Website Hosting – PHP Web FTP

What Is SQL Injection?

If you have come across the term ‘SQL Injection’ and always wondered what it meant, the answer is that SQL stands for ‘Structured Query Language, and so by default SQL Injection must mean ‘Structured Query Language Injection’. If you are still somewhat bemused, then we can assure you, once you have read the rest of this article you will have a fuller explanation which hopefully clarifies it for you.

We will state from the outset that SQL Injection is not desirable, and in truth, it can cause individuals, businesses, and organisations no end of problems. The clue is the word ‘injection’ and the fact that an SQL injection is an attack by hackers or cybercriminals on the database of an online property such as a website, and the queries made to it by applications.

What Can Happen During An SQL Injection?

Some SQL injection attacks can cause nothing more than an inconvenience at one end of the scale, through to a full-scale attack on the website’s server and its data or the disabling of a website so that it cannot function.

5 Types Of Web Hosting Explained

The choices you have to make regarding hosting your website, obviously include the web hosting company, however, beyond making that decision, you also need to determine which sort of hosting you require. The reason for this is that your website’s size, its complexity, its popularity in terms of visitor numbers, what functions it has, and the type of business the website represents will all influence what is the most appropriate type of hosting for your website.

In the main there 5 types of web hosting that should cover the vast majority of websites in the sense that one of them will be suitable. Not all hosting companies will offer all 5 of these and it might be the case that they only offer two or three. You also need to factor in the possibility or even the likelihood that your business grows and as such, you need to expand your website.

At that point, the type of hosting most suited to it may need to change, and if the most suitable type is not offered by your current hosting provider then you have the task of choosing a new one and migrating your website over to them. For this reason, it may be wise to select a web hosting service that provides the hosting types that will allow you to expand. As for those 5 web hosting options, here they are…

Shared Hosting

This is the most popular and cheapest hosting option which usually suits the vast majority of websites. With shared hosting, all files for your website are stored on a server that also stores the files of other websites. Your website will also share bandwidth with other websites too. This can mean that even if your hosting plan offers you ‘unlimited’ bandwidth if there is a lot of traffic visiting the other websites on the same server as yours, it can cause your website’s speed to fall.

10 Steps To Successfully Migrate Your Website To A New Hosting Provider

There can come a point in the development and expansion of your website where you need to migrate it. The reason could be to move it from a shared hosting to a VPS, a dedicated server, or to a new web hosting company altogether. With any website migration, there are risks, especially if a specific set of steps are not followed in order.

These risks include the website no longer functioning properly, missing elements, a loss of data, poor website performance, and it can even cause your website to no longer be indexed by the search engines and therefore lose its rankings. In order to ensure none of the previous risks manifest themselves into reality here are the 10 steps you should follow when migrating your website between hosting companies.

#1: Retain Your Existing Website…For Now: This first one is not actually a step but a definite ‘DO NOT’, which is under no circumstances should you take down your existing website from its current hosting until it is properly migrated and tested as being 100% operational on its new hosting.

#2: Create A Copy Of Your Website: You next need to create a copy of your current website and upload it to your new hosting account. One point here that as you are keeping your current site live, you will initially need to upload the new one to a subdomain as the same domain cannot exist for two separate websites, even if they are identical.

The Benefits Of Paid Web Hosting Over Free Web Hosting

When you start your search for a web hosting service for any new website you wish to create, you will soon come to realise that there is no shortage of choices to be made. There are several different types of hosting services, and an absolute abundance of hosting providers, all hoping you will choose them.

Whilst many of the choices you make have several variables, one decision only has two options to choose from and that is the choice as to whether you wish to pay for your hosting or choose a hosting service that is free of charge. There are merits to both, but in this article we are going to explain, why, in most cases, opting for a paid hosting service provides several important benefits, that free hosting cannot give you.

Ability To Have A Unique Domain Name

If your website is related to your business, and in particular, if you wish to build that business into a recognisable brand, it is essential that you have a unique domain for your website. Many paid hosting companies actually include a free domain of your choice when you sign up with them.

With a free web hosting company you will have to pay for your domain separately, and the other main issue is that you might not even be able to use a unique domain name. Instead, you will only be able to use a sub-domain. That means that instead of your website having ‘myawesomebrand.com’ as its domain, for example, you may only be able to use ‘hostingservice.com/myawesomebrand’, which is far from memorable and looks ugly.

