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.

When in the beginning stages of building a website, you will always come accross the decision of what application you should use to build and code your website; making this decision can be tough since there are several different factors that you should always take into consideration when searching for the right application. Many website design applications also contain many features, meaning that it is important that you identify what you want from an application when making the search; you should also take into consideration the type of support that is available for the applications that you are looking at, since most are very complicated and will take you a while to adjust to - whilst adjusting to the application you have chosen, you might also require knowledgable support if there is a certain feature which you are confused about or are trying to find but are having difficulty doing so. The main decision you will need to make is whether you want to use a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor so that you are able to edit the design of your site directly within the application, or whether you are going to go with a plain text based application and code your website by using your own knowledge.

WYSIWYG or Code Editor 

If you choose to go with a WYSIWYG editor then it is important that you choose an application which has additional features which allow you to specify certain settings, which the application then processes into certain code which it then inserts into your website. Applications such as Adobe Dreamweaver do this for you; Dreamweaver lets you specify certain settings and is then able to process the Javascript code for things such as popup windows and ‘mouse over’ image actions, Dreamweaver is also able to process code for functionalities such as database interaction in most of the different programming lanaguages which it supports as an application. Some applications support dual view - in other words you are able to view your website in design view and code view; this is good if you are a beginner as it allows you to see the code functionality of different areas of the design which you can then use to teach yourself the basic code skills. If you are going to be building your website using your own code, then you needn’t look for an application, since you could just use a simple text-based editor; these types or editors are free and are normally included with most operating systems - an example of this would be Notepad which is included as part of the Windows operating system.

Server Side Languages 

If you are building a ‘dynamic’ website which utilizes a server-side scripting language such as PHP or ASP, then you should consider an application which supports your chosen language specifically, as it will most likely have additional support for the chosen language which can be of advantage to you when building your website; additional support might include things such as ‘code snippets’ which you can use in your own code when constructing your website. Examples of this type of application include Microsoft Visual Studio and Adobe Dreamweaver; Visual Studio has been specifically built to allow ASP.NET developers make the most of the language - Microsoft has also recently released a cut down version of this application known as ‘Microsoft Visual Web Developer’ which is free - the idea of it is to promote ASP.NET as a language to get more people using it. Dreamweaver has support for many different server side languages including PHP, ASP.NET and Java Server Pages; Dreamweaver’s support of these languages extends as far as allowing people who are new to these languages make the most of them by just entering details into the application.

Web Based Site Building Applications

If you go with a shared or reseller hosting plan, you will most likely have access to a web based application which you can use to build your website with. These applications are good if you are new to the concept of website design since they allow you to choose a template that suites your needs, then apply the information which you want your website to contain; in some cases, you are even able to modify or insert HTML code into the template so that the website looks exactly the way you want it to. If you need to build a website quickly, then this type of solution is perfect for you since you don’t have to fiddle about with anything technical. Examples of this type of site building application include:

• Parallels Sitebuilder - http://www.parallels.com/en/products/sitebuilder/
• RV Site Builder - http://www.rvsitebuilder.com/
• Site Studio - http://www.psoft.net/SS/site_studio_info.html

Conclusion 

In conclusion, if you are able to identify your needs and search around the internet you should be able to find an application that supports your needs. There are some good free text based editors such as Windows Notepad and jEdit that allow you to build your website using your own code without having to fork out the money for a premium WYSIWYG application. If you are a high end web developer who is utilizing many different applications within your work, then you should consider an application such as Adobe Dreamweaver since it supports many different languages and is able to provide you with help when coding in the supported languages; if you are only utilizing one language within your work then you should consider a language dependent application, an example of which is Microsoft Visual Studio.

Dependent on your requirements, the following is a list of website building applications which you should have a look at:

• Adobe Dreamweaver - http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/
• jEdit - http://www.jedit.org/
• Netobjects Fusion - http://www.netobjects.com/

Shared Web Hosting is seen as the starting point when entering the web hosting world; this is because the environment in which you are hosted is shared with many other people, and in most cases the resources such as disk space and bandwidth that have been assigned to your account are normally low. Shared Hosting is normally the ideal starting point for people with little or no experience of web hosting, since they are always assigned a control panel which they can use to control their website, also within many control panels, features such as script auto-installers are available to help you get started with your website. If your website is of the utmost importance, and is mission critical for you or your business then you should never have it hosted within a shared environment; this is because shared web hosting servers can be easily bought down by outside attackers if a ‘rogue’ website or account is hosted on the server concerned - in this type of situation you should always consider purchasing a VPS or a dedicated server since dedicated resources will be assigned to you within these environments, and the dedicated environment itself is not shared with anybody else.

