Second Step is finding Web Host for your web site

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Bhupendra

You must have gone through my previous post First Step for your web site is getting a Domain Name . Now let us discuss next step.

Before choosing a hosting provider you have to determine what your needs are. For a start-up Web site, this might not be very clear, but you will have some idea about the kind of services you plan to offer to your audience . There are a number of elements you need to be clear about before shopping around for a Web host. These include the type of site, the kind of database(s) required, special software such as chat, bulletin boards and shopping carts, the average number of visitors you expect, the number of e-mails users who will use you domain address, and the server side technology used for your site.

Each of these elements will determine your choice of Web host. The first choice you have to make is whether you Web site will sit on a shared server of a dedicated box. A Shared server, as the name indicates, is a single physical server that will be hosting tens or even hundreds of other Web sites alongside yours. On the other hand, on a dedicated server, the entire machine is allocated to your Web site. An extension of the dedicated server is co-location. Unlike dedicated servers, a co-located server is owned by you. The Web hosting provide a pipe to the Internet and your server will be connected to the Web.

Shared Hosting The main attraction associated with shared hosting is cost. For a fraction of the cost of a complete server, you can have a fully-functional Web site up and running in no time. Most hosting provides provide online setup and configuration of your accounts.

Dedicated Server Dedicated servers give you exclusive use of a single server machine to host your Web site. While they are more expensive, dedicated servers might make sense if you are hosting sensitive data and/or have high volume traffic. Since there are no other Web sites on your machine, you can make full use of the entire resources of the server without fear of suffering from performance issues. Of course, beyond a certain load you would need to upgrade your server to ensure consistency in performance.

Choosing a Web host is one of the most important decisions you will make. Generally, the hosting provider should be able to give you full control over your account(on a shared server) or your server. There should preferably be a Web-based administration interface that will enable you to directly make configuration changes to your site without needing to call technical support. You will need to invest time and effort in choosing a host that will be able to fulfill if not exceed your needs.

One fact that you need to verify is the strength of the provider’s technical support. Most good hosting providers will have support personnel available 24×7 both via chat and e-mail. Also, it is a good idea to maintain complete and up-to-date offline backups of all the data and content on your Web site. This will enable you to quickly switch hosts if you find your current host unsatisfactory. All you need to do is set up the new site, change the DNS pointers in you domain name, wait for a few days for the propagation to take effect, you’ll be good to go.

Below I include a video for Web hosting with GoDaddy.com, as I guess you already brought a domain name of your choice.

Web Hosting with GoDaddy

First Step for your web site is getting a Domain Name

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Bhupendra

The first step to make your Website live is choosing your domain name and getting it registered. Choosing the right name depends on a number of factors. If you are a business with an already established presence, it would make sense to use your company name. If you’re promoting a particular product, it may be a better idea to use that product’s name. If it’s personal Web site, you could use your own name… and so on.

Some of the ground rules in choosing a domain name are:

It shouldn’t be too long
It should be easy to remember
If should not be easy to misspell the name

Like the site name, the last part of the domain name – which ends in .com, .net, .org, etc.-is also important. The choice of what domain extension to register your site under should also be driven by your target audience. Registering with a .com extension is the default consideration. Most people associate Web site addresses with the .com extension. So even if they’ve heard of your company in passing and want to visit your Web site, they would naturally try yourcompany.com first. Of course, search engines will help, but this point could be important in the early days of your Website before you get into the search engine indexes.

In addition to the .com extension, you should also consider registering the name in country level domains. For example. if you are a business based in United States, the .us extension will communicate an intrinsic message to your web audience. It will declare that you are an US based company present in United States, so you are reachable by phone or physical address without too much difficulty. If your site is an e-commerce site, it would also give customers the much needed assurance of the legality of your site.

Domain names are valuable. You will need to have at least two to three possible candidates for your Web site name, as there is a good likelihood that most of the obvious ones are already taken.

Also, you will need to protect your domain name. Once your site crosses a threshold of popularity you can become easy targets for me-too Web site trying to ride on your success. Unscrupulous punters will attempt to lure you customers away with underhand tactics: say, you’ve registered your site as mysite.com and mysite.in. These scam artists will register mysite.org and mysite.net and host mock Web sites that look exactly like yours and may put you in trouble in future.

Having decided on the possible names for your Web site, the next step is to find a domain registrar. Many hosting companies include domain name registration as part of their hosting packages. Few examples are GoDaddy.com, names.com, BigRock.in etc.,where you can easily register you domain name. So purchase your domain name other wise some one else will purchase with the same name you wish to buy. Hurry!

For your convenience I have included a video for how to purchase a domain name at GoDaddy.com. ComputersBay was also bought from GoDaddy.

Road map for a good programmer

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Bhupendra

Write lots of code. Have fun with it!
Learn to use your tools – Once you learn all the items from the menu, then Google ‘tips and trick” for your IDE
Learn how to make trade-offs. Do some change in the code which is worth while.
Learn the platform APIs collection.
Don’t put your entire application in one method.
Interact with an expert.
Start simple and keep learning.
Don’t be overwhelmed by the language or the platform. If you break it down, the basic of programming language are based on OOP, threading, concurrency, and event driven programming.
First don’t panic just start.

