Web Hosting

Having Fun with Google!

You know Google as a search engine.  You also know that, like all search engines, they constantly add different features to bring in more users.  So you’ve probably heard of, say, Google Maps, Google Earth and now Google+.  But did you know about these other services?

Picnik

Picnik is Google’s free Photoshop equivalent.  Instead of just relying on reviews we tested it out.  It loaded pretty quickly, was easy to use, and provided an impressive array of options for a free service.  One nice feature is the ability of users to upload their own filters, a lot of which we enjoyed.  We’re not sure what the pay service offers outside of layering: if you don’t need that, then you’ll probably find enough functionality in the free one.

Google Books

Google has the goal of scanning every book every published and displaying the full text on their web site.  No one will fault them for aiming too low, given that they themselves estimate this number to be roughly 130 million.  What’s more is that this has run into all sorts of copyright issues.  Nonetheless, there are currently 2 million books available through Google Books, and this number continues to increase.

Panoramio

Sort of fusing Google Earth, Google Street View and Wikipedia, Panoramio lets users upload pictures of real-world locations, and submit them so that they are viewable and linked to Google’s other services.  Note that pictures are reviewed by internal editors, so it doesn’t have Wikipedia’s immediacy.  On the other hand this means that you don’t have to worry about your kids finding adult material uploaded by some wiseguy.  Also users who send in photos can choose their own licensing restriction.

Google Trends

OK, perhaps it’s only a geek like me that finds this fascinating.  Still, maybe others will enjoy a section of Google that will display a graph showing the historical search popularity of certain terms.  I say this even staring at the sadness of how much the word “pinball” has declined as a search term since 2004.  Anyway, you can modify your graph to search by specific region or time period, and the data can be exported as a CSV file.

Google Scholar

Chances are either you know of this and already use this, or else don’t and don’t have much need of it.  Nevertheless, if the democratic nature of the internet can get much for you some days and you want peer-reviewed papers on a serious topic, here is where you’d find it.  While much of what you’ll find here you could find just through Google proper, it’s the options here that make this feature useful.  Not only can you search by subject area, publication name and publishing date, but you can even search through legal opinions, including those of specific courts.

Google Translate

We could be serious here and close out this list with Google Code and all of the API tools that it includes, or Google SketchUp, their downloadable 3D renderer.  That’s all useful, but we feel instead like pointing out that Google Translate is now 50 languages large, including the ability to auto-detect the input language.

What the New User can Learn from the GoDaddy Account Hack

Recently a security breach occurred in 445 of GoDaddy’s web hosting accounts.  While that may not seem like a lot on a percentage basis, that is also high enough to indicate that the hack was some type of systemic problem.  This can scare the new user into a lot of frantic questions.

Panicked thought is seldom a clear thought.  So even if you were one of the accounts in question, there are things that you’ll want to consider when evaluating this incident.

Innocent until proven guilty

One of the most obvious knee-jerk responses is the one that is most necessary for us to correct immediately: blaming GoDaddy.  When something like this happens, until you have very specific, proven reason to believe otherwise, it’s unwise and unfair to blame the host.  We’re hesitant to even use this as an article topic for that reason.  We only are because this will happen now and then, and it’s good to have the object lesson.

Why did this only happen with GoDaddy though, you might ask?  There are many reasons that have nothing to do with them.  The most obvious is just efficiency.  By focusing their attack on one host with many users, the hacker(s) don’t have to concern themselves with more than one system architecture.

What actually happened?

Let’s summarize the incident.  The compromised accounts had their .htaccess file changed.  This is a file that handles URL requests on the user account level.  It sets rules for how to treat different requests to that user’s web site based on different criteria.  In this case, it was set so that any hits to the user’s site that came from a major search engine were redirected to a malicious outside site.  This site in turn infected the surfer’s browser, continuing and amplifying the disease.

The accounts have since been re-secured, but this does now require that we ask the pertinent question: how were the accounts infiltrated?

They got the passwords – but how?

