cPanel 11 Review and Report

cPanel Inc. released their stable version of their world-used cPanel 11 on August 15, 2007 – complete with a makeover and masses of new features; making it more compatible to the end users desires.

This powerful web panel has served the industry for years, and with its new oncoming of the x3 theme, with ajax, DHTML galore and friendly tips and reminders, it is the latest up-and-coming product for web users everywhere.

This massive update includes the following:

Enhanced Security
Foolproof Aesthetic Design
Friendly Video Tutorials
And Further Compatibility and branding options

cPanel 11 promises a click-and-its-done interface, intuitive help system, new Web Disk (WebDav) access built-in, and more email configuration options. I have tested this new update for a couple of months now, and in my opinion is it a more than worthy upgrade for all you system admins out there; with its new and improved speed, reliability and ajax form checking, your users will finally recieve what they want from their web control panel, and this edition doesn’t exclude human beings.

Windows Server 2008, cPanel, And You

July past, Microsoft attended HostingCon 2007 to talk about their new addition to the Windows Product line – Server Edition 2008. This boasts new IIS7.0 with its out-of-the-box PHP support, enhanced Management Console and further debugging / error handling improvements; DotNetPanel – A New Web Control Panel from a new partnership with Microsoft and DotNetPanel Software Company; and built-in Virtualization support.

They also announced – wait for it – cPanel Web Control Panel for Windows Server 2008! That’s right, you heard me, cPanel for Server 2008. Woah, at last cPInc =)

With 111 days from date to launch of this new Server OS however, we may as well forget about it for a good couple of months, and with limitless price possibilities for Microsoft, for some of us, forever.

2Checkout now accepts Paypal. And so what?

Not too long ago, 2Checkout added Paypal Express Checkout to their checkout process “by popular demand“. The essence of this blog post is to examine the impact of this on the web hosting industry.

Online payment systems are very popular with web hosting [and domain name registration] companies. Paying online speeds-up the order process for getting a new web hosting account and leading the pack of online wallets is Paypal. Aside Visa and Mastercard credit/debit cards, online wallets like Paypal have become increasingly popular online. What makes Paypal even better is that it can function as a 3rd-party credit card payment processor. Paypal has thus been enabling several Small-Office-Home-Office [SOHO] businesses worldwide to accept payment online.

That said, Paypal is not available in every country and available in some countries on a “Send money only” basis. This makes accepting payment online via Paypal very difficult for online merchants in such countries where Paypal is not fully functional or not available at all. The fact that 2Checkout now includes Paypal as a checkout option empowers millions of online merchants [web hosts included] to accept payment from Paypal’s over 130 million users. Several leading global brands have increasingly been adding Paypal as payment option on their respective websites, in recent times.

According to 2Checkout’s blog post on this issue:

This will allow customers to pay for products and services with the funds in their PayPal account, even if the supplier does not have their own PayPal account and only uses 2Checkout.

The PayPal payment option will be available for all non-recurring orders in the following currencies:

• Australian Dollar (AUD)
• Canadian Dollar (CAD)
• Euro (EUR)
• British Pound (GBP)
• Japanese Yen (JPY)
• U.S. Dollar (USD)

2Checkout is much easier to join and use though they would verify your information if they have any reason to suspect you/your business.

In case you’re a web host helping your clients with e-commerce solutions, the e-commerces scripts under Fantastico (if you’re using CPanel) have modules that allow merchants to accept payment via 2Checkout. CubeCart, OSCommerce and Zen Cart are all available for installation via Fantastico and there are several other equally good e-commerce shopping scripts out there that integrate well with 2Checkout.

Do you run a web hosting business? How do you accept payments online? Has the addition of Paypal to 2Checkout’s checkout process had an positive/negative impact on your web hosting business or online store? Share your thoughts here and now.

4 Month Old Acer Laptop – Should be fine, right?…… right?!

After purchasing my wonderful Acer laptop, I was more than exstatic about the features I was to encounter.

SignalUp Enhanced Wifi Capabilities, Intel HD Audio, 15.4 inch widescreen LCD, Pentium 4 and 1GB RAM had me perfectly happy for 4 months… but then…

I booted up; Logged On and started Firefox as per any usual day. I browse to Web Hosting Search, read a bit and suddenly my screen freezes, goes blank, and I hear an almighty “bang” as what I later found to be my PSU and MotherBoard, had – for lack of a better phrase – ‘blown up’. Watch out folks… This had me offline for a week and a half; Not what I expected from Acer, and not exactly safe either.

