Round Tale

The web hosting industry appears to be incredibly complex to most novice webmasters, especially those that are not familiar with crucial web hosting terms. One of the most basic web hosting terms is “web server.” Web servers are the focal point of web hosting. In fact, web hosting is simply a service in which you remotely lease web servers for your web site’s use. If you have been struggling to figure out what a web server is and why it is needed then you may want to continue reading.

The Main Purpose of a Web Server

A web server’s main purpose is to store web site files and broadcast them over the internet for you site visitor’s to see. In essence, a web server is simply a powerful computer that stores and transmits data via the internet. When someone visits a web page on your site their browser communicates with your web server, sending and receiving information that ultimately dictates what appears on the visitor’s computer screen. Thus, the main purpose of a web server is to store and transfer web site data upon the request of a visitor’s browser.

How Do Web Servers Work?

Every web server and computer that is connected to the internet is assigned an IP address that identifies that device on the network. Even standard computers are assigned IP addresses when they connect to the internet. An IP address is almost like the return address on a postal package. When you visit a web site, a request is sent out from your IP address to the IP address of the web server. The web server then responds by sending data to the requesting IP address, and this is the process through which all data is transferred to your computer from a web site. More than ninety percent of the web sites on the internet are currently utilizing a leased web server that is being provided by a web hosting company. Web server capabilities differ depending upon the type, size and provider of the hosting plan.

Why Are Web Servers Needed?

Without web servers the internet as we know it would cease to exist. Web servers are an integral part of the way the internet works. The web hosting industry is simply used to lease out web servers, providing average business owners and individuals with the opportunity to use high-tech servers that make it possible to expand their outreach to the entire world. Without rental web servers the internet would be a fraction of the size it is today, as most web site owners can afford to buy their own web server in cash.

Web servers are the gateway between the average individual and the world wide web, yet surprisingly web hosting plans start at only a couple of dollars per month. Now that you’re familiar with web servers you can begin shopping for a quality web hosting plan without the usual confusion that most novices experience.

Your website is the focal point of your online business, as it represents your online identity and reputation on a continual basis. The performance, appearance and presence of your site directly affect the way your visitors perceive the professionalism of your online business. Every site operates on a web server, and this server ultimately dictates the full functionality and performance limitations of every web page on the site. Every time a page is loaded a small burden is placed on the web server, and if the load is too heavy the site performance begins to suffer, in the form of slow page loads, and even site down time. The likelihood of this decreased site performance occurring depends entirely upon the kind of web server being used, as some are more powerful than others. Shared web servers are perhaps  the least beneficial, simply because all of the server resources are shared amongst various sites simultaneously.

How Much Is Shared?

Fortunately, sensitive site information  (such as financial data) is not shared between unrelated sites in a shared hosting plan. However all of the server resources, such as bandwidth, data transfer, and even storage space are shared with other users that are renting a hosting plan with your web host. Your site’s IP address is also shared with these users as well, which means that their actions may reflect on both the legal credibility and search engine ranking of your site.  Since you are sharing all of these attributes with sites that are not under your control, it is possible that unforeseen circumstances could arise, such as being de-indexed from search engines, or even having your site taken offline temporarily.

How Much Can You Save?

The main reason why anyone would purchase a shared hosting plan would be to save money. However, when you factor in the issues that could result from sharing all of your server resources with dozens of other sites, it becomes clear that you may not be saving anything at all. In fact, the percentage of people that will eventually upgrade from a shared hosting plan is rather high. Therefore if you’re inevitably going to upgrade in the future, then there may be little sense in paying for a plan which will soon be obsolete. The truth is you can save a lot of time and money by starting with a plan that is right for you.

When Would Shared Hosting Be Optimal?

If you are operating a personal blog, or a .info domain that is not of high importance to you, then a shared hosting plan could accommodate your needs. Shared hosting is only recommended for individuals, and is not an ideal solution for the online business owner. If you are currently using a shared hosting account for your online business, you may want to consider switching to a VPS or Dedicated hosting account instead. Dedicated and VPS hosting plans offer flexibility, privacy and capabilities that cannot be found in any shared hosting service.

Previously known as cmPublish, the Clickability Platform is a CMS with a different approach on content management.  Developed by CMS provider Clickability, this platform is delivered on an on-demand basis, as well as full service with the company’s “Innovation as a Service” solution.  Aside from content management, the Clickability Platform also offers analytics, email campaign, web 2.0 and advertising among other functionality.  While there is obviously far more to the Clickability Platform than content management, this is indeed the focal point of the package.

Core Technologies

Though a licensed commercial product, Clickability Platform is based on powerful open-source technologies such as PHP, MySQL and Java.  It utilizes Apache as its web server and Velocity for the templating system.  Even though you have to pay for a license, the leveraging of various popular open-source tools makes Clickability Platform a cost effective CMS product.

Clickability Content

The main content entity in the Clickability environment is the item.  Authors have the ability to create content items by selecting various types of content from the navigation pane.  This CMS gives you a number of different content items out of the box, including jobs, blogs, press releases, case studies and FAQs.  Furthermore, custom content types can be created as well.   The templating system is a major part of the process as it allows you to actually get the content on your web pages.  These templates can be tailored to display numerous types of content in different sections of a single page.  While this feature caters to beginners, Clickability Platform also has something for developers with advanced creation environments and other customizing assets such as stylesheets.

Additional Features

Clickability Platform certainly isn’t short on features.  The package bundles streamlined content management capabilities alongside a host of SEO tools, Web 2.0, capabilities and the following list of features:

Newsletters – Publishers can create a newsletter of content and automatically distribute it to subscribers.  They can also manage mailing lists and have the ability to provide subscribers with double opt-in capabilities.

Advertising - Adverting functionality is tightly integrated into the Clickability Platform.  This allows administrators to create and maintain campaigns as well as all the details that go along with them.  Because ads are considered content pieces, they have targets that provide administrators with a way to track and keep up with the history of their performance.

cmSideKick – Clickability Platform allows you to run your website in the browser and the intuitive cmSideKick in a second frame.  cmSideKick is a utility that enables you to perform deep analyzation of statistics, allowing you to view your site in the administrator mode or selective views to modify certain areas.  This is one tool that you are likely to put to great use in the Clickability environment.

Conclusion

Clickability has come a long way since its days as cmPublish.  However, it has managed to maintain all the basics of content management and received some nice upgrades to compliment the emerging technologies and web trends.  Clickability Platform is definitely a enterprise CMS solution and can help to satisfy the needs of businesses of all sizes.