Clustered hosting

Clustered hosting technology is designed to eliminate the problems inherent with typical shared hosting infrastructures. This technology provides customers with a “clustered” handling of security, load balancing, and necessary website resources.

A clustered hosting platform is data-driven, which means that no human interaction is needed to provision a new account to the platform.

Clustered hosting "virtualizes" the resources beyond the limits of one physical server, and as a result, a website is not limited to one server. They share the processing power of many servers and their applications are distributed in real-time. This means that they can purchase as much computing power as they want from a virtually inexhaustible source, since even the largest customer never consumes more than a fraction of a percent of the total server pool. Customer account changes (to add new resources or change settings) are propagated immediately to every server in the cluster. This is different from typical shared hosting architectures that usually require changes to a configuration file that becomes live after the server is rebooted during off hours, or are pushed on a cyclic basis every few hours.

Multiple tiers of security are integrated into the clustered hosting platform. In a typical hosting environment, the security layer is usually not integrated in the platform. The stock solutions used for shared hosting do not solve core issues around integrating security between the application and the operating system. At best, most typical hosts will implement a firewall solution, and weaknesses inherent with the operating system will remain exploitable to those that penetrate the firewall.

Clustered hosting network layer protections employ intelligent routing, redundant switching fabric and built in firewall and proxy technology. Clustered hosting provides considerable advantages over traditional hosting architectures in mitigating denial-of-service attacks and other network attacks because such attacks can be dispersed over a large pool of servers, and if individual hardware components are impacted by such attacks, they automatically fall out of traffic handling during the attack.

Grids versus conventional supercomputers

Distributed" or "grid" computing in general is a special type of parallel computing[citation needed] which relies on complete computers (with onboard CPU, storage, power supply, network interface, etc.) connected to a network (private, public or the Internet) by a conventional network interface, such as Ethernet. This is in contrast to the traditional notion of a supercomputer, which has many processors connected by a local high-speed computer bus.

The primary advantage of distributed computing is that each node can be purchased as commodity hardware, which when combined can produce similar computing resources to a multiprocessor supercomputer, but at lower cost. This is due to the economies of scale of producing commodity hardware, compared to the lower efficiency of designing and constructing a small number of custom supercomputers. The primary performance disadvantage is that the various processors and local storage areas do not have high-speed connections. This arrangement is thus well-suited to applications in which multiple parallel computations can take place independently, without the need to communicate intermediate results between processors.

The high-end scalability of geographically dispersed grids is generally favorable, due to the low need for connectivity between nodes relative to the capacity of the public Internet.There are also some differences in programming and deployment. It can be costly and difficult to write programs so that they can be run in the environment of a supercomputer, which may have a custom operating system, or require the program to address concurrency issues.

If a problem can be adequately parallelized, a "thin" layer of "grid" infrastructure can allow conventional, standalone programs to run on multiple machines (but each given a different part of the same problem). This makes it possible to write and debug on a single conventional machine, and eliminates complications due to multiple instances of the same program running in the same shared memory and storage space at the same time.

Grid computing

Grid computing (or the use of a computational grid) is the application of several computers to a single problem at the same time - usually to a scientific or technical problem that requires a great number of computer processing cycles or access to large amounts of data. According to John Patrick, IBM's vice-president for Internet strategies, "the next big thing will be grid computing."

Grid computing depends on software to divide and apportion pieces of a program among several computers, sometimes up to many thousands. Grid computing can also be thought of as distributed and large-scale cluster computing, as well as a form of network-distributed parallel processing. It can be small -- confined to a network of computer workstations within a corporation or it can be large -- a public collaboration across many companies or networks.

It is a form of distributed computing whereby a "super and virtual computer" is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely-coupled computers, acting in concert to perform very large tasks. This technology has been applied to computationally-intensive scientific, mathematical, and academic problems through volunteer computing, and it is used in commercial enterprises for such diverse applications as drug discovery, economic forecasting, seismic analysis, and back-office data processing in support of e-commerce and web services.

What distinguishes grid computing from conventional cluster computing systems is that grids tend to be more loosely coupled, heterogeneous, and geographically dispersed. Also, while a computing grid may be dedicated to a specialized application, it is often constructed with the aid of general purpose grid software libraries and middleware.

