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Archives for September 2006

Web Hosting 2.0

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Web Hosting 2.0
 
Is there such a thing as Web Hosting 2.0 at all? I mean, 2.0 seems to be everywhere. While many people finally understand the impact of Web 2.0, what might be the impact to how web hosting is done in times of web 2.0? A web host who successfully wants to separate from the existing, must figure out a way how to do this. We all know that the lowest price with the biggest allowances just does not cut it and that it can actually backfire at you in regards to reputation and business volume (income, revenue, profit, etc.).
 
But what kind of flavor of 2.0 does a web host need to define and develop? Is it a MySpace or Digg flavor? Is something like that possible for web hosting at all? And how would it look like? Keep in mind we are not talking about marketing here and who has more friends on his/her Myspace.com train. It also does not matter how many diggs one has. But how can a web host build a hosting business around social networking and the interactive piece that plays such a big role in Web 2.0 and has other businesses succeed? Is it a forum-style approach? Not really, because that is already around for years – more or less successful depending on the web host and the quality of service that is provided. The actual hosting platform isn’t it either. Everyone can hook up a server and sell hosting of it. But services and features wrapped around that, that’s where a 2.0 would fit in just fine. Maybe theme-based hosting with a matching social network and dynamic services could be your stairway to a true 2.0? Think about it – there is a reason why so many teenagers are flocking to MySpace.com. What do they find? What does connect them? Look at Yahoo Groups, MSN groups, or for that matter large discussion forums. Look beyond of just having a support forum where customer of different kinds and origin can interact. What is there? Can you recognize it? Can you see it? If you do, you are upon something. Identify it. Define it. Shape it. Develop it. Go for it.
 
Don’t be left behind in the 1.0 world.

Review: Demowolf.com Web Hosting Flash Tutorials

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Review: Demowolf.com Web Hosting Flash Tutorials
 
A couple of days ago I started looking at flash based web hosting video tutorials for this very website (Webhostingresourcekit.com). After researching the 2 main providers (DemoDemo.com and Demowolf.com) I decided to purchase my first batch of flash based web hosting tutorials from Demowolf.com. My pre-sales questions were answered fast and in a very professional way. I then move forward and made my purchase. The purchase process is pretty straight forward and easy to complete. Additional information to provide was which colors for the text boxes and balloons I would prefer. Of course a logo of my website was required and soon I had everything provided Demowolf.com needed to complete my order.
 
Within less than 12 hours my order was completed and a download link was provided. I downloaded the tutorials I had ordered. The zip files contained the flash files + a matching HTML file. That is very convenient as all I would have to do now would be to make those HTML pages match the design of my site and a little more search engine friendly. Thanks to Macromedia Dreamweaver that was a snap on all 59 pages for my tutorials. The global "find & replace" functionality in Dreamweaver is extremely convenient. Not having to worry about how embed a flash file into a page was nice and I appreciate Demowolf providing that piece as part of the standard sales package. One warning: If Dreamweaver prompts you to update the page for you due to a possible problem with newer web browsers – deny it and say "no". Why? It broke the flash functionality in the pages. Once I had that figured out it was a smooth ride.
 
The tutorials itself did meet my expectations completely. Actually they exceeded my expectations. My logo was well placed within the tutorials and clearly identifies these tutorials as part of the Web Hosting Resource Kit. That was an important piece for me and I am very happy how the results look like. 
 
Conclusion: Web Hosting Flash Tutorials are a great service for web hosting clients from a support standpoint. In my case they complement the web hosting tutorials already available from my site. They can show web hosting business owners how these tutorials look like and web hosting customers can independently check out tutorials – away from a web hosting business sales website (on neutral ground so to speak). The service and quality of work provided by Demowolf.com has been outstanding and Rob of Demowolf.com delivered a great value for a great price. Two thumbs up from "The Web Hosting Resource Kit".

How to enable register_globals for a single website without putting an entire server security at risk?

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How to enable register_globals for a single website without putting the entire server security at risk?
 
Web servers configured with security in mind have PHP register_globals disabled from within PHP.ini. This affects the entire server. If are you trying to install osCommerce or another Fantastico script you are sometimes getting the error message shown below:
 
register_globals is disabled in php.ini, please enable it!
 
This error messages points to a problem with a specific script on a web hosting account. Fortunately register_globals can be turned on per domain. Please follow the instructions below to fix this issue.
  • Go to your control panel and then click on File manager.
  • In your file manager, enter the public_html folder.
  • In the public_html folder you will see a file called .htaccess.
  • Select  the .htaccess  file and click on edit in the upper right hand corner.
  • Copy and paste the text line shown below at the bottom of .htaccess file and then save it:
 php_value register_globals 1
 
This will turn your register_globals on and your script will work properly. Why is register_globals disabled in the first place? Leaving register_globals turned on poses a security risk for an entire web server. It should therefore only be enable on a case by case situation and only per website. Web Developers should no longer develop scripts that require register_globals to be turned on. Unfortunately this is very difficult to enforce.

