MAIN FEATURES OVERVIEW
If you were to hop around the web looking at hosting plans you will notice that quantity and pricing is all the same. The same space, the same data transfer, the same package.
What makes iHostBig different is our equipment, and especially our people. If everyone offers the same thing, you must become the exception by becoming the example. The standard of service. We strive to provide the highest level of customer service possible, and we do just that.
HOST UNLIMITED DOMAINS
Domain names are human-friendly identifiers that point to the IP addresses of resources on the internet. Web sites represent one such resource. Domain names have to be unique, and must be registered through a registrar in order to be used.
In the case of unlimited domain hosting, you can host unlimited independent web sites, each with its own unique domain name, and associated features, on one single hosting account. You can now have as many domains with iHostBig plans as you like.
Host an unlimited number of independent websites per account, each with its own domain name and services.
UNLIMITED DISK STORAGE
This is the amount of storage space that is allotted to your account on our servers. This represents the sum total of all space available for your web files, email and databases.
This is a separate factor from the number of visitors you have, and is not affected by web traffic.
2 FREE DOMAIN REGISTRATIONS
iHostBig provides you with a number of free domain points, which enable you to register domain names at no additional cost!
*The domain will be Free For Life for as long as you host with us.
10 DEDICATED IP ADDRESSES
IP addresses are unique identifiers that allow your website to be found on the internet.
Many hosting companies will assign multiple domains to a single IP, sharing it amongst them.
iHostBig provides 10 dedicated IP addresses per account. This is necessary for SSL certificates as well as a variety of other functions, and does not subject you to problems with other sites sharing the same IP address as you.
UNLIMITED DATA TRANSFER
Data Transfer represents the amount of data, per month, that you can move to and from our servers.
For example, if you have a 1 megabyte file in your hosting space, and 100 people download that file per month, then 100 megabytes of your monthly transfer are used.
iHostBig customers get unlimited data transfer.
UNLIMITED SUB DOMAINS
Sub domains are third level domains.
For example, if you have domain.com, and you want to setup a special site just for your sales department, you could do so by adding a sub domain of sales.domain.com. These are independent sites with independent file and folder structures.
You may assign as many sub domains to your hosting account as you need.
FREE SITE BUILDER
We provide you with an easy-to-use template-based application for creating your website from scratch.
Knowledge of HTML is not required, and you do not need to install any software on your computer.
The site builder runs on our servers, and is accessed and utilized through your web browser.
FREE 24/7 SUPPORT
Most hosting companies provide very limited support, often email-only. If phone support is provided, it is generally available during business hours only.
iHostBig provides you with big phone support that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We also provide additional 24/7 support outlets such as LiveChat and our ticketing system.
ALL AVAILABLE 24/7
UNLIMITED DATABASES
iHostBig offers unlimited number of databases and database space.
MySQL and/or PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL 2005 and/or Access (windows plans only), ODBC/DSN (windows plans only), phpMyAdmin, and phpPgAdmin are all included database structures.
EMAIL OVERVIEW
Fast, dependable, and supported on all platforms. Accessible via the web and all email clients.
Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, you name it, we support it.
UNLIMITED EMAIL ACCOUNTS
Email accounts are virtual mailboxes which reside on our mail servers, and receive and store email sent to them from the internet.
Each email account is given its own unique address and login credentials.
CATCH-ALL EMAIL ADDRESSES
Many times, a person may want one single email account to receive all email that comes into a domain, or any emails that are not addressed to an existing account. This is useful in making sure that ANY email that comes into a domain is received, even if the address is misspelled.
So long as the domain is correct, a catchall account will receive any of these emails. This must be enabled on the desired account.
POP3
POP3 stands for Post Office Protocol version 3, and is the de facto standard for accessing your email. Email clients such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, and others utilize this protocol by default to access remote email boxes, and are the most popular way to retrieve and manage email.
IMAP
IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol, and is a more advanced standard for accessing remote email than POP3.
WEBMAIL
Webmail is a popular way to access your email when you are away from your computer. All you need is access to the internet and you can log directly into your email box on our servers through a web browser.
This is especially useful when you are traveling.
EMAIL FORWARDS
An email forward is an email address which, when it receives email, automatically forwards it to a specified remote email address.
Forwards do not store email, they only route email to another email address elsewhere.
For example, if you setup an email forward of johndoe@domain.com forwarding to johndoe@aol.com, then any email that is received by johndoe@domain.com will be automatically forwarded to johndoe@aol.com, where the email will then be stored.
MAILBOX ALIASES
An alias is an email address which acts as an additional address to a local email account.
