webapplicationsreview.com

OK, so this is the deal. Anyone who has ever ventured into the world of web design, whether a newbie, or a veteran, know just how difficult and tedious web design can be. And probably like so many others out there, I myself, struggling with programs such a NVU, Frontpage and so many others like them, began to dread web design. Well, I have some uplifting news for you my friend; there is light at the end of the tunnel, and it is called Adobe Dreamweaver CS4. This article is a Dreamweaver review, and will hopefully shed some light on the infamous web design world.

Adobe DreamweaverCS4 software is the one and only tool for web designers, application developers and visual designers of all levels. It is by far one of the industry’s top leading web authoring tools on the market today. The new and improved layout tools bring you elite speed and ability to get the job done fast, all the way from your very first ideas to actually putting it in the clients hands. Enhanced coding functions make it a breeze to navigate through complex site pages at design time. Adobe DreamweaverCS4 is jammed packed with tons of new and exciting features that will make your web designing experience with Dreamweaver like no other.

Listed below are some of the new features that Dreamweaver CS4 offers:

1. Live View – Design your web pages under real-world browser conditions with the new Live View in Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 – while still retaining direct access to the code. Changes to the code are instantly reflected in the rendered display.

2. Adobe InContext Editing (Free preview) – Design your pages in Dreamweaver so end users can edit their web pages without help from you or additional software using the Adobe InContext Editing online service. As a Dreamweaver designer, you can limit changes to specific pages, distinct regions, and even custom formatting options.

3. Adobe Photoshop Smart Objects – Insert any Adobe Photoshop PSD document in Dreamweaver to create an image Smart Object tightly linked to the source file. Make changes to the source image, and update your image in Dreamweaver without opening Photoshop.

4. New user interface – Work faster and smarter across Adobe Creative Suite 4 components with a shared user interface design. Toggle quickly from one work environment to the next with the workspace switcher.

5. HTML data sets – Integrate the power of dynamic data into your web pages without the learning curve of mastering databases or XML coding. Spry Data Sets recognize content in a simple HTML table as an interactive data source.

6. Code hinting for Ajax and JavaScript frameworks – Write JavaScript more efficiently with improved support for JavaScript core objects and primitive data types. Put the extended coding functionality of Dreamweaver CS4 to work by incorporating popular JavaScript frameworks, including jQuery, Prototype, and Spry.

7. Related Files and Code Navigator – Click any included file shown in the Related Files bar to see both its source in Code view and the parent page in Design view. The new Code Navigator feature shows you the CSS source code that affects your current selection and allows you to access it quickly.

8. CSS best practices – Implement CSS best practices without writing code. Create new CSS rules in the Properties panel, and get clear, simple explanations of where each property fits in the cascade of styles.

These are just a few of the top new features of the Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 package. I hope that this Dreamweaver review was helpful to you and that you are excited to know that there is an easier, faster way of designing websites. Whether it be a freelance job, corporate job, or just your own personal website design; Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 will work for you. Trust me on this one, you definitely will not be disappointed.

Whether you spend a fair amount of time online, or you are responsible for the design or content of a web site or web application, the list below should be of interest to you. What are the most important attributes of a web site that make it both usable and persuasive? Why do some web sites succeed in making us click while others result in abandonment?

1. The organization of the information at the website (the information architecture) fits the visitor’s mental model – Is the website organized the way the visitor thinks? For example, if the visitor comes to a website looking up reviews of computer monitors is there a category called monitors? Or is the information on monitors part of the “Peripherals” category. Do the visitors really think of “peripherals” when they come to the site? Web designers and content managers are often too close to their own information and need to make sure that the categories and organization of the web site match what most visitors have in their heads when they arrive at the site. Usable and persuasive sites are designed for the visitor’s mental model.

