Data Encryption Basics

posted on May 14, 2021

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Encryption is a security method in which information is encoded in such a way that only authorized user can read it. It uses encryption algorithm to generate ciphertext that can only be read if decrypted.

Types of Encryption
There are two types of encryptions schemes as listed below:

Symmetric Key encryption
Symmetric key encryption algorithm uses same cryptographic keys for both encryption and decryption of cipher text.

internet-symmetric_key_cryptography

Public Key encryption
Public key encryption algorithm uses pair of keys, one of which is a secret key and one of which is public. These two keys are mathematically linked with each other.

internet-public_key_cryptography

Hashing
In terms of security, hashing is a technique used to encrypt data and generate unpredictable hash values. It is the hash function that generates the hash code, which helps to protect the security of transmission from unauthorized users.

Hash function algorithms
Hashing algorithm provides a way to verify that the message received is the same as the message sent. It can take a plain text message as input and then computes a value based on that message.

Key Points

  • The length of computed value is much shorter than the original message.
  • It is possible that different plain text messages could generate the same value.

Here we will discuss a sample hashing algorithm in which we will multiply the number of a’s, e’s and h’s in the message and will then add the number of o’s to this value.

For example, the message is “ the combination to the safe is two, seven, thirty-five”. The hash of this message, using our simple hashing algorithm is as follows:

    2 x 6 x 3 ) + 4 = 40

The hash of this message is sent to John with cipher text. After he decrypts the message, he computes its hash value using the agreed upon hashing algorithm. If the hash value sent by Bob doesn’t match the hash value of decrypted message, John will know that the message has been altered.

For example, John received a hash value of 17 and decrypted a message Bob has sent as “You are being followed, use backroads, hurry”

He could conclude the message had been altered, this is because the hash value of the message he received is:

    (3x4x1)+4 = 16

You should know that quality web hosting companies like LiquidWeb use high level of encryption in order to make he most secure environment for your website.

101 E-mail Security

posted on May 14, 2021

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Email hacking can be done in any of the following ways:

Spam
E-mail spamming is an act of sending Unsolicited Bulk E-mails (UBI) which one has not asked for. Email spams are the junk mails sent by commercial companies as an advertisement of their products and services.

Virus
Some emails may incorporate with files containing malicious script which when run on your computer may lead to destroy your important data.

Phishing
Email phishing is an activity of sending emails to a user claiming to be a legitimate enterprise. Its main purpose is to steal sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details.

Such emails contains link to websites that are infected with malware and direct the user to enter details at a fake website whose look and feels are same to legitimate one.

E-mail Spamming and Junk Mails
Email spamming is an act of sending Unsolicited Bulk E-mails (UBI) which one has not asked for. Email spams are the junk mails sent by commercial companies as an advertisement of their products and services.

Spams may cause the following problems:

  • It floods your e-mail account with unwanted e-mails, which may result in loss of important e-mails if inbox is full.
  • Time and energy is wasted in reviewing and deleting junk emails or spams.
  • It consumes the bandwidth that slows the speed with which mails are delivered.
  • Some unsolicited email may contain virus that can cause harm to your computer.

Blocking Spams
Following ways will help you to reduce spams:

  • While posting letters to newsgroups or mailing list, use a separate e-mail address than the one you used for your personal e-mails.
  • Don’t give your email address on the websites as it can easily be spammed.
  • Avoid replying to emails which you have received from unknown persons.
  • Never buy anything in response to a spam that advertises a product.

E-mail Cleanup and Archiving

In order to have light weighted Inbox, it’s good to archive your inbox from time to time. Here I will discuss the steps to clean up and archive your Outlook inbox.

  • Select File tab on the mail pane.
  • Select Cleanup Tools button on account information screen.
  • Select Archive from cleanup tools drop down menu.

Select Archive this folder and all subfolders option and then click on the folder that you want to archive. Select the date from the Archive items older than: list. Click Browse to create new .pst file name and location. Click OK.

A reputable web hosting company can save you the troubles with email hacking.

What Is Website Maintenance?

posted on May 14, 2021

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Website maintenance is the act of regularly checking your website for issues and mistakes and keeping it updated and relevant. This should be done on a consistent basis in order to keep your website healthy, encourage continued traffic growth, and strengthen your SEO and Google rankings. Your ranking actually can be improved by your web hosting provider as well.

Keeping a website well maintained and attractive is important to companies big and small in order to engage and retain customers. It’s easy for businesses, especially startups, to cut corners and let a few tasks slide.

1. What Is Website Maintenance?
2. What Are the Steps in Website Maintenance? A Quick Checklist
3. A Proper Website Maintenance Plan Is a Circle
4. Why Is It Important to Do Website Maintenance?
5. How Much Does Website Maintenance Cost?
6. Paying for Website Maintenance Services: The Advantages
7. Determining If You Should Buy Website Maintenance Packages

Website maintenance can easily become one of those things as it doesn’t always present immediate issues. However, just like your health can fall apart if you go too long without a regular check up, so can the health of your website.

Regular monitoring of your website is a must for keeping your business running smoothly.

What Are the Steps in Website Maintenance? A Quick Checklist

There is a laundry list of tasks that should be done to keep your website running smoothly. The most time-sensitive of these are website security updates and patches. Without these, your website has the potential to be an actual danger to those who click on it.

With that in mind, here is a list of website maintenance tasks that should be completed regularly:

To be done weekly

  • Check that all of your pages are loading without errors
  • Run a backup and make sure a previous version of your site is stored
  • Make updates to website software and plugins
  • Check that all of your forms are running properly
  • Remove any spam comments from pages and posts
  • Check your pages to see if there are any broken links
  • Search for 404 errors and fix or redirect
  • Write one or more blog posts to keep your community engaged and encourage SEO traffic.

To be done monthly

  • Check the load speed of your website and ensure that nothing is bogging it down
  • Review your security scans and make sure nothing is out of place
  • Analyze website statistics from the previous month
  • Check your blog to see if there are any articles that could be updated

To be done quarterly

  • Review your website design and structure  – can be it improved?
  • Check graphics and images – should anything be updated?
  • Review SEO and meta titles and descriptions to ensure they are as effective as possible
  • Test and tweak popups, forms, and calls to action
  • Review your workload for efficiencies to see if anything can be automated
  • Test your website on all devices and browsers to see if it displays correctly
  • Review advertising and marketing campaigns to see if anything needs to be changed or updated.
  • Restore a previous version of the website to check your backup health

To be done yearly

  • Update any reference to the current year
  • Review each page for content accuracy, grammar, typos, and relevancy
  • Check any active email addresses and see if any are excessive and can be deleted
  • Ensure that your website domain name is renewed
  • Consider whether a website design update is due
  • Review all of your top performing blog articles and see if they can be updated with new content

A Proper Website Maintenance Plan Is a Circle

As you can see from our checklist, website maintenance should be a consistent part of your business. It grows on itself, and if not correctly implemented, can cause some serious problems and setbacks to your potential growth and business health.

Staying on top of website health takes awareness and organization. This is particularly the case for a large site with hundreds (or even thousands) of pages.

With the introduction of new tools to make website building easier, website sizes are growing each year. While it’s easy to add pages to most websites, it’s not as easy to keep all of your pages in a good state.

Why Is It Important to Do Website Maintenance?

Many new businesses already have a lot on their plates without worrying about constantly checking in on their website. It’s tempting to buy a domain name, throw up something temporary, and just worry about it later. There are many reasons why this is not a good idea. Maintaining a current, healthy, and active website is important for a number of reasons.

SEO

The whole point to starting a business is to have customers, clients, or an audience. To drive traffic to your website, you’ll need to keep it regularly updated.

Google wants to rank websites that have the most relevant and up-to-date information on their search engine results page . They may even de-index your website entirely if it hasn’t been updated recently enough and if they suspect it has been infected by malware. You must keep your website regularly updated with current content, news, keywords, and articles in order to rank well in search results. Regularly website maintenance is invaluable for SEO strategy.

Customer Attraction/Engagement

If your website is gaining traction and traffic, it’s important to keep those potential customers. If they aren’t able to find what they are looking for, current information and relevant content, there is a good chance you’ll lose interest quickly. In order for your website to be the useful tool you want, you’ll need to ensure it is free from typos and grammar issues, has any and all information a customer could want, and looks engaging and consistent.