For example, if you setup an email account called john@domain.com, and then setup an alias for it called info@domain.com, any email that is sent to info@domain.com will automatically be delivered to john@domain.com where the email will then be stored.
EMAIL AUTO-RESPONDERS
Email auto-responders are user-specified messages which will be sent back to whom ever sends email to that account.
For example, if you were going on vacation for a week, you could setup an auto-responder for your email address which, when email is received at this address, will send a response back to the sender containing whatever message you specify. The email sent by them to you is stored in your mailbox as normal.
MAILING LISTS
Mailing lists allow you to easily send one email to any number of recipients. You could have a mailing list of newsletter@domain.com which has several hundred subscribers. An email sent to newsletter@domain.com will then be sent to each email address on the mailing list.
TOTAL MAILBOX QUOTA
A mailbox quota is the amount of space on the server your emails are allowed to use. Each email is a small text file, with an attached file on occasion. These emails and associated attachments are stored on the server for viewing. The quota is the space allocated for storing the emails, not to be confused with the number of emails. A typical email is around 4kb in size. It would take over 1,250,000 emails to fill the quota.
SCRIPTING OVERVIEW
On the server side of the http link, application servers and other dynamic content servers such as Web content management systems provide content through a large variety of techniques and technologies typified by the scripting approach.
PHP
PHP, strangely enough, stands for Hypertext Preprocessor, and is a very popular open-source server-side scripting language, most often parsed on Apache-based web servers.
We support PHP v5.
Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails is a web application framework designed to support the development of dynamic websites, web applications and web services. Ruby on Rails aims to alleviate the overhead associated with common activities used in Web development such as form validation and user login scripts, and database access.
PERL
Perl (unofficially acronymed as Practical Extraction and Report Language) is a dynamic procedural programming language which is influenced by a wide range of pre-existing technologies, such as the C programming language, and has been popular on Unix and Linux platforms.
CGI with FastCGI support (windows plans only)
CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface, and is a protocol for interfacing external application software, in any number of languages, with a web server.
FastCGI is a protocol for interfacing interactive programs with a web server. FastCGI is a variation on the earlier Common Gateway Interface (CGI); FastCGI's main aim is to reduce the overhead associated with interfacing the web server and CGI programs, allowing a server to handle more web page requests at once.
CGI
CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface, and is a protocol for interfacing external application software, in any number of languages, with a web server.
CGI-BIN
CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is a kind of program that allows for communication between a web server and a script. This enables the interaction of HTML documents and applications. The CGI-BIN is a special folder in which these scripts can execute.
ASP / ASP.NET v3.5 (windows plans only)
ASP stands for Active Server Pages, and is Microsoft's proprietary server-side scripting language. We support both ASP and ASP.NET v1.1, v2 and v3.5.
It can only be used on Windows platforms.
COLDFUSION MX7 (windows plans only)
Cold Fusion is a server-side scripting language developed by Macromedia (now Adobe) available for only $5/month on Windows plans.
JAVASCRIPT / DHTML
Javascript is a client-side scripting language which allows dynamic, interactive elements to be implemented into a website. These can be games, forms, rollover effects, etc.
DHTML (or Dynamic HTML) is a variant of JavaScript in which high level client-side browser manipulation is made possible. Since both of these are client-side technologies, both function perfectly well with our services.
OVERRIDE .htaccess SUPPORT (linux plans only)
This is a method of customizing the behavior of a directory, especially a web folder, by using a custom .htaccess file with the desired overrides in place.
DATABASES OVERVIEW
A database is a structured collection of records or data. A computer database relies upon software to organize the storage of data. The software models the database structure in what are known as database models. These are the Databasing applications available with iHostBig.
MySQL
MySQL is an open-source database system which is often compared to Microsoft SQL in scope and power. Often paired with PHP, this is a very popular database platform, especially in the Unix and Linux communities.
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source relational database system. It has more than 15 years of active development and a proven architecture that has earned it a strong reputation for reliability, data integrity, and correctness.
Microsoft SQL (windows plans only)
Microsoft SQL is Microsoft's proprietary Structured Query Language database platform. It is very powerful, and a common counterpart to ASP. Microsoft SQL databases are only available on Windows platforms.
MS Access (windows plans only)
MS Access is a database program for Windows which is programmable using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Access can read ODBC-compliant data.
ODBC/DSN (windows plans only)
ODBC stands for Open DataBase Connectivity, and is an API for interfacing with database management systems. DSN stands for Database Source Name. These are data structures used to identify and describe a connection to a database.
PhpMyAdmin
phpMyAdmin is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web.
Currently it can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage keys on fields, manage privileges, export data into various formats and is available in 50 languages.
