How should next generation email look like?

May 5th, 2012 | Posted under Internet Trends, The Internet | No Comments »

How should next generation email look like?

Over the years, the concept of emails has taken a drastic change. There was a time when Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail used to be market leaders with a total of 2-4 MB email space. Interestingly, people were happy with the space provided, and everything was working out fine until Google entered the scenario with 1GB free space. It changed the whole scenario altogether and suddenly, everyone started using Gmail!

Apart from the huge mailbox size, what attracted people were the new user interface, the smooth operations and new innovations every now and then. Soon after, Google launched Google Talk, which is its Internet messaging service, and then quite intelligently, integrated it with the Google mail box. This ensured that people would not have to switch between windows to work on mail and chat.

While Google came up with extremely impressive innovations, what forced the world to revisit the concept of emailing altogether was the entry of social networking giants such as Facebook. Initially, it was just a sharing among friends, but with innovations within the social networking websites, the inevitable question came up if social networking feeds had the power to make the current emailing system obsolete in the near future?

At the first glance, it would seem to be a ridiculous idea as because mailing is predominant in the personal and corporate sphere, while social networking is present only in people’s personal domain. However, the core concept of both emailing and social sharing is the same – people propagate their message to intended recipients through mediums like text, images, videos and other formats. However, as one may argue, a mailbox provides a sense of security, which cannot be guaranteed by a open social networking feed.

However, looking at the bigger picture, what seems to be more likely that, emailing would have to replace a lot of its concepts by bringing in fresh concepts from the social networking feeds. The user interface is definitely going to be centred on the user’s social circle, rather than the current data-centric approach. Moreover, it should be easier to handle large amount of data – as social circles would help in efficient classification of data.

On the flip side, as pointed out earlier, there could be a few security tradeoffs that need to be worked out before we move on to the next version of email communication. Users should always have the control over what they receive and what they want to share with the rest of the world.

The need for a revolutionary version of email system is very much required as it can be observed that emails relating to one’s private life are now being replaced by social networking feeds. The forwarded mails containing several funny content are now being shared on Facebook rather than intruding people’s inbox. In one way, people may argue that it has taken off the unnecessary stuff out of the mailbox, but it also has dented the popularity of mailboxes to a large extent. Unless, emailing system are ready to embrace the latest Internet trends, it could face tough times ahead.

Be in touch with the next generation through technologies that Bounceweb Hosting supports!

Evergreen SEO Tips

May 5th, 2012 | Posted under Internet Trends, The Internet, Tips For Life, Web Hosting Tips | No Comments »

Evergreen SEO Tips

Hosting a website on the Internet is not enough to promote one’s agenda online. The simple reason behind it is that there are millions of websites on the Internet which would be available on the same category. Therefore, it is equally important to promote your website in order to get visitors for your website.

We are all aware of how search engine results redirect users to different websites based on the search keywords entered by the user. Therefore, a website owner must always aim that his/her website features among the top search results. This can be ensured only if the website is optimized for good search engine results – thus bringing the concept of search engine optimization (SEO).

In layman terms, SEO can be referred to as a technique that enhances the probability of a website to be among the first few results for keywords related to the website category. However, implementing SEO to a website is not easy and requires the website owner to be extremely meticulous about the complete procedure. It has been observed over the years that website ranking algorithm has changed tremendously over the years, resulting in many SEO techniques becoming obsolete. Here, we discuss few SEO tips and techniques that have stood the test of time and would play an important role in SEO building irrespective of the ranking algorithm in use:

1. Content is king: There is no alternative to good content. While SEO is all about keywords and their proper placement, people often confuse it to make their website content a collage of stuffed keywords. On the contrary, one needs to ensure that the website content is of the highest quality and at the same time has optimum inclusion of keywords.
2. Backlinks always help: The idea of SEO is to make the website links popular. One way to do so is to ensure that the website links are backtracked from several other sources. Thus, blogs, comment and social networking websites can always be easily used to ensure popularity of the link.
3. Spamming spoils the mix: When the concept of promoting through content is taken too literally, people start spamming before realizing what they are doing. However, one must always ensure that they should promote their website with decency and in places which do not intrude on the target’s private space. Moreover, it would also impact the brand image of a website if it is considered to be spamming.
4. Creating content out of content: A good content can always help you to generate more content on its lines. The content of your website needs to be propagated through effective mediums, and should be open to comments from users – so as to enable creation of more content around the core one. This not only increases the value of your content, but also enhances your loyal user base. However, one should always be aware about spams which may fill up comment boxes.
5. Differentiating good from the bad: A thorough knowledge of search engine algorithms is required to understand what would be treated as a good content and what would not be. Therefore, one must always strive to keep the good content while reducing content that do not help them with search engine results.

