5 reasons to use Managed DNS

Are you getting too tired of seeing how slow your site loads? We bet you have found Managed DNS as a solution to speed up your website’s performance. But it is far more than just a speed booster. Let’s see the top 5 reasons to use Managed DNS.

Managed DNS – Why do you need it?

Multiple points of presence (PoP)

5, 10, 20, or even more! You can have PoPs in different countries and continents that contain DNS records. A user from a place far away from your Primary server will still get its query resolved incredibly fast. Without Managed DNS, the query will travel a long time until it gets answered. Set up PoPs in all the important locations for your business. Most companies offer plans with the most connected spots in North America, Europe, and Asia, and there are others with locations on all of the continents.

Better uptime (availability)

So let’s say you have 10 PoPs. There is a problem, a massive one, that brings 5 of them down. What do you think will happen? Your site or application will continue to function! One of the rest of the DNS servers will step up until all of them are back. Your users could experience a slightly slower experience, but you will stay online. Better availability is crucial for every e-commerce business now.

You can set it up with a load balancing method and even make it automatic, so you don’t need to worry at all.

Scalability

You can start small, but if your site is getting more popular, you can expand your service. You can add more features to make it faster, more secure, or failed-proofed.

In some cases, when you are starting, you can satisfy your needs with a simple free plan. When the revenues and traffic go up, you can simply upgrade with a few clicks. Or you can plan a promotion campaign and upscale for a short period.

In the worst-case scenario that your business is struggling for a while, you can downscale. That way, you can lower your expenses and still stay operating.

Better cost

Can you create your own DNS? Yes, but this will be extremely expensive. Imagine searching all around the world and making local deals for servers. Negotiating prices with local Internet providers. In the end, you will get extremely tired, and you will pay many times more.

With a Managed DNS service, you don’t worry about hardware, and your concern is just to manage it properly.

Security

DDoS attacks from everywhere and pointing at everybody. This is the world that we are living in. With a Managed DNS, you could benefit from balancing the load between all the available DNS servers. That way, you can resist a certain level of bad traffic towards your site. Everybody has a limit, but if you want to increase your chances, you will need more servers and some of them to be DNS protected servers. That means that they can analyze the traffic and spot suspicious activities. They can then take further action to protect your DNS. There are different failovers to automate actions and keep your site up, by discarding packets, banning IP addresses, or redirecting the traffic.

Conclusion

So, did you get convinced by the utility of Managed DNS already? Yes, there are many benefits to use it.

Now the question is, which Managed DNS service provider should you choose. There are many good and well-priced DNS service providers. We will leave this decision up to you. Only you can best know your needs and budget.

SSL certificate – 5 reasons to use it

The security is, and it will be a constant concern for everybody, website owners, and users. Cybercriminals don’t stop hacking, so we can’t quit protecting our sites. Every upgrade or new development related to boosting security online is worthy of trying.

What is an SSL certificate?

SSL means Secure Sockets Layer. It’s a cryptographic protocol for connecting servers with users’ computers, or any other devices, ensuring data passing through them remains confidential.

Secure Sockets Layer is a data file that creates an encrypted link browser-server cryptographically. When they connect, the SSL certificate is validated, or no communication between them gets protected. This way, no one else but the user and the website could access the info (e-mail address, payment details, etc.) provided by the user.

Users can visually identify a website that has a SSL certificate through the extra “s” that appears after “HTTP”.

5 reasons to use an SSL certificate

Boost security on your website

SSL certificate protects your website and users from different threats. It prevents phishing that commonly works by cloning sites or pages. It requires a very high hacking level to make a convincing copy of a site protected with SSL.

SSL also prevents breaches while encrypting the data users send to your site. If someone intercepts this communication user’s browser-website (server), the SSL can detect and warn about a third-player involved.

Protect users’ data

No matter the website you own (blog, corporate site, portfolio, e-shop), there’s valuable information from users you must protect, from an e-mail, passwords, to sensitive card numbers.

SSL reinforces your site security by encrypting info going from one user device to another or device to server.

Be an authenticated and trustable website

To authenticate websites is another objective of SSL certificates. For installing a SSL certificate on your site, there’s a previous process for your identity to be verified.

Your identity is confirmed by an independent third-party authority in charge of issuing a digital certificate for websites. Once done, your website gets the signs that vouch for its integrity as an authentic, trustable website. Depending on the kind of SSL certificate you get, users can even check details about you and your organization directly on the website.

SSL authentication brings benefits for sites in terms of good reputation and trust.

Cover the requirements

For all kinds of websites, to protect their users’ data and be authenticated have become an obligation due to the serious threats to privacy that exist online.

In 2018, Google announced that websites without TLS/SSL certificates would be flagged with the warning message “Not secure website”. A security measure to make safer the online experience.

If the first thing your potential clients see while requesting your website is the “unsafe” warning in the URL field, they can quit immediately.

To receive online payments, e-shops must be PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant. That means there are some requirements to guarantee websites are a secure environment to manage such transactions. Having a SSL certificate is one of those requirements.

Rank better on Google

Google has taken different measures pushing website owners to make the online experience safer. Since 2004, the company places better websites with a SSL certificate installed. They clearly improve their search engine ranking.

Conclusion

No effort is pointless about a security matter. The good news is, SSL certificates are affordable. There are different kinds and some come free when purchasing other digital services like web hosting. So be legit, protect users’ data, and do great businesses!

How to host a website locally?

Many articles are comparing different web hosting types like shared hosting vs cloud hosting or cloud vs dedicated, but it is rare to see local hosting. Can you host your website locally? Yes, you can host your site on a local computer and make it available online or use it for testing.

Why host a website locally?