Oh well, I guess that’ll teach me not to overclock

If you’ve had a similar experience, why not comment it in to me?? I love to hear from y’all

Sedo auctions CHRISTMAS.co.uk and other generic christmas-y domain names

We can all feel it folks, it’s coming up to Christmas, and Sedo.co.uk have decided to unravel their Christmas Auction domains – Including christmas.co.uk, christmasbreaks.co.uk, christmasgifts.co.uk, christmashampers.co.uk and stuffing.co.uk.

Sedo’s UK Operations Director, Nora Nanayakkara, tries to attract more businesses and individuals to the process:

“The UK is forecast to spend around GBP13bn(i) on presents in the online Christmas shopping period, more than any other European country. By purchasing a generic co.uk Christmas Internet domain name at auction, organisations can capture a bigger chunk of the growing UK online festive spend.

“With over 27 million online shoppers in the UK, owning a quality generic Christmas co.uk Internet domain name will attract a large volume of natural traffic. As well as improving search engine rankings, a generic Christmas co.uk Internet domain name also strengthens a company’s online brand. We expect Sedo’s Christmas co.uk domain name auction to attract plenty of watchful eyes.”

A full list of the domains available is listed at http://www.sedo.co.uk

SEO Web Hosting and how its good for you

f there is a phenomenon that is making waves in the web hosting industry in recent times, it would be SEO Web Hosting. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Web Hosting basically encompasses all the strategies involved in ranking well for a particular country-specific version of a popular search engine.

Leading search engines especially Google and Yahoo have country-specific versions for several countries across the globe. The mere fact that one’s website would necessarily rank better if hosted in the target country has given birth to the new genre – SEO Web Hosting.

According to Travis aka “The Farmer“:

SEO Web Hosting is the art of hosting your marketing efforts across multiple IP ranges using multiple name servers. By doing so you are ensuring the true success of your online business.

What web hosts do is to provide multiple IP addresses and multiple nameservers spread across different countries such that the website appears to be hosted in these different countries and thus have the chance of ranking better in the respective countries. The specialized SEO packages typically have the following range of specifications: [20 IPs / 10 class C; 2 IPs per Class C; 10 Nameservers] and [120 IPs / 60 class C; 2 IPs per Class C; 60 Nameservers].

Understandably, these SEO Web Hosting packages come at a relatively high cost since immense effort is put into sourcing this different IP ranges. This makes it feasible for companies with deep pockets, who are specifically targetting web users in specific countries.

It is important to point out however that aside web hosting that provides local IP addresses, successful search optimization for international markets may require professional translation of web pages, registration of a domain name with a top level domain in the target market.

If SEO Web Hosting is not for you and you still want to rank better in specific countries, you want to consider registering your domains under the Country code Top-Level Domains (cc-TLDs) for your target countries. You would then have to put up localized content for maximum effect.

Drupal 6.0 Beta3 Released

The Drupal Team, after winning the 2007 Overall Open-Source CMS Award, (And a sum of $5000), have went on to release their 3rd Beta of the up-and-coming Drupal 6.0.

This Beta update includes 180 bug fixes since Beta2, and while they claim “our code is getting more stable by the day”, the Beta3 is now available for download from their website, here

6.0 boasts lots of new features, to name a few- more efficient SQL usage, stronger core, HTML Validity fixes, faster performance and an easier to use template system. Also, on a more useful scale, it includes better language support, OpenID support from install, easier to use installer, and at last it has the Update Status module included from install too – You can now check for updates and bug fixes directly from your Drupal installation.

I know I’ll be testing the Beta3, leave me your comments on how it goes for you

Archive for the ‘Control Panels’ Category

Twitter Unveils Premium Accounts

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

Twitter announced yesterday premium account subscriptions. It is not confirmed on the Twitter blog or Twitter website about these services. This will mark a close to Twitter’s bleeding books and maybe give the company some much needed real income.
There will be four flavors of, in honor of birds of course, of account levels: Sparrow, Dove, Owl, Eagle.

• Sparrow- $5/month, 145 character limit
• Dove- $15/month, 160 character limit
• Owl- $50/month, 250 character limit
• Eagle- $250/month, 500 character limit

Rumors are also circulating that super accounts, in line with the American Express Black, called Black will also be available.

but it may just all be a joke

Tags: twitter
Posted in Control Panels, Fun | No Comments »

Make Money with Reseller Web Hosting – Or Not?

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

Some people claim to make a fortune from Reseller Web Hosting without any effort. Even though this sounds good I for one don’t believe it. Of course, there’s money to be made but just because you’ve invested money in the web hosting business it doesn’t equal that you’ll see any return on it.

