Hi,
I'm creating a website/database that my dad and his partner will use to help manage there business. update new appointments / manage customers ect.
My dad wanted to host it on our server, however I'm not confident about setting up security so I was just going to use a hosting company that offer everything. is there anything I'm missing anything other than self hosting can be cheaper?
other than self hosting can be cheaper
Don't underestimate the costs of running your own server. Hardware, infrastructure, software licenses, upgrading and updating... All take a lot of your (costly) time.
A good host will have a lot of precautions already in place, because they can not afford to be taken down. If your data is sensitive, you may want to consider a dedicated IP address and an SSL certificate, and make sure you have a good backup package.
In addition, to control costs, you can host your web on a shared platform. As the site is developed and bandwidth and storage requirements increase, you can migrate from a shared to a dedicated platform.
I would agree with pritaeas that there are a lot of hidden and soft costs associated with hosting this own your own. Web hosting companies have already invested in things such as multiple data centers, fault tolerant DNS servers, load balanced web servers, highly available network connections, etc..
If the only people who will see the results from the database are your dad and partner, then putting it on line presents an unnecessary risk of exposing customer details. If yo uhave to ask, you probably don't have enough experience yet to make it secure.
If it is just a database for them to track their business, put it on a computer at their place of business. If you wish to practice building a web database system, then get usbwebserver, which is a zero configuration server set-up so developers can build and test their dataabse before putting it on line. Then you can build them a system that the rest of the world can't see or hack into. It's how I build and test online databases before putting them on line.
The problem is they need to be able to access it while out on a job.
While I look into more detailed PHP security for acessing the Db via the website I was planning on creating the DB on my hosts server and updateing it using SSH. Am I right in thinking this would be secure? also would using phpmyadmin be secure for filling it in?
also would using phpmyadmin be secure for filling it in?
PhpMyAdmin is usually installed with the root account. I'd say you check with their docs on how to protect it, so should your laptop get stolen, nobody can delete the data.
Personally, I'd make a small application so you can view what you need, and add/update/delete items, using a restricted MySQL user, and good logging.
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