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We give you expert advice, reviews, how-to guides, server management, WordPress goodies, and far more.

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Types Of Hosting

Personal Sites & Blogs

Shared Hosting is where there’s a large web server that hosts thousands of websites on one server. They usually include unlimited features, which is perfect for someone just starting out or on a limited budget.  You may not always get the best performance, but for the price you really can’t beat them.  This is exactly where I started out hosting my first site and my 3 picks below should give you the best performance and value over all others.

My top 3 picks:

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Busy Sites, E-Commerce, Web Design, Programmers

VPS Hosting is where there’s one powerful physical server OR servers connected virtually (Cloud).  You can then choose how much processing power , memory, bandwidth, etc.., that you want.  These are a great stepping stone from Shared hosting to Dedicated hosting because of the price and performance.  Typically people that buy VPS servers are more technically inclined, but the hosting companies have made this extremely easy and offer customized support to help you choose the right one.  These usually include specific feature limits (bandwidth, disk space, etc..,) and cost more, but you get far better performance than Shared Hosting for your website.

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Very Busy Sites, E-Commerce, Multiple Websites, Reseller

A Dedicated server is a single server that only runs your website(s) and only you have access to.  My #1 pick is Hivelocity and where my dedicated server is hosted at (I’ve been with them for over 3 years). These typically start at $75/mo, but give you the ultimate in speed, security, and control.  They’re perfect for running a single website at blazing speeds, multiple websites at blazing speeds (with server upgrades), or even Reselling hosting to others (with server upgrades).  This is the type of hosting that I use to host my websites (100+).

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Resell Hosting To Others or Host All Of Your Own Websites

A Reseller plan allows you to resell hosting to others to make extra money or simply host all of your own websites.  Many hosts offer specific plans called Reseller accounts, but you can also use a VPS or Dedicated server to do this with the right software.  I still have a Reseller account at Hostgator that I use to host several of my sites on for SEO and redundancy reasons.

Click To View Reseller Hosting Reviews »

WordPress Focused Hosting

A WordPress hosting account only allows you run a WordPress website, but since it’s focused only on that CMS your site runs far faster than hosting it on other types of accounts.  The best value for this is Sitepoint, but the absolute fastest is WP Engine and worth every penny.

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From The Blog

EasyApache 4 In cPanel WHM

Do you know about EasyApache 4 (EA4) that’s included in cPanel/WHM?  If not, then you’re in for a treat. What’s EasyApache 4?  It’s the new version of EasyApache that makes compiling Apache (the web server) easy instead of complicated command lines.  It also allows you to run multiple versions of PHP on your server that you can easily specify site by site.  Let’s say you have 20 websites running, but one can only use PHP 5.5.  In EasyApache 3 you could only have one version of PHP running, which meant you were stuck at the lowest compatible version of PHP

WordPress Security Tips

Most people are happy enough to have their site live on the web, but far too few follow some basic WordPress Security Tips. This is an evolving list and will never be finished, so I'll continue to update it with new plugins, software, and tips to help you keep your WordPress site safer. Why should you care about WordPress Security? If you don't, then your site can become an easy target for hackers, spammers, and other nefarious types. What's the worst that can happen if you don't care?  Hmm...your hosting account can be cancelled without refund, your site could be [...]

How To Articles

Edit Large Files

How To Edit A Large File I recently needed to edit (actually search) a 1.4 GIG file.  I use Sublime Text for almost everything, but knew that it really wasn’t designed for huge files. My first try was Notepad++ because I love it and remembered using it on a large file before. Nope – it wouldn’t even start. I thought that I had gVim installed, but didn’t.  That took me on a Google search and I found some amazing editors that handle massive files. One of the editors I found was EmEditor and it rocked this huge file!  It opened

Choose cPanel WHM or Plesk

How To Choose Between cPanel/WHM or Plesk If you’re one of the many people who are trying to choose between one of these managers, then we can help.  Most people who have used cPanel/WHM or Plesk already know which they prefer and tend to stay with them. Both packages have grown dramatically over the years, but in my opinion cPanel/WHM far exceeds what Plesk can do.  It also depends whether you’re using Linux or Windows as a hosting platform because cPanel/WHM won’t run on Windows. You have to look at many factors beyond what each web host manager provides.  If

Reduce SMTP Brute Force Attacks On cPanel WHM

Recently I noticed a huge increase in SMTP brute force attacks on my server.  I started digging around to see what steps I could take and found a simple solution.  This solution alone has reduced my server load and SMTP brute force attempts. If you have a dedicated server, VPS server, or another solution with WHM then this solution is for you.  If you have a shared hosting account, then this is not for you. Ensure that you have ConfigServer Firewall installed, but if not it’s easy to install: https://download.configserver.com/csf/install.txt The following steps assume that you have ConfigServer Firewall installed

How To Fix Adobe Flash Crashing

How To Fix Adobe Flash Crashing I recently had continual problems with the Firefox browser crashing and sometimes completely hanging on any page with Adobe Flash.  This should be something easy to fix – right?  Nope.  I’m highly technical and spent a ridiculous amount of time researching this and testing out every idea.  The problem was that nothing worked, so I started using Chrome exclusively. I’ve always used both of these browsers, but due to the continual crashes I had to stop using Firefox.   After a few days the Adobe Flash player started crashing in Chrome.  That’s it – I

cPanel WHM Change The Default Website Page

Change The Default Website Page I was recently looking at my apache traffic and noticed some HEAD hits to my ip address directly instead of any of my hosted domains (probably scanning for vulnerabilities).  I then browsed the address and saw that it was giving away more information than I wanted.  It basically says “If you are the owner of this website, please contact your hosting provider”. Ok – so how do I change the default website page for my server’s IP address on my cPanel/WHM server? All of my sites are properly configured, so the only time this would

How To Fix Login Issues With A New Server

This will only apply to you if you have a VPS or Dedicated server AND the cPHulk portion will only apply if you have cPanel/WHM installed. If you have a VPS or Dedicated server without cPanel/WHM, then skip to Step 2. I had a brand new server created for me with CentOS 7 and cPanel/WHM so that I could migrate from my older server.  They provided the initial login and password to me, but I couldn’t log in to WHM.  That’s odd, so I tried to shell in and it worked fine. My first thought was that maybe my IP

How To Enable GZIP Compression In cPanel WHM

Have you ever wondered How To Enable GZIP Compression In cPanel WHM? I moved servers earlier this year at the same host provider and lately I noticed my sites were somewhat slower. That’s odd for a more powerful server with more memory, so I started digging around. It turns out that I forgot to migrate my pre_virtualhost_global.conf file that ensured all sites on my dedicated server were compressing content to browsers. I’ve had a dedicated server for over 10 years and it boggles my mind that I still forget to do some basic things. If you don’t have a VPS

How To Install WordPress

In this post I’ll show you How To Install WordPress.  Installing WordPress is very straightforward and the steps depend on what your hosting account provides.  There are many hosting addons that make it a once-click operation (like Softaculous, Fantastico, or MOJO Marketplace), but even if you don’t have one on your hosting account it’s still relatively easy. I’ll start with the simplest method and close it out with the manual method. cPanel With Softaculous or Fantastico Log in to your cPanel account (typically https://yourdomain.com:2083) Click the Softaculous or Fantastico icon Select WordPress Enter your WordPress settings and click Install That’s

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