Some questions on SSL, E commerce, domain names and how to get going.. - UK Web Hosting | Dedicated Server Windows and Linux VPS Forum

**cagray** · #1 (**permalink**) 28-03-2007, 11:24

Hi,

I am looking for some advice and help on hosting my website. I know how to develop websites but know very little about hosting so bear with me! I saw the packages offered by eUKHosting and they seemed very competitive and offered more than other hosting companies. I had a cuople of questions though regarding what is offered and just wanted to make sure what I had was suitable for the package I had seen.

My website is a relatively small website built suing ASP.NET 2.0 and Ajax 1.0. It uses a MS SQL Server 2005 Express database behind it to drive it. I would like to be able to take online payments through the website but really it is a very minor thing so don't want big expenses to be allowed to do this as the page is really more a trial of a hobby than a full blown company!

So my questions are:

Is the Windows Bronze package suitable for what I have descibed?
If I went over my bandwidth I presume you would let me know and I could just udgrade (and not get booted)
You seem to offer some kind of facilites on taking payments. Would this cover what I need? I had looked into linking paypal payments into my website but if you have tools which would provide payment options that would be great. The payments are only very small so I don't want to have to set up Merchant's etc which costs a lot.
I wanted a .co.uk name but I notice your offer for free domain registration is only for .com. This seems strange as the .co.uk name would only cost 3 pounds to register per year (at another site) but the .com would cost 10 pounds. It looks almost like you have the free offer the opposite to what I would have expected.
If you do take the free domain name do I own it? basically if I move host I can take the domain name with me
Do I need Dedicated SSL for my online payments or is shared sufficient?
Finally (you will be pleased to hear!!) to get going can I simply upload all my .net files and the sql database file to your servers or is there more to it than that (especially with regards to the sql server I guess) and is that fact my database built in Express and not the full version of sql server a problem?

Thanks and any help is greatly appreciated.

Colin

**Ryan** · #2 (**permalink**) 28-03-2007, 12:46

Hi Colin,

Welcome to the forum, I have answered your questions below

1. Is the Windows Bronze package suitable for what I have descibed?

Ans. Our Windows Bronze package would be suitable for your website according to your description.

2. If I went over my bandwidth I presume you would let me know and I could just udgrade (and not get booted)

Ans. If you bandwidth usage exceeds 80 % of the total alloted bandwidth, you will be sent couple of email notfications. You can upgrade your plan anytime if you need more resources by only paying the difference in the price of two plans.

3. You seem to offer some kind of facilites on taking payments. Would this cover what I need? I had looked into linking paypal payments into my website but if you have tools which would provide payment options that would be great. The payments are only very small so I don't want to have to set up Merchant's etc which costs a lot.

Ans. You can accept payments on your website hosted on our servers but we do not provide merchant services, so you will need to contact a company like PayPal / 2Checkout / Worldpay or Authorize.net to setup a merchant account.

4. I wanted a .co.uk name but I notice your offer for free domain registration is only for .com. This seems strange as the .co.uk name would only cost 3 pounds to register per year (at another site) but the .com would cost 10 pounds. It looks almost like you have the free offer the opposite to what I would have expected.

Ans. If you wish a register a .co.uk domain name then you need to pay for 1 year and 1 year would be free as .co.uk domains are registered for minimum 2 years terms as per rules of nominet.

5. If you do take the free domain name do I own it? basically if I move host I can take the domain name with me

Ans. Yes, you are the owner of the domain name and you can take the domain with you while moving host.

6. Do I need Dedicated SSL for my online payments or is shared sufficient?

Ans. Shared SSL or Dedicated SSL depends on you as both fulfill the main aim of SSL; i.e. transmitting data in encrypted form over the networks. One of the main considerations in using a shared or dedicated SSL is the URL and how it will appear to your customers.

With Shared SSL, the URL may look something like this:

https:// secure.ukhostsupport.com/~username/

While with dedicated SSL, the URL is determined by you, either as another registered domain or as a sub domain of your website domain name.

7. Finally (you will be pleased to hear!!) to get going can I simply upload all my .net files and the sql database file to your servers or is there more to it than that (especially with regards to the sql server I guess) and is that fact my database built in Express and not the full version of sql server a problem?

Ans. There shouldn't be a problem with regards to file uploads to our server. In case of any problem you can contact our support team and let them know.

Feel free to ask if you any doubts or further queries.

**eUKhost.com** · #3 (**permalink**) 28-03-2007, 12:50

Hello Colin,

I've answered your questions as following :-

1. Is the Windows Bronze package suitable for what I have descibed?
Ans :- Yes. Windows bronze package will allow you to install some shopping cart softwares from the control panel like Zencart, osCommerce and few more which are opensource shopping carts ( no cost to you ).