Security

This is the single most important reason to keep website maintenance on your radar, particularly if your website is storing any form of customer information. If you are using a website building platform like WordPress or Wix, you must ensure that you are installing regular software updates and security patches. It can be easy and attractive for hackers to find and target websites that have sat dormant for too long.

Corporate Image

It’s becoming more and more simple to create a website that looks well-designed and professional. There is an expectation for a professional website from professional companies. If your website doesn’t deliver on the promise of professionalism, your customers will often go elsewhere.

Your Sanity

Your website is a very important element of your business. If it is up-to-date and running smoothly, it can be a valuable support and asset. If it is not in a good state, it can cost you dearly. Once you are behind on your maintenance needs, it can be quite the process to bring the website back up to speed. Sometimes, if your maintenance has been ignored for too long, it is easier just to scrap everything and rebuild from the scratch.

Do yourself and your business a favor by staying on top of your website. This will repay you with simple ease of mind.

Keep up with Trends in Design and Technology

The sleeker your website is, the more you’ll convince potential customers that you are their ultimate choice. If you’re staying on top of your website maintenance, you’ll also have the opportunity to be an early adopter of new website technology that will help the back-end run more smoothly. If you’re installing software updates regularly, you’ll be able to take advantage of new features that install along with the updates.

You’ll also be able to tweak your design to stay on top of the latest website looks. It’s far more tempting to employ a company with a polished and modern website than one that looks like it hopped on a time travel device from 2003.  

How Much Does Website Maintenance Cost?

There are different cost expectations based on what your website is used for, the size of your audience, and how much content is hosted. We’ve discussed the different pricing brackets below.

Small Personal Blog

A small blog typically does not have a lot of traffic and has very few needs. This can be hosted on a blogging site like Google Blogger with no costs whatsoever. Or, it could be self-hosted using a platform like WordPress with low monthly costs stemming from domain name renewal and hosting service.

Medium-Large Sized Active Blog with a Wide Audience

If you have a blog that is bringing in an income with an active audience, you will likely want to be self hosted with some customizations. This will require more frequent maintenance, updates, marketing and backups and a slightly larger monetary investment.

Company Website for the Purpose of Marketing Only

Similar to the medium-large size blog, this will need to be self hosted with a simple design template and limited content. It will be low maintenance for upkeep with with regular updates, marketing, and backups.

Large Customized eCommerce Websites

This will be a larger financial investment as you’ll need to be vigilant about website maintenance. You’re handling a lot of content, code customization, and customer data. If you do not have an IT team on staff, we would recommend finding a web maintenance package to stay on top of your website needs.

Custom Built Web Application

This will be your largest financial investment. Your web application was custom built from the ground up for a specific purpose and it needs to be in top-notch working condition at all times or your company will suffer. This likely needs a dedicated staff of developers keeping a close eye on the maintenance.

Paying for Website Maintenance Services: The Advantages

Now that we’ve established that website maintenance is a must for websites of any size, it’s time to discuss the advantages to employing someone else to do that maintenance. You can, of course, take on these tasks yourself, but it will save time and stress to pay an agency for several reasons.

  • You’ll be hiring a team of experts who take care of these tasks every day. They know what to look for and what to expect.
  • You can focus on other areas of your business that need your attention.
  • Hiring an outside agency is cost-effective and can scale with your company. Your package will reflect the needs of your company.

There are several elements that go into determining whether you should purchase a website maintenance package.

  • The size of your website
  • The purpose of your website
  • How much of your website is customized content
  • How quickly is your business growing?
  • How much experience do you have with website maintenance?
  • Is your website currently out-of-date?
  • How much time do you have to dedicate to website maintenance?

If you’ve read this whole article, you probably have a good idea if maintaining your own website is something you are currently capable of. If your website is simply sitting and taking up space on the internet, you should absolutely consider purchasing a website maintenance package. Your website should be a tool that is supporting and helping your business grow. It is a living and breathing entity that deserves your time and attention in order to fulfill its potential.

Is your website delivering as many leads and new clients as you would like?

posted on May 14, 2021

Every business today – whether large or small – has access to the techniques and tools to build an active online presence that attracts and retains clients.  If you’re not taking advantage of them you’re practically giving business away to your competitors.

Minimally, every business should be doing the following:

  • Search Engine Optimization.  It gets your website found by people looking for you products or services.
  • Social Media.  It builds “mind share” – creating awareness of your business with clients and prospects.
  • Reputation Management.  It ensures that the online perception of your business is a good one.

Looking for excellent WordPress hosting?  Check out SiteGround. Easy to use, fast, and secure.

Search Engine Optimization

Consider the following:

  • The first 5 search results in Google get nearly 70% of all clicks
  • 75% of local mobile searches result in a store visit within 24 hours
  • There are over 3.5 billion google searches every day

SEO is about getting your company in front of people as they search for products and services. You might have an excellent website that can turn any visitor into a customer, but if people aren’t getting to the website that’s never going to happen.

SEO is a proactive, structured approach used to improve the position of your website in the search engine listings for the keywords and phrases that it should be found. So if you sell “left handed widgets”, and someone is searching for “left handed widgets”, your site comes up.

It is a cost-effective method of online marketing that can help you get new visitors, leads and sales.

There are some great tools available to help you with SEO that will continually track and analyze your website each month and provide step by step instructions for how to improve its search engine ranking.  You can also hire experts in this field if it’s not something you want to do yourself.

Isn’t SEO a one time thing?

No!  Besides the fact that you may have hundreds of competitors trying to get their websites to the top of the search results (and push yours down), Google often modifies the formulas by which they rank sites.  They always want to be providing the best listings for people who are searching, and so they are always making changes to provide the best results. These changes can affect where your site shows up.

Need your site updated?  Free up some time for yourself by taking advantage of website maintenance services.

Social Media

Did you know that:

  • People spend an average of 142 minutes on social media every day?
  • 81% of all small and medium businesses use some kind of social platform?
  • There are 3.5 billion active social media users?

Social media allows you to create awareness of your business, your products and your services – to gain “mind share” with clients and potential clients by being a regular part of their lives so if they have a need they think of you.  The particular product or services you offer will determine which social media channels make sense, but they could be Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or any one of dozens of social media platforms.

How is it Done?

Ideally with a plan.  You set specific goals for your social media and then craft your campaigns to meet them.  There are some great tools available to help you do this yourself; tools that will help you post, schedule posts (this is key – by being able to schedule posts you can plan out your social media weeks or months in advance), interact with clients and more.  Of course, there are also companies you work with to do this for you.

Reputation Management

You want your business to look great when people are checking you out online.

These days:

  • 88% of online shoppers consider online reviews when making a buying decision
  • 80% of consumers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations
  • 86% of people will hesitate to purchase from a business that has negative online reviews

Just like in our personal lives, if someone is saying something bad about us, we want to know about it, and conversely, if they were saying great things about us, we want to know about that too!

You need to ensure that online your company appears in the best possible light.

Reputation Management helps you listen to what people are saying about your business all over the web, whether that is on review sites, other websites, in social media, or anywhere they might be interacting. If what they are saying is great, you can thank them, if what they are saying isn’t so great, you hopefully work with them to resolve any problems or issues and hopefully get them to upgrade their review.

There are tools available to help you monitor and respond to comments, ensure that your business information is accurate everywhere online, and even help you to generate more positive reviews for your business.  There are also companies that can look after this for you.

Conclusion

These 3 techniques are the basics that every business should be doing to generate more leads through their website; whether you do them yourself or you hire a firm to look after them for you.  One thing is for sure, your competitors are trying to make sure their business gets found on the web, and if you’re not working at it as well you could be losing business to them.

Increase the Speed of Your Website

posted on May 13, 2021

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There are many ways to improve the performance of a Web site and the strategies that optimize this performance can be organized into three types.

The first category concerns support hardware. It is obvious that improving the performance of the machine (physical or virtual) that is hosting the web site or an application can also significantly reduce the loading time of web pages. However, only large companies with direct access to the front-end machines, whether they’re placed in-house or at a colocation hosting provider, can hope to optimize the website performance by working on the support hardware. Small and medium size companies usually rely on a web hosting provider, so it is not always possible for them to choose the hardware that is right for them. They can, however, improve upon the technical features of their web hosting plan: number of processors, server RAM, bandwidth, etc.

