From time to time we have requests from customers to host Kontrolit on their own servers. This document helps explain the advantages of using Kontrolit hosting and why we have decided to take the route of only providing Kontrolit sites on our servers. What do we mean by web hosting? Before we begin it would be useful to recap on what we actually mean by web hosting. For a typical small business, hosting is normally split into three entities. Domain hosting, email hosting and web hosting. For a normal hosting setup we would expect each entity to be housed on separate servers (if one should fail the others can keep running!). A nice way to think about how this all works is to imagine the domain hosting (DNS Server) as being a phone book. So when you bring up a website in a browser, your computer will consult the DNS server (phone book) which will let your browser know where the website is located. Similarly if you want to send an email your machine will contact the DNS server (phone book), which will tell it where your email server resides. So when we talk about Kontrolit web hosting we are only talking about moving the bit on the web server over to us. We do not need to make any changes to your current domain or email hosting if you are happy with your setup. It is also worth noting that we do not need to administer your domain name (your domain name will have information stored against it which tells the World where your DNS server is thus completing the loop). If I don t host the site am I forced to use you to make changes? The Kontrolit administration panel comes with a range of tools that allow administrators to make changes to the site without ever needing to come back to us. So whilst we have built Kontrolit to cater for people that have zero knowledge of code, for those that have skills with CSS, jquery and HTML, Kontrolit offers the user the opportunity to extend the software as required. Our theming module allows the style sheet to be overwritten. This allows an administrator to change the entire design of the site.
The same page but with a different style sheet. In addition the theming module on the full version allows an administrator to place different themes into different sections of the site; in fact every page could have its own theme. We also offer the ability to edit the source code or HTML for the main content area of a page. This allows and administrator to add in custom jquery, HTML and styles if they so wish. The main content area on an about us page and the source code highliged in the administration panel for the same page Along with the main content area of a page, our component manager which allows you to place items around the main content also comes with a custom component to embed your own source code. This is a great way of adding in third party mailing content such as mailing list forms. All of the above items, together with Kontrolit s inbuilt ability to manage: menus page layouts all textual elements
and more means that Kontrolit very rarely prevents the administrator (you) from being able to make changes yourself just using the administration panel. What about other code changes that can t be made with the administration panel such as creating a new module or changing existing functionality? We want all Kontrolit sites to load as quickly as possible. So to do this we compile a lot of the core code into library files called dlls (dynamic link library). Compiled code runs faster than non-compiled code, that s why we do it. These files can t be edited in note pad much like exe files on your PC can t be edited. So whilst you could change some of the layout files on the page you are not going to be able to edit the dll files to make changes to functionality. You would need the actual source files and then software called Visual Studio to recompile the code to update your site. Kontrolit currently has over 50,000 lines of code. Whilst we code to high standards and follow standard conventions we still have our own in-house way of doing things based on our 12 years of experience. So it could take time for someone to read through the code, understand it and then make the desired changes. So normally the quickest and almost certainly cheapest route to get changes made at that level would be to get the people who wrote the software in the first place to complete the changes. We can offer discounts on additional work depending on what is needed. For example should you request some new functionality that we think would be useful for all of our customers then we reduce your costs by 50%. So what does Kontrolit web hosting cost? We have tried to kept costs as low as possible. For example pricing for the full version starts at 12 + VAT per month or 120 + VAT per year for 0.5 GB of web space. Along with the amount of web space we also, as standard, include: Patch your websites automatically (we couldn t do this on your servers) Take daily backups to a separate physical location Provide access 24x7 to our statistics server that comes with a range of reports on traffic and visitors with the advantage of daily, weekly or monthly emailed reports. So who owns the site? You always own the content or the data on the website. Once the final payment has been made for the initial setup and build of the website you will own all the design files and any working files used to produce that design. Kontrolit CMS, which powers your design and content, remains our property.
What if you didn t use Kontrolit CMS and built me a site from scratch? In this case you would own the code and you could even take the entire source code from us to host the site on your own servers (if they are the right type). However the cost for reproducing functionality already present in Kontrolit even just in part is always going to be a lot more expensive than just using Kontrolit. My servers are really good wouldn t the site be faster there? Firstly we would need to check if you would have the right servers and infrastructure and then secondly we need to make sure you are running the correct software to enable Kontrolit to run. Kontrolit is an ASP.NET application. That means it uses Windows servers to run the software. So for a typical website we use the following servers: Web Server running Windows 2008 R2, Internet Information Service (IIS) 7.5, ASP.NET framework 3.5 and the IIS URL rewrite module Database server running Windows 2008 R2, Microsoft SQL 2008 R2 Standard Edition Backup Web Server (see above) Backup Database Server (see above) Statistics Server that reads log files in real time Backup File Server in second physical location Hardware Firewall As a minimum you would need to replicate the items in bold above. If you don t have access to this you would then need to buy new hardware or software to get Kontrolit to run. If you had the hardware (servers) but needed to buy the above software in bold you could be looking at costs in the region of 2500 that s roughly the same as 21 years of entry level web hosting costs! You would also need to think about backups and hopefully offsite backups. When it comes to hardware a typical specification for a Kontrolit web server is: 2 x quad core processors 16 GB of RAM Raid hard disks at 15,000 rpm Dual network cards idrac cards for remote management Redundant power supplies So where do you keep your servers? We have servers in two locations Telehouse Metro and Telehouse North in London. These data centres are around 4 miles apart.
How do you maintain them? We invest in the hardware we buy so that we can install production servers and use the inbuilt redundancy to run them continuously for 3 years before retiring them to backup servers for a further 2 years before finally ending their production life. On the odd occasion where we require assistance with the hardware we have a local company who can be on site within 15 minutes. We also have maintenance contracts with our suppliers who can be on site next business day to replace any faulty parts. However our network/setup is designed so that we can move sites to other physical servers quickly to minimise any down time whilst we take steps to correct any hardware issues. What happens if you have problems out of normal working hours? We monitor all of our servers 24x7x365. If a server should fail staff would receive SMS messages to their mobile phones within 5 minutes. We have staff on call 24x7x365 to respond to any issues. We also offer premium support contracts to Enterprise level customers should they wish to contact us out of normal working hours for emergency support. Anything else? By keeping the source code for Kontrolit closed at a stroke we are massively improving the security of our software. If we take the case of an open source platform like WordPress, one can go to the main WordPress site and download the full source code. If one then wanted to hack a WordPress site they can then search the source code and test it for weaknesses. If they find a weakness they can then use that against a site. This means to date a Kontrolit site has never been hacked. Because we only host Kontrolit sites our servers and web sites are ultra-reliable (all code is tested by us before it is released to production servers). A good proportion of hosting issues outside of faulty hardware is normally due to poorly tested code being released to the production server. In 2011 we achieved an up time of 99.9998%