We have got together a list of ten basic things that one should know about their domain name:

• Domain Registrar Company Name – Your domain was bought from this company. This is the only place from where you can update or renew any domain information. If you don't know your domain registrar company name then visit Better Who Is http://www.betterwhois.com and enter your domain name. You'll receive a confirmation code and instantly given the name of your registrar.
• Domain Registrar Username and Password – You need to have the username and password of your domain to make any changes. Contact your domain registrar in case you don't know your login and account name.
• Domain Registrant – Generally, the business owner is termed as the registrant. But, the person with the registrar username and password has full control over the domain. He is considered as the legal owner of your domain. In most cases, companies find out that often their ex-employee, or the web hosting company they hired are the registrant of their domain name. To know about your domain registrant search at Better Who Is.
• Domain Registrant Contact Information – It is important that the contact information of the registrant given at registrar's website is current. At times, registrant change their email address or ISP and don't notify the registrar. In such a situation, you might lose your domain name since you'll never be notified that your domain name has expired.
• Domain Expiration Date – Every registrant must know when his/her domain name is set to expire. Since, there are some people who will get your expired domain name and resell it back to you for more.
• Domain Locked Status – By default at the registrar, every new domain name registrations are locked. Therefore, no changes can be made without notifying the registrar. After a couple of years, it is possible that your registrar may not have locked your domain name. Make sure to check this at the website of your registrant.
• Your Web host – You'll be shocked to know that many businesses are unaware of their web hosting company. It’s hard to believe, but many businesses faced with the loss of a key employee don’t even know who is hosting their website. If you want to know about your webhost, do the following steps:

1. To determine your “Name Server” settings visit Better Who Is.
2. Go to DNS Stuff and search under “DNS Lookup.” Enter your domain name without the first prefix.
3. You'll be given the name of the domain that owns your name servers.
4. Once you've the Name Server owner's domain name, visit their site to get their contact information.

• Your Domain FTP Username and Password – If you want to make any changes to site then you must know your domain FTP username and password. Make sure to change this information after any key employee leaves your company since, it is very crucial.
• Domain Control Panel Access – It helps in adding or removing any email address, mailing lists, FTP users, or subdomains to your current domain.
• Website Visitor Statistics – Only certain web host companies offer free comprehensive reporting on your website visitors. However, not many owners are aware of this fact. Therefore, make sure to get in touch with your webhost, to get your site statistics.

Some Important Definitions:

• Domain name – This is your site's url or “address” on the web.
• Registrant – The legal owner of a domain name. At times, the business owner or company using the domain name are not the legal owners.
• Registrar – An online service to register your domain names.

Know more about our domain registration services, click here.

To own a website, you need to hire the services of a skilled and competent web hosting company! The fact is, a company of this sort offers unlimited services to match the needs of its clients. One of those services is shared web hosting, wherein a lot of websites are placed on one component of server which is further connected to the Internet. Now each and every website has its own place in the server that disjoints it from the other websites.

Shared web hosting is one of the cheapest, yet effective methods of hosting web, as it allows a lot of people to share the expense in a collective manner.

How does the whole process work? In case of shared web hosting service, web control panel plays a very effective role as it is used in almost all the processes. It can be from C-panel, Plesk, H-sphere or any other control panel system.

You will find numerous web hosting providers all over the world. They handle the entire installation process, security, service and each and every technical details of a website with brilliance. A lot of their servers have Linux operating system called as LAMP.

Types Of Shared Web Hosting: A Shared web hosting service is carried in two major ways. Both are crafted, keeping the individual preferences of each customer in mind.

• The first type is called Name based shared hosting, that deals with various host names on individual machine. That means that you don't have to invest much, as compared to other web hosting services. It also has own IP address. When you will opt for this option and then surf the Internet, then the web browser will ask for resource from the server via http/. It admits the required resource in the form of a request and server is responsible for taking this information and showing the requested website.
• The second type that is called IP based shared web hosting, is slightly different from the former one as it involves a distinct IP address for each host! The server houses a lot of virtual interfaces on one particular physical interface. But how does it work? The software that is already present in the server takes the IP address that is sent by the client and locates the required website that can be shown further. It is not only a cost effective method but also employs its own SSL certificate as well. There is one more aspect to shared web hosting company. It is known as cooperative hosting where shared web hosting is done in a private manner by sharing the cost of running a server in a collocation centre.

This is all about a shared web hosting service. But in order to avail it, you need to charter the services of a sound and plausible web hosting company to expand your business at a national or global level.