Where to Start

Since your shared web hosting package might be your first web hosting package completely, there are several different places that you could consider starting from. If you have bought your package to just mess around with it, then you could try out the auto-script installer that should be included in your control panel (e.g. this is called Fantastico if you are using the cPanel control panel); these types of installers install many different applications within your web environment which you can have a play about with, if you are completely new to the concept of website design and hosting then this is perfect for you since the installer will take care of setting the necessary file permissions and the setup of the database for you. You might have signed up, but not have a website ready to host yet; in this case you could try out the different email functions on your control panel and setup emails for your website domain to get you going - you could also try out other different functions of the control panel and the more technical side of things such as the setting up and the modifying of databases under your website or account. If you are completely new, and are waiting for the completion of your website and don’t know what email accounts you need to setup yet, you could simply just have a browse around the control panel itself so that you know where everything is enabling you to carry out future tasks with ease; also, if you know the whereabouts of everything within the control panel, you are able to use your knowledge to help and guide others who might face problems.

Making the Most of Your Resources

Although you might have a good amount of resources within your account, it is highly unlikely that you’ll ever use them effectively. To make the most of them you should always consider hosting multiple domains under your account, and spreading the resources evenly across each domain; this would ensure that each site is getting a fair amount of bandwidth and disk space, for example. If one site uses more bandwidth than another site, you should always consider spacing both the disk space and bandwidth in proportion to the size of the site and the amount of visitors each site receives as well the amount of disk space each site uses - a factor which is normally dependent on the website’s content and infrastructure. If you have a hosting account which has both a large amount of disk space and bandwidth, then you could consider hosting a website such as an image sharing website; this is because you could easily use up all of the disk space by hosting visitor’s images and photos, and then use up a good amount of the bandwidth assigned to your account by streaming them - in other words allowing people to link back to them so that others are allowed to view them. Something else that you could so with an account which has a large amount of resources is host website for friends and family for a cost; by doing this you are able to make an income out of your package, and if you end up hosting enough websites, could upgrade to a reseller package or even a VPS server at a later date. For a package with a small amount of resources, you could host a small HTML based site which makes minimal use of images; by doing this you are able to establish an online presence, but one which only leaves a small foot print within your hosting resources.

Choosing the Appropriate Shared Hosting Package

When choosing a shared hosting package, you should only consider packages which suit your needs as well as ones which are within your price range. You might see packages advertised around with high specifications which seem unreal, for example a host might be offering 100GB disk space and 50tb bandwidth; the truth is that they are unreal. Web hosts which offer these types of packages are known as ‘overselling hosts’; this is because the packages that they have on offer are inviable both financially and server wise. In most cases, if all of a company’s users used up all their resources then the host would most likely go bust since there just wouldn’t be the capacity on the server to cope with such a demand. If you choose a package with not enough resources, then you could end up using your resources too quickly and having your site suspended because it has no bandwidth, or if you go for a package with too many resources then you could end up paying for what you don’t really need. If you run a small site which doesn’t receive many visitors, then you can easily go with a low end shared hosting package; however, if your site doesn’t receive many visitors but is very ‘image heavy’ then you should always go with a mid-range package for the reason that images can take up both alot of bandwidth and disk space. Your site might not be image heavy, but might receive alot of users and might be based on a database; in this case you should choose a high end package because the more visitors you receive, the more bandwidth you will need - also, databases can use up alot of disk space although that is dependent on the type of data held.

The Benefits of Shared Hosting

If you are new to the concept of web hosting, then a shared hosting package is perfect for you. Most packages, such as those provided by eUKhost, are feature packed allowing beginners to become extremely knowledgeable of everything related to their hosting account. Your account is normally hosted within a secure and controlled environment which means you are able to test new things out without disrupting others which may be hosted on the same server as you. The server maintenance and support is normally taken care of by your host meaning that you can use your account safe knowing that if anything does go wrong with the server you are unlikely to have caused it, and that it will most likely be dealt with by your host at the earliest possible convenience.