Canceling a Server at ThePlanet

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Canceling a Server at ThePlanet
 

It’s always exciting for me to get a new server online. But sooner or later the moment comes when it is time to shutdown a server for good. Planning for that moment is important. No matter how good a server might have performed over the years, the older it gets the higher the risk of a hardware failure will be. Nothing lasts forever and that is especially true when it comes to computer hardware.
 
If you own your hardware planning ahead is even more critical. Unless you always have a spare server sitting around, you will need to order parts or the server itself. Ordering a server – depending on your supplier – can take a few weeks. The server then usually gets build and customized and receives some monitoring before it gets thrown into production. These tasks can add up and suddenly 2 months have gone by. If you lease hardware you need to check what the market prices are and who your supplier will eventually be. You will also need to check availability of hardware.
 
For the remaining part of this tutorial we will concentrate on the termination of a leased server at ThePlanet.com. In this case I brought up a new server at Softlayer.com due to ThePlanet.com not being able and willing to provide a comparable price quote. The new server came online at the end of August. I had Rack911.com prepare the server setup and match the old server and new server in software version setup and configuration to prepare for a smooth transition. Some minor problems came up when moving the first websites, but these issues were solved fairly quick. So, that went through pretty good. Here is a quick check list that I used and that made the move of several dozens of websites a success.
 
1) MySQL / PHP / Apache are on exactly the same version/patch level
2) Both servers match the modules that have been installed
3) Cpanel settings are configured the same way on both sites
4) The firewall rules are the same
5) Enough IP addresses are available on the new server
6) Reduce the DNS TTL (Time to live) value on the old and new server to 600 (= 10 Minutes). This should be done 3-4 days in advance of a website move
7) Cleanup unnecessary files and folders in websites; delete unneeded MySQL databases; etc.
8) Communicate the upcoming move with customers at least 2 weeks in advance. Send reminder emails. Communicate an exact schedule and work out that schedule with customers.
9) Make sure that access to the domain registry is either given or that the customers know the new DNS servers
10) Practice several moves. Don’t move important sites first. Let the less important sites hit the new server first and find the problems.
11) Find out what the cancellation terms for the old server are
 
Once move activity winds down and you get a good idea when you will be done, it is time to cancel the old server. Log on to Orbit (that is the ThePlanet.com customer support area on the Internet). Find the accounting section and then put in a cancellation request. The next page will show you when the cutoff for the next cancelation is to avoid having to pay for another month. The system will ask a few questions about why you are leaving. Once that is done you can submit the form and a special-drafted ticket is created. The next thing that happened to me was that sales contacted me trying to find why I was leaving and if they could do anything to make me stay. Since I am leaving under good terms I honestly provided the information that I had inquired about pricing on a new server and did not come to an agreement with the options Sales had me provided with. I liked the service I had received in the past (except for some minor issues), but could not justify the premium they were asking for on a comparable server at Softlayer.com. The next message I received was that my cancellation was accepted and that all billing for my server had been stopped. The server would remain online until the end of the current billing period.
 
That’s all I needed. I have 2 websites left to move. The server has been canceled and the remaining time in the billing cycle gave me enough room to move my sites and to clean up the server.

Web Hosting Flash Tutorials

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Web Hosting Flash Tutorials
 
I am in the process of reviewing some web hosting related flash tutorials for my Web Hosting Resource Kit website (the website you are on). I contacted two companies that offer flash tutorials to see if I can get a sample tutorial to find out if I can embed these flash files into the article / content management system I am using. And I have to say – I wish more companies would be that responsive to inquiries. Within 12 hours I had a sample file from each company in my hands. In the end it turned out that I cannot embed these flash files and rather have to build static pages to present these tutorials on my website (but that is a different story.
 
What are the two companies we looked at? We contacted DemoDemo.com and DemoWolf.com. As mentioned, both companies were super fast in their response time and none of them was picky about handing out a sample for test purposes. Once communication was established I took a closer look at each of the offerings to decide who I would like to work with in the first place. I compared tutorials from both sites as well as I reviewed the terms of a possible purchase.
 
After weighing the Pro’s and Con’s I was finding, I decided to look at DemoWolf (http://www.demowolf.com) first. Not only do they offer more tutorials ‘for the buck’, I also found their website easier to navigate and cleaner from a visitor point of view.
 
