting package, and what they mean to you
and your site.
Hard Disk
Storage
This is the space you have to store your site. Every
website is stored on a web-server which is the computer that
broadcasts your site to your visitors. Your hard disk storage is
how much space you are allocated on that computer's hard drive.
Even most robust websites don't require more than 5 megs of space,
but having more is a nice luxury.
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Monthly
Transfer (also called bandwidth)
This is the total amount of data (including graphics and
HTML web pages) which can be uploaded and downloaded from your site
each month. It is a rough estimator of how many visitors your
hosting plan can accommodate. For example, on an average size
website with a moderate amount of graphics, it has been our
experience that 750 megs of transfer can accommodate well over 4,000
visitors per month. Some web hosts claim to offer
"unlimited bandwidth" which is generally a bad thing. Not
only are they likely to pack your site on an overloaded server and
connection (bandwidth costs us money), but if you read the fine
print there are always "excessive use penalties" which are arbitrary
and costly. In contrast, we monitor bandwidth and insure your site
is always fast and reliable with no hidden charges.
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POP3
Email Accounts
These are email accounts which can be used with your domain
name. They allow you to receive and read email via our easy web
interface or with a number of popular mail clients. This is
incoming mail only, and you should use the server of your dialup
account for sending mail (although it can still appear to come from
your domain name). Please visit our support page for
more information on configuring your email.
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Unlimited updates via FTP
We allow you to update your site 24/7 using an FTP (File
Transfer Protocol) Client. This is a program which allows you to
connect to our server and upload your files. We recommend CuteFTP
which is both powerful and simple to use. It can be found at
www.cuteftp.com.
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Microsoft FrontPage Server
Extensions
Microsoft FrontPage is an extremely popular web development
tool. You can create your site and upload it to our servers using
this extremely powerful product. Our servers also support FrontPage
"bots" which are easy-to-add bells and whistles for your website
like counters, order forms, and more.
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CGI
script support and your own CGI-BIN
directory
CGI (common gateway interface) allows you to run scripts
and programs on our server to enhance your web pages. Most of
these scripts are written in a language called Perl, although C and
C++ are also used frequently. Unlike with HTML, CGI's are executed
on the server. You can use CGI to add advanced forms, shopping
carts, counters, and many other features to your website. The
CGI-BIN is a special directory which allows scripts and programs to
be executed on the server.
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Active
Server Pages
With ASP, you can add interactive content to your Web pages
or build entire Web applications that use HTML pages as the
interface to your visitors. Active Server Pages (ASP) is a
server-side scripting environment that you can use to create dynamic
Web pages or build powerful Web applications. ASP pages are files
that contain HTML tags, text, and script commands. ASP pages can
call ActiveX components to perform tasks, such as connecting to a
database or performing a business calculation.
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