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Hosting Reviews

What's Webdav?

Webdav is a http protocol which let you map the remote server space to your local disk drive. You can easily manage your website files just like on your local computer disk partion. Webdav simplifed the process of website deployment.

Best Webdav Hosting Provider

There're not so many web hosting service be able to support a subset of WebDAV. Till present, the best web hosts with webdav supported are hostgator and arvixe.

Arvixe and hostgator webdav hosting Features

1. Lots of hosting features to help with a successful website
2. Fantastic customer support and user guide tutorials
3. Pretty cheap web hosting plan and hosting coupon available
4. A long time money back guarantee

How is webdav supported?

Webdav is supported by both windows and linux server, but for many issues, webdav on windows IIS is not offered by all majoy hosts, it's mostly used on linux or unix like system. With a standard cpanel hosting server, webdav is enabled by default, you can easily manage it via regular user login.

How to enable webdav in cpanel?

You can follow the steps below to configure webdav service in your cpanel

1. Login to cPanel and click the Web Disk icon.
2. Scroll down and click the Access Web Disk button.
3. Choose your operating system (the one you use on your personal computer).
4. Scroll down and hit the Go button.
5. Click the Save button.
6. On your computer, hit Save, Open, and Run.
7. You are now viewing website files from your personal computer.

If you would like to take webdav advantages from IIS hosting service, arvixe be able to enable for your account as well. If not, just contact support and they will do needful assistance.

Webdav configuration tutorials: www.iis.net/learn/install/installing-publishing-technologies/installing-and-configuring-webdav-on-iis

Webdav vs FTP vs remote iis manager, which is better?

Technically speaking, webdav, remote iis manager and ftp are all doing the same work – "website management". Not sure which is the best solution?. Well, they're not completely doing the same work. Webdav and FTP are mainly configured for file transfer. Remote IIS manager is only available for windows server and configured for IIS service management other than file transfer. Let's take a look from below about webdav and ftp comparison.

1. Ftp requires ftp server to work with and you  have to create user credentials seprately on your server system, but webdav is another story, webdav has it's own secre authentication protocol without any additional system user accounts.

2. Security – You have to configure many settings in order to use secure ftp because it's completely plain text transfer as default. But you can simply use https directly for webdav file transfer, it saved a lot of time for server admin or webmasters.

3. Speed – FTP file transfer rate is pretty slow comparing to webdav, ftp file transfer will open multiple tcp connections while webdav only uses one.

4. Ftp always got blocked by some kinds of firewall, but webdav hardly got into such issues since it's http protocol based.

5. You have to use third party ftp software in order to ftping. With webdav you only open the connection just double clicking the virtual disk mapping then you can drag and drop files between the remote server and your local computer. Webdav is definitely more convenient than ftp.

Conclusion: If you have the chance to use webdav, you will find it's more professional than ftp, but please make sure your computer is protected to avoid potential abuse and virus attack because your hosting space will be mapped to your computer directly.

China Firewall Quick view

Firewall protects your network and computer health, that's good. But things are little different to Chinese people especially Chinese webmasters. There's a general national firewalll setup on their internet gateway that will block a certain outbound connections. In this article we'll discuss how it works and what should Chinese webmasters do in order to put up a healthy website.

How does China Firewall work?

China firewall or great firewall(short for GFW), it's a project supported by Chinese government over the entire Chinese internet gateway. The GFW's main work is to block websites which's considered to be "dangerous" or potential dangerous, it's generally referring to political, sexal and some illegal stuff. Till present, 3 of the world's most popular community sites are officially blocked by GFW – Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.

Why the firewall?

Although the internet business is growing rapidly in China, their internet quality is not as good as other countries such as Japan, Korea, US etc. Since the internet is open for every people on the globe and there're lots of news and discussion topics every day and let people know more about the outside world, it also brings issues to some parties and they always want to avoid some sensitive information in order to keep up their interests and control.

What's effect of GFW?

The biggest problem created by this firewall is it blocked a certain famous sites such as facebook, it blocked the communication between Chinese people and the outside world, this must be a historical backward. The worst of the worst to webmasters is they will have to take the risk their hosting server/website will be blocked some day.

Is there any good of this firewall?

Yes, it does have some contribution to internet people in china, at least the Chinese people won't be able to open some adult sites which is absolutely bad for children.

