Title: What is PHP?

You hear all those articles about how good PHP is, and how it’s the best Web development kit you’ll ever need, which of course is true – but you may not even know what it is about and how it is used.

For starters, let’s just compare what you can do with HTML and PHP – with HTML, you can make static Web pages that are not interactive to the visitor and with PHP, you can make dynamic Web pages that are interactive to the visitor. Remember, you’ll always need HTML in your PHP development, as HTML, as we know, structures (and possibly styles, in some cases) our Web pages. Luckily enough PHP is an HTML embedded scripting language, so, unlike other scripting languages, HTML can be embedded inside PHP files (or, in other terms, the PHP code).

I must stress – PHP is not anything to do with HTML, and isn’t used to build Web pages like HTML can do, however it is used to build dynamic Web pages. Okay, let’s make an example:

• You build the online form using HTML

• You set it to your e-mail address

• You save the file

Okay, fair enough, what’s the big deal then? This isn’t dynamic – as when a visitor visits the Web page, upon clicking the button to submit the form, their favourite e-mail program will open up with the e-mail contents, and they’ll have to manually submit the e-mail themselves.

However, with PHP, that’s a little different. Using the HTML form as normal, we submit the form data to a different page on your Website and some PHP pre-defined variables as we call them POST or GET hold the form data and then sends the contents of those pre-defined variables to your e-mail inbox, without the visitor having to do a thing! Now, that is a dynamic Web page, as it’s interactive to the visitor.

Now, if you think about it – if PHP can do that, it can do a lot of other things too! Well, you’re absolutely right! PHP could display the form data they submitted on the second page (where the form data is e-mailed to you), by simply (as us programmers call it) “echoing” the contents of the variables to the Web page, using the echo function.

What are functions?
The best thing about PHP is it is quicker to setup a dynamic Web page than other scripting languages. Why, you ask? Simply because of the wide use of functions PHP have. Unlike other scripting languages, PHP has functions for almost anything you can think of, including to prevent exploitations in your code, to check string lengths (for submitted forms, for instance), to check particular variables values are integers, and so much more. Whenever you want to look up a function in PHP, usually just typing it in on Google will get you the results you need, but go to the official PHP Website (which is www.php.net) where you’ll find tutorials on every single function. You can also find the PHP manual there (which is incredibly step by step and easy to understand).

Hmm, I’m not really sure, I mean, all this “fish talk” seems a bit too complicated!
If you haven’t noticed already, PHP is the most widely supported language on the Web, and you’ll find hundreds, upon thousands of resources over the Internet as well as community forums devoted to PHP, which I am sure would be able to help you on your PHP footpath. There are also PHP mailing lists at PHP.net, which you can signup to, absolutely free, for whenever you need help. And, not to mention, eUKhost.com community forums, we are here to help – if you have any PHP specific problems or questions, we have quite a few PHP competent members on our forum which would be happy to help you, join in at www.eukhost.com/forums

I hope you enjoyed this article and found out why PHP is such a good language, and what it is about. There are so many resources over the Web related to PHP you’ll never become lost; Google.com is the only thing you’ll need to find the resources you need ;). Good luck!

The information that is transferred between client computers these days is ever growing more confidential; it is for this reason that cPanel provides you with many different tools to help keep your website secure, and any information that is passed between it and your visitors. cPanel is able to provide you with password protected directories, an IP deny manager, SSL/TLS certificate manager, SSH/shell access management, hot link protections, leech protection and GnuPG keys; all these tools put together give you the ability to protect directories or areas of your website which might contain sensitive information that you don’t want people without passwords to see, and the ability to keep those people with intentions of harming your website or server away from it. Most of these security tools should only be deployed in the situation when you need them; for example an IP should only be added to the IP deny manager when it is pretty obvious that the visitor at that IP address has harmful intentions for your website. Most of the listed tools are only their to give advantage to your website and the server on which you are hosted; however, there is one tool that gives benefits to both you and your visitors - these are SSL certificates. SSL certificates are basically there to ensure the information passed between your website and the client machine is secure. If you run a small static website which doesn’t receive many visitors, then the need for you to use any of these security features is fairly low; however, the opposite is appliable to larger sites which receive many visitors, this is because that if you have a larger website with more visitors, hackers, spammers and other types of malicious threat will want to take your deface your website or even take it down to cause the most inconvenience possible.

Although Linux web hosting servers are well known to be much more secure than their Windows counterparts, they still require many different levels of security to ensure that the website they run are not compromised in any way. Different technologies are implemented to ensure that the data passed between the website and client is secure, and that the data that is stored is secure as well. The following are different technologies are available for use through your cPanel control panel and ensure that your website is secure as it can possibly be; they ensure that you are able protect different areas of your website to ensure that the data stored within those areas is secure, to ensuring that other people and websites aren’t able to take all your bandwidth up easily. Other areas covered include how to ban people from your website, which can be of the utmost importance if you feel that any part of your website has been compromised in any shape or form. You might also find that one part of your website is not working for some reason, you might be finding that when you enter certain information in a text box, you are ending up back at the root of your domain; the cause of this is explained and can help relieve any frustrations that you might have over the subject.

