Hosting Features

Questions about Web hosting? You're not alone. The numerous aspects of hosting a Web site can be both confusing and intimidating to anyone who is new to Web hosting.

That's why we have created the following list of services and software that are part of hosting a Web site. Each item has an explanation describing exactly what it is. Hopefully, by reading through this list you will gain a better understanding of all the things that go into hosting a Web site.

A domain name will give you a unique identity and web address on the Internet. Also, at Acme you are not limited to .COM. Our customers utilize a wide variety of top level domains. Acme has configured DNS services for such top level domains as: .NET, .ORG, .EDU, .US in addition to hosting foreign or specialized top level domains such as: .NU, .CC, .TC, .SE and more.

Too many ISP's throw in Microsoft® FrontPage® Web Server support as an afterthought. Acme's support for Microsoft FrontPage doesn't end at being a sales feature - it's our specialty!

The author of the book from SAM's Publishing "Teach yourself Microsoft FrontPage 2002 in 24 hours" <available from Amazon.com> participated in our Microsoft FrontPage beta program while writing his book. Acme was chosen for our demonstrated expertise in supporting sites created with FrontPage.

Acme offers native Windows 2000-based web server support for Microsoft FrontPage, the world's leading Web site management and creation tool that seamlessly integrates with the Microsoft Office family of applications.

With MCSE, MCP and MCP+Internet certified staff members running our network, your hosting services are managed by highly knowledgeable IT professionals. Our technical team members have passed the rigorous exams required to receive certifications in Windows NT Server, NT Enterprise, Internet Information Server (IIS 4.0 web server), TCP/IP, Microsoft FrontPage, Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) and numerous other desktop/server operating systems and applications.

Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server and the award winning Internet Information Server 5.0 (IIS) web server make it easy to publish documents and information on the web.

This combination of operating system and Web Server provide the ultimate platform for powerful, scalable, yet easy to manage web sites.

Active Server Pages (ASP) allow you to generate dynamic web pages that mix HTML and a scripting language in a single file. With ASP you can build HTML pages that display information stored in a database, perform queries to search for information in your web, or provide customized content for users.

The amount of Hard Drive space you are allocated on our server for your web site. Most web sites reside comfortably in less than 15 megs of space. Our Starter plan features double that amount. In the future you may decide to expand your web site to include more extensive storage for documents, images, databases, audio and video files. Acme's choice of web hosting plans offers value and flexibility to grow your web site well beyond it's initial space requirements.

A measurement of the amount of data/files (text, graphics, audio, video, etc.) that is being downloaded by people who are visiting your web site. Greater than 99% of our customer's fall well within the range of normal traffic volume supported by their web hosting plan.

Our goal is to give you the greatest flexibility in managing your web site, without any hidden costs or surprise fees. All web sites have their busy times and not-so-busy times. If your web site enjoys lots of visitors, or spikes in traffic following a new product announcement, banner advertising campaign, etc. - we won't penalize you for your success. Of course, in fairness to all our web hosting clients, we reserve the right to review any sites that show sustained usage of excessive amounts of bandwidth, CPU and/or system resources that negatively impact our other users. In these circumstances, we'll gladly work with you to implement a solution or an upgrade in service that's both agreeable and fair.

POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) mail service allows you to log into a mail box residing on our mail server to download your mail using any standard POP3 capable e-mail software (such as MS Outlook, Netscape Mail, Eudora, Pegasus and many others).

An alternative method is IMAP (Interactive Mail Access Protocol). With IMAP, your e-mail software remains stored on the server while you remotely "view" your e-mail messages. Your messages remain stored on the server until you decide to delete them. For example, email stored on an IMAP server can be accessed from your computer at home, a workstation at the office, and a notebook computer while traveling, without the need to transfer messages or files back and forth between these computers.

POP and IMAP deal with the receiving of e-mail and are not to be confused with SMTP, a protocol for transferring e-mail across the Internet. You send outgoing e-mail with SMTP, and retrieve incoming e-mail with POP or IMAP.

E-mail addressed to anyname@yourdomain.com can be automatically routed to your personal e-mail address anywhere on the Internet, or delivered directly to your POP3 Login account with Acme.

Access your e-mail account to send and receive email from any Web browser, on any computer - anywhere! Great if you are traveling or otherwise away from your regular office or home computer.

The web-based E-mail Administration features allow you to change your password, mail forwarding information, configure an autoresponder, activate a vacation message, create processing rules and even contains a convenient on-line address book to store your commonly used e-mail addresses!

An e-mail autoresponder automatically replies to incoming e-mails with a precomposed message, usually, but not limited to acknowledgement or confirmation e-mails.

An e-mail list is a list of "users" and their e-mail addresses. Can be used for sending multiple messages to a group of users at the same time.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol ) is one of the available methods to access your web site to upload and download pages and other files. You can publish to your web site via FTP by logging in with a username and password.

Your web site log file records information about all the activity that takes place on your web site and stores it in a text file (log file). You can download and view your log files, or when processed with a log analysis software (like WebTrends) your can use them to generate detailed reporting on your web site activity.

WebTrends reads and analyzes Web-server log files, then uses that information to generate detailed full color charts and graphs containing a wealth of information, such as who accesses your site, when they do it, which files they request most often, and how long they spend browsing.

Connect your database to the web with support for Microsoft Access, Visual FoxPro, and many other common database file formats.

Secured Sockets Layer, also known as SSL, provides the data encryption that has become the standard for online credit card transactions and other secure data transfer over the Internet. Acme supports QuickSSL, Verisign and Thawte Digital Server ID's.

Acme offers support for StoreFront E-Commerce, an affordable shopping cart creation software package. When used with Microsoft's FrontPage, StoreFront helps you create electronic commerce sites quickly and easily!

Real Audio/Video allows web site visitors to experience streaming audio and video files delivered from your web site.

Microsoft's Advanced Streaming Format (ASF) allows multimedia content will be stored, streamed, and presented to viewers over the Internet. Although ASF was developed with an eye toward network streaming, ASF is perfectly suitable for local storage and playback as well, in light of its optimization for playback. The data stored in the ASF format can represent dynamic, advanced multimedia presentations.

Microsoft Index Server indexes all documents on your web site. Powerful, yet easy to use, it allows the end user to perform full-text searches of your site. The search engine can find documents in just about any format: text in a Microsoft Word document, statistics on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, or the content of an HTML page.

Or call 952-928-8828 or 800-332-0990
and we'll answer any questions your might have.