What should Chinese webmasters do?

Surely, since there's a firewall infront of every Chinese webmaster, they have to follow the rules to putup a live site. The first thing is not to mention politics and sex related topics on their websites. The second and most important is to find a good hosting service which is not GFW friendly.

Best Web Hosting service for China Friendly

Since we're talking about firewall in this article, we'll mainly focus on this point but not others such as pricing. After out search and research, we found ixwebhosting should be the best choice for Chinese webmasters. Why? Just look following

• Inhouse managed datacenters
• up to 15 free dedicated IPs
• 99% Uptime guarantee
• Free domain registration
• Multiple domain hosting

What we're really looking for? Definitely the up to 15 free dedicated IPs. why dedicated IP is so important in this topic? Because the firewall generally blocks a certain ips from some special websites, however if you have the option to change website IP then it's possible to avoid the block.

Dedicated IP is also wished by many other webmasters for SEO consideration, the search engine will assume that a website hosted on dedicated ip is working on dedicated server so there's no penalty to your website if some other websites are causing problems on the same hosting server.

Besides all above advantages, ixwebhosting also prepared Chinese support and local payment solutions to support Chinese webmasters well. It showed their efforts and confidence to earn business success in that district. Read more about Ixwbehosting China.

Read ixwebhosting review
Visit www.ixwebhosting.com for official plan details now!

SPF Record Introduction

SPF full name is Sender Policy Framework, SPF is a DNS record which allows administrators to specify which hosts are allowed to send e-mail from a given domain. So in a word, SPF record is set to reduce spam and spoof email on DNS level.

Where to configure SPF record?

SPF record is not set by yourself although you may have full control over your domain dns records. The spf record has to be configured by your ISP, if you're hosting your domain under a service provider, they should help with the configurations.

The standard format for most SPF records will look like this, unless you have special MX modifications or other arrangements for outgoing mail:

"v=spf1 a mx ~all"

Best SPF Record Web Hosting

Not all hosting providers be able to support SPF records on their dns server, especially when you're dealing with a reseller hosting (more and more hosting providers are actually reseller based). In order to configure proper spf record, you must have full access to your domain dns records and you can easily add/delete it. the most important is the hosting server is not spam friendly and not in spam list or else the next work will not be functional. SPF record support is a sign of effort about how the hosting company is trying to reduce email spam.

The best way to configure SPF record is to setup your own DNS server. In this way you have full control of DNS settings. You can do this by VPS or dedicated server easily. For high qualify SPF record web hosting provider, we highly recommend Arvixe based our 5+ years working experience and their professional spf record management. Learn more about arvixe hosting on www.arvixe.com.

Besides SPF record, arvixe team setup lots of hardware/software configurations to stop spoof email and ensure the cleanness for your email box. At low cost hosting plan, you get more than expected service!

How Does SPF Reduce Email Spam?

Email spam is a headache to many people in the world and the number is increasing everyday. what worse is some day you find your email address is being abused by other people. For example you receive an error message saying that a message sent by you could not be delivered to the recipient, but you never sent a message to that address. it definitely generated much worries to us and make us afraid of the email security and reliability. Yes you're right, your email address is being abused!

You may curious about how spammers managed to do this, here I'll share some basic email technical documents. For example if you want to send an email to someone, instead by logging to your web interface email account, you can use a simple "Telnet" command to do so, sample as below:

telnet mail.domain.ext 25
Trying …
Connected to mail.domain.ext.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mail.domain.ext ESMTP Sendmail ?version-number?; ?date+time+gmtoffset?

You will then need to delcare where you are sending the email from:

HELO domain.ext
This should give you:
250 mail.domain.ext Hello local.domain.name [loc.al.i.p], pleased to meet you

Now give your email address:

MAIL FROM: mail@domain.ext
Should yeild:
250 2.1.0 mail@domain.ext… Sender ok

Now give the recipients address:

RCPT TO: mail@otherdomain.ext
250 2.1.0 mail@otherdomain.ext… Recipient ok

To start composing the message issue the command

DATA

If you want a subject for your email type Subject:type your subject here then press enter twice

You may now proceed to type the body of your message (e.g. hello mail@otherdomain.ext from mail@domain.ext)

To tell the mail server that you have completed the message enter a single "." on a line on it's own.
The mail server should reply with: 250 2.0.0 Message accepted for delivery

You can close the connection by issuing the QUIT command.

