Project Presentation~~

venue: Computer Lab 1, CTL

date: 29 march 2010

time: 3.00 pm

finally!...its time to reveal our project....hehe Alhamdullilah everything went smoothly....as the web designer (me) & web programmer (aimi), we take the responsibility to present our project....fortunately kak puteri arrived on time to bring the evaluation form...huhu 

to view some photos during the presentation, kindly go to shufianah's blog....(>_^)v

congrats! to all groups for their marvelous projects...everybody had done their god job! 

special thanks to Dr. J for his guidance and support through all the process during accomplishing this project....

Key Selection Criteria For Choosing a Web Hosting Provider

Here below, a list of key selection criteria to help you choose the ideal web hosting provider. These are all critical features that identify what you should request and expect from your hosting provider to save stress and time.

1. Customer service: Check if your hosting provider has a customer service that is competent and ready to help if you have a problem. Send your requests and see how quick the customer service replies. If your hosting provider claims to have 24/7 support, test it by sending an e-mail during the weekend. You may also want to be sure that you receive help by friendly people, who are not there just because you are a paying customer.
2. Online reputation: Sign up with a web hosting provider that has reputable credentials that can be trusted. Reputation can be measured just by looking at these simple things: reviews the hosting provider receives from customers, comments inside the forum of the provider web site and whether the hosting provider has been short in business.
3. Money back guarantee: Pay attention to the refund policy of your web hosting provider. Does your provider give your money back if you are not satisfied with it? Do you get a full refund or just a part of your money? Make sure you read your contract very carefully.
4. Guaranteed uptime: Look for a minimum uptime of 99.5%. 99% is too low for a web hosting provider that claims to be reliable, because a 0.5% of downtime translates into several hours when your site is down and unreachable. Notwithstanding this, keep in mind that you will need clear and documented proofs to show your hosting provider it has not matched its promise.
5. Monthly, not forced yearly pre-payments: Choose a monthly solution to pay your bills to the hosting provider. When you are still testing different options and companies, you might opt to go monthly and not to pay in advance for a year-long contract. By paying monthly, you can switch to another hosting provider whenever you want, without feeling forced to stay with a company for a fixed time. You might consider to pay in advance for a yearly plan only after you have long tested your hosting provider.
6. Quality of user control panel: To manage your web hosting files you need a control panel, which is a personal web page that you use to upload files, scripts and perform other operations on your site. Having a user interface that is clear and understandable for anyone, and not just for geeks, is very important to avoid stress and mistakes. Request a demo or a screenshot of the control panel and judge for yourself if it is the right solution for your competences.
7. Monthly bandwidth: Check whether the hosting provider gives you sufficient monthly bandwidth to ensure efficient data transfer. The bandwidth is the amount of data that goes in and out of your server when your viewers watch a video, read content, make a purchase or do anything else on your site. Make sure that the amount of bandwidth supported by your hosting plan matches your needs.
8. Disk space: Be aware of the amount of disk space you get from your web hosting provider. Even though providers tend to give you way more space than your web site needs, you should be concerned if you publish lots of videos, offer large files for download or manage content that requires several disk space to be hosted.
9. Log file analysis tool: Check with your hosting provider which software is used to analyze log files and generate statistic reports. The standard in the industry is Webalizer, but your hosting provider may go for a different solution. Also check if you are able to export log files to your computer and use your own tool to manage statistic reports.
10. E-mail management and support: Look at the e-mail management solution your hosting provider gives you. All providers support e-mail management, but not everyone has advanced features like auto-responders, mail forwarding, virus protection or junk mail filters. Check also the number of separate mailboxes you are allowed to create inside your domain.
11. Number of separate FTP accesses: Having different FTP accesses allows you and your collaborators to manage your web site independently. The site owner can thus allow other people to work on her site without giving away her personal credentials.
12. Publishing platform integration: Verify if your hosting provider supports a pre-installed publishing platform like WordPress or Movable Type. You may save the time and stress of setting up a publishing platform on your own and also receive support from the same customer service of your hosting provider.
13. Backups: Having persistent, automatic backups of your data is highly recommended. If something goes wrong, you can always recover your data and start again without losing hours or even years of work. Be sure to check with your hosting provider which data is backed up (files, databases, server settings, etc.), how often (daily, weekly, monthly) and where backups are stored (off-server or off-site).
14. PHP, Perl, MySQL support: Make sure your web hosting provider supports fully and explicitly PHP, Perl and MySQL databases. You will need all of these elements to run a professional web site which needs advanced customization and scripting.