PhpPgAdmin
phpPgAdmin is a web-based administrative tool for PostgreSQL databases.
Total SQL Database Quota
This is the total quota for all databases. The disk space provided to house your databases.
COMPLIMENTARY SCRIPTS OVERVIEW
Each hosting plan is provided with a library of on-demand installation of web applications.
MESSAGE FORUM
Message Forums are a very popular feature on the web. These allow users of a website to communicate with one another, often carrying on long conversations amongst any number of users, in a format similar to a bulletin board.
BLOGS (online diaries or news syndicate)
A Blog is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.
PHOTO GALLERIES
An Online Gallery is a script that lets you manage your photos or pictures on your own website. With online galleries, you will have an ever-lasting memory with your moments.
ONLINE SHOPS
An online shop, e-shop, e-store, internet shop, webshop or online store enables you to sell products online without any geographical boundaries. With us, you can set up your own online shop with just a few clicks of a button.
LIVECHAT SYSTEM
LiveChat systems allow users to communicate in real-time through a website. With our LiveChat scripts, you will be able to provide the online support for your visitors.
WEB PORTALS & CMS
A Web Portal is a site that functions as a point of access to information on the World Wide Web, and a CMS (Content Management System) is a back-end administrative system that lets you manage the front-end contents of your website.
MISCELLANEOUS SCRIPTS
•From Form-Mail
•Website Counter
•Online Calendar, etc.
•Advanced Polling System,
you will have plenty of scripts to beautify your website.
ECOMMERCE FEATURES OVERVIEW
All hosting packages are ecommerce ready. Build your store, make it secure.
Be Successful!
FREE SHARED SSL CERTIFICATE
SSL stands for Secured Socket Layer, and is a technique for encrypting traffic between a client's computer and a web server.
A shared SSL certificate is a certificate which is registered under one domain name, in our case iHostBig.com, and with which our customers can secure their site, but would do so using their domain as a 3rd level domain under ours, iHostBig.com.
Therefore, if your domain name was qualitybikes.com, and you wanted to us our shared certificate to secure the site, the secure URL would be https://qualitybikes.iHostBig.com.
This shared certificate is provided by us for free on all accounts except for our Expert Plan, which does not support SSL.
SSL SECURE SERVER
SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer, and is a technique whereby any information passed from a visitor's machine to the web server, and vice versa, is encrypted. This prevents the exposure of any private and sensitive information to the world, keeping you and your visitors safe and secure.
A locked padlock in your browser, generally in the lower right of the window, indicates a secured connection.
An open padlock indicates an unsecured connection.
ONLINE SHOP READY
You will have a complete set of tools with our hosting accounts.
You can set up your online shop with our complimentary scripts, get a secure URL with our SSL support, and accept payment with our Merchant Account.
Everything you need to start selling online!
SUPPORT FEATURES OVERVIEW
A friend in need is a friend indeed. We provide 24 hour / 7 days a week coverage for any of your needs. You also have options.
Three ways to contact us. Phone. Chat. Web. Whatever makes you comfortable.
24 / 7 FREE LIVE PHONE SUPPORT
Live telephone support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Whatever issue or question you might have, our phone support staff is always here to assist you.
24 / 7 FREE LIVECHAT SYSTEM
LiveChat is a popular alternative to phone support for communicating with our support staff.
Accessed by way of our website, live support personnel are always here to address anything that might arise.
24 / 7 FREE TICKET CENTER
This is our internal ticketing system.
You're guaranteed a response within 24 hours.
ADDITIONAL FEATURES OVERVIEW
Non-Categorized features.
These features are essencial for getting the biggest potential from your online business.
INTERNATIONAL DOMAIN NAME SUPPORT
International Domain Names are domains whose TLD (Top Level Domain) is country-specific.
Examples of these can be found in .CA (Canada) and .US (The United States). These are fully supported by iHostBig, although only a few can be registered through us.
They can all be hosted with iHostBig.
WEBSITE STATISTICS
This tool provides you with graphics analysis of the traffic that your web site has received, breaking down where visitors are coming from, when they visited, what they did when they came to your site, what search term they used to find you in a search engine, and much, much more.
This is an indispensable tool for knowing what sort of traffic your web site receives.
ACCOUNT CONTROL PANEL
iHostBig provides you with access to your account information and settings, including invoices, payment settings and even our helpful ticketing system, as part of your hosting control panel.
This gives you full control over your account and billing options, and allows you to make all the necessary changes to your account information.
FILE TRANSFER OVERVIEW
FTP is a file transfer protocol for exchanging files over any TCP/IP based network to manipulate files on another computer on that network regardless of which operating systems are involved (if the computers permit FTP access). There are many existing FTP client and server programs.