2. Less is More – Have you ever heard about the “magic number” 7 plus or minus 2?–the idea that people can remember or deal with between 5 to 9 things at time? Well, that’s a myth. Research shows that the real magic number is 3 or maybe 4. Research shows that people can only deal with about 3-4 items of information at a time. Anything more than that they are not really seeing or paying attention to. People will tell you they want more choices, but the research on decision-making is clear that too many choices means that we don’t choose at all. Usable and persuasive sites provide 3 to 4 clear choices at a time.

3. The top third of the page, in the center, is “prime real estate” — Where information is on the page does matter. The top third is the part of the page that people see first. Contrary to what some people say, the very top left is NOT the place people look first. The web has come to be much more of a TV model (top middle) than a book model (top left in countries that read left to right and top to bottom). Smart designers pay attention to what is in this top third of the page. They make sure it is attention getting, meaningful, and speaks to the emotional/unconscious part of the brain, not just the logical /conscious part. Usable and persuasive sites make good and careful use of the prime real estate.

4. Use visual and cognitive distinctions — There is a lot going on at a typical web site page these days. There are images, and major category navigation bars. There are links to information about the company or individual who owns the site. There might be a place to go for help, a top banner with a shopping cart and a footer with more information. Then there is the main content on the page, and maybe there is advertising. The list goes on and on. In order to make sure the visitor knows where to look when the site design has to use both visual and cognitive distinction. Visual distinction means that a certain part of the screen uses different shapes, sizes, colors or fonts to look different. For example a navigation bar has a green background, and a border around it. It is a rectangle and it is vertical. The top navigation bar on the other hand is horizontal, is on the top right of the page, is a set of links without a background color or a border. It looks visually different than the left navigation bar. It’s not enough, though to use JUST visual distinction. The different parts of the page must also be cognitively distinct. That means that the items that are in different locations belong together with other items in that location, and are distinctly different than the items in other parts of the screen. For example, the items in the green left navigation bar refer to different products I can buy. The items in the top right navigation bar without color are where I go to make changes to my account, get help, and ask for support. Usable and persuasive sites use both visual and cognitive distinctions.

5. Engage all 3 brains — In my book Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? I talk about the idea that we don’t have just one brain, we really have 3: the new brain is the logical/conscious brain, the mid brain governs emotions and the old brain is interested in scanning the environment and asking, “can I eat it?”, “can I have sex with it?”, “will it kill me”. Engaging the old brain means that you are speaking to issues that are important to the basic self, such as food or security/danger or sex. Since most sites aren’t about food or sex, this leaves danger messages such as security, feeling safe, the idea that we are getting something for FREE or some other trigger that grabs the attention of the old brain. Engaging the mid brain means that you are using photos or pictures or stories that talk to the emotional part of the visitor, and engaging the new brain means that you have taken care of all the rational/logical reasons why someone would want to continue at your site. Usable and persuasive sites engage all three brains.

6. Make text easy to scan — In general, people don’t like to read online. Devices such as the Kindle are an exception, since they don’t use regular LCD screens. Most websites are still being viewed on regular laptops and monitors, and these are still hard use for blocks of text. With some exceptions (for example, people who have subscribed to the NYTimes Reader software application), people will not read large blocks of text online. In place of these large blocks web sites should be concise, and use headings, bullets, and small paragraphs to break up text. Usable and persuasive sites make text easy to scan

7. Use progressive disclosure to show people what they need when they need it — Lots of people come to a web site. Some know what they want, some are browsing. Some have lots of knowledge about what the site contains and some are new to the topic. The best tactic therefore is to use “progressive disclosure”. This means showing a small amount of information and then having the visitor click for more information. Then there is some more information and they can click again for more. Have you heard that the user should be able to get to what they want in 3 clicks or less? That’s another myth! As long as the clicks make sense people are willing to “follow the scent” to get to their information. Usable and persuasive sites use progressive disclosure.