Password Protected Directories

The password protected directory security feature that is built into cPanel allows you to password protect multiple directories within your website with multiple usernames and password; it is done via the use of the .htaccess file, and no technical work is needed on your end since all the file generating is done by cPanel - all you have to do is enter the usernames and password of the people that you want to have access to the protected directories, the good thing is that you can add, delete and edit users at any time you want through cPanel, you can even have multiple password protected directories. By password protecting certain directories of your website, you are able to store sensitive information in them which you may not want to risk storing in a regular unprotected directory which can be accessed by anyone, including spammers and hackers; you are also able to create a secure part of your website that only you have control over. You might also want to take advantage of this feature to create an area of your website that only people such staff can enter; this area could be similar to your internal intranet in the fact that you could use it to share information without having to meet a colleague face to face, which can be very time consuming. The .htaccess method of user authentication is the preferred type by some who have little technical knowledge; this is because more complicated systems that are based on programming languages such as PHP are more complicated to install since they require a database and for file permissions to be set, however, the .htaccess method of user authentication isn’t as secure as a PHP/MySQL based system since the user credentials are being stored in plain text and not in an encrypted password protected database.

IP Deny Manager

The IP deny manager built into cPanel allows you to ban the IP addresses of any visitor to your website. This security tool is useful to you if you have a suspicion that a user from a certain IP address is trying to hack, spam or harm your website in any way. This feature gives you access to control who can access your website; some web hosts do not allow access to this however, since IP banning is generally carried out either by the hosting node automatically or by firewalls that are in front of the server. Some web hosting servers will automatically block IP addresses for one reason or another; if any IP trying to access your website has been banned automatically by the main hosting server, then it should appear in your list of blocked IP addresses. You are able to block visitors either by their IP address or hostname; cPanel also gives you the option to block an entire subnet of IP addresses - this can be useful if you think that you are under attack from one subnet, or country for that matter. You are also able to delete any IP address that you have added to the block this - this is something that can be useful if you have mistakenly blocked a hostname or IP address. If you have blocked a range of IP addresses, then they will be displayed in a list being classed as ‘Beginning IP’ and ‘Ending IP’ to avoid confusion when checking which IP addresses have been blocked. You should always be careful when using the IP deny manager; this is because you could easily enter an IP address incorrectly and blocking the wrong person - you may even enter your own IP address by accident and end up blocking yourself.

SSL/TLS Manager

The purpose of the SSL/TLS manager is to allow you to control digital certificates which may be assigned to your website. It also gives you the ability to generate private keys and CSRs without any intervention from your web host to allow you to buy SSL or TLS certificates from suppliers who sell them, and if you have the appropriate knowledge you can then install them yourself. SSL and TLS certificates are used to encrypt the data that is sent between your website and the people who visit it; they are normally deployed in environments where the information exchanges between the two is highly sensitive and could cause great damage if it were to fall into the wrong hands - examples of this kind of data would be credit/debit card details as well as usernames and password for webites where personal information is stored. SSL/TLS certificate encryption can come in different levels; the main levels used by most mainstream websites are either 128bit or 256bit - the higher the number the more encrypted the exchanged information is. If you have a website where users are logging in and out all the time, and you accept online orders where customers enter their credit or debit card details, then you should consider implementing an SSL/TLS certificate if you haven’t already; the trust that your customers have in your website will also increase if you display a seal on your website from the vendor that you bought your certificate from saying that your website is secure to trade through and that any details transferred between them and your website is highly encrypted. Websites that use secure certificates can be easily identified since an ’s’ will appear after the ‘http’ in the address bar at the top of your web browser; SSL websites also generally run on port 443 through a web server. One thing to note is that SSL certificates will only run on dedicated IP addresses, which you must purchase separately from your web host; they will not run on shared IP addresses which is what you get in a normal shared website hosting environment.

Mod Security

Although not a feature built into cPanel itself, mod_security (sometimes referred to as mod_sec for short) is still a security which most web hosts deploy within a shared cPanel website hosting environment. Its main aim is to stop any malicious attacks being carried out on scripts which may be vulnerable; for example, it throws a user back to the homepage of the website if they try to enter any HTML into a regular text field. Mod_security is in place to stop attacks on programs which have known holes such as Joomla!, which is an open source CMS system used by many websites, although it is widely known that it is insecure in many areas. If you have a website or use an application which is being effected by mod_security in the form that when you try to edit any pages or post any information using regular text fields, you end up back at the root of the domain, there is a fix that you can place in your .htaccess file to ensure that the applications are still usable. Other types of PHP website application that may be affected by this include forum softwares, blog softwares and other types of application in which the data posted back to the page contains any code of sorts. Spammers and hackers are beginning to target websites even more these days, which is the reason why so many web hosts have deployed mod_security; it is able to ensure that websites can’t be compromised, and that if they are, other websites hosted on the same server as the compromised website are not affected by the hack/hijack. You should only disable mod_security in the situation that you are running an application that is being affected by it; if your website or application that you run is not being affected by it then you should leave it be since it leaves your website open for attack if you disable it without any good reason because at the end of the day, you should prefer to have a secure site rather than one which is open for easy attack. One thing to note is that your web host might not allow you to disable it because they don’t want the other websites on the same server as you to be compromised; in this case you should pack up and move to another cPanel based web host that does not use it or does use it, but at the same time allows you to disable it.

SSH/Shell Access

SSH is rarely given in a shared web hosting environment due to the attached security risks, but some web hosts including eUKhost do provide some servers which do allow customers who need SSH access the ability to use it. SSH is generally used for the transfer of files between Linux web hosting servers, although at root level it can be used to administer a server; unlike telnet, the data which is exchanged between the client machine and the server which is running SSH is normally encrypted. Those web hosts that do allow you SSH/shell access will normally provide you with an interface in cPanel which you can use to administer your SSH/shell access; you are able to modify and change private keys which are an alternative to use instead of a password when communicating through SSH since they allow automatic login; when a person is normally communicating with a Linux web hosting server via SSH, they are normally required to enter a username and password - this type of information is not needed when using a private key since that key is normally unique in some way or another - private keys are a perferred method of authentication when running scripts that require SSH access to another server. Through cPanel, you are also given the ability to import existing private keys; this function can be useful to you if you are migrating your website hosting account from another server or provider. One thing to note is that you do require a certain amount of Linux knowledge to be able to use SSH access in a shared web hostig environment effectively; you might not also be able to be granted SSH access in a shared environment because of the associated security risks, but those hosts that do provide it will normally require some sort of proof that you need it before assigning it to you.

