Ask CWS: How do Domain Pointers Work?

Website owners commonly use more than one address to route traffic to a single website. This practice is called domain pointing. Although the concept is relatively simple, there are actually several separate systems involved, so it's helpful to understand what's happening when you set up or change a pointer.

DNS (Domain Name Service)

Anytime you ask your computer to access a website, it has to map the friendly address you typed in (for example, http://www.cws.net/) to an IP address, which works much like a phone number -- it's uniquely tied to the server that will ultimately handle your request. That DNS query is a lot like looking up a person's phone number based on their name in a phone book, but the computer also needs to know where to find the information in the first place.

When you register a domain, you give the registrar (Network Solutions, for example) two or more name servers that will provide this information. Usually these are provided by the same company that hosts your website.

Web Server

Once a name server gives the requesting computer an IP address, it can connect to the server that holds the website. Often a single IP address can be used for many different sites, so the server software acts like a switchboard operator, examining each request and sending it to the right place. When multiple addresses are pointed at a single site, it must be configured to accept traffic for each one.

Setting up or changing a domain pointer requires that, for each address:

1. The registrar has the correct name servers listed.
2. The name servers report the correct IP address.
3. The Web server accepts and correctly handles the incoming traffic.

People set up domain pointers for many reasons -- most commonly to accommodate misspellings or variations on a company name. Sophisticated marketers might use a particular domain exclusively with different advertising channels and monitor the performance of each.

However, there is a danger to watch out for. Search engines like Google may consider each domain as a separate website, and if there are too many with perceived "duplicate" content, they may not rank as well in search results. It's often better to choose one address as the primary, and redirect traffic from the others to it.

Registering alternate domains can be a valuable tool in your Web marketing efforts, but it's important to make sure all the moving parts are covered. Drop us a line at support (at) cws (dot) net if we can help.

Ask CWS: Hosting Plan Limits

Question: Other hosting companies offer unlimited hard drive space, unlimited emails, and 100 terabytes of data transfer per month. Why don't you offer this much?

Anwser: Simple, we don't oversell our servers.

When a company oversells hosting they are selling more resources than they currently have, just like an airline that sells more seats than the plane can hold because they expect a few to reschedule. For example, if you have a server with a 300 GB hard drive, and you sell hosting packages with 10GB of storage to 50 customers, you have sold 500 GB of server space. Since you only have a 300 GB hard drive, you've oversold the server by 200 GB.

Why do hosting companies do this? Because they know that the typical website only takes up around 50 MB of space and uses 1 GB of bandwidth per month, so on average, these 50 customers shouldn't use up all of the resources on the server.

If a typical website only takes up 50 MB, imagine how many of them you could fit on a 300 GB server -- over 6,000! The potential profits from this type of arrangement, and thus the temptation to do so, are huge. But it doesn't seem very ethical to promise what you can't deliver, simply trusting that your customers won't ask you to fulfill your promise, does it?

We don't think so.

We believe that companies who offer "unlimited" emails or "unlimited" hard drive space are doing exactly that -- promising something they can't possibly deliver. These types of offers also tend to attract a few customers who do try to take advantage of the provider and steal precious resources from quality customers (like you). We want your business website to perform at an optimal level at all times and not be affected by some kid who is streaming a video to five thousand college buddies.

If we promise more than we can deliver, we can't guarantee reliability 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That's our promise to you and the reason we don't offer hosting plans with ridiculous limits on hard drive space, bandwidth or email accounts. Thanks for asking!

Have a question for us?
Got a question about design, business, marketing, etc? We would be honored to provide some insight into how we'd tackle the issue. Send an email to support [at] cws dot net with the subject "Ask CWS".

Site Launch: autodatapubs.com

Autodata Publications has recently launched their new redesigned website and hosted by Corporate Web Services, Inc.

The new site offers an array of products and information for the professional auto technician who is looking for technical data for a large assortment of domestic, and imported vehicles.

The site also includes product photos, distributor contact information, and even a newsletter to keep you up to date on new product releases.

It was a pleasure working with Autodata, and we hope they enjoy their redesigned home on the web.

Fraudulent Email

It has come to our attention that a handful of hosting customers recently received a fraudulent email message claiming to be from CWS. The subject line of this message is "Hosting Regular Security Maintenance."

The message includes an attached PHP script named webguard.php with instructions for the hosting customer to place the script on his or her website and run it. Although this file is presented as a security feature, the opposite is in fact true. The script is malicious and is intended to compromise the security of a server on which it runs.

Should you receive an email of this nature, do not under any circumstances upload the script to your website. If you ever receive an email that claims to be from CWS and have any question at all about its authenticity, please contact us at 1-888-426-7793.