LAB #1 Part B
1.
I have installed WordPress no worries, I was surprised at how quickly I could get a site hosted on my computer using these tools, what also surprised me is how much money some people can make from this type of work, although I have reason to believe the challenging part is developing a reputation and portfolio in order to get a steady stream of clients. None the less, I am interested in developing a couple websites using CMS software just to test the waters of this potentially lucrative venture. What excites me the most is how much I enjoyed piecing together a neat little website without having to grind over the details of code, I can really get into the enjoyment of creating something completely new and unique to the world, careers that offer this are ideal in my mind.
Following this I've been instructed to include a discussion on remote & local environments. Without really knowing where to start I'm researching for the top cloud based hosting service, after reading over some course information I understand the different types of hosting available but, what are the top hosting companies?
Oh boy, well. After searching through a breadth of options, opinions differ greatly across different sources. Instead I am going to research into some of the big names in tech and the cloud hosting they provide as well as some other companies of interest.
Digital Ocean: Digital Ocean, Inc. provides a cloud infrastructure for software developers to deploy and scale their applications. Its cloud infrastructure offers scaling tools that help users to create, automate, and manage an infrastructure with various features, such as API, floating IPs, share private networking, and team accounts; solid state disk (SSD)-based block storage to their Droplet; an interface to control virtual servers; features to choose their favorite Linux distribution or install their favorite application with the click of a button; and tools to build networks. It also offers high CPU droplets featuring the Intel Xeon Scalable processors to provide support for applications, such as ad exchanges, game servers, highly active front-end application servers, and queue/batch processing. The company was incorporated in 2012 and is based in New York, New York. It has data center locations in San Francisco, New York, Toronto, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Bengaluru, and Singapore.
(July 30, 2017). Company Overview of Digital Ocean, Inc.. Available from: https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapid=243910980. [Accessed: 30/7/2017].
Cloud servers can be configured to provide levels of performance, security and control similar to those of a dedicated server. But instead of being hosted on physical hardware that's solely dedicated to you, they reside on a shared “virtualized” environment that's managed by your cloud hosting provider.
Cloud systems are interesting technology, capable of dedicating more hardware to your hosted website as the traffic grows and subsequently reducing it as traffic decreases it. This has pro's and cons compared to a regular dedicated server. High spikes in traffic can actually just cost you money in paying to increase your websites dedicated resources within the cloud system for a period of time, if your website isn't turning this spike of traffic into profit that is. Despite this though I strongly feel that cloud servers are the way forward considering the ease of use thanks to this technology, efficiency is king and nothing is more efficient that being able to upgrade your server by accepting a simple confirmation message, to upgrade a dedicated server you would have to schedule maintenance time, take the website down and install the required hardware manually. As long as pricing remains competitive and your website is worth the costing compared to other options I would strongly suggest cloud hosting.
For example a small company website would not require such a service and the website could easily live upon a VPS server with other websites for a minimal fee.
The major con of cloud service hosting though is that your data is living across multiple different servers around the world, many companies with a responsibility to keep their data or their customers data safe hold such information on secure dedicated servers, for some large companies these servers are located within their own buildings and behind locked doors. Security remains an issue for cloud hosting into the future, there may not be a secure way around it but it still remains a select choice for websites that don't require strict levels of security.
2.
The admin account has access to a multitude of different features used to tweak and customize your website, post editing, media library for storing media locally inside the website folders, page editing, comment option/editing. Appearance being the key functionality of the administrator menu, under it there lives a wealth of options used to customize your websites look.
Admins can also add/edit plugins, create/edit user accounts including the level of permissions an account has.
The toolbox tab gives you access to the current tools available to you, more tools can be added via plugins, my chosen theme has recommended a couple plugins to me under the tools tab.
Finally there is also a settings tab which allows you to edit basic information & formatting such as site name, url, time formatting etc
3.
My chosen theme after some deliberation was "Sydney", I will be using this website to display photography pictures centered around a coffee theme. This themes holds a simplistic design, suitable for displaying photography & blogs, the core content of my website.
4.
I have implemented five placeholder pages for the upcoming LAB work, my chosen theme places them across the top right, a prime location for usability.
5.
My navigation is simple on this website, one menu which leads to the 5 pages and one button in the middle which simply scrolls the page downwards to view my recent blogs. A blog page will be added at a later date to view older blogs and sort by category etc.
I have installed WordPress no worries, I was surprised at how quickly I could get a site hosted on my computer using these tools, what also surprised me is how much money some people can make from this type of work, although I have reason to believe the challenging part is developing a reputation and portfolio in order to get a steady stream of clients. None the less, I am interested in developing a couple websites using CMS software just to test the waters of this potentially lucrative venture. What excites me the most is how much I enjoyed piecing together a neat little website without having to grind over the details of code, I can really get into the enjoyment of creating something completely new and unique to the world, careers that offer this are ideal in my mind.
