• Microsoft Vista Home Networking Setup and Options
The most daunting part of upgrading to Windows Vista may be trying to figure out where in the layers of menus the networking and file-sharing options are hidden.
• Tips for Securing Your Home Router
Seemingly minor and easily overlooked settings can still have profound security implications. Here are some steps you can take to make sure your wired or wireless home router — and by extension, your network — is as secure as possible.
Most Popular Reviews
• Microsoft Windows Home Server
If you have a home network, you'll welcome the easy file sharing, remote access and the image-based backup features of Windows Home Server.
• Iomega StorCenter Network Hard Drive
Iomega's fourth generation StorCenter Network Hard Drive brings many of the features found in higher-end storage devices down to an attractive price.
• MikroTik's The Dude
This free tool delivers many of the same capabilities that you'd find in pricey network monitoring tools. As long as you don't mind tinkering, The Dude is a decent network utility that should be worth the download.
For whatever reason, the time has come to change your
webhost. There are some things that you can do to make the transition easier for
both you and invisible to your site visitors.
1) Get your own domain name
I described the reasons for this in the ISP Hosting
page, and if you don't have one at this point, then the first move is going to be more
complicated. You'll have to:
tell your customers about your new email address and new Web site address ahead of time
keep the old accounts active for some period of time while people find out about the
change
setup email forwarding, home page forwarding and maybe forwarding for frequently visited
Web site pages.
If you do have your own domain name, you don't really have to tell
your customers anything about your move, because all the addresses they use to reach you
stay the same. (Think of it like having a Post Office box address. Your place of
business can move anywhere it wants, but your customers always send their mail to the same
place.)
2) Try the service before you move your domain The single biggest mistake I made was switching my domain as soon as I signed up
with a new webhosting company. This caused me a lot of grief when I found that my
new webhost was "not as advertised" and I had to switch back to my previous
webhost ASAP! It takes time to make the change, so you
really want to make sure that your new webhost provides good service before you start the
process.
So when you sign up with a new webhost, tell them you'll move
your domain yourself. After your new webhost account is active you should do the
following things:
Upload and check your Web site.
You'll be able to do this by using the new IP address that has been assigned to you.
The webhost should provide instructions for doing this.
Once the site is uploaded, check outeverything on your Web site.
You'll have to access the site by typing the IP address (http://XXX.XX.XX.XX/) into
the browser, since typing your domain will take you to your old webhost's
site.
Make sure that all links work. If you're using CGI programs or Front Page extensions
(or "Webbots"), make sure they work. If your webhost has webserver
log analysis software, check that out too. But for that you'll probably
need to autoforward visitors to your new site (see below)
Check that email is working properly.
This can be the hardest to do, since you can't send email to an IP address. But you can
setup your email client to check mail from the new webhost's mailserver and verify that
the POP login works ok. (Your email program should be able to check multiple POP
mailboxes, since email will be going to both mailboxes during the nameserver transition
period.)
3) Forward users from your old site.
To check any webserver log analysis software, you need some site traffic! You can do
this by changing your old site's home page (and also other frequently accessed pages) so
that it contains:
a "We've moved" message
a link to the new page (in case autoforwarding doesn't work)
and a META refresh tag that forwards the user automatically.
Here's an example of the HTML code that you'll need to include between the <head>
and </head> tags at the top of your page (before the <body> section.
This should all be on one line. The number of seconds that the
page will display before forwarding the user is set in the number immediately following content=
.
The URL of the page you want the user to be forwarded to is set after URL=
.
Make sure everything after content= is inside quotes ("").
Be sure you don't change the names of the pages that you change to autoforward!
If you do, users won't be able to find your old pages, and won't get
forwarded to your new pages!
4) Discontinue your old webhosting service last!
So you've done everything above, and your site has been running for at least
a few days without problems. Great! Now you can move
your domain.
Before you contact them, make sure you've cleaned out your mailbox(es) if
you keep mail on the server, and downloaded any files that you didn't have on your
computer.
Then delete everything in your old site, so that you don't have to worry
about any files being left around when the webhost rents your former IP address on their
server.
Ask them when service will stop and what the final charges will be.
