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What happens though when all of that happiness is suddenly washed down the drain and you realize that your cheap dedicated servers are not as cheap as they were promised to be? Now the smiling face of that pretty girl or guy looks sinister as you realize that you have been had.

How unfortunate! Now you need to contact the company and ask for some form of compensation. (And good luck on that, specially if you have to deal with customer support via email!) Yes, all of this could have been avoided if you read the fine print of the contract…which of course the company goes out of its way to shrink on the actual website.

This article will help you to understand the method behind cheap pricing. First, try and understand that no matter what the company states on their wonderfully crafted website, they are looking for a solid cash investment from you. They don’t want a few dollars by the month, despite whatever the laughing guy or girl suggest on the site’s homepage. They actually want a figure that should be close to £50 to do business with you, or maybe more, if they can get it. Therefore, when you click on more information you will notice that the original three or four pounds plan they promised is only available if you pay in advance for the year.

Some companies extend this prepay period out to a few years or even several years. One company offers a ten-year contract advertising with prices at just £2-3 a month. So, if you prepay for a few years in advance, then your lump sum would equal just a few pounds a month. Clever, huh? That may not look like a good deal now, considering you now have to spend your grocery money this week on a web hosting provider.

Here’s another trick to look out for. Let’s say you want to pay only by the year, or maybe, even at intervals of three or six months. The web hosting company is okay with this…but now is ordering you to pay a setup fee which brings your grand total to…you guessed it, £50! Simple lesson learned: when it’s time to decide on a web hosting package, look for the one that is not having any set up fees and that you can pay on a short-term basis.

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Posted under Dedicated Servers

It usually depends on what you really need and what you want to achieve. There are advantages and disadvantages for each and everything so do both paid and as well as free web hosting have.

Free Web Hosting

Advantages:

- The most obvious benefit is that it’s free.

- You can use your free web space to practice programming. Not many, but there are some free web hosting plans that support a programming language such as PHP, ASP, CGI/Perl, Coldfusion or JSP.

- A free web hosting plan is good for creating a personal website.

Disadvantages:

- A free web hosts usually place their banner and text ads on your website.

- With a large number of free hosts, your website is placed in a sub-domain or a folder (www.yourwebsite.freehosting.com or www.freehosting.com/yourwebsite) which usually results in poor search engine rankings.

- As they are offering free hosting, lots of free web hosts are not able to offer 24/7 or any support.

- Very few free web hosts offer a control panel with their plans.

- Another drawback with free web hosts is many don’t allow FTP access which is an problem if you have many files to upload.

- Free web hosting plans does not offer much disk space or data transfer. This could be a problem if you have a lot of bigger files or if your website generates a lot of traffic.

Paid Web Hosting

Advantages:

- With paid hosting, you will now have any unwanted text or banner ads placed on your website.

- Your website will not be placed in a sub-domain or folder. You will have your own domain name (yourwebsite.com) which will not only have better search engine rankings but it will also looks more professional.

- Most paid web hosts offer 24/7 support.

- Many paid web hosting plans comes with a control panel such as cPanel, Vdeck, Plesk or Ensim which is having the features like web stats, the ability to password protect directories, and you can also create web based email accounts.

- Most paid web hosts offer FTP access.

- Usually, all the paid web hosting plans support lots of programming languages like PHP, ASP, CGI/Perl, Coldfusion and JSP.

- With the more disk space and data transfer you get with paid hosting, you can add more files to your website and it is having the ability to handle more traffic.

Disadvantages:

- The only disadvantage here is that it’s not free.

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Posted under Web hosting

As we all know that PhpBB is an open source software and con be downloaded for free and because of this almost all the webmasters like to use this software to run their online communities and the only thing we need to make sure is that the software works seamlessly with the web hosting service provider. Here are some of the points which can help you to  choose a compatible host for PhpBB.

1) Linux Hosting

Since the software is written in PHP, it’s best that you choose Linux hosting. Windows servers can also run PHP scripts, but some features do not run in a Windows environment (e.g. mod rewrite). Mod rewrite is important for SEO purposes.