Planning to boost your business at a national or global level? Consider owning a website. But what's the use of doing so? A website (when designed in a professional way holds the power to gather audience from all over the world and can even boost your sales). We all know that Internet serves as our own personal window to the outer world. So definitely it holds the dynamism to boost our business by giving a kick start to our professional lives as well.

If you are a businessman, or just a normal being who owns an organization, then it is very important for you to have your own personal space and make your presence felt on the Internet.

How can you do so? By owning a website! There are several steps involved in website making.

• First and foremost, a website should be designed in a professional manner with relevant content and apt information on its web pages.
• After making sure that the above task is finished, it becomes extremely vital to get your website hosted from a good and reliable web hosting company.
• Now there are two main factors that are linked with a good Web hosting company.
  • First is the requirement of an attractive and innovative designing in order to gain attention of readers.
  • Second is hosting with big web space and bandwidth, so that the websites gets a lot of viewers and also helps to put up as much information as required.
• So make sure that your preferred company should have both the features. This is to avoid unnecessary wastage of time and confusion that would have come to your way while hiring two different companies for the same.
• Now if you will surf the Internet, you will probably get thousands of web hosting companies on the result pages. But which one to choose from! However, you as a user must judge their potential before hiring a particular company. Ask them about their success ratio and previous clients directly!
• You can also choose a web hosting company by taking references from your fellow colleagues and folks. Ask them if they know any company that offers expertise and experience in providing the best designing and hosting solution, and that too at affordable rates.
• Get a rough estimate of the budget. Also, ask whether there are any hidden cost procedures involved or not. If yes, then ask in advance. A credible Web hosting company never hides any cost and states all the regulations in the beginning itself.

So keep all these points in mind and choose the best company that can host your business for the world wide audience.

Internet has become an integral part of our day to day life. When we want a live cricket update, we switch over to Internet, and if it's a matter of knowing stock exchange rates, Internet is our primary option… So no matter what our query is, we tend to take the assistance from Internet!

But have you ever thought of having a claim over Internet (may be, on a small portion of it?) No! Then own a website and know how it feels to have an online presence at a global level. 'Web Hosting is your answer'! Read on to have a better insight on 'web hosting' and 'web development.'

Here are a few essential terms that are related to the business:

WWW

World Wide Web or the www, that is written before every domain name (will discuss 'Domain name' later on) is the web of computers connected through an HTTP protocol. What does that mean? It means that with the help of it, you will be connected to millions of computers all over the world through this single protocol. You can target the whole world!

HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a communications protocol. In other words it is a language through which the documents are transferred. And what is a web page? It is what you see on your Internet browser. These web pages are initially generated from a particular host and that's what takes us to the world of Web Hosting in general.

What exactly is Web Hosting?

When we browse a website, we come across various web pages that are our ultimate source of information. They are generated from a web browser and are stored in computers called web servers.

So, if a person wants to own a website (to boost their online business or spread it at a global level), then it is advised to hire the services of a credible web hosting company that allows you to hold a stake of the Internet so that you can own your website. It's that simple. You will also get a domain registration service (e.g. www.domain.com) from the web hosting company, to make your website official andcopyrighted!

So Go For It…

The idea of having an Internet presence to boost your business is a nice strategy! And above all, if you are planning to register a domain name, then keep one thing in mind- 'Never follow a blind trend.' If you are a beginner, then make sure that you hire the services of a professional web hosting organization.

Just remember below mentioned points to get good rankings and a likable traffic for your website:

• The first tip is to choose a domain name by following some of the basic SEO principles. That means, your domain name should be armed with apt keywords related to your business. Right? But, please don't overdo it. Just one keyword (maximum two) in one domain.
• Let us move towards the next tip… KISS! Keep it short and simple! Don't expect the other person to be an Einstein or a King Solomon. No one has the capacity to remember long domain names. Perhaps no one wants to do that! Keep it short and memorable.
• It is not mandatory, but it is prefered that you should choose a (.com) domain especially if you want to spread your business at a global level.
• Also, make sure that you register your domain in a specific country’s TLD designation. That does not mean that you will deviate from the idea of keeping a (.com) domain name! Both the things will go side by side.
• Do you know that a majority of search engines don’t read words if they are written together. (For example: tipsforagoodbusiness.com). Therefore, it is advised that you should separate your words with dashes/hyphens(-).
• Register your domain with as many extensions as possible. Go for a multiple buying process in order to get higher rankings in search engines. If possible, purchase domains in singular as well as plural form. For example, (trip.com, trips.com) (domain.com, domains.com etc.) This step will cease your competitors from taking the traffic from your website.
• One must never go for domain names that are decked with strange and confusing keywords. Some of the examples are:
  • "2" for "to"
  • "4" for "four"
  • "u" for "you"

Avoid them!

