The Top 15 Essential Ingredients of Every WINDOWS HOSTING Plan (Package), Web Hosting : iPedia

Microsoft Windows is a family of operating systems by Microsoft for use on personal computers, although versions of Windows designed for servers, embedded devices, and other platforms also exist. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing trend of graphical user interfaces popularized by the Apple Macintosh. Microsoft Windows eventually came to dominate the world's personal computer market with market analysts such as IDC estimating that Windows has around 90% of the client operating system market.
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Linux (also known as GNU/Linux) is a Unix-like computer operating system. It is one of the most prominent examples of open source development and free software; unlike proprietary operating systems such as Windows or Mac OS, all of its underlying source code is available to the public for anyone to freely use, modify, and redistribute.
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An Internet hosting service is a service that runs Internet servers, allowing organizations and individuals to serve content to the Internet. There are various levels of service and various kinds of services offered.
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A language is a method of communication. Human spoken and written languages can be described as a system of symbols (sometimes known as lexemes) and the grammars (rules) by which the symbols are manipulated. The word "language" is also used to refer to common properties of languages.

Language learning is normal in human childhood. Most human languages use patterns of sound or gesture for symbols which enable communication with others around them. There are thousands of human languages, and these seem to share certain properties, even though many shared properties have exceptions.
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PHP is an open-source, reflective programming language. Originally designed as a high-level tool for producing dynamic web content, PHP is used mainly in server-side applications.
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MySQL is a multithreaded, multi-user, SQL Database Management System (DBMS) with more than six million installations.[1] MySQL AB makes MySQL available as free software under the GNU General Public License (GPL), but they also dual-license it under traditional proprietary licensing arrangements for cases where the intended use is incompatible with the GPL.
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The Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with 2005 global annual sales of US$39.79 billion and 63,564 employees in 102 countries and regions. It develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices.[4][2] Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, its most popular products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software, each of which has achieved near-ubiquity in the desktop computer market. Microsoft possesses footholds in other m
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Active Server Pages (ASP) are Microsoft's server-side technology for dynamically-generated web pages that is marketed as an add-on to Internet Information Services (IIS).

Programming ASP websites is made easier by various built-in objects. Each object corresponds to a group of frequently-used functionality useful for creating dynamic web pages. In ASP 2.0 there are six such built-in objects: Application, ASPError, Request, Response, Server and Session. Session, for example, is a cookie-based session object that maintains variables from page to page. Application
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In computing, HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language designed for the creation of web pages with hypertext and other information to be displayed in a web browser. HTML is used to structure information — denoting certain text as headings, paragraphs, lists and so on — and can be used to describe, to some degree, the appearance and semantics of a document. HTML's grammar structure is the HTML DTD that was created using SGML syntax.
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The Internet (also known simply as the Net) can be briefly understood as "a network of networks". Specifically, it is the worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and governmental networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.
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WYSIWYG (pronounced /wɪziwɪg/, transcripted whizzie wig[citation needed]), is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, used in computing to describe a system in which content during editing appears very similar to the final product. It is commonly used for word processors, but has other applications, such as Web (HTML) authoring.
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A Compact Disc (or CD) is an optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio. The CD, introduced in 1982, is the standard playback format for commercial audio recordings as of mid-2006. An audio compact disc consists of one or more stereo tracks stored using 16-bit PCM coding at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. Standard compact discs have a diameter of 120 mm or 80 mm. The 120 mm discs can hold approximately 80 minutes of audio. The 80 mm discs, sometimes used for CD singles, hold approximately 20 minutes of audio. Compact disc technology was later adapted f
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Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was originally designed to be a powerful high level language based processor independent multiprocessing multiuser operating system with features comparable to UNIX to complement workstation versions of Windows that were based on MS-DOS until 2001. It was the first 32-bit version of Windows. Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 are the latest versions of Windows NT.
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4. DATABASES - Microsoft Access 2000 Database is supported by all the windows hosting plans. This will do if you are a starter. For experienced campaigners, MS-Sql is a must have. This is an advanced feature and most of the hosting companies charge extra. The control for the Databases must be provided in the Control Panel. Check that.

5. DATABASE Connection - DSN or DSNless Connections, whatever the case may be, please check if the host has provided the option in the Control Panel to create/manage DSNs. (Data Source Name). If DSNs are NOT allowed, ask for the Connection String for DSNless connections.

6. ASP Components - Apart from the default components, there are loads of third party software. Check the list of such components that the host provides. ASP Upload, ASPImage, Dundas Mailer, ASPjpeg, ASPEncrypt are few popular components. At times you may require to have your own components (DLLs) installed. This is provided by most of the hosts, but after the DLL undergoes a complete test in the server environment. This does not come free.

7. PHP & Coldfusion - ColdFusion is a server-side scripting language web development tool. It uses HTML-like tags called CFML to enable back-end ODBC database connectivity as well as data manipulation and validation within webpages.. This is again an advanced option and NOT every hosting provider provide this. But PHP, Mysql is also bundled with windows hosting plans. Keep an eye on both of these.

8. Control Panel - This is the nucleus of your website. In a Control Panel, popularly known as CP, you can literally do anything. The moment you signup for a Hosting Pack, you must be provided with a CP to manage your webspace.

9. POP3 email Ids & Aliases - yourname@your domain.com is an example POP3 ID. You must be provided with ample of POP3 email ids and it depends on the Package size.

10. FTP Account - This is where you upload your files, delete them, update them. This again comes along with the CP.

11. Backup - Most of the Hosts take Automated Backups. But users do not take much care on this while choosing the Hosting Pack. This feature is as essential as anyother in this list.

12. Web Statistics - Analysis of your website visitors plays a key role in the success of your website. Say, your website has been launched and you get NIL Visits or More than 100 Visits per day. Whatever the case may be, you can view the Report using Statistics Application that run in the server backend.

13. Bandwidth - Choose the Hosting Plan that gives enough Bandwidth for your website. Even though you cannot judge at the beginning, as time progresses, you can easily deduct the Bandwidth required.

14. Webmail, SMTP & SPAM - Email becomes key part in your life once you launch the website. Check if the Hosts provide with WEBMAIL (mail.yourdomain.com) to check your mails thru a web based interface using Squirrelmail or Horde. Corporate Users prefer downloading mails thru Email Clients such as Eudora or Outlook Express. Only if SMTP or IMAP support is enabled you can use this option. Hence check if SMTP support is provided.No email user is free from a spam attack. Hence you need to have Spam Filters installed on the server where your website resides.

15. IP - If your website prefers SSL Support (https://) as time grows, makes ure you get a DEDICATED IP. Most of the websites are hosted on shared IPs. Ask your Hosting Provider about the extra charges involved in getting a dedicated IP and SSL Support. Note : For SSL (https://), you need to buy a Digital Certificate.

Teeyes Siva heads the Sales Operations @ aalpha NET (www.aalphanet.com), India's leading domain name registration, web hosting service provider. He can be reached @ siva@aalphanet.com or 00 91 452 3105858.

The Top 15 Essential Ingredients of Every WINDOWS HOSTING Plan (Package)

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