FTP ACCESS
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and is a method of moving files from one computer to another over a TCP/IP connection.
FTP is fully supported by iHostBig, and is, by far, the most popular method for publishing documents to your hosting company's server(s).
ADDITIONAL FTP ACCOUNTS
Additional FTP accounts, also called FTP Sub Accounts, are special FTP accounts which can be setup with unique logins and passwords, and can be restricted to specific folders within the directory structure of the hosting account. This is commonly used to allow a designer to access one particular directory in a hosting account, but nothing else.
For Windows accounts, this is called Systems Accounts.
ANONYMOUS FTP ACCOUNTS
Anonymous FTP is a form of FTP which allows users to transfer files without having to have an FTP account.
These are fully supported on Linux accounts.
WEBSITE ADMINISTRATION OVERVIEW
iHostBig provides many tools for your website administration needs. From aliases to web files we'll have you covered.
FREE PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE TEMPLATES
Often, a customer would rather use a pre-designed template than create their website's design from scratch.
This is a feature that is offered by iHostBig in our Site Studio application.
CREATE & CHANGE DESIGNS AT ANY TIME
iHostBig imposes no limits whatsoever as to when you can modify your website, databases, or related services. Your services are available to you at all times for management, modification, or anything else.
LOG FILES & SITE STATS
Log files are text documents in which activity on a web server or web site is chronicled. Information about each visit, such as IP, time and date, and other relevant information is stored in these log files. Site stats tools are applications which analyze these log files and produce people-friendly charts and diagrams which illustrate and summarize the contents of these log files.
Log files and site stats tools are both provided to our customers by default, even to the extent of providing two very different stats applications: ModLogAn and Webalizer.
WEB FILE MANAGER
Our hosting services come with a handy file management tool called Webshell 3. This allows you to work with your files, modify documents, set permissions, and much more, all through your browser.
Although many times a dedicated FTP client is the best way to handle these things, sometimes this is not practical, and this tool is always available to you for such needs.
PUBLISHING PROGRAM
iHostBig allows for the publishing of documents by way of FTP and WebShell, as well as through our site builder utility, Site Studio.
Dreamweaver publishes through FTP as well, as do most web design applications.
PASSWORD PROTECTED DIRECTORIES (linux plans only)
By way of .htaccess, any folder can be password protected on Linux accounts.
Windows accounts can have folders password protected as well, but the process of establishing this security is a bit involved.
ONLINE WEB EDITOR
There are two ways which we provide for editing your web pages.
One is called Webshell 3, and is a file manager provided through your control panel. This application has the ability to edit documents (as raw html) in your browser, and is very handy for making minor changes to existing documents.
The other tool is a template based website creation tool called Site Studio. It is proprietary, self contained, and can only edit documents created within it.
CUSTOM MIME TYPES
MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions.
MIME types are used to instruct one computer on how to communicate with another regarding the nature of the file that is being sent. It defines the types of files attached to email, and is supported by iHostBig.
CUSTOM CRON JOBS (linux plans only)
CRON Jobs are functions which can be scheduled to run at specific times, and on a recurring basis, such as every night at midnight. They are scheduled to run based on the system clock, and can be setup in the control panel we provide.
CUSTOM ERROR PAGES
You are not required to use our server's default error pages.
Customer error pages can be used, and are specified in the control panel we provide you with. These are very popular with regards to keeping the look and feel of your site consistent, even unto the error pages themselves, as well as for modifying the behavior of the site in the event of an error.
CUSTOM THROTTLE POLICY (linux plans only)
Throttle Policy helps you regulate the amount of traffic your website receives. This is useful when you are nearing your traffic limit and do not want to exceed it.
To manage your traffic limit, you can set how much traffic your website will be receiving and deny traffic you do not want.
CUSTOM SERVER ALIASES
Server aliases are additional names for your website.
Unlike subdomains, you will not have separate websites for each name.
For instance, if your website is example.com and you also would like it to be available at test.example.com, you should add test server alias to the example.com domain. Both example.com and test.example.com will point to your website.
MULTIMEDIA OVERVIEW
Audio or video streaming and embedding is completely supported.
podcasts, video tutorials, flash games.
FLASH & SHOCKWAVE SUPPORT
Flash and Shockwave are advanced media-rich formats for content delivery. Although we do not provide any Flash or Shockwave services, Flash and Shockwave content can be hosted with any iHostBig account without a problem.
A great many of our clients currently use Flash elements in their sites, and several host sites with us which are entirely made in Flash.
