Software

An SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server is primarily used for sending email messages between servers. Most email systems use SMTP servers. But are there free servers for this task? Free SMTP Server is a Windows program that satisfies that need, and it is very easy to use. Furthermore, it …

There are many issues to consider when creating your own forum website: themes, topics, moderators, administrators, categories, advertising, user permissions, and policies. One of the most important decisions you will make, however, is choosing the forum software. Discussion forum software can be proprietary/commercial or free and open source. It can …

The default update manager for Redhat-based Linux distributions is YUM, which is wonderful and all, but some people, especially those used to Debian-based distributions (such as Ubuntu), prefer to use APT for their updates. This is only for advanced users and should not be attempted on a server that already …

Question: When I run updates with YUM (an update tool for Redhat, CentOS, or Fedora Linux), it seems like it takes forever. How can I make it faster? Answer: Although there many things to consider when trouble-shooting speed issues, one specific YUM concern might be the speed of the mirror …

Coda is a lightweight HTML editor for the Mac that not only lets you write HTML, but can do quite a bit more. It has a built-in FTP client, preview mode, dedicated stylesheet editor, spell check, and downloadable plugins. While Coda is undoubtedly one of the best OS X HTML …

Question: I am new to Linux server administration. Is there any way to create a test server without having to buy a new computer or dual boot my Windows machine? Answer: Yes there is a way, and virtualization is the answer. There are many paid virtualization options like Vmware, but …

Question: I have a shared hosting account but need to import a 3GB MySQL database. I do not have shell access, and phpMyAdmin always times out. How can I restore it? Answer: You can use a script called BigDump to import your dumped MySQL database a little at a time. …

Grep is a powerful Linux tool that can make finding things much easier. If you have SSH access to your server and need to find something lost in your big mess of files, grep can help. A simple way to use grep is: grep "modern" /home/user/public_html/podcasts.opml This command will search …

If you spend a lot of time working from the command line on your server, you will undoubtedly grow tired of having to type the same ones repeatedly in a session. And if you are anything like me, you might grow tired of having to look up long strings of …

There are many design benefits to using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), but there are also technical ones that any website owner or server administrator should consider. Originally, websites were mostly just text and images with no fancy boxes, menus, or other slick layout schemes. Over time people started getting more …