The second category concerns the optimization of the server side scripting. Most Web applications use some sort of programming language to create dynamic web pages, with some examples being PHP, ASP, JSP etc. Once you choose the programming paradigm, the speed of the site will depend heavily on the quality of the software. Two websites using the same scripting language and a web host with same technical characteristics can significantly differ in their performance due to the architectural choices of the software. Put simply, with regard to the optimization of server side scripting, there are two factors that matter most:

  •     Choice of the platform.
  •     Skills of the development team that produces the software.

The third category concerns the material displayed on the front end like pictures, animations, content, and even the client side scripting languages.

It is extremely important to understand the difference between the quality of software server side and the client side. A Web page can be optimized from a server side, for example,by writing PHP code with an eye towards performance. An optimization of this kind results in an improved execution speed at the server side. On the contrary, optimization at the client side needs well-written JavaScript code execution.

Let’s see an example: Consider a Web page that weights 5KB on the server, written in PHP. If the code is well written, page could produce the markup sent to the client in a matter of milliseconds. If poorly written, it could take seconds to accomplish the same task .

Now let’s look at the issue from the client side. The HTML page produced at the client side contains images, content and JavaScript code. Let us assume that this page weighs 20KB. Now this 20 KB size may have a 90% contribution by images and 10% by the textual content or a 50-50% contribution by both. However, there is also a possibility that most of its contribution comes from the JavaScript code.

Now this Javascript code must have been written extremely well and would have run very fast in the browser; but the very fact that it weighs a solid 20KB will still increase the page loading time drastically. Lesson? When optimizing the performance of the client side, always give more importance to reducing weight of the code than the speed of its execution. Obviously, both the factors are partly related and not mutually exclusive, but must be measured and evaluated independently for the best results.

Now, out of the three categories mentioned above, which one can you handle most effectively? The answer most likely, is the third one; simply because:

  • As discussed earlier, most of us don’t have full control over the hardware,
  • And server side programming, while very crucial, is also not under full control of the person who initiates activity on the Web. For example, if we use a CMS to create a web site, then we do not hold cards on the table and cannot expect to change website performance considerably. We can only use the most recent versions of CMS and hope that they are faster than the previous ones.

So let’s discuss what we can control- the contents exposed at the front-end i.e images, textual content, JavaScript libraries etc.

Reducing Website Loading Speed by Content Optimization

All modern browsers are equipped with tools that allow you to measure the loading time of each element on the page. For example, if you use Firefox, you can install the plugin Firebug. If you use Internet Explorer, you have an analysis tool built into the browser called ‘development tools’. If you use Chrome, you have an integrated tool which you can activate by this path: Customize menu – Tools – Tools for Developers. When you open a page on our site with one of these tools of analysis, you can get very useful information on the performance of the page.Let’s consider performance analysis using Firefox’s plugin Firebug.

Reducing Website Loading Speed by using Content Delivery Network (CDN)

The abbreviation CDN stands for Content Delivery Network and is the hosting service of libraries and resources distributed across a network. Many developers use this system to load the JavaScript libraries from a remote server in order to conserve the bandwidth on your host. Let’s understand how it works using a concrete example, considering the jQuery library.

When we load jQuery on our website we can specify a script tag to point to the jQuery site, such as in the lib directory. This means that every time a new user comes to the site, he will have to download the library, thereby hogging bandwidth and employing a certain time. However, if the script tag was referring to the URL of a CDN, then the library would be offloaded from the host associated with that URL. And CDN services consist of a network of servers that offer the same content. This means that the user will download the library using the bandwidth of the closest available server to his geographic location, thereby significantly reducing the page load time.

Most of the companies use CDN as a personal service to distribute their content on the Web. The primary advantage of this is that even if a company has its dedicated server located in India, even those who connect from UK will be able to load its website quickly, because it will automatically download all the content from the nearest CDN server.
Modus-operandi of CDNs

Reducing Website Loading Speed by Optimizing the Size Of The Images

The most used formats of images on the web are probably JPEG, GIF and PNG. Depending on the type of image you can optimize performance by choosing the right size. To understand what is the best format for a certain image, we have to analyze the type of image.

  • If the image contains many colors, spread in a phased manner, with detailed nuances (such as a photograph), you can decrease its size by saving it in JPEG format.
  • If the image is simpler, i.e. made up of bars, charts, graphs or symbols with a few well-defined colors and no gradients, then should use PNG format.

In case of doubt you can do a simple test: save the image in both formats and compare the size, keeping an eye on the quality of the result. If the quality remains almost unchanged to the naked eye, but the size is greatly reduced, probably you should use the lightweight format, i.e. JPEG. If the dimensions are similar, or if the quality of the compressed format is insufficient, then you should choose the richer format (PNG or GIF).

Features of a Smart Home Security System

posted on May 13, 2021

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Your home is meant to be to be your own private space where you can relax, unwind, have fun with family and friends, and feel safe and comfortable at all times. And while no-one wants to think about being the victim of a home robbery or break-in, the fact is that it does happen, and it happens at a rather alarming rate across the country. This is exactly why so many homeowners install smart home security systems. They give you peace of mind and can act as a strong deterrent for would-be intruders. Let’s take a look at some of the top features to look for when picking the right smart home security system for your needs.

Does it have a doorbell camera?

One of the most popular features to look for in a Smart Home Security System today is a doorbell camera. Not only is it a useful feature, but you’ll find that it’s one of the most popular features these systems have. What’s great about a doorbell camera is that you will obviously be able to see who is at your door but, in many cases, you can also speak with them, and here’s the best part – that is done remotely. What that means is that you can be on vacation in a different country, get an alert that someone is at your door, and you can then speak to them giving the impression that you are right there – at home.
Smart sensors and detectors

These systems also tend to have smart sensors and detectors that are meant to keep you and the house safe. This includes such things as a water sensor, which can sense a water leak in the home, and a carbon monoxide detector which will alert you if there is a gas leak. These are the kind of safety features you hope to never use, but should they be required, they can literally save your life where a carbon monoxide leak is concerned.

Make use of a Wi-Fi camera

A Wi-Fi camera is not to be confused with a doorbell camera as this is a separately mounted camera. Because this one is Wi-Fi enabled, you’ll be able to access the video remotely. It will constantly be recording, and you may also be able to take still pictures – which can come in handy if you need to share information with police. You can use a remote hosting for increasing the security.

When shopping for the right Wi-Fi camera for your security system, be sure that it features night vision, so you have a clear and crisp picture any time of the day or night. It also needs to be positioned in a way that it will capture the entire image of any would-be intruders.

It should feature a Companion App

Finally, you want to be sure it features a companion app that can be installed on your phone, giving you quick and easy access to all the features, voice control, video, and photos.

These are just a few of the key features to look for when shopping for the ideal smart home security system.

What makes a great website design?

posted on May 13, 2021

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Here are top 14 web designer skills that a web designer should master!

1. Design Tool

Craftsmen always have a set of tools. As the job descriptions listed above, a web designer must use several essential design software applications. Although it is now possible to design websites in a web browser, tools such as Photoshop, Sketch, and Mockplus are very useful tools for image processing, icon design, and prototyping. Using the right tools at the right stage will make your work more effective.

Adobe Illustrator: referred to as "AI", is a very good vector graphics processing tool, mainly used for font design, graphic design, product packaging design, book /magazine layout, and illustration design.

Adobe After Effects: referred to as "AE", is a graphic video processing software introduced by Adobe. In a nutshell, it is a dynamic version of PS, which is very powerful with a complicated operation.

Mockplus iDoc, a design handoff too for designers and developers. Get started for free here.

2. Design Sense

Having a good sense of design is very important for web designers. Web design is more than just making a good-looking website. You must have an understanding of design elements such as typeset, images, and basic design principles such as layout principles, form design principles and more.

3. UX Design

UX stands for user experience, or how people feel when they use the site. To provide a good UX, you need to research your users to help create user personas and use sitemaps to lay out pages and content. This helps you understand the user's path during actual site visits. Through repeated testing, a website’s design can be improved, ameliorating user experience, and thus increasing user conversions.

4. Responsive Design

With the growth of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices, more and more people use small screens to view and read web page information. As a web designer, you should understand the principles of responsive web design to keep your web pages readable on small screens. (12 best responsive web design tutorials to get you started!)

5. Graphic Design

Web design is different from graphic design. If you are a web designer with graphic design skills, this will enhance your marketability.

6. Adobe Animate

Animation can make a dull web page dynamic. An appropriate animation will make your website more attractive. Especially for name-brand clothing, cars, film, and television websites, an animation is particularly important. Visual impact will help with brands identity and recognition.

