Introduction
The-OnRamp.Net provides commercial,
small business and personal web hosting. Services provided in web hosting can vary
from static personal and small business web pages to large and complicated
applications
using customer databases, credit card services, email systems. To
immediately apply for web hosting, complete the Web
Hosting Application Form for small business or commercial usage, or Express
Personal Web Page Hosting Form for personal use.
The following describes pretty much everything you
need to know about web hosting your personal pages or a small or
commercial business. Feel free to print this for future reference or email
it to a friend to have them help you learn the concepts of web hosting.
Brief Terminology
Here are some terms and acronyms that you should be familiar with in order
to communicate with The-OnRamp.Net staff regarding web hosting.
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language.
PERL is a programming language.
ASP stands for Active Server Pages.
CGI stands for common gateway interface. CGI is commonly confused to be a
programming language, but it is not. PERL AND ASP are programming language
that uses a CGI.
Both CGI and ASP scripts are performed or carried out on the Internet
server (SERVER SIDE) rather than on your computer (CLIENT SIDE).
HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. This is a protocol that your
Internet browser using to receive and display HTML pages.
FTP stands for File Transfer protocol. This is a protocol that your
Internet browser or FTP program uses to transfer text or binary files from
one place to another (e.g. from your computer to an Internet FTP website.)
Commercial Use
Commercial web hosting can best be
described as a website that involves large and complicated web pages that
interact with other businesses, computer databases, e-commerce shopping
cart systems, credit card services, emailing and advertising systems.
Small Business Use
Small business web hosting can best
be described as a website that involves web pages that are on a smaller
scale or system requirements. It can include some of the major components
of a commercial website, but not all of them.
Personal Use
Any member of The-OnRamp.Net can
request web hosting using a virtual directory on THE-ONRAMP.NET. This is a
free service.
We recommend using one of the latest commercial or free FTP utilities and
a Web page development tool. There is a disk space limitations of 5MB.
FrontPage Server Extensions are not supported because FrontPage2000 server
extensions are not installed on The-OnRamp.Net homepage.
An example of a virtual webpage would be for a customer called Jane Doe, who is a Dialup customer of
THE-ONRAMP.NET, and she requests web hosting for personal use. Her virtual
directory could be
called JANEDOE if a virtual directory named like that doesn't all ready
exist. If one were to lookup the web page using your Internet browser you would
type this: HTTP://WWW.THE-ONRAMP.NET/JANEDOE
Tools
The following tools are listed for
your benefit. We often use one or many of these programs to design and
implement web pages for our own internal usage, small business, personal
and commercial business.
Commercial Web Development Programs
These are programs that are available at a local or online computer
store. Check around for latest prices.
1. Microsoft FrontPage2000 / FrontPage97
2. Microsoft Visual Studio
3. Netscape Composer
4. Microsoft Word for Windows97
File Editors
These are for the web developer who can read and write HTML syntax.
1. Programmer's File Editor (PFE32), v1.01. This is a free program.
Get this at http://www.freeware32.com
2. Microsoft Notepad. This is built into your Windows operating system in
the Programs | Accessories menu.
FTP Programs
1. WSFTP / Pro Get this from http://www.ipswitch.com
2. CuteFTP Get this from http://www.globalscape.com
3. Microsoft FTP - this is built into Microsoft Windows95, 98 and Windows
NT through your Internet Dialup or Remote Access.
Compression Programs
It is important to understand how to compress and decompress data for
usage on the Internet. In doing so, you save hard drive space for file
storage and retrieval, and decrease download and upload times. The
following are some utilities that can be useful. They are widely available
on the Internet, but make sure before you use them to virus check them
when you download them.
1. WinZip - used to compress and decompress files. Get this from Http://www.winzip.com
OS: Windows
2. Pkzip.exe / Pkunzip.exe - used to compress and decompress files.
OS:
MS-DOS
3. LHA.exe - used to freeze and melt files. Very cool! OS: MS-DOS
4. Split.exe - used to split binary files into smaller chunks. OS: MS-DOS
Specifications
You can never understand too much about the languages that are used to
create web pages.
HTML, etc - Go to http://www.w3.org
Perl, etc - Go to http://www.perl.com
JavaScript - Got to http://www.javascript.com
, http://www.adeveloper.com/resource.html
SQL - Got to http://www.mssqlserver.com
, http://www.sqlserver.com
Setup &
Configuration
When the setup and configuration of
a web hosted site begins, there are a few requirements that must be
completed: 1) server type and location. 2) Usage / Load, 3) Security
Server Type & Location
There are two types of application servers that can provide web
hosting and a third which is your server at our location:
1. Shared - These are servers that share application
space with other web hosted sites. Personal and small business web hosting
often falls into this category.
2. Dedicated - this is a server that only supports and
runs your web site. This can be a server The-OnRamp.Net provides or it can
be provided by you. If it is provided by you, your web hosting category
would fall into the Co-hosting category.
3. Co-Located - this is your server, in our network
operations, totally secured, configured and dedicated to your web hosting
application. See our Co-Located Application Server request form and
services agreement for a better understanding of this Server Type &
Location.
Usage / Load
When you web host, you must have an idea of how many customers or
users will be visiting the site daily, and how many files or web pages
will be accessed. This kind of anticipated knowledge will help
The-OnRamp.Net staff better prepare and configure your website for current
demand from customers.