2) cPanel Control Panel

Usually Linux servers comes with free cPanel admin control panel so once you are having access to the control panel, you just need to login and install the PhpBB script. Cpanel is also having a useful feature like Fantastico which helps you to install the forum in just couple of min. It is having an easy to use installation wizard which helps you to promote, guide and assist with the entire installation procedure.

3) Hosting Space and Bandwidth

Today, the hosting industry has become pretty much competitive and there are many web hosts who can give unlimited hosting space and bandwidth on shared hosting plans. Normally, if you run static sites on this plan, you will not face any problem but if you want to run a forum, your site may eventually end up hogging too much resources.

The only thing that creates problem with running a forum is that the number of users will keep on improving as per time and because there will be lots of users connecting to the server, the number of requests that are sent to the server will be dramatically increased and sometimes this may slowdown the server. If the same thing happens on lots of times then other users who are sharing the same server with you may start to complain and at the end, your hosting account may get suspended temporarily.

So to avoid your hosting account from getting disrupted, just make sure that you plan for the growth of your site. If you feel like your site is growing rapidly, plan to migrate the site to more stable environment. Instead of hosting the site on a shared hosting plan, go for a VPS Hosting package. As if you go with a VPS plan, you get all dedicated server resources and admin rights. You can continue with shared plans if you are not having more than 2000 members but if there are more than 2000 members, you will have to go for a VPS hosting or Dedicated Servers Hosting.

I agree that VPS Hosting and Dedicated servers cost a lot if compared to shared server hosting so if you are starting a brand new forum, it is a wise decision to setup the forum on shared server for the first 6 months or so. As the time grows and members as well, you will need to switch over the plan to VPS Hosting or Dedicated Servers.

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Posted under Web hosting

Before starting with the installation and enabling steps of BFD, I would like to add some light on what is BFD?

Basically, BFD also known as Brute Force Detection is a simple SSH script which is used to parse applicable logs to check about the authentication failure. Installing BFD adds your server one more advantage that it will secure your dedicated server from any harmful brute force attempts. It also works in conjuction with APF firewall to manage your level of server protection and similar to most of the linux server tools, can be easily installed and configured. It is one of the most popular tool for all your dedicated server hosting requirements. Make sure the APF firewall is already installed on your server or the BFD won’t work.

Steps to Install BFD on your Dedicated Server:

Step 1 : Login to the root and cd root/downloads (directory where you store your files)

Step 2 : Use the SSH command of wget as shown below:
wget http://www.rfxnetworks.com/downloads/bfd-current.tar.gz

Step 3 : Use the SSH command of tar as shown below:
tar –xvzf bfd-current.tar.gz

Step 4 : Use the SSH command of cd as shown below:
cd bfd-0.7

Step 5 : Run the ./install.sh file. when its completed, it will show you the following message that alerts to you a proper installation:

.: BFD installed
Install path: /usr/local/bfd
Config path: /usr/local/bfd/conf.bfd
Executable path: /usr/local/sbin/bfd

This means your BFD is now succesfully installed. Now, moving to the enabling BFD which will allow you to block brute force attempts.

Steps to Enable BFD on your Dedicated Server:

Step 1 : Edit the config file, which is located at /usr/local/bfd/conf.bfd

Step 2 : Now, enabling “brute force hack attempt alerts”. Simply, find ALERT_USR=“0” and change it to ALERT_USR=“1” which is ensuring that yes, it will alert you whenever there is a brute force hacking attacks.

Step 3 : Where do you want to send those alerts comes next! Find EMAIL_USR=“root” and change that to EMAIL_USR=“emailaddresshere”

Step 4 : Ctrl+X then Y

Step 5 : However, if you are disallowing everyone from accessing your SSH, doesn’t that mean you can’t get in either? Yes, so let’s prevent that. pico –w /usr/local/bfd/ignore.hosts and add your own IP(s). Ctrl+X then Y.

You can run your installed BFD by entering /usr/local/sbin/bfd –s

Now, your Dedicated Server Hosting account will get alerts whenever there is a brute force hacking attacks.

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A server is a hard drive where electronic files are stored. A dedicated server is a hard drive that is been dedicated to a particular person or an entire company, or a specific function within a company such as an email server.