“Get rich quick” schemes are nothing but just schemes but if you invest some time and effort on marketing and run your Reseller Web Hosting business the correct way the chances are there. With this blogpost I would like to terminate two myths about Reseller Web Hosting.

The first one that I wish to terminate is the myth that one doesn’t have to have any knowledge about the hardware. It simply isn’t correct – understanding the hardware is a must if one wishes to be really successful. If you don’t have this knowledge you won’t be able to provide your clients with quality web hosting services.

The other myth that has to go away is the one that says that this type of business is all about clicking a few buttons. Nothing could be further from the truth. Again, if you want to provide good services to your clients you have to know more about web hosting than just how to click buttons in cPanel. You should be able to fix issues that arises (sooner or later they will) without all too much effort. Become knowledgeable before thinking that you can make a killing from this business and don’t believe all the myths that are out there.

Posted in Control Panels | 8 Comments »

Windows Server 2008, cPanel, And You

Friday, November 9th, 2007

July past, Microsoft attended HostingCon 2007 to talk about their new addition to the Windows Product line – Server Edition 2008. This boasts new IIS7.0 with its out-of-the-box PHP support, enhanced Management Console and further debugging / error handling improvements; DotNetPanel – A New Web Control Panel from a new partnership with Microsoft and DotNetPanel Software Company; and built-in Virtualization support.

They also announced – wait for it – cPanel Web Control Panel for Windows Server 2008! That’s right, you heard me, cPanel for Server 2008. Woah, at last cPInc =)

With 111 days from date to launch of this new Server OS however, we may as well forget about it for a good couple of months, and with limitless price possibilities for Microsoft, for some of us, forever.

Posted in Control Panels, Hosting News, Platforms, Scripting | 4 Comments »

cPanel 11 Review and Report

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

cPanel Inc. released their stable version of their world-used cPanel 11 on August 15, 2007 – complete with a makeover and masses of new features; making it more compatible to the end users desires.

This powerful web panel has served the industry for years, and with its new oncoming of the x3 theme, with ajax, DHTML galore and friendly tips and reminders, it is the latest up-and-coming product for web users everywhere.

This massive update includes the following:

Enhanced Security
Foolproof Aesthetic Design
Friendly Video Tutorials
And Further Compatibility and branding options

cPanel 11 promises a click-and-its-done interface, intuitive help system, new Web Disk (WebDav) access built-in, and more email configuration options. I have tested this new update for a couple of months now, and in my opinion is it a more than worthy upgrade for all you system admins out there; with its new and improved speed, reliability and ajax form checking, your users will finally recieve what they want from their web control panel, and this edition doesn’t exclude human beings.

Posted in Control Panels, Hosting News | 1 Comment »

Cpanel takes control of Windows servers

Thursday, October 18th, 2007

Cpanel, one of the leading providers of control panels for Linux and FreeBSD web hosting servers has announced that it would be releasing a beta version of a new Cpanel Server Suite that would be its first Microsoft Windows Server® 2008-based product line.

A Slashbot job advert seems to suggest that Cpanel is recruiting Windows application developers for this new venture.

Cpanel has been working on this Windows version for some time now. The only difference this time is that they are re-staffing and commiting more time and resources to it. Cpanel is expecting to release the beta version of the product on December 15th 2007 and have the production release available by March 30th 2008.

A press release by Microsoft quotes cPanel CEO J. Nick Koston as saying:

“Microsoft has shown a strong commitment to the hosting industry over the past several years. cPanel’s Windows development team feels that IIS7 offers a robust, high-performance Web server with increased security that the industry will quickly adopt. Microsoft Server 2008 and IIS7 with its modern architecture and support for legacy products was the natural starting point for our expanded product offering.”

Posted in Control Panels, Hosting News, Platforms, Windows | 1 Comment »

Hands on Cpanel 11

Tuesday, October 9th, 2007

I have had the opportunity to use Cpanel 11 from September, and my ranking of the Linux/Apache hosting control panel is quite high. I had to wait this long on the advice of my server management company, to upgrade to the most stable version of Cpanel 11.

The first and most striking impression is the new looks. The entire user interface of Cpanel has been overhauled and its now much more visually-appealing. The icons that link to the main controls have also been re-arranged into more relevant groups and same goes with a new Notice panel that displays on the top left corner of the Cpanel first screen. The Notice panel displays vital warnings about the hosting account in red, and also carries News from the web host or server administrator.

