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Web Hosting - How To Select A Web Host As with many purchases, our first impulse when selecting a web hosting company is to go with the cheapest. Hey, they're all alike, why pay more? Au contraire. There are a number of objective criteria that separates one web hosting company from another and money is only one of them. And not the most important one. Selecting a company based on price alone is equivalent to selecting an auto mechanic on price alone. Sure, he may maintain or fix your car cheaper. But will the car spend all the time in the shop and none on the road? The first consideration is 'horsepower'. Do they have the capacity to carry your load and deliver decent performance? Most hosting companies will advertise that they have huge bandwidth and hundreds of servers. They're usually telling the truth. But there's a difference between existing capacity and usable capacity. If they also have thousands of sites with millions of visitors per day the available or free capacity will be much lower. A big pickup truck may be able to tow 5,000 lbs. But not if it's already carrying 4,999. Be sure to ask about available capacity, and have the prospective company back it up with reliable numbers. If you can't interpret the information they provide, find someone to help you do so. Next, and a very close second, is reliability. A lot of power is worthless if it's cut often. Outages are a normal part of business. Even Google and Microsoft go down from time to time. The difference is, it happens rarely and they have failover plans. That means, if their site/system does go down it's either up again in a flash, or you never see the outage because a backup system kicks in automatically and seamlessly. Be sure to grill the company closely about their up time. They'll often tout 99.6%, or some such figure. But, like the on-time figures of the airlines, those numbers can be shaded by adjusting the definition of 'up time'. What matters to you is whether your visitors will be able to reach your site at any time of the day or night they might want to. Find out what systems, both technical and human, they have in place to deal with failures of all sorts. Servers can go down, networks can fail, hard disks can become defective and lose data even when the other components continue to work fine. The result is YOUR site is unavailable, which is all that matters to you. The web hosting company should be able to deal with all of that and have you up again very quickly. Last, but not least, is security. With the continuing prevalence of viruses and spam, you need to know that the web hosting company you select has an array of methods for dealing with them. That means a good technical plan and staff who are knowledgeable in dealing with those issues. The old saying: 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure' is more true here than anywhere else. All these issues are central to finding a web hosting company that can deliver the services you need. After those criteria are satisfied by a number of candidates, then you can start narrowing them down by price.

Web Hosting - The Internet and How It Works In one sense, detailing the statement in the title would require at least a book. In another sense, it can't be fully explained at all, since there's no central authority that designs or implements the highly distributed entity called The Internet. But the basics can certainly be outlined, simply and briefly. And it's in the interest of any novice web site owner to have some idea of how their tree fits into that gigantic forest, full of complex paths, that is called the Internet. The analogy to a forest is not far off. Every computer is a single plant, sometimes a little bush sometimes a mighty tree. A percentage, to be sure, are weeds we could do without. In networking terminology, the individual plants are called 'nodes' and each one has a domain name and IP address. Connecting those nodes are paths. The Internet, taken in total, is just the collection of all those plants and the pieces that allow for their interconnections - all the nodes and the paths between them. Servers and clients (desktop computers, laptops, PDAs, cell phones and more) make up the most visible parts of the Internet. They store information and programs that make the data accessible. But behind the scenes there are vitally important components - both hardware and software - that make the entire mesh possible and useful. Though there's no single central authority, database, or computer that creates the World Wide Web, it's nonetheless true that not all computers are equal. There is a hierarchy. That hierarchy starts with a tree with many branches: the domain system. Designators like .com, .net, .org, and so forth are familiar to everyone now. Those basic names are stored inside a relatively small number of specialized systems maintained by a few non-profit organizations. They form something called the TLD, the Top Level Domains. From there, company networks and others form what are called the Second Level Domains, such as Microsoft.com. That's further sub-divided into www.Microsoft.com which is, technically, a sub-domain but is sometimes mis-named 'a host' or a domain. A host is the name for one specific computer. That host name may or may not be, for example, 'www' and usually