How to Choose a Web Server Platform?

Web ServersEvery website needs a reliable web server to be hosted on, so that it can be accessed via internet users. Today, in web hosting market there are many types of web servers available running on different platform to select.  types are There is a wide range of web servers running on different platform to choose from within the web hosting market today. As per the Netcraft, a company that keeps statistics on the leading web servers and the platforms on the Internet, the most popular platforms and web servers are:

  • UNIX and Linux running Apache web server
  • Window NT/2000 running Internet Information Server (IIS)

The other web server includes WebLogic, iPlanet, Sun ONE, Zeus and etc… Given the widespread popularity of Apache (closed to 60% market share) and Microsoft IIS (approximately 30%), you can almost guarantee you can find these two platforms are supported by most of the web hosting providers.

Operating systems are an importance piece of software that is required by each computer to be installed before it can function properly. Today, most of the personal computers are running on Microsoft Windows operating system: Win98, WinXP or Win2000.

Likewise, all web servers need operating system to perform different functionalities and different web servers run on different operating systems (or so called platforms). One of the most commonly found platform is UNIX that comes in various varieties that are popular with web hosts, including FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux. Another popular platform that has gained strong ground as a platform for web hosting market is Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003.

How do you choose your web server platform?

If your website is purely make up of static web pages (i.e. HTML files), then any web hosting platform will work fine for you. However, if your website allows dynamic content, you will most likely need to run specific server-side functionality such as CGI scripts, JSP, ASP, SSI or PHP. In this case, UNIX platform web hosting will be ideal for your requirement.

On the other hand, if you need to use specific applications that require Windows to run such as ASP, .Net, MS Access, Microsoft SQL server or Cold Fusion, then you will need to find a web hosting providers that support Microsoft’s Windows NT platform. Otherwise, all other server-side functionalities such as PHP, Perl and MySQL can be supported by UNIX platform.

While common programs such as Perl, PHP, Flash etc run on both UNIX and Window platform. Many other free open source software programs are available only for UNIX than for Windows. As a result, UNIX hosting is less expensive than Window hosting. So, if hosting cost is a big concern to you, then you should consider UNIX or Linux hosting.

If you have already decided on the type of design on your web pages, make sure you can find a web hosting plan that support your needs by reading the full features of the web hosting plan before you sign-up.

Posted under Webhosting

Difference between SEO and Regular Website Design

In today’s business world around 60% of success depends upon the company’s appearance. The biggest mistake overlooked by the beginners is when they build their business and tries to put an artistic look over the functions of the website design. However, one should make sure that it is very much important to make your site nice and lovely that will look pleasing to the visitor eyes. In short a simple and attractive website which will influence the search engines and easily get indexed by them.

There are three fundamental steps that must be followed while designing a pleasing website.

  • Titles, Keywords, Descriptions
  • Clean Design
  • Page Names

The first words a search engine spider fetches from your website are Meta Tags – Titles, Keywords and Descriptions which are located in an html page. These tags play a very significant role in getting your website indexed by search engines. If these Meta tags are done correctly, the search engine spiders will get a clear picture of your website and may get indexed quickly. But still many site owners don’t know the importance of these tags and put unnecessary and ineffective information that can’t help you for better search results.

A typical web page design contains a title that either shows the name of the page a visitor is on or the name of the company itself. Unless your business is nationally or globally known, for example Ford, there is a good chance you won’t be seen by Web users searching for your services. A good SEO plan will include a title that fits your site’s target keywords and keyword phrases.

Keyword Meta tags are useful to reinforce the keywords and phrases you want to have indexed from your site. This will aid to a boost in your search engine rankings as well. Be sure that words used in the keyword tag are also found throughout the content, otherwise the words in the keyword tag will be useless.

The Meta description tag allows you to influence the description of your website that spiders will place into the search engines. Typically, a wise strategy is to either include the first couple of lines in your content or a brief summary about the page itself with a few keywords. A good description also doesn’t need to be a whole paragraph of information. Usually one sentence of 7-15 words is all that is needed.

As mentioned earlier, a common pitfall with many designers is the strong focus on looks without clean functional code that search engine spiders can easily read. What would be the point of creating superbly optimized content if it is hidden and broken up with lines on top of lines of coding? Thankfully, there are methods of Web design that don’t include “messy” code for the spiders to read. However two commonly used methods (Flash and JavaScript), although they contain less lines of code, mean absolutely nothing to a search engine.

Flash is an animation program that has increasingly been utilized in Web design. If done properly, a Flash design can be a visual masterpiece of the Internet. However, when a website is built entirely with Flash the html says absolutely nothing of the site itself. The figure below shows how the code is only written to load in the movie. There is no content or links that spiders would use to index the site. So now the owner has a great looking site and no one to visit.

Usually, a web page design, pages are named to match what the menu button or text link says. For example, a page button labeled as “Services” will likely go to a page named http://www.example.com/services.html. When utilizing a professional SEO strategy, basic page names will not help index your site into the search engines. It would be better if you use the keywords in the page name you want to target.

For example, if you are a web hosting service provider located in UK you don’t want to simply name services page as services.html, a better choice would be web-hosting-service-provider-UK.html. This will fit better with target keywords and will likely be included in the content as well.

Posted under Search Engine Optimization