Bounceweb Hosting enhances your SEO techniques to attract more users to your website.

The future of social networking

May 5th, 2012 | Posted under Internet Trends, The Internet | No Comments »

The future of social networking

Social networking has evolved as a part of our life on the Internet – irrespective of the fact whether we are an active part of the world’s largest network. After years of hard-fought competition, Facebook and Twitter stand as undisputed leaders in the social networking industry. However, on the other hand, LinkedIn has created its own niche, while some other websites do keep coming up to capture our interest for short period of time. On the other hand, Google, the pioneers of Internet search and other Internet services have opted for a social networking product, which is slowly but surely creating a market for its own.

The interesting mix of ideas and innovations has led to the inevitable question: how would the whole phenomenon of social networking shape up in the near future. In order to gauge the future of social networking, we need to understand the direction which leading social networking websites are taking. The first trend that seems to be a clear winner is to collate usage data statistics into trends, so as to cash in on the content that is being discussed the most. While this enables users to stay updated with the latest buzz on the Internet, it also increases the probability of favourable content being shared further – a clear gain for the networking websites.

Although Facebook has been leading in terms of registered users, it is surprising how it has followed Google Plus in introducing features that has really transformed the social networking experience. The inclusion of video chatting, hot trends being part of the main stream and a better user experience are all features that were introduced by Google Plus.

However, the bigger picture is that social networking websites are now efficiently using content in order to influence its users into propagating them further. Thus, it can be easily predicted that content that we share are going to determine the quality of data or information around us.

The second factor that can be seen to be a future phenomenon for sure is the growth of niche social networking websites. While LinkedIn is a social networking website for professionals, Twitter is a mini-blogging website in its own standard. Similarly, more such websites could be expected to enter the market. As one would argue, niche sites would not be able to attract mass users, but the unique selling point for such websites is the exclusivity that they offer. In fact, the initial popularity of Facebook can be attributed to the exclusivity of its registration eligibility.

The third fact that has already been implemented to a large extent is the integration with other services on the Internet. While Google has integrated most of its services with Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter has also integrated with each other, with Facebook collaborating with Microsoft Bing search as well. However, as per the current trend, one may perceive it as the tip of the iceberg. In fact, several such associations can be expected in future which would help shape up the Internet as a network of individuals creating their own social circle – much like the outer world!

Make the most of the growing social network on your website and host it with Bounceweb Hosting!

Best practises while developing large scale websites

May 5th, 2012 | Posted under The Internet, Web Hosting, Web Hosting Tips | No Comments »

Best practises while developing large scale websites

With the fast paced development of Internet technologies, the perception of websites takes a new definition every few years. From static web pages, we have now moved on to dynamic, user-interactive web pages. In fact, most of the things that we do in the real life can now also be done online. With so much dependency on Internet-driven applications, it is important that these applications and websites are built properly. This is important for specific critical websites where we transact with money – as a small bug can cause a very severe impact to the user as well as the seller’s business and reputation.

Therefore, a lot of responsibility is bestowed on the development team. However, with large scale websites which contain numerous components, an additional challenge is the size of the development team and to manage the team effectively. In fact, large teams are generally divided in terms of small modules, and these sub-groups often interact at later stages of development. There could be several issues that could crop up due to mismanagement of a large group. The aim of such teams is to ensure proper planning is done and processes are setup for each activity.

There are several best practises that are followed by teams worldwide in order to create efficient and trouble-free applications. The first thing that needs to be ensure is proper requirement gathering, and then, proper analysis based on the resources available. Unrealistic expectations at the beginning of the development cycle would have to be carried all though the execution of the project, which is absolutely undesirable. Hence, the requirement should be analysed with utmost sincerity and then converted into a working design.

