Server Hosting Tips

Web hosting is a vast subject, and we have covered many areas of the topic over the past year. Here are a few tips to help you keep your server in the best web hosting shape possible.

1. Keep backups of all data, both account storage and databases. If possible, keep the backups on a remote server and schedule regular incremental updates

2. Update the kernel and other software regularly.

3. Use a script installation service to help users install web applications

4. Provide a web-based control panel to help users manage their sites

5. Enforce strong passwords and encourage users to update their passwords regularly

6. Use a monitoring service for the web server, mail server, database server, and any other critical services

7. Maximize disk and memory usage only to the point of ideal performance and do not over exert the server

8. Always announce any changes, updates, reboots, or maintenance, giving users plenty of time adjust.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

Twitter to open Utah data center later this year

To help keep up with ever-increasing traffic, Twitter is set to open up a new custom-built data center in Utah later this year. Considering 300,000 new Twitter users log on every day, the site desperately needs to expand its capacity.

The data center is being built especially for Twitter’s needs. The site currently leases data center space for third-parties. The new configuration will give the company more control and better performance. Jean-Paul Cozzatti of Twitter stated:

Having dedicated data centers will give us more capacity to accommodate this growth in users and activity on Twitter.Twitter will have full control over network and systems configuration, with a much larger footprint in a building designed specifically around our unique power and cooling needs. The data center will house a mixed-vendor environment for servers running open source OS and applications.

Other social networking sites like Facebook are also in the process of expanding.

Source | Tech Crunch
Photo | Flickr

Types of Hosting Explained

If you are in the market for hosting, you’ve probably seen a number of terms thrown around. Words like ‘shared hosting,’ ‘VPS’ and ‘reseller plan’ make perfect sense to people in the industry, but hosting gurus often take for granted that newcomers understand these definitions. Here’s a brief guide to the most common types of hosting:

Shared hosting- This is the most common type of web hosting. The host gives you a set amount of bandwidth and disk space, but hosts you on a server with hundreds or even thousands of other customers. Shared hosting is perfect for small websites.

Reseller hosting- Similar to shared hosting, but offers more disk space and bandwidth plus the ability to host others. This is a good choice if you want to split the cost of hosting with multiple people.
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How to Sync Two Websites on the Same Server

Question: I have two separate websites that I want to have identical data on each site. How can I do this?

Answer: First of all, to sync files on two separate sites on the same server, you will need to have a user that has write permissions on both sites. If you are using a shared hosting account, and both sites are under your account, you probably already have this. For a VPS that has a unique user for each site, you will need to use the root user.

Next, you need to know the full path to the directories for both sites. For example, site one may be /home/user/www/html/siteone.com/html and site two may be /home/user/www/html/sitetwo.com/html. To sync both directories and keep them synced even when data changes, the best choice is rsync. Although rsync is normally used for remote syncing, it also works for local directories.

To sync the two directories, you would use this command:

rsync -avc /home/user/www/html/siteone.com/html/ /home/user/www/html/sitetwo.com/html/

If you want the sync to be performed periodically and automatically, you can create a script and then drop it into one of the cron directories, such as cron.daily. You can also setup a manual cron job in /etc/crontab. From now on, both sites will show identical information.

More Joomla Security Tips

Yesterday, I highlighted some of the critical Joomla security issues that you should consider. Here are a few more you should add to your list:

All of these can be set within your local php.ini directory (if your server allows it), rather than manipulating the global one for the server.

1. Use the “disable_functions” to prevent the use of some dangerous PHP functions:
Example: disable_fuctions = show_source, exec, phpinfo

2. Use open_basedir. This will limit which files PHP can opened to the directory tree specified (i.e. in your home folder)
Example: open_basedir = /home/webguy/www/html

3. Disable register_globals. Joomla will actually warn you if you have this enabled:

Example: register_globals = 0

4. Disable allow_url_fopen. This is used when you want to create PHP wrappers to open remote URLs. You can probably imagine the dangers that would create if exploited.
Example: allow_url_fopen = 0

Source: Joomla Security Checklist

THAT caused a web host outage?

