First things first. You have to make sure your company’s SLAs(Service Level Agreements) are met. That means you are going to need a server that’s running smoother than a baby’s bottom. You don’t want to leave the health of your server to chance. Bad things can happen, and you’ll be blamed. Remember, we live in the social media world now. Even the smallest problem on your end can blow up to a huge PR snafu once Twitter gets a hold of it.

Well, keeping a functioning server isn’t as hard as it sounds. We have scoured the net and found 7 insanely useful server monitoring tools. Give these a try and secure some peace of mind.

1. Pingdom

Pingdom is available on PCs and as an iPhone application. It makes sure your website is reachable and responding properly at all times. It goes as far as to provide you with SMS alerts if it’s not. It also monitors uptime and overall performance, which it illustrates via easily understandable charts and tables.

2. McAfee Secure

McAfee is a trusted name in computer security. McAfee Secure constantly monitors your servers for potential security breaches and threats. It’s goal is to protect end-users of your website from all manner of Internet danger, be them credit card fraud, spyware, spam, viruses or online scams. Every day the program tests your site and, if passed, awards the site with a certification mark to give your users a little confidence. The program currently certifies over 80,000 websites.

3. Webmetrics GlobalWatch

GlobalWatch by Webmetrics does exactly what it says it does. It watches. The service monitors a broad range of websites and Internet services. It keeps a lookout for downtime, errors and other poor performance problems. Then it sends you a diagnosis rich with easily digestible reports and measurements. It supports Web 2.0, AJAX, Flash, Java and more.

4. Solarwinds Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM)

Orion NPM checks the efficiency of your servers, but that’s not all it does. It also monitors all of your routers, switches and wireless access points, throughout your entire network. Not bad. It’s really easy to set up, and aesthetically pleasing. What’s more is the support staff are easy to get a hold of which can be rare in the server world.  A true plug and play system.

5. Nagios

Nagios is the go-to IT infrastructure monitoring system out there. It provides a snapshot of your entire operations network and also keeps perfect tabs on the health and status of just about everything affiliated. This includes applications, network protocols, system metrics, services and operating systems. If anything smells fishy your staff will be sent instant alerts via email and SMS. Nagios is also compatible with most in-house and third party applications.

6. ENVIROMUX Server Environment Monitoring System

This system is perfect for use in a variety of places, including data centers, web hosting facilities, telecom switching sites and server closets. It’s or more or less a “real world” monitoring system for your server. It keeps an eye on temperature, humidity, liquid presence, motion, intrusion and vibration. This ensures that your server is operating in tip-top shape. You can also attach up to 8 video cameras to the system to give you that bird’s eye view.

7. Simple Server Monitor

This is the cheapest, yet serviceable, monitoring system on the market. It’s just $69.95 and this follows a 30-day free trial. However, don’t be fooled. It’s a pretty useful suite of programs. It gives minute-by-minute monitoring of uptime and sends accessible performance charts. It alerts your admins to problems via popup messages, desktop alarms, email and SMS.

Hackers. They aren’t just Hollywood archetypes. They actually exist, and they do mean to cause your website and company harm. How can you protect yourself from these threats? Well, first of all by taking it seriously. Now, I’m not talking “lose a bunch of sleep and buy a bunch of stuff” seriously. Just recognize the threat and make the necessary changes to your infrastructure to minimize it.

The facts

This is the part where I throw some uncomfortable facts at you. Again, these aren’t intended to scare you. Rather, they are being thrown out there as a call to action.

The numbers of hacked sites has been rising dramatically over the past few years. Now, it’s up to debate as to why this is happening but a popular take is that many webmasters and company owners have taken a “wait and see” approach regarding hackers. It can’t possibly happen to me, right?

Well it does happen to lots of folks. All it takes is a slight hack for you to experience some site damage, data theft or loss in search rankings. It goes without sayings that a huge hack could lead you to a “locked out of your website” nightmare scenario.

