With your own dedicated server, many of the configuration tasks fall squarely on your shoulders. PHP is no exception. Most of the PHP configuration settings are found in the php.ini file, which is often located in /etc/php.ini on Linux servers. You must edit the file as root, and any configuration changes will only take effect after you restart your web server.

For example, a common setting that system administrators might want to change is the memory limit, which is generally too low for many web applications. Edit php.ini and find:

memory_limit = 16M

You can then change it to something like:

memory_limit = 64M

Save the file and then restart Apache:

service httpd restart

To see if changes have come into effect and to look at any other configuration settings you might want to change, you can create a phpinfo.php file in a regular document root of one your websites. Edit the file and add the following code:

<?php

?>

Save it and then load that file from your web browser. It will print out a list of all PHP configuration settings.

Continue reading: Configuring PHP: php.ini and phpinfo

Want to see a revealing video about the Gulf oil spill or the NBA Finals? Apparently thousands of Web users do, and many of them are being lured to video sites that look just like Google’s YouTube. But rather than playing the videos immediately, clicking “play” prompts the user to install a “media codec”. When the users accept, their computers are infected with malware.

According to the eSoft Threat Prevention Team, there are now over 135,000 such sites sprouting up all over the Web, many of which can be found by a simple Google search. Because the sites look and feel like YouTube, many users will not check the URL to verify that it actually is the giant video sharing website.

The “media codec” that the users download is actually a trojan that infects the computer and can access sensitive data, even taking control of the entire system. Currently, only 8 of 41 virus scanners are picking up the new malware, although that will probably change as the threat becomes more widespread. People who are concerned about inadvertently visiting one of these sites should use web filters that will detect malware sites and warn them before allowing the browsers to connect.

Source: Infosecurity

Continue reading: Thousands of Fake YouTube Pages Deliver Malware

Scribd CTO Jared Freedman has announced that the document sharing website in HTML 5, abandoning the proprietary Adobe Flash application that has powered their site for the past three years. The move comes days after Apple CEO Steve Jobs offered his manifesto against flash and why it was bad for touch devices like the iPad.

Web developers have long had a love-hate relationship with Flash. Some would build entire sites based on it, while others shunned it for its lack of Web standards compliance, high CPU requirements, and proprietary license. For most web hosting companies it will not matter either way in the short term, anyone with a website will need to consider what devices are supported by their website.

Scribd will move to a Javascript/CSS/HTML5 web application that works better with their interface.

“Why do you need a special reading application just to view a document?” asked Friedman.

Unlike Flash, which requires the installation of a third-party plugin, Javascript and HTML are built into all modern browsers and are becoming increasingly popular. Many of the cross-browser consistency problems that drove developers to use Flash have since faded away, especially with Microsoft moving closer to standards compliance with each new Internet Explorer release.

Source: InformationWeek

Continue reading: Scribd Dumps Adobe Flash for HTML5

Aside from writing, I also develop websites for clients on a freelance basis. In the ideal scenario, I get contacted by an interested client who has neither a domain name nor a current web hosting company. I can then steer that client to the host and domain provider I think is best and will work well with Joomla or whatever content management system I use.

Unfortunately, many clients come with their own baggage. More often than not, it includes a domain hosted by a company like GoDaddy and possibly a current website that is less than stellar. The worst situation that I ever encountered was a client who had chosen to use GoDaddy’s hosting service with a Windows server. Anyone who has tried to use PHP content management systems with Windows is probably already cringing at the thought.

Aside from the usual problems with GoDaddy’s control panel, I had to content with Windows and its strange compatibility issues with PHP. Theoretically, it should work fine with Joomla, but that requires proper configuration, something GoDaddy failed to do. Mind you, the Joomla installation was automatic from their own control panel, but it still never worked quite right. In the end, the client settled for a less-than-perfect site. My advice to anyone who wants a website: ask those who know first before you make purchases.

Photo Source: Flickr

Continue reading: What people should know about Windows servers

Although it was 1985 with Symbolics computers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA registered the very first .com domain name, it would take nearly 12 years for Web as we know it to really explode with doctoms.

“This birthday is really significant because what we are celebrating here is the internet and dotcom is a good, well known placeholder for the rest of the internet,” said Mark Mclaughlin, chief executive officer of Verisign the company that is responsible for looking after the dotcom domain.

There are now 668,000 .com websites registered every month and over 80 million total. It has become the default choice for most web users. Even new users who do not even know how to perform basic searches often type whatever they want followed by “.com” hoping to score a hit. It is a huge information space and also a huge market for domain registrars and web hosting providers. Even with numerous other top-level domain options (such as .net and .org), it is .com that still reigns supreme and may continue to do so for years to come.

Source: BBC News
Photo: Flickr

Continue reading: First dotcom domain celebrates 25th anniversary

SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer and is the underlying technology that enables a website to use the HTTPS protocol. Why is this important? A website with an HTTPS URL provides website visitors with a secure connection for private transactions. It is essential for any type of online sales or exchange of private data.

Windows 2008 server relies on IIS to serve websites to users, and in order to configure a Windows server for SSL, you need to enable it in IIS.