source from: http://www.masternewmedia.org/the-web-hosting-providers-guide-how-to-choose-the-ideal-hosting-solution/

How to Choose the Best Web Hosting Service

One of the most crucial decisions that most online businesses have to make is choosing the best web hosting service. With a popular or well known and reliable Internet Service Provider (ISP) you won't face many problems, however with a poor web hosting service provider it can be a nightmare.

Choosing the right kind of web hosting service can be a very daunting task at times as there are some very important features that you need to make sure of. Here you can find below what exactly to look for when choosing the best web hosting service.

Amount of web space: A web hosting service provider would usually assign you a certain amount of space on their server. You need to ensure that does it have the right amount of space for your website and your business requirements. You might want to expand your online business tomorrow and would require much more space. So it's imperative for you that the web hosting company should be able to provide you with ample of space especially if your website is rich in graphics or has video clips.

FTP access: FTP access is very crucial since it provides the ability to upload new pages. Some web hosting service providers allow you to just design your web pages with their own personal web builder. This may be useful for beginners however you need to ensure if they provide you the facility to expand later when you enhance your online business capabilities.

Degree of reliability, security and speed of access: Speed, security and reliability are extremely important for the success of any online business. While choosing a reliable web hosting service you need to ensure that this is taken care of. A site that is not available, not updated on time or is down, will lose many online visitors. If an online visitor finds your site listed on a search engine, and he tries to access it but finds it down, he is sure to move on to the next link and you lose an important customer or visitor. Even slow working websites are very frustrating. So how do you know if a hosting company is reliable or not? By word of mouth or feedback from others! If that's not possible then you can yourself try accessing your site during peak hours and non-peak hours too. Your site has to be secure of intruders at the same time, especially if it's an ecommerce website.

Dependence and support: Does the web hosting service provide 24x7 supports? Do they respond rapidly to your issue? Can you depend on them? If you need 24-hour technical support that larger companies need then expect to pay substantially more. In fact, people are much more expensive than machines.

Pricing plans : Price is also one factor that you should look out for when choosing the best web hosting service. It's not necessarily true that the most expensive hosts are the best. Simply compare prices and services before you finalize one.

Data transfer (Bandwidth): You also need to see if the hosting company provides you with sufficient bandwidth for efficient data transfer. After all it's your website and you need to ensure that you are getting the best services for the money you invest.

source from: http://webhostinggeeks.com/articles/How_to_Choose_the_Best_Web_Hosting_Service.html

How To Choose Free Web Hosting

Nowadays a great number of various web hosting companies offer you to subscribe to their services each having different features. Your task is to decide what type of service you need for your work and what kind of hosting fits your requirements best. The main choice lies between free and paid web hosting services and implies certain aspects you need to take into account for this choice to be right. In case you are interested in free host let us consider the key aspects you should be aware of before making your choice.

1. Advertisements.
If you are using free web host you need to accept that your website will include constantly popping up advertising windows and banners regardless of your wish. These adverts is the way free web hosting companies cover their expenses on providing you with free services, so you have nothing to do with it. Of course this annoys you and your website visitors much but be careful with free hosts that don’t maintain adverts - sooner or later they will just go bankrupt.

2. Amount of web space
Each company offers different amount of web space you are allowed to use for storing your data on the server. So before starting cooperation with one of the free web hosting providers find out how much space you are granted with and if there is any possibility to expand it. Don’t forget that the quantity of web space your website will take depends on the files you want to store there (images, videos, audio files etc).

3. File restrictions
Free web hosts have some limitations concerning types and sizes of files you can attach to your website. For example, you are not always allowed to store some programs within your website. So if it is crucial for you, better check at once what exact types of files you can upload to the server in order to avoid further misunderstandings and obstacles.

4. Traffic restrictions
As a rule free hosting providers claim about limitations concerning traffic your website may use. The amount of used traffic depends both on the number of visitors who come to your website and your web page design. When the amount of used traffic comes to the limit your web presence is disabled by the provider of hosting services you use.