Hot Link Protection

Hot linking is when a another person or website links directly to an image that is hosted within your web space without your knowledge or permission; hot linking can quickly use up any bandwidth assigned to your website hosting account if the image that is being hot linked is rather large in file size and if the website that is hot linking the image or file gets a lot of visitors. Images are the main type of file that are hot linked, but other file types such as video can be easily hot linked; in fact any type of file can be hot linked. By enabling hot link protection, you can ensure that any file with the extension that you have listed when enabling hot link protection will not be displayed on any website under any domain except the main domain that you have assigned to your web hosting account; if someone does hot link to the file then it just won’t be displayed on any other website - its as simple as that. You are also able to direct any request to any listed file extension on your website to another image or page; this can be helpful in the combat of hot linking since the page that you redirect people to could be one explaining why they shouldn’t hot link. If you don’t disable hot linking then you could end up having your bandwidth stolen, which is not something you want since the price of bandwidth is quite high, and if you have an option set to automatically bill you for any bandwidth overages then you could end up with a very very big bandwidth bill. The hot linking panel that is built into cPanel also gives you the option to not allow people to call any of the designated file types in a browser, meaning that they can only be called from your web pages. One thing to note is that you should be careful when choosing which file types that you don’t want to be hot linked; if you enter an extension which you didn’t mean to enter then you could end up affecting not only your website but others which might be hot linking to something within your website.

Leech Protect

Leech protect is a function that is built into cPanel to restrict a user from publicly posting their password to a restricted area of your website; it can also be put in place to stop malicious attackers such as spammers and hackers from trying to guess a the password of a username multiple times. To enable leech protection for a directory in your website, just select the ‘Leech Protect’ option from the security panel on the homepage of your cPanel control panel; you are then prompted to enter things such as how many times a user is allowed to login to a certain folder as well as the time length in which the number of times that they can login is applicable. You can also specify the page that leech users should be sent to - this page could contain a warning message telling them not to attempt such an attack again; you can also choose for an email message to be sent to you informing you of the attempted security breach on your website. You can also choose for accounts to be suspended if they breach the leech policy for whatever reason; this is a good option to protect the information for which the user account has been assigned to, since the account’s owner might have posted the password openly meaning that the information is open for many to see - but if too many people try to login to the account then it will be in breach of the leech policy, meaning the account will be suspended, safeguarding the data which it has access to. You should always set your options for leech users quite loosely since you could end up blocking out a member of your staff or someone genuine who is trying to access a protected part of your website. One thing to note though is that the leech policy that you put in place for the user accounts that have access to password protected areas of your website might affect how you are able to use the protected areas since you might be limited on how many times you can log in within a specified time period.
GnuPG Keys

GnuPG is a publicly available scheme that uses the so called ‘public key’ approach; this works in the way that a message is encrypted using the public key but can only be decrypted by using the ‘private key’ which is held by the intended recipient of the message. GnuPG keys can be helpful for you if you want to send messages or store information quickly, but still want the ability to decrypt it at a later date. You can also choose the password or private key that you want to give to the recipient of the message to allow them to decrypt the message or data when they receive it. Unlike other forms of encryption where the encryption and decryption keys used are the same, both keys that are used with GnuPG keys are different - although the encryption key will always be the same for whatever message is sent using it, the decryption key will always be whatever the maker of the message wants it to be. With the cPanel interface for GnuPG keys, you are able to specify how long the decryption key is valid for; this means that after a certain date the message will not be decryptable and therefore unreadable. You are also given the option to choose the key size that you want; the higher the key size the more encrypted the message will be, meaning that it will be more secure the bigger the key size is. cPanel also gives you the option to import existing private and public keys which can be of help to you if you are transferring your website hosting over from another provider.

Conclusion

In conclusion, cPanel provides you with a number of tools that you can use to ensure that your website is as secure as it can be. Via the use of password protected directories you can ensure that information stored in certain directories of your website is only accessible via the use of a username and password which any sensible web master would retain for themselves; however, you are given to the ability to create multiple accounts meaning that you can easily allow access for others if you want or if needs be. If your website is very informative and contains a lot of images which others may find of use, then you should ensure that you put hot link protection in place; this is because that other website owners may want to include your images within their content but don’t have the sufficient knowledge to download the image and place it in their web space - in this case, if hot link protection is not enabled and the other person’s website is a very busy one then you might find yourself with either a large bandwidth overage bill or running out of bandwidth. If you feel that visitors from a certain host name or IP address may be trying to breach the security of your website in one way or another, then you can easily ban them through the IP deny manager; you should always do this since one day they might just get lucky and manage to get through all the security that you have laid in their way. If you run an online shop or a website where the information that is exchanged between client computers and your website is of the highest confidentiality, then you should deploy an SSL certificate on a dedicated IP address; you can also display a ’sticker’ on your website that most SSl vendors supply since that could boost the confidence that customers have in your website. If you require it, then you can also use SSH access within your shared hosting environment in order to transfer files between one server and another server; you can also implement private keys in this case in scripts to enable automatic file transfer via SSH without the need for any username or password, although the information that is being exchanged is still secure. If you have implemented password protected directories within your website, then you can also put in a leech policy to ensure that if any user accounts that are used to access confidential information in your website are suspended if they are compromised in any way; if you don’t want others to see the information contained within your password protected directories then you should deploy a leech policy to protect both the user accounts that are used to access the directories as well as the information contained within the directories. Finally, you can use GnuPG keys to encrypt and decrypt messages sent between you and a friend; the messages are all encrypted using the same public key, although you have the power to specify the private key/password that may be used to decrypt the message.