“The implementation of SSL has changed from IIS 6.0 to IIS 7.0.  On Windows Server 2003, all SSL configuration was stored in the IIS metabase and encryption/decryption happened in user mode (required a lot of kernel/user mode transitions).  On Windows Vista and Windows Server® 2008, HTTP.sys handles SSL encryption/decryption in kernel mode, resulting in up to 20% better performance for secure connections.  “

Read the rest at Learn IIS

Photo: stock.xchng

Continue reading: How to enable HTTPS on a Windows server

So far we have covered Linux, Windows, BSD, and Solaris. Another server operating system worth mentioning is Mac OS X Server. Although most tend to think of OS X as a desktop OS, there is a server version that has the same Unix-like structure and stability as other BSD distributions. The main difference is that it has customized visual configuration utilities.

A virtual host allows an administrator to host multiple websites on a single box. By default, Apache will only host one site. There are three steps to configuring a virtual host in Apache. They are:

1. Edit the DNS
2. Create the stie folder
3. Configure the virtual host

This is standard for Apache, but the process differs depending on the operating system. For example, on Mac OS X, the default folder for websites is /Library/WebServer, which is drastically different from the /var/www common on many Linux distributions. You can change this setting and many others to suit your preferences. For the the full how-to wiki article, see macos-x-server.com.

Source: macos-x-server.com”>macos-x-server.com

Continue reading: How to setup a virtual host in Apache on a Mac OS X Server

Cookies are very important for dynamic websites. They allow you to set parameters for user interaction. With cookies, your website can remember visitors and show them appropriate data, ads, and even specific pages. By default, cookies only last for a single browser session. With the CookieExpires Apache directive, you can set the length of time.

With a dedicated server, you can put the directive into your Apache configuration file, but this is not an ideal setup because it will control cookies for all websites on the server. The better method is to use an .htaccess file for each site.

Add the directive to your .htaccess file or create a new file:

CookieExpires expiry-period

Replace “expiry-period” with the number of seconds (i.e. 432,000 for 5 days) or you can insert as follows:

CookieExpires 2 weeks 3 days 7 hours

Source: Apache.org

Continue reading: How to set cookie expiration in Apache

Question: How do I install FTP on IIS 7.5 in Windows?

Answer: IIS (Internet Information Service) is a set of Microsoft’s Internet-based services. As a web server, it is second only to Apache HTTP Server, serving 29% of all websites. In addition to HTTP services, it also includes FTP. On Windows Server 2008, installing FTP is pretty painless. Just follow these easy steps:

1. Click Start on the taskbar and select Administrative Tools -> Server Manager
2. In the Server Manager window, click Roles to expand it and then select Web Server (IIS).
3. Now in the Web Server (IIS) pane, go to Role Services and click Add Role Services.
4. Now expand FTP Server in the Select Role Services page.
5. Choose FTP Service and click Next.
6. Finally, click Install and Close.

It is that simple. Now, you should have an FTP service running and ready to start receiving clients. In a future post, we will learn how to configure an FTP server.

Source: Learn IIS

Continue reading: How do I install FTP on IIS 7.5

Many people who manage websites also have other jobs, and even those who do not frequently find themselves traveling and away from the comfort of their own home Internet connection. In such situations, users sometimes find themselves behind firewalls that prevent them from accessing certain services, including web hosting control panels like cPanel.

The reason for the restriction is usually not to prevent people from specifically accessing cPanel but rather just a general blocking of any “unnecessary” ports by the network’s firewall. JAP4CPANEL (or simply JAP) allows you to access cPanel, WebHostManager, and webmail all through port 80, acting as a proxy between your network and your server.

With JAP, you will be able to access cPanel no matter where you are. It is available for PHP4 and PHP5 and also requires cURL, which is installed on most active web servers. JAP is free and open source software, released under the LGPL.

Source: webhostingtalk.com
Photo: Flickr

Continue reading: Gain access to cPanel from anywhere with JAP

When stepping into the world of web hosting, you will be inundated with abbreviations, acronyms, and recursive acronyms. Three that you should definitely know are: HTML, XHTML, and CSS. HTML is as old as the Web itself. It stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is the primary language of the Web. All websites use at least some of it, and a web browser’s primary function is to read it. Web servers, such as Apache HTTP Server, are designed to primarily to publish HTML-based websites.

XHTML is the extended form of HTML that was officially recommended in 2000 to clean up some of the issues with HTML 4, while also preparing for HTML 5. It has gradually become the standard for websites, and web purists insist on it. In XHTML, the structure of the site is handled in the markup, while the style is handled by CSS.

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, and is a language in itself that handles all of the style (colors, sizes, text weight, borders) of the elements on a web page. All modern web browsers support CSS, and it is very useful for sites with multiple pages, as you can quickly and easily apply new styles to multiple pages without having to edit each page individually. All three languages have standards established and maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Photo: Flickr

Continue reading: HTML, XHTML, and CSS

Question: I have a virtual private server (or dedicated server) with lots of files from numerous websites. How can I keep my files indexed and search for them whenever I need them?

Answer: There are two tools that make searching for files in Linux easy: locate and slocate. The only difference between the two is that slocate provides some extra security. This is useful if you have people on your server without full root permissions who will be performing the searches. Any files above their user level will be hidden.

If you try typing “locate filename” where “filename” is the name of an actual file, you should receive a list of all files with that name in it. If you do not, that means that your server is not setup to index the files. For that, you need another program called “updatedb”. This updates the index database with all of your files. Depending on the size of your drive, this can become an intense activity, so it is best to do it at a low usage time.

You can also schedule updatedb to run periodically using a cron job. Many Linux distributions have this enabled by default. If you need it, leave it on. If not, you might consider turning it off to save CPU and memory usage.

Photo Source: SXC

Continue reading: How to Index and Find Files in Linux