Some controls hitherto placed a few clicks into the panel have been brought to the homepage making such controls more accessible. Even better, cPanel shortcuts have been introduced. These links can be added to your desktop or your browser’s bookmarks toolbar. They are an easy way to access your cPanel.

What makes the several panels better is that they can actually be moved to suit the preference of the user. All a user has to do is drag-and-drop. The overall theme of Cpanel can be changed as well. Thats not new, but whats new are the several other more visually-appealing themes that have been added.

For a new Cpanel user, there are free Video Tutorials that would guide them through all the basics of using Cpanel 11. Similar videos have been made available before now by other companies, for a fee. Not to forget the “Getting Started Wizard”, a 7-page basic guide that takes new Cpanel users through the rudiments of setting-up their new hosting account.

The Cpanel interface loads faster as well. In some cases, processes are carried-out using AJAX thus the entire page needs not be re-loaded, to complete a process. Some back-end processes now run faster as well. Example? SpamAssasin. It now requires less server resources.

These are a few amongst the several CPanel improvements that make an upgrade a must. What has been your experience with using Cpanel 11? Share your thoughts here and now.

Posted in Control Panels, Linux | No Comments »

Is cPanel 11 ready for use?

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

Its no news that cPanel has released the 11th main version of their Cpanel and WHM software.

cPanel and WebHost ManagerTM (WHM) combine to form a fully featured web hosting control panel system. cPanel and WHM allow you to provide an interface for both your customers and your staff.

The cPanel and WebHost Manager package includes:

* cPanel – Domain Owner Control Panel
* WebHost Manager – Server Administration and Reseller Panel
* Webmail Panel – Webmail Access Panel

cPanel 11 promises amongst other features, enhanced security, improved overall performance, better usability, nicer visual style, tightened branding and integration.

The point here though is, my server management service provider announced they were not upgrading to cPanel 11 on my Linux server just yet. They felt it was still unstable and contained bugs that needed to be fixed.

Early this month, cPanel published some release notes for cPanel 11.

These release notes provide information on the new features and functionality in cPanel and WHM v11 along with any known issues (and their workarounds), and frequently asked questions.

One thus needs to strike a balance between upgrading for the sake of it, and upgrading because it’s really necessary. As at today June 27th 2007, cPanel stated on their website that the STABLE upgrade of Stage 2 for cPanel 11 will be released on July 31st 2007.

More PHP Projects to require PHP5

This vicious circle has been going on for sometime now but its about to stop, come 5th February 2008.

PHP5, a successor of PHP4 was launched about 3 years ago but has not witnessed widespread use mostly due to its incompatibility with PHP4. Most scripts and software today are written in PHP4 even though PHP5 comes with vast improvements including better security and improved functionality. The PHP Group has thus been forced to continue offering support to users still on PHP4.

This is about to change though. An organization was formed, exlcusively for that:GoPHP5.org The objective is simple, gather more support for PHP5, and make sure most software required PHP5, by February 5th 2008. In their words:

It is a dangerous cycle, and one that needs to be broken. The PHP developer community has decided that it is indeed now time to move forward, together. Therefore, the listed software projects have all agreed that effective February 5th, 2008, any new feature releases will have a minimum version requirement of at least PHP 5.2.0. Furthermore, the listed web hosts have agreed that effective February 5th, 2008, they will include PHP 5.2 (or a more recent version) in their service offer.

The news this week though, is that some leading PHP software have joined the massive effort to switch to the latest PHP upgrade. The Symfony, Typo3, phpMyAdmin, Drupal, Propel, and Doctrine projects have all announced that their next release after February 5, 2008 will require PHP version 5.2 as part of a coordinated effort at GoPHP5.org, and have issued an open invitation to any other PHP projects and applications, both open source and proprietary, that want to participate in the effort.

According to phpMyAdmin’s project lead, Marc Delisle: “The phpMyAdmin project is very enthusiastic to join the GoPHP5 initiative. We see GoPHP5 as a way both to improve our product’s new versions — not always having to add workarounds to remain PHP4­compatible — and improve the experience of our users — by projecting the correct message about the PHP system itself and its evolution.”

The first-ever version of PHP appeared on 8th June 1995 and as of October 2006, PHP6 is under-development.

About Us

Beep. beep. beep. Writing an “About Us” page is always the hardest thing about a blog. It’s like writing the cover letter to a company. Am I supposed to be witty, intelligent, dazzling, stoic?

I could describe our little group running Web Hosting Search as funny, driven, geeky, and friendly. We run on coffee, tea, and the fruit deliveries to our office. When we’re blessed by the weather gods, we even get to go outside. Most of all, we love what we are doing and the services we can provide for our visitors.