cPanel is the control panel that is deployed by many web hosts to allow them to provide their clients with Linux based web hosting; cPanel has many features that allow its users to administrate many different parts of their website, including the ability to generate bandwidth statistics from many different built in programs to allow them to get a detailed view of their bandwidth use. Bandwidth is the type of traffic that you have assigned to your web hosting account, and normally the amount that you use up is based on how many visitors you have as well as how ‘bandwidth heavy’ your website is - something which is normally dependent on how many images your website is made up of; bandwidth is normally measured in gigbytes (GB) due to the number of visitors many website receive nowadays as well as how multimedia heavy websites on shared hosting are becoming. cPanel contains many different bandwidth statistic generating programs such as AwStats, Webalizer and then a built in bandwidth usage chart maker; each different solutions covers how bandwidth is used in its own different way, but all have the sole aim of generating statistics and charts to inform you of how much bandwidth your shared cPanel web hosting account has taken up. Since there are several different bandwidth usage statistic generator programs built into cPanel, identifying the use of each individual one can be hard; once you have identified the use of each one then you should be able to monitor your bandwidth with effect - you won’t just have to look how much you have used, but instead you can see where it is being use as well as where your visitors are originating from, something like that can help you with the SEO of the site as well as give you the ability to market towards a certain country.

Latest Visitors

The ‘Latest Visitors’ function built into cPanel displays the last 330 visitors that you have had to your website. It displays all the files called by each host along with which protocol was used to call the page, and the user agent string attached to that certain visitor; the HTTP code and the size of the file called is also displayed - all the files called are contained under a category titled with the user’s IP address to ensure that you don’t get each visitor muddled up when going through the statistics. The date is also contained with these statistics; this can be helpful to you since you can then know which pages of your website are being accessed and at what time of day - this kind of information is gold dust if you are aiming to advertise your website or optimize it for search engines in a better way. The latest visitors function can also aid you the detection of errors in your website since the HTTP code is included with each page call; if the message received is not the correct one then it may be dictating an error to you.

AWStats

AwStats is a visitor counter add-on built into cPanel, although it requires activation from WHM before cPanel accounts are able to use. AWStats shows you how many visitors your website receives daily, and break the numbers down into different categories to give you a better idea of how much of your audience and how much of it is just search engines crawling your website; this can help when trying to find out how successful your website is if it doesn’t contain a community space such as a forum of chat room. AWStats also displays information such as the hostnames of your visitors and even does a reverse search on the IP addresses of your visitors in order to show you which countries they come from; it then breaks this information down to show you how much bandwidth each country that your visitors originate from has used up. The different visitor categories within AWStats are signified in graphs via the use of graphical images to make each different category out clearly. AWStats is a great tool for search engine optimization since it shows you which pages your websites enter at, as well as where they exit; it also provides information on referrers where applicable. If your visitors originate from a search engine or something similar, then AWStats is also able to capture the search keyword or keyphrase that they entered in the search engine in order to reach your website. User agent strings are also broken down in AWStats to give you information on your visitors such as the operating system and browser they are using; although this information might seem pretty useless, it can help you when optimizing your website to suit different web browsers. AWStats also tells you where error messages are being received by visitors - this can help you to update links if needed, if there are out of date or incorrect ones contained within your website. The visitor history in AWStats can be broken down into a monthly history, a weekly history, a daily history as well as an hourly history.

Bandwidth

The bandwidth function that is built into cPanel displays graphical charts on how and when tha bandwidth assigned to your shared cPanel website hosting account has been used. The charts are able to show you how much bandwidth each different web hosting service attached to your shared cPanel website hosting account has used; this can help you in the event that you believe your certain FTP or mail subdomain is being attacked, as this will normally make the bandwidth of attacked service go through the roof. If you have more than one domain attached to your hosting account either via the use of add-on domains or sub domains, then the share of the final amount of bandwidth usage of each domain is generated and displayed as a pie chart in this part of cPanel; this ca be helpful if you have several different websites since you are able to tell how many visitors each different part of the site is receiving, and the amount used by each domain is displayed much more clearly than other bandwidth generating programs built into cPanel.

Webalizer

Webalizer is a bandwidth statistics generating system which works in a similar way to AWStats, by displaying the organized data into charts and graphs; the only difference is that the information that is generated by Webalizer is not as detailed as that generated by AWStats. The charts produced by Webalizer colour code each differnet category related to the generated statistics to ensure that the chart is actually readable; however, the information that is produced is only numbers and can be quite confusing for somebody who is facing Webalizer for the first time. Webalizer also has a separate FTP statistic generation program built into cPanel which can generate information about FTP usage within your shared cPanel web hosting account.

Raw Access Logs

Raw access logs are the logs which the statistics softwares that are built into cPanel base their statistics on. They can be helpful to you if you need to see who has accessed your website quickly. cPanel generates a GunZIP file which you are able to download which contains the access logs for your website as well as any add-on or sub domains that might be attached to your account as well as your main domain. You can also choose for cPanel to archive your raw access logs into your home directory to ensure that they’re backed up; you can also choose for the previous month’s archived logs to be deleted at the end of each month. Some of the data displayed in statistic generation softwares might also be changed in a certain way before it is displayed; by looking that the raw access logs you are able to ensure that the data you are seeing is the original data.