What we know is that somehow the bad guys got these user’s passwords.  What we don’t know is how.  So in lieu of having further information, we must use this opportunity to repeat two of the oldest security cautions:

• Keep your software updated – One site suggested the possibility that the users exploited a hole in a web site created by an outdated version of WordPress of Joomla!  You need to decide how much it’s worth it to stay close to the news reel on security updates, but either way don’t ignore them entirely.
• Choose secure passwords! – This is the bane of the security world.  Even after decades of warning, users still continue to have “123456” and “password” for passwords.  Do you? Change it!  This is a major reason why we must give GoDaddy the benefit of the doubt: this alone might have been the cause of the break-in.

In summary, if there’s any one piece of advice we can take from this incident, it’s this: don’t panic.  Security for your web site requires clear-thinking at all times.

Picking up Expired Domains – Not Always Fun, but There’s a Way

The number of domain names that are available is, if not technically infinite, effectively so.  This is one of the many reasons why few people go through the irritating process of trying to re-register expired domains.  Even if you were the person who originally owned the domain and you have a significant amount of branding on it, changing domain names is common.  You can usually get something close enough to your original name.

Nonetheless there will always be someone that will really want to try to pick up that expired domain.  Maybe it’s their family name.  Maybe it’s the company name that goes back 100 years.  Whatever the reason, these customers will always be there.  If you’re one of them, then as long as you’re going to do this, you might as well know how to do it right.

“Expired” doesn’t exactly mean Expired

The first thing that you need to know is that there is a grace period that goes along with a domain name’s expiration date.  How long this grace period lasts is determined by the domain’s registrar, and can even be different for different top-level domains.  You will want to inquire with them specifically.  During this grace period the original owner of the domain name, and only the original owner, can re-register it at normal rates.

Once this period ends then there is usually a “redemption period”.  This amounts to about the same thing, except that the original owner must now pay a higher fee.  Again, though, no one else can touch it during this phase.

Even then there’s more

If the redemption period lapses, then one of two things happen.  First, the registrar can immediately open the domain name up for re-registration by anyone.  It is best if this does not happen.  Why?

Because the world wide web is packed with digital vultures ready to pounce on an available domain seconds after it re-enters the marketplace.  You will have virtually no chance of keeping up with these outfits.  Once they register them, then you’ll be looking at some exorbitant fee to make it yours.

This isn’t to say that if your domain goes on auction that you’ll be able to get it automatically, however, you will have a fighting chance.  Domain name harvesters are looking for profit, and profit is all but guaranteed if they can snatch up a domain name for a few bucks.  The higher the price goes, the less it’s worth, from an investment perspective, for them.  They’re making a bet, after all.  They don’t know for certain that anyone will want it.

Is it all worth it?

If you’re ready to deal with this hassle, then simply keep an eye on the registrar.  Find out from them whether or not the domain is going to go up for auction.  Then do like any good auction attendee: show up, and play it smart.  Remember what we said: there are nearly an infinite number of many domains.  Before shelling out a few hundred, or even thousands of dollars for your dream name, ask yourself whether you can get by with an alternative.  Quite a lot of web sites have discovered that they can.

What to do When Everything is Running Well at Your Web Hosting Business

Believe it or not, owning a web hosting company is not always the hectic, out of control affair we think of it as. In fact, a lot of your time may simply be spent in front of your desk playing Solitaire as the bytes travel back and forth. Your servers may finally be running smoothly on autopilot, but does that mean you should take the opportunity to kick back, relax, and stop working on your systems?

Absolutely not! When you’ve got some “down time”—and not of the server variety—you’ve got a golden opportunity to ensure your servers are smooth, slick, and up to date. You never know when the perfect storm may be just around the corner, and the smart web hoster takes every placid opportunity to give his servers a looking over.