There is nothing more important in a development cycle than the design. Developers around the world agree on the fact that an efficient design reduces coding effort by 50 percent. In modular web applications, design becomes extremely critical as it is the common link between each module. In such situations, the design should create provisions for more common functionalities and services, which can be reused by different modules. This not only ensures uniformity but also takes care of any redundancy in code or issues that could come up due to abnormal dependencies.

Every stage in the development process needs to be review by peers as well as seniors in order to prevent any conflicts in approaches. In the implementation phase, the communication between different sub-groups becomes very critical as they start working on common components.

In most cases, a centralized code repository is used where several people share and collaborate on a single version of code. As and when people create or modify files, it is checked in to the common location. The problem arises when different people working on the same file at the same time do not communicate effectively. A situation could arise where a person could override the other person’s code unknowingly. This could have a major impact and would lead to rework at the very least. Thus, one should always communicate to the entire team as soon as they put their version of the code to the common location so that others could update their local copy of the centralized code.

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How to debug your web application bugs?

May 5th, 2012 | Posted under Software, Tips For Life, Web Hosting Tips | No Comments »

How to debug your web application bugs?

A web application, once released on production for its intended users, is very likely to come across several bugs. Although, the development of an application is done with an aim to create a bug-free code, it is an inevitable part of the software development lifecycle. Therefore, it is very important to ensure proper handling of bugs.

The development team needs to devise a particular approach to debug the application. Firstly, it is always better to prevent a defect rather than fix it later. A proper defect prevention plan would need every stage of development to be thoroughly reviewed and validated. In fact, a lot of defects can be prevented in the requirement capturing stage itself. However, it is impossible to cover all ends at the initial development phases. In fact, some bugs or defects are not actually development issues in nature, but some bad data or connection issues can also cause unexpected behaviour at the application end.

However, since the objective is to minimise as many defects as possible, we need to check for defects at every stage of the development. In fact, a defect prevention tracker needs to be maintained in order to record every defect detected and fixed. In that regard, it is also important to ensure proper techniques are in place to detect all bugs. While users or testers may report bugs, some checks at the code level can also help in detecting bugs.

In fact, defect detection is the first stage of debugging an application. However, in order to perform the analysis required to find the fault, there must be enough logging present for all the components in the application. There are several issues which cannot be recreated at will, as it may manipulate user data or cause other issues. Moreover, there could be one-time issues, which could have happened under abnormal circumstances – and in order to capture required information of that particular time, logging needs to be enabled throughout the application.

Once the code is analysed and the faulty component is identified, a fix needs to be prepared. However, fixing bugs on an existing application code is tougher than writing the code in the first place, as the fix also needs to ensure that it does not impact the normal flow of other components. In other words, a thorough regression testing is required for implementing a fix in the existing code. It is most undesirable that new code defects are introduced while fixing one.

However, the whole process of bug fixing needs to be prioritized properly. The severity of the issue decides the priority with which it needs to be rectified. The frequency of the issue is one parameter that determines the severity of the issue.

Some web applications which deal with critical information such as financial and demographic data of the users need to be very efficient with bug fixing techniques. The amount of time a defect is present in the application, it translates into bad user experience, and also could lead into large amount of business loss. Thus, debugging the application should be treated with high importance by the application development team.

Ensure best debugging environment for your web application by choosing Bounceweb as the web hosting partner.

How Google ranks websites?

April 22nd, 2012 | Posted under Internet Trends, The Internet | No Comments »

How Google ranks websites?

The Google search engine uses an algorithm called PageRank, developed by Larry Page at Stanford University to rank websites. PageRank is basically a link analysis algorithm that is based on the webgraph, created by denoting all WWW (World Wide Web) pages as nodes and hyperlinks as edges, that measures the relative importance of a hyperlinked set of documents by assigning a numerical weighting to each elements of the set. The numerical weight assigned to a given element E is the PageRank of element E; generally represented as PR(E). This rank value determines the popularity and importance of the page while the hyperlinks from another page indicate as vote of support. This algorithm is applicable to all set of entities having reciprocal quotations and references. PageRank is the trademark of Google but the process is patented and assigned to Stanford University while Google has exclusive license right for the patent.

How Google PageRank algorithm works?