The number of hacks and exploits that are typically used have also been increasing. I’m not going to go into every one, but some of the most common types include XSS, SQL Injections and defacing. In short, it can be a full time job keeping up to date on all of this stuff. Unless you have a dedicated employee willing to make this their pet project, it really can seem overwhelming.

Don’t worry. You don’t need to re-structure your entire financial plan in order to make room for some new anti-hacker employees. You can make yourself reasonably secure by taking some simple steps that will quite literally be “no skin off your back.”

The steps

Protect yourself - Your hosting company probably has some protective measures in place but it’s important to understand that that isn’t a license to slack off on your end. You are still responsible for your own site. If a hacker went after your host, it could shut your site down for a while, but it wouldn’t affect your data or any of your secure information. That’s the difference. Hackers going for sites underneath the host’s umbrella are interested in data, information and general tomfoolery. Take steps to make you are protected.

Keep software up to date – Old versions of software are insecure. This is a fact. You really have to make sure any software you use in the office is up to date. Updated software includes security fixes and more.  Pay the extra money. Get on the phone with a specialist to make sure. Do anything possible. This can be a minor annoyance but it’s a minor annoyance that you only have to put up with once a year or so. It’s worth it.

Make sure 3rd party scripts and code are up to task – There is nothing more useful than a code or script that seems to exist just to help your business thrive. Still, these 3rd party scripts and codes are written by people on their own time in their own situations. Some may not be so safe. Now, this is not to say that you should avoid them. Quite the contrary. Just do your research. Google the creator. Look up message boards where customers are exchanging pertinent information. Do this before installation and you’ll be set.

Do your homework – Let’s be honest here. Most of the time a hacker finds a way in to your site the fault usually lies at your feet. Do your homework! Make sure you run virus scans often. Clear your browsing histories on a regular basis. Just be aware of the general security of your infrastructure, enough that you’ll notice any changes no matter how minor. Once this becomes habit, it gets easy. I promise.

Secure your passwords - This is also part of your homework but it’s so important I decided it needed it’s own little section. Keep your passwords secure! You have no how idea far this goes to discourage would-be hackers. Think of a secure password like bars on a bedroom window. If a would-be robber passes by and sees those bars, are they really going to bother? They’ll just move on to the next house. Here are some general rules of thumb to keeping your passwords safe: Always use a combination of numbers and letters. Stay away from real words and family names.  And, oh yeah, the longer the password is the better. These can be annoying to remember but in the long run it’s worth it.

If you have the money, outsource – I know I said you wouldn’t be required to hire for this problem. That is mostly true, however, if you can you may as well. A lot of reputable coders work freelance and won’t break the bank. If you really have money to burn, go with a professional security agency.

Google Webmaster tools – Google Webtools can be your best friend in this situation. They offer tons of functionality that can help keep your website and your company safe. You can set it up so you’ll automatically be informed of any software updates, any problems with third party scripts and they’ll be sure to alert you if anything suspicious is going on(Within reason.) It’s free and definitely should become part of your security repertoire.

Backup everything, a lot- This is such an important and oft-overlooked step. Back up everything all of the time! This way if the worst does happen, you can be up and going again in no time. Send important files, emails and documents to just about anywhere that will have them.  This includes email accounts, portable hard drives, home computers, mp3 players and more. Also keep a record of IPs that have been accessing your site and don’t forget that all-important clean record of your site.

Check your logs – Keep an eye on who is visiting your site regularly. This way you’ll have a list of suspects as soon as something goes wrong. Often times you can Google IP addresses, phone numbers and other pertinent information and come up with the guilty party. You can help before the hack as well. Keep an eye out for any unusual traffic, you know visitors coming from online pharmacies, sex sites etc. Once traced, you can be sure these visitors are up to no good.

Spread yourself around – Hosting is relatively cheap. Why settle on just one? Spreading yourself around means if one portion of your web empire is attacked, the rest remain completely secure. You can even have your sites hosted on different C Class IPs. 