Conclusion

By making the most of the resources which are assigned to your shared hosting account, you are able to maximize the possibilities open to you - and in some cases are even able to make a return on the purchase of your package. Shared hosting is perfect for you if you are new to the concept of web hosting since you are in a shared and controlled environment meaning that you are not able to cause any actions which are likely to disrupt fellow customers on the same server as you. Also, the maintenance of the server is not something which falls back to you, giving you one less thing to worry about.

As long as your host allows you to, you can use a custom php.ini file within your Linux shared hosting environment. By utilizing .htaccess you are able to create a custom fileset which you can then use to disable and enable PHP functions as per your wish within your website; this can be done site-wide or directory-wide. This can be helpful to you if your host has disabled certain modules within the server wide php.ini file, or if there are modules which are enables but you’d rather have disabled, for example if they don’t work with a PHP application which you have installed on your website. As long as you are able to within your shared hosting environment, the deployment of a custom php.ini file is relatively easy if the following steps are followed.

Deploying a Custom PHP.ini File

First off, you need to create a .htaccess file; you might already have one within your hosting environment, if so you can easily edit. In either case, you will need to add the following line to the .htaccess to enable Apache to find the custom php.ini file:

SetEnv PHPRC /path/to/custom/php.ini

You will then need to create the custom php.ini file itself within your site - the file can actually be named anything and can have any posess any extension, if you want it to. Within this file you are able to specify whether PHP modules are enabled or disabled for your website - Apache will pick the custom php.ini file up via the use of your .htaccess file and will then apply your custom settings to your virtual environment on run time. For our example we will be disabling PHP’s use of magic quotes. To disable PHP’s use of magic quotes on run time, we will need to paste the following three lines into our custom PHP.ini file:

magic_quotes_gpc = Off
magic_quotes_runtime = Off
magic_quotes_sybase = Off

Once that has been done, as long as the .htaccess file is pointed towards the correct custom php.ini file, Apache should pick the changes up on the next run and the specified modules or settings will take effect every time your site is run as long as the appropriate files are in their correct locations. By doing this, you are able to ensure that all custom settings for your website are served on the next run, meaning that they will always be applied to it. Another example of a module being changed would be the setting of the time zone for your website through the use of a custom php.ini file, to do this we need to paste the following code into the file:

date.timezone = “America/Indianapolis”

The example shown sets the date timezone to Indiana, America; if we want to set our time zone of GMT London, we need to paste in the following code:

date.timezone = “Europe/London”

Changing the time zone can be an important change, since your website might be hosted in somewhere like America, but your audience however might be Australia - that is a vast time difference. Some applications are time/date sensitive, which means that you should ensure that you change the time zone to fit in with your audience, as it could cause confusion with both the system and your visitors if a different time from what they’re use to is displayed, or if completely the wrong day is set.

Conclusion

With the use of .htaccess you are able to use a custom php.ini at either site or directory levels within yoru website, allowing you to run your website with the appropriate settings as per your wish. This is good since it allows you to achieve things which in some cases are only achievable within a dedicated environment such as a VPS server or a dedicated server. Also, some applications only work if certain PHP settings are enabled or disabled, so this allows you to customize your environment to ensure you are able to run any type of PHP application. This sort of tweaking is something that certainly allows you to make the best out of your shared or reseller website hosting.

PHP and ASP.NET are the two main scripting languages used by web developers. PHP is a multi-platform open-source language whilst ASP.NET is a single platform language built and owned by Microsoft. Both of these languages are packed full of features and add-ons for both are available so that you are able to extend their framework to build feature rich applications. Although PHP is open source, it has a large active community which is there to support users of the language; ASP.NET is a product of Microsoft meaning that there is a large amount of online documentation and other community forums where you can get support.

PHP

PHP is a language which has been around since 1984 and powers many of the world’s websites. It is free and is known as ‘open source’ software meaning that its source code is available for download, at no cost. It widely used in conjunction with the MySQL database engine, but can be used with others such as Oracle and SQLite. PHP is generally easier to code in than ASP.NET, since it has more functions built in than its rival; however, ASP.NET has built-in AJAX functions which is something that PHP lacks. Since PHP is open source, there is a number of applications that are available for free based on it, most of these applications are commonly used and are very powerful; also, there is a greater number of community forums and blogs where you are able to find information regarding PHP since it is open source.