Google PageRank instead of expressing in percentage uses a logarithmic scale to determine the page ranks. The PageRank depends on the total number of incoming links and is defined recursively. Hence, it is obvious that a page linked to maximum pages gets a high rank; but it is not the sole criteria. If a Page C has fewer links compared to a Page E, yet if C gets a link from an important page having high PageRank, C will eventually have a high PageRank. Hence, a page linked to several pages with high PageRank gets itself a high rank while the one having no links has no support.

How to improve PageRank?

Google PageRank can be scaled down to two important factors: Keywords in the page and number of hyperlinks from high quality pages. For example, suppose you have your own blog that is less popular since it lacks links from other pages. On the other hand, your competitors keep their pages updated. So each time they update, it gets you down on the rank list, pushing you at the bottom in google search results. To improve this, try adding more keywords and constantly updating your blog by posting new relevant contents that will keep the viewers engaged and optimizes your position in the search results, hence making your site popular.

Why is a high PageRank desired?

A high PageRank indicates the popularity of your page. It gets you on top of the search results increasing the page traffic quantity. Also it helps getting linked up with high quality webpages that also improves the page quality and the incoming links from large websites helps you earn a high PageRank.

Other Tactics

Since it’s important for a blog to get a high rank value, there are certain tactics that can help improve the rank. Some of them are:

1. Name your pages properly
2. Use plenty yet relevant keywords
3. Exchange links with other relevant sites having high rank
4. Social networking sites like Digg and Del.icio.us are a good way to promote your site.
5. Try making the search friendly graphics and good, popular design for your blog
6. Finally, try incorporating your blog to a website.

Google is undoubtedly the most popular and widely-used search engine with maximum number of hits per day. For a business website, the top position in Google search results is highly desired since it can be a lead generating machine. It gets you lots of free traffic flow, viewers and sales.

Hosting with Bounceweb Hosting keeps you one step ahead with Google page rank!

Clustered Hosting: Optimized Resources Usage for Better Performance

April 22nd, 2012 | Posted under Web Hosting, Web Hosting Tips | No Comments »

Clustered Hosting: Optimized Resources Usage for Better Performance

In most of the web hosting environments, the website and all its associated data are located on a single server. So if the datacenter faces hosting problems like server goes offline, this would cause serious trouble. The solution to this problem is Clustered Hosting.

Generally, most of the hosting solutions use a single server for hosting multiple hosting services like website, database, FTP, email etc. So, it has a single failure point and finite traffic capacity causing troubles for high traffic websites.

Clustered Hosting differs from the traditional web hosting mechanisms as the load of web hosting is spread across “nodes” which are multiple physical machines, thus increasing the availability and also the chances of one feature or service like email or FTP, affecting other services like MySQL. Large websites, discussion forums use clustered hosting as they run with multiple front-end web servers and back-end database servers.

Single failure points can be eliminated by load balancing in clustered hosting using multiple physical servers. In a single server, periodic reboots maybe required for software upgrade but in clustered hosting the reboots can be staggered to make the services available while upgrading all the necessary machines present in the cluster.

The advantages of Clustered Hosting are:

• Enhanced Reliability: The computer grid is powered by several clusters running dedicated hosting services with more than 2 servers in each cluster. All the clusters work together for hosting the website and eliminate single point of failure.
• Flexibility: Many servers can be added to a cluster and many clusters can be added to the grid for increasing availability as and when required.
• Maintenance: Scheduled or unscheduled maintenances of the servers for hardware check or software upgrade, don’t affect the website.
• Enhanced Security: Security can be enforced at all the layers for maximum protection from Kernel to the applications. Classes of attacks like SQL injection, cross site scripting, buffer overflows etc can be stopped.
• Load Balancing: The workload is distributed across multiple nodes for achieving optimum utilization of resources. The load balancers use schedule mechanism for prioritizing requests and forward requests for processing to the servers.
• Better Performance: Close integration with load balancers allows the web servers to perform parallel request delivery. So, the web pages are served very fast.
• Fast Raid Storage: In clustered hosting, the storage of data is redundant, optimized and protected from single point failures.
• Faster SQL Queries: For faster execution of database queries, multiple instances of SQL database services are run concurrently. Unattended queries are promptly handed over to another available database server.
• Reduced Mail Queuing: Implementation of a more balanced system of distribution of the mail queue provides better mail processing & delivery services. Multiple mail servers are used for shortening the queue.
• Fail-Safe DNS: The zones are centralized from hosting servers by DNS servers present in the cluster using a fail-redundant DNS structure

Clustered hosting costs same as shared hosting, so it is cost-effective. Access to large number of servers in clusters provides you with computing power as much you require. So, clustered hosting has gained popularity due to its several advantages over shared hosting.