The tutorials offered by DemoWolf.com are of very high quality and seem to do exactly what the marketing information promises. For the beginning I concentrated on the CPanel/WHM tutorials as all my own servers run the same platform and did allow me to compare and to verify that the tutorials were indeed correct. I have been very impressed with the Voice Tutorials and could imagine that these will catch a nice share of the market. For my own purposes they are overkill as I am only hosting a very small, but exclusive group of clients and mainly provide phone support for my clients. My purchase of a set of tutorials is rather done to complement the content on Webhostingresourcekit.com with some more dynamic features.
 
I contacted Rob at DemoWolf with additional pre-sales questions and found him very easy to work with. Response was fast and our conversation was held on a very professional level. The purchase process was easy and straight forward. The available information of what they would need from me to complete my order was easy to find and very clear in description.
 
So, I got my order placed and are already working on setting up the infrastructure to provide web hosting flash tutorials for demo purposes on my website. As the Web Hosting Resource Kit is mainly targeting web hosting businesses, showing them what flash tutorials can do for their business, is a great addition to our library of articles. Look forward to find some world-class flash tutorials here soon. We will also post a more detailed review about the products we purchased today.

How to remove or disable mod_evasive from Apache Web Server?

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How to remove or disable mod_evasive from Apache Web Server?
 
Quite a few web server administrators have mod_evasive installed to protect the servers they are responsible for. Mod_evasive is one way to stop several kind of attacks on a server. This apache module will help protect against computers sending too many requests to a webserver in a short period of time in an attempt to flood it with traffic and to make it unreachable that way.
 
However – sometimes mod_evasive can be a problem for a server itself. If not fine-tuned for a specific server, the rules can cause more damage to a server than providing protection. Search engines as an example tend to hit a website pretty hard and pretty fast in a short period of time to index it. Usually this does not cause server problems, but if mod_evasive is running with not very fine-tuned rules, it can consider a search engine as an attacker and then block the search engine from spidering a website.
 
One option is to install mod_evasive on a server, but not to turn it on by default. A webmaster can decide to have it just ready to go in case the server gets attacked. Mod_evasive would be installed on a server and then disabled. Here is how to do just that:
 
1)  SSH into the web server as root and switch directories to get access to the httpd.conf file. Usually this can be done by going to "cd /etc/httpd/conf" or by going to "cd /usr/local/apache/conf"
 
2) Make a backup of the httpd.conf file. Now open httpd.conf and disable the lines that mention mod_evasive. This will probably be in two places. Example:
 
change "LoadModule evasive_module libexex/mod_evasive" to "#LoadModule evasive_module libexex/mod_evasive"
and 
change "AddModule mod_evasive.c" to "#AddModule mod_evasive.c"
 
3) Now with in the "conf" folder open the "mod_evasive.conf" and either delete the content (make a backup first) or rename the file to "mod_evasive.conf.old". Renaming to something other is the preferred way as it will easily allow you to turn it back on in a matter of seconds by renaming the file and by enabling the 2  lines in the httpd.conf file.
 
4) Restart Apache webserver and test your website. Mod_evasive is now disabled.

Linux Server Management Companies

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Linux Server Management Companies

For the last 2.5 years I have been pretty much administering my own servers. Well, at least more or less I’d say. I had a friend who is a really good Linux admin who did the majority of the work in the first 1.5 years before I slowly took over the administration.

However – at this point I am considering to outsource this task to a Linux Server Management Company. During my research I ran into several recommended companies. Here is a quick review of which Server Management Companies are currently available for hire. This is not a complete list of course, but I think it gives you some good information anyway.

The following list shows the companies that were recommended to me most:

  1. platinumservermanagement.com
  2. touchsupport.com
  3. rackaid.com
  4. serverwizards.com
  5. acunett.com

Let’s have a quick look at the most recommended company – Platinum Server Management. What are the services they offer for what price?

– Server Monitoring: 24x7x365 (5 minute interval) Server Monitoring with Reboot
– Monitoring Stats
– Within 6 Hour Response Time Guarantee for Support Tickets and Within 24 Hour Resolution Time Guarantee for Support Tickets
– Unlimited Admin Work Time!!
– 3rd Party Software Installation
– Initial Server Setup
– Server Backup Restoration
– Disaster Recovery & Hack Recovery
– Server Migration
– System Security, Optimization and Hardening

All these services are included in the standard server administration and management package. The price for this package is $29.00 per month. That sounds like a very good deal.

The one thing I noticed about 3rd party server management companies – they seem to be very good for all standard work, but quite a few folks recommended to go to a more specialized service provider when it comes to special requirements for a server update as an example (special Apache/PHP setups, etc.). These folks rather pay a professional by the hour in special occasions and do not use the standard management service provider.

