Start the year of right - set up a backup system! A few years ago, I documented how to backup your web sites, databases, email, etc when your host uses CPanel to a remote FTP server. Since then, there have been several CPanel updates and Perl updates that the script no longer works so I have been looking for another option and finally found it. The new script is called: CPsafe (if that does not work, check out the cached version. Within 5 minutes, you can have your home directory backup set up and ready to run. I think the hardest part of this process was figuring out where to turn on FTP access in my Mac OS X 10.5 new install. (System Prefs > Sharing > File Sharing > Options > FTP)

Finally after two years of contemplating the updates to Apache 2.x, MySQL 5.x, and PHP 5.x, I finally updated my server to the latest version os Apache, MySQL, and PHP. I was not too concerned about custom work or any of my WordPress sites, but I was concerned XOOPS and/or XOOPS modules would have some problems, but it is now a week later and everything is running smoothly. Why finally? Well, as of the end of this month, support for PHP 4 will be discontinued. Better late than never. Time to update your servers too?

If you all the sudden get database errors (select, cannot login, cannot write, etc) - and everything looks ok (from the database end of things) check to make sure you have not run out of disk space. How do I know? Well - let’s say last night I had to do a major fall clean-up. If you know me and my monitoring habits, this will sound a bit confusing because one of the many things I monitor is disk space, but when your hosting company accidentally halves your disk space - trouble can occur, and quickly. I have not had many issues at all with Liquid Web - but this was major…and handled a little slower than I would have liked.

I have a lot of hosting companies - thanks to my clients who come in with all kinds of hosting companies. I have found that some hosting companies are better than others in terms of support and I just found another horrible support company that I wanted to mention: iPowerWeb. I was on hold multiple times today for over 30 minutes and I waited to “Live Chat” with someone for over 20 minutes. When someone actually got on and tried to help, after 1 hour, they told me they could not help me and had to escalate the issue. Yikes. (other hosting posts)

It has almost been two years since I moved all my sites to Liquid Web for my hosting needs and am still very happy with them. If you take a look at my hosting category, you can see I have been around the block a few times. I have had a few issues, BUT, everyone who I have spoken with is very knowledgeable, helpful, and always been on top of the issue. If you are interested in a new web host, I highly recommend Liquid Web.

I have enjoyed looking at multiple hosting options through clients in the last few months. Yesterday I worked with Plesk on one account and another who uses Yahoo! for hosting. Just as I was getting ready to write a positive blog post on Yahoo’s web hosting I ran into a snag when uploading and preparing the WordPress site for my client…Yahoo! does not allow you to use mod_rewrite Permalinks. So instead of having nice URLs like /services/ and /contact/ you have to use ?page_d=4. Gross. So in short - if you are using WordPress and want to maintain it yourself (always have the latest, most secure version, etc) I do not recommend using Yahoo! for WordPress sites.

Over the past few months I have had the chance to look at a number of hosting companies and their “control panels” by working with a number of clients. It seems as a number of people flock to godaddy.com because of it’s price (really cheap), but I have learned - once again - that you get what you pay for. If you want to have a very simple 1-5 page static web site, go for it - use whatever host you want. If you want anything else, after working with over 20 hosting companies, I can easily say that I would not go with godaddy.com. Why?

• The admin area (control panel) is horrible in general. Not intuitive at all.
• No backup on demand (or scheduled) available
• Working with .htaccess files is a pain - as they do not work right away, there is a “wait time”.
• The admin area (control panel) is slow and sometimes even times out
• Free support is almost non-existent
• Creating a database is not instantaneous
• Paid support (talk to someone) is a joke (at least in my experience)
• I am not alone in my recommendation

I could go on, but I have a busy day ahead of me. … [more]

What got me up early Saturday and then up at 1am on Sunday? Server hardware failure…which led to some database corruption. I have never had to deal with database corruption, so I did not even know my problem was database corruption until after calling the helpful tech guys at Liquid Web. (I am not one to usually call tech support, but at 136am on a Sunday…I did not feel like spending time at mysql.com or google.com.)

I first noticed something on Saturday morning, but after restoring a database table from a backup, everything was golden. I told myself…it had to have been from some user error. Monday morning, after my Nagios server paged me, I noticed that jappler.com had several mysql fetch_row () errors after the server came back up. I decided that this problem was not user error and something else was going on. As soon as I told the tech guy the error that I was seeing onjappler.com and other web sites I manage, he asked me if I had tried “repairing” the databases. I had not even thought about it (especially … [more]

Well, after multiple outages in the last few weeks, I think it is once again, time to move to another host. I had high hopes for Host Gator but I cannot handle too many more conversations with the tech support people because of outages. Next up: another go at a VPS account at Liquid Web. The conversion begins tonight.
[tags]web hosts, jappler.com, Host Gator, Liquid Web[/tags]

For months I have been manually backing up my web sites. Last night, I learned my lesson and realized I needed to have something more dependable in place. (and I am pretty damn dependable). I finally took the time to research the process of automating a CPanel update.
The script I found and used is freely available and easy to use.

How to completely automate your CPanel backup and store the files remotely:

There are three main parts to this process:

• The backup script.
  • Download the script.
  • Edit the script's configuration variables as needed (see instructions on the download script page (see above).
  • Set up a cron job via CPanel (cron jobs is one of the main icons in the list) so your script will run every x minutes/hours/days/weeks/months.
• The files you want backed up on your host. The script will have CPanel perform a full backup of all your files and databases. (The same if you were to choose "full backup" within the Backup module of CPanel.)
• The location where your files go when they are automatically backed up.
  • Define the server/computer you want your files to get backed up to. If you are like ... [more]
    

Ken often asks me: "what is the first thing you would do if you won the lottery?". The last time he asked I told him I would take a cab to a Land Rover dealer and buy myself a Range Rover. I would like to continue my response to add that I would then drive home and go to apple.com and buy three Xserves. Two for web servers (one main, one failover) and the other Xserve as a development server or backup server (or game server). I would drive my new Range Rover with the Xserves in the back to a data center and then strip off Mac OS X Server, put Mac OS X client on them, call all my friends and tell them I will host whatever they want for free, and then of course talk to my financial advisor. So my point to all of this? I hate 99% of web hosts out there. I have been through several. I am tired, so I will not go into detail, but ServInt sucks. Unreliable, unreliable, unreliable. They claim they "manage" VPS systems, ... [more]

Jappler.com will be moving to a new host ASAP. I have been moving hosts for awhile now...and thought I had a good one: hostgator.com. After some downtime and idiotic conversation with the "support", I decided I deserved better and needed to be able to take more responsiblity for my web presence. I decided to go, upon recommendation from Ken, to ServInt (the people that fark.com use)
[tags]web hosts, jappler.com, ServInt[/tags]

I had been wanting to move my personal web site on a server that supported both PHP and MySQL for awhile since I started working with the two technologies. After talking to a friend about it, he suggested I find a host and do month to month billing until I am satisfied with the hosting company. My first stop on the hosting journey: TowerHost. TowerHost had great prices and good plans, but horrible support. Ex. They offered IMAP mail, yet do a search in their support section for IMAP, nothing. I filled out a support form, and it took over a week to get back to me. I need customer service. Zip files, move on. Next stop: AMX Host. While their web site is a bit shady...hardly any content, the support contact is often avaialable on IM and the plans/prices seemed again, right on. Things were going ok for the first few months then the servers got hacked, a CPanel vulnerability, and do you think I got notified other than going to my web site only to see a hacked index.html page? No. ... [more]