Dedicated Web Hosting FAQ

What is dedicated hosting?
How should I decide which type of dedicated hosting for my business?

Shared or Dedicated? Which should you choose?

What is dedicated hosting?

Dedicated hosting is a form of Web hosting where the hosting provider dedicates a single machine for a customer’s website's.

Dedicated hosting divides into two categories: managed dedicated and unmanaged dedicated. Managed hosting is a dedicated server that is accompanied by a full suite of technical support, maintenance and monitoring services. This differs from unmanaged dedicated web hosting, where customers are provided with their own servers but are still responsible for virtually all administrative and maintenance duties.

How should I decide which type of dedicated hosting for my business?

To understand the two types of dedicated hosting, please refer to the first question for details.

If you're unsure about the server configuration, we recommend you to choose a managed server. Going with the managed server is more expensive but is much more reassuring for the inexperienced administrator. Remember, you can always downgrade your account to an unmanaged service later once you've acquired some expertise in server administration. Though once you opt for the personal attention you will receive through a managed host, you might think twice of turning into an unmanaged service later on.

CI host is managed dedicated hosting by default and all other hosts on our list are unmanaged type

Windows Web Hosting FAQ

What is Windows Hosting?
What is ASP?
What is ASP.NET?
Shared or Windows? Which should you choose?

What is Windows Hosting?
Windows Hosting is hosting account that uses windows as their server platform that allows for software such as MS FrontPage, ColdFusion and MSSQL. Windows Hosting is a popular choice among programmers requiring ASP and MS SQL for their work

What is ASP?
Active Server Pages, introduced by Microsoft in the mid-1990s, is a scripting language designed to be embedded within the HTML code for Web pages. This is the standard programming system for Internet applications hosted on Windows servers. With ASP, you can combine HTML pages, script commands, and COM components to create interactive Web pages or powerful Web-based applications, which are easy to develop and modify.

What is ASP.NET?
ASP.net(sometimes referred to as ASP+) is the next generation of Microsoft's Active Server Page technology(ASP). ASP.net is different from its predecessor in two major ways: it supports code written in compiled languages like C++, Visual Basic, and Perl. Also, it is able to separate the code from the content, allowing WYSIWYG editing of pages.

Although ASP.NET is not backwards compatible with ASP, it is able to run side by side with ASP applications.

Shared or Windows? Which should you choose?
There's no definite answer to this question. It's what you need to do with your site that lead you to the type of hosting. If you want the tightest security then Unix is probably for you. If you’re looking for compatibility with all of Microsoft's products, then Windows is the best for you. If you opt to use PHP to power your web site, then you’ll want to go with Unix hosting. Between Windows and Unix server, there is no difference in terms of ease of use and speed.

Unix Web Hosting FAQ

What is Unix Hosting?
What is Shared/Virtual Hosting?
What is PHP?
What is Perl?
What is MYSQL?
How can I edit a mySQL database table without creating an application?

What is Unix Hosting?
A. Unix is an operating system developed by Bell Labs in the 1970's. It is a popular operating system that is used by many companies all over the world. Most web hosting providers use a unix based OS called FreeBSD on their shared hosting servers.

Your personal computer's operating system does not affect your ability to use a Unix server for hosting. Having a Windows system at home does not mean you must have a Windows Hosting account. A unix account will work just as well.

What is Shared/Virtual Hosting?
A. Shared Hosting refers to a hosting package where two or more customers share the same server (computer). This is the least expensive way to get a real web site.

What is PHP?
A. PHP is a server-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language.

PHP is a tool that lets you create dynamic Web pages. The web pages with PHP enabled are treated much like regular html pages.

In an HTML document, PHP script (similar syntax to that of Perl or C) is enclosed within special PHP tags. As PHP is embedded within tags, it does not have to rely on heavy amounts of code to output HTML. Also, PHP code cannot be viewed by the client as the script is executed on the server.

PHP can perform any task any CGI program can, but its strength lies in its ease of use. PHP can talk across networks using IMAP, SNMP, NNTP, POP3, or HTTP.

What is Perl?
A. Perl is a programming language that was created to primarily process text. It is widely used as a rapid prototyping language that makes it possible for different systems to work well together.

It is also the most popular language used for the Custom Gateway Interface. With this support, you are able to use various Perl scripts that will allow you to open your store, chat room, newsgroup, classifieds, etc. There are countless numbers of pre-made scripts that can be found on the Internet.

Perl's roots are in UNIX. Because Perl is an interpreted language, Perl programs are highly portable across systems.

What is MYSQL?
A. MySQL is a powerful and most popular database program that runs on the Linux operation system. It is able to handle million of entries all at once.

Its flexibility and speed allow you to also store logs and pictures. MySQL is designed to scale well under heavy traffic conditions and is ideal for database-intensive or e-commerce-enabled Web sites.

You can use MySQL with PHP and/or Perl. MySQL and PHP have become the dynamic duo of Open Source, data-driven Website creation.

How can I edit a mySQL database table without creating an application?
A. Cpanel allows you to use phpMyAdmin to edit mySQL tables through the use of SQL query language.