Shared Hosting

One of the more popular forms of web hosting is the affordable shared web hosting alternative. If you are a power user that needs complete control, this is not the hosting for you but for users that does not want to deal with any system administration it just might be the perfect hosting. Shared hosting most often includes a user-friendly control panel, with cPanel being the most appreciated and common.

A great deal of the today active hosting providers, ranging from small companies to the major players on the market, offers some form of shared hosting. This form of web hosting is funded in two different ways. It can be driven privately by letting the customers share the costs of running and maintaining a server. The other way it can be driven is via affiliate programs and PPC advertising.

There are two ways that shared web hosting can be accomplished: name-based or IP-based.

Name-based  This is also known as IP hosting and what it means is that a large number of hostnames are served on a single server with just one IP address.

IP-based This type of hosting is frequently referred to as dedicated IP hosting. Every virtual web host has its own different IP address and the web server uses the IP address which the client uses in order to determine which website to show the user. This way a dedicated IP address can take advantage of it own SSL certificate instead of a shared certificate.

Most shared hosting packages include plenty of disk storage, unlimited traffic and free traffic. There has been some talk about shared hosting not being secure but we find that to simply not be true. One great thing about hosting is that it is often easy to let it grow at the same pace as your website. Simply expand your hosting when it is necessary.

What is domain parking or parked domains?
If you are planning to build up a website and have decided on a name for it you then must purchase that domain name from a domain registrar: i.e. your domain name gets placed on a name server so that you can use it later on. This is known as domain parking. Even if your website content is not ready, it�s better to park your desired domain name. Otherwise, it might be possible that in future somebody else acquires that particular domain name.

What are sub domains?
Sub domains are third level domains in the sense that they are used solely to organize your website content. They are simply folders under your root directory, but to access them a special URL is used. For instance, http://www.m6.net is a regular URL without a sub domain. http://features.m6.net is an URL with the sub domain name: "features". 

Here the:
                .net: is the first level domain,
                 m6: is the second level domain,
                 features: is the third level domain

What are addon domains?
Addon domains are provided by your web hosting plan. They allow you to have one hosting plan or account with your provider that has 2 different websites, each with a different URL (domain) for each. Let's say I own Plan 2 from Tower Host which offers 2 addon domains. My main site uses the domain webhostgear.com but through my control panel I can add a second site with a second URL but under the same hosting account. So my second domain would be ramprage.com. As you can see addon domains are very useful if you have more than 1 website and you want to save on hosting costs!

For how long does a domain name belong to you?
Generally when you register a domain name it is registered for a minimum of one year. However, you can register it for more years, as there is no hard and fast rule as such.

What is Domain Renewal?
After one year you need to renew your domain name so that your website doesn get lost.  Generally when your domain is about to expire your domain registrar will send you a reminder mail regarding the domain renewal. If you do not renew your domain you lose the rights to own it. After this someone can take over your domain and register it for themselves - see domain expires below.

What happens when your domain name expires?
When your domain name expires you can renew it within one month. If you dont renew it in this period it goes into a redemption phase. It stays in this redemption phase for 15 to 30 days before it is then available for purchase again at a normal price.  Getting a domain name out of redemption phase is like buying fifty domains as it can cost around $200! If you don't renew your domain before it expires somoeone else can buy it and use it.

How to find out the owner of a domain name?
To find out the owner of a domain name, use the WhoIs search tool on the Internet .For E.g. Go to http://whois.sc and type the domain name.  It will show you the name of the registrant/domains owner/web host.

What is WhoIs record?
WhoIS record is a domain name search engine/Internet program where users can enter an Internet entity (e.g. a domain, a network, some hosts) and it will give detailed information on the domain registrar, the owner of the domain, and respective DNS records.

Domain Names

Domain names are often confusing to web hosting customers. Trying to understand the difference between a parked domain, addon domain, url forwarding, sub domains and more can be frustrating so we explain domain names here.

It�s been two years since John started his online business. He is very much satisfied with his current web host whose services he acquired one year ago. Today John is relaxing in his chair and thinking about the initial days when he spent many hours on the Internet collecting information related to web hosting. Like him there are many John�s out there who are in search of information everyday, visiting this and that website hoping to find the most illuminating advice. The problem is that common topics of interest can be found on most of the websites whereas other relevant issues are not dealt with everywhere.  This article is going to touch on one of those areas: various concerns related with domain names.

What is multiple domain hosting?
Many times you will see that a web host offers multiple domain hosting. In simpler words it means that on buying an account you will have the ability to get multiple websites. For instance, if the plan provides you with five domain names, you can use one domain for your website and you will still have four domain names leftover to use. The advantage of this scenario is that you can resell these four domain names to your clients.

A good domain policy should outline cost effective answers to 'how' and 'where' your brand is found on the Internet, ensure the protection of your valuable online Intellectual Property in addition to maximising web traffic to your site.