Small companies and even the freelancers who work from home office can also use regular desk top computer with a good amount of gigs as a server from which other computers run. This type of server runs on the same concept and accomplishes the same tasks that larger, off site, servers can accomplish.

Dedicated servers are commonly used by company’s for their website. Usually lots of small companies use off site servers and hosting companies on which they build their websites and blogs. These companies that own the servers are just providing the storage space for the web pages, just like Hotmail, who provides off site storage space for emails.

These companies usually gives the guarantee at a certain amount of “up time” and they will provide further stats on the maximum amount of bandwidth a company is allowed with the price paid for the web hosting services provided. The bandwidth refers to how active your web site is; if you have pretty good amount of traffic that’s great for you, but it may cause problems with your web hosting company/off site server if they will not be able to handle the overload.

A lot of times an individual or small company that is not comfortable with building a website from scratch, or not needing a site that includes a lot of bells and whistles like flash, video, or even shopping carts, usually go for an online source that allows them to build a website using a user friendly template format.

While using this type of web service, the servers are located at, and run and owned by the company that you are building your website at. For example, some web portals like Yahoo and MSN offers user friendly templates and dedicated server hosting.

As time passes and a company grows, it’s quite common to have their web hosting servers customized and brought in house. This requires a much higher level of technical expertise since owning your own server means taking the responsibility for all updates, changes, migrations, and problems that need to be addressed.

To keep your web hosting server off site where you have a higher level of security all around. A web hosting company already has different types of security in place against hackers, viruses, and even “acts of God” such as building fires, floods, tornadoes, etc.

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As we all know that  Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization platform has been accepted in the marketplace in pretty small time, it is pretty much worthwhile to compare Hyper-V virtual dedicated servers with traditional dedicated servers. These options keeps on changing in terms of managed limitations, connectivity and their uses.

A dedicated server is a physical server that can be rented from a managed service provider and it also includes a powerful hardware, related server software, bandwidth, connection to the internet and IP connectivity for a remote access. A dedicated server can be configured and operated by the company itself, and most of all it saves costs in terms of staffing, security, bandwidth and administration of the network. It is pretty much flexible for customization than shared hosting as the  the user is having a complete control over the hardware and operating system.

Actually Hyper-V Virtual Dedicated Servers (VDS) are the software implementations of dedicated servers that are implemented by using the powerful virtualization platform from Microsoft called Hyper-V.  VDS is pretty much familier with the name VPS (Virtual Private Server). This system gives all the benefits that a client get from dedicated server but at a pretty much cost effective priec. In a very short time the physical server is divided into multiple virtual servers or virtual machines that can be configured to share the desire level of server resources.

To understand what a VPS Hosting or VDS Hosting is, i have referred to the Wikipedia explanation – “A virtual private server is a method of partitioning a physical server computer into multiple servers such that each has the appearance and capabilities of running on its own dedicated machine. Each virtual server can run its own full-fledged operating system, and each server can be independently rebooted.”

For regular use, the end user can treat the VDS just like a regular dedicated server. A Hyper-V Virtual Dedicated Server provides a workable solution for the client at pretty lowest cost, that is above $50 per month.

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Many times you see that your computer is responding very slow though you have latest hardware with high configuration. There are chances for getting your computer being affected by virus, torjans, adware or any spyware which got into your system through infected cd’s pen drives, external hardrives etc…your machine can also be infected by some malicious programs such as spyware, adwares which usually crawl to your machine through freeware softwares, application or through game softwares which are freely available on internet. All these malicious program get their place in registry and start creating trouble for your machine,  thud you need to scan your system as often as possible using some reliable antivirus and antispyware tools. Make sure you update them as frequent as possible. Also you need to take care of your registry, as you install anyapplication on your system lot of information gets added to your registry for that specific application. Many times after using some application you uninstall them but its not necessary that such uninstallation will clear related data from registry thus your registry may get filledup with unnecessary data which may affect overall system performance. So its always better to clean your registry with atmost care. Overloaded registry not only causes registry problems, but can also slows down registry access resulting in poor performance of your machine. Thus to get good results you should try to scan and clean your registry on regular basis. You should also take backup of your registry which can be used in case of registry failure.

