Some of the website access management tools your host needs to provide
You have just launched your site on the web and feel confident that it is now freely accessible to your potential visitors? Well, having the website up and running online is just a part of the job. You will also need to make sure you can manage the access settings of its pages. With the help of the access control tools offered by your host, you will be able to set various patterns for flawless communication between your site and its visitors.
There are many popular access management tools, most of which are expected to be integrated into the service packages of your web hosting provider as add-on features.
The Custom Error Pages feature is aimed at filling in the gap between you and your visitors when your website is experiencing accessibility problems. They represent a customized version of the non-user-friendly standard system error message pages, which appear when a website is temporary unavailable. You have the freedom to design them the way you like with the sole purpose of keeping your visitors’ interest to your site, by informing them of the temporary problem and even redirecting them to the webpage they are searching for, whenever possible.
Another important feature working for your website accessibility is the URL Redirection tool. It helps you point your domain or subdomain to a new up-to-date URL, and thus preserve the relevance of its incoming links. You may need this service if having to change, temporarily or permanently, a certain URL within your site to instruct your visitors’ browsers and the search engines to open its corresponding page under the new actual address. This way, you save both your visitors’ and the search engine’s connection to your webpages.
A great access control tool is the Password Protection feature. In contrast to the previous two tools, it is not working to keep your global audience’s interest to your site. Its basic mission it to help you intentionally limit the access to the whole site or to certain pages of it, by making it available to a special authorized group of users only. Such restricted access may be necessary for certain secure pages like member login forms or for the whole site if it is not yet ready to be presented online or if the site itself contains confidential information.
The very fact that your website is online makes it inevitably associated with potential unauthorized access risks. Features like the IP Blocking tool, integrated into your Control Panel, have been created to help you recognize the malicious visitors by their IP address and block their connections to your website. With this access tool you not only control the connections to your website, you also protect it against any external negative influences.
All of the tools mentioned here are recommended to be on the add-on services list offered by your host. Usually, they are accessible from the Control Panel offered with their hosting packages, so make sure they are supported by your host before choosing to use their services.
Tags: custom error pages, IP address, Password Protection, URL redirection, web hosting