Installing Ubuntu as a Standalone OS

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Bhupendra

To install Ubuntu on a machine without any operating systems, follow the regular procedure: insert the boot media (CD/DVD/USB drive) and boot the computer with it. You’ll eventually arrive at the Ubuntu desktop, which, as we’ve already said, is very much usable as a complete system in itself. Before beginning the installation, take a backup, so that our installation is beneficial and not harmful to us. On the desktop you’ll find a shortcut to the installer(it’s called ubiquity). Simply double-click it and the installer will pop up asking questins(we’ll call them steps to install Ubuntu):

Step 1: Chose your language. Since you’re reading this, we assume you’d choose ‘English’ on that screen and press the ‘Forward’ button.

Step 2: On the next screen, ubiquity will recommend system requirements and tell you whether your system meets them all or not. It basically shows you the following requirements:

4.4 GB disk space – This is perhaps the only stringent requirement by Ubuntu. You should make sure that your hard disk has at least that much space. Of course the bigger, the better.
Is connected to power source – This is not a very hardcore requirement. All Ubuntu wants to say here is: “please ensure power supply is not turned off when installing”.
Is connected to internet – Although this too is not a necessity, Ubuntu could use your internet connection to download updates and extra media codecs (both are options provided on the same screen) over the internet. This will ensure that your OS is brand new and updated when installation finally finishes.

Just make sure that Ubuntu is ready to be installed and press the ‘Forward’ button again to go to next step.
Ubuntu installing steps 2
Step 3: In the next step, ubiquity will offer you two options: “Erase entire disk and install Ubutnu” and “Something else”. Unless you have files which you would like to have on disk, go with the first option. It tells Ubuntu to utilize the complete disk space and decide what’s best for your system. Ubuntu will create its own root(/) partition, a swap partition and install itself on the ‘/’ partition.

If, however you have something to save, chooose the ‘Something else option and that would get you to a simple-but-powerful partition editor where you can choose the disk you want to partition(in case you have more than one) and then create or edit partitions on it. We’ve discussed more about this in the “Installation steps for a dual-boot setup” section where it’s more relevant.

That’s simple. Now click the obvious Forward button again. You’ll be asked to confirm the setting once more. Then click on the ‘Install now’ button. Installer will disable its controls for some time while it formats the partitions for installation and then returns asking you another question.

Step 4: Installation at this point of time would already be running. While installation is still in progress, Ubuntu will ask you to enter information required after installation. This includes your time zone and country.

Step 5: Select your keyboard layout. If you’re unsure, you can click the ‘Detect keyboard layout’ button and that would help you select the right one. In almost all cased it’s the USA keyboard layout which we use. Click ‘Forward’ (again).

Step 6: Enter you real name, your username (Ubuntu will automatically make your first name your username, through you can change it), computer’s name(useful for a networked setup) and password for the user. Ubuntu will warn you if you choose a weak password. You can still use it. However, it’s always good to have a stronger password (more than 8 characters, mixed case, special characters and digits included). You may also choose to automatically log in when the computers starts. Remember the password you enter here. Ubuntu will not offer you the luxury of forgetting it nor will it offer you a ‘forgot password’ option. Although you can reset your Linux password later.

Step 7: It you’re connected to the internet, it will download the package list so that you’re ready to install new software as and when you reboot. If you want, you can stop this process by clicking the ‘Skip’ button which reveals when you click on the line showing the current status. Oh, and if you would allow Ubuntu to get the latest list of software, it will show you a slideshow of its best features by the time.

Step 8: There is not step 8. Ubuntu is installed. Just restart the system!

Step 9: Once again, there is not step 9. Ubuntu won’t ask you for any more details after the reboot. Enjoy Ubuntu!

Array to Collection and Collection to Array in Java

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Bhupendra

It is required some time to convert an array to a collection to perform some operation that can only be done on collections. Both the array and collection differ in their functionality and features.

Below is the program to show how to convert an array into a collection.


public class ArrayToCollection{
      public static void main(String[] arg){
            String a[] = {"Bob","Adam","Harry","Peter"}

            //Print the content of array using for each loop
            for(String s:a){
                 System.out.println(s);
            }

            //Converting array to collection
            List ls = Arrays.asList(a);

           //Do what ever you wish to do with this List.
           //I am traversing it here
           for(String s2:ls){
                 System.out.println(s2);
           }
      }
}

Output:
Bob
Adam
Harry
Peter

Bob
Adam
Harry
Peter

There are many operations that you can only do simply with collection like reversing the array, sorting the array, making it read-only, shuffling the collection and many more. So, enjoy the program and do some fun with it.

But at the same time if you need to convert a Collection into a Array, below is the code given.


public class CollectionToArray{
      public static void main(String[] arg){
            List ls = new ArrayList();
            ls.add("This");
            ls.add("is");
            ls.add("a");
            ls.add("good");
            ls.add("program");

            //Converting collection to array
            String s[] = ls.toArray(new String[0]);

           for(String a:s){
              System.out.println(a);
           }
      }
}

Output:

This
is
a
good
program

So. Please have fun with this good program.