MIDI FILE SUPPORT
MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Usage of midi files in web pages is not terribly popular, primarily due to the lack of control over how the playback on the visitor's computer will sound.
However, it is not a problem to embed a midi file into an html document, and can be done on our service.
STREAMING AUDIO SUPPORT (via http://)
Streaming audio is a method of media delivery in which the audio will play on the client's computer before the file has finished downloading. In other words, as the beginning of the file is downloaded, the audio will begin to play, and will continue to play as long as the process of downloading ("streaming") the audio continues uninterrupted. This is supported by iHostBig as http streaming.
STREAMING AUDIO SUPPORT (via http://)
Streaming video is a method of media delivery in which the video will play on the client's computer before the file has finished downloading. In other words, as the beginning of the file is downloaded, the video will begin to play, and will continue to play as long as the process of downloading, ("streaming") the video continues uninterrupted. This is supported by iHostBig as http streaming.
REAL AUDIO & VIDEO SUPPORT
RealVideo and RealAudio work perfectly well with our service. However, we do not provide streaming services such as Helix.
All streaming must be facilitated using http streams.
SECURITY MECHANISM OVERVIEW
Your site is as important to us as it is to you. The internet is a public arena, and with anything precious in public, security precautions must be taken.
We take pride in our network.
24 / 7 MONITORING
In order to maintain the highest levels of performance and reliability, constant monitoring of our equipment is required.
We monitor our network and equipment at all times, and we keep track of any anomalous behavior that might arise.
FIREWALL PROTECTION
Firewalls are services which manage the traffic between 2 points on a network. They can be configured to block certain kinds of traffic, certain IP addresses, and pretty much any other factor. Among other things, this is used to prevent hacking, abuse, denial of service attacks, and the like.
Our entire network is protected by a firewall which we keep constant track of. This is a crucial factor in maintaining a secure and safe environment for our clients.
SPAM FILTER IRONPORT
Spam, or unsolicited commercial email, is an ongoing problem and annoyance. We utilize IronPort as a means of curbing the amount of spam that is received by our customers. This is an always-on solution, and requires no intervention by the customer in order to use.
UPS POWER BACK-UP / BACK-UP GENERATOR
Without electricity, none of this would be possible. In order to ensure seamless, problem-free hosting, power backup is absolutely essential. We incorporate not only UPS systems on all of our equipment, but also have diesel backup generators in place for worst-case-scenarios. We test this system each and every week, and have shown that even in the event of catastrophic power failure, our data center remains live with no downtime.
HOTLINK PROTECTION
Hotlinking (commonly called bandwidth theft) is a practice whereby a web accessible resource, usually an image or video, is linked to from a completely different website. This is considered unacceptable to most people, and can easily be prevented by using the appropriate overrides in an .htaccess file.
SERVER LOAD BALANCING SYSTEM
Load balancing is a technique to spread work between servers in order to get optimal resource utilization and decrease computing time.
We are using a state-of-the-art load balancing solution to maximize our uptime.
DOMAIN MANAGEMENT OVERVIEW
Domains are your name on the web. We provide the necessary tools to keep your domain working and active to your needs.
DOMAIN ACCESS WITH OR WITHOUT “WWW”
Any domain hosted with iHostBig can be accessed either at the domain itself (for example: http://domain.com) or at the www host for it (http://www.domain.com).
This behavior can be modified if need be, but by default, both formats will work.
EXTERNAL DOMAINS
These are domains which were registered independently of iHostBig. These can be hosted here without any problems. Being that they are registered with 3rd parties, the settings for the domain, specifically the name servers which are authoritative for it, would need to be changed over to ours, and the domain would have to be setup for hosting with us in order to function.
Other than those factors, external domains work perfectly fine, and are very common.
PARKED DOMAINS
Parked domains are domain names which do not have their own hosting yet. They are pointed to a pair of name servers for the time being. This is perfectly fine with iHostBig and is rather common with customers who have registered a domain name, but have not established hosting for it.
URL MASKING (linux plans only)
This is a function whereby a visitor is forwarded to a resource, but the URL displayed in the address bar of their browser remains unchanged.
This can be achieved by implementation in an .htaccess file.
ADD-ON DOMAINS
Add-On Domains, also called domain aliases, are often used when you want two different domains to point to the same content.
For instance, if you were the owner of domain.com, and had a website setup at that domain, you could setup domain.net and domain.org as domain aliases, and all 3 domains would pull up the same site, the site at domain.com.
These are fully supported by iHostBig.
Our design packages can be customized and itemized to fulfill any need at any size. From basic informational to full blown ecommerce sites, we are your solution.
Big success is a one package solution to starting a business online. A package to help save you tons of time and money.