Stay informed – Don’t take my word it. Stay on top of the latest trends and news on how to keep hackers out of your life. Read pertinent blogs. Subscribe to some newsletters. Wanna know where to start? Here are some sites to check out.

Trend Micro
Apache Security
MySQL Security
Security Focus
ha.ckers.org
Tips to Protect Your WordPress Installation

Ok. This may seem like a lot but hopefully you are doing some of these steps already. Once you get your game-face on it will all become second nature. After all, your company and website are worth it aren’t they?

Who doesn’t love email? It’s easy, convenient and trackable. We all have our various systems for managing it. Mine is far from perfect but I’m usually able to make quick decisions about each message I receive. Some emails I file away. Others I transfer to a different folder or project. Some I tag for the future and some I answer on the spot. It’s all about quick decisions. My eternal aim is to have just a few messages(Under twenty) at any given time in my mailbox. That’s the goal anyways.

It works. The field of email management is one where I feel pretty confident. However, the interruptions that come with email are another story.

The Problem

Like most people who work for a living, I keep my email client open all day. I don’t use a visual notification to alert me when new emails show up, but I do have an audio alert set up. I chose the quietest, shortest and least obtrusive alert. It’s a nice, gentle ping. Kind of relaxing actually.

But on some days, I can shoot from 20 to 120 messages in no time at all. There’s also that attention-craving Blackberry buzzing about my desk, also letting me know there are treasures to be read. How do you say no?

I try not to stray off task, but I am guilty of peeking once in a while when something comes in. Again, it’s hard to say no. The pause I take to take a peek at these emails has certainly begun to take chunks out of productivity. For instance, once the pause happens it takes me a few minutes to get back into the groove of writing. A lot of backtracking needs to be done.

This week I decided to face this problem head on.

The Solution

For me, the solution could not be removal of email. I need it. I also can’t even decide to look at it just once a day. Certain emails are time sensitive and that could be a disaster. But I no longer can afford to be run by the ping-pinging of new emails. I needed to turn the tables.

I shut down my email client.

Wait, didn’t I just say I wasn’t’ going to do that? Hear me out. I have more than 12 email accounts coming into my email client. Most of these are not accounts I need to check multiple times a day or even every day.

Also, having those twenty or so emails I have to act on staring me in the face all day tends to get, um, distracting. After all, I am not able to act on a great many of them yet.

As part of my solution, I open my email client just a few times a day to let messages download and to make sure I’m not missing anything important.

I changed my BlackBerry notification settings.

Gone are the vibrations that alert me to new messages. The Blackberry is a silent movie now.

I started using webmail.

My primary webmail account only contains my top-priority email, the messages I need to see quickly. None of these messages are tagged, labeled, colored or anything like that. There is no filtering of any kind whatsoever. This makes it perfect for a quick sneak and peek. Plus, I can delete the junk before it downloads into my email client, making it more manageable later on.

I (am trying to) reset my brain.

This is the hardest part of all. Training your brain into realizing that email WILL be there whenever you are done with what you are doing. You really and truly are not missing anything by waiting an hour to check it. The super important stuff can stream into your webmail and all will be right with the world.

That’s pretty much it. Call it a “zen state.” Call it “email meditation.” Call it what you will. It’s working. I finally feel like email is working at my command and not the other way around. It may seem simple, but I think I’m winning this battle.

What’s Your Problem?

What are your most pressing email concerns and what do you do to fix them?

F5 Networks recently surveyed 250 companies’ senior IT Personnel about Cloud Computing, and one thing remains consistent – IT managers cannot come together regarding the consensual definition of the term. In fact, the survey represented no less than six separate definitions of cloud computing, and participants could not designate which was “right.”

The two most popular definitions were:

* Cloud computing is on-demand access to virtualized IT resources that are housed outside of your own data center, shared by others, simple to use, paid for via subscription and accessed over the Web.

* Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the “cloud.”

Interestingly, despite this massive confusion as to an exact definition, cloud computing continues to gain ground amongst IT professionals and the general public. In fact, 99% of the respondents to F5?s survey are actively discussing or implementing a cloud solution within their organization. More than half (66%) have set aside sizable budgets to implement said solution.

Additionally, IT Managers have high expectations for what can be “offloaded” to cloud environments. This is, of course, interesting depending on your own vision of what cloud computing is. 75% of the survey respondents believe PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) is part of the cloud. 66% said Iaas (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) should be or already is included. Interestingly, the most popular buzzword of all finds relative obscurity in the survey. SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) registered with only 60% of the participants. Can’t win them all, SaaS.

The things that drive the need for a public cloud are quite different than requirements reported by private cloud users.

* Public Cloud – #1 efficiency, #2 reducing capital costs, #3 easing staffing issues

* Private Cloud – #1 reducing capital costs, #2 agility, #3 easing staffing issues

It’s interesting that there is so little consensus given IT managers and their propensity for wanting to find out how things work. The critical technology must be addressed and defined before 100% of IT managers get behind the idea. The main concerns they want addressed before adopting could computing solutions are Access Control, Network Security, and Server and Storage Virtualization. Once that is done, then cloud will be here to stay.

McAfee’s study, “The Security Paradox” takes a look at how small and medium organizations that employ between 51-1,000 workers deal IT security and cyber threats. Both are, as it stands, on the rise for SMBs.

One scary point the report makes is that SMBs the world over(and especially in North America) feel as though they are too small and therefore hold too little value to be attractive to hackers. However, recent trends indicate quite the opposite.

SMBs exhibit quite a few traits that make them alluring to hackers and other ne’er-do-wells. Small and medium-sized businesses usually have a limited palette of resources. Their security measures are are usually out of date and inadequate. Their employees are often ill-equipped to deal with serious cyber threats. Taken together, these three problems equal big trouble for little businesses.

Jeff Green, Senior VP of McAfee Avert Labs confirmed, “High profile attacks [on larger enterprises] are becoming less frequent because they are often detected quickly. Attackers are favoring stealth attacks that quietly infiltrate systems [of small and medium businesses].”

To reverse this alarming trend, small and medium-sized businesses are going to have to make some sweeping changes that will affect the fundamentals of their budgetary concerns. Here are some scary statistics. Apologies in advance.

Today:

* 52% of SMBs believe they are not well known enough to be a target for cybercrime.

*46% believe hackers could not make any money by accessing their information.

* 45% of SMBs think they hold little value to hackers.

* 44% believe cyber crime is an issue for larger organizations.

* 35% of SMBs are not concerned about being a target of cybercrime.

* 34% don’t think their information has value outside the organization.

Even worse, a large percentage(74%) of SMBs allocate three hours or less each week to IT security. Also, half of the companies surveyed feel adequately protected by the default settings on their IT equipment. This is all, of course, podunk. The results of this ignorance has resulted in stolen data, downtime, decreased productivity, non-compliance, lost sales, and a tarnished reputation.

Businesses who fall prey to a cyber attack usually experience a week or more of downtime as they try to set everything right again. Real, out of pocket, costs hover at about $41,000. That’s a lot of office furniture.

So what are you supposed to do?

Well, it starts with attitude. Simply recognize that you are at risk and move on from there. Don’t lose sleep over it but do take baby steps every day to rectify the problem. Talk it over with your IT people. Invest in some protective software that goes above and beyond the default settings of your IT equipment. Most of all, pay attention. Your employees and your customers may be aware of problems before you are. Remember, just because you aren’t AT&T or the US government doesn’t mean you are not a value to hackers. You are a value to your customers, aren’t you?

Web hosting, such as it is, can be spread out into three major categories.