Following this I've been instructed to include a discussion on remote & local environments. Without really knowing where to start I'm researching for the top cloud based hosting service, after reading over some course information I understand the different types of hosting available but, what are the top hosting companies?
Oh boy, well. After searching through a breadth of options, opinions differ greatly across different sources. Instead I am going to research into some of the big names in tech and the cloud hosting they provide as well as some other companies of interest.
Who’s who?
Google Cloud Platform (GCP): GCP started their journey on October 6, 2011. With only 5 years in operation, they have created good presence in the market. The initial push was done to power their own services such as YouTube and Google. Later on, they built enterprise services and enabled anyone to host in the cloud. Google manages GCP.
Amazon Web Services (AWS): With 11 years in operation, AWS is one of the oldest players in the cloud market. Their computing services are extensive and cover important cloud sections such as deployment, mobile networking, etc. Amazon manages AWS.
Microsoft Azure: Azure is also 6 years old and has shown great promise in the market. They can easily be associated with the leader group in the market with AWS. Azure also provide a complete set of cloud services. Microsoft manages Azure.
DAMIEN WOLF. (20/2/2017). Who wins the three-way cloud battle? Google vs. Azure vs. AWS. Available from: https://readwrite.com/2017/02/20/wins-three-way-cloud-battle-google-vs-azure-vs-aws-dl1/. [Accessed 30/7/2017]Digital Ocean: Digital Ocean, Inc. provides a cloud infrastructure for software developers to deploy and scale their applications. Its cloud infrastructure offers scaling tools that help users to create, automate, and manage an infrastructure with various features, such as API, floating IPs, share private networking, and team accounts; solid state disk (SSD)-based block storage to their Droplet; an interface to control virtual servers; features to choose their favorite Linux distribution or install their favorite application with the click of a button; and tools to build networks. It also offers high CPU droplets featuring the Intel Xeon Scalable processors to provide support for applications, such as ad exchanges, game servers, highly active front-end application servers, and queue/batch processing. The company was incorporated in 2012 and is based in New York, New York. It has data center locations in San Francisco, New York, Toronto, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Bengaluru, and Singapore.
(July 30, 2017). Company Overview of Digital Ocean, Inc.. Available from: https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapid=243910980. [Accessed: 30/7/2017].
DigitalOcean - Growth. Available from: http://trends.netcraft.com/www.digitalocean.com. [Accessed: 30/7/2017].
Cloud Server cs. Dedicated Server. Available from: https://www.rackspace.com/cloud/cloud-computing/cloud-vs-dedicated. [Accessed: 30/7/2017].
Cloud systems are interesting technology, capable of dedicating more hardware to your hosted website as the traffic grows and subsequently reducing it as traffic decreases it. This has pro's and cons compared to a regular dedicated server. High spikes in traffic can actually just cost you money in paying to increase your websites dedicated resources within the cloud system for a period of time, if your website isn't turning this spike of traffic into profit that is. Despite this though I strongly feel that cloud servers are the way forward considering the ease of use thanks to this technology, efficiency is king and nothing is more efficient that being able to upgrade your server by accepting a simple confirmation message, to upgrade a dedicated server you would have to schedule maintenance time, take the website down and install the required hardware manually. As long as pricing remains competitive and your website is worth the costing compared to other options I would strongly suggest cloud hosting.
For example a small company website would not require such a service and the website could easily live upon a VPS server with other websites for a minimal fee.
The major con of cloud service hosting though is that your data is living across multiple different servers around the world, many companies with a responsibility to keep their data or their customers data safe hold such information on secure dedicated servers, for some large companies these servers are located within their own buildings and behind locked doors. Security remains an issue for cloud hosting into the future, there may not be a secure way around it but it still remains a select choice for websites that don't require strict levels of security.
2.
The admin account has access to a multitude of different features used to tweak and customize your website, post editing, media library for storing media locally inside the website folders, page editing, comment option/editing. Appearance being the key functionality of the administrator menu, under it there lives a wealth of options used to customize your websites look.
Admins can also add/edit plugins, create/edit user accounts including the level of permissions an account has.
The toolbox tab gives you access to the current tools available to you, more tools can be added via plugins, my chosen theme has recommended a couple plugins to me under the tools tab.
Finally there is also a settings tab which allows you to edit basic information & formatting such as site name, url, time formatting etc
3.
My chosen theme after some deliberation was "Sydney", I will be using this website to display photography pictures centered around a coffee theme. This themes holds a simplistic design, suitable for displaying photography & blogs, the core content of my website.
I have implemented five placeholder pages for the upcoming LAB work, my chosen theme places them across the top right, a prime location for usability.
My navigation is simple on this website, one menu which leads to the 5 pages and one button in the middle which simply scrolls the page downwards to view my recent blogs. A blog page will be added at a later date to view older blogs and sort by category etc.
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