2. If I went over my bandwidth I presume you would let me know and I could just udgrade (and not get booted)
Ans :- You will get email notifications couple of times when you exceed 80% limit so you will get sufficient time to contact us and get your account upgraded.

3. You seem to offer some kind of facilities on taking payments. Would this cover what I need? I had looked into linking paypal payments into my website but if you have tools which would provide payment options that would be great. The payments are only very small so I don't want to have to set up Merchant's etc which costs a lot.
Ans :- You can setup a free account with paypal and pay $50 to 2checkout. This 2 gateways would be more than sufficient for you to accept credit card payments as well as paypal online payments. Both gateways can be used to withdraw payment into your bank account when you have sufficient balance in them. Some people use paypal debit card to withdraw funds from ATM so thats also a good option for you.

4. I wanted a .co.uk name but I notice your offer for free domain registration is only for .com. This seems strange as the .co.uk name would only cost 3 pounds to register per year (at another site) but the .com would cost 10 pounds. It looks almost like you have the free offer the opposite to what I would have expected.
Ans :- Others don't keep any profit margin for themselves in domain registration as they expect customers to purchase hosting accounts as well with the domain name and thats where their policies go wrong as customers need service and support no matter if they purchase a domain name or dedicated server. We have policy for profit margin so our hosting plans look cheap in comparison to other hosting companies but our domain names cost more.

5. If you do take the free domain name do I own it? basically if I move host I can take the domain name with me
Ans :- Yes. You can take the domain name with you but we will reduce price of the domain name from the refund that we will issue.

6. Do I need Dedicated SSL for my online payments or is shared sufficient?
Ans :- You will need dedicated SSL as some potential customers may not signup or pay if they get security warning with shared SSL.

7. Finally (you will be pleased to hear!!) to get going can I simply upload all my .net files and the sql database file to your servers or is there more to it than that (especially with regards to the sql server I guess) and is that fact my database built in Express and not the full version of sql server a problem?
Ans :- Simply upload your asp.net files using FTP and upload your database from the control panel. We have MSSQL 2005 Express on our servers getting filled right now so you should have no problems with it.

**eUKhost.com** · #4 (**permalink**) 28-03-2007, 12:52

seems like we both clicked on post-reply same time so could not see who was replying. Anyways, our answers are quite similar.

**cagray** · #5 (**permalink**) 28-03-2007, 13:09

Thanks for the detailed responses. It sounds like you can provide me with everything I need. With regards to the SSL and payments, I think I still need to try it out and see how it goes.

I presume again, if I set up with shared SSL and wanted to shift to dedicated ssl later on that would not be an issue?

Colin

**eUKhost.com** · #6 (**permalink**) 28-03-2007, 13:10

It wont be a problem. You can switch to dedicated SSL once you start getting good traffic and signups.

**troglodyfae** · #7 (**permalink**) 07-09-2007, 16:05

Actually I kinda have a dumb question about SSL that you might be able to answer on this thread.

I have set up an os commerce website on one of my domains, which I am still trying to get my head around. I noticed in my admin panel that it tells me 'You are not protected by a secure SSL connection' Ok that makes me an idiot for not noticing this before, but how do I change this? Majority of the business I will be doing will be C.O.D, but for the business that I hope to do that will involve taking payment via credit card, I would obviously like the potential client to feel secure and also protect myself by not allowing crucial and sensitive data to be intercepted.

I kinda need to know this before I go any further and make any other modifications especially if I have to reinstall the whole shooting match. Sorry if this info is already out there somewhere and I have not found it, just this thread was kinda asking some of the questions I maybe should have asked earlier

**flesso** · #8 (**permalink**) 07-09-2007, 16:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by troglodyfae

Actually I kinda have a dumb question about SSL that you might be able to answer on this thread.

I have set up an os commerce website on one of my domains, which I am still trying to get my head around. I noticed in my admin panel that it tells me 'You are not protected by a secure SSL connection' Ok that makes me an idiot for not noticing this before, but how do I change this? Majority of the business I will be doing will be C.O.D, but for the business that I hope to do that will involve taking payment via credit card, I would obviously like the potential client to feel secure and also protect myself by not allowing crucial and sensitive data to be intercepted.

I kinda need to know this before I go any further and make any other modifications especially if I have to reinstall the whole shooting match. Sorry if this info is already out there somewhere and I have not found it, just this thread was kinda asking some of the questions I maybe should have asked earlier

Do you have an SSL certificate installed? If so, do you have 'https' instead of 'http' in the address bar?