Website awards for advertising and design

Several advertising and design award schemes now include categories for websites and other interactive media. Among the most prominent are:

Addy Awards

The Addy awards are operated by the American Advertising Federation, which is based in Washington DC, USA. In addition to awards for print, poster, and television advertisements, there are several categories for interactive media. These include: Business to Business Websites, Consumer Websites, Banners & Pop-Ups, E-Cards, Micro & Mini Websites, Online Games, Online Newsletters, Podcasts, Mobile Marketing, Internet Commercials, and Webisodes. Selection is based on a judgement of creative quality.

Clio Awards

The Clio awards program, which is based in New York USA, is operated by Nielsen, the Dutch media conglomerate formerly known as VNU. Clio awards recognise excellence in advertising and design. There is an interactive category, which grants awards to websites. Other categories include: TV/Cinema, Print, Poster, and Billboard. The Clio jury comprises more than 100 judges drawn from more than 60 countries. Awards are granted during the four day Clio Festival, held each May in Miami, Florida.

D&AD

The D&AD awards program is operated by D&AD, a non-profit organization based in London, England, and founded in 1962, which represents the global creative, design and advertising communities. D&AD offers several annual awards for websites, including awards for: Websites, Microsites, New Uses of Websites, Writing, Sound Design, Interface & Navigation, and Photography. Two levels of award are granted: the Yellow Pencil (equivalent to a silver award) and the coveted Black Pencil (equivalent to a gold award).

Website awards

The internet industry has established various award schemes for websites, following the example of the Tony, Oscar, BAFTA, Cannes Film Festival and Emmy awards which are granted in the fields of theatre, film and television. This article covers notable English language website award schemes.

General website awards
Best-on-topic website awards
Website awards for advertising and design
Aggregating award sites

General website awards

There are numerous general website award schemes, many of which carry little credibility. Among the most prominent general website award schemes are:

Favourite Website Awards

The Favourite Website Awards (FWA) scheme has been operated since 2000 by FWA, which is based in Knebworth, England. FWA claims to be the world's most visited website award program, receiving more than 1 million visits per month. FWA selects a Site of the Day, a Site of the Month, and a Site of the Year. Recent Sites of the Day are shown as thumbnails on the FWA front page. FWA bases its selections on: Design 40%, Navigation 25%, Graphics 15%, Content 15%, and Personality 5%. As a result of the emphasis on design and graphics, winning websites tend to be strikingly designed and visually attractive. In addition to the Site of the Year, there is an annual People's Choice Award decided by online public vote.

Interactive Media Awards.

The Interactive Media Awards (IMA) scheme has been operated since 2004 by the non-profit Interactive Media Council Inc., which is based in New York, USA. Entries are judged on the following criteria: Design, Content, Feature Functionality, Usability, and Standards Compliance & Cross-Browser Compatibility. IMA takes the view that a website rich in graphic design is of little value if its content is weak, boring and useless. Awards are granted annually in 100 categories. These are divided into four quarterly judging rounds. Categories include Advertising, Agriculture, Arts & Culture, Banking, Community, Education, Energy, Legal, News, Politics, Real Estate, School, Spirituality, and Sports.

WebAwards

The WebAwards scheme has been operated since 1997 by the Web Marketing Association, based in Simsbury, Connecticut, USA. It grants annual awards to websites in 96 industry categories including Advertising, Architecture, Automobile, Banks, Broadcasting, Insurance, Investor Relations, Legal, Leisure, Media, Medical, Military, Movies, Music, News, Pharmaceuticals, Political, Real Estate, Retail, School, Sports, Technology, Travel, and University. Entries are judged by three or more expert judges on seven criteria, each of which is given equal weight. The criteria are: Design, Innovation, Content, Technology, Interactivity, Copywriting, and Ease of use.

Webbys

The Webby Awards scheme has been operated since 1996 by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which is based in New York, USA. Awards are granted each spring for websites which demonstrate Best Practice in: Content, Structure & Navigation, Visual Design, Interactivity, Functionality, and Overall Experience. Other award categories include: Activism, Commerce, Fashion, Humor, Kids, News, Politics, Science, and Sports. There are Business Website awards covering categories which include: Automotive, Financial Services, Professional Services, Retail, and Travel. The main awards are decided by a panel of judges. The related People's Voice Awards are decided by online public vote.

