The Nimda Virus...
Because of the increased activity over the Internet, viruses and worms have become serious pests. As the Internet advances, these pests are becoming much more sophisticated. There capacity to spread across the Internet in just a matter of hours can cause serious floods of payloads to systems. One recent virus that caused, and still is causing, an up-roar across the Internet is the 'Nimda'.
What is Nimda? Nimda is a computer virus appearing first on September 18, 2001 when it caused massive delays by creating huge amounts of traffic as it spread across the Internet. Nimda has four main attach mechanisms: web server to web server (IIS 4 / 5), to desktops through an e-mail attachment called README.EXE or ADMIN.DLL; browsing infected Web sites from Windows desktop or server machines; and by shares across internal networks. Once an internal machine is infected, it is possible for the virus to spread to shared drives and machines.
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How to Analyze Your Web Site Traffic
Herman Drost
How to Analyze Your Web Site Traffic (Part 1 of a 3 Part Series) Copyright 2002 by Herman DrostGetting traffic to your web site without analyzing it, is like being blindfolded in a crowd. You hear voices, but you don't know which direction they are coming from or who they are. Without analyzing your web site traffic, it's difficult to improve your web site marketing.
Know Your Traffic Language You should be aware of the different terms used to describe web site traffic, so as not to be confused about your web site visitors. Here are the main terms used:
Visit – these are all requests made by a specific user to the site during a set period of time. The visit is ended if a set period of time (say 30 minutes) goes by with no further accesses. Users are identified by cookies, username or hostnames/ip addresses.
Hit – this is a request to the server for a file not a page. Your page can be made up of different files, such as graphic files, audio files or css and javascript files, resulting in a number of hits for that page. Each of these requests is called a hit.
Counting hits is not the same as tracking pageviews. It takes multiple hits to view a page.
Pageview/Impression – this is the number of times a page is accessed as a whole.
Unique View - A page view by a unique person within a 24 hour period.
Referrer - A page that links to your site. By looking at your referrers will tell you who's linked to your site. This can be particularly valuable for seeing where your search engine traffic is coming from.
User Agent - This refers to the software used to access your site. Sometimes known as a "browser" or "client", the term user agent can describe a PHP script, a browser like Internet Explorer, or a search engine spider like GoogleBot. If you can identify what software is being used to access your site, you'll be able to tell if users are abusing it, and when the search engines last crawled your pages.
In Part 2 of this article series we'll look at some of the ways to track your web site visitors.
Herman Drost is a Certified Web Site Designer (CIW), owner and author of iSiteBuild.com Affordable Hosting, Site Design and Promotion Packages http://www.isitebuild.comSubscribe to his "Marketing Tips" newsletter for more original articles. mailto:subscribe@isitebuild.com. Read more of his in-depth articles at: www.isitebuild.com/articles
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Are You a Hosting Hostage?© 2004, John Calder http://www.TheEzine.net
In recent years, the hosting business has become extremely competitive. Not so long ago, the monthly price for an average hosting account for one domain was in the $35 and up range, at a minimum. Now, you can get a hosting account where you can host unlimited domains (up to the disk space and network usage limits of your account), for $25 and under. To try to win more customers in this crowded field, most hosting companies offer bundles of features, included at no extra charge in your hosting plan.
On the surface, all of those features look great, and they are. From single autoresponders to shopping carts, from private name servers to the amazing Fantastico package that lets you install any of numerous software packages, like blogs, content management systems, forums, help desks, and so on, with near one-click ease. But there's a hidden, more self-serving reason the hosting companies offer this convenience to their customers. They hope you'll become dependent enough on the software features they offer that it will discourage you from changing hosting companies.
Their service may suffer at some point, perhaps due to sale of the company, support staff cutbacks, problems within their network, and a variety of other reasons. You may want to change hosting companies for good reason. But if you've set up your entire site using the software your hosting company offers, you won't necessarily be able to take those software packages with you. You can probably find another hosting company that offers the same software, but you'll still have to transfer all of your databases and configuration settings yourself.
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