Shopping cart applications have one purpose: to make it easy for virtual customers to purchase products and services from your site.

In brick-and-mortar stores, shoppers use a cart to navigate the aisles, choose products, and take them to the checkout stand. The virtual shopping cart has the same core functionality, but it also takes the role of a catalog, by providing a means for users to browse your wares, and of a salesclerk, by allowing shoppers to pay for the products they want to purchase. More than that, shopping cart software provides inventory, order tracking, reporting, and marketing functionality. In other words, a good shopping cart solution will give you everything you need to create your virtual store.

The importance of choosing the right ecommerce solution cannot be overstated. The ultimate success of your online store may depend on this choice. With the right ecommerce web hosting solution and the right shopping cart, you have everything you need to succeed in online commerce. It is important to know what options you have and what the pros and cons are for each shopping cart. In this article, we explore the top shopping cart applications of the moment, with an emphasis on open source solutions. We discuss the strengths of each ecommerce hosting application and their most suitable uses.

A content management system (CMS) provides a simple way to add and modify content on a website without having to modify any HTML code. Without a CMS, each time you want to add an article or modify the text on your homepage, you have to modify the actual files that make up your site. Working directly in the source code is not only time-consuming and difficult, but it also leaves your site prone to errors and inconsistencies.

A CMS hosting solution eliminates the need to have a professional on-call to maintain and update your site. You can do everything yourself, without the risk of making a faulty edit that takes down your site. There are many CMS web hosting solutions of various degrees of usability and flexibility. To help you make a decision, we’ve put together a list of freely-available content management systems. We based our reviews on ease of use, capabilities, and extensibility so that you can make an informed decision as to which of the following solutions is best for creating a modern, attractive website for yourself or for your business.

The popularity of WordPress is nothing short of amazing. Currently, the open source platform hosts almost 15% of the world’s top million websites. Even more impressive, close to a quarter of all new websites registered in the United States are built on WordPress. That’s quite an achievement for a web application that started in 2003 as the personal project of a 19-year old philosophy student, Matt Mullenweg, who wanted a better way to blog.

WordPress has been embraced by millions of users, hobbyists, and professionals alike, and is now used to power an incredible range of projects. Which brings us to the subject of this article: although most people associate WordPress with blogging, the open source platform is so versatile that it can be used to build almost any type of website. With its powerful templating systems, open architecture, and extensive plugin support, WordPress is the cornerstone of blogs, business websites, forums, wikis, and even online stores.

In this article, we take a high-level look at the things you can accomplish with a WordPress website. In particular, we discuss how you can use WordPress as a CMS, to power a forum, and to build your own online store. We analyze some of the options that you have for each purpose and demonstrate why it’s important to invest in a quality WordPress hosting service.

If you’re serious about your online presence, you probably value high-availability and a glitch-free website more than anything else. You know that slow loading pages, server errors, and extensive downtime are all problems that drive visitors away. And, in today’s ultracompetitive online environment, every click and every page view matters.

So, what can you do to protect your investment – your time, your energy, and ultimately your money? How can you keep your website running flawlessly, day in and day out? The answer is managed dedicated hosting. But not just any type of dedicated managed server will do. Find a hosting provider that offers quality, round-the-clock server monitoring services. Here are the top three reasons you should invest in a managed dedicated hosting solution that includes top-notch server monitoring.

If you are remotely serious about your website, SQL should mean more to you than just another fancy acronym.

Structured Query Language (SQL) is a programming language that manages data in relational databases. But why would that interest you? After all, you just signed up for a hosting account so you can start a blog. Or perhaps you want to host a simple online store. You don’t need to know anything about SQL, right? Well, you actually do. Just about every web application that you can imagine relies on some sort of SQL database to store text, images, user credentials, settings, and all the other items that make up a website. So, unless you plan to have a completely static webpage, sooner or later, you will bump into SQL.

Did you noticed how we said “some sort of SQL database?” That’s because there are many types of SQL implementations, including Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle SQL, and the open source MySQL. In this article, we focus on MySQL because it’s one of the most popular database servers and it’s free, meaning that most hosting providers offer it in their standard hosting packages. What are the most important things that you should know about MySQL? Read on to find out.

When it comes to web hosting, it doesn’t get any better than a powerful dedicated server. Dedicated hosting gives customers access to the raw power of an entire server, without the limitations that affect shared and VPS hosting solutions.

