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Web Hosting - Changing Web Hosts, Pitfalls and Planning At some point, nearly everyone finds it necessary to change web hosts. It may be just a migration to another server, or it may be changing web hosting companies entirely. Either way, the process is fraught with potential dangers. But there are ways to minimize the odds of problems and maximize your changes of a smooth migration. Plan, plan, plan. Make a very detailed list of everything that is on your current system. Review what is static and what changes frequently. Note any tailoring done to software and files. Be prepared to remake them if the systems aren't transferred properly or can't be restored. Keep careful track of all old and new names, IP addresses and other information needed to make the migration. Backup and Test Backup everything on your system yourself, whenever possible. Web hosting companies typically offer that as a service, but the staff and/or software are often less than par. Often backups appear to go well, but they're rarely tested by restoring to a spare server. When the time comes that they're needed, they sometimes don't work. Do a dry run, if you can. Restore the system to its new location and make any needed changes. If you have the host name and or IP address buried in files, make sure it gets changed. This is often true of databases. SQL Server on Windows, for example, picks up the host name during installation. Moving a single database, or even multiple ones, to a new server is straightforward using in-built utilities or commercial backup/restore software. But moving certain system-related information may require changing the host name stored inside the master database. Similar considerations apply to web servers and other components. Accept Some Downtime Be prepared for some downtime. Very few systems can be picked up, moved to another place, then brought online with zero downtime. Doing so is possible, in fact it's common. But in such scenarios high-powered professionals use state-of-the-art tools to make the transition seamless. Most staff at web hosting companies don't have the skills or the resources to pull it off. Prepare for Name Changes One aspect of moving to a new host can bedevil the most skilled professionals: changing domain names and or domain name/IP address combinations. When you type a URL into your browser, or click on one, that name is used because it's easier for people to remember. www.yahoo.com is a lot easier to remember than 209.131.36.158. Yet the name and or name/IP address combination can (and does) change. Still, specialized servers called DNS (Domain Name System) servers have to keep track of them. And there are a lot of them. There may be only two (rarely) or there may be a dozen or more DNS servers between your visitors' browsers/computers and your web host. Every system along the chain has to keep track of who is who. When a name/IP address changes, that pair has to be communicated to everyone along the chain, and that takes time. In the meantime, it's possible for one visitor to find you at the new place, while another will be pointing to the old one. Some amount of downtime will usually occur while everything gets back in sync. The Little Gotchas But even apart from name and IP address changes, there are a hundred little things that can, and often do, go wrong. That's not a disaster. It's just the normal hurdles that arise when changing something as complicated as a web site and the associated systems that underlie it. Gather Tools and Support Having an FTP program that you're familiar with will help facilitate the change. That will allow you to quickly move files from one place to the next to do your part to get the system ready to go or make repairs. Making the effort to get to know, and become friendly with, support staff at the new site can be a huge benefit. They may be more willing to address your problem before the dozen others they have to deal with at any given moment. Ok. On your mark. Get ready. Go.

Web Hosting - Redundancy and Failover Among the more useful innovations in computing, actually invented decades ago, are the twin ideas of redundancy and failover. These fancy words name very common sense concepts. When one computer (or part) fails, switch to another. Doing that seamlessly and quickly versus slowly with disruption defines one difference between good hosting and bad. Network redundancy is the most widely used example. The Internet is just that, an inter-connected set of networks. Between and within networks are paths that make possible page requests, file transfers and data movement from one spot (called a 'node') to the next. If you have two or more paths between a user's computer and the server, one becoming unavailable is not much of a problem. Closing one street is not so bad, if you can drive down another just as easily. Of course, there's the catch: 'just as easily'. When one path fails, the total load (the amount of data requested and by how many within what time frame) doesn't change. Now the same number of 'cars' are using fewer 'roads'. That can lead to traffic jams. A very different, but related, phenomenon occurs when there suddenly become more 'cars', as happens in a massively widespread virus attack, for example. Then, a large number of useless and destructive programs are running around flooding the network. Making the situation worse, at a certain point, parts of the networks may shut down to prevent further spread, producing more 'cars' on now-fewer 'roads'. A related form of redundancy and failover can be carried out with servers, which are in essence the 'end-nodes' of a network path. Servers can fail because of a hard drive failure, motherboard overheating, memory malfunction, operating system bug, web server software overload or any of a hundred other causes. Whatever the cause, when two or more servers are configured so that another can take up the slack from one that's failed, that is redundancy. That is more difficult to achieve than network redundancy, but it is still very common. Not as common as it should be, since many times a failed server is just re-booted or replaced or repaired with another piece of hardware. But, more sophisticated web hosting companies will have such redundancy in place. And that's one lesson for anyone considering which web hosting company may offer superior service over another (similarly priced) company. Look at which company can offer competent assistance when things fail, as they always do sooner or later. One company may have a habit of simply re-booting. Others may have redundant disk arrays. Hardware containing multiple disk drives to which the server has access allows for one or more drives to fail without bringing the system down. The failed drive is replaced and no one but the administrator is even aware there was a problem. Still other companies may have still more sophisticated systems in place. Failover servers that take up the load of a crashed computer, without the end-user seeing anything are possible. In fact, in better installations, they're the norm. When they're in place, the user has at most only to refresh his or her browser and, bingo, everything is fine. The more a web site owner knows about redundancy and failover, the better he or she can understand why things go wrong, and what options are available when they do. That knowledge can lead to better choices for a better web site experience.

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.