Articles about website hosting.

Website Hosting Offers More Than Hosting Web Pages.

A website hosting account is more than just a service to make your website available to the world. Sure, it holds your web pages and provides a direct connection to the Internet that is always on, but it does more for you than that.

Most hosting accounts allow you to have your own e-mail servers. Pop3 (Post Office protocol version 3) is the part that allows you to receive mail using your own domain name. You can usually set up more e-mail accounts than you will ever need.

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the part that some hosting accounts have and some don’t. You can have one without the other. IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) is an e-mail protocol where it is more usual to leave the e-mail on the e-mail server instead of downloading to your computer.

SMTP allows you to send e-mail using your own domain name. Since everyone is concerned with not spamming, to include this makes the Webhost worry that a customer might use their service to send spam. Of course, if a user did spam, the webhost would probably discontinue the account in short order.

An e-mail client is the part of the system that operates on the users computer and communicates with the e-mail server on your webserver. Microsoft Outlook Express is such a client and is available for free download if you don’t already have a copy. Version 6 is the latest edition.

There is a little setup involved to make the connection from your computer to the webserver but it will operate automatically after that. There will be step by step instructions to walk you through the process which takes only a few minutes. Here’s one that will setup Outlook Express 6 with one mouse click.

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Another powerful tool that many hosting accounts make available to you is the ability to actually run programs on the computer that is your webserver. These are usually referred to as CGI (Common Gateway Interface) and PHP (PHP Hypertext Preprocessor). Sometimes the webserver will have a collection of these programs already installed for you to use. But you can add your own. They can be a little finicky to get installed and working but you will find that they can be worth the effort.

Working with both CGI and PHP are MySQL databases which also reside on the webserver. They are most commonly used to hold information such as a membership list or a mailing list but you can customize a database to hold whatever information you may choose. They can be backed up to your computer for added peace of mind.

A common use is to include a form on a webpage or as a pop-up so that a visitor to your site could request information or have her name placed on your mailing list to receive information from you. Some applications can even generate the HTML code to copy/paste into your webpage in order to create the form and to tie it to the database all at once.

Don't forget that your Host's webserver is a very fast computer and that it is connected directly to the Internet backbone. You probably can get it to do somethings for you such as:

• Run a Smart Email Auto Responder.

• Host a Forum or Bulletin Board for your visitors to ask questions or exchange information.

• Hold Ebooks, Reports and similar infomation products which you can make available for download to your visitors.

Don’t forget to investigate the other free services that your webhost makes available to you with your website hosting account.

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