Web Designer’s Technical Skills

With the rapid development of web development technology, the requirements for web designers are getting higher and higher. In addition to being proficient in professional skills, understanding the necessary web development language will have a longer-term benefit for you.

1. HTML

Some people might not think Web designers should master HTML, however, whether you are a developer or not, you should know basic HTML/CSS. This will help you to more easily read, edit and solve problems. However, depending on your actual work as a designer/developer, the level and scope you need to know may be even broader. In any case, you should be aware of how styles and colors are controlled and adjusted by code. These skills are extremely useful in the long run.

2. CSS

CSS and HTML are partners in website development and are the basic building blocks of web page structure and style. HTML determines the structure of the site, and CSS handles the visual appearance. For example, CSS lets you adjust colors, change fonts, or add stunning backgrounds.

3. JavaScript

With the ability to write design code in HTML and CSS, you can help render yourself more competitive by learning to program in JavaScript. As a web designer you know JavaScript, that may help you solve big problems in actual work. In addition, according to a survey by StackOverflow, JS is the most popular programming language for full stack developers.

4. Web Server Management

Most web designers think they can ignore the server, but the web server and downtime issues are inevitable. You don't need to be a back-end expert, but understanding how a web server and web hosting and their basic features work will help you solve problems faster.

Web Designer’s Soft Skills

Now that we’ve discussed professional and technical skills, we should look at adding some soft skills to help keep our web design work more organized.

1.Time management

Whether you are a freelancer or work for a company, time management skills are important. The rapid updating of project iterations means that the design must also be updated from time to time. Good web designers need to manage their schedules and follow up on project needs.

2. Project Management

Project management is a key job skill in almost every industry, and web design is no exception. Good project management skills not only benefit the project but also benefit your career.

3. SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is useful for anyone building a website. Web designers and web developers should at least understand the basics of SEO, and that will be a plus for your work.

Many factors can affect the ranking of a website in a search engine, from the content of the site to its inbound links to its download speed, performance, and its mobile-friendliness. All of these are factors that web designers should pay attention to when designing. Once you know SEO, you can use these factors to make the site more attractive to search engines, thus making it easier to find for customers.

4. Customer Service

Although customer service is not a technical skill, providing excellent customer service is a requirement in order for a good web designer to win customers and achieve better results. Even the best web designers/developers may fail.

Is Ryzen better than Intel?

posted on May 13, 2021

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IT Technician here. The question is badly phrased : Ryzen is an AMD brand. AMD’s competitor, Intel, is the company who holds the “Core” brand.

Short answer:

The AMD Ryzen CPUS are progressively taking over the Intel Core processors in all matters, from brute performances per core to performance/watt ratio, while remaining still more afordable.

Also, AMD AM4 motherboard compatibility spans, for the best motherboards, over all generations of Ryzen (from 1x00 to 5xx0) if the manufacturer offers the right BIOS updates, while Intel motherboards are limited to.. one generation of CPU, even if the architecture barely changes from one generation to another.

Longer answer:

In a general fashion, AMD Ryzen 3, 5, 7 & 9 correspond to Intel Core i3, i5, i7, & i9, and these denomination are related to core and thread count, each brand & series being declined generations after generation by respectively AMD & Intel.

Desktop computers:

The last AMD Ryzen generation (4th generation, named “Zen 3”, and marketed as “Ryzen 5xx0”, forgive AMD’s logic lol) is faster than the 10th generation of Intel Core, both in single thread & in multi-thread computation (at equivalent number of cores/threads), due to its amount of Instructions Per Cycles (+ 20% compared to Intel 10th gen), and more power-savvy as well due to the second generation of 7nm lithography it employs.

What will happen to C/C++ in the next 20 years?

posted on May 13, 2021

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If the recent past is any guide:

  •     the C language will remain mostly stable and unchanged
  •     The C++ language will adopt many new things, in 20 years it will probably be from 2 to 10 times as complex as it is now

Some alternative programming languages will rise for the domain that is now dominated by C and C++, but they will not get much traction. The successful ideas from these languages will be incorporated in C++ (and a few unsuccesful ones too), but will be ignored by C.

C will remain dominant in Electrical Engineering curricula and careers (and in the Linux kernel). C++ will become dominant in low-level/high-performance/resource-constrained programming that is not intimately tied to electronics.

Hardware will continue to evolve, hence things that are now done in C and C++ will be done in other, more programmer-friendly but less performant (less CPU-friendly) languages. New application areas will arise that require performant languages to get the most out of the hardware, these things (gadgets? wearables? intelligent dust? who knows) will be programmed in C or C++.

Which is stronger: the Intel Core i3 (8th Generation) or the Intel Core i7 (2nd Generation)?

posted on May 13, 2021

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Which is stronger: the Intel Core i3 (8th Generation) or the Intel Core i7 (2nd Generation)

From a purely technical perspective, the Intel i7 from the second generation is stronger.

Around 6th gen, Intel decided, for whatever reason, that they would make the substrate (the part that goes between the silicon and the socket) thinner. All future processors (not used for HPC purposes) inherited this thinner substrate. On that basis alone, the 2nd Gen i7 is stronger than the 8th gen i3.

On top on the substrate differences, there’s also the use of solder to transfer the heat from the silicon to the integrated heat spreader. 3rd gen and later used thermal paste, while 2nd gen used solder; which makes it more rigid in that area as well, as solder is metal compared to paste, which is not.

Undeniably, if you had to use either one or the other as a building material, the i7 would be a better choice.

Addendum, June 11, 2020: With the arrival of the 10th generation, the latest i9s and i7s have reclaimed the title of Strongest Intel Processor from the 2nd generation. While the substrate remains thin, they use solder instead of the paste (something shared with the 9th generation). However, the 10th generation has thinner silicon as compared to the 9th generation (to aid in thermal performance). To compensate for the thinner silicon, the heat spreader is that much thicker as compared to all older processors, resulting in significantly better structural rigidity overall. Just don’t push too hard on the exposed substrate, that’s still thin.

Blade Servers vs Rack Servers vs Tower Servers

posted on May 12, 2021

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Servers come in several different configurations. In the data center, decisions about blade server vs. rack server vs. tower server will affect performance, data center space, budgets, and scalability.

This article is a quick start guide to rack servers, blade servers, tower servers: how to understand their advantages and shortcomings, and how each type fits into your server requirements.
server

Before we go in-depth, let’s look at a quick summary of each:

  • Rack servers are mounted on standardized racks that can reach 10 feet in height, allowing the data center to efficiently deploy dozens of rack-mounted servers.
  • Blade servers are small circuit boards that act as servers within their server enclosure; they are an excellent choice for high processing power in a dense environment.
  • Tower servers come with the capacity for high optimization and customization, allowing organizations to match the server configuration to their needs.


What Is a Rack Server?

A rack server is a server mounted inside a rack. Rack servers are typically general-purpose servers that support a broad range of applications and computing infrastructure. The racks stack servers vertically to save data center floor space. The more equipment that admins can stack vertically, the more equipment they can house.

Standardized racks are measured in units (U’s) that are 1.75 inches tall and 19 inches wide. Rack servers fit into these dimensions by vertical multipliers, meaning that rack server heights may be 1U, 4U, 10U, or higher, like the 10 foot tall 70U rack that came out in 2016. Additional devices are also manufactured to fit the rack unit standard, so companies can make use of empty units in their racks.
Blade vs. Rack vs. Tower Servers

Rack Server Pros

• Self-contained: Each rack server has everything necessary to run as a stand-alone or networked system: its own power source, CPU, and memory. This enables rack servers to run intensive computing operations.

• Efficiency: Rack-mounted servers and other computing devices mke highly efficient use of limited data center space. Rack servers can be easily expanded with additional memory, storage, and processors. And it’s physically simple to hot-swap rack servers if admins have shared or clustered the server data for redundancy.

• Cost-effective: Smaller deployments offer management and energy efficiency at lower cost.
Rack Server Cons

• Power usage: Densely populated racks require more cooling units, which raises energy costs. Large numbers of rack servers will raise energy needs overall.

• Maintenance: Dense racks require more troubleshooting and management time.

What Is a Blade Server?

A blade server is a server enclosure that houses multiple modular circuit boards called server blades. Most blade servers are stripped down to CPUs, network controllers, and memory. Some have internal storage drives. Any other components—like switches, ports, and power connectors—are shared through the chassis.

