For future website owners one of the two most important things is making a decision on hosting. Hosting is the space that you website take up. When getting a hosting there are some factors to be cautious of.
When getting a hosting, the most important this is the accountability of the service provider and for it to be a professional and serious company: The hosting provider must definitely have website. On this website it must have an open address, land line and email address. A company without these shouldn’t be trusted. Don’t be fooled when acquiring a hosting by such words as “we provide you with unlimited hosting space” because the place you are buying this from is a server much like your own computer that uses a hard drive as storage. Because they cant possibly have unlimited hard drives, this means they cant possibly have unlimited hosting space. Another important factor is bandwidth.
Bandwidth is the space a guest on your page takes up when downloading a file off your website. Because newbie web designers don’t know much about bandwidth they tend to buy the lower end bandwidth packages. If a hosting company promises you unlimited bandwidth do not believe this, as there is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth. These are said purely to draw in customers.
- You must check the server location of the hosting company (Germany, Turkey etc.)
- You must find out about the plug-ins used on the server.
- You need to know the services the server provides (backup, carriage etc.)
- You need to know if the server speed is right for you.
- You must know how many MySQLs and subdomains they allow you to have. Some companies only allow one of each and this is unacceptable, you need to be cautious of this.
- The way a company interacts with their clients is of the utmost importance. How long it takes for them to get back to you and the way they talk, whether professionally or in an unprofessional manner is definitive of what kind of company they are.
I have a few tips for people looking for a hosting. Compare your prospective hosting company with these tips, read up on them and then make your mind up on whether or not you want to go with them. When getting a hosting you must pay close attention to the space, bandwidth, mysql, sub domain and email support. I will give an example regarding what I’ve written, going by this example you can decide on what kind of hosting you should get.
I have an average of 1000 visitors to my site daily. I have articles and a picture for each of these articles. The sizes of these pictures aren’t large. Ideally I would need 1 GB of space for this site. Because of the 1000 daily visitors , 30 GB of bandwidth will be sufficient. I will be distributing msn from my website so I need email support and unlimited email address adding capabilities. I will be putting up many scripts on my site, so I will need a sub domain and these require separate MySQLs so I will need to compose numerous MySQLs. So the average hosting features I would need would be thus;
- 1 GB of hosting.
- 30 GB of bandwidth
- Unlimited email
- Unlimited sub domains
- Unlimited MySQLs
A hosting with these specifications can be acquired from a serious hosting company from around $50 to $80. If the hosting quality is high but the price is low, this should be a sign of caution. Don’t get inferior hosting on the premise of affordability.
SSL Certificates and where to get them.
What are the prices of SSL certificates and where does one get them? SSL Certificate costs vary according to suppliers and to the certificates features. It is required that you pay between $50 and $700 for an SSL certificate. Due to the fact that your SSL certificate is required for you e-commerce site you will need to buy a server type certificate. Also you will need to use a fixed IP address to use an SSL certificate. Fixed IP addresses are necessary to get through firewalls when making transactions with your bank. For this reason, only requests from certain IP addresses will be evaluated. A fixed IP address is around $30. Banks do not have preferences when it comes to SSL certificate brands, so a certificate with a lower price should be the aim when buying one.
Procedures to be executed when creating an e-commerce website:
Necessary information on the EST POS SYSTEM.
Virtual POSs from banks are realized with the help of the epayment.ddl library transactions supplied by the EST Company. Currently we have the epayment.ddl version 1.0.1517.23556 written in .net. I would advise that you update the old version whenever a new version is supplied by EST.
IMPORTANT: applications are made by companies for those who have an e-commerce website.
1. Your application will be confirmed by the bank within 7-15 days. During the confirmation period your running site will be supervised by the banks (injection tests etc.)
2. Before your application, the shopping-cart application must be completed and your site must be navigable for usage.
3. After this confirmation, your virtual POS account will be identified.
4. Right after this identification you will receive all required information via the email address and phone number you have provided.
5. By using the identified username and password you can log in to your banks virtual POS page and download necessary information and software.
6. After installing this software into your server you can start making transactions. According to the dimensions of integrations you are to make to your system, this can take from 15-20 minutes to 4-5 hours.
Example: Bank of America virtual POS pre application form states that you require the following;
1. Your sites design and programming must be prepared for e-commerce.
2. Acquire a fixed IP address for the SSL certificate.
3. Get a 128-bit certificate.
4. Agreeing with an appropriate bank for a virtual POS.
5. Adapting the codes given by the bank to your website.
6. Testing the site.
7. Open publication of the site.
What are the steps for a bank application?
For virtual POS tests to be initiated, the client must contact those concerned at the bank and acquire necessary information regarding virtual POS and transfer them to the company. This information is;
Parameter Description
Host: Bank server address
ClientId: Member workplace number(numeric)
Name: Member workplace username.
Password: Member workplace password.
After this information is received, if necessary it is possible to contact EST and initiate codification procedures.
Specifications and procedures to be executed by the company.
First of all, the host address, clientId, password and username information given by EST will be tested in a test procedure. If confirmation is received, you can move on to the actual process with the information from the client.
You need to enter your clientId, name and password encrypted into the the specific blanks in the payment.ddl database, where the POS tabe is. The encryption applied here must be two-ways in that when this information is to be used it will be deciphered. One of the space to be found on this table is the host address. Because the host address, clientid, password and username are different for tests and for actual usage, this address information must be edited hen entering the production media.
IMPORTANT: any kind of fixed IP address identification is not necessary for a bank virtual POS. otherwise during firewall procedures there will be no identified fixed IP address on the banks fireall, so all your requests will be denied.