IT Digital Brand Services has developed a unique approach that enables clients to create a self-managed and effective domain name policy, flexible enough to respond to your changing business needs. After determining the value of a name/brand to your organisation (i.e. a product name) Digital Brand Services will assist in defining a domain policy which outlines the scope and importance of variations, geographies and risks to each name. Working closely with our clients is the key to a successful policy which contains clear guidelines and ensures a consistent approach to domain registration and brand protection. Domain Name Policy Features

     Clear and consistent internal guidelines
     Development of a strategic approach to brand protection
     Reduced internal administration
     Enhanced internal controls
     Defined internal accountabilities/ownership
     Proactive planning mechanisms to promote key brands

IT Digital Brand Services Portfolio Management enables global corporations to proactively manage their online Intellectual Property assets, while leaving all the detailed, behind the scenes transactions to the world's leading provider. Portfolio management provides for: the timely renewal of existing domain names, proactive registration of new and release of obsolete domain names thereby mitigating costly corrective action of recovering lost domains.

Effective in-house management can be an impossibly large task for enterprises with thousands of domains, expiring at differing times and being subject to varying regulations and pricing.
In addition to the significant burden of registering an existing portfolio and remaining up-to-date with evolving regulations, enterprises also need to keep abreast of the dynamic evolution of new top level domains. Knowing which new domain spaces your company should own is an onerous activity. However, registering in new domain spaces is important to the perception and projection of your brand. If appropriate domains are not secured, they will often be freely available to the public. Failure to register in new domain spaces or effectively managing your existing portfolio can result in cyber-squatting and/or the erosion of your valuable online Intellectual Property. IT Digital Brand Services can keep you up-to-date and help enterprise react quickly to the fast evolving domain industry; ensuring your changing portfolio requirements are met.

Included as part of our Portfolio Management service, enterprises have access to our advanced Online Portal. The Online Portal is available 24x7. Some of its features include: real time status, order tracking capability, customised reporting and multi-level, secure access.
 

Portfolio Management Features
      A substantial reduction in in-house administration costs
      Fail-safe and experience in all global registration and renewal requirements
      A dependable renewals process
      Competitive, fixed and transparent pricing - often reducing registration/renewal costs
     Online Portal for complete details of your domain portfolio with ordering and customised    

     reporting
     Proactive advice on the release of unnecessary domain names
     The latest industry information (bi-weekly newsletters)
     Assistance with the development of your domain strategy

Corporate Domain Mangement...

A typical corporate domain name portfolio consists of: hundreds or thousands of names, multiple vendors, many internal stakeholders and inconsistent contact and billing processes. Combined, all these issues result in high internal management costs and considerable risk of domain non-renewals.
 

IT Digital Brand Services Portfolio Centralisation consolidates an organisation's domain names into one central portfolio thereby: streamlining administration, removing fragmentation, simplifying and centralising billing and allowing enterprises to effectively manage and take control of their online brands.
 

IT Digital Brand Services tightly project manage all centralisation activities and swiftly bring centralisation projects to completion. Projects are not allowed to drag on for long periods and we won't avoid working with difficult ccTLD domains and registries. With offices spread across the globe, we have experience in even the most obscure domain registries.
 

Having secured and centralised a portfolio, a client can readily access their domain name portfolio through the Corporate Brand Online Portal. The Online Portal is a feature rich interface. Basic functionality includes the ability to view an entire domain name portfolio, segment according to brand, location or division, check DNS details and request new registrations.
    

      Portfolio Centralisation Features
     A systematic, project managed centralisation
     Tight internal management processes to ensure timely and accurate project completion
      Experience and a willingness to work with obscure domains and registries
     Regular project reporting
     Prioritised action plan to address identified issues
     Online Portal to view and manage your domain name portfolio

Corporate Domain Mangement

In today's complex global environment, it is essential to the success of your business to effectively protect and manage your brand and/or Trademark on the Internet. Failing to protect your brand can potentially result in the loss of your domain name/s and costly litigation.

IT Digital Brand Services is one of the world's leading providers of Corporate Domain Management, providing a comprehensive range of domain name management solutions that allow organisations to successfully manage or remove risks, reduce costs and protect valuable Intellectual Property assets on the Internet.Corporate Domain Management services include:

        Global Portfolio Audit
        Portfolio Centralization
        Portfolio Management
        Domain Policy
        Managed DNS Services
        Self Managed DNS

Our Corporate Domain Management approach is illustrated below, from the in-depth portfolio audit to the management of the domain name portfolio.
 IT Digital Brand Services has been trusted to manage the world's leading brands over the past decade through personalised interaction with clients provided by our experienced account management professionals. We manage the world's leading brands through providing global solutions with local delivery.

We should start thinking of stability beyond particular technical considerations and have it encompass cross-border collaboration.