Error Log

The error log built into cPanel displays the last 300 errors that visitors to your website have been faced with. This log can be helpful if your website is giving out errors that you don’t know about; it also gives more detailed information about the error which can help when trying to solve it. This log can help keep your website running smoothly since its able to give you an indication of what links are broken, and where they should be fixed as well what files are missing but should exist. If your website experiences too many errors then the most likely scenario is that search engines will give up indexing it since all they’re indexing is errors; this log can help you make sure that there aren’t too many errors experienced on your website, and inturn ensuring that the search engines keep on indexing it.

Shared website hosting is where multiple websites are hosted on the same server; each website is contained within its own folder or location on the server to keep it separate from other websites which are hosted on the same server. Shared hosting is seen as the most economical type of website hosting since the cost of server maintenance as well as other server related costs are spread across a large amount of customers, meaning that the cost of hosting for each customer is low; generally the more customers that can be fitted onto a high performance server, the less the website hosting package or packages will cost. Shared hosting is normally where most webmasters begin, and then work their way up the chain to eventually owning a dedicated server; this is because shared hosting packages are generally every cheap, and the amount of skilled needed to begin with is very low. Shared hosting is normally only available on two different types of operating system: Linux and Windows; this is because most web applications are built to suite either one of these platforms, and hosting control panels are only mainly made for Linux and Windows. One thing to note though is that there are a few hosts who do offer shared hosting on BSD based systems, although BSD operating systems are only normally available on dedicated servers.

Types of Shared Web Hosting

There are different types of shared website hosting, which can cover different areas and services that a site may require to be able to run. The owner of a website might choose to disperse the hosting of the services which they require for their website for extra redundancy; in most cases this is done because the website is ‘mission critical’ and they want to minimize the amount of downtime as much as they possibly can - but might not be able to afford a dedicated server or a clustered website hosting package. These different types of shared hosting also allow for people to only host what they need to host; for example a customer might only require email hosting, and not actual website hosting - this means that all they have to do is choose a shared email hosting plan that matches their specifications. One thing to note is that most shared hosting plans, whatever the type, provide some sort of DNS hosting in some way or another; without the use of a DNS server or servers, any service related to your website won’t be able to run - for example, you won’t be able receive any emails without the use of DNS because the email servers for your domain won’t be findable since your MX (mail exchanger) DNS records can’t be found since you don’t have any DNS servers attached to your domain. Examples of different types of shared website hosting are the following sections.

Application Specific Web Hosting

Application specific web hosting is the term that is given to web hosting which caters for specific website applications, or categories of website. In most cases, application specific web hosting covers categories such as blogging, image and video (multimedia) hosting, and in some cases specific applications have their own web hosting packages. This type of shared hosting can be of benefit for those who are looking to host a website which makes use of one of the three categories that are hosted for; those with little technical knowledge on how to get their website running with certain applications might also find themselves interested in application specific website hosting. Application specific can also take the form of free web hosting as well as paid web hosting; for example Blogger is an online service that allows you to create and write your own blog - it allows you to do this for free, on the other hand there might be a web host that is offering a hosting plan which has Wordpress already installed on it so that the customer is able to start their blog straight away. Both the free and paid types have their advantages, but the free versions tend to have adverts plastered all over them which can spoil both the environment and look of your website.

Game Server Hosting

Game server hosting is used by players to host league table matches; most games that are played over the internet require a connection to some sort of game server. Game server hosting rarely comes as a type of shared web hosting because of the bandwidth and CPU requirements of a game server to allow it to run; in most cases a host would advise a customer to go with a dedicated server to allow them to host their online gaming community. Game servers are also referred to as ‘listen servers’ and are run of the same machine as the gaming client; the server is normally shut down when the client is since both are hosted together. The gaming server has software built into it to limit the number of players that are allowed to play on the server at one time; this is because of the bandwidth and CPU restraints that even face a game server that is hosted on a dedicated server. Game servers that are hosted within a shared environment are normally placed on a server cluster; this can help ease the strain on both the CPU and bandwidth of each server and can ensure that the game can be played effectively without any problems. Game server providers, such as eUKhost, offer many titles for their customers to choose from when ordering their dedicated gaming server; this game will then be installed for them on receipt of the server so that they can get on with the thing that matters to them most straight away - gaming.

File Hosting

File hosting is a common type of shared hosting which people use mainly to backup data either on their home PC or that which is contained within either their shared hosting account, or on their VPS or dedicated server. File hosting normally doesn’t require the user to have a domain since the file transferring is done either through a web based control or via FTP (file transfer protocol). The amount of storage that you are assigned for hosting your files in is normally measured in gigbytes (GB) because of the size of files that we wish to store of backup these days; a few years ago the amount of space allocated to you would have been measured in megabytes (MB). With backup or file storage solutions that have been designed for use by large corporations or people who need to access the files whenever without any trouble, caches are normally deployed; caches ensure that the data can still be accessed even if there are bandwidth or connection problems on the host’s network. Open file hosting services are ones which don’t require users to register before they are able to upload any type of file - instead they only have to visit one page of the website and they are able to upload any file more or less instantly, services which take this form are normally free but plastered in adverts; this kind of service is preferred by people such as shareware authors since they are able to host the files for their free products without having to pay a penny - millions of people are also able to download the files in most cases, although with some premium services may have a restriction on something like this. File hosting is sometimes referred to as ‘off-site backup’; this is because the files are being backed up from the server and then transported over to the file hosting service where they are then stored - or in other words, backed up.