With that in mind, here’s some ideas for you to capitalize on the next time everything is running smoothly on the home front:

1. Run Updates: This seems obvious, but taking the time to ensure your servers are up to date is a must. You may have fixed every other aspect of your hardware imaginable, but when’s the last time you checked to see if CentOS added any new features? If you’re bored, can’t think of anything else to check, or just want to keep your servers running smoothly, go run your distro’s updater application and download the changes.
2. Nuke The Remnants: When a tenant on one of your servers leaves, their website is deleted. At least, it should be: The truth is, most websites leave behind scripting files, or the occasional stray media cache. There are also several preference bits that tend to get stuck to your hardware. With this in mind, just troll through your file cabinets looking for “remnants,” or bits of old sites that no longer exist on your servers. Take out any loose ends, and then feel better about yourself. House cleaning is hard work, and very likely needed to be done!
3. Take Another, Deeper Look: When everything is running perfectly, why not take the extra time to be sure your eyes aren’t deceiving you? Troll through some log files and look for any unseen errors. Run as many diagnostic tools as you can. If there’s an error, you’ll find it this way. If there’s not, you’ll have yet another opportunity to give yourself a pat on the back! It’s a win-win, in our eyes.

Using cPanel to Setup Cron Jobs

The “cron job” is one of the basic programming tools that remind you that you can get a lot of function out of learning just a little code.  A “cron job” is simply a command that you instruct your server to perform at regular intervals.  It can literally be any command that you can run normally. Continue Reading »

Guarantees – Separating Fact from Fiction

As web hosting companies continue to try to get a leg up on one another, many of them include in their offerings different types of “guarantees”.  This is the point at which we remember that, like any other, these are businesses, and the “guarantee” is a marketing tactic.

We also remember, though, that this word does still mean something: it bounds the web host to certain types of behavior, with potential consequences if they don’t follow through.  What do guarantees mean then, and what can you expect if your host can’t meet them?

Disk space and bandwidth – Not so much

One of the most popular is the guarantee of “unlimited” disk space and bandwidth.  It shouldn’t take too much of a technical expert to be suspicious of this one.  Of course, disk space and bandwidth can’t possibly be unlimited.  Walk into any one web host right now, and you can calculate the precise amount of data they can hold and data transfer they can handle.  Granted, those numbers will boggle you if you think about them too long.

To run afoul of this guarantee, though, won’t require you to go that high.  It will only require you to go high enough that you are long past using what you pay for.  It’s impossible to say how high this is, and maybe some hosts will bite the bullet and not say anything no matter how bad you abuse their systems.  Likely, though, what will happen is beyond some very egregious point, your host will ask you to either upgrade your account or (politely) take a hike.  Since they are free to do business with you or not they aren’t technically breaking their pledge.  So just don’t host the entire EMI back collection on your $3.99 account.

Uptime – Possibly more true

Since uptime is one of the most critical features a web host can provide, providers attempt to guarantee percentages of time your web site will be accessible.  This is another one to take with a grain of salt.  There is clearly only so much a web host can control, especially outside of its own facility.

99.9% uptime is the industry minimum standard, and is the only one you should really put much stock into: at a minute and a half a day, it’s a reasonable expectation.  Just adding one more 9 to that brings it to questionable enforceability.  99.99% uptime means that your site is down no more than one minute per week.  99.999% gives them 26 seconds a month to get your site back up.

Now granted, web hosts are doing more real work to back up these guarantees, such as the increasing use of multiple data centers in different cities.  Just make sure that your host gives you some indication that you will be compensated if your site goes down for longer than 26 seconds.

24/7 support

Finally there are support guarantees, and these you should keep them to.  Given the chaos that can go on in any business, let alone a web host, these can be brazen claims depending on the specifics and one you might need to rely on.  Hold their feet to the fire on this one.

Guarantees from any company many not be completely reliable, but that doesn’t change your need for reliability.  Know what you’re getting into with them, and know what your options are if they fail.

The Ins and Outs of DirectAdmin

By just about every measure, cPanel is the #1 web hosting control panel.  In the web hosting world, though, that typically means that there are a gaggle of alternatives that are 2^nd best and trying harder.  While not all of them have gained a strong footing among web hosts, one that is climbing the ranks is DirectAdmin.

The first complete version of DirectAdmin was released on Mar 1, 2003.  Reviews of some of its earliest versions circa 2005-6 weren’t so hot.  Lately, however, it’s been gaining traction, as evidenced by the active user support forum for it, and the increasing number of hosts offering it alongside of cPanel.  In fact,  vpsLink, HostPC and SiteValley includes this control panel among their standard hosting options.

So what is the main drawing point for DirectAdmin?

Simple: It’s simple.

DirectAdmin’s main draw is how light it is as a software package.  “Light” means a lot of good things for the user.