The mailserver should reply with something like

221 2.0.0 mail.domain.ext closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.

The above steps are some basic email knowledges and not doable anymore to most email providers for security leak, but it's also available to some providers who do not have very strong protection.

Beside the telnet commands, the typical method a spammer used is known as "script email" where local SMTP is enabled on hosting server, the spammer just use a simple email script or some third party applications to send a big amount of spam.

How to solve the problem? SPF is the solution. The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an open standard specifying a technical method to prevent sender address forgery. SPF protects the envelope sender address, which is used for the delivery of messages, it also allows the owner of a domain to specify their mail sending policy, e.g. which mail servers they use to send mail from their domain.

About how  spf record works, you can refer to this official site for further details.

Cloud Web Hosting Review

Cloud hosting is a form of cloud computing which means a server system is powered by lots of hardware units in one or even multiple networks. a web site with cloud hosting is actually hosted on multiple servers and share all resources among those servers. If there's single server failure, it will pick up contents from other servers and make sure the website is always up.

Cloud hosting has been top choice for heavy traffic sites with extremely high online requirement. The "pay by usage" feature makes cloud service worry free for low cost start. With those leading hosting provider, we can even stop the service temporarily in case we do not need to use for some time, but all data is kept there and accessible. In this article we'll discuss what's required to become a qualified cloud web hosting and the best cloud hosting provider.

Cloud Hosting Advantages

Uptime: Since the website is hosted on multiple hosting servers but not a single server, if there's single point failure, another server will take over the work and make sure the service is up. Because of this, there's no "server down" issue for a high quality cloud hosting service. Because of this, customer complaint is greatly reduced, the hosting management team will get more time to improve their services.

Price: Is cloud hosting really expensive? Not really, because the true cloud hosting is charged by usage not a monthly or yearly contract. You can always stop the service temporarily in case you don't need it and no extra cost will appear.

Scalability: In logical, the resources of cloud hosting is unlimited because it can be setup on multiple networks on multi points on the planet. you don't have to worry about usage because the system will automatically allocate more in case your usage grows up. Manual operation is excluded.

Best Cloud Web Hosting

Bluehost is awarded the best cloud web hosting provider with side by side support to your business. Either from hosting feature, server performance, price or customer support, bluehost provides unbeatable advantages comparing to any existing shared cloud service provider.

• Networking – Networking is one of the most important parts of cloud hosting. Bluehost network backbones and simply the best of the best in United States including Level3, ATT. In order to make sure max network availability, their people constructed 3 data centers with extremly optimization. Any connection problem will be alerted and sent to engineers for urgent fix.
• Security – Bluehost professionals constructed both hardware and software protection via top lorch procuction such as juniper,cisco,checkpoint etc. Their developers also programmed their own security products on server core level. Their ceo Matt Heaton is server core developer himself with great contribution to the industry. Their people joined multiple projects for leading security solutions.
• Pricing – Bluehost shared hosting price starts at $3.49/mo as promotional offer. Because the entire system is cloud based, customer accounts will be instantly setup upon order verification. For cloud vps/dedicated server plans, bluehost is offering 50% discount for initial term. Absolutely unbeatable offer.
• Support – A qualified cloud hosting provider always comes with outstanding customer support in the industry. The bluehost support team is knowledgeable for cloud computing with 24*7 instant support.

More about Bluehost Cloud Hosting Plan

Bluehost cloud plans is different from any existing service. Let's take a quick look of hosting features

• Unlimited space and bandwidth
• Host Unlimited domains
• 99.99% uptime guarantee
• Free domain name registration
• Free sitebuilder wizard
• Cloud cpanel with scripts installer
• Green hosting server & data centers

Besides leading server/network structures, bluehost also provides advanced management system. There're two panels for cloud hosting service – revised cpanel and cloud panel. cPanel is deeply revised to simplify the common tasks with more friendly category layouts. What really matter is their cloud panel, users be able to view/manage server resources and usage via GUI indicator. The most important feature is you can access this panel via any mobile device for anywhere access! Even your server is cracked down, you still get another tunnel for data access and make sure there's no data loss.

View bluehost cloud hosting plans at www.Bluehost.com