NT servers are designed to accommodate advanced Microsoft applications. NT servers therefore integrate back office offerings such as FrontPage, Access and MS SQL with basic Web services. NT servers also offer specific programming environments such as Active Server Pages (ASP), Visual Basic Scripts, MS Index Server and Cold Fusion, which mainly link database applications to Web.

NT servers do not provide an interactive shell, but are accessible through GUI-based remote administration packages such as PCAnywhere. Such packages allow you to log into server's desktop as chief administrator as long as you have full control over your server.

We only recommend NT hosting if you intend to run your own dedicated server. The quality of hosting degrades rapidly if Web host attempts to run an NT server as a shared hosting system.

Since NT servers provide unparalleled levels of support, security and integration for Microsoft family of products, we recommend that you only select NT if you need to link a Microsoft-based service to your Internet hosting requirements.

NT is rather complex and labor-intensive and should only be selected if webmaster has extensive experience in maintaining Windows systems remotely and requires product/Web integration.

By Russ Mate

You've made your decision to move from your website from your current web host to a new web host. The following tips will help you make transition easier and make you aware of some potential pitfalls to avoid.

1) Make sure new web hosting plan you've chosen offers you storage capabilities to handle all of your current website storage requirements. If your website is 50MB, you need to make sure your new hosting plan offers that much space, or more. If you're not sure how much space your website is using, ask your current host. You can also usually find this information on your web hosting control panel.

2) How does your current web host determine what your storage amount is used for? Find out what your current and new host includes in your plan's storage amount. Are your emails and log files counted towards your total storage, or just your web files?

3) What operating system does your current hosting plan use? Windows or Unix? Sometimes this can make no difference, in other cases it can make difference between a working website and a broken website. If your site is currently on a Windows server and your website uses ASP scripting, you'll find it difficult to make things work well on a Unix server, as ASP is a Windows based programming language. Find out ahead of time whether your current hosting plan is on a Unix or Windows server.

4) Does your site currently use FrontPage? Find out if your new host supports FrontPage. And make sure your new host supports same version of FrontPage you currently use.

5) Find out if your new hosting plan offers you same amount of bandwidth that your current host offers. You don't want to be surprised by unexpected overage charges at end of month.

6) Does your new web hosting plan give you same amount of email accounts, autoresponders and mail forwards that you currently use?

7) Does your site use a shopping cart that your current hosting plan provides? Can you move cart to your new host? If not, does your new host have a suitable shopping cart replacement?

8) If you are using any scripts on your website, make sure that your new hosting plan supports all of your scripts. Find out in advance if you'll need to make any modifications to your scripts to get them working on new server.

9) Make sure to set up your existing email accounts on your new server before transferring your domain name to new server. At MateMedia (www.matemediainc.com) we see this overlooked quite often.

10) Do you know how to upload your website files to new server? If you don't, you'll need to find out if your new web host will upload your files for you. Some hosts will do this at no charge, some will do it for a fee, yet other hosts won't do it all because of liability issues.