E-Mail Hosting

Email hosting is standard shared hosting, but without the ability to host a website; instead it only allows you to setup and configure email accounts for the domain which you have purchased the hosting for. Email hosting is normally purchased by a user who doesn’t require a website but needs email, or if the customer wants to host their website somewhere else for more redundancy. Another reason for the uptake of separate email hosting might be to take advantage of extra mail services provided by another company which aren’t available on your current hosting plan; for example someone might take up separate email hosting so that they could use Exchange Server 2007 email services which their current host doesn’t provide - however, this scenario is highly unlikely since if a business did need to take advantage of an enterprise email system such as Exchange server then they would most likely have it installed on their own servers. If you don’t need a website at the time you purchase your domain, then email only hosting will be perfect for you since the DNS servers will be provided for you to point your domain to, and you will be provided with a control panel which you can use to setup and configure email accounts for your domain; any good host will allow you to upgrade your account to one which does have support for a website at a later stage. There are already some free separate email hosting services that are available for you to use; two of the best known ones are based on the GUIs of two of the worlds most popular webmail interfaces - GMail and Windows Live Mail. Both Microsoft and Google have developed their own systems to allow members of the public to utilize the company’s services under their own domains; this has been a blow for the email hosting market since these systems also incorporate other enterprise class features such as calendar and contact sharing, as well as document storage.

DNS Hosting

DNS stands for domain name system and is the name which generally brands the technical working of domains; each domain has its own ‘zone’ on a name server which it has been delegated to, this zone contains all the data which other computers and servers on the internet use to communicate with the servers that host the domain in question to allow people to view a website and to allow for email to be delivered. DNS hosting is a type of shared hosting only the DNS records for a domain are held, and no other services such as the hosting of a website or email are involved. A DNS zone hold the DNS records for a domain, which control the location of the website as well as where the email for the website is routed to. One may choose to you separate DNS hosting to ensure extra redundancy in the current DNS setup, or so that they are able to control their DNS zone without having to be stuck to one host if they want to have all their hosting services dispersed amongst several different companies. DNS hosting is normally provided by domain registrars to allow their customers to take control of their domain without having to purchase a hosting account with them, and to allow them to utilize hosting that they might already have with another company; there are also some free services out there which can provide you with free DNS hosting if you are not able to provide your own or are not satisfied with the DNS hosting which is provided by your hosting provider or domain registrar. Your current DNS setup may not be that reliable, so you might choose to use an external DNS hosting company to ensure that if the DNS service with your web host does pack up, you have backup to ensure that your website is still reachable. If you have your hosting and DNS with one host, then the chances of your website going down are highly likely; if the DNS service on the server fails then your website will be completely inaccessible, and since most host’s use the single point of failure, they will have no backup which your domain can use - one thing to note though is that other services such as email and web services might still be running. If you utilize another DNS provider then your website will still be accessible if it is only the DNS service that had failed on the server, other services such as email might not be affected either.

Everytime, you open a browser and type in http://www.eukhost.com, have you ever thought about the process which helped the browser display the website? Has it every crossed your mind that there is a complex system which supports this activity? Here is a brief explanation of the methodology behind this easy-to-use, but difficult-to make-it-work process.

More often than not, users access a website by typing in the domain name in their browser, or from a hyperlink that brings them to the website. Lets take eukhost.com as a case-study. You open a browser and type http://www.eukhost.com into the address bar. Your browser then initiates a connection to the webserver in which the eukhost.com files are stored. The browser does this using the internet connection you have. The request for http://eukhost.com is first converted into an IP address using the nameservers which have been assigned to eukhost.com and then locating the server which has eukhost’s files.

Once communicaton has been established between the browser and the webserver; a request for the files of eukhost.com to be displayed is made. This is done using the hyper text transfer protocol (http). All the files which the webserver sends back to the browser is then converted into human readable format by the web-browser itself. Using this very process, the server can send files to multiple client computers at the same time allowing viewers across the globe to access the website.

A webserver typically stores all the files necessary to display eukhost.com’s pages in your web browser. This includes all the text files, images, graphics, video files, audio files and any other script that enables the dynamic elements of a website to function. The number of such simultaneous requests which can be serviced depends entirely on the robustness and configuration of the webserver.

The most popular open-source webserver in use today is Apache, while windows servers generally use IIS (Internet Information Services) as their webserver application.

Like any type of web hosting, shared cPanel hosting accounts come with many features. Whether you are a novice or an expert, you might have trouble working out what these features do or what their meanings are in general. Knowing the meanings of different features is really important, especially when looking around for a new web host or website hosting package since you could end up choosing a package with features that you want but don’t have, or with features that you have or don’t particularly want. If you know about certain features, then you could benefit yourself in the future when trying to carry out a task; for example you might be having trouble installing a certain script - in that case, if you know of a script auto-installer which is available within your control panel, then you could apply your knowledge and skills to using that for installing the desired script. The names of some features are abbreviated, for example File Transfer Protocol is shortened down to FTP; knowing these different abbreviations can also help when trying to fix a certain problem or when searching around for a web hosting package since you are able to apply your knowledge without the need for a search engine. By the end of this article you will have extended your technical knowledge of hosting related features since you will be introduced to the main features of cPanel based shared website hosting and the basic features provided by most web hosts.

cPanel

cPanel is the web hosting control panel which is used by many website hosting providers, including eUKhost, to provide Linux based (Windows support coming soon) hosting to customers. cPanel also has a reseller client built called WHM (Web Host Manager) which allows reseller clients to host multiple domains which have their own dedicated client account; reseller clients are also able to allocate their specified resources amongst their clients in the form of web hosting packages. Both cPanel and WHM boast many features which helps to make them superior amongst their rivals; developers are also able to build their own extensions and plugins for both control panels to allow customization to an extent, as well as to extend the functionality of both control panels.