The best webhosting options for your website are always available when you choose Bounceweb hosting as your web host!

Decoding the new Google Plus Look

April 22nd, 2012 | Posted under Internet Trends, The Internet | No Comments »

Decoding the new Google Plus Look

Google Plus is a social networking site launched by Google on June 28^th, 2011 and now has over 170 million users. The Google+ user base is expected to increase more now with the new look. Competing with the social networking kings Facebook and Twitter, Google+ received a setback as it wasn’t able to capture the market as desired. However, to meet the user demand, Google+ is constantly adding new features since the beta launch. The new up-gradation of Google+ has rectified some of its flaws to attract new users. Though it has still got some blemishes, Google Plus seems to be a potential contender to be at the social networking world’s pinnacle.

Some of the changes brought in Google+ are:

Integration with Picasa: The integration of Google+ with Picasa Photo Editor makes it much easier to add pictures and edit them as required. The photo viewer is also better and the pictures can be easily shared with friends and families.

Explore: The new Explore page keeps you updated with what’s new in Google+.

Video Hangouts: Starting video hangouts or free video conferences with up to 10 people in a hangout is a lot easier now. The hangout section is expanded and has added several new features along with the list constantly updated of all the hangout invites.

Editing: Google+ now allows the users to edit the ribbon. Now it is possible for the users to place their favorite services at the top for easy access to them. You can similarly drop the applications or services not used by you to the “More” box at the bottom-right as you won’t be using them.

Easy Access to Actions: When you are hovering over an application, a set of actions for quick access will be presented. For example: hovering over the photos application will give you options for adding new images from an online album or your phone.

Activity Drawer: An activity drawer is a sliding out box displaying the +1s and the no. of shares of the post.

Google+ Vocabulary: A “Card” is a box containing all the posts and the related comments, +1s and shares. It has made scanning and joining discussions easier.

Customizing Circle Feeds: Using a slider that has now been provided with each of the circles you have created, it is now possible to determine the amount of message feeds of the circles to be displayed in the main all circles feed of your page.

Profile Pictures: The size of profile pictures has been increased.

More Space: The different icons have been shifted for providing more space for the posts.

All these feature upgrades have made Google+ more user-friendly and expects to attract more joining. However some flaws still remain. Comments in a post are displayed in white and light gray making it difficult to read. Also the new look has not been implemented for mobile and Smartphone versions. Also the “Whitespace” between the online list of friends and the news feed is very disturbing. Google+ needs to rectify these flaws to be able to capture the market.

Ensure better traffic to your website by integrating your website to Google Plus and host it with Bounceweb Hosting!

Difference between Managed and Unmanaged hosting

April 22nd, 2012 | Posted under Web Hosting, Web Hosting Tips | No Comments »

Difference between Managed and Unmanaged hosting

Web hosting is a service which makes the websites by individuals and organizations accessible via WWW (World Wide Web). The companies that own or lease the space on the server used by clients are the Web Hosts. Web hosts also provide internet connectivity and data centre space. The main scope of web hosting is web page hosting and file hosting which is used for uploading files using FTP (File Transfer Protocol).

Web hosting may be required for personal websites where the number of web pages would be less. On the other hand, complex websites with server side scripting is also hosted on server which allows users to write and install scripts by making use of comprehensive package providing database support and can be developed using applications like PHP, ASP.Net. Hosing can be classified into Managed and Unmanaged hosting. The difference of using managed and unmanaged hosting services can be known while using a dedicated server.