PHP is a dynamic language since there are several different types of database that you are able to connect to, including: MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL and in some cases, Microsoft SQL Server. You are also able to edit the source of the language if you wish to speed it up or install custom modifications so that it is able to run as per your requirements; again, this is because it is open source - although ASP.NET is a free language, it isn’t open source meaning that you are unable to edit its source.

ASP.NET 

ASP.NET is a language based on classic ASP - both languages are owned and were created by Microsoft. Although it is a free language, it isn’t open source meaning that you are unable to view or edit the source code of it. Also, it is very limited in what database types you can use with it - Microsoft only invented it to work with Microsoft Access and Microsoft SQL Server databases, although developers can use it with MySQL databases with the help of third party components. Classic ASP, ASP.NET’s forefather, was created back in the mid-1990s and is the base which ASP.NET has been built on. One thing which annoys many ASP.NET developers is the fact that Microsoft is forever releasing updates to the system, and in its course, changing things along the way meaning that in some cases, developers have to keep on learning the changes as well as the new components and functions which are being added.

CMS stands for content management system; these are systems where you are able to create and modify web pages on the fly since they are database driven applications, most of the best known CMS solutions are open source meaning that they are free. By using a CMS you are able to create and edit the content on your website with easy from any internet connected location; with most CMS applications, add-ons are available allowing you to extend your system to cover many different functions. All systems come with a default design, but theming a CMS to suit the design you want can be done easily through the use of templates. You should only use a CMS if the content on your site needs regular updates, or if your site is a rather large one with alot of content; if you have a small website then a CMS will be of no benefit to you in anyway, it could become an annoyance in certain situations, for example if you’re not going to update your content regularly then you could end up forgetting the administrator password.

Choosing a CMS

Choosing CMS can be either an easy task, or a hard one; the decision of where it is easy or hard is based upon your requirements. If you have fairly simple requirements, for example what operating systems it can run on and whether it is XHTML compliant then you could be in for an easy search since there are CMS solutions available which will run on any operating system, and if the chosen system’s default template isn’t XHTML compliant then you can easily code yourself a custom template which you can make XHTML compliant if you wish. However, if your requirements are much more strict then you could end up having to pay for a premium CMS, or face a hard search for an open source CMS that fits your requirements.

There are universal factors which you should also take into consideration, such as whether the systems you are looking at are SEO friendly and how secure they are. SEO friendly CMS systems will convert your pages to friendly URLs such as ‘http://www.my-cms-site.com/new-article/cat-falls-down-drain-after-slipping-off-tree-branch’, in that case the CMS has taken the article title o ‘Cat Falls Down Drain After Slipping Off Tree Branch’ and converted it into a URL which search engines will consider friendly - these types of URLs can end up with a search engine such as Google giving you a higher rank. Security is also a big factor concerning CMS systems; open source systems are remarkebly insecure since they are available to anyone meaning that a hacker can easily get a copy and find the exploits within, once they have found the exploits they can then go on to targeting websites based on the system concerned; SQL injections are also easily executed on open source systems.

The following is a list of open source CMS systems which you should consider trying out:

• Joomla - http://www.joomla.org
• PHPNuke - http://www.phpnuke.org
• Drupal - http://www.drupal.org

You will find that all of the ones listed above are powered by PHP and MySQL; these two systems are used in most open source CMS, and both are available on most operating systems.

Installing a CMS 

Installing a CMS can be a very easy task; all you have to do is download the system, upload it to your web space via FTP, setup a blank database and then set permissions on some files to ‘777′ - thats the technical part done. Most systems have specially built setup wizards ready made to make the installation as easy as possible. There is also a range of open source CMS available for instant installation from the CMS category within Fantastico, if you are on cPanel based website hosting. The following is a list of free guides which you can use to help you install some of the most popular open souce CMS:

• How to Install Joomla - http://www.joomlatribune.com/joomla-tutorials/how-to-install-joomla-cms.html
• How to Install Drupal 5 (Videocast) - http://www.lullabot.com/videocast/installing_drupal_5
• How to Install PHPNuke - http://www.trap17.com/index.php/how-install-php-nuke_t22493.html
• How to Install Mambo - http://www.siteground.com/tutorials/mambo/mambo_installation.htm