First, it means that it is fast to operate, not having cPanel’s heavy overhead.  This is especially critical on shared hosting services, since it might be several dozen users at once using these.  That kind of processing can add up fast if not done right.  Second, it means that it is easy to use and navigate through.  Its interface is also very similar to cPanel, so users crossing over won’t spend a lot of time re-educating themselves.

Third, being a lightweight package means that it is far more reliable and doesn’t crash nearly as much.  When it does crash, the recovery is comparatively pretty quick and clean.  Finally, being a smaller package means that it’s also a cheaper package, resulting in lower price passed on to you, the end user.  A number of free web hosts use DirectAdmin for this reason.

Simple isn’t all good … is it?

The downside of this easier approach means that DirectAdmin doesn’t quite have the full rainbow of options that cPanel has.

Or does it?  In multiple reviews online comparing cPanel to DirectAdmin I found users talking about the advanced administrator tasks that you can only do in cPanel.  However, when pressed to name what those tasks were, I did not see a single specific one listed.

This doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.  With a package as established and worked over as cPanel, its probably a sure thing that there are some cPanel wizard tricks that you cannot do, or do easily with DirectAdmin.  On top of that, even if there isn’t that much in direct functionality that’s different, cPanel has a larger set of tutorials, FAQs, and current users ready to share their knowledge of the product.

Less popular because it’s less popular?

One web site suggests that the preference towards cPanel in the hosting world might be little more than momentum.  If that’s true, then considering the fact that DirectAdmin is also largely considered to be the more secure of the two control panels (again, for reasons of programming simplicity), this might not be the case forever.

Whatever the reason, DirectAdmin is clearly rising in the web hosting world as a respected control panel package.  If your host offers this, you might consider looking into it.

Comparing Popular Bulletin Board Software Packages

Bulletin board systems these days don’t get as much attentions as other genres of software.  These tend to be more associated with not-for-profit sites of various kinds, and non-business related genres often plays second fiddle.

Regardless, adding a discussion board to your web site is a great way to generate community interest in whatever your site is centred around.  The difference between a good and bad forum site can be like night and day, though.  Here are some of the most popular BBS’s out there, and their perceived advantages and disadvantages.

phpBB

This is one category in which there is a clear leader.  phpBB is far-and-away the most popular BBS.  Even with a few features lacking one web site summarized its review of the latest version, phpBB3, by declaring it “the perfect forum software.”

Is it?  Looking over it we could fill this entire article up with a list of its features.  It comes with support for 42 languages, including both American and British English.  It’s compatible with 7 different PC browsers and six different SmartPhones.  It can run on six different data storage systems.  It has more than 400 available plugins and more than 500 available themes.

Honestly, we have an easier time listing what it can’t do.  About the only features it lacks that you might have serious use for are threaded discussions, a calendar system and the ability to have a paid-customer only section.  It is described as possibly a little tricky to fine tune, but otherwise easy to install and work with.  There were complaints in recent versions about security weakness, but they seem to have been cleared up.

vBulletin

Comparing them side-by-side you may wonder exactly why phpBB is so much more popular than a package like vBulletin.  Their feature lists are close to being carbon copies of one another.

The primary reason is probably the fact that phpBB is free and open source, vBulletin is paid software, and is not cheap.  This appears to be the only reason, though, and we should temper this with one addendum.  The entire Publishing Suite version of the software package includes content management and community blog software designed to work with your forums.  Given the high marks that the forum software receives, this may make it a preferred choice for someone who needs a more professional looking site.

Simple Machines Forum (SMF)

SMF doesn’t seem to have nearly the level of usage on the web as these other two packages.  Like vBulletin, though, it doesn’t seem to be because the software itself is lacking.  In fact, it arguably has the most features of all three, and one site listing its positives and negatives couldn’t even come up with any of the latter.  It is only at version 2.0, but five years worth of development went in between that and version 1.5.

Bulletin board software packages appear to be one of the more complete areas of web development.  If you want to add a discussion board to your site, you have lots of solid packages to choose from.