The enclosures typically fit rack unit measurements, which allows IT to save space. Admins can cluster blades or manage and operate each individually as its own separate server, such as assigning applications and end-users to specific blades. Their modular architecture supports hot swaps. Blades have small external handles, so it’s a simple matter to pull out or replace them.

Blade servers have high processing power to serve complex computing needs. They can scale to high performance levels, if the data center has enough cooling and energy to support the dense infrastructure.

Blade Server Pros

• Low energy spend: Instead of powering and cooling multiple servers in separate racks, the chassis supplies power to multiple blade servers. This reduces energy spend.

• Processing Power: Blade servers provide high processing power while taking up minimal space.

• Multi-Purpose: They can host primary operating systems and hypervisors, databases, applications, web services, and other enterprise-level processes and applications.

• Availability: The blade server environment simplifies centralized monitoring and maintenance, load balancing, and clustered failover. Hot swapping also helps to increase system availability.
Blade Server Cons

• Upfront costs: Over time, operating expenses are reasonable thanks to simplified management interfaces and lower energy usage. However, initial capital, deployment, and configuration costs can be high.

• Energy costs: High density blade servers require advanced climate control. Heating, cooling, and ventilation are all necessary expenditures in order to maintain blade server performance.

What Is a Tower Server?

Tower servers are servers in a stand-alone chassis configuration. They are manufactured with minimal components and software, so mid-size and enterprise customers can heavily customize the servers for specific tasks. For example, tower servers usually do not come with additional components like advanced graphic cards, high RAM, or peripherals.

Tower servers are typically targeted to customers who want to customize their servers and maintain a customized upgrade path. For example, customers can configure tower servers as general-purpose servers, communication servers, web servers, or network servers that integrate using HTTP protocols. Buyers may order the customization they need, or do it themselves when the tower server is shipped to their site. Another usage case is a smaller business that needs a single powerful server to run multiple processes and applications.

Externally they resemble desktop towers, and—like desktops—they do not share input devices. Multiple tower installations will require separate keyboards, mice, and monitors; or switches that make it possible to share peripheral devices. They can share network storage like any other type of server.

Tower Server Pros

• Efficient scalability: Tower servers come with minimal configuration, so IT can customize and upgrade them based on business needs. They are less expensive to buy than a fully loaded server.
• Low cooling costs: With their low component density, towers are less expensive to cool than dense racks or blades.

Tower Server Cons

• Upgrade expense. Many customers buy tower servers for the customization and not low capital costs. High-end hardware components and software will raise the ongoing price considerably.

• Large footprint: These servers do not fit in racks and consume data center space. They require opening the enclosure to troubleshoot and add or upgrade internal components.

• Awkward peripheral management: In multiple tower server environments, IT must invest in switches or re-plug external devices into each separate server.

Will Cryptocurrency Investing Become the Next Dotcom Bubble?

posted on May 12, 2021

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In fact, we’re already in the early stages of a crypto bubble.

Well take a look yourself.

paris-hilton

A) Paris Hilton loves crypto

lidsay-2


B) Lindsay Lohan NFT sells for $50k

cnbc-1

C) CNBC hyping up dogecoin and talking about crypto with the same suspense as sports events

D) Everyone wants to day trade crypto.
crypto4

E) NFTs sold for extreme prices.

Not to mention, my uncle, mum and aunt are all buying crypto. If that isn’t an early sign of a bubble, I don’t know what is.

How are these early signs of a bubble?

Well if you were around back in the dotcom days, you would find these signs all too similar.

Back in the 90s, the internet completely transformed communication forever and early investors saw this opportunity. They were salivating for profits.

This led to the dotcom bubble, which was a stock market bubble caused by massive speculation of internet stocks. The NASDAQ itself rose by 400% in 5 years, which is absolutely bonkers for a traditional stock market index.

The FOMO was very real back then. People were quitting their jobs and taking on loads of debt to day trade for a living.

And news media outlets were also hyping it up, similar to what we see today with crypto.

Much of what went on was speculative, pretty much every company was losing money and focused on marketing instead. (Everything in crypto is speculative)

But this did not stop people from investing in them. They ignored the weak cash flow and were mesmerised by the promise of this new technology. Who could blame them really. (Sounds familiar?)

This is the definition of a bubble by the way. When the price of something is waayyy higher than the actual real value of the thing itself.

Our view of the market is heavily warped

In crypto today, we can see many projects that seem to be great ideas on the surface. We look at their website, read all their fancy words and all their amazing benefits and we really do get a sense that there is great potential behind each one.

However, the prices of these projects are heavily warped.

Warped? By what?

Well, by us.

You see, when someone buys into a crypto, they become a mini-brand ambassador for the project. If you’ve been in crypto long enough, you will realise almost everyone is “shilling” their own bags in this way.

Everyone wears their cryptos like a badge and treat it like a religion. We already have different sub-communities such as BTC maxis, XRP army and LINK marines.

The crypto space is pretty tribal, but for marketing purposes, this is great for the cryptos. Each investor is providing free word-of-mouth, attracting developers and new investors to their project. (Similar to how marketing was such a big component of the dotcom bubble)

This creates an echo chamber and heavily influences new investors entering the market.

These new investors get distracted by prices and the very seductive chance of earning a huge amount of money, but do not base their investments on solid fundamentals. (Ignoring fundamentals, similar to the dotcom bubble)

Many just invest in whatever a You-Tuber or an Elon Musk tweet tells them to, thinking that they can get-rich-quick.

Many projects get pumped and hyped up because of this, becoming very popular, very quickly. And they use quality web hosts as well.

This then attracts more investors, and the cycle goes on.

Don’t take financial advice from a stranger on the internet. Investing is risky, period. Do your own research and invest only what you can afford to lose.

Top Ten Best Web Designing Companies in India in 2021

posted on May 12, 2021

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These are the top ten best web designing companies in India in 2021.

web-design-development

Unified Infotech

Unified Infotech is a technology company headquartered in New York with another office in Kolkata, India. Unified Infotech developed a home management platform that needed support creating a more user-friendly UI. They provided development, design, SA, and QA services for the client. They leveraged multiple technologies and went well beyond the original scope of work to create an improvement from the previous product.

KrishaWeb

KrishaWeb is a full-service digital agency based in Montgomery Village, Md., with an office in Ahmedabad, India. KrishaWeb provided development support to a digital marketing agency. They assisted them in development projects of all types, including website and app development, the creation of graphics and logos, and branding.

Cynexis Media

Cynexis Media is a web design and development firm based in Columbus, Ohio. A social fashion startup hired Cynexis Media for web and mobile app development. Handling everything from strategy to implementation, the agency was able to create two distinct but seamlessly integrated platforms. The client was impressed with Cynexis Media's commitment to the project.

Suffescom Solutions

Suffescom Solutions is an IT firm skilled in web design, web development, and e-commerce development. Suffescom Solutions designed a custom website for a small media company. The project included optimizing the website for search and integrating feed partners.

Virtual Employee

Virtual Employee is a remote staffing company based in Rockland, Maine, with a satellite office in Noida, India. Virtual Employee worked with a call center company to supply virtual assistant services that would assist the client in reducing redundancies while streamlining its tasks. The client was particularly pleased with Virtual Employee's communication and data entry processing tools.

Crantia Technologies

Crantia Technologies is a web design company based in Trivandrum, India, and founded in 2014. Crantia Technologies upgraded a website for a building materials company. They collected necessary information from the clients and used SEO best practices and PHP to advance and launch the site.

VirtusaPolaris

VirtusaPolaris is an international business consulting firm that offers a multitude of IT services ranging from web development and design to software development to IT consulting to business process outsourcing. With offices in Chennai, India, Westborough, MA, and New York, NY, VirtusaPolaris has been around since 1993 and is composed of an ever-growing team of nearly 3,000 employees.

A patron account services company hired VirtusaPolaris to build an answering service. VirtusaPolaris developed a fully automated answering machine that the client still uses to this day. The client was impressed with VirtusaPolaris's reliability and the success of the answering machine system.

Uplers

Uplers is a Sydney-based global outsourcing company specializing in web development, SEO, PPC, and digital strategy. Uplers provided software development resources to a marketing firm. The team was responsible for frontend development, using HTML, CSS, and WordPress.

Ray Creations

Ray Creations is a web design and development company founded in 2006 and located in Ghaziabad, India. Ray Creations upgraded a waterjet cutting machines manufacturer’s website and incorporated a WooCommerce store. The team also led SEO and web management efforts. They handled the project well and delivered a useful product.

