Website DOS Attacks on site
 

Has anyone had an increase in DOS attacks on their sites? I get them almost daily and shuts down the site till the web guys fix it. Is there a way to prevent them from happening as frequently or at all??

Though I don't experience your pains I have seen on periods where dozens or hundreds of users/bots just flush into a website.
If you have a close competitor I wouldn't be surprised if they rent out botnets to attempt to shut you down or hurt your business enough they stop going to you. There are methods to filter out botnets but this is something your webhosting company should have implemented.

I can't really help you out on a technical level just yet. I hope you solve your problem though and sorry to hear about it.

I have lots of competitors in the toy business and have had people do that to my ppc campaigns. I hope that's not the case but my guys are working on it and usually have the site back up fairly quickly.

Preventing dos attacks to a server can be challenging but not impossible. you should ask your host to setup protection for you.

(d)DOS attack
 

The best way is to have a device installed where your webserver is hosted that analyzes the incomming traffic and then tries to find a pattern in the attacking traffic, then filter that out. The device will have to learn what bad traffic looks like so it may take some time.
These devices are not cheap, but downtime is not cheap either. Look at the big brands like CICSO.

My experience is that it will work over time, but you will probably also filter out some good traffic.. But the bad guys will give up on the attack once they see its not effective any more and then you can disable the device ;)

Your host should really be on top of that. If they're not able to prevent small attacks you should be talking to other hosts.