Archive for May, 2014
DNS – The Domain Name System And The Cloud no comments
Howdie do Turnkey Lovers,
For this article, I thought I would take you a little into my world as an engineer/technician at Turnkey Internet. Before we begin, as usual, I like to ask you a question. Today’s question, “What is DNS?” It seems that every day I speak with a client about this mysterious creature named DNS. Most people I speak with either fall into 2 categories:
- People who know what DNS is
- People who do not know what DNS is
In this post, we’re going to deal with people on the second bullet point. To begin, we first must get the technical jargon out of the way before going any further. The worse is when you’re reading a post and the author is using acronyms that you do not know what they stand for. I’ve been guilty of this already in this post and should clear it up before moving forward.
DNS stands for Domain Name System. DNS (Domain Name System) is a naming system for computers, services or any resource connected to the internet. It translates IP addresses to a domain name. For example, 208.85.0.20 would translate to http://turnkeyinternet.net/ To see this for yourself, open a web browser and enter in the address bar, 208.85.0.20. Go ahead, I will wait.
Our main website, http://turnkeyinternet.net/ should of immediately opened in your web browser. That in a nut shell is what DNS is and does. Now, let’s see if we can delve a little deeper into on how this works. I’m a big believer in using real world examples to teach different concepts. Not everyone can visualize an IP address, but what about your mailing address? Or the cross streets that you may live on? Are you getting the theme here? To help you understand exactly how DNS works, let’s use the real world example of driving to your friends house
For this example, let’s say you received a phone call from a buddy who said to swing on by to his/her new place for a house warming. Your friend has just recently moved. Now, how do you find him? You would need some piece of information that would allow you know which house is your buddy’s house. This piece of information would be the mailing address. Using the mailing address, you can enter your buddies address into a GPS(Global Positioning System) and be navigated directly to the house warming. The mailing address or your home address would be the equivalent of your IP address. Your IP address on the internet is where your files reside that display your website.
You may be saying, “Yes, that’s pretty clear, but you said DNS converts an IP to a domain name. What does my mailing address have to do with that?” In order to answer that question, we must first ask, how do you get your actual mail delivered? I’m talking about the mailman walking to your home and placing bills into your mailbox. How does the mailman know where to go? Sure, he has your mailing address, but where is that information stored? If you guessed the Post Office, you would be correct.
Let’s say someone writes you a letter and drops it off at the post office. Post office workers look up your name in their system to find your mailing address. The letter is then given to the corresponding mailman to be delivered to your home address. This is what DNS does in a nutshell. You sign up for a domain name which you purchased through TurnKey Internet. The place you just purchased the domain from is your registrar which means they registered your domain name in their system. This process is of registering your domain in their system is what keeps other users from being able to buy your domain. In our example above, the post office would be the registrar. You registered your home address with the post office so when someone drops a letter off a the post office, the mail can be routed to your home via mailmen.
This is what name servers do. After purchasing a domain from a register, such as TurnKey Internet, you create name servers at the registrar to inform the rest of the internet where your website resides. Much the same way the post office uses mailing addresses to deliver mail to your home.
You see, when you view items in real world scenarios, it can help to shed some light on concepts that you may not fully understand such as DNS. There are more avenues that you can take with DNS, but the general method is still the same.
For example, let’s say you move your website to a different host, you would need to update your registrar with the new name servers to point to the new location for your site. It’s the same as when you move to a new home and have to request a change of address from the post office. The post office then updates all its files and records to reflect the new address. This could include sending your new address out to businesses that you’ve dealt with as well. The rest of the world has to be updated to your new address. On the internet, this is what is called propagation. It’s when your new name server and IP information are updated across the internet so that everyone knows where your new site resolves after changing hosts. This can take 24 to 48 hours
Well, I hope that helps to clear up some confusion on this matter. I didn’t include too much technical jargon as this article is more about getting you to understand how DNS works at a very high level. I hope with this information, it will help you to better understand how the DNS works and how your hosting works here at Turnkey Internet.
Until next time
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The Great Google Update (lions, tigers, bears, and panda’s oh my!) 1 comment
Howdie do Turnkey Lovers,
I have a quick question for you. When you think of Google, what is the first thing that comes to mind? If you’re like most people, the first thing may be Search engine or Gmail. For the purposes of this post, we will focus on the search engine aspect of Google. Now, when you think of panda’s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Is it a cute, loveable creature that is known for eating bamboo. Bamboo being the favorite food for pandas. My last question is, how are these two items related?
Do you feel you’re back in high school yet with the metaphors and pandas? If you haven’t figured it out yet, what pandas and google search have in common, I will help you a bit. When you go to Google and enter a search term, you’re immediately greeted with a page that shows the sites that could match the query you’re looking for. The pages are listed in a ranking. With the 1st site being the most likely result to match your query and the last result, being the furthest away from your query
You’re probably saying, “Hey, I know that. I know that Google ranks sites. What does this have to do with pandas?” Well my friend, did you know that the algorithm used to rank sites is called Google Panda? I bet you thought I was never going to connect Google with pandas 🙂
Google has recently released a blog post that shows that the Google Panda algorithm has been officially patented which you can read about here:
http://searchengineland.com/google-granted-patent-for-panda-algorithm-187573
However, this article isn’t about that update. This article is about Google Panda’s update that is being released to help smaller businesses to gain better rankings. You can read about it here:
You may be wondering, what does this have anything to do with Turnkey Internet and how does this affect my hosting? I would ask you back, would you like your site rankings increased? Have you ever wondered how sites are ranked so high in Google? Well to answer those questions, we must first delve a little deeper into what Google Panda actually is.