MandyWebDesign

Mandy Web Design is a web design and development agency based in Punjab, India. Mandy Web Design provided SEO work for a leather goods store to enhance the digital presence. After reworking the site to be SEO compatible, they boosted keyword rankings to the first and second pages.

All these companise need quality web hosting services and that's why it's importnat for hosts to maintain good relationship with them.

After Apple’s M1, are the days of x86 over?

posted on May 12, 2021

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The M1. It’s freaking insane.

m1-image
That single-threaded performance don’t lie.

m1-image1

Could be better in multi-threading.

Mind you the XEON E5–2687W v3 is a 10-core server CPU with 20 threads. The Ryzen 7 1700—which I bought on release—has 8 cores and 16 threads. These are old CPUs though.

A “fairer” comparison would be against a Ryzen 5600X, that has 91% of the M1’s single-threaded score and is within 0.07% of the M1’s multi-threaded score per thread (not core).

—Oh great, it’s just a Ryzen with Apple branding. One would say.

But no! That’s not the point!

amd

This is part of a trend we've seen coming for a while. Apple’s not even the first company to make a good ARM chip for a computer.

Anyone remember the AMD Opteron A1100 from 2016?

The logic has always been the same. ARM is very efficient, but not very powerful. But certain server processes require just that. Amazon is not stupid, so they did the same thing with the Graviton chips—though the first ones were kind of shit.

—But hey, it’s coming! ARM is just around the corner. It’ll be awesome. We said.

And then this M1 came.

It’s Ryzen-level performance on four times less TDP and roughly a quarter of the juice.

The M1 goes about 30W on a multi-threaded load. A 5600X will go up to 140[1]W fully loaded.

It’s no longer around the corner. This is here.

I’d be hugely surprised if AMD is not working on a revival of their Opteron ARM ambitions.

It will take some time for compatibility to catch up and SDKs/frameworks to be mature enough, but the incentives are now here. This performance per watt is insane. Much longer battery lives, much cheaper servers (Graviton), more competition in the CPU space. Win, win, win.

It’s not the end for x86/64 but it surely is a new beginning as things heat up.

How do I start freelancing as a computer programmer?

posted on May 12, 2021

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There has never been a more exciting time to start freelancing as a remote software developer. Many engineers all over the world are making the transition to remote freelancing every year, and more and more companies are following the same trend. You will need a good web hosting parnter for your hosting needs.

With remote freelancing on the rise, and projections that within the next decade the majority of the U.S. workforce is going to work as freelancers, many freelancers are achieving successful careers (see freelance millionaires).

Here are some of the best practices that we hear from freelancers that can help you get started as a remote freelancer:

  • Find and master the skills that are demanded for remote positions.
  • It’s recommended to have at least 2-3 years of full-time experience with the skills that you want to focus on.
  • Have savings to “survive” for at least 6 months in case of issues.
  • Sometimes the start can be slower, and it’s always good to prevent unnecessary stress and be on the safe side.
  • Before quitting your full-time job, make sure to have at least one long-term client.
  • Long-term clients help build a stable portfolio of freelance income. In order to find long-term clients, the best way is to rely on personal connections and word-of-mouth, and/or joining a talent network.
  • Make a plan, set a realistic goal for at least 12-24 months ahead.
  • Freelancing can get tense, maybe even overwhelming in the beginning, and having a clear objective helps to make sure you keep focused on the right objectives.
  • Give it a try – pick-up a side gig for just a couple of hours per week.
  • It’s always helpful to get a sense of the experience before taking the leap to switch to full-time freelancing.
  • Join a reliable talent network. Not only can you find both long-term clients and potential side gigs there, but you will also have a clear sense of what is currently demanded by various clients all over the world. The network takes care of all administrative, legal and financial overhead, so I will know you will always get paid on time for the hours that you spend working for clients by the rate that you set upfront.
  • If possible, work on multiple projects at a time.
  • This helps you get more experience from different projects and environments in a shorter time, while also helping you balance out some of the specifics of each of the projects - one might be more focused on collaboration, whereas the other project might be primarily individual work etc.
  • Learn from other freelancers and ask a lot of questions.
  • Find a local meetup community (meetup.com), check out some of the events organized by talent networks (e.g. toptal.com/community/events), attend conferences or reach out to different online communities.

After years of freelance work and listening to hundreds of freelance developers, the points above are the most important take-aways that can help you get started freelancing without taking too much risk. People that had never thought of finding the courage to get started with independent contracting work have followed these simple principles and now are working remotely for different clients all over the world.

What is the highest CPU motherboard? Is there an 8 CPU motherboard or 16 CPU motherboard?

posted on May 12, 2021

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Intel Xeon motherboards can have (currently) up to 8 sockets. Just search for “8 socket motherboard” and you will find them.

servers-image

A quick look did not find AMD motherboards that could hold 8 sockets.

I have not heard of any 16-sockets systems.

It is not entirely clear under what conditions you want such a thing. One use case would be applications that need a great number of threads running in a coherent shared memory address space. This sort of thing might be useful, for example, in DNA sequencing with very large RAM, but not too much bandwidth per thread. They might also be useful as in-memory database machines, but that’s not my area.

8-socket systems will cost more per socket than 4 socket systems, which cost more per socket than 2-socket systems, and so forth. The reason for this is that you need rather expensive motherboards to get the intersocket connections routed correctly. If you don’t need a very large shared memory, you can get more computing per dollar with smaller servers and a fast network.

Back at SiCortex our boards had 27 processor sockets, each with 2 DIMM sockets, but that was an unusual system and not x86 compatible :)

How can I add SSL Certificate in my host when the domain is somewhere else?

posted on May 12, 2021

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The precise answer to the question depends highly on the specific hosting company in use.

But, as general advice, TLS (formerly, SSL) certificates may be installed on any hosting provider (or any server on the Internet) as long as the DNS records point to the server IP address where the HTTPS server is running.

An extra point of confusion is that the company where your domain is registered may be different from where the DNS records are hosted - for consumer services these are typically the same company.

It doesn’t matter who manages your domain names. If your domain name is pointed to your web host (you’ve added the name servers to your domain with your domain registrar), you can install an SSL certificate on your server.

On many hosting providers, you can do it via cPanel or Plesk. In your dashboard, locate the SSL certificates section and import your SSL files. For some servers, you’ll need the OpenSSL utility to configure SSL.

Possible Ways for Website Monetization

posted on May 11, 2021

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Many people start a website with the intent of making money. Others do it for the enjoyment of building something or sharing their knowledge. Whatever the reason, there is an abundance of tools available to you to help you turn your digital content into an income generating machine. You will also need a good web hosting partner in order to achive your goals.

Whether you are looking to get rich or simply make some passive income, here are some strategies to get your online content to make the most for you.

1) Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

This one is probably the most widely known and used. So much that I hesitated including it in this list. But, if you’re new to the world of online advertising, this is a must-know, and it can certainly be profitable.

With PPC advertising, you as the advertiser lease out some of your space on your site to let companies advertise their products and services. There are even platforms, called advertising networks, that allow you to offload all the heavy lifting.

There are several programs available, varying in ease of use and payouts. Check out some of the following and see what fits your needs:

  • Google Adsense - simple to use/setup, high CPM and CPC rates.
  • RevenueHits -  variety of ads, simple to use.
  • Chitika.com - can use with Adsense, high CPC rates, less intuitive.
  • Clicksor - large variety of ads, works well with traffic from UK and CA.

2) Lead Marketing

Lead marketing is the process of generating qualified interest on behalf of a company. Many businesses are willing to pay you to help them with list building, growing their email lists, or gaining sales leads.

This is one that you can do yourself, if you have the connections and know-how, and a lot of time on your hands. If you don’t, however, there are tools and services to allow you to plug and play.

3) Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a way of marketing a product or service in a way that you get paid a commission for every customer that signs up for said product or service. Most affiliate programs will give you links to put on your website. Those links have parameters in the URL to track what signups and purchases come from you. If you can find a way to incorporate this into your website, it has great money-making potential.

  • Amazon Associates  -  this one is my favorite for it’s ease of use and high number of products to search.
  • Commission Junction
  • Others — there are so many niche affiliate programs that I wouldn’t be able to list them all in one article. Many websites have their own affiliate programs. No matter your website’s niche, you’re pretty much guaranteed to find some program that works for you.