1. Shared or virtual
2. Reseller
3. Dedicated

The most common of the three is shared, which is when you have an account with a hosting company to which you pay a monthly or yearly fee. Think Godaddy. This nets you a pre-determined amount of space and a “host” of other goodies. Often, each shared hosting account allows you to host one domain at a time, with a single control panel. They are low on frills but as long as demand necessitates them, they will still be around.

When a host if starting out, they often won’t have enough capital to afford their own server, not to mention the time for upkeep and maintenance. There’s also the small manner of, oh, trying to build their business. What can a host do when faced with this kind of a situation. Where are they to turn? This is when reseller-style hosting comes into the picture.

Just what is it?

Reseller hosting is when a Web host buys a bulk plan from the reseller hosting company, and then splits that big plan into smaller pieces for resale to groups or individuals. It works similarly to how anything in sales works.

The reseller host provides a valuable service where, for a fixed cost, substantial packages of space and bandwidth are made available. This is coupled with to ability to host bulk domain names. The customers, individual Web hosts, can then focus on attracting customers instead of the real-world nuts and bolts stuff that tends to drag new businesses down.

Who Operates the Server?

The sever is run by the reselling company. All major issues are also handled by the reselling company. The Web host can claim ownership of the server but this is partially misleading as they rarely have full access to it. They are free to ask for changes, however. For example, if a particular host needs a module installed to help run a script they have, they can request that it be installed. Most resellers are obliged to fulfill these kinds of requests.

So Why not Go Straight to the Reseller Host?

Most Web hosts make due with the amount of bandwidth allotted to them. A reseller-style account involves a large amount of space and bandwidth. This is way too much for a single site to use, unless you are Paypal or something.

Additionally, prices are generally more expensive at the reseller host than at the shared host. Smaller chunks into smaller prices. Single sites cannot afford that kind of initial investment usually.

What is Unbranded Reselling About?

When a reseller host says they offer unbranded reseller plans (sometimes referred to as ‘private label’ plans), it means they provide the hosting services to their customers in a way that appears they do not exist. Rather, the individual customer is given free reign to act as total provider.

How this works is that the reseller host uses an ambiguous domain as the primary name for their servers, purposefully not branding the site with their own name. This gives the impression the on-site company is larger than it actually is. Subterfuge, but useful subterfuge.

Who are reseller hosts most useful for?

Reseller hosts are useful for the following type of people:

“Overselling” — What’s It All About?

Overselling is a fairly common practice among Web hosts. Imagine a Web host might be allotted a set amount of space and bandwidth (for example 1000Mb of space and 10,000Mb of bandwidth), which they divide up to sell to their customers. Now, suppose the Web host offers plans that comprise 200Mb of space, and 2,000Mb of bandwidth. Without overselling, the Web host will be limited to only five of those plans before they’ve used up all the space and bandwidth they’ve purchased from their reseller. How are they expected to maximize profit this way?

Overselling works on the promise that individual customers will not use all of the data and bandwidth they are allotted. Overselling allows the host to, in effect, resell some of the space to other customers. This is a sure way to double your money, just as long as you have a firm grasp of what your customers use.

If this sounds a bit shady to you, don’t worry. Control panel software is available that actively prohibits your host from selling off your unused bandwidth. You never know when you are gonna need it, after all.

I need a Reseller Account! Who do I Pick?

That’s a tough one! Each reseller offers a variety of different packaegs for a variety of different prices. The old adage “you get what you pay for” is true here so be careful not to skimp too hard. Otherwise, the factors cited as most important by a customer of a reseller Web host are:

How many email accounts do you have? It’s getting to be a bit overwhelming, isn’t it? The good old days seem so long ago now. You know, back when we only had three email accounts: One for work, one for personal use and one for all of the trash.