Lower cost. You might already have a server at the office. You are using it for data sharing between the employees or for an email server. If it is powerful enough, you can just add extra functionality and use it as a web host. Yes, there are many disadvantages like IP address changes, keeping the server always-on, need for back up the internet and power supply, and more, but it is technically possible.

To test. You can have an identical version of your site locally and use it to test new features. That way, if something goes wrong, it will be on this local test server, and your site will continue to work. Test new software, new updates, and more in a safe environment where downtime does not matter.

How to host a website locally?

The easiest way of trying a locally hosted website on Windows is to use a WAMP server. WAMP is a package for Windows that includes Apache webserver software, Database – MySQL, and PHP.

Go to the WAMP’s site and get the 64bit version. Then install it on your computer.

When it is ready, you will see a new icon (WAMP) down on the right next to the time and date. Click on it and then navigate to phpMyAdmin. This admin panel will help you create a database.

There you need to create a root user and choose a password for the software. The next step is to click on the tab “Databases”, write the name for your database, and click create.

For this example, we will install the WordPress CMS. You can go for Joomla or another if you like and still follow the instructions.

So, we will go to WodPress.org and press the button “Get WordPress”.

You will get a zip file that you need to extract in “C:\wamp64\mysite” (change “mysite” with the folder you have chosen or create a new one).

Open your browser and write the following in the address bar:

http://localhost/mysite/

So finally, the installation process of WordPress begins. There you will need to add data from the previous steps about the database. Use the user “root” and the information about the database you recently created.

Continue with the installation process by choosing site’s name, username, password, and additional information.

Now you have successfully installed a WordPress site on your local hardware!

Your Localhost online, how?

By now, we have created a WordPress site, but only you can use it. We will need to change a few things so it can be available online.

Let’s go to the configuration of Apache:

C:\wamp\bin\apache\apache[VersionWillBeHere]\conf]

Open it with Notepad or another text editor, find the “Listen 80” and change the 80 number with your IP address. Find your IP address in some of the “What’s my IP address site” if you don’t know it.

So now it will look like “62.232.160.1:80”.

Then change the second thing that is “ServerName” with “ServerName YOUR IP ADDRESS”.

Then find “c:/wamp/www/”, and under it, you need to change the permission to:

Order Allow,Deny

Allow from all

Restart your Localhost, and everybody can get to your website by using the IP address.

Adding a domain to your site

Now the site is accessible only with the IP address. You can go and buy a domain from a domain register site and use it to provide access to the site.

Buy a domain, and in the control panel of the domain provider, you will need to add an A DNS record that connects the domain to your IP address where the site is hosted.

We are not finished yet. If your IP address is not static, you will need to do some more.

Go to the settings of your router. You will need to find NAT, virtual server, or forwarding.

We need to forward the port, so when your IP address changes, you don’t need to change the A record manually.

Forward the WEB or HTTP traffic to port number 80, and in the field, LAN IP Address, add the IP address that your device uses on the local network (not the previous IP address that we used). Apply the changes and save.

Now it is ready!

You can use a very similar approach for mac computers with MAMP and LAMP for Linux.

Creating a website locally is possible, but currently, it is worth it, only for testing.

GeoDNS explained

Every time users request a website, and it takes a long time to be loaded, they leave! Website owners know that it could be that the server is busy or the server is located too far from the user. But users do not care and just abandon the site and maybe never comes back.

That’s called latency. A severe problem for website owners that, fortunately, can be fixed!

What is GeoDNS, and how does it work?

GeoDNS (Geographical Domain Name System) means a traffic distribution process based on the requests’ location. This is possible due to a group of name servers strategically located on different spots (regions, countries, continents).

When a visitor requests a domain, a long and complex process of domain resolving gets triggered. And it must happen in a few seconds for the site to be served successfully and fast.

Once the visitor types a domain in the browser, a request will travel to a DNS resolver. In the case of GeoDNS, the DNS server will read the visitor’s IP address to know the user’s location. Already knowing that the request will be sent to the closest server. Finally, this last will serve visitor’s request.

The difference between a traditional DNS service and GeoDNS is that the traditional DNS servers have the same IP address for the domain. The GeoDNS have different IP addresses, depending on the region, and that is the magic boosting the speed.

Benefits of having GeoDNS

There are clear benefits of enabling GeoDNS for your domain.

Optimized distribution of traffic

Intelligent management of traffic is possible through GeoDNS. It is a load balancing solution. It ensures the closest nameserver to the visitor will respond to the request. Besides, through this distribution, traffic overload can avoid automatically.

Uptime enhancement

Having not a DNS server but a group of them is a great benefit. In case a server is down, the visitor’s request for sure will find another server that will answer.

Faster loading

Fast loading is vital to improve the users’ experience and a key factor to be ranked better in search engines. Considering the smart location process of GeoDNS, waiting time definitely will be shorter for your visitors. This is already a great advantage but, now that offering a positive user experience will also be taken into account to be positioned in the first search results, the benefit is even more valuable.

IP filtering (Geofencing)

To deny access or direct users from a specific region, a website you choose can be done through IP filtering.

A singer, contracted exclusively by a British company, will release a new set of songs. The access to the new material can definitely be restricted through IP filtering just for British users. IP’s coming from other countries will be dropped.

Ventures who want to offer different contents per continent can configure the access aligned with that objective.

For whom GeoDNS is?

GeoDNS is good for all kinds of businesses. Small and medium websites would like to have it for growing. And large companies, for running smoothly the big needs they have.

But let’s say there are specific companies that can get the most out of it. International companies (tech, banking, and more) managing massive amounts of traffic, content platforms, and their need of delivery for a worldwide audience or e-commerce, always looking for high uptime and low latency to guarantee profits.

Conclusion

GeoDNS is a technology that offers real benefits to your business. If your company is growing internationally or if you are already global, keep it in mind. Big needs require advanced and efficient solutions!