How To Connect To Your Server Using SSH

SSH is about as cool as sliced bread, if maybe not a little bit more so. Seriously, it’s a great way to get at your server’s terminal shell, which—as we all know—is the hotbed of power. From there you can change just about any aspect of the server, not to mention seriously screw things up if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Regardless of your skill level or knowledgeability, if you’re going to do any serious web mastering with your server, you’ll need to access the server shell at some point. To do this, you’ll need to tunnel commands server-side via SSH. There are several ways to accomplish this, but each operating system treats the process slightly differently. Lucky for you, we’ve got a common way to get at your server via SSH for all three major operating systems. No need to thank us, though: This is by no means a comprehensive methods list, but rather just a quick guide to dipping your toe in the water. For more complex entry methods, hit up the Big-G and google it.

In the meantime, though, check below for our ways of getting to your server via SSH!

SSH Access For Windows

Windows is complicated, and because of that, we’ll get it out of the way quick. Windows, unlike Linux or Macintosh (which we’ll look at in just a second) is not based on UNIX, and does not come stock with any kind of SSH client. However, there are plenty of utilities out there that will get the job done. Without sending you to a search engine, though, you can use our favorite in the meantime: PuTTY.

This handy application provides a pleasant enough graphical interface from which to get at your server. Just enter the name of the host, then choose SSH as your connection type. If you’d like, you can save the information for further use. Then enter your username and password, and PuTTY should do the rest.

Download PuTTY at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html.

For Linux

Linux, by nature of its internal coding, is much less of a pain in the derriere. All you have to do is locate your local terminal application (this varies from distro to distro, so look carefully) and then type the following string:

ssh -l your-username yourserver-or-ip.com

For Macintosh

For Mac users, enter the same command as above, only use the native Terminal application, which can be found in your Utilities folder. Easy as pie, right?

Basic SSH Commands

Here is a short list of some of the most common SSH commands.

<command> -h                 # The -h flag provides help on a command
ls                           # List the contents of the current directory
cd <directory or full path>  # Change to that directory or path
cp <source> <destination>    # Copy the source file to the destination
cp -r <source> <destination> # Copy the source directory to the destination directory
mv <source> <destination>    # Move the source file to the destination
mkdir <directory name>       # Create a new directory
pico <file>                  # Edit file in a friendly, easy to use file editor
grep <text> <file>           # Search for text within a file
wget <URI>                   # Download the file at the given URI to the current path
tar -xz -f <file>            # Un-gzip and un-tar the given *.tgz or *.tar.gz file
rm <file>                    # Delete the file
rm -r <directory>            # Delete the directory and all contents
killall <program name>       # Kill all running processes of the program
ps                           # Show running processes
top                          # Show running processes in a graphical frontend
netstat                      # Show all current network connections
du                           # Show disk usage

For more SSH commands check David Coe‘s http://www.sshcommands.co.uk/, an easy to understand list of SSH commands (with examples).

Why Your Site Would Be Better With a Virtual Server

We don’t intend to tell you how to host your website, but every now and again we do get a pretty great idea to improve your chunk of the Web. This weeks thought is one of our better, and if you’re looking to expand on your shared web hosting plan, you owe it yourself to read our thoughts below on why virtual servers could be the lifeblood your business needs.

To start off, we should likely explain what we mean by virtual servers. Think of a virtual server this way – when you have a single piece of hardware, and store all of your various sites to that one server, your files are all mashed up together into the same block. With virtual server hosting, you’re free to partition your single server into many different separate entities, none of which overlap. In essence, it’s like putting walls on your server, keeping all your different sites apart. Continue Reading »

Common Web Hosting Terms And What They Mean

If you’re new to the world of web hosting, you may find yourself swamped with endless lists of terminology that sound like Greek to your fresh ears. Website hosting, like any other tech industry, comes with its own unique retinue of words, many of which aren’t necessarily self-explanatory. However, that doesn’t mean most of them can’t be explained in a few short sentences.

To help ease you into the modern trends of web hosting, we’ve compiled a handy list of the most common terms in the business. We’ll do our best to explain them, but if you find yourself befuddled after we’ve done our best, don’t hesitate to hit up Google: There are plenty of more complex definitions out there, and we won’t blame you for skipping our more generalized information. Continue Reading »