For example, a big threat to Internet stability and security is the rapid evolution of identity theft schemes and malware. These scams not only affect us all technically, but they also affect the end-users' level of trust while surfing the web.

Think of Confiker, which had us all scrambling to respond. The Internet is a global medium. However,the laws that govern us are very much local and often conflicting. So in trying to mitigate security threats, our hands are often tied when faced with the threat of litigation for overstepping the myriad of overlapping boundaries that we have to navigate. As a result, many simply give up—to the detriment of us all. Collaboratively taking responsibility and involving players outside the ICANN area is one answer (note: shameless plug for RISG which involves almost every actor in the chain collaborating across industry lines to mitigate identity theft). But another is our governments and regulatory systems untying the chains that bind us… or at least make it much harder to do the right thing. Why not encourage our respective governments and regulatory bodies to provide multilateral relief in security cases which cross national boundaries? For example, ICANN provided regulatory relief upon request during Confiker so the registries could take the necessary actions to mitigate the threat. We need this model on a multilateral- governmental scale. If we do not actively enable end-user trust in the use of the Internet, we risk losing it.

When the trust in the wider ecosystem of the Internet decreases, users will be more tempted to give some of the their rights to a controlling third party platform provider in return for assurances of security. Haven't we seen that happen already many times in the real world? I can almost hear the voice-over: remember those National Geographic specials? Recall when the thirsty wildebeest started walking towards the safe-looking pool of water, teeming with crocodiles. "Sadly now, there can be but one outcome." And it wasn't pretty.

The Internet needs to be protected not only from the potential impacts of technical considerations but also from over-eager governments.

Governments are increasingly searching for ways to control and manipulate news and expression. What's more is that when the traditional channels fail, they try their hand at controlling Internet access. This control can take the form of shutting down sites or manipulating the Internet bandwidth available to users within the country at crucial times. What results is that the beauty of the Internet's vast "oneness" and ubiquitous accessibility ultimately transforms into inaccessible silos.

Yes, the Internet is growing. Yet it remains vulnerable to censorship. While traditional news channels with defined content hierarchies are easy targets for governments, what's proving harder to control is the self-authored content, which is de-centralized and proposes a "whack-a-mole" model to the governments. Case in point, consider the barring of foreign news coverage from traditional sources during and after the Iranian election. This control inspired the populace to use their mobile phones to capture images, to use Twitter and Facebook to report what was happening to the outside world, and to help organize themselves inside the country. The most iconic image of last year was the death of a young women, Neda, from a sniper's bullet, all captured by video on a mobile phone. For effective communication, users' content needs to be found by the right audience—whether that is through SEO or social networks. As a result, many are opting for an account with these aggregators instead of their own unique domain name. Unfortunately, these outlets of communication are becoming more centralized. Many are consolidating (being bought—such as YouTube's acquisition by Google) or struggling to find a working revenue model to exist (i.e., Twitter). As outlets disappear or become more centralized, governments will have an easier time quelling the chorus of voices.

Beyond Domains: What Did We Really Learn in 2009?

The beginning of every year is a time for introspection, an appraisal of the year that was, and planning for the year to come. It is also a time to follow tradition and to recap the biggest news of the year. But by now, I am guessing that we have all read our fair share about the people and events who have impacted the last 12 months. But as we examine the "whats" of 2009 (i.e. what happened, who was involved, and what resulted) , we should set our focuses forward by learning from yesterday and planning for tomorrow. That said, if we take a larger vantage point (than our own relatively small domain name industry), these lessons from 2009—in my view—could teach us all and most importantly, really shape the year ahead:

Who is Ready to Leap on the "Localized Internet"

Four pioneers are ready to Leap on the "Localized Internet".

ICANN has approved 4 character strings of IDN ccTLD (Internationalized Top-Level Domain Names) after evaluation.

The Lucky-Ones are Russian Federation, The United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.

1. Russian Federation - .рф (meaning .rf in Cyrillic)
2. United Arab Emirates - .امارات (meaning .Emarat in Arabic)
3. Egypt - .مصر (meaning .Egypt in Arabic)
4. Saudi Arabia - .السعودية (meaning .AlSaudiah in Arabic, including desired variants السعودیة , لسعوديه ,السعودیۃ )

These four pioneer countries may take their first step on the new Localized Global Layer of the Languistic Internet by requesting their approved names strings of top level country code names in the Internet domain names root system and will become ready to register IDN.IDN Domain names (on this new layer - Virtual Real Estate) in the mid of 2010. Remaining 12 name strings are still under evaluation.

Personality Crisis ( Contd...)

In business a corporate name is normally a single word. Two words names are problematic and three words are even more complicated. Four words?—Why not kill the business first? Also, if there are hundreds of others using the same identical name, though in dozens of different types of businesses, that poor name is shouting in vain and that overly strained voice is simply being lost in the crowd.

