Web hosting is, more or less, an agreement between you and a web hosting service provider that you will pay a monthly lease to own and operate a portion of their massive web servers. These are computers that will house all of your data, and will allow others to get a good look at the content you so painstakingly create. Think of it as a storage unit with windows that other Internet users will drive by and take a peep through.

In order to operate a web site you absolutely need a web hosting account, as no site can just live on the Internet without a web server. Since web server usually costs thousands of dollars it is much more affordable to simply lease one from a web hosting provider. Web hosting services give you the opportunity to reach the world wide web without making a significant investment.

Before you begin your comparison journey, you have to decide what type of web hosting will fit your needs as a webmaster. Your basic choices are shared, reseller, VPS, and dedicated hosting.

If you are just starting out online and you don’t have a lot of websites, then you may want to begin comparing cheap shared hosting plans. If you want more freedom over your hosting account, then you may want to choose a more powerful VPS hosting plan instead. Finally, if you’re extremely serious about being successful online and you want the best of the best, then you should being comparing dedicated hosting plans.

If you want to move your web hosting to MandelaStream, the first step is to create a MandelaStream account – you can do that from any of our product pages (Shared Hosting, VPS, Dedicated, During the signup process, select the option to add your current domain to your new account – don’t worry, this does NOT affect your current live website!

Next, you’ll need to backup your website files and upload them to MandelaStream. 

Once you’ve migrated your website to MandelaStream servers, you’ll need to check the site to confirm that it looks and functions just as intended. If everything looks great, you’ll need to point your DNS to MandelaStream so people know where to find you! If this sounds complicated, don’t worry contact us. 

Have some questions before you get started? No worries. Get in touch with us and we’ll be happy to help.

Domain names end with extensions called TLDs. The TLD is the letters that appear after the last dot in the domain name. For example, .com is a TLD. Fortunately there are a wide variety of TLDs available, and there are even geographically specific TLDs that specify the location of a web site. The cost of a domain name will usually depend upon the TLD.

Dot com domains are the most common, with .org, .net and .info following closely behind in terms of popularity.

Subdomains are actually extensions of a website that are primarily used to separate and categorize web site content. The address of the subdomain appears before the main domain name. For example – subdomain.example.com. It does not cost money to add a subdomain to your web site, and many web hosting providers allow the use of unlimited subdomains.

By creating a subdomain you are actually creating a separate web site within your site, which can be used as its own independent directory. When content is uploaded to the subdomain via FTP, a new FTP account should be created for the subdomain to facilitate quicker access to the site’s directories and files.

IP addresses are used to uniquely identify a website or computer. Any device that is connected to the internet is automatically assigned an IP address. IP stands for Internet Protocol, which is simply the practice through which data is transmitted over the internet. When a computer or web server is connected to a network it is given an IP address that separates it from all other devices on the network. An IP address is a string of numbers separated by dots that appear in the following format – 161.28.31.91. If you are connected to the internet right now then you have an IP address assigned to you.

IP address are crucial to internet communication because they dictate where a request for information is sent to. For example, if a web site visitors your site and clicks on a button, information is sent from their IP address to your web server. In order to return the proper information the web server will need to know the IP address of your computer.

Domain Name System is responsible for the allocation of domain names and traffic direction based on URLs in the address bar of the web browser. The Domain Name System is the largest database in the world, containing information about every web site in existence. There are currently more than 350 million unique active domains on the Internet.

Web sites are identified by the IP address of their server and/or server partition. However, an IP address is a number, which is far more difficult to remember than a simple phrase. In order to convert the IP address of a web site into a memorable phrase that is the domain name, a DNS server is needed.

A name server is a web server assigned with the sole task of sending and receiving request pertaining to domain names and IP addresses. The job of the domain name server is to take a number like an IP address and turn it into a readable term that can be typed into a browser’s address bar, or vice versa.

Computers read Internet addresses much differently than humans. All computer language is in numbers and not letters. Therefore, in order for information to be transmitted from the nameserver to a user’s computer, the DNS has to transmit information pertaining to the address and meaning of the domain name. The domain name system is a basically the largest database in the world, receiving more requests than any other database.

Control panel is a graphical user interface (GUI) to manage your web hosting account. Within your control panel you can upload and organize site content, manage domain name settings, schedule duties and much more. Whether you need comprehensive traffic analysis or a simple interface to check your emails, a good web hosting control panel can do all of this and more.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is one of the standard security protocols used by millions for establishing an encrypted connection between a web browser and a web server while preventing cybercriminals from reading and modifying any transaction done between them such as the transmission of sensitive information like credit card while doing online shopping. It ensures that all the data passed between the web browser and web server remains private and secured.

TLS (Transport Layer Security) the successor protocol and an improved version of SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). It works similar to SSL using encryption for protecting the transmission of data and information.

Moreover, SSL Certificates are one of the digital certificates which prove that the identity of the websites is authenticated and all the information sent to SSL installed website will stay encrypted with the help of SSL/TLS technology.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the security protocol used for establishing a secured connection between web-browser and the webserver. It’s one of the industry security standard protocol, which is used by many websites for securing the online transactions of the clients. On the other hand, HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer), works as a sub-layer under the HTTP application layering. Here, HTTPS encrypts the regular HTTP message before sending and decrypts a message during its arrival.

Yes, SSL encrypts email. Moreover, it’s not possible by third parties to decrypt any email during data exchange if an SSL has encrypted it. Lastly, SSL/TLS technology is not only used for securing websites, online banking, but also for emails and it doesn’t matter whether it’s from email clients such as Outlook or a web browser.