service – Internetblog.org.uk

Hosting Company Shuts Down Blogging Service

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:00:21 +0000

The incident apparently began with the FBI monitoring certain web blogs for terrorist activity. Al-Qaeda is known to operate and spread their communication through the Internet, but the odd part about this shut down is that it was a community web service with many users.

The blogging service, Blogetery, reportedly hosted over 70,000 blogs, and most of those users had nothing to do with terrorism. Furthermore, the owner of the service is not being accused of terrorist activity either. The hosting company, Burst.net sent a warning to Alexander Yusupov to take down the sites but did not supply any official evidence of the FBI investigation. The FBI says that it did not order the service to be shut down and that Burst.net took that action on its own.

The sad part of all of this is that possibly thousands of blogs have just been erased from the Web with little regard for the innocent people who used them. The lesson to be learned, however, is that any website or service should have backups, even if the content is created by other users. Furthermore, with as many as 70,000 blogs, they also should have had some type of redundancy in place to prevent total data loss, even if it were accidental.

Source: Times Newsline

Managing your Ubuntu server

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:19:56 +0000

When most people think of Ubuntu, they think of the award-winning community-driven desktop Linux distribution created by South African billionaire Mark Shuttleworth and his army loyal supporters. But Shuttleworth is still a businessman, and part of his investment is making sure people who use Ubuntu at the server level have support.

Don’t worry. Despite how it sounds, this is a good thing. It means those who use Ubuntu at the server level are not up a creek if something goes wrong. Most server-ready Linux distributions are backed by companies that will offer support for them. Ubuntu offers a service called Landscape that helps you monitor and manage your server.

Landscape has two versions: Hosted Edition, which is hosted remotely and accessed over the web and Dedicated Server Edition, which you install directly on your dedicated server. Canonical currently offers a free 60 day trial, and a subscription to Landscape is $150 per node per year.

Source: Canonical

Before you hire someone to design your website

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:17:47 +0000

Whether you are a business owner, freelancer, or hobbyist, having a website can have great benefits in expanding your audience and marketability. Unless you also have web design experience, you have probably considered hiring someone to design your site. Here are a few things to consider before you make a choice.

1. Do you need a website? This seems like an obvious question, but some people struggle with it, not realizing the problem. For some, getting a blog with a free blogging service is enough and more convenient. Also, just because you have an offline slug collecting club does not mean that you need a website. Evaluate your intended audience and examine all the free options before getting a domain and hosting account.

2. Who will maintain the site? This is a big one. Make sure you know exactly what you are getting into when you hire someone to make a site for you. Will you be responsible for updating it? Do you want that responsibility? Is the designer installing a content management system for easy updating, or do they expect you to pay them every time it needs work? Web design does not mean website maintenance.

3. Who are the site and content owners? Typically, ownership of the site content always belongs to you, but make sure you read the fine print. As for the domain and site itself, make sure all of that is in your name and under your control.

4. Price. This one goes without saying. While the U.S. government will happily pay $18 million for a website, you should not.

Take all of these points into consideration and anything else you can think of before you sign on the dotted line. Do not assume that you need professional web design simply because the option is available.

Photo Source: Flickr