8. Use grouping to show what things go together and limit clutter — With all the information and pictures and videos and ads that are on screens these days it’s easy to forget that a screen can be visually overwhelming, especially to someone who is new to the page. There is a whole science behind designing screens and pages so that they use grouping to reduce clutter. There can be a lot of material on the page as long as the things that go together are placed together, and that there is a little more space between separate groups than there is within items inside of a group. Web sites that minimize the number of unique margins by lining up labels and fields and columns well can have lots of information and still not appear cluttered. Usable and persuasive sites pay attention to the grouping of information and limit clutter.

9. Build in the features and functionality that make the site become a habit — Research shows that over time people will tend to focus on one or two web sites for a particular task. For example, they will go to one or two websites for news, one or two web sites to shop, one or two web sites for entertainment. So what makes them choose to come back over and over to one or two sites and let the others fall away? Sites that build in features that encourage use to be habitual are the winners, for example, e-commerce sites that make it easy to re-order (Staples), or offer one-click buying (Amazon). Or sites that aggregate all of your financial information together in one place (Mint) or allow you to not only send a twitter message but also monitor the twitters on particular topics (HootSuite). There’s a limit here though. It’s not about having lots of features it’s about having the one or two “can’t live without it” features that make the site become a habit. Usable and persuasive sites choose and outperform in one or two killer features and functions.

10. Create a buzz in a specific market — Don’t forget the power of social validation. I have a whole chapter on this in my book on Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? People listen to what other people say, especially if they are uncertain about what to do. So if there are 5 different sites that you can use to upload your photos, but one of those sites is talked about amongst your twitter group, is written about at the blogs you read, and advertises how many members they have, then that is the site you are most likely to check out and stick with. Usable and persuasive sites know who they are aiming for, and do the marketing and publicity to make sure that have buzz among a certain cohort.

Web Attacks and Defense

1. Introduction

What is a web application? Why web applications are the first target for hackers? What are the attacks Web applications usually face, how to prevent from these attacks. Lets start from the various web application attacks. This article is divided into three areas including types of attacks, countermeasures and risk factor.

2. ATTACKS

Following are the most common web application attacks.

a. Remote code execution

b. SQL injection

c. Format string vulnerabilities

d. Cross Site Scripting (XSS)

e. Username enumeration

Remote Code Execution

As the name suggests, this vulnerability allows an attacker to run arbitrary, system level code on the vulnerable web application server and retrieve any desired information contained therein. Improper coding errors lead to this vulnerability. At times, it is difficult to discover this vulnerability during penetration testing assignments but such problems are often revealed while doing a source code review. However, when testing Web applications is important to remember that exploitation of this vulnerability can lead to total system compromise with the same rights as the Web server itself is running with.

SQL Injection

SQL injection is a very old approach but it’s still popular among attackers. This technique allows an attacker to retrieve crucial information from a Web server’s database. Depending on the application’s security measures, the impact of this attack can vary from basic information disclosure to remote code execution and total system compromise.

Format String Vulnerabilities

This vulnerability results from the use of unfiltered user input as the format string parameter in certain Perl or C functions that perform formatting, such as C’s printf().
A malicious user may use the %s and %x format tokens, among others, to print data from the stack or possibly other locations in memory. One may also write arbitrary data to arbitrary locations using the %n format token, which commands printf() and similar functions to write back the number of bytes formatted. This is assuming that the corresponding argument exists and is of type int *.
Format string vulnerability attacks fall into three general categories: denial of service, reading and writing.

Cross Site Scripting

The success of this attack requires the victim to execute a malicious URL which may be crafted in such a manner to appear to be legitimate at first look. When visiting such a crafted URL, an attacker can effectively execute something malicious in the victim’s browser. Some malicious JavaScript, for example, will be run in the context of the web site which possesses the XSS bug.

Username enumeration

Username enumeration is a type of attack where the backend validation script tells the attacker if the supplied username is correct or not. Exploiting this vulnerability helps the attacker to experiment with different usernames and determine valid ones with the help of these different error messages.