Best-on-topic website awards

Beesker. The Beesker award scheme, operated by Extonet Ltd of Cambridge UK, selects the world's best website on each of several hundred narrow topics from Aardvarks to Zippers. Selection is based on depth and reliability of content, and clarity of presentation. 400 topics are covered in the following categories: Arts & Entertainment, Education, Food & Drink, Hobbies, Home & Garden, Natural World, People, Places & Travel, Sports, and Technology.

History of Website builder

The first websites were created in the early 1990's. These sites were hand written in a markup language called HTML. The early versions of HTML were very basic, only giving websites basic structure (headings and paragraphs), and the ability to link using hypertext. As the Web and web design progressed, the markup language changed to become more complex and flexible, giving the ability to add objects like images and tables to a page. Features like tables, which were originally intended to be used to display tabular information, were soon subverted for use as invisible layout devices. Page layout using tables made these pages difficult to update, as adding information generally meant rewriting the whole page. With the advent of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), formatting pages became separated from content making pages easier to edit. Database integration technologies such as server-side scripting and design standards like W3C further changed and enhanced the way the pages are built.

Software was written to help design web pages and by 1998 Dreamweaver had been established as the industry leader, however purists criticised the quality of the code produced by such software as being overblown and reliant on tables. As the industry moved towards W3C standards Dreamweaver amongst others were criticised for not being compliant. The Acid2 Test, developed by the Web Standards Project is used to test compliance with standards and most modern web builders now support CSS and are more or less compliant, though many professionals still prefer to write optimized source code by hand.

Open source software for building web sites took much longer to become established mainly due to problems with browser compliance with standards. Most open source developers are interested with being standards compliant rather than commercially viable, whereas those producing software for sale need it to work with Internet Explorer which is still not completely standards compliant. W3C started Amaya in 1996 to showcase Web technologies in a fully-featured Web client. This was to provide a framework that integrated lots of W3C technologies in a single, consistent environment. Amaya started as an HTML + CSS style sheets editor and now supports XML, XHTML, MathML, and SVG.

With the coming of the second generation of the Internet, also known as Web 2.0, many more people are surfing the web, few of which have any technical knowledge. These users want an easy and stress free experience. With the explosion of commerce on the Internet more and more people need their own web site and so software designers created better and simpler WYSIWIG web builders. As more people connected to the web using broadband it became possible to use web builders on line rather than buy or download one. Web hosts began to provide web building software as part of the package, claiming a web site can be created in 10 minutes with out any technical knowledge. These on-line web builders are easy to use and offer small businesses and private individuals a relatively quick and cheaper alternative to employing a professional web designer or learning how to write source code. They can produce colourful and professional looking pages but are tied to a single web host.

Website builder

There are two kinds of web site builders: on-line proprietary tools provided by web hosting companies which cater to people who wish to build and publish their website without learning the technical aspects of web page production and software which runs on a computer, creating pages off-line and which can then publish these pages on any host.

On-line website builders typically require customers to sign up with the web hosting company -- most offer free trial periods -- and choose the page design that best suits their purpose. They offer a variety of services, anywhere between creating basic personal web pages or social network content (Widgets) to making full blown business/e-commerce websites, either template based or - on the more flexible platforms - totally design free. Some companies' tools allow the user to see the source code, that is, the HTML behind the page he is building. Many do not, meaning that only certain designated areas on the page can be modified. Usually, these areas are: headers, text and some graphic elements. These web builders are WYSIWIG or “what you see is what you get” meaning that the page can be edited as in a word processor. An example is Moogo.

Off – line web builders cater to professional web designers who need to create pages for more than one client or web host. Modern off-line web builders are usually both WYSIWIG and allow direct editing of source code and CSS styling. They are generally quicker and more flexible to use than on-line builders, but may be expensive to buy. An example is Adobe Dreamweaver (previously Macromedia Dreamweaver). There are some open source web builders which may be downloaded free of charge. Sea Monkey is an example of an open source free web builder.