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Email Hosting

Posted by kk on Monday, September 14, 2009


If you work in a Small and Mid Size business (SME) there is a big chance that you are sending, receiving emails and sharing contacts/tasks/calendars on hosted exchange or Webmail powered email hosting solution. But what are the differences between hosted exchange and Webmail and what is the best option for your business?
Most SMEs usually don’t have the time, a large IT budget or technical staff to implement and maintain an entire in-house email server infrastructure. Other factors such as costs are usually the main reasons why hosted exchange or Webmail email hosting is becoming more and more popular. By using hosted exchange or Webmail from an email hosting provider your business don’t need to physical-in-house-on-site email servers. Hosted Exchange is sometimes also called exchange hosting and is usually running on a Microsoft Exchange backend server. Using an email hosting provider you get peace of mind that your email system is always secure, backed up and up and running. Using a premier email hosting provider services also comes with high reliability and performance plus administration and 24/7/365 support. To summarize the main difference between hosted exchange and Webmail email hosting is that 1. Webmail is a budget version of email hosting and 2. With Webmail you use a web browser to send, receive and review emails, i.e. you will need internet access to utilize Webmail.
Hosted Exchange
Hosted exchange is based on Microsoft’s latest exchange server with Microsoft outlook as your client. With Outlook you can do more than send and receive email, you can share calendars, folders and contacts. Outlook is available for desktop, browser and mobile access so you are always connected, whether you are in the office, on the road or working at home. You always connect to the same exchange server; therefore your inbox always stays synched in near-real time, no matter which Outlook client you are using.
In a hosted exchange environment, the hosting provider owns and is responsible for the data centre, network, devices, operating system and application infrastructure components. In short, the hosting provider is responsible for providing a stable operating environment for every application used. Your own IT organization manages the applications and maintains full control over the applications infrastructure and business process.
In contrast with in-house-on-site email servers you need to provide maintenance and have anti-virus subscription and security update upgrades. You’ll need to purchase a new server approximately every 5 years and you will have slow access from outside of the office. You also need to invest in server hardware, server software licensing, exchange enterprise software and Blackberry server software. Finally you’ll need to hire a consultant to install software and perform maintenance/upgrades. Having a hosted exchange solution mean you don’t have to pay through the nose for expensive in-house servers, software licenses, employing IT staff to install and maintain the infrastructure, or being responsible for a 24/7 infrastructure.
Webmail
Webmail gives you “anywhere, anytime”, emails, calendars, contacts and task lists. It’s intended to be as powerful as a desktop client, such as Outlook. The only limitation is that you need is a web browser and an internet connection. You can access email from Outlook, BlackBerry, Webmail, or any other email client or wireless device with absolutely no maintenance on your end. Webmail email hosting is a budget email hosting solution, but nonetheless it delivers great functionality for small businesses. A Webmail service takes away complexities of installing and maintaining an in-house email solution and at the same time offers the latest anti-spam, anti-virus and security technologies. Webmail is an email hosting solution that is perfect for businesses that have somewhat limited in-house budgets for IT expenses, limited IT resources to support an email environment and businesses that need the latest spam and virus protection.
Hosted exchange or Webmail – What’s best for you?
What are the main differences between hosted exchange and Webmail? In summary hosted exchange is a more sophisticated solution with more shared options and is more widely deployed, on the other hand Webmail is gaining market share easily accessible and is of course a cheaper solution than hosted exchange. Below is a brief explanation of what the differences are - in terms of ability to share contacts, tasks and calendar - between hosted exchange and Webmail email hosting.
- Share contacts: Shared contacts are usually available with the hosted exchange option. Other users can be granted access to edit your contacts. Usually there is no ability for shared contacts with the Webmail option. Other users cannot have access to edit your contacts. - Share tasks: You can usually share tasks among users with hosted exchange. You have the ability to assign a task to other users. You can select the users you want to invite and automatically see the best times to meet. Collaboration with tasks among users is usually not available with the Webmail option. You cannot assign a task to someone else and you have to manually find everyone’s schedule before you agree to set up a meeting. - Share calendar: Exchange usually allows you to delegate read/write capabilities with the hosted exchange option, i.e. you can have an assistant create events for you. Events can have different statuses and colours on your calendar (i.e. out of office, on holiday, business etc.). No delegation capabilities can be given to other users with the Webmail option, so your assistant cannot create events for you. Only read access can be given. Categories of events are not available (personal, out of office, on holiday etc.) and all calendar events are displayed in the same colour.