Well, times have changed. For instance, I now have five primary email accounts, and dozens more that filter into those main five. I’ve lost count of all of the webmail accounts I’ve registered for. I used to consider webmail accounts “throwaway” accounts but anyone who is a regular user of  Google Docs, Analytics or AdWords will certainly object to that. They all require use of the web’s most popular webmail service, Gmail.

This, of course, is more pronounced when dealing with freelancers or small business owners. It’s common to develop micro-businesses selling software or services from a variety of websites. These all include one or several new email addresses. It can be a bit much. Also, I’m sure email overload is becoming a frustrating issue for mainstream users as well.

Applications like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird can help keep things organized. There are some little things you can do also. For instance, all of my incoming emails are color-coded or forwarded to an appropriate folder. The same goes for spam, which is filtered several times. Also, it’s good to make a habit out of deleted pertinent email threads once a project or conversation has been completed. Just because you have all of that space, doesn’t mean you have to use it all.

However, even with my diligence, problems remain. Some webmail accounts must be checked manually and do not allow access to services such as Outlook. So, what to do then? The easy answer would be to scrap some of those accounts, but we all know it’s not that easy or straightforward. It’s often a necessity to send emails from these accounts, especially if you are a freelancer that dabbles in several fields. You need to seem professional, after all.

But how widespread a problem is this? Many webmail services offer email aggregation facilities but few offer the configuration options of offline clients such as Outlook or Thunderbird. There’s also a pretty valid concern regarding full email consolidation. It could make you more susceptible to online threats, be they privacy, security or finance related.

There may not be a perfect solution. It’s something that just has to be taken as it comes. Piece by piece with due diligence. Keep things organized, to the best of your ability, and just try not to think about it. For now, let’s see what you have to say. Are you experiencing email overload? What do you do about it? Any tips will be much appreciated.

You may have heard some talk around the office cooler about Alfresco. What is it? What does it do? Most importantly, how will it benefit your business?

Simply put, Alfresco is an open source alternative for enterprise content management(ECM.) ECM, then, is everything and nothing at once. It’s the pretty much an all-purpose term referring to how an organization delivers content and information. Think of a brand being the book cover, and enterprise content management is all of that ooey-gooey information inside of the book. It’s the reality behind the image of a brand. This can be anything from public domain content to employee emails and instant message sessions. So, yeah. Your company probably has a whole lot of enterprise content. And it needs to be managed.

ECM tools, then, allow the management of an enterprise level organization’s information. This is done in a variety of ways and, in the past, primarily done on closed systems such as Sharepoint and Documentum. However, Alfresco is an open source solution. This means the program and code contained therein are allowed to be accessed by users just like you. Poke around, see how it works, tinker with it to make it better to suit your needs. Not a coder? Don’t worry. A lot of other people using it are, and you’ll be sure they are making their revisions available.

The use of an open system offers many benefits, including:

• Speed – Alfresco is five times faster than Traditional Closed Systems
• Cost – Alfresco is 90% Less Expensive than Traditional Closed Systems

So what is Alfresco exactly? It’s an ECM management tool with a set of features to maximize ease of use and stability. Alfresco is:

• Open – Open Source, Open Standards
• Source – Best-of-Breed Open Source Components
• Enterprise – Enterprise-Scale, Enterprise-Infrastructure, Enterprise-Control
• Content – Documents, records, Web Pages, Images, Rich Media
• Management – Most Experienced Team in Content Management in the World from Documentum and Vignette.

The content management is a large system unto itself. Alfresco offers toolsets for document management, web content management, records management and collaborative content management. Anything and everything your company makes record of can be managed using this effective program.

Alfresco is also simpler to use than you’d expect. You don’t have to be a grizzled old IT vet in order to grasp the nuance and subtlety of the program. They even let you try it on the web, without downloading anything, before you get a feel for it. Finally, they offer gads of free online seminars if you are still puzzled.

Many big-name companies have already dropped closed systems in favor for Alfresco’s new approach to ECM, including:

• Toyota
• Yell.com
• Sony Pictures
• NASA
• Merck

If your looking for an easy way to get started with an Alfresco setup visit our Alfresco Hosting plans to get up and running easily with Alfresco.

