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Web Hosting - Why Backups Are Essential
One thing most web site owners have little time for is... anything! Anything other than focusing on their site content and the business or service it supports and the information it provides, that is. That means that administration often suffers, as it frequently must. There's only so much time in the day.
But the one thing that you should never let slide are backups. They are like insurance. You rarely need it (you hope), but when you do you need it very badly.
Performing regular backups - and testing them - doesn't have to be a nightmare. A little bit of forethought and effort and they can be automated to a high degree. And, they should be tested from time to time. Even when a backup appears to have gone without a hitch, the only way to know whether it's of any value is to attempt to restore the information. If it can't be restored, the backup is worthless.
Even when the web hosting company provides the service, there is still some planning involved for the site owner. Hosting companies often rely on one or both of two methods. They backup everything (called a full backup), then backup anything which has changed since the last full backup (called an incremental backup).
Of special interest are any configuration files that have been tailored. If you've modified the default installation of a software package, you want to be able to recapture or reproduce those changes without starting from scratch. Network configuration files, modifications to basic HTML files, CSS style sheets and others fall into the same category.
If you have XML files, databases, spreadsheets or other files that carry product or subscriber information - about items purchased, for example, or people who signed up for a newsletter - those should get special attention, too. That's the lifeblood of your business or service. Lose them and you must start over. That can break your site permanently.
It should go without saying that all HTML and related web site files that comprise visible pages should be backed up regularly. It isn't necessary to record every trivial change, but you can tailor backup software to exclude files or folders. Usually they're so small it isn't worth the trouble. But in some cases those small changes can add up in scenarios where there are many thousands of them.
Here again, the backups are worthless if they can't be used. Even if the hosting company charges for doing so, it's worthwhile to test once or twice a year at least to ensure the data can be restored. That's especially true of database backups, which often involve special software and routines. Database files have a special structure and the information is related in certain ways that require backups be done differently.
Developing a backup strategy can be straightforward. Start simply and review your plan from time to time, modifying it as your site changes and grows. But don't neglect the subject entirely. The day will come when a hard drive fails, or you get hacked or attacked by a virus, or you accidentally delete something important. When that day comes, the few minutes or hours you spent developing and executing a backup plan will have saved you days or weeks of effort.
Get Roboform to Help with those Countless Online Forms for Free Stuff RoboForm, is a web site that offers users programs to make life on the Pc and on the Internet easier. These programs help the user to remember and securely store online and offline passwords. How often does it happen that someone forgets the PC password and then there is no other way than reinstalling the whole PC operating system? The programs offered by the website also help with many other Internet and PC issues and tasks. RoboForm can log the user automatically into online accounts, complete online registrations and complete checkout forms with just one click of the mouse. This makes the program a great help with the countless online forms that exist for free stuff. Over and over fill freebie seekers online forms. Name, address, e-mail, birth date and more and this program is able to fill the information into the online forms with essentially one mouse click. For example, for online sweepstakes entries, the most important factor to receiving free stuff is how often one is able to sign up for different sweepstakes. Hunting down online free stuff is already time consuming, but filling out all the long and tedious entry forms every single time takes even longer. The company states, that this program can help the consumer increase the number of filled forms for sweepstakes at least ten times, since the users identity is stored in the software and then used to fill the online forms. When sweepstakes allow for multiple entries, the program can speed up this process even more. The software offers the option to save the data into a file and then the user needs to just choose the data and hit the fill and submit button and the sweepstake entry is on its way. For consumers of the software it is important to know, that RoboForm will not disqualify consumers from the sweepstakes and as the company states is completely legal. The reason a user cannot be disqualified for using this program is that the company that offers the sweepstake will not even remotely know that a program was used. Data is saved on the user’s computer and just used to fill the forms. The filling happens just like when the consumer enters the information himself into the form. Even if programs state that automated entries are prohibited, this excludes this program. The automated entries are referring to programs that submit the data to the page without the user ever viewing the page. With this program the user is still required to open the page, view it, and then fill the forms. The only part done by the program is filling the form. The user then still has to check the filled form and hit the submit button on the page by himself. This is what makes the whole process legal and a good deal for freebie seekers. By many this software is called the best way to automat sweepstakes and increases the free stuff coming into the house. Due to the programs ability to save online addresses users can browse thru their sweepstake web pages without having to remember all the long URL addresses. Additionally due to the ability to save already filled forms, users can easily participate in daily sweepstakes for certain products. When combining this software with one of the online pages that offer links to free contests, free products and more, consumers can be showered in anything from free movie tickets, to food products and health products. Many consumers have positive feedbacks to offer about the amount of freebies they are able to get every month. Sometimes people apply for freebies, even if they do not really need them. There are always pages up there, where the product can be donated or sold to other people. Web Hosting - Bandwidth and Server Load, What's That? Two key performance metrics will impact every web site owner sooner or later: bandwidth and server load. Bandwidth is the amount of network capacity available, and the term actually covers two different aspects. 'Bandwidth' can mean the measure of network capacity for web traffic back and forth at a given time. Or, it sometimes is used to mean the amount that is allowed for some interval, such as one month. Both are important. As files are transferred, emails sent and received, and web pages accessed, network bandwidth is being used. If you want to send water through a pipe, you have to have a pipe. Those pipes can vary in size and the amount of water going through them at any time can also vary. Total monthly bandwidth is a cap that hosting companies place on sites in order to share fairly a limited resource. Companies monitor sites in order to keep one site from accidentally or deliberately consuming all the network capacity. Similar considerations apply to instantaneous bandwidth, though companies usually have such large network 'pipes' that it's much less common for heavy use by one user to be a problem. Server load is a more generic concept. It often refers, in more technical discussions, solely to CPU utilization. The CPU (central processing unit) is the component in a computer that processes instructions from programs, ordering memory to be used a certain way, moving files from one place to the next and more. Every function you perform consumes some CPU and its role is so central (hence the name) that it has come to be used as a synonym for the computer itself. People point to their case and say 'That is the CPU'. But, the computer actually has memory, disk drive(s) and several other features required in order to do its job. Server load refers, in more general circumstances, to the amount of use of each of those other components in total. Disk drives can be busy fetching files which they do in pieces, which are then assembled in memory and presented on the monitor, all controlled by instructions managed by the CPU. Memory capacity is limited. It's often the case that not all programs can use as much as they need at the same time. Special operating system routines control who gets how much, when and for how long, sharing the total 'pool' among competing processes. So, how 'loaded' the server is at any given time or over time is a matter of how heavily used any one, or all, of these components are. Why should you care? Because every web site owner will want to understand why a server becomes slow or unresponsive, and be able to optimize their use of it. When you share a server with other sites, which is extremely common, the traffic other sites receive creates load on the server that can affect your site. There's a limited amount you can do to influence that situation. But if you're aware of it, you can request the company move you to a less heavily loaded server. Or, if the other site (which you generally have no visibility to) is misbehaving, it's possible to get them moved or banned. But when you have a dedicated server, you have much more control over load issues. You can optimize your own site's HTML pages and programs, tune a database and carry out other activities that maximize throughput. Your users will see that as quicker page accesses and a more enjoyable user experience. |