Google Panda was introduced in February 2011. The algorithm was released to help deal with low quality sites or thin sites. These are sites that you visit and are just flooded with advertisements when you view the site. It could be scrolling down the site or clicking a link and you’re instantly bombarded with advertisements. Google in 2011, wanted to fix this by creating an algorithm that would check sites content and rank those higher on in search results. This is what is known as Panda.
Several iterations of the algorithm have been released since its inception in 2011. These revisions were set to increase scrutiny and make it harder for sites to command the first page of site rankings. However, at times, this became to stringent for small businesses. A small business site may not have content that is updated every day. They may only update their sites once a week for a new special.
This resulted in some legitimate sites being listed lower on Google as smaller business may not have the funds to purchase additional resources to increase their page rankings. With this new update, Google is promising to help smaller businesses have high ranking sites within the Google databases. Google did do a softer update last year in July to help in this aspect as well which you can read about here:
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-update-17094.html
Now, you may be saying, how does this affect me? Well, I you’ve been working on improving your site ranks for your business, Google’s new Panda update will make it easier for you. You just need to ensure that you’re following some basic guidelines:
- Make sure you have valid site content
- Make sure you have valuable keywords that relate to your site throughout the page
- Try to use “pretty” links instead of long, hard to deciper links. E.g http://yourdomain.com/pets instead of http://yourdomain.com/page1
- Try to develop some content on the site even if it’s a weekly update that shows your new specials
There are many other options that you can take, but knowing that Google is updating Google Panda to help smaller businesses get better page rankings is a welcome update in many our eyes here at Turnkey Internet
Until next time Turnkey Lovers
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Earth Day Means Thinking about the Earth and being Green Every Day no comments
Howdie do Turnkey lovers,
Do you ladies and gentleman know what Tuesday, April 22nd 2014 is all about? Don’t worry, you don’t have to pull out your almanac or open Google to find what’s so special about, Tuesday, April 22nd 2014. The day was EARTH DAYYYYY!!!! Ok, you may not be as excited as I am about Earth day, but it’s a day that is lauded as the day for the environment. This could be going out to help with cleaning up an old playground or maybe picking up trash on the side of the road. Literally, anything that is good for the environment is appreciated on this day. Hey, you may even find your garbage man may have a little bit of pep to his or her step.
Ok, ok that may be a bit overboard about the garbage man, but it is a day where support for environmental protection is at an all time high. Now, you may be saying, “This is a webhosting company, why do they care about Earth Day?” Well my friend, almost every day at Turnkey Internet is some form of Earth day. How? How can everyday at Turnkey Internet be a version of Earth day? Well to answer that question, I must first ask a question back to you
- Do you have electricity in your home/workplace that you used to view this post ?
Those are pretty straightforward questions, right? They may even seem redundant as since you’re reading this post, you should have some form of electricity powering the machine you’re viewing this post on and more than likely, that machine is a desktop or laptop. You may be saying, “Yea, so what? What does this have to do with EarthDay and Turnkey Internet?”
That form of electricity is more than likely from a fossil fuel. What exactly is a fossil fuel? A fossil fuel is a fuel that is formed by natural processes such as coal. Using these type of fuels can lead to all sort of environmental issues such as Greenhouse gases being released into the environment. These gases can result in harmful effects to the environment and the people within it which results in a higher carbon footprint. You can read more about forms of electricity and fossil fuels here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil-fuel_power_station
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel
The reason I’m even mentioning this is because technology has reached a point in time where different forms of electricity can be created. These different forms can be any of the following listed below and many others:
- Solar power – converting energy from the sun to electricity
- Hydroelectric Power – Converting energy from water to electricity
Now both of these forms of power conversion each have their pros and cons, but they also have one thing in common: a zero carbon footprint. What exactly is a zero carbon footprint? The Zero Carbon Footprint is the measure of the amount of green house gases produced by burning fossil fuels. The higher the footprint, the worse for the environment. How does this factor into Turnkey Internet? Well, we utilize both, solar power and hydroelectric power, within our datacenter.
On top of our building, we have many different solar panels that convert solar energy directly to electric power to power the datacenter, but not only that, we also receive power from Niagara Falls that directly power the datacenter as well.
That means that our datacenter currently has a zero-carbon footprint which is the most effective way to ensure you leave a good mark on the environment. Every day when I walk into work and look at our datacenter, it makes me proud to know that we’re not damaging the environment. That we are helping to sustain the environment by using outside of the box methods to power the AWESOME datacenter that is Turnkey Internet.
You can read more about our forms of power at:
http://turnkeyinternet.net/green-initiative/
Since it’s Earth Day, I wanted to bring light to the effectiveness on our power consumption at Turnkey Internet.
Until next time
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