Clean Your YUM Out!

YUM is a package manager and updater service for Red Hat Linux , and if you’re part of the Red Hat Network, you’re likely already using the offering to keep your applications fresh. YUM makes sure your various server components are as up to date as they can be, bringing you the latest and greatest in Red Hat without much fuss. That being said, your YUM repositories aren’t set in stone. These are the places the service goes to when it needs to find new packages, or compare your existing software to the latest releases. These files can be edited in a number of ways, and if you haven’t messed with them before, you should likely follow the steps mentioned below to keep your Red Hat cruising along at maximum capacity. Know How To Disable A Source The repositories that YUM trolls can be found at the following file directory within your main server installation: /etc/yum.repos.d Within this directory, you’ll find a myriad of files listed as repository sources. Each of these can be edited to your hearts content, and if you want to disable a source for your YUM updater, this is the way to go.

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Clean Your YUM Out!

Linux and E-Commerce: The Top 5 Best Hosts for Two Long-term Trends

Let’s mix up two of the biggest of web hosting trends for this Top 5.  Linux is quickly becoming the operating system of choice for many webmasters.  It goes without saying that where there’s web hosting , there is a need for E-Commerce.  Given the enhanced reliability and added security that comes from a Linux server, more hosts offer it, and thus, it appears likely that the intersection between these two trends will only keep growing stronger. If that’s the case, then it’s a good idea to go over the options available to someone investigating Linux servers and E-Commerce for their web sites.  Here are five hosts that are good selections for the Linux E-Commerce user, judged not just by their specific E-commerce offerings, but by what else they have to offer surrounding those packages: 1) WebHostingHub WebHostingHub’s Premium Website Builder lets you build a storefront from scratch without having to fuss with any other programs.  For those of you who want to dive into the nuts and bolts, though, WebHostingHub should have everything you need to get started.  Their supported shopping cart packages include Cube Cart, OS Commerce, and Zen Cart.  Among important and related features are RingCentral, a virtual phone system, RatePoint, a word-of-mouth marketing program, and iContact, an email marketing tool. 2) JustHost This big name in the web hosting world impresses with a strong array of both E-commerce and other supporting features.  They offer OS Commerce and Agora shopping carts, several types of security protection, Merchant Account and PayPal support.  Their accounts also come with several different types of site building software and lots of ad credits. 3) iPage The very affordable web hosting accounts at iPage have three shopping cart options (ShopSite, osCommerce and Agora), multiple content management system packages, $150 in ad word credits, related scripting and other software of all varieties.  They are one of the largest hosts around today, meaning they have experience in managing and supporting these packages. 4) DowntownHost One of the better-kept secrets in the hosting world, DowntownHost has a dazzling array of features.  CubeCart, OS Commerce and Zen Cart are all offered.  Even more impressive is their dozen different portals and content management systems, 5 blogging software packages, 2 project management software packages, and a few miscellaneous programs that you don’t see often but could greatly enhance the right E-commerce site, such as Noah’s Classifieds and PHPAuction. 5) BlueHost Another big player in the web hosting world with millions of sites on their servers, BlueHost has one of the largest selections of shopping cart systems, with OS Commerce, Agora, Cube and Zen carts all present.  Rounding out their offerings is support for lots of types of multimedia, script support with some more rare inclusions such as DHTML, and an average 30 second hold time to reach a technical representative. As stated above, the amount of hosting companies that we will be looking at for this category will likely do nothing but increase over time, and increase rapidly.  It appears safe to say, though, that these five companies will continue to have a strong place on our list for some time to come. Related posts: June 12, 2009 – Power Your Store with Open-Source Shopping Carts April 8, 2009 – Open-source Shopping Cart Options August 30, 2011 – Top WordPress Hosting Sites Announced April 6, 2011 – Using Free Shopping Carts for Your E-Commerce Website January 12, 2009 – The Essentials of E-commerce September 22, 2011 – Dedicated Server Hosting: How to Tell if Your Getting What You Paid For September 22, 2011 – How And When To Offer SSH Access To Your Customers September 22, 2011 – Choosing The Right Linux Distro For Your LAMP VPS September 21, 2011 – A Look at Dirt Cheap, Quality, Web Hosts September 20, 2011 – Linux Server Logs Explained