3. Countermeasures

Username enumerations:

Display consistent error messages to prevent disclosure of valid usernames. Make sure if trivial accounts have been created for testing purposes that their passwords are either not trivial or these accounts are absolutely removed after testing is over – and before the application is put online.

Cross site scripting:

Input validation, secure programming and usage of good language for dynamic web applications.

SQL Injection:

Avoid connecting to the database as a super user or as the database owner. Always use customized database users with the bare minimum required privileges required to perform the assigned task. Perform input validation and do not give error response on client side.

Format String:

Edit the source code so that the input is properly verified.
Remote code execution:
It is an absolute must to sanitize all user input before processing it. As far as possible, avoid using shell commands. However, if they are required, ensure that only filtered data is used to construct the string to be executed and make sure to escape the output

4. Risk Factors

SQL Injection:
Rating: Moderate to Highly Critical
Remote Code Execution:
Rating: Highly Critical
Cross Site Scripting:
Rating: Less Critical
User Name Enumeration
Rating: Less

5. Summary

This is the short article to develop awareness on web attacks and countermeasures, these are common web application attacks.

Once you’ve completed a security assessment as a part of your web application development, it’s time to go down the path of remediating all of the security problems you uncovered. At this point, your developers, quality assurance testers, auditors, and your security managers should all be collaborating closely to incorporate security into the current processes of your software development lifecycle in order to eliminate application vulnerabilities. And with your Web application security assessment report in hand, you probably now have a long list of security issues that need to be addressed: low, medium, and high application vulnerabilities; configuration gaffes; and cases in which business-logic errors create security risk. For a detailed overview on how to conduct a Web application security assessment, take a look at the first article in this series, Web Application Vulnerability Assessment: Your First Step to a Highly Secure Web Site.

First Up: Categorize and Prioritize Your Application Vulnerabilities

The first stage of the remediation process within web application development is categorizing and prioritizing everything that needs to be fixed within your application, or Web site. From a high level, there are two classes of application vulnerabilities: development errors and configuration errors. As the name says, web application development vulnerabilities are those that arose through the conceptualization and coding of the application. These are issues residing within the actual code, or workflow of the application, that developers will have to address. Often, but not always, these types of errors can take more thought, time, and resources to remedy. Configuration errors are those that require system settings to be changed, services to be shut off, and so forth. Depending on how your organization is structured, these application vulnerabilities may or may not be handled by your developers. Oftentimes they can be handled by application or infrastructure managers. In any event, configuration errors can, in many cases, be set straight swiftly.

At this point in the web application development and remediation process, it’s time to prioritize all of the technical and business-logic vulnerabilities uncovered in the assessment. In this straightforward process, you first list your most critical application vulnerabilities with the highest potential of negative impact on the most important systems to your organization, and then list other application vulnerabilities in descending order based on risk and business impact.

Develop an Attainable Remediation Roadmap

Once application vulnerabilities have been categorized and prioritized, the next step in web application development is to estimate how long it will take to implement the fixes. If you’re not familiar with web application development and revision cycles, it’s a good idea to bring in your developers for this discussion. Don’t get too granular here. The idea is to get an idea of how long the process will take, and get the remediation work underway based on the most time-consuming and critical application vulnerabilities first. The time, or difficulty estimates, can be as simple as easy, medium, and hard. And remediation will begin not only with the application vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk, but those that also will take the longest to time correct. For instance, get started on fixing complex application vulnerabilities that could take considerable time to fix first, and wait to work on the half-dozen medium defects that can be rectified in an afternoon. By following this process during web application development, you won’t fall into the trap of having to extend development time, or delay an application rollout because it’s taken longer than expected to fix all of the security-related flaws.

This process also provides for excellent follow-up for auditors and developers during web application development: you now have an attainable road map to track. And this progression will reduce security holes while making sure development flows smoothly.