The managed and unmanaged hosting can be differentiated as:

• Managed servers: The web hosting companies manage and host the managed servers. The clients are able to set up domains and mailboxes but the sole responsibilities of necessary configurations and maintaining the server lies in the hands of the web host company.
• Unmanaged servers: these servers are self managed by the clients or users, i.e. unlike the managed servers, the responsibilities of necessary configurations and maintaining the server lies in the users’ hands, hence it’s their duty to keep the server up to date and safe from hackers.
• Managed vs. Unmanaged Hosting: Though it’s known that unmanaged hosting is less expensive than managed hosting; but since all the responsibilities of the server now lies with the client, it requires technical knowledge and time to maintain and configure the server. Hence, it can be said that along with price, managed hosting also lessens the clients’ burden. Also unmanaged hosting cannot be used if your UNIX knowledge is limited.
• Dedicated vs. Shared Hosting: It is advisable to adopt dedicated web hosting instead of shared hosting in case of hosting complex and large website which may affect the service to serve the clients. In shared hosting, the resources like disk space, bandwidth are shared by all the websites on that server resulting in limiting your growth to serve the clients. Dedicated hosting works by renting or owning space on the server for sole use. Hence, dedicated hosting is expensive than shared.

So the bottom line is which type of web hosting suits you the most. The main differences lie with factors: flexibility, cost-effective and control. Mostly, web hosting does not require great deal of flexibility unless the client wants to run own web applications. In most cases, the clients mainly want to setup a simple site with hosting account. It is also necessary to figure out the space required, and knowledge and experience of working on UNIX.

 

Bounceweb Hosting provides you tempting choices when it comes to choosing the perfect hosting plan for your website.

Understanding the concepts of Transport Security Layer (TLS)

April 22nd, 2012 | Posted under The Internet, Web Hosting, Web Hosting Tips | No Comments »

Understanding the concepts of Transport Security Layer (TLS)

Transport Layer Security (TLS) is an application layer cryptographic protocol. The main purpose of TLS and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer; predecessor of TLS) is to ensure privacy between the applications and the users communicating over Internet. When the server and client communicate, TLS/SSL provides communication security and ensures that no malicious party can tamper with the message-packets and also protects against serious threats like eavesdropping and message-forgery. The protocol has several versions that are widely used in applications such as email, Internet faxing, voice-over-IP (VoIP) for protecting sensitive data that are transmitted over the Internet. TLS is widely recognised and is also a standard protocol issued by IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) for communication of emails securely over the Internet and also creates a secured environment for applications like web-browsing, emails and other client-server applications.

What is TLS?

Transport Layer Security or TLS is a protocol used in application layer that ensures message security over the internet; it uses a combination of asymmetric cryptography, symmetric encryption and message authentication codes for key exchange, privacy and message integrity respectively to encrypt the network connections above Transport layer.

Why is TLS used?

TLS is especially designed to provide protection against eavesdropping, message-forging, message tampering and protect confidentiality and data integrity by encrypting the data transmission of applications like email between client and server.

Components of TLS:

TLS is mainly composed of two layers: TLS Record Protocol and TLS Handshake Protocol. TLS Record Protocol is responsible for connection security with encryption mechanisms like DES (Data Encryption Standard) to protect confidentiality while TLS Handshake Protocol authenticates the communicating server and client, and selects an encryption algorithm and cryptographic keys to exchange data securely.

How to indicate TLS connection:

To indicate the server that the client is using a TLS connection can be achieved by two ways: by using different port numbers for TLS connections or by using general port numbers where the client requests the server to switch the connection to TLS using any protocol-specific mechanism.

How TLS works:

After both the client and server have agreed on a TLS connection, they use a handshaking mechanism in which they agrees on several parameters to establish a secure connection and negotiate a stateful connection. Finally when TLS is established on both the ends information is exchanged by encrypting the plain text to ensure data confidentiality.

As the client presents a list of supported ciphers and hash functions, the server then selects the strongest cipher and hash function and informs the client of its selection by sending a digital certificate containing server name, trusted certificate authority (CA) and the public encryption key. The client acknowledges the receipt of the certificate. The client then encrypts a random number which can only be decrypted by the server’s private key and then the session keys are generated. The connection is established only after all the steps are successfully done; failing in which results in connection failure.

TLS is based on specifications developed by Netscape Communications’ SSL protocol, which is the predecessor of TLS. TLS and SSL are not interoperable, i.e. TLS cannot be implemented as SSL.

Since transferring unencrypted data increases the risk of threats of message tampering and alteration, in some organizations that deals with storing of confidential data and sensitive messages, implementing TLS is not only a good idea but instead a mandated option.

Ensure enhanced security of your website by choosing Bounceweb as your web hosting option.