Usually when a web host goes down, the cause is something very mundane. Maybe a router went offline or a hardware upgrade didn’t go as planned. In the case of Rackspace in 2007, however, something no one could have expected knocked one of its data centers out: a truck.

In a dizzying domino effect, a truck crashed into a utility pole. The pole then crashed into a nearby transformer, blowing it up. The power went out and Rackspace’s generators couldn’t handle the equipment load. All of its dedicated server clients were taken offline.

It took around 12 hours for service to be restored. Although very costly and inconvenient, Rackspace takes the cake for most the coolest data center outage cause.

Source | Randomkitty.net
Photo | jsnward

Setting Ethical Standards for Hosting

In a previous post, I explained the importance of having a Terms of Service (TOS) (Acceptable Use) agreement and privacy policy for your website. They protect both the users and the website owners. One question that might arise, however, is how to determine what acceptable use actually is. It is important for every website owner and server administrator to consider this.

For individual websites with any form of participation, whether it has comments or full social media elements, the ethical limits users are allowed to cross should be made clear. For anyone who uses a dedicated server to host other websites, the same is also true, especially if you have a small reseller hosting company with limited access to legal counsel.

Issues like tobacco, firearms, alcohol, gambling, pornography, and racially offensive terminology are legal in many countries but may or may not be what you want to allow on your sites. As a private individual or company with ownership over your web space, you have every right to place limits on what can and cannot be done or said by users on your sites. This may even be solely for the protection of your commercial interests rather than political or moral motivation. Certain controversial elements can put your site or server in danger of malware attacks and negative media. Whatever standards you set, make them clear and be firm.

Pligg hosting

Pligg is an open source CMS that lets users submit and vote on content. If you’re looking to create the next Digg or reddit, this is the software to use. But what about Pligg hosting?

Any host that can handle more popular CMS’s like WordPress and Joomla should play fine with Pligg. Look for a provider that uses a LAMP configuration (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP). Unfortunately, other database types like PostgreSQL and SQlite are not supported.

When determining how much space and bandwidth you will need, keep in mind that dynamic content management systems tend to use quite a bit of CPU and memory.

You will likely need to move to a VPS or dedicated server before you start using huge chunks of data transfer or fill up a 1 TB hard drive. Consider how many simultaneous users your site will have when determining hosting requirements.

Photo | Flickr

Multiple domain hosting

If you have more than one website or ever plan on expanding your web presence, multiple domain hosting is a must. As its name implies, the service lets you host multiple domains on a single account.

Believe it or not, some shared hosts actually limit you to one domain. Multiple domain hosts cost the same and do not have this restriction. It’s all a matter of policy, really.

Keep in mind that all space and bandwidth usage are computed for all your sites as a whole, not individually. Any domains you add will be hosted on the same IP address, which shouldn’t be a problem. Personally, I wouldn’t choose any host that only allowed me to have one domain. It’s your hosting account, why not use as much of it as you can?

Rent a dedicated server in Estonia?

A Webhostingtalk.com user asked today if it is possible to find a low-price dedicated server in Estonia. Unfortunately, this type of Estonia hosting will be hard to find for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, there just isn’t much demand for web hosting or servers in many countries around the world, Estonia included. Because of this, few providers want to set up shop and when they do, they often have a monopoly or near-monopoly. There is no competition to drive down prices.

In addition, many of these markets have poorly developed Internet infrastructure. This often means bandwidth rates are more expensive and thus the cost of hosting is higher.

In the case of this individual, I recommend he/she look for a server outside of Estonia, perhaps in Germany, Russia, or the UK. There probably won’t be much difference between network latency in one of these countries and Estonia, but if there is, the savings will far outweigh any minor slow-downs that might occur.