It’s worth pointing out that that any business-logic problems identified during the assessment need to be carefully considered during the prioritization stage of web application development. Many times, because you’re dealing with logic – the way the application actually flows – you want to carefully consider how these application vulnerabilities are to be resolved. What may seem like a simple fix can turn out to be quite complicated. So you’ll want to work closely with your developers, security teams, and consultants to develop the best business-logic error correction routine possible, and an accurate estimate of how long it will take to remedy.

In addition, prioritizing and categorizing application vulnerabilities for remediation is an area within web application development in which consultants can play a pivotal role in helping lead your organization down a successful path. Some businesses will find it more cost effective to have a security consultant provide a few hours of advice on how to remedy application vulnerabilities; this advice often shaves hundreds of hours from the remediation process during web application development.

One of the pitfalls you want to avoid when using consultants during web application development, however, is failure to establish proper expectations. While many consultants will provide a list of application vulnerabilities that need to be fixed, they often neglect to provide the information that organizations need on how to remedy the problem. It’s important to establish the expectation with your experts, whether in-house or outsourced, to provide details on how to fix security defects. The challenge, however, without the proper detail, education, and guidance, is that the developers who created the vulnerable code during the web application development cycle may not know how to fix the problem. That’s why having that application security consultant available to the developers, or one of your security team members, is critical to make sure they’re going down the right path. In this way, your web application development timelines are met and security problems are fixed.

Testing and Validation: Independently Make Sure Application Vulnerabilities Have Been Fixed

When the next phase of the web application development lifecycle is reached, and previously identified application vulnerabilities have (hopefully) been mended by the developers, it’s time to verify the posture of the application with a reassessment, or regression testing. For this assessment, it’s crucial that the developers aren’t the only ones charged with assessing their own code. They already should have completed their verification. This point is worth raising, because many times companies make the mistake of allowing developers to test their own applications during the reassessment stage of the web application development lifecycle. And upon verification of progress, it is often found that the developers not only failed to fix flaws pegged for remediation, but they also have introduced additional application vulnerabilities and numerous other mistakes that needed to be fixed. That’s why it’s vital that an independent entity, whether an in-house team or an outsourced consultant, review the code to ensure everything has been done right.

Other Areas of Application Risk Mitigation

While you have full control over accessing your custom applications during web application development, not all application vulnerabilities can be fixed quickly enough to meet immovable deployment deadlines. And discovering a vulnerability that could take weeks to rectify in an application already in production is nerve-wracking. In situations like these, you won’t always have control over reducing your Web application security risks. This is especially true for applications you purchase; there will be application vulnerabilities that go unpatched by the vendor for extended periods of time. Rather than operate at high levels of risk, we recommend that you consider other ways to mitigate your risks. These can include segregating applications from other areas of your network, limiting access as much as possible to the affected application, or changing the configuration of the application, if possible. The idea is to look at the application and your system architecture for other ways to reduce risk while you wait for the fix. You might even consider installing a web application firewall (a specially crafted firewall designed to secure web applications and enforce their security policies) that can provide you a reasonable interim solution. While you can’t rely on such firewalls to reduce all of your risks indefinitely, they can provide an adequate shield to buy you time while the web application development team creates a fix.

As you have seen, remedying web application vulnerabilities during the web application development lifecycle requires collaboration among your developers, QA testers, security managers, and application teams. The associated processes can seem laborious, but the fact is that by implementing these processes, you’ll cost-effectively reduce your risk of application-level attacks. Web application development is complex, and this approach is less expensive than reengineering applications and associated systems after they’re deployed into production.

That’s why the best approach to web application security is to build security awareness among developers and quality assurance testers, and to instill best practices throughout your Web application development life cycle – from its architecture throughout its life in production. Reaching this level of maturity will be the focus of the next installment, Effective Controls For Attaining Continuous Application Security. The third and final article will provide you with the framework you need to build a development culture that develops and deploys highly secure and available applications – all of the time.