Here is the acid test, enter a corporate or a product name in "quotes" on Google search engine and if it comes up with around hundred or more other companies using the same identical name, then surely this name is hurting and advertising campaign is only being wasted. If there are more than one thousand other companies using the same identical name, then it will explain the shortage of sales, the lack of traffic to sites etc. Remember only a good name makes a cash register ring.

This is the reason, why a corporate brand name is the single most important issue of corporate communications today. Equally, a domain name, the twin of a corporate name, still as to most CEOs, it is the most misunderstood term of corporate communications. Even now, domain name issues are often left to webmasters, ISPs and, sometimes to lawyers. It has yet to earn the respect as the single most important issue of e-Commerce and also to earn the respect as a real and a true passkey for global access for the web. Only 3.7% corporations around the world have exactly identical dotcom domain names, the rest have extra luggage and words and slashes added in the URL making it difficult to type and easily forgettable.

While Domain Naming is seriously under-priced, the current dogfights between registrars and the hopeless name branding by corporate identity firms and Ad Agencies, have only confused the corporations and brought embarrassing branding campaigns crashing down.

Many thousands of such projects failed during the last boom from 'Kozmo' to 'Gazoontite' and 'Boo.com' to 'MarchFirst'. This last name, incidentally, had nothing to do with the month of the Julian calendar and the business did not start on March 1st, rather February 17.  Of course, 'AprilFirst' was taken by some other fool. But, somehow, most people just couldn't hear the steps or see them march. Marching into a brick wall that is. This big bang branding failed and MarchFirst went into bankruptcy. When name is meant to play tricks on the gentle minds of the net-savvy customers, watch out for the revenge. It will be very costly.

Personality Crisis

When a name is used in business it must be unique, powerful, proprietary, related to the business, excitable able to arouse curiosity and pleasing to the mind. Therefore, it is not wise to have a twisted spelling, hard to pronounce, or some wild name ideas that the subconscious mind simply refuses to accept. 'RockCloud', 'PurpleRhino', or 'ONGA-BOINKA' (meaning 'Great Things' in a dialect of the some Romantic language.) Do you really care? No, the mind simply shuts down and the name screams in panic while drowning.

A good name should simply pop up at the time of a purchase decision otherwise it is absolutely useless if it wanders through, out of the mental fog, a day after the purchase. This is how big sales are missed. Ouch. When a name is unique with a star quality alpha-structure the would brain recognizes it as such, 'Sony', 'Panasonic', 'Telus', 'Celestica', and it files it away very nicely, while recognizing it's unique position among the other daily confusing mumbo jumbo. When a name is purely generic, like 'Quantum', 'Allied', 'United' or 'General', then the garbage kicks in verbal branding and it can quickly become a verbal diarrhea. 'United Systems', 'United Payroll', 'United Services' or 'General Insurance', 'General Distribution' or 'General Production' and so on. A common day usage term, such as a dictionary word, has the least recall. The busy brain doesn't have the incentive to remember all this. The same applies to numbers; minds hate numbers, slashes, dashes, dingbats and symbols etc. Studies have shown again and again that only very unique, one of a kind, clear yet very powerful names, survive and become legends. A name must relate to its core activity. The rest simply fades away. Guaranteed.

A Psychoanalysis of Corporate Domain Names and Branding

A corporate name of any merged entity, at best, is really an outcry from the deep bottom of a corporation, all in search of attention and in pursuit of fame and glory. Whether you read a corporate brand name in a column, see it in a phone book, hear it on a radio, TV or come across it on the web, the name is always, a real show-off with a desperate mission to seek all the attention it can get.

Go to any big search engine and you will see one name after another screaming and yelling, each name wants to be on top of each other. Each wants to be as prominent and as loud as possible. Some have very high pitch and some with a flat boring humming noise...a humming noise, which sometimes, our subconscious mind can only hear. When you look at the word 'Banana', your sub-conscious mind does hear a soft enunciation of the word, this is sometimes a voice print left from the past encounters with the name, its sound or maybe the object itself, and if you ever slipped on a peel, then of course, other screaming thoughts may also conjure up. These types of branding experiences are often attached to most words used in our daily lingo.

So let's talk about verbal branding or how a corporate names travel mouth-to-mouth, from one corner of the city to the whole nation, infesting the entire globe.

Really! Today this is achieved in one afternoon. A press release in the morning, a chat on CNN in the afternoon, e-commerce campaign for the rest of the day and voila! The name is the talk of the town from Rio to Paris and from New York to Shanghai. How long this name fame and glory will last all depends on how many customers will remember this name in the long run. With millions of names being registered each day as new corporate identities, new products, domain Names and other strange things, it is very noisy out there, almost like a deaf tone. While naming of this newly created new name-economy awaits its thunder, there are still some very serious problems for marketers.