What is this Liferay you’ve no doubt been hearing about from colleagues/friends/acquaintances/even a few enemies? Yet another confusing Internet platform to make life and business more difficult? Don’t worry. It’s not that bad. Webrulon is here to give you the lowdown on Liferay and what it can do for you and your business. And we’ll do it in baby steps.

Liferay is not the comic book opposite of a death ray, although that would be very cool. No, Liferay is an “Enterprise web platform for building business solutions that deliver immediate results and long-term value.” What does that mean? It’s a suite of programs designed to help you market and maintain your business.

Think of it this way. Think of a website like Kraft.com or even Youtube.com. Wow. They have some cool things there. Where would a smaller business even start to approach that level of big money functionality? That’s where Liferay comes in. Think of it as a shell, an outer casing that, by adding and deleting functions, you can shape to your liking, to give your web and online business presence any amount of luster you desire.

Here are some of the services Liferay offers:

• Self-Service Portals
• Knowledge Sharing Workspaces
• Dynamic Web 2.0 Websites
• Revenue-generating Social Networks
• Enterprise Application Integration

Pretty much anything you see on an established website, you can do here. Think of it as your very own Internet sandbox. Only instead of sand castles, you’ll be building increased profit margins and sustainability. The company vows it will run with your current infrastructure and, best of all, Liferay is open source.

Open source – Open source is a new-fangled web term that essentially means you can do whatever you want with it. More PC. Less Apple. You can tinker, get in to the source code and do what you want legally and easily. “But I can’t program” you say. Well, the good thing about open source software isn’t that you are tinkering with it. It’s that everyone else is. Open source software is sure to attain more functionality than it’s closed counterparts simply because the whole world is in there with their virtual screw drivers, trying new things, tooling around. Sometimes the stuff garden variety consumers come up with is ten thousand times more imaginative and useful than what big companies cook up. In short, open source is good and Liferay has it.

What else does Liferay bring to the table?

• Highly scalable, supporting more than 3,300 concurrent transactions per server
• Real-world performance of millions of page views and 1.3 million users
• Clusterable configuration for high availability
• Implements top ten OWASP-recommended security practices
• Options for Terracotta, Oracle RAC, and other scalability solutions
• Deployable to the Cloud and available as SaaS
• Runs PHP, Ruby, Python, Grails and other lightweight scripting technologies within a robust Java framework

The pricing is scalable depending on your needs and your installed customer base. Fill out the form here to get a quote. Put your browser here to download a free demo. It should give you enough of an idea as to whether or not this is the right direction to take your company’s web presence . Also, just to be sure, click here to look over the tech specs to see if you can handle it. Don’t worry. You probably will be fine. Only games cause you to need hardware upgrades.

If you are looking for Liferay Hosting, webRulon offers various Liferay Hosting Plans which can help you easily start to take advantage of all that Liferay has to offer.

Give it some thought. And in the meantime, here are a few sites built using the service to give you an idea of what it can do for you:

Autozone

Fox Network (Germany)

Monster Energy Drink

E-Commerce is bigger than a sasquatch these days. If you have goods or services to sell, you may as well sell them on your website. The only hurdle, however, is choosing the right shopping cart to suit your needs. There are so many out there and it can be hard to know where to start. WebRulon to the rescue. Here are eighteen popular shopping carts that could send your e-business to the next level.

Free Carts

AgoraCart – The free version of AgoraCart still contains the bells and whistles the paid product is known for.  However, if you upgrade to the gold version you will get access to more modules and support. Goodie!

Batavi – Started an 2007 by osCommerce core-team members and ICEshop members because they felt that eCommerce 3.0 was not advancing as they had hoped. With that in mind, Batavi offers  customer- and group-specific pricing, payment and shipping modules, related products for crossselling and upselling, product price rules for pricing large product volumes and many other features that make it very friendly for business-to-business selling.

