Originally posted by Helen Dayman dayman@ion.com.au at www.alon-cohen.com

Your on-line business is growing, traffic to your website is increasing and orders are coming in fast. Too fast. Prospective customers are going elsewhere as your site is becoming congested. Your web pages are taking too long to load and error messages are greeting their requests.

Time to find a solution to this common problem for rapidly growing on-line businesses. Dedicated Server Hosting is the answer.

What is the difference you ask? Currently your website is sharing a server with many other websites. Each of these websites generates traffic through the server. Imagine for a moment, hundreds of busy websites generating traffic flow through this server.

Hosting of your website on this shared server might be limited by the amount of space available to you, say 20gb. Maybe your provider limits uploading and downloading of data to your site with excess traffic flow charged. These restrictions can impair the growth of a rapidly growing on-line business.

There is a solution to this ever-increasing problem. Your on-line business can be hosted on a single computer linked into a network. This dedicated server is reserved to service the needs of a single customer, you. Without the encumbrance of the server dividing the access between many hosted sites, it is able to provide faster access to data.

The server can be customised to meet the exact needs of your on-line business. Maybe you, the business owner, have a number of businesses. A dedicated server can also host a large number of virtual domains enabling your other on-line businesses to be hosted and accessed separately by your customers. A dedicated server will decrease your monthly hosting fees by eliminating multiple hosting accounts and replacing with a single monthly fee.

It would be great to be able to exercise 100% control over your web presence. With a dedicated server you can specify and modify the entire operating system and install the supporting software that meet up with your website’s requirements. Increase faster access to data, scalability and site analysis. If you have the experience, you can configure the CPU speed and partition the server to your specifications.

The dedicated server does not share bandwidth or storage space, you have the entire server to yourself. As no other user has access to the server, you can modify the settings. You can optimise the server for certain web applications such as e-commerce and multimedia.

One of the greatest advantages of a dedicated server is that you are basically renting it. If it breaks down it is the responsibility of the provider to fix it. They will maintain equipment and the connectivity of the server. Any repairs or replacement of hardware components is the responsibility of the provider.

You as the user usually have two service options, managed or unmanaged. The unmanaged service option is more for the user who has experience with programming, installing applications and configuring the server. This service is more economical for advanced users.

Those users who are less confident in their technical expertise can opt for the managed service. The managed service is ideal as it allows the user to customise the server without having the technical expertise.

Once you have made the decision to host your on-line business on a dedicated server, sit back and watch your business grow.

Originally posted by Michael Milley mikemilley@hotmail.com at www.alon-cohen.com

So you’ve got a great idea for a web business – maybe you even have the site designed – but where are you going to keep it? You need to find someone to host your site. Web hosting services are where most individuals and small- to medium-sized businesses keep their websites. Their actual web pages are located on a web hosting company’s computer.

You might ask why you need a web hosting service when you could keep the site on your own computer? Even if your page is personal and meant only for friends and family, you need a computer that is online all the time. Anything much beyond a text-only site would load slowly onto the internet even with a DSL or cable connection. Your personal computer just isn’t designed for hosting a web site, and setting up the necessary hardware and software is a hassle, not to mention expensive. Only big, established internet companies host their own sites. Web hosting services already have all the tools to get your pages up and running. A host keeps your web pages on its computer so that they can be accessed day or night by the worldwide audience that surfs the net.

Whether you’re putting up a fan page for your favorite concert violinist or you’d like to sell your line of hand-made violins and accessories on-line, there are web hosting services to meet your needs. When looking at hosts, consider things like the overall size of the data on your pages, how much activity you expect to have, what extras you might want, as well as price.

If the site you have in mind is relatively small or meant primarily for informational purposes, you probably don’t need a lot of space on a host server. You are also not looking for a high bandwidth (the amount of information transferred to and from your site over a period of time). You may even be able to get free hosting through your current internet service provider or a company that places ads on your page.

However, if you want to set up a professional or commercial web site, your site is likely to be larger, so you’ll need to get more space. And you don’t want customers or potential customers waiting for your site to download onto their computer, so you probably need more bandwidth to accommodate more activity.

If you’re putting up a commercial web site you may also want to think about the options that your host service can provide. CGI can allow your site’s users to fill out a form online and have it converted to an e-mail message to your company. If your site offers products for sale, security is an important consideration. Your host should offer secure SSL connections to help prevent fraud.

Many web hosting services offer more than just a place to park your site. Most offer e-mail addresses to go with your site. Web hosts may be able to provide activity statistics for your site allow you to track the use of your online business. Some web hosts will help design your site and register a domain name for your web pages. At Alon-Cohen.com Internet Solutions we offer full service web hosting, with packages ranging from smaller, personal sites to 2-Gigabyte sites with many additional features.