Add-On Domain

This is the name given to the action of attaching another domain to your existing website hosting package. By using the add-on domain feature, you are able to maximize the use of your website hosting package by attaching a number of domains to it; this also means that you can use your allocated resources effectively by spreading them across several websites. If you host several different websites on the same shared hosting package, you can cut down costs since you won’t have to buy a new hosting package every time you want to host or start another website. One thing to note with add-on domains is that you can’t create separate client accounts for each domain - they will all fall under the same account; if you want a separate client account for each domain then you should opt for a reseller hosting package.

Sub Domain

A sub domain is a domain which is created under an existing domain; an example of which would be ’sub.domain.com’ - the main domain in this case being ‘domain.com’, and the sub created being ’sub’. Sub domains are a good way of giving different sections of your website their own identity since they have their own top level address; the company or personal identity of the website is still kept however since the address created will still contain the TLD domain of the main business or personal website.

Fantastico

Fantastico is an auto-script installer which allows you to install certain scripts within your website without the need for any technical knowledge since the technical actions such as the setup and configuring of the database are taken care of by the program. It is an optional premium plugin for both cPanel and WHM which is made by a company called Netenberg. Some hosting companies provide it with their shared and reseller website hosting packages; others also provide it with their dedicated and VPS server packages for free, although some companies do charge for it.

Server Side Scripting Languages

Server side scripting languages are languages which require a certain program to be installed on the server to allow them to run; they normally carry out complex tasks such as adding, removing and updating database data as well as sending emails automatically and displaying the current time and date on a website. There are many different languages out there which can be used, although the most commonly used ones and ones which are supported by most website hosts on shared cPanel Linux web hosting include the following:

• PHP - Some hosts run PHP 4 and PHP 5 side by side on their servers, so that you can make use of both versions.
• Perl
• RoR (Ruby on Rails)

MySQL Databases

MySQL is an open source database program which is normally used in conjunction with the PHP scripting language. It is supported on nearly any shared cPanel web hosting plan since it is normally installed by default; most web hosts are currently running version 5 of the MySQL server, however there are the odd few who are still stuck using version 4 of the software. Since it is open source (free), there are quite a few PHP based applications which utilize it, meaning that you can make the most of it by choosing an open source application which is based on it. There are also quite a few free tools which you can utilize to manage your MySQL databases. One thing to note that the MySQL server is available for other operating systems as well as Linux, including Windows and BSD based systems.

POP3/SMTP Email Accounts

Email accounts are what you use to send and receive email. You are able to create email accounts within your shared hosting package such as ‘you@yourdomain.com’; you can create email accounts with any name under your domain. POP3 stands for ‘Post Office Protocol Version 3′ and is the technology which is used by most email servers and clients to retrieve email; SMTP stands for ‘Simple Mail Transfer Protocol’ and is the technology which is used by email servers and clients to send email, email servers also use it to receive email from other email servers.

Mailing List

A mailing list is used to send an email or message to a group of people, small or large, regularly without the need to enter all their email addresses into the ‘To, CC or BCC’ sections of the compose pane contained within most email clients. If you use a web page frontend mailing list such as PHPList then you can let your clients or members of the general public subscribe to your mailing list, this can be helpful if you are aiming to message a large customer base or if you want your mailing list to grow.

Spam Assassin

Spam Assassin is a spam filtering server which is built in most Linux email server installs. With cPanel installs, it has a web age frontend within the cPanel client for each email account so that clients can customize the Spam Assassin settings, for example a client might want to change the required spam score for incoming emails on a certain email account, but might want a different score than that which is used by other email accounts within their account.

Auto Responders

Within any shared cPanel hosting package you are able to setup auto responders for any email address. An auto responder is a message which you can choose to be sent on receipt of an email; the message can be whatever you want and is sent to the original sender of the email. Auto responders can be helpful, for example you might want to setup an out-of-office one which can be sent to anyone who sends you an email whilst you are on a business trip or are away from a computer meaning that you can’t check your emails.

Email Forwarder

An email forwarder (sometimes known as an alias) is an email account which doesn’t physically exist since any email messages which are sent to it’s address are always forwarded to another specified email address. Email forwarders can be helpful if you don’t want the hassle of having multiple email inboxes to check, or if you are running multiple companies within the same industry and want certain issues such as billing and support to be centralized to one or two email inboxes.

IMAP

IMAP is another technology which is used by email clients to retrieve email from email servers. IMAP stands for ‘Internet Message Access Protocol’ - the current version being IMAP 4; it is different to POP3 since the message is actually still held on the email server when being read at first, once you have read the message you can then choose to download the email or not. Unlike POP3, IMAP requires a continuous connection to the server to allow you to read your emails.

File Manager

cPanel’s web frontend comes with a file manager to allow you to manage the files in your website remotely without the need for direct FTP access. It can be useful to use if you are in an internet cafe or using a computer where you are unable to access your website for a reason such as port 21 (the port used by FTP) being blocked by the router or firewall on the connection that you are using.

FTP Access

FTP stands for ‘File Transfer Protocol’ and is the standard which is used by website designers and developers to transfer files to and from their assigned website space. In most cases you require a user name and password to be able to gain access to the space which is normally protected, however some servers allow anonymous FTP access to files. FTP servers normally run on port 21, however this can vary between servers. In shared cPanel web hosting you are able to create and managed multiple FTP accounts and restrain their access to a certain part of your web space or FTP space.