Harddrive is the most important part of your machine, all data is stored in digital format on this part of your machine. Thus you should take much care of your harddrive and should scan it regularly for virus, as if your harddrive gets affected all your data may also get corrupted and will be lost. You should remove unwanted files from your harddrive as they just eatup your precious space and may affect its performance. If you frequently install and uninstall new applications/programs on your PC, then your hard disk will also get filled up with orphan information left behind when you remove these programs so you need to install only applications which are must for you. Its always suggested to keep your machine free from unwanted rarely used applications.

Following measure should be taken for getting optimal performance of your machine.
*) Always use a registry cleaner tool to remove any orphan entries which may be left behind after you uinstalled any program or application
*) Take care to cleanup your harddrive using some good reliable Disk Cleanup tool which will clean up unwanted data, such as Temporary Internet Files, old program setup files etc…
*) Its always said “ Prevention is better then cure “ this matches perfect for your computer too.
So for better performance and faster system you must take all preventative maintenance steps for keeping your machine free from error and virus.

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A firewall is a secure and trusted hardware/software application which is used to block unwanted logical ports and manage unwanted traffic. In simple words firewall is a barrier to  keep destructive forces away from your server which may be loading your server. A firewall is useful if you don’t want eternal users to access a particular host or service.
it useful to filter packets based on source’s IP address.
Its used securing your data and server from being get hacked.
Its most common use is to prevent denial of service attack, you can prevent certain level of DDOS attacks for your server..

You can consider firewall as a program or a device which can monitor, control all data transfer between any internal network with whole internet, A firewall ensures that all data communication in both directions is accordingly to security rules set.
Firewall technologies are configurable thus you can limit communication by direction, IP address, protocol, ports, or numerous other combination. There can be communication failure if data communication is not as per the rule set for all outgoing and incoming requests.  If you have access to the firewall of you server , you can configure it to enable the ports, protocols, and addresses that may optimize data communication.
As for security reasons you can configure your firewall to allow only TCP traffic which may cause the user to see frequent buffering of clips. User experience of the presentation is compromised; greater latency and startup times affect the time needed to view the clip, and delivery of the clip requires more total bandwidth.

General types of Firewall :

Desktop Firewall :

Allmost all operating system have built-in firewall applications which is responsible for protecting standalone machine, This type of firewall is designed to protect a single desktop computer and is of a great protection mechanism if the network firewall is compromised.

Software Firewall :

As the name suggest it’s a software application which can be installed on a server which is capable of preventing unwanted data communication. Many webmaster don’t prefer software firewall as most secure. This type of firewall is often used as an application firewall which means that the firewall is optimized to protect applications such as web application and email servers. All Software firewalls have built-in complex filters to inspect the content of the network traffic. This type of firewall is usually (but not always) behind hardware firewalls.

Hardware Firewall :

A hardware firewall is a dedicated hardware device which is installed on your system/server. These firewalls consist of network routers with additional firewall capabilities. Usually hardware firewalls are designed to handle heavy network traffic sites. Hardware firewalls are often placed on the perimeter of the network to filter the internet noise and only allow pre-determined traffic into the network.

Many-a-times hardware firewalls are used in conjunction with software firewalls thus hardware firewall filters out the traffic and the software firewall inspects the network traffic thus you get pure traffic and unwanted traffic can be blocked easily. If in case hardware firewalls are bombarded with bogus network traffic her comes the role of hardware firewall they drop this unwanted traffic and will only let in the right traffic for your network/server thus hardware firewall not only protects the software firewall but also allows the software firewall only to inspect proper network traffic thus such hardware and software firewall combination will surely optimizes the network throughput.

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Posted under ASP Hosting, MSSQL, MySQL, MS Access Hosting, Plesk Control panel, Uncategorized, Windows Hosting with Plesk, Windows Plesk Hosting

RAID i.e. Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a mechanism which enhances the speed, storage capacity & reliability of your webserver using more than one hard disk instead of the traditional single hard disk solutions. In essence, RAID actually works in such a way which allows the multiple hard drives present on the machine to be combined and used as one big hard drive with different levels of benefits and also covers your risk of data loss. The higher your RAID level, the better risk coverage you get. Completely subjective to your need for data safety and redundancy, you can use several variations of RAID depending on your budget. RAID solutions are available starting from as low as $40.00 to a few thousand $$. There is no such thing called as the best RAID combination or implementation. What RAID levels you need is completely dependent on the applications, processes and softwares which run off the server.