Take a look around and give us input if you find something. I promise we will blog and tweet more too. =)

End of the road for PHP4

A solid 3 years after PHP5 was released, The PHP Group has finally announced that support for PHP4 will henceforth be discontinued.

In those three years it has seen many improvements over PHP 4. PHP 5 is fast, stable & production-ready and as PHP 6 is on the way, PHP 4 will be discontinued.

The PHP development team hereby announces that support for PHP 4 will continue until the end of this year only. After 2007-12-31 there will be no more releases of PHP 4.4. We will continue to make critical security fixes available on a case-by-case basis until 2008-08-08. Please use the rest of this year to make your application suitable to run on PHP 5.

Already, several web projects using PHP have announced their intention to switch to PHP5 soon. These include: The Symfony, Typo3, phpMyAdmin, Drupal, Propel, and Doctrine project.

With this new announcement, it is expected that many more web hosts will upgrade their Linux server currently using PH4, to PHP5.

2CheckOut now accepting PayPal!

That’s right, 2CO is now allowing its users to pay via PayPal on all Checkouts, after what they call “popular demand”.

We all have been the position before – You want to sign up to a web host who sounds reliable, worthy and generally just right for you; But they use 2CheckOut, and you haven’t got an account. Well, now, rather than having to change host, or sign up using your credit card, and/or waiting a week for money to come in from your bank account, you can now pay via Paypal with their PayPal Express CheckOut Option.

A quote from 2CO’s website; “This will allow customers to pay for products and services with the funds in their PayPal account, even if the supplier does not have their own PayPal account and only uses 2Checkout.

The PayPal payment option will be available for all non-recurring orders in the following currencies:

• Australian Dollar (AUD)
• Canadian Dollar (CAD)
• Euro (EUR)
• British Pound (GBP)
• Japanese Yen (JPY)
• U.S. Dollar (USD)”

I know this will come in handy for me; What about all of you out there? Leave me your views!

Web Hosting Coupons

This is the perfect place for all of you that are looking for great web hosting at the lowest price possible. Take a look at the list below and take advantage of the discount codes before you sign up for a hosting plan. All the coupons are exclusive for WebHostingSearch.com meaning you will not find a better deal anywhere else. Simply copy the coupon code and paste it in the correct box when entering your information during the sign-up process.

Microsoft Challenges Google with Bing

Just yesterday it was released – Bing, the new search engine from Microsoft. This is their attempt to become a serious contender and steal a piece of the pie from Google. The features are pretty much the same although they say that it delivers a much more functional experience, something that I to be perfectly honest have not noticed yet. But hey, it is only a couple of hours old, and it has quite a few good reviews, so maybe I should give it a proper try.

I for one am not all that impressed over the way it look. It is pretty much a wallpaper (and not a very interesting one I might add) with the same search function that we already know from Google and Yahoo. I am more into the minimalist design, but that has to do with personal taste. Who knows, you might love the way Bing looks. The search results that I get when I use Bing are pretty ok but not impressive enough to make me want to change search engine. Ok, Bing might have some growing pains (as all businesses do) in the beginning so I will most likely keep track of their progress to see how they evolve in the future. A little healthy competition is always a good element.

Google Wave – The Next Big Thing?

The next big thing to look out for seems to be Google Wave, a soon to be released real-time communication platform which has been under construction for about two years now. When the platform hits the public is difficult to say so I guess that we just have to settle with “sometime later this year”. With every new release from the major web companies follows a heap of info, tending to make it all a bit overwhelming. To clarify what Google Wave is all about I thought that it was about time that I wrote a little something about it.

As mentioned is Google Wave a real-time communication platform and it combines everything from email, social networking (for example FaceBook), instant messaging and wikis. In other words: you will get access to all of this and much more through a one in-browser client. Want to share files with your friends and colleagues at work? Yes, you guessed right – Google Wave is a tool that can help you with this. Some of the features that are included are: drag and drop file sharing, wiki functionality, real-time, embeddability on your blog or website, playback and natural language which means that the wave corrects your language.

As with most new hypes nowadays do Google Wave come with its own lingo. Yes, you will yet again have to learn a couple of terms if you want to be in the “it crowd”. A wave means a specific threaded conversation. A wavelet is part of the mentioned thread bit it is just a small part of the larger picture. A Blip is the smallest part of the conversation, being a single line of a conversation.

This was just a short walkthrough but other things that could be worth reading up on are wave gadgets, robots and wave embeds. If you have the time you can check out the video below. In my opinion is Google Wave one of the most exciting things