PHPMyAdmin

PHPMyAdmin is a web frontend for the management of MySQL databases which are contained within your shared cPanel website hosting account. This utility can be helpful if you travel alot and need instant or quick access to the administration of your database. Since it is a web based application, you can access it from any internet connected computer.

SSL Certificates

SSL stands for ‘Secure Socket Layer’ and are certificates which encrypt the data which is transferred between your website and the client which is browsing your website. SSL certificates are most commonly used with websites such as online shops where the data transferred is highly confidential, and should not be viewed by third parties. With shared hosting packages, SSL certificates come in two forms - shared and dedicated. Shared SSL certificates are applied to one address, which is normally the host name of the server; the full address for your shared SSL space is normally something such as ‘https://server.company.com/~accountname/’. Dedicated SSL certificates are completely different since they can be applied to your own domain, and should be used if you want to keep your corporate identity when having visitors buy products off your website, for example; a dedicated SSL certificate would allow you to keep your own domain, an example would be: ‘https://yourdomain.com/’. Notice the ‘https://’ in both examples - the ’s’ signifies that the connection being used is a secure one and has an SSL certificate applied to it.

Server Side Includes

Server Side Includes, which are better known as SSI, are pages which are included into other pages within a website; the code is processed on the server meaning that the website visitor is unaware that there might be other pages merged into the one which they are viewing. This technology can be helpful, for example if you want to use one header and footer around your whole website, all you have to do is create 2 files (one for the header, one for the footer) and then ‘include’ them in the chosen places on the main pages on your website. If you want to change the header or footer at a later date, then you can - the changes will be applied to every page on your website since they will still be getting the header and the footer from the same location.

GD Image Library

The GD image library is one which can generate images on the fly. It is best known for it’s compability with PHP, however there it can be used with Perl in some cases. The core application is written in C, and is mainly used for the generation of image thumbnails, graphs as well as other types of graphics - for example it is regularly used for the generation of images in captcha solutions.

Custom Error Pages

cPanel allows you to create your own error pages which will be shown when an error occurs with your website. Although you don’t really want there to be an error with your website, they can happen without any warning and so it is important that if there is a problem with your website, a page which still boasts your website’s graphical identity is displayed. The most common errors are numbers 404 and 500; a 404 error happens when a user tries to navigate to a page within your website which doesn’t exist, a 500 error occurs when there is a problem with either the hosting server or your scripts. cPanel can be configured to show custom error pages for most errors.

Zend Optimizer

Zend Optimizer is a program which is installed on the hosting server to decode Zend encrypted PHP files. This is required to allow some applications, most notably ones which have been bought, to run; they have been encoded so that their source code can’t be rebranded and sold on - it also ensures that items such as licensing routines aren’t cracked which would allow people to run the application without a license key. Another application which is similar to the Zend system is Ioncube which encrypts and decrypts PHP files in a similar way.

Password Protected Directories

cPanel is able to create password protected directories for you via the use of the .hta and .htpassword files; the .hta file is used to store the user names of people who are allowed you access the protected area of the website, and the .htpassword file is used to store the password of those users who are authorized to enter the protected area. This type of password protection is pretty weak when compared to other types of website protection; for example more scalable and automatic applications built using PHP are much more secure since they encrypt all data that is stored to a MySQL database.

JSP Support / Apache Tomcat

JSP stands for ‘Java Server Pages’ and is a type of server side scripting; Tomcat is the engine which most shared cPanel web hosts use to provide and process JSP pages through Apache - it can also be used within dedicated server environments. Most web hosts do not host JSP pages for the simple reason that they can be very resource intensive, and many hosts would rather loose a customer after JSP hosting than loose a whole server full because the server is too slow to load their websites; it is also for this reason that many web hosts advise people wanting to host JSP web pages or Java based applications to go with either VPS or dedicated servers, as this can benefit both them and their website since it will most certainly load their website quicker.

Multimedia Support

Most websites contain some sort of multimedia content these days - whether i be a short audio clip or an entire film; multimedia can come in many different formats so it is important when looking for hosting that you take into consideration whether any type of multimedia that you use is supported, in some cases it may not be because it could either put a strain on bandwidth or server resources. The most common type of multimedia that is used on websites is known as ‘Flash’; support of this is not normally dependent of the server specification but those of the client machine which is accessing your website; since Adobe flash player is free, and available for most operating systems, it is a good choice since it will work for most of your visitors - since it isn’t dependent on the hosting server, any web host should support it. Other websites make use of Microsoft Windows Media technology which should be supported by any web host since it is again, dependent on the client rather than the server. Other types of website media used include Real Media and Microsoft Silverlight technology.

Site Builder

Site builder is a web based application which you can use to build your website if you are unable to afford the high costs of desktop website design software or if you have little to no experience of building a website; the application comes in the form of a wizard which leads you through the difference steps of building a website from choosing a layout to entering in the text that you want to be displayed, it then takes all the collected and builds a website out of it all and leaves you with something that you can enjoy or use to market your business.  Most hosts provide some type of web based site building application for both Linux and Windows; the Linux program that is used by eUKhost and many other web hosts is called RV SiteBuilder, and its Windows variant is called SiteBuilder and is made by SWSoft.

FTP Manager

The FTP manager that is built into cPanel allows you as the web hosting customer to control all the FTP accounts that have access to your FTP / web space. This utility can be handy if you have multiple FTP accounts accessing your website space.