Previously, RAID could be implemented and coupled with only the high end and most expensive server configurations. Now-a-days. with the advancement in technology and the vast amount of research which has been done on RAID, affordable yet effective RAID controllers have been made which can be easily procured and used. There are different RAID levels which exist.

Software Raid 0
This is not something we should be recommending but you will be asked about it. With Raid 0 you take two hard drives and turn them into 1 big HDD. This improves the storage space and performance but there is NO fault tolerance. If one of these drives were to fail, all data would be lost. There would be no option for recovery. If a client asks you about this, make it very clear that you do NOT recommend it.

Hardware Raid 1
This is an option for 2 hard drives and is highly recommended. Raid 1 offers a slight performance increase and also allows for any 1 of the drives to fail without the server crashing or data being lost. The main benefit of raid 1 is the cost. It’s relatively cheap to implement and can be offered to clients with a low budget. If a client was to have 2×250 GB hard drives in Raid 1, Only 250 GB would be available.

Hardware Raid 5
Raid 5 is slightly different from Raid 1 and Raid 10. Whereas Raid 1 and Raid 10 offer a slight performance increase, Raid 5 offers a much greater performance increase. Raid 5 contains a minimum of 3 hard drives. At any one time, any one drive can fail and the server will keep on working. If more than 1 drive fails, all data is lost. You may get people looking for game servers asking about Raid 5. If a client was to have 3×250 GB HDD in Raid 5, 500 GB would be available.

Hardware Raid 10
A Raid 10 array contains a minimum of 4 hard drives. In this configuration the drives are paired up and the data is mirrored. In theory, the server could sustain two hard drive failures and the server will keep on running. However, the server can not sustain two hard drive losses on the same mirrored pair. As an example, let’s say a server has HD0, HD1, HD2, and HD3. Four separate drives. In this example we will say that HD0 and HD1 are mirrored and HD2 and HD3 are mirrored. If HD0 and HD2 were to fail, the server would carry on running without data loss. If HD0 and HD1 fail, all data stored on HD0 and HD1 would be lost. Modern raid controllers are very efficient. At the first sign of any fault, on any drive, it will automatically declare it as faulty and will request the drive be replaced. Raid 10 doesn’t offer the same performance level as Raid 5, but is more reliable. This is highly recommended for clients with a high uptime requirement. If a client was to have 4×250 GB hard drives, 500 GB would be available.

Setup times for RAID depends on the level which one chose. Normally it takes between 24 to 48 hours, wherein the higher you go on the levels, the more time it takes for the setup to be done.

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Posted under ASP Hosting, MSSQL, MySQL, MS Access Hosting, Plesk Control panel, Windows Hosting with Plesk, Windows Plesk Hosting

File Manager usign Plesk control panel :
Plesk provides you file manager tool usign which you can manage edit/view all of your data files stored onto your website hosting account. Plesk File manager allows you to manage files from open directories [ available for all] and also files from password protected directories [ private directories] easily.
Most basic difference between file manager feature and web directories features is that using web directories you are allows to manage only files and directories within your web space that are directly accessible by all computers [ open directories ].
Using file manager you can use different icons so as to differentiate between file and directory. You can easily add/remove files, directories within ‘parent’or ‘main’ directory which you have setup for your website. Plesk File manager also have a built in calculator using which you can calculate sizes of certain files or directories automatically which may not have been displayed in your Plesk File Manager,this tool will help you for certain reason if you wish to move or copy files or directories within other directories you can easily do so, this will ensure flexibility for moving files and directories within your website hosting account.

Thus using this feature you can easily manage file which are to be displayed and which are to be kept hidden for your visitors, this feature seems to be of great use for your website. If you wish to prevent certain directories to be accessible for whole world then you can move it under that particular directory. Thus you can easily manage your private data or
can remove required content from your website which you no longer want to display for your visitors to see.

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