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Linux and E-Commerce: The Top 5 Best Hosts for Two Long-term Trends

Search Engine Optimization tips for Bing

You know that there are other search engines beside Google, but many do not consider this within their SEO initiates.  It’s a hassle to try to make your page more search-engine friendly for more than one search engine, and besides, how many people even search outside of Google?  What if I told you that that answer was as high as 30% of all searches?  After all, did you really think that there was an IT market that Microsoft couldn’t muscle its way into? With rare exceptions, what helps you with one search engine will help you with another.  Very little will get you forcibly pushed down the listings.  This means that whatever you do with Bing should also help you at least a bit with Google and all other search engines.  So since you don’t have anything to lose by doing so, let’s look at some of the most commonly offered tips for making sure your site gets well Binged. Pay it forward Google also places some value on having relevant links out, but it appears from most metrics that Bing scores this even higher.  As always don’t overdo it.  Search engine programmers are well aware of how much you want to game their systems.  Keep it well populated, but not overcrowded. Say anything Bing also gives more attention to pages with a significant amount of text.  You’ll want at least 300 words of original text on your page.  Keep it relevant, and keep the keyword stuffing to a dull roar: once or twice per 300 word block is the most common recommendation. Title your pages Once, the title of your page was one of the more important page rank considerations.  Other search engines seem to have dropped that.  Bing is bringing it back, so make sure you put your most relevant keywords in there.  Again, though, don’t overdo it: one site recommends no more than 65 characters for this field.  This is a one-line-per-page fix that could make a huge difference. Structure your site well Bing puts more emphasis on site architecture than other web search engines.  Some ways to take advantage of this include the following: Make your site “crawlable” – Ensure that your site is easy to navigate.  You can use a robots.txt file to help guide Bing along. Invest in a sitemap – A single page that maps out your entire web site is a good, comprehensive way to make sure your site is fully indexed.  For that matter, make it, and then go right to Bing and submit it there.

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Search Engine Optimization tips for Bing

What’s A Preinstalled Script, And Do I Need It?

When setting up your next website, you will inevitably come across a need for dynamic web applications. These are things that your users can work with, adding their own content, viewing yours in a quick manner, and even manipulating it to a fine-edge. From a server-side perspective, having dynamic web apps allows you to create media in a speedy way, and then get it out to all of your various end-game sites in a pinch. With this in mind, many current web hosts provide preinstalled scripts of varying types. These are applications that are often times built into the cPanel , or can be installed with a mere click of a button. Think of how many hosts you’ve seen offering WordPress at the get-go: Seems like most of them, right?

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What’s A Preinstalled Script, And Do I Need It?

What To Remember When Moving To A New Control Panel

Very rarely will you have to move your website to a new control panel interface, especially if you’re using shared hosting. Most providers will not give you the choice of several different offerings, or even the option to migrate to a new base. However, if you’re using VPS or dedicated hosting , you may be looking at a totally different animal. The control panel at work is under your thumb, and should you get a wild hair to swap from cPanel to Plesk , it’s your prerogative. With that in mind, there are several things that need to be kept in mind when deciding to migrate from one control panel to another. It’s not an easy task, and considering the benefits, you may want to reconsider.  So, here’s our quick thoughts on what you need to know before swapping to a different control panel.  It’s In The Matrix, Neo: First off the bat, we’d like to remind you that not all control panels are wired the same.

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What To Remember When Moving To A New Control Panel

Keep Your Site Safe – Learn What Not to Do

Let’s face it: The Internet isn’t the golden playground it once was, where all could go and have their swing in peace. In fact, it’s now so overrun with bullies and miscreants that it’s a wonder we haven’t decided to swap school districts yet! That was a joke, but the idea remains the same. It’s a wild, wild world out there, and if you aren’t careful, your site may be a ripe melon just waiting to be cracked open. However, there are steps you can take to safeguard your source of livelihood. First of all, simply admitting that you need to keep your server locked down is a good place to start. From there, it’s worth taking a look at the way you manage your site. If you’re doing any number of things wrong, you may be leaving your site exposed

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Keep Your Site Safe – Learn What Not to Do

Say it with me – Joomla!