With the growth of internet, web marketing and web business are taking their shapes. Number of investors and marketers are forging ahead in devising new and innovative techniques and web applications that can facilitate its process and promotions. And if you wonder how internet have developed the mode of communication. With the help of web application development, many unimagined processes and non-viable works are now accomplished immediately.

Web application- Relevance in web world

Web application works as a business strategies and policies that are implemented on the web via usage of business and data services and users. These applications are the next level of what we call evolution. To target their potential customers and buyers, many companies enter the online world of websites. Companies launch their websites in order to achieve their goals that includes marketing of their business and products and to enlarge their customers band. Hence these websites acts as a channel that help these companies to extend their services to the target customers for enormous profits.

Normally before taking the help of web applications, there are 4 stages that has to be ensured.

- Visualizing the nature and direction of the project – This phase demands management team to gather and to establish the goals jointly. This also includes proper scheduling, identifying the limitations and upgrading the applications. At the end of this phase, all the purpose are cleared about the goal that can be achieved.

- Planning – This stage involves the planning regards to many aspects. Various queries like the existence of features and usage of script language are ensured. Realizing the project plans and functional scheme, this phase involves the allocation of the jobs. Taking the significant decisions and plans to the next level, it is the conclusive step that decides the function and flow of the application.

- Development – This stage requires the programmers and developer to pull their socks and establishes the entities, data variables and various coding procedures. The development team at the end prepare the document that is handed to the management for the review.

- Stability – This stage involves the testing and ensuring the proper functioning of the application. It requires the removal of the bugs and other malicious contents in order to prevent the application to fail.

Web Applications are compromised daily and now account for the majority of vulnerabilities on the Internet.

Website weaknesses are a major way that cyber criminals, working with hacking techniques, can steal sensitive data. With this data, nefarious crooks can affect companies and individuals alike; there is little distinction between Fortune 500 Companies and an end user with a credit card. They often just follow the path of least resistance.

Online data theft is not a game. While some hackers will brag about having breached the security of a web application and gained access to sensitive data, the criminals have money, not bragging rights in their cross-hairs. Extortion is sometimes the name of the game. If data can be held at ransom by thieves, depending on how sensitive the data is, they can demand a huge sum of money.

The ways that companies and individuals are affected by web application attacks are numerous. Imagine this “what if” situation. A large Fortune 500 company is attacked by an orchestrated attack and the credit card numbers are taken and held at ransom by an organized crime group. Word gets out and the Fortune 500 company under goes a huge investigation and security audit. The clients and customers of the company lose trust in the security of the company and start taking their business elsewhere. The company then starts losing revenue and the customers begin to find that their credit cards are being charged illegally. The credit card companies are involved and are losing money as well. Nobody is immune to these website attacks, whether its large company or one individual.

As programmers design web applications to be more accessible and easy to use, often these features are targets for crime groups to attack. Programmers must protect their applications by following secure coding practices to filter out any attacks and create a safe place for their clients customers to do business.

One of the major ways hackers breach a web application are through SQL injection attacks. SQL injection attacks can be used to access sensitive data or do any number of destructive things to the data stored in the web application’s database. Cross-site scripting attacks are also prevalent. This attack occurs when malicious code is inserted and executed when a user loads an infected page. Denial of service attacks are also popular. This happens when the network hosting a website is swamped with useless requests sent out by the criminals which creates so much traffic that the network or system crashes.

It’s a wild world out there…

Open source web applications have a very intriguing quality about them. They are free applications that get released under special licensing terms which make the core coding viewable and can also be edited by the user to suit his needs. The author creating these applications has the right to release it for free distribution where it can be further worked upon by programmers. Open source applications are meant for numerous usages. Web development companies design open source applications for diverse usage and for a lot of other usages too. There are certain principles that go behind the development of open source applications with some of them being free redistribution, inclusion of source code, imperative modifications, zero discrimination and single license allotment.