DISK SPACE - how much hard drive space (MB) is required to support
your web hosting pages or application.
TRAFFIC - how much Internet activity is going to be added to our servers
and to our Internet communication systems.
USERS - how many maximum users per day and also concurrent (online at the
same time) will be expected.
Security
Web hosting security is a something that is not often thought about
until a hacker gets into your application and brings down your site. There
are several precautions one can take to guarantee uptime and there are
also security types you can use for web hosting.
Security precautions:
1. Backup your content prior to making web site changes, and then
regularly if customer data is involved. Most of all create a backup plan
that will work for your business and web hosting needs.
2. Regularly change the Internet passwords to your site. The best
prevention of being hacked is strong passwords that are regularly changed.
The-OnRamp.Net can assist you with this if we control your web hosting
password. However, it is up to you to request the change and then test it.
3. The password for your Internet username name and password (to include
email) through an ISP should not be the same as an operating system
password or application password.
4. The Username and Password should not be the same. A username
like Joe and a password like Joe is unacceptable.
5. The username and password should not be connected to your personal
information like your social security number, home address or telephone
number, children's name, pet's name, etc.
6. A good strong password would be at least 6 characters, with letters and
numbers and mixed case. For example: username James and password 1doorsAway.
Or, another good one is username GinaG and password Ttbgtyd2
Security Types:
There are two types of security that your web hosting can implement.
Server Level Security
The-OnRamp.Net servers can provide two types of security. This is security
that is controlled by the web hosting server's operating system (e.g.
Microsoft Windows NT, Linux, Solaris, etc.)
1. Anonymous - This means anyone who can find your web site can
access it.
2. Secured - This means that a username and password are required
to access your web site.
Application level security
Then there are security elements that you can include in your web hosted
application. This is security that is built into your web hosting
application.
1. Web pages can be secured by programming into the it a username password
that the user must supply when visiting the page.
2. Databases can include security of their own. SQL Server, MS Access
offers built-in security for web pages.
Testing
The testing of your website on
The-OnRamp.Net systems can be dangerous if you are not aware of the impact
of the web page components you are installing. Prior to any testing that
involves Active Server Pages, Perl scripts, Credit Card services, Email
services, database functionality, it would be best to test it offline on
your own network servers.
InterNIC
When you want to change ISPs, you
need to provide the following information to the Referral Agency (networksolutions.com,
etc.)
PRIMARY NAME SERVER & IP ADDRESS:
NS1.THE-ONRAMP.NET
64.42.26.6
SECONDARY NAME SERVER & IP ADDRESS:
NS2.THE-ONRAMP.NET
64.42.26.7
Referral Agencies
To locate your existing website and update or
modify Administrative or Hosting information, go to the referral agency
Network
Solutions.
Note: DO NOT use the IP Address for NS1.THE-ONRAMP.NET nor the IP Address
for NS1.SOURCE.NET. Why? Because the IP Addresses may change in the
future, and it is easier to change the number the refers to the name, than
change the name. That is called "Abstraction" and is commonly
known in the programming world. NS1.THE-ONRAMP.NET used to be 208.138.53.1,
then 207.190.141.4 and now 64.42.26.6. Because InterNIC.net knew that
NS1.THE-ONRAMP.NET is a primary name server, the fact that the number
changed was irrelevant. All websites hosted by THE-ONRAMP.NET was mass
changed to the new number within 3 days.
Our Servers
The-OnRamp.Net provides the state
of the art servers with plenty of hard drive space, memory and network
speed. It is our goal to remain up-to-date with the latest knowledge and
technology that provides the best Internet service to you. Our servers do
require maintenance from time to time, and in doing so, scheduled downtime
needs to be documented and communicated to our web hosting customers.
Sometimes, downtime may include upgrades for security reasons or for bug
fixes.
If maintenance is scheduled, you as a web host customer will be advised in
advance of the scheduled downtime and also will be communicated on the
changes so you can reply if you believe this might impact your web host
application.
Backups
The-OnRamp.Net regularly performs backups of all critical systems
including web hosting content. If you have special requirements, please
contact The-OnRamp.Net and we can arrange some special service for your
needs.
Viruses
The-OnRamp.Net regularly checks our
internal servers for viruses using the latest commercial programs. If you
believe your computer was infected from a file downloaded from the
Internet, please contact support@the-onramp.net
as soon as possible so we can review our systems.
About every other day, a new virus is released into the Internet and all
of us must report and share information that affects everyone. Our
community cannot afford the spread of viruses. A virus on your
computer can interfere with your Internet service because you cannot
identify why your Internet connections and computer are behaving so erratically
or slowly, and you might think that it was something that The-OnRamp.Net
might have done to affect your service.
What are some of the signs that your computer has a virus??? What should
you do? Here are some tips that we recommend so you are not frustrated.
1. Your anti-virus program reports that a virus was found on your
computer. You should immediately contact a close computer friend or a
computer store to resolve the problem before you connect to the Internet
and spread the problem.
2. Your computer is running more slowly than normal. This can be seen as
slow Internet surfing, slow email programs, sudden pauses in your
computer.
3. Your email program is sending email that you are unaware of to friends
and customers in your address book.
4. Your email program cannot send attachments.
...The list goes on and on.
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