Web Hosting

Question: What is “directory listing” and how do I enable/disable it? Answer: On an Apache HTTP Server, directory listing refers to a directory on the server that does not have a default index file. The file is usually called index.html, index.htm, index.php, etc. That is the default page that visitors …

Question: Should I setup my own dedicated servers or use the cloud? Answer: The tech world is currently abuzz with positive, negative, and neutral news about cloud computing. Some small to medium sized businesses have successfully transitioned to it and are perfectly happy. Others are sticking with traditional dedicated hosting, …

Question: What are Xen, Vmware, and Hyper-V? Answer: All three are popular virtualization software. Xen is a free and open source virtualization solution and is therefore included in some Linux distributions. Vmware is a commercial company with many virtualization products. Hyper-V, formerly known as Windows Server Virtualization, is a commercial …

One of the many features that comes in any web hosting package is free email hosting. By simply routing a domain’s name servers to a web host, one can set up email accounts on the domain. It’s amazing how many people do not take advantage of this feature. Having a …

Question: What is MRTG? Answer: MRTG stands for Multi Rounter Traffic Grapher. It is free and open source software that monitors and measures traffic on a network. It provides a graph that shows traffic load over a set period of time. Although it was originally developed to monitor routers, many …

A caveat of the sub-£30 dedicated servers some providers are now offering is hidden fees. One of the nastier ones is a charge for server reboots. If your server needs a simple restart, something most hosts do for free could become very expensive. I ran into a provider once that …

Question: How do I choose an inexpensive but reliable web hosting provider? Answer: Fortunately, there are boatload of people with your dilemma. Some of them have created websites that specialize in rating and reviewing hosts. You can also check the web host uptime to make sure they deliver on their …

Do you make regular backups of your data? Even if you do, you will always experience significant downtime in the event of a hard disk failure on your dedicated server. One solution to this problem is to upgrade from a single drive to a RAID array. Simply put, the technology …

Question: I’m starting my own custom web server and want to use a free web hosting control panel. Can you name a few? Answer: Unfortunately, the list of free hosting panels is not very long, but there are a few quality choices out there. Here they are in no particular …

In a previous post, we learned about dynamic websites. One of the drawbacks of dynamic websites that we did not mention was the incomprehensibly long URLs that often result. The URL to a page might looks something like: yourdomain.com/indep.php?reallylongname&somethingelse&sid003234. Content management systems like Joomla, provide a solution that works fairly …