4) Sell Your Own Products

Chances are, if you’ve started a website, it is because you are knowledgable or passionate about the subject matter on your site. Use that to your advantage and share your knowledge. You can very easily sell that knowledge in digital format (pdf book, instructional videos, access to premium site content).

You may also have some physical product that you could sell to consumers. There are many tools to help you sell online. Here are a few:

  • Woocommerce  -  this one is a Wordpress specific plugin that can help you sell online. If your site is built on Wordpress, this is a quick easy way to start selling products.
  • Paypal  - this is an oldie, but still, probably one of the easiest ways to sell digital content if you have minimal technological abilities. Paypal has a feature for easily selling those e-products.
  • Squarespace -  another option, if you’re looking to sell products. I haven’t tried this myself, but friends have told me it’s fairly intuitive. If you find you can’t fully build a Squarespace site yourself, they have a program to help you find specialists to help you (for a price, of course).
  • Stripe, Braintree -  if you’re more technically inclined and familiar with code, both Stripe and Braintree provide payment processing solutions and both have excellent APIs and documentation. I highly recommend both.

5) Donations

I’m not one to ask for handouts. But increasingly, I’m finding legitimate reasons for sites to ask for donations. Wikipedia, is known for it’s free service of providing a wealth of knowledge and asking for donations in return. If you provide some open source knowledge, consider allowing people to reward you for the benefit they receive.

  • Gratipay -  provides voluntary payments for open work.
  • Paypal - again, one you have probably seen before.

6) Sponsored Posts & Reviews

Just two days ago, I was looking for a review on Nordic Lifting’s knee sleeves
to help with my squat. The second link to come up in Google search was a YouTube video. Nordic Lifting reached out to this guy and asked him to do a review of their product.

Similarly, I know many bloggers who write reviews or sponsored posts for companies. If you have a large audience, consider reaching out to a company that you love and let them know that you’d love to promote their business.

No matter your choice for monetization of your website, you will need a realiable web hosting service provider.

Rack Server – a Closer Look

posted on May 11, 2021

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What Is a Rack Server?

Rack servers are mountable servers placed in metal frame racks. Rack servers are one of three form factors for servers, with the other two standards being blade servers and tower servers.

As data centers and IT professionals worked to develop improved methods for storing more servers while not sacrificing space or connectivity, server racks entered the scene. Server racks offer the space, fit, and proper environment for servers to continue operating at a high performance.

What is a 1U rack server?

Racks are designed to hold the dimensions of rack servers. Standardized frames are 19 inches wide and a variable number of rack units or U’s (equivalent to 1.75in) in height. A standard rack-mount server is a 1U rack server, with a width of 19″ and a height of 1.75″. Most rack servers are 1U or 2U, but the largest rack server comes in at 70U (10ft).

With pre-installed rails for a 2U rack server’s height, the data center administrator only needs a push inwards and rack screws to secure the 19″ by 3.5″ module into the rack.

Also Read: Dell Continues to Rise
Rack Server Components
Component     Function
Motherboard     Enables communication between components
Central Processing Unit (CPU)     Executes start instructions; also known as the processor
Random Access Memory (RAM)     Stores server memory; increases speed of data access
Host Bus Adapter (HBA)     Connects external devices to server
I/O Ports     Embedded into system board for endpoint access into system
Drive Bays     Open slots for adding hard drives (HDD) or solid state drives (SDD)
Supporting equipment     All else needed for smooth performance: rails, screws, cable managers, cooling system, sensors, etc.
NVMe     Non-Volatile Memory express facilitates access to storage and come in the form of SSDs, NVMe cards, and M.2 cards
PCIe     Peripheral Component Interconnect express connects expanded hardware to the motherboard

How Are Rack Servers Compared?

Manufacturers have designed servers to do just about everything you can imagine a computer to do. When comparing rack servers, the indicators frequently used to compare products include:

  • Target workloads: What tasks is the server capable of or specializes in doing?
  • Processor type: Which CPU processors are included with the rack server?
  • Memory: What is the server’s RAM capacity and DIMM slots count?
  • NVMe drives: How many drives of NVMe drives are available?
  • PCIe slots: How many PCIe slots are there and are they compatible with 3rd and 4th Gen PCIe?
  • Disk drives: What size and how many disk drives are insertable?
  • Storage: How much total storage is possible?
  • Rack height: How many Us does the device take up?
  • Operating systems: What OS software is the server compatible with?
  • Integrated security: What security features come pre-installed on the server?

How Do Rack Servers Work?

The rack environment has been critical to organizations because it offers interchangeability and access for essential components, including the server rack. A server rack’s easy implementation also means server administrators can easily remove them for inspection and troubleshooting. Rack servers can also hot-swap with another server to continue the mission-critical activity and limit downtime.

Because a rack server describes the form factor and not the intent, rack servers can take on any number of roles for a network. Responsibilities could include storage, email, web, proxy, application server duties, data-intensive applications, and more.

Benefits of Rack Servers
Self-contained and accessible

Rack servers are designed with their power source, CPU, and memory to run as a standalone or network system. The server’s operation is independent of the remaining rack components, which means that the rack server can be installed, configured, or removed quickly–without disassembly of the rack’s infrastructure or downtime.

Efficient space usage

In a world intent on expanding resources, available physical space is a data center’s most precious gift. The thinking goes more space, more racks, more server power. Racks and the servers built to fill them maximize space limitations with the dense organization. Unless dealing with a 70U rack server, frames hold many servers and equipment that save space.

Cooling mechanism

A top priority of any server administrator is ensuring the module won’t overheat when working hard. Unlike blade and tower servers, rack servers have an incredible capacity for a cooling system. Many racks come pre-installed with cooling systems today, with more available for installation. Fit with real-time sensors and accessible configuration, the rack server’s cooling mechanism protects against overheating and system failure. And the more powerful and densely packed servers become, the more important cooling becomes.

Rack Server Considerations

Though many of the top solutions share some of these features, buyers should consider the following factors when purchasing rack servers:

  • Processing Power
  • Scalability
  • Expandability
  • Upgradability
  • Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP)

Whether an organization needs additional storage, additional servers, or a server replacement, rack servers are the best form factor. With their portability and ease of access, organizations can scale, expand, and upgrade their systems seamlessly. Still, processing power remains the biggest selling point for server manufacturers.

Size, weight, and power (SWaP) also play their part and can cause faulty server or rack performance if not correctly configured. For example, an overly heavy rack server could require more cooling. Without adjusting the cooling system or moving other components, the rack’s pieces are at risk of overheating.

Server Market

After raking in $83.66 billion in 2020, the global server market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.8%% between 2021 to 2028. Rack server sales accounted for over half of server market revenue with $43 billion.

As noted, nearly 50% of the server industry market has long been owned by Dell, HPE, and IBM. One of the reasons for this is clear market stratification—the ODM white boxes on the low end and the midrange and high-end systems are experiencing massive growth as separate segments. So as you shop, be aware of what price level you find most appropriate for your business.

More than just high-computing machines, vendors continue to add features that support big data analytics, software-defined solutions, and hyper-converged infrastructure. Factors influencing the server market include increasing data center needs and the adoption of new technologies like cloud computing.

Rack Servers: Contained, Condensed, and Cool

Rack servers are self-contained to prevent disruption to other rack components, condensed to offer high-powered performance in minimal space, and are kept cool to facilitate the best environment for work. On top of these features, rack servers offer organizations scalability, expandability, and upgradability. Racks offer both the additional space and structural framework for organizations to scale out or up and upgrade when necessary.

Top Rack Servers of 2021

posted on May 11, 2021

tags:

Businesses shopping for rack servers have fewer vendors to choose from than in years past, as market consolidation and acquisitions have left a rack server industry dominated by the few. Web hosting companies also choose the best possible servers for their business.

The top three providers remain Dell EMC, HPE, and IBM, accounting for almost 43% of the server vendor market, according to Gartner. Vendors competing for a seat at the table include Lenovo, Huawei, and Inspur, while Cisco, Fujitsu, and Oracle continue to produce unique, high-performance machines. We look at the top rack servers available today, whether you need a general-purpose server or one for data-intensive applications, followed by an overview of the rack server market and what buyers should look for in a rack server.

Top Rack Servers
Cisco UCS C240 M6

The newest addition to the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) C-Series servers is the 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processor. The Cisco C240 M6 includes 32 DIMM slots, 8TB of capacity, RAID control, and an internal dual M.2 drive option.

