Notes 5 for E-Commerce

Watch & Read:

Don't be penny wise and pound foolish when selecting a hosting service. Hosting Horror stories.

Check the claims of hosting services uptime using Netcraft Webserver Survey.

C|Net Central's informative article on Web Hosting.

Review the following:

Your Web Hosting Service Can Make the Difference Between Success and Failure!

Don't be Penny Wise and Pound foolish (Check all your costs before getting a service)

Consider the following topics before selecting a hosting service or hosting your own Web server. C|Net is a great resource on Hosting

1. How will the Web Hosting service help promote (market) your site?

2. What type of technical support does the Hosting service offer?

3. Does the Web Hosting service host sites that may be objectionable to your customers?

Will associating with these pages cause your company any harm?

Will the traffic to the site tie up your site?

4. What are their disaster recovery provisions?

5. How fast do the Host's own pages download? (This gives you insight into the Hosting services bandwidth capability or you can use Cnet's Bandwidth meter)

What is the bandwidth capability of your prospective Web host?

You need to know how much data they currently transfer and their peak transfer times.

Consider the web host's plans for expanding its bandwidth capabilities.

The type of data line connections the service uses can determine the bandwidth capabilities of a web hosting service. Obviously, the faster the data line, the more the web host pays for the connection.

6. What server resources are available and do they cost extra?

Does the server offer data encryption for credit card transactions?

Does the server support the creation of server-generated files created by CGI (Common Gateway Interface) scripts or database created ASP (Automatic Server Pages)?

Terms you need to Lookup:

Bandwidth, ASP, PHP, and Gateway

Homework:

You should Read Chapters 6 in the Everything Book.

You should review 3 host services and recommend one (tell me why)!
A good format is to put the info in a table! (Same Idea for a merchant service evaluation)

Web Host	Price (setup / month)	Storage	Marketing Services	Technical Support	Objectionable Content Allowed?	Disaster Recovery	Host’s pages loading speed	Bandwidth	Server Resources
Host 1 Name	Price	info	info	info	Yes / No	info	info	info	info
Host 2 Name	Price	info	info	info	Yes / No	info	info	info	info
Host 3 Name	Price	info	info	info	Yes / No	info	info	info	info

Final Step:

Review in your mind everything we covered in class and remember to cover it again before you go to bed so your mind to process this information while you sleep.