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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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Posted under Uncategorized

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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Posted under Dedicated Servers