5. FTP Access
The FTP access option allows you to upload files to the server with the help of e-mail or web browser. So if you don’t find the necessary tools in the page builder of your hosting provider, FTP will appear important for you.

6. Company reputation
While choosing between free web hosting providers have a time to pay attention to their reputation as it may influence your decision at once. In order to find out whether the company is reliable or not you may read users’ feedbacks, although mind that such method is not entirely trustworthy. After all, you can always try the service yourself as it is free and won’t take you much time to see whether the thing is worth the effort.

7.Scripts Supported
If you're thinking of starting a basic HTML content site, this may not mean so much to you, but if you're interested in starting a site that require a script such as PHP, ASP, make sure to check out all scripting options available.

8.Uptime Guarantee
You'll offen see 99% or 98% uptime guranteed for your websites. Don't be fooled into thinking that 98% or something even lower is good enough. 1% makes the world of a difference in terms of hours lost for connection and don't forget. If a visitor loses a connection to your website, you may lose the vistor forever.

So these are the key points you should take into account while choosing free web hosting service in order for your choice to be the most successful.

week 15~

today is the last class for this subject...yahoo!....BUT....don't be happy yet...we still don't present our project....hehe suppose this week we present the project...but since last week we have no class...so the presentation will be postponed...tq Dr. J!...after having some discussion...everybody agree to set the date for presentation on Monday, 29/3/2010 which is next week....it's ok because our progress is already 90%....only 10% left to complete the website & a little bit touch here and there....huhuhu 

back to the syllabus...today we learn how to publish our web....we can choose whether using free web hosting or commercial web hosting...for sure commercial web hosting offers you more benefit but you have to pay for it depend on the plan offer by the web hosting provider....

we have to consider certain characteristics before we choose the web hosting no matter whether free web hosting or commercial web hosting....so we asked Mr. Google what is the criteria the we should consider before choosing the web hosting....and i'll tell u in the next entry...hehehe

example free web hosting providers are Host-ed, geocities, tripod, AwardSpace, HostHelpers and many more....and the example of commercial web hosting providers are InMotion, JustHost, GoDaddy and so on....

week 14~

date: 14/03/2010 

time: 8:27 PM

Please be informed mpt1393 there will be no class tomorrow, 15 March> Jamal

no class today....and no presentation next week....got extra time to finish our web project...yeay!

Five criteria for evaluating Web pages

Evaluation of Web documents	How to interpret the basics
1. Accuracy of Web Documents Who wrote the page and can you contact him or her? What is the purpose of the document and why was it produced? Is this person qualified to write this document?	Accuracy Make sure author provides e-mail or a contact address/phone number. Know the distinction between author and Webmaster.
2. Authority of Web Documents Who published the document and is it separate from the "Webmaster?" Check the domain of the document, what institution publishes this document? Does the publisher list his or her qualifications?	Authority What credentials are listed for the authors)? Where is the document published? Check URL domain.
3. Objectivity of Web Documents What goals/objectives does this page meet? How detailed is the information? What opinions (if any) are expressed by the author?	Objectivity Determine if page is a mask for advertising; if so information might be biased. View any Web page as you would an infommercial on television. Ask yourself why was this written and for whom?
4. Currency of Web Documents When was it produced? When was it updated' How up-to-date are the links (if any)?	Currency How many dead links are on the page? Are the links current or updated regularly? Is the information on the page outdated?
5. Coverage of the Web Documents Are the links (if any) evaluated and do they complement the documents' theme? Is it all images or a balance of text and images? Is the information presented cited correctly?	Coverage If page requires special software to view the information, how much are you missing if you don't have the software? Is it free or is there a fee, to obtain the information? Is there an option for text only, or frames, or a suggested browser for better viewing?
Putting it all together Accuracy. If your page lists the author and institution that published the page and provides a way of contacting him/her and . . . Authority. If your page lists the author credentials and its domain is preferred (.edu, .gov, .org, or .net), and, . . Objectivity. If your page provides accurate information with limited advertising and it is objective in presenting the information, and . . . Currency. If your page is current and updated regularly (as stated on the page) and the links (if any) are also up-to-date, and . . . Coverage. If you can view the information properly--not limited to fees, browser technology, or software requirement, then . . .You may have a Web page that could be of value to your research!

source from: http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/webcrit.html