Offshore software development companies and web design India companies design a lot of such applications. They get criticized and also a lot of praise is heaped on them for the work they do. Offshore outsourcing companies designing open source web applications have often mentioned about its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are numerous. The core software comes free of cost. The capital can be kept down by a lot of margin. The evolving software is again an added advantage. Features can be implemented at a rapid pace and resources can be pooled in. When one is short on cash and has to get modifications done on the source, he can do it himself on these open source web applications. One is not tied to a single vendor from whom the application is developed. Since the code is open source, it can be modified and handled by anyone.

There is a flip side to these opensource web applications developed by web development companies and offshore software development companies. Very similar to commercial applications, some of the open source web applications have this tendency to die quickly. Programmers lose interest in them and sop developing them further leading to stagnation and eventual annihilation. Offshore outsourcing companies making these applications often receive complaints regarding support issues. Online bugs often keep invading these applications time and again forcing the buyer to constantly call the vendor. If the vendor is not available, then the buyer might have to pay someone to get rid of the bugs.

Having these open source web applications on board ensure that the task is carried out smoothly and at the same time, also brings n some flaws that need constant corrections. The best thing about such applications is they can be handled by any programmer and not only that one who made it in the first place. It also helps in software companies understanding the way in which these applications get made and also the effort put in by their competitors. Since open source web applications can be read without any hassles, it is quite encouraging to know that they can be handled and managed by anyone. Perhaps that is the reason why they are always in such huge demand and regularly ordered.

Lately, we have been talking about the Linux Dedicated Servers, in this article I am going to show you the three important tools which are useful for your Linux Dedicated Server Hosting.

A fact that most of the people belonging to the website hosting industry knows that the products and applications released for Linux are FREE. The tools listed below are also free to download on Internet.

GRUB: Basically, this is boot loader application unveiled under GNU project available for free. If you wish to use 2 operating systems on one single machine, you will need an option to choose the OS you want to run on start of your machine. GRUB is one of the multiboot specification that can fulfil you needs. This is an application which lets you to install and run two different operating systems (OS) on the same machine.

You can see the option, only if the GRUB is installed on your Linux Dedicated Server, otherwise the feature will not work. One more advantage of this feature is that you can select various images of the kernel and pass boot time parameters on a single operating system partitions to such kernels.

Most of the Linux Dedicated Server Hosting providers will help you to install GRUB boot loader on your server. If not, there is a possibility that you will have to install the GRUB application of your own.

TCP Wrapper: This application is also a free tool that you can download via Internet. TCP Wrapper basically acts as a firewall for your own Linux based dedicated servers. A fact that the incoming packets are being monitored by the TCP Wrapper, hence it is stated as an acting firewall.

On linux dedicated server hacking attacks might be possible, hackers may attempts to login into your server. TCP Wrapper ensures it by checking the external source is aurthorized to connect your linux server or not. If the attempt is unauthorized, the application will denied the login permission.

It is also known as a domain computer program, one of the best programs by using it you can keep hackers far away from your Linux server.

Zend Optimizer: It is a free runtime application that allows PHP to run the scripts encoded by Zend Guard. Those who want to run encoded application can freely use this application.

Zend Encoder and Zend Guard are few software’s which encode specific files and Zend optimizer is a free linux application software which runs these files while boosting the running speed of PHP applications. Basically, it is an application required by most of the scripts to run the scripts on your linux server while decrypting and running them on the fly while increasing runtime performance.

Maximize your limitations and increase your security by installing these useful tools on your Linux Dedicated Server Hosting.

So you’ve decided that the limiting factor on the performance of your application is disc I/O. The rate at which data is read and written to and from the discs in your dedicated server. It’s time to follow the I/O path from the OS, down to the volume level, down to the individual disc, for a world of adventure…

Optimise the web application!

If we reduce the number of I/O requests in the first place from your application we can free up space for the other demanding activities we can’t change.

Start by looking at the level of logging that is being performed by your application. Is it necessary? could we turn it down for all those times that we aren’t doing debugging?