• It is recommended that you should hire the services of a credible web hosting company in order to boost your sales and increase traffic for your website.

Best of luck for your online business!

WordPress launched 'WordPress 2.3.3.' Classifying the release as urgent, it has been launched to counter a security bug discovered, "If you have registration enabled a flaw was found in the XML-RPC implementation such that a specially crafted request would allow a user to edit posts of other users on that blog. In addition to fixing this security flaw, 2.3.3 fixes a few minor bugs," went the official statement.

You have two options for the download, either download the fixed version of xmlrpc.php and copy it over your existing xmlrpc.php or you could get the entire release from the official download section here.

There's also a warning that, there is a vulnerability in the WP-Forum plugin that is being actively exploited at present. In case you are using this plugin, remove it until an update is available from its author.

You might want to keep your accounts secure, and it's a good idea to make use of strong passwords and change them at regular intervals. Further, even while you update WP and the plugins, refresh your passwords.

ICANN 's all set to move forward to completely do away with domain tasting. Domain tasters are frequently accused of taking advantage of loopholes in the registration process and mint millions out of it, without actually paying anything for it. They pull this stunt by amassing a large number of domain names they think the customers are looking for.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), now wants to effectively end domain tasting and in lieu of that start charging an annual ICANN fee on registrar domain registrations.

"Domain tasting has been an issue for the Internet community and ICANN is offering this proposal as a way to stop tasting,…Charging the ICANN fee as soon as a domain name is registered would close the loophole used by tasters to test a domain name's profitability for free." said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN's President and CEO.

The statistics by themselves portray the state of affairs as dismal, and tasting has seen an exponential growth since 2004. "In January 2007, the top 10 domain tasters accounted for 95% of all deleted .com and .net domain names — or 45,450,897 domain names out of 47,824,131 total deletes," ICANN estimates.

ICANN domain tasting entails "the use of the Add Grace Period to test the profitability of a domain name registration. The AGP is a five-day period following the initial registration of a domain name when the registration may be deleted and a credit can be issued to a registrar."

One of the ways to eliminate this kind of exploitation being talked by ICANN is to not to refund the charges levied by ICANN on a domain transaction. It is hoped that this practice would curb and control misuse of domain tasting in large numbers.

While it sounds like a good move to achieve the objective, there are a couple of questions hovering in the minds of folks, such as if a customer makes a mistake in registering, would there be some kind of a support provided to the customer?

Further, wouldn't it lead to a hike in prices to register a domain, etc. Since, the move is still in the proposal stage answers to all the questions might not be evident. While the move seems to be in the right direction, it now on remains to be seen, how the proposal actually gets implemented and how it overcomes various questions being raised at it?

While ICANN is there to protect the interests of the industry, it might not be fair to classify all webhosting companies under the same head. Perhaps, the answer lies in self-regulation by webhosting service providers. Candid Webhosting for sometime now, with the objective of providing friendly and customized solutions to the clients.

Candidwebhosting.com acknowledges your full rights over your domain, visit the domain registration section FAQ.

Do you run a WordPress blog? Do you know how you can protect your WordPress installation? In this post we cover three simple but effective ways to protect the installation as suggested by Matt Cutts.

First off, you need to secure your “/wp-admin/” directory. One option is to lock down the directory “/wp-admin/.” This enables only selected IP addresses to access your directory. For instance, if you use a .htaccess file you can put it in the following manner “/wp-admin/.htaccess.”

Here's how Matt's directory looks like:

Picture Credits: Matt Cutts

The file's instructions convey that only IP address 64.233.169.99 in addition to a couple of other which you permit can access /wp-admin/, the rest cannot.

Second, create an empty wp-content/plugins/index.html file. This can help you prevent a leakage of information about the plug-ins you run. A hacker can exploit you if he or she finds out that the plug-in you run is an outdated one.

Finally, it is worthwhile to subscribe to the WordPress Development blog as whenever WordPress fixes a security flaw or even when they release a fresh version they announce it on the blog. As soon as you see a security fix launched, download the patch or else the consequences could be serious.