**troglodyfae** · #9 (**permalink**) 08-09-2007, 12:59

Tried to reply to this response last night but the website or the spanish telephony system gave me the finger, so I had a brandy and went to bed

Quote:

Do you have an SSL certificate installed? If so, do you have 'https' instead of 'http' in the address bar?

Er that would be a no then. Not actually sure how to go about this as I have never entertained this concept before, so be gentle with me and assume that I know nothing. ( I am sure people have already concluded this)

I have applied to my bank for a portable machine to enable me to process credit card details, but to be fair I generally leave OH to work these things out, I am more the artistic side of our partnership. I also have a pay pal account to accept payments from my Open directory website. I guess my question is this. Would it be better initially to use the pay pal account until I can gauge the volume of business. My assumption, because of my knowledge of the market for the items I will be selling, is that the uptake will be considerable, and other vendors are considerably more expensive than we are. However the best laid plans etc.

What are the set up costs for obtaining a certificate and really was does the process involve. Thanks in advance

**eUKhost.com** · #10 (**permalink**) 08-09-2007, 13:09

It will cost £39 per year to have SSL Certificate. You wont need it if you decide to integrate only Paypal for now.

If you wish to accept online credit cards then you have to consider SSL Certificate. Paypal payment are done on their Website so you need not bother about SSL Certificate as of now.

**DPS Computing** · #11 (**permalink**) 08-09-2007, 13:13

I would recommend your continuation of using Paypal unless you have a reasonable number of customers and money coming in to keep it profitable for you. On the other hand when your customer base builds up it adds to your image when you transfer all responsibility for the payments to your server, and therefore set up SSL.

However, if you are just starting up Paypal is a good way to accept payments as Paypal is a trusted name and will put customers minds at ease until you build up your own individual reputation.

**troglodyfae** · #12 (**permalink**) 08-09-2007, 13:19

Thanks for the quick response. So say I trundle along with good old pay pal for the payment side of the website for now, and the business does what I genuinely expect it will, and I feel it is necessary to go along obtaining the SSL cert how do I change the os commerce site?

I have been scanning through some other information where shared SSL is mentioned, what is all that about then? Sorry a lot of this information is almost another language to me. Websites, fine, graphics fine....e-commerce Doh!

**DPS Computing** · #13 (**permalink**) 08-09-2007, 13:31

You would simply purchase an SSL certificate (which you can do from eUKhost if you choose for £39/year) and then any website where you wanted to use an encrypted page you would type in "https://" rather than the standard "http://". If your on a shared server eUKhost have shared SSL installed which means everyone on your server shares the same SSL certificate.

Hope that helps

. If you have any more questions then feel free to ask

.

**eUKhost.com** · #14 (**permalink**) 08-09-2007, 14:30

SSL Certificate can be ordered from http://www.eukhost.com/ssl.php

Dedicated IP and installation is free when you purchase Certificate from us.

**jc8654** · #15 (**permalink**) 10-09-2007, 09:48

Instead of paypal, there are other companies who do a similar thing with payments so it might be best shopping round to see which is the cheapest for you.

**DPS Computing** · #16 (**permalink**) 13-09-2007, 13:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by jc8654

Instead of paypal, there are other companies who do a similar thing with payments so it might be best shopping round to see which is the cheapest for you.

If its a modest amount of money Paypal will probably be the best, and it also does of course have the advantage of being the most trusted and well known in general.

There is of course other services such as NoChex but I have had no personal experience with them.

**Macca** · #17 (**permalink**) 14-12-2007, 16:44

This is just a quick question so didn't want to create a new thread.

A client of mine has the facility to process credit card payments manually and therefore wishes to simply collect the customers card information from his site without the use of a 3rd party payment gateway.

I am aware that this will need to be done securely so I will be purchasing a dedicated SSL certificate for his domain.

The question is how does this information get passed to him? Will he have to log into a secure area of his site to view the details as sending them by email is not an option?

If this is the best way to do it, will the details be safe kept in a database until he views them?

All my other clients use paypal so I have simply create the URL and redirected the visitor without collecting card details.

I currently have a windows advanced reseller package.

Thanks for any help you can give.

**Ryan** · #18 (**permalink**) 14-12-2007, 17:32

Hello Macca,

Collecting the customers card information from the site and keeping it safe in a database until the site admin views them is possible however use of a 3rd party payment gateway is what I would recommend. Its more secure and convenient option which also ensures that your customers are at ease while entering sensitive card information.

**troglodyfae** · #19 (**permalink**) 15-12-2007, 07:19

I also have a client who does this and for that I use Mals e-commerce. Free to use although you can upgrade, and it does what it says on the tin. This has been working for about a year now and very happily too. Both the client and his customers are very happy with the arrangement, as you get the little padlock coming up to show that it is secure.