Modern dedicated servers are powerful machines that combine abundant physical resources with cutting-edge software technologies. Additionally, modern dedicated servers are finely tuned to maximize the potential of the hosting infrastructure. Dedicated hosting solutions span a wide range of specifications and budgets, with substantial differences between the two ends of the scale. You can get a reasonably capable machine that is well suited for smaller websites for less than $100. On the other hand, a fully-optioned dedicated web hosting service can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month. That’s the equivalent of purchasing a new laptop every month.

Most dedicated server web hosting service providers will let you customize your dedicated server. With so many options available and an equally diverse price range, it’s important to know how to select the components of a custom dedicated server in order to maximize performance and keep expenses in check. The following article will guide you through the three main stages of server customization and explain how to personalize your dedicated hosting solution. You will also learn how to keep costs in check by eliminating expenses that are not absolutely necessary.

Whether you are a hobbyist passionate about a topic, an online publisher looking to build an active following, or a business that seeks promotion, an online forum can be an extremely powerful tool. Creating an online community is beneficial in many ways, from the increased traffic to your website to the credibility that you win by hosting an active forum with many members.

Online forums, also known as message boards or discussion boards, require a certain amount of work to setup and get running. Perhaps the hardest thing about starting a forum is getting people to join the conversation and become an active community member. Creating a successful forum is a lot easier when you have the proper tools, namely a comprehensive forum platform such as vBulletin. In the following article, you will learn what makes vBulletin such a useful tool for creating attractive forums and you will learn how to select a hosting solution that lets you take advantage of vBulletin power.

Ecommerce is a multi-billion dollar business that has experienced massive worldwide growth in recent years and is set to become even more important in the future. Artists, craftsmen that sell their creations online, charities looking to raise funds, small to medium sized businesses, bookstores, etc. Almost any company, organization, and individual, can successfully use the online medium to market and sell goods and services.

Setting up online stores used to be a difficult, time-consuming, and expensive endeavor. Nevertheless, with the costs of dedicated shopping cart hosting solutions plummeting, and the emergence of open source ecommerce applications, the investment required to start an online store has significantly decreased. One open source shopping cart in particular, osCommerce, is a popular solution for ecommerce, thanks to its rich feature set and low costs to implement.

In this article, you will learn more about osCommerce and how you can use this application to develop online stores that create consistent revenue. We discuss the installation and customization of osCommerce and show you why it is important to opt for a dedicated osCommerce web hosting solution. To begin, let’s go through some general information on osCommerce to understand why it is the premier choice for creating successful shopping websites.

Third party scripts provide one of the most powerful ways to customize your online presence. Whether you are using your shared web hosting account to run a personal site or you are in charge of a powerful dedicated server, you can use a third party script to quickly install a web application such as a blog, online store, or forum. WordPress, Joomla, phpBB, or MediaWiki are just a few of the scripts used by website owners worldwide to improve the functionality of their online presences.

Many of the most popular web applications are open source software that is developed actively by a community of volunteers. The release cycle of popular open source scripts is often quick as new versions are released regularly, sometimes at intervals of a few months. In this article, we review why it is important to keep your third party scripts up to date by regularly checking for new releases and installing the latest version. Among the benefits of using the latest version of third party scripts, we will discuss protection against security threats, improved functionality, and fewer bugs.

Content management systems (CMS), such as Drupal, Joomla, or WordPress, allow web developers to create rich, attractive websites that can be updated easily, even by people with no programming skills. CMS have become wildly popular because they simplify the task of creating and maintaining an online presence, to the point where virtually anybody can create an impressive-looking website in a matter of hours. Add to that flexibility and scalability provided by Drupal and other CMS, and you will understand why content management systems have become a household name in companies and organizations around the world, from small charities to the largest corporate and government portals.

Drupal is a prime example of a popular CMS used in large-scale projects. A small list of high-profile projects developed with Drupal includes the sites of NASA, the White House, Harvard University, Popular Science magazine, Greenpeace, and many others. In fact, you have probably browsed a few Drupal websites today without realizing it.

It is obvious that Drupal is a great CMS that can be customized for virtually any scope or requirement. Nevertheless, to tap into the full potential of Drupal, webmasters and developers need a web hosting plan that is tailored to the particularities of Drupal. In the following article, we explore the importance of choosing a Drupal web hosting solution that was designed from the ground up with Drupal in mind. Furthermore, you will learn about the benefits of choosing a quality Drupal hosting service. Let’s begin with performance.