Magento – This was also began as a osCommerce offshoot but the developers soon decided to build the program from the ground up. They ended up building it on the Zend Network and the cart is PHP-based and is available as an open source option with extra modules that can be installed.

OFBiz – Apache OFBiz may be the perfect solution for all of your enterprise business needs. It’s easy, simple to use and a good match for any sized business.

OpenCart – OpenCart is another open source platform for all of your commerce needs. This one has more bells and whistles than usual, too. It supports a full templating system, support for over 20 payment gateways, over 8 different payment gateways, unlimited categories and products and more.

osCommerce – The best known shopping cart on the block, osCommerce has been around the bend and then some. It’s so popular, in fact, that lots of other carts are based on this humble and all-seeing program. What does it offer? A constantly growing developer community that continues to develop new plugins to make this shopping cart do everything but clean the windows. Also, the front end of the cart is highly customizable. This might be the gold standard.

PrestaShop – PrestaShop runs on PHP and MySQL and has an extensive admin panel. The system allows you to have orders placed for out of stock items, package tracking, merchandise return and so much more. There’s also access to lots of expansion modules for free.

Satchmo – Satchmo was originally designed in Python, as an attempt to overcome the limitations of PHP. However, Python was abandoned in favor of the Django web application. It includes many features such as PDF invoice generation, automatic thumbnail generation, inventory tracking and a whole lot more.

Ubercart – Ubercart was developed to work with Drupart, as such the program can be fully integrated with your site and community on any server that can run PHP or MySQL. It works best with companies that feature only a limited number of items to sell.

VirtueMart – VirtueMart started it’s life as a plugin named mambo-PHPShop. However, that faded when Mambo merged with Joomla. The cart still requires Joomla to work and as such may be viable for a small percentage o f businesses. It runs on PHP and MySQL, and is capable of supporting an unlimited number of products and categories.

Zen Cart – Zen Cart was built off of the popular OSCommerce framework and features a templating system and  some popular osCommerce plugins  such as the gift certificate module. It is PHP-based and uses MySQL databases.

Fee-based shopping carts

Avactis – This cart has tons of bells and whistles, including real-time shipping calculation, multiple currencies, sales reports, marketing etc. It’s PHP/MySQL based and it’s tag based cart system that allows you to add the system to any web site of your choice, whether it’s a static site or not. Also, there’s even a free limited service trial period. Good going!

CubeCart – CubeCart is another template driven PHP/MySQL driven cart. It does have some cool perks, including  tax by state/zone or country, inventory control, gift certificates and more. The company also offers free updates and more plugin modules than you can shake a stick at.

Magellan Commerce – Magellan, in addition to being a great explorer, also knew a thing or two about e-commerce. As such, Magellan Commerce is a serviceable cart that could suit your needs quite nicely. It offers over 30 templates, real time shipping calculators, order and inventory tracking and a lot more.

ProductCart – ProductCart is written in ASP and relies heavily on AJAX to speed up the consumer experience. The system can also integrate with your current site if you prefer to building one totally on top of the cart. The feature set is more extensive than it would seem.

ShopSite – This cart allows you to add buttons to an existing site, quite handy. You can also build an entire site with their functional and easy to use wizard. ShopSite offers three levels of subscription to its shopping cart system, or you can pay one time fees for the top two tiers of service. Perfect for those e-businesses who want a full featured site without the headache.

ViArt – ViArt is a PHP cart that comes with lots of options. There is a free version but skips out on so much functionality, you are better off coughing up the beans. ViArt also provides you with a full CMS and Help Desk that can be integrated into the online store.

X-Cart – X-Cart offers different versions of its software to match the different needs of you, the e-merchant. From the most basic version on up it features a CSS-based layout for customization, MySQL databases, search engine friendly and more. Not a bad little cart.