 Often you will see that a web hosting company offers, for example, “99.5% guaranteed uptime”. What does this mean, and why is it important? Put simply, uptime is the amount of time that your web site is up and running, and available to the world. In contrast, downtime means that your web site will be inaccessible. Uptime is normally given as a percentage, as above. Let’s do some math, and see exactly what is meant by 99.5% uptime. A calendar month contains 43,200 minutes, so an uptime figure of 99.5% means that your site should be down for a maximum of 216 minutes during any one month. If the uptime figure was 99.7%, then the downtime drops to 130 minutes a month or a little over two hours. |
Most consumers have no idea how much information they unwittingly turn over to third-party data trackers when they surf the web with today’s most popular browsers. According to Chris Calabrese of the American Civil Liberties Union, “There’s a pretty big disparity between what folks think their privacy rights are online and what they actually are online.” There are huge holes in the privacy policies of most browsers, leaving consumers vulnerable to malicious actors and privacy invasions.
Businesses looking to establish a web presence do so for many reasons. The most obvious is to market their goods or services to a wider clientele. Other reasons include the desire to get product information to customers and to keep customers updated with the latest news and information. Establishing a web site immediately gives a company a global presence, and allows potential customers to see what products are available at any time of the day or night. If the web site is equipped with a shopping cart then orders can be taken and payments processed without any need for human intervention. Large savings can be made by not needing a traditional customer service call center for order-taking, with the added benefit that orders may be taken at any time.
The ICANN is responsible for the creation and distribution of IP addresses and is the governing body that oversees this whole process. Usually, the ICANN will allocate blocks of IP Addresses to secondary namespace organizations such as Internet Service Providers (similar to how Zip Codes are allocated to certain areas within a city). These secondary organizations will then distribute IP addresses to the public and their customers. A question that is regularly asked is “Do IP Addresses get Recycled? This is an interesting question as theoretically there is only a limited amount of possible IP addresses that can ever be created.
IP address is a unique number assigned to any device you connect to the internet. Your IP address is similar to your mailing address in that it lets other devices find and send you information. However, your IP address can also reveal sensitive information about you, which is why many internet users choose to hide it. With your IP address, advertisers and ISPs can get the location of your city, state, and even your ZIP code.
Imagine the Internet as a global postal service. Your ISP has the role of the mail carrier; it ensures you receive your incoming mail and sorts your outgoing mail so each virtual piece is sure to arrive at the correct destination. So, not only does your ISP have your Internet protocol address, or IP address, it also has the IP address of the person you’re exchanging data packets with.
When building a website, one of the most important decisions you should make is, what kind of hosting plan to buy. You will need a web hosting for your website in order to be available online. What’s more, selecting the right option is essential. Two of the most popular options for first-time website owners are Shared Web Hosting and WordPress hosting. Shared Web Hosting is a type of low-cost web hosting, where you share server's space with other websites. In the other hand, WordPress hosting (which can be shared or not) means that the server is optimized for WordPress Websites. In this article, we will walk you through these two hosting options, and explain how to choose a plan that best suits your hosting needs. There are some Advantages and Disadvantages for both options, so if you're interested, click on Read More button and continue reading.