In your database, use indexes to access data blocks rather than bulk scans – this will generate fewer read requests.

Cluster hot data blocks together – this will generate fewer disc head seeks.

Add RAM

In a web server you can often never have enough RAM. The more you have, the more will be allocated to cacheing of data in memory, which will in turn reduce the number of requests that reach the discs.

Increasing RAM also has the effect of increasing the percentage used for dirty buffers so it helps conglomerate writes as well.

In the event that a server has a requirement for more RAM than is available, it will eventually start swapping out the data from memory onto the discs. Essentially – the discs start to act as RAM. Since the discs are an order of magnitude slower this swapping causes a severe performance hit to the server.

RAM is cheap these days so add it liberally.

Batter backed write cache

Use a battery backed write cache for applications that perform an intensive number of writes to a single location. This will reduce the number of writes that physically hit the disc.

A battery backed write cache will also help with transaction processing on an ACID database. This will hide the write latency.

Multiple volumes
Try splitting the work load over different physical volumes. For example, have separate volumes for small databases, log files, user data, etc. Or put the file system journal on another disc.

More discs
Each physical disc has limits on the rate at which data can be accessed and moved in or out. The more discs you have the more I/O capacity you have. You just have to make sure the best RAID configuration is selected:

RAID 0 will have the best read/write performance (but no data safety!) RAID 10 is the next best RAID 1 characteristics: Write performance is slightly less than a single disc Linear read performance only good with good OS read ahead Read performance otherwise can scale as requests split over drives

RAID 5 characteristics:
Decent read performance Write performance is only good when writing entire strides (i.e. bulk data writes) Database performance is terrible RAID 5 when degraded will have terrible performance RAID 6 great when reliability is everything.

Ensure that you have sufficient bus bandwidth to the discs
Some technology selection tips:
PCI-E or PCI-X Point to Point (SAS, SATA) will be better than a shared bus (SCSI LVD, IDE) Two IDE devices on the same cable will suck Increase the individual disc speed, higher the RPM the better If data safety does not matter, turn on the disc write-back caches

Using some or all of these suggestions, you should be able to generate significant improvements on your server and remove the I/O bottleneck.

Thinking about trying free web page designs for your organization or business website project? One thing is certain-there are plenty of free website design options out there, from website templates to free or advertising-supported website hosting services that come with built-in design software.

But more importantly than the relative abundance of free web page designs out there is the cold hard fact that they are simply not a good option for your growing website (and here’s why)…

Free Web Page Designs Come Across As Amateurish.

The last thing you want for your business or organization as you strive to go live on the web is to have a website that your visitors won’t take seriously. A good majority of website visitors will are really quite web-savvy these days. They can spot a “free template” style site from a mile away due to a number of telltale signs. The bottom line here is that if your visitors know that you are using a free site-and most will be able to tell-then, they probably will question your resources and staying power within your unique industry in the first place.

Free Website Designs Are Still Difficult To Work With.

Many equate free and do-it-yourself type websites with being quick and easy to establish. Again, this just isn’t the case at all. While there are a few services out there than can guide you through the process as you fill in the blanks, these sites aren’t able to be customized and designed in a versatile, customized way. And for the free web page designs that you might want to try customizing yourself, this is a possibility, but learning the ins and outs of HTML, CSS, and PHP can be very challenging.

Using Free Web Templates Creates Duplicate Sites.

There are only so many different free website templates in circulation. While the odds of your competitors ending up with the same exact design as you are probably slim, the fact of the matter is that there will be others using the same design. After all, they’re free and available to everyone-not just you alone. Having the same exact site design as someone else is just not a very good idea…especially if your visitors or customers find out.

So, what’s the alternative to free web page designs then? Well, for starters, you might give some serious consideration to using a basic entry-level design option from a well-regarded web design expert. We can usually work with even tight budgets-and more importantly-save you money compared to the long term costs of not succeeding with free web page designs.