INTRODUCTION
Now that you have registered with KingOfHosting.com and your web site is on its way to completion, it is time to take a closer look at some of the resources that KingOfHosting.com offers to help you build a more powerful and effective site.

Our services facilitate the construction of web sites that provide more than just static information. Successful and effective web sites utilize technologies that offer information processing behind the scenes to create interactive content that engages and involves your visitors.

These resources which are made available on KingOfHosting.com servers, will help you to build a better web site:

• Server-side Includes - By including certain text in HTML documents, you can give instructions to the IIS server to perform certain actions on your HTML before it is sent out to a visitor on your site. A common way to use this is to include a 'footer' at the bottom of all the web pages on your site. By including a 'server side include' (a small extra tag) at the bottom of each HTML document, the web server will attach a file you specify to each page. Then, instead of wasting time and disk space adding this footer by hand and double-checking to ensure you have not missed it anywhere, the web server can do it for you. For example, 'copyright, your company, 2001, all rights reserved' can be added easily at the bottom of every page this way.
• HTTP logs - If you have used free web hosting services prior to KingOfHosting.com, you have probably discovered that using 'counters' to track the number of visitors to your web site is not a great way to monitor your site's traffic, simply because they are just not designed for the job. The IIS web server maintains its own HTTP Logs, namely, accounts of every file served up by your web site, who viewed them, when, and with what browser. With this information, you can make use of Log Analysis Tools to analyze your traffic patterns during specific times of the day, to specific areas of your site, and other trends.
• CGI-BIN - To ensure that your site is more than just another 'electronic brochure' comprising endless static pages, it must offer interactive content. To do that, your site needs to offer functionality to your visitor. This can take the form of a simple guestbook or message board, to an elaborate online ordering and tracking system. CGI or Common Gateway Interface is the way to achieve this. This is a way to run programs on the web server itself, as well as send and receive information from visitors to your site. CGI programs can be written in many different computer languages and we support most of the common ones, among them, PERL, Python, and Tcl.

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  E-MAIL ACCOUNTS
  A strong e-mail system behind your web site is one of the best ways to build rapport and enhance communication with your site's visitors. Make sure that your email address is easy to remember since email is often the first line of contact to your visitors after your home page. You may already have your own email addresses through your internet service provider, so being able to incorporate your KingOfHosting.com emails with your existing emails is important here too. Here are some of the tools available to you with KingofHosting.
  • POP Accounts
    POP accounts are email addresses to store received email on the server for your collection later, just like your email account with your ISP. When you register an account, you will get one of these, and you can later add extra addresses to your domain so that more people in your organization can receive email at your domain too.
  • E-Mail Forwarding
    When you need an extra address at your domain, but do not require another place to store your email prior to collection, you can use a forwarder. Forwarders are email addresses that redirect email that is receives to another email address for collection. A simple way is to set up a 'webmaster@yourdomain.com' address that forwards the emails to your email address at your internet service provider.
  • Auto Responders
    Sometimes, it is not possible to respond to every email that arrives in your mailbox in the same day. However, if you do not provide an immediate response, your customers and business associates may wonder if they have managed to contact you. It is also part of good service to provide an instant reply so that your contacts are aware that you are always on hand for assistance. To solve this problem, you can use auto responders to offer information that is required on demand.
  • Mailing Lists
    Mailing lists have always been an efficient way of facilitating communication between interested parties and they work in the same way as their actual physical counterparts except that the people subscribing to the list are allowed to send their own messages to the list to be received by the other subscribers.
    

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  FTP ACCESS
  File Transfer Protocol [FTP] is the most commonly used and reliable method of transferring files via the internet, and it is the recommended tool for managing your web site at KingOfHosting.com. FTP clients are available for all network-capable operating systems and some elements of site management can only be performed with an FTP client.

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  MYSQL
  Structured Query Language [SQL] has been the defacto standard for accessing databases over a network. SQL servers provide data storage and management services that can be accessed conveniently from many scripting languages and CGI systems. Using SQL is both faster and simpler than storing and accessing data from a flat text file.

  KingOfHosting.com implements the TCX MySQL database server; MySQL has a reputation for speed, stability and ease of use. While there are SQL servers that are much faster than MySQL, its accessibility and adherence to standards make it the perfect choice for web site database storage.

  • Database Storage/Processing
    The basis of the SQL language is the concept of storing data in tables of related information and retrieving this data according to certain criteria, for example: 'show all inventory categories with less than ten units remaining', or 'show all accounts whose payment is due next week'. This data could comprise customer accounts, product information, or order records since SQL is extremely flexible in the kind of data that can be expressed and contained.
  • Commerce applications
    The successful development of an online commerce solution can be accomplished through the use of the SQL language. Furthermore, with the speed and security of data stored in SQL databases, much of the criteria of a successful commerce site is fulfilled.
    

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  PHP
  PHP, a server-side scripting language with built in methods to access database services through SQL, is a powerful alternative to CGI applications for processing data prior to viewing by site visitors. For more information, goto www.php.net c PHP has many uses:
  
  
  • Rapid Database Driven Site Generation
    Database access used to be possible only through using a CGI application running on the server. However, this meant extra modules and lengthy codes. PHP, like other server-side script languages such as ASP, Cold Fusion, etc, actually speeds up this process by providing fast, direct access to SQL databases in very readable syntax. Unless you have very specific needs or a pre-built system, the fastest way to build database services for your web site would be by using PHP.
  • Dynamic Page Generation
    Another common usage of PHP with an SQL server is for creating instant web pages. Using a template page written in PHP, you can easily retrieve images, text, etc from an SQL server to construct the final HTML page that is seen by the web browser. A good example would be product information pages. Instead of generating hundreds of HTML pages, each describing a separate product and consuming much disk space, product descriptions, an SQL database can store photographs and other information, and a template PHP is generated. Whenever a client requests information on a certain product number, the PHP template requests the corresponding information from the database, and constructs a completed web page of the product information that is presented to the client. This saves much work, especially with regards to amending product information, adding and removing products, as well as other site management tasks.