The C240 M6 is a two-socket, 2RU form factor and goes further than its predecessor in offering high-performance computing. This upgrade includes additional ranges of DDR4 DIMMs capacity, eight PCIe 4.0 slots, 28 storage interface slots, up to 960GB for M.2 boot options, and support for up to five GPUs. It’s worth noting that the fourth and most recent generation of PCI express is twice as fast as PCIe 3.0, with a data rate of 16 GT/s.

This server is fit for an array of tasks including storage, I/O intensive applications, and high-performance computing. For small organizations, consider the C225. For anything more, your best bet will be the C240 M6.

Dell EMC PowerEdge R750

The Dell EMC PowerEdge R750 sits atop the suite of Dell EMC PowerEdge rack servers, offering up to 24 NVMe drives and eight PCIe 4.0 slots for throughput. Specs include two 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors that total 80 processors. For memory, the PowerEdge R750 carries 32 DIMM slots, up to 8TB of capacity, and can take six different disk types.

Designed to manage demanding workloads ranging from database analytics to AI, virtualization, and machine learning, the PowerEdge R750 provides excellent performance for a general-purpose server. According to Dell EMC, this server is “the optimal rack server to address application performance and acceleration.”

Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX4770 M5

With long-time partner Sun Microsystems, Fujitsu continues to make moves in the server market, including unveiling Solaris-compatible UltraSparc chips in September 2020. For now, Fujitsu’s PRIMERGY server lineup offers the latest generation of Intel Xeon processors.

The Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX4770 M6 is a 2U, quad-socket server using 3rd Gen Intel Xeon processors. Providing 28 cores per socket and 12 DIMM slots per CPU, this server can hold up to 15 TB in memory. The RX4770 is flexible, with twelve operating systems to choose from and a 3-year warranty. Storage disk allotments include 16 general slots for up to 6 NVMe adapters and 8 PCIe 3.0 slots. Solaris as an operating system continues to gain steam as the only enterprise-class Unix system available for x86.

Organizations seeking a scalable and expandable server solution won’t be disappointed in the Fujitsu RX4770.

HPE Proliant DL380 Gen10

The HPE Proliant DL380 has long been a popular server in the market, offering reliability, performance, and a wealth of features for a reasonable cost. In its newest iteration, the DL380 Gen10 continues to meet SMB needs with better processors, more memory, NVMe ports, and more robust networking. Notable improvements include the addition of two 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors that upped performance by 60% and 27% in cores.

The 2U rack server functions well for databases, analytics, and mission-critical applications, but loses out to some more expensive models on high-end features. That said it comes with enough reliability, serviceability, availability, GPU options, and Windows Server support to make it a good choice for general-purpose servers in the enterprise.

Huawei FusionServer Pro 2288H V5

Established in 1987, China-based tech giant Huawei has experienced accelerating growth over the years, including a sturdy position in the rack server market. The FusionServer Pro 2288H V5 is a flexible, 2U, 2-socket server that’s suited for an array of workloads. From big data processing to databases and cloud computing, this server is suited to contemporary tasks and cuts power consumption up to 15% without a change in performance.

Where the FusionServer Pro 2288H V5 truly stands out is its availability to NVM express drives. Tied with Cisco C240, both servers offer up to 28 NVMe drives. With 12 Intel Optane persistent memory modules, the 2288H V5 can achieve up to 7.5 TB in-memory capacity and offers 10 PCIe 3.0 slots.

IBM Power System S922

The IBM Power System S922 is quite different from almost all the other racks in this guide in that it is one of two without an x86 processor from AMD or Intel. The IBM homegrown POWER9 processor adds to the initial cost but is worth it for organizations that need a resilient, cloud-enabled server. These servers offer top-notch processing power and up to 4TB of memory, easing cloud applications, analytics, and other demanding workloads.

The Power System S922 also includes fifteen PCIe 4.0 slots and two U.2 modules slots for expansion capabilities. The list of embedded features includes the PowerVM hypervisor. In line with its cloud-optimized focus, the PowerVM can consolidate and plan workloads that result in reduced overhead costs.

Inspur NF8480

Inspur was one of the first organizations to manufacture servers in China. As of late 2020, the company is just short of Dell EMC and HPE in global revenue for the broader server market.

We look at our first 4U server via the Inspur NF8480 M6. This four-socket module is fit for high-performance computing such as AI and deep learning inference and offers a whopping 50 slots for SAS, SATA, and NVMe drives. With 19 slots for PCIe 3.0 drives, this server is only second to Dell EMC’s E980. With the addition of 24 Intel Optane Persistent Memory 200 series, the total memory capacity is 7.5 TB.

The Inspur NF8480 M6 is a highly scalable solution and flexible for administrators who need full-height and half-height options for I/O balance and expansion.

Lenovo ThinkSystem SR630

If you are looking for a higher-end server with up to 7.5TB memory and 123TB storage capacity, the Lenovo ThinkSystem SR630 is hard to beat. It scored very well in benchmark tests for single-threaded compute-intensive applications and is well-regarded for most large enterprises.

Featuring the latest Intel Xeon processors, it comes with flexible I/O expansion options, four PCIe 4.0 slots, and four NVMe ports. It is also able to cope with harsh environments and keeps energy costs low relative to the amount of raw compute power it unleashes. With the Lenovo XClarity Controller and Administrator, the user experience only keeps improving for server managers.

Oracle Server X8-2

The Oracle Server X8 series is the newest industry line of x86 servers for middleware and application workloads. The Oracle Server X8-2 specifically is a compact, 1U module that allows up to 64TB of memory and 51.2TB of storage. For Oracle users, the X8-2 is a no-brainer as it interoperates with the wide range of Oracle hardware and software packages.

Unlike its predecessor, Oracle Server X7-2, which used 1st Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, the X8-2 is based on the Platinum or Gold 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. This upgrade means being able to execute in-silicon patches for Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities whereas prior generations required microcode patches.

Dell EMC PowerEdge R840

The PowerEdge R840 is the second four-socket rack server to make the list and is a big upgrade over the previous generation from Dell. Its small footprint includes up to four 2nd Gen Intel Xeon processors, 24 NVMe drives, and can also support two GPUs to accelerate workloads. Impressively, it comes with the second most memory offered in this rack server guide, with up to 6TB in capacity, and expanded to over 15TB capacity when using DC persistent memory and load reduction DIMM (LRDIMM).

If you are looking for an entry-level server, this is not it. But for more sophisticated workloads or a powerhouse server that can host multiple virtualized applications, this is a strong candidate.

HPE Proliant DL325 Gen10

The HPE Proliant DL325 Gen10 is a general-purpose server that packs more into a single socket than most 2-processor servers can manage. Notably, the Gen10 offers 2x the performance of the prior generation. For organizations that demand an enterprise-class processor without purchasing a dual processor, this might be for you.

The DL325 is a 2nd Gen AMD EYPC-based platform with enough security included to suit enterprise needs. It has plenty of memory in the form of 64 GB RDIMMs, supporting up to 2TB of memory. It boasts a low power consumption profile and power-packed chassis along with 8 NVMe drives, two PCIe 3.0 slots, and networking options.

IBM Power System E980

For our second IBM pick, the Power System E980 is a mammoth of a server for a 4U, quad-socket module. Ideal for large-scale, mission-critical applications, this server comes with a solid list of reliability, availability, and serviceability features.

With the use of four POWER9 processors, the Power System E980 can manage up to 48 cores per socket and 64 TB in memory. Though the server only offers 16 slots for NVMe, the E980 tops our list in PCIe 4.0 with 32 slots for optimized interconnection between system components.

The Power System E980 also provides easy to execute consolidation of under-utilized servers by sharing POWER9 processor resources. All said, the E980 is a good solution for enterprises working heavily with AIX, IBM i, and Linux applications.

Oracle SPARC T8-1

We can’t finish our list of top rack servers without mentioning the SPARC M8 processor, which just a few years ago set a world record for Java enterprise performance. All in a condensed 1U, single-socket server, the Oracle SPARC T8-1 is an excellent general-purpose machine and is reportedly 2x faster than competitor systems for Java software, databases, and applications.

Built for enterprise workloads, the SPARC T8-1 contains 16 DIMMs and can hold a maximum memory of 6.4 TB with NVDIMM capabilities. With only 8 insertable drives–only 4 of which can be NVMe–and 6 PCIe 3.0 ports, the server can store up to 25.6 TB. For organizations using Oracle software, adopting the T8-1 for its integration is a worthwhile consideration. Additional software like Oracle VM comes built-in to aid virtualization.

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