isn't. The domain is the name without the 'www' in front. Finally, at the bottom of the pyramid, are the individual hosts (usually servers) that provide actual information and the means to share it. Those hosts (along with other hardware and software that enable communication, such as routers) form a network. The set of all those networks taken together is the physical aspect of the Internet. There are less obvious aspects, too, that are essential. When you click on a URL (Uniform Resource Locator, such as http://www.microsoft.com) on a web page, your browser sends a request through the Internet to connect and get data. That request, and the data that is returned from the request, is divided up into packets (chunks of data wrapped in routing and control information). That's one of the reasons you will often see your web page getting painted on the screen one section at a time. When the packets take too long to get where they're supposed to go, that's a 'timeout'. Suppose you request a set of names that are stored in a database. Those names, let's suppose get stored in order. But the packets they get shoved into for delivery can arrive at your computer in any order. They're then reassembled and displayed. All those packets can be directed to the proper place because they're associated with a specified IP address, a numeric identifier that designates a host (a computer that 'hosts' data). But those numbers are hard to remember and work with, so names are layered on top, the so-called domain names we started out discussing. Imagine the postal system (the Internet). Each home (domain name) has an address (IP address). Those who live in them (programs) send and receive letters (packets). The letters contain news (database data, email messages, images) that's of interest to the residents. The Internet is very much the same.

Promotions and Freebie Help from Kraft Foods Are you a Kraft junkie? Do you live for the rich, creamy luscious taste of classic Kraft Macaroni and Cheese? If you are a fan of Kraft Foods, did you know that you could get your hands on Kraft freebies? If you are interested in getting free samples, coupons and other promotions from Kraft foods, here is some information on how you can find promotions and freebies from Kraft Foods. Why Kraft Foods is a Good Company to Get to Know Better Kraft Foods is an excellent place to get your start as a freebie hunter. That is because Kraft Foods is known to put a lot of effort to keeping their brand names in the public eye. Kraft Foods also has many devotees that really follow the brand, and the company makes an effort to connect and stay connected to its consumers. If you are a Kraft Foods fan, you will find that they are a very accessible company when it comes to finding free offers and receiving free services and food product samples. Here are some tips on how you can find Kraft Food promotions and freebies. How You Too Can Get Kraft Food Promotional Freebies If you are interested in accessing free Kraft Foods freebies, here are some ways that you can get your hands on some free Kraft goodies. First, get to know the official Kraft Foods website. The official Kraft Foods website keeps its own promotions page. The promotions page is where you can find the details on the latest free offers, sweepstakes contests, promotions and offers. If you live in Canada, make sure that you consult the Canadian version of the Kraft Foods promotions webpage. For those of you in the United States military, check out the special Kraft Foods Military website for the latest special offers. This promotional Kraft Foods webpage is the best place to find all the latest deals and steals, and of course, freebies. How to Find Other Kraft Foods Promotions Although the Kraft Foods promotions page should be your first stop in finding freebies, not all the promotions available will always be listed on this page. Did you know that you could find many more Kraft Foods promotions simply by subscribing to their popular Food and Family Magazine? It is true. The good news is that the Kraft Works Food and Family Magazine is a totally free publication. This publication is published and distributed quarterly. It is filled with recipes and great coupons, and sometimes, free offers. You can sign up for the Food and Family Magazine directly on the Kraft Foods webpage. Did you know that Kraft Foods is now also publishing a new free online publication, titled Meal and Fitness Plan? This is a free and totally customizable lifestyle publication that can help you lead your best life by eating the best foods for you. How to Find the Availability of the Kraft Foods Offers Sometimes it can be difficult to find the availability of Kraft Food offers. This is mostly due to the fact that the Kraft Foods Corporations maintains many different sites, including a US site, a US Military site and a Canadian site. Make sure that you are checking the right site for you, and that you check the site frequently and periodically in order to get the best deals. The offers and promotions may last from a few days to several months, so make sure that you search the page often. Are There Any Risks to Getting Kraft Foods Freebies? Be aware that when you request free Kraft Foods freebies, you will be placed on mailing lists. You may also receive email offers, so be prepared for an inflow of messages to your inbox.