What Is FTP?

When it comes to the internet, websites, and website security, you may have already realised that there is no shortage of terminology. Much of this terminology seems to have been created by someone who was on a mission to use as many long words and letters as possible. This has led to many of them being abbreviated, and one of those abbreviations is FTP.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and here we are going to explain what it is and why it is used. Trying to explain FTP is made more difficult because it can be defined in three different ways. First, it is a ‘method’ of transferring files, next it is the ‘software’ or ‘client’ which does the sending and receiving, and to add even more to the mix, FTP is also used as an ‘action’ in the sense that someone may be asked to FTP files to a server.

How FTP Works

For FTP to take place, there have to be two parties to it, in the same sense that a verbal conversation cannot take place unless two people are involved. With FTP, the two parties are the sender and the receiver. The sender, using FTP software, will send files to the receiver. The receiver can either be another person simply working on a PC, or it could be a server, with an example being a hosting server receiving the files required to publish a website online.

7 Features You Want Your Web Hosting Company To Provide

Whether you are seeking a web hosting provider for a new website or are unhappy with your existing web hosting company and are looking for a new one, it pays to ensure that whoever you choose is able to provide some specific features. These are features that can enhance the operation of your website, improve the experience of visitors to that website, and make it easier for you to manage your website.

These features are what you might call the absolute minimum that any web hosting worthy of the name should provide. In some cases, you will find that some of these features are only available on certain hosting plans that a web hosting company offers, so make sure you check all the plans of any web hosting service you are considering.

Ability To Host Unlimited Domains/Websites

The importance of this to you will depend on your business model but it is better to have and not need it than need it and not have it available to you. Unlimited domains allow you to host multiple websites with different domains for businesses that you control. They may all be satellite businesses under one corporate structure, or it could be you run a variety of websites that all operate independently of each other. Either way, having them all hosted on one service is preferable.

Multiple Email Accounts

Even if you only have one website hosted with your service provider, having the means to set up and use multiple emails will make running your business much easier. You can have one with your name, and then others which are used with respect to what the person is emailing about. This could include email address set up for customer support, general enquiries, or sales.

Apple’s iCloud – nothing but blue sky?

fad –noun: a temporary fashion, notion, manner of conduct, etc, especially one followed enthusiastically by a group.
trend –noun: the general course or prevailing tendency; style; vogue.
game changer –colloquialism: an innovation that changes or redefines business.

It’s difficult to browse the media today and not read about a new technology, product or application in this ever-advancing online world. Whether it’s a new “i” this or a new “smart” that, it can be a bit daunting to try to make sense of each new development and how it might impact our business (or not).

The goal of this blog is to highlight new technologies, products and applications and discuss their potential impact on the way we do business, always asking the question: Is this just a passing fad, a new trend or will it change the game as we know it? Hopefully as a result, we can spark some great conversations.

So let’s begin with Apple’s recently announced iCloud. First of all, what’s a cloud or, as it’s more commonly referred to, cloud computing? Simply put, it’s a secure, online environment where you can access your applications and data from any network-connected device, such as a computer, smart phone or tablet. In other words, rather than storing files on your devices, you store them in the cloud for better accessibility and security.

What You Must Consider When Changing Your Web Hosting Provider

There are many reasons why you might one day wish to consider switching your web hosting provider. It could be that you have found their customer service to be poor, that the performance of your website is being compromised, or that they are increasing their hosting fees to a level that you find too high.

Regardless of the reason you wish to leave your current hosting company, before switching to another, there are several key considerations you must make. Failure to do so could mean that you end up with a hosting company that is no better than the previous one, or worse, one whose performance and service are even more lacking than what you were experiencing before.

To avoid either of those two undesirable scenarios and more importantly, to ensure that any new hosting company you move to can provide you with what you require for your website to function properly and be able to be managed effectively, here are some of the more crucial points you should consider.

What Specific Features Do They Offer?

This can cover a wide range of possibilities but in most cases, you need only focus on the more important ones. These include the following:

Disc Space – How Much?
Bandwidth – Limited Or Unlimited?
Email Accounts – Offered And Are They Unlimited?
Subdomains / Add On Domains – Unlimited?
Which Platforms Can Be Used? WordPress? Joomla? Others?

If the answers to these questions are either positive or in most cases ‘unlimited’, then this is a good sign that this hosting service can provide the level of website functionality and management you need.