Restoring Domain Accounts and Server Config Files with WHM / cPanel

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Restoring Domain Accounts and Server Config Files with WHM / cPanel 
 
This article describes how you can restore domain accounts on your server or VPS. It also describes how to restore configuration files using the WHM / cPanel native backup/restore system.
 
When it comes to restoring your domain accounts or configuration files, the WHM / cPanel restore system is pretty much straight forward and easy to use. Log into your WHM account and access the Backup section. The available options are:
 
  • Configuration File Rollback
  • Configure Backup
  • Restore Backups
  • Restore Multiple Backups
  • Restore a Full Backup/cpmove file
 
Configuration File Rollback:
This option allows you to view, and to restore either the httpd.conf (Apache configuration file), named.conf (BIND/DNS configuration file), and/or the proftpd.conf (ProFTP configuration file). This option is used if you upgraded the server software mentioned and something went horribly wrong. This option can be a life saver, but should be your last resort when fixing a problem. Select the file you need to restore, and the current configuration file will be displayed on the screen. At the bottom you will have the option to scroll between the file’s revisions, viewing its date stamp, and having the option to restore it if necessary.
 
Configure Backup:
You should visit this option as soon as you have a new server and configure it appropriately. Without doing this, you will not have backups. No backups and you will be heading towards a disaster at one point. Here is a screenshot of the available options.

 

Restore Backups:
This option allows you to restore either a daily, weekly, or monthly backup of a domain account. The backup will directly run from your default backup storage location. Select the type of backup you need to use (daily, weekly, monthly), and a list will appear containing all backups of accounts that are available for restore.
 
Restore Multiple Backups:
This option is very similar to the one above. It just adds the extra functionality to restore more than one account at the same time.
 
Restore a Full Backup/cpmove file:
As defined by WHM / cPanel, this feature will restore full backups, cPanel backups and cPanel move files in the format of: cpmove-user.tar.gz, user.tar.gz, backup-date_time_user.tar.gz. A user can create a full backup file from the domain account cPanel as an example. Important: For the restore the files must be in one of these directories on the server:
 
/home
/usr/home
/web
/home2
/home3
/root
/usr
 
Backups are an essential piece of your business. It does not matter if you host your own websites or websites for others. Backups should be done as often as feasible. You should also test the restores once a quarter or at least once every 6 months to make sure you recover from backup. This is critical for large accounts as it gets more difficult the bigger an account is. You should also consider to have off-side backups available in case your server provider goes belly up.
 

How to move a SSL Certificate from Server to Server?

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How to move a SSL Certificate from Server to Server?
 
Webmasters and web hosts often have concerns moving domain accounts from server to server when a SSL certificate is involved. Sometimes you hear concerns about the static IP addresses involved and that they won’t match on a new server naturally. Another concern is if the cert requests and keys have been displaced and how to get them back. We recently had to move domain accounts that included a SSL certificate move from server to server and recorded the steps involved here is our little guide of how to move a SSL certificate from server to server. Please be aware that all our servers are cPanel servers.
 
Prerequisites: To reduce the risk of failure when moving a SSL certificate both server environments should match as much as possible. So, having the exact same versions of PHP, MySQL, and Apache should be the minimum. Matching versions of PHP and MySQL is just a precaution. For a server to server migration we just felt more comfortable with having them on the exact same level on both servers. The operating system does not need to match. In our case we moved the domain from Linux Red Hat ES 3.0 (Intel CPU) to Red Hat ES 4.0 (AMD CPU).
 
1) Move the domain account with cPanel/WHM "Copy an account from another server with account password" functionality. Once the account move is completed assign a new static IP address of your choice to this account. You can do this during the domain move already. We preferred to do it manually afterwards.
 
2) On the source server go into WHM and select "SSL Manager" under "SSL/TLS" (See screenshot).
 
Find the domain with the SSL certificate. Your screen output should look like this (screenshot).
 
3) Click on the little Floppy Disk icon for the key and the crt piece and copy the output (see sample screenshot) into notepad.
 
4) Go into WHM on the destination server and select "Install a SSL Certificate and Setup the Domain" (see screenshot).
 
 
5) Copy and paste the crt and key output from the source server into the appropriate fields of the screen. Also add the SSL domain name (including sub domain if that is the actual URL), the account user name and the static IP address to the form fields. Once done, click on "Do it". The certificate is now being installed Apache is restarted automatically. If all goes well, you are now done. Go the SSL URL of the domain and test it.
 
6) In our case the cPanel/WHM move did not create the sub domain for the SSL URL. We had to go into cPanel of the account and recreate the sub domain. Once that was done everything worked as before on the old server.