Continuing on with our series of reviewing the most popular content management systems out there, this week we shall explore Joomla !  (The exclamation point is there’s, not mine. Joomla!’s origins are a lot more exciting than a lot of software, being born out of a tech divorce worthy of a Maury Povich show.  The team that created Joomla bailed from a previous software package called “Mambo” after a very public spat over differences in approach, and whether or not the old team had violated open source principles.  See the discussions if you’re really curious: the discussions are too complex to be summarized easily. After the storm What’s important is what came out of it, and that is a content management software package that won awards straight out of the starting gate.  Like it’s rival Drupal , Joomla!’s open source nature has created around a worldwide community of developers who are loyal to it, and who have authored for Joomla! more than 7,000 extensions. The package has been downloaded more than 20 million times, though to date this hasn’t resulted in the impressive resume that Drupal has acquired.  Still, if it can’t claim whitehouse.gov, it can claim Linux.com: from some geeks’ perspective, that’s arguably better. The facts of the case The reason behind this lower profile showing can be considered both its primary advantage and disadvantage: Joomla! is invariably described as being easier to use.  This manifests itself in an easier installation, less work on those who just want to setup a simple website or blog, more comprehensive tutorial support (enter “Joomla” into Youtube and you’ll get dozens of hits, including its own channel), and a more extensive administrative backend. While this may make it more attractive to the new webmaster, however, this makes it less attractive to the expert developer.  The user is usually locked into a page or website design that doesn’t allow for much customization: and while a number of plug-ins can fix some of the issues that you’ll encounter, not all of them are free. Joomla! also has a curious number of technical shortcomings.  It is considered bulkier, slower, and more resource hungry than Drupal (though both being open-source, one of them has to be).  It is also not SEO-ready ( search engine optimization ) out of the box: again, you’ll need do add some extensions for this.  It also doesn’t come initially with the capability to support more than one login. A middle ground?

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Say it with me – Joomla!

Dedicated Server Hosting: How to Tell if Your Getting What You Paid For

You’ve shelled out the expenses for a reliable dedicated server for your business. It’s all said and done, and the funds are out of your account. Not only that, but now you’ve got access to the hardware, and have starting uploading your site files. However, how do you really know for sure if you got what you paid for? I mean, you can’t see the hardware yourself, so how do you know your web hosting provider isn’t giving you the finger by cutting corners in the dark? Thanks to the beauty of Linux , and it’s various diagnostic tools, you can figure out pretty quick, actually.

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Dedicated Server Hosting: How to Tell if Your Getting What You Paid For

How And When To Offer SSH Access To Your Customers

If you’re running on a Unix or Linux server, then you likely access your files systems via SSH on a daily basis. However, this might be well and fine for an administrator like you, but should you also be offering the same access to your customers? SSH is particularly vulnerable to attacks by unwanted intruders, and by giving out that kind of power on a limb you may be greatly compromising the security of your system. The need for SSH access largely depends on the kind of services you’re offering. Giving customers that level of connection puts them as close to administrator status as they’ll ever get. Also, giving each user a secure password makes it that much easier for a hacker to gain access to your server: With that many backdoors left laying around, you’re only increasing the likely hood of an attack.

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How And When To Offer SSH Access To Your Customers

Enkompass: A Windows Control Panel For The Masses

So, you finally bit the bullet: You gave in and used a Windows-based web host , contrary to the popular, Linux-oriented hosting . Before we say good for you, though, we just want to point out one sad fact—there aren’t many quality, Windows-ready control panels out there for managing your new content. At least, there aren’t many as easy to use or as user friendly as you might like. Thankfully, though, there are a few, and one of our favorites ( Enkompass ) is even the brainchild of the same developers that brought you cPanel/WHM . Enkompass is easily one of the best control panels around for your Windows-based server. If you’re looking for a fresh face to add to your account, you could certainly do a lot worse. We aren’t here to sell you the software, but we will tell you what we like about it. Starting with the following: It Looks Like cPanel, Smells Like cPanel : Like we said, Enkompass comes straight from the guys that made cPanel, one of the easiest to use and most familiar control panels around for UNIX-based servers.

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Enkompass: A Windows Control Panel For The Masses

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