Have you heard it? There's a buzz like never before on the Internet. Everyone is talking about Web 2.0. If you're like many people, you may think it's a marketing gimmick and quite an overused statement. If so, you would be at least partially right.

Fortunately, there's another side to the story. Underneath all of the chatter is a concept that is even more powerful than the hype that surrounds it.

The concept of Web 2.0 started as a conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International. During their discussion, they analyzed the companies that had survived the dot-com collapse. Interestingly enough, many of these companies had quite a few things in common. Was there a connection? Was the dot-com crash a turning point for the web? O'Reilly and MediaLive believed so. And therefore, Web 2.0 was born.

So, what is it?

Wikipedia defines Web 2.0 as:

"The term Web 2.0 refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online. In contrast to the first generation, Web 2.0 gives users an experience closer to desktop applications than the traditional static Web pages. Web 2.0 applications often use a combination of techniques devised in the late 1990s, including public web service APIs (dating from 1998), Ajax (1998), and web syndication (1997). They often allow for mass publishing (web-based social software). The concept may include
blogs and wikis."

There is no official standard for what makes something "Web 2.0", but there are certainly a few common attributes
that often describe this new culture of transformation.

You can see many of these concepts in sites like Flickr, del.icious, Wikipedia, Amazon reviews, and the eBay reputation system.

Web 2.0 is built on a system of collective knowledge. It provides a social fabric for the Web, empowering the individual and giving them an outlet for their voice to be heard.

However, we have only seen a small glimpse of the effects of these new transitions. Del.icio.us and Digg are just the beginning of what will soon become a much more interactive Web.

Each day there are a variety of new online applications being released: online spreadsheets, online word processing, to-do lists, reminder services, and personal start pages.

In addition, many of the changes that are evident in the world of Web 2.0 can be seen through common design practices. Old-school HTML was full of boxes and square tables. Today's web designers are rapidly moving away from boxy designs to flexible curves. When designing for today's Internet, it's all about rounded designs, nice big text, gradients, glassy effects, and bright colors.

Rounded Corners:

Let's face it. The days of good 'ol tables and square boxes are good and gone. The Web 2.0 era has ushered in the pleasing sight of rounded corners.

Unfortunately, many web masters have spent unending hours trying to obtain perfectly rounded corners. Their pain and suffering has led to a number of tutorials that will help us bypass the grief.

Below are some links to tutorials that will get you started creating your very own rounded corners:

Nice Big Text:

Have you ever been to a web site where you could barely read the text? Well, join the club. Fortunately, times have taken a turn for the better. With Web 2.0, oversized fonts have come into style. You can start using plenty of oversized text to make important messages stand out. Of course, you don't want all of the text on your web site to be supersized, but make sure that the most important text on the page is bigger than normal text.

Gradients:

Gradients are another popular design element of Web 2.0. This is especially true of backgrounds. A common background used today has a gradient at the top, fading down to some other color that continues throughout the background for the rest of the page.

For a complete tutorial on how to create this type of effect, go to http://www.photoshoplab.com/web20-design-kit.html.

Colors:

Web 2.0 sites are strongly defined by their colors. They nearly always use bright and cheery colors - lots of blue, orange, and lime green.

They also often include large, colorful icons, sometimes with reflections and drop shadows. To see some samples of how web sites are effectively using bright colors, check out:

http://www.9rules.com/
http://www.iconbuffet.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/

Other common design characteristics include the use of tabs, reflections, glassy effects, large buttons, and big text boxes for submission forms.

Sites that are embracing Web 2.0 can also often be identified by their tag clouds. If you have traveled the web much in the last 6 months, then you have surely seen tag clouds. They are used prominently on del.icio.us, Technorati, and Flickr. A tag cloud is basically a visual depiction of the content on a website. Often times, more popular tags are shown in a larger font.

Why not add a tag cloud to your own site? Not only do they look cool, but they also provide your visitor with a search tool that helps them to find your content quickly and easily.

You can create your own tag cloud with a very simple service called Eurekster Swicki. This is a community-based search engine that creates free tag clouds for web sites.

Although we have discussed many of the design elements associated with Web 2.0, this change is much more than just an aesthetic transition. Web 2.0 is essentially about a transition in the way we experience the Internet. The new Ajax programming base allows web masters to create an architecture of participation for their users. Web 2.0 refers to the ongoing transition to full participation on the Web.

Your web site can be so much more than an information resource. Your web presence is a place. With the proper programming skills, you can create a virtual world complete with an online shopping mall that compares prices from a variety of merchants, looks for potential coupons, and displays Amazon reviews.

In addition, traditional desktop applications are rapidly becoming available online as a service. Why not offer your visitors the ability to create their own to-do lists, online note pads, reminder services, and personal start pages?

Shared Web Hosting Plan: Increase Your Traffic

Posted by kk on Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Whether you are a newbie or an experienced webmaster one thing which you will need to have your websites online is a web hosting service. There are various webs hosting services each of which are useful in different ways. A shared web hosting plan is the ideal solution for starters or webmasters with low to medium traffic sites. It proves to be the most popular and cost effective choice for businesses, organizations, or people looking to host a website.

If you seriously want to build some sites then join the bandwagon of shared web hosting plan. The plan is simple and similar to the real life comparison of passengers sharing a same cab and paying a relatively lower fare to reach their destination. Similar the shared web hosting service distribute the server's resources among the accounts holder for a cheap and affordable monthly fee. The another most attractive aspect of shared hosting for most people besides the reduce cost is that though customers share the same physical computer but hard drive space is separated and so there is no interference and therefore no one else has access to your files or data.

Shared web hosting service will provide you with a pre-defined large indefinite amount of disk space, a fixed monthly bandwidth or transfer quota and a control panel to manage your hosting account. You will also come across shared hosting packages that usually come with a simple to use client management interface, that allows them to set up file and FTP access, manage email accounts and other basic functions, giving you control over your website. The features are not confined here. If you want more features such as shopping carts, automated backups, and security certificates, shared hosting packages will offer them as extras to your account but you have to spend some extra bucks.

You can lower the prices even more if sign up for a longer term contract 6, 12, or 24 months than paying at the end of each month. You no need to have any kind of headache with your security and software updates because shared hosting is managed by hosting company where their staff pay special attention to all kind of security, and software updates. Since the CPU and RAM resources are shared among on a single server so, if one tends to utilize a very high amount of CPU or memory, then the others tend to suffer and this factor is also looked after with care by the hosts. They monitor all accounts and take necessary step against the over-using customers. They ask to either leave or upgrade their plans.

Web servers, like every other electronic device that connects with the Internet, are identified by an Internet Protocol (IP) address. So each fax, computer, router, printer, and switch has a distinct IP address. The IP address is made up of four 1-3 digit numbers that are in the range of 0 - 255 and separated by dots. The IP address of a web server is “dedicated,” and that means that the server always has the same IP address. This differs from the situation with shared hosting in which websites that use the same server share the IP address.
Managed hosting service provides you with a dedicated server and a dedicated manager to administer your system. This is a more expensive service than dedicated hosting, in which you are leasing the server while providing your own server manager who will need to solve any problems that arise. Here’s an example of the difference in cost. Dedicated hosting with up to 500 GB of space and around 2000 GB of bandwidth runs from $55 to $215 per month at selected web hosts if the account is paid by the year. Managed hosting with those parameters for capacity and bandwidth runs $99 to $260 per month if the account is paid by the year.
There are several reasons why a dedicated server is the ideal situation. First is capacity. If you need the entire server space for your business or businesses, a dedicated server is an obvious choice. Second is bandwidth. On a dedicated server, you don’t have to be concerned with how much bandwidth anyone else is using: it’s all yours. Third is extensibility. Even if you’re not using the whole server now, but you have plans to expand, it may be preferable for you to have all your holdings on one server (with redundant reliable backup) rather than split over several servers.
Another reason that might push you towards a dedicated server is the behavior of neighbors on a shared server. It has been known to happen that spam blockers respond to the misbehavior of some users by blocking not just those users but an entire IP address. If your online activities require free and unlimited access to other web addresses, then freeing yourself from the repercussions of your server-neighbors’ poor choices might be enough to move you to a dedicated server.
Beyond the value of handing the dedicated server itself, there’s also the value of the dedicated IP address to consider. For one thing, those who seek a Private Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate must have a dedicated IP address. And that comes with having a dedicated server. SSL certificates have an encryption system used for the security of message transmission and are a crucial element of electronic commerce, such as accepting credit cards, as well as other sensitive information.
If you are looking for cheaper dedicated servers, you should be careful while choosing the right specification and package. Things to consider are operating system, data backup and monitoring service, hardware options, space, bandwidth and technical support. Ask the hosting providers to give you a few websites for references, read hosting reviews before you sign up and be sure that the price is affordable. We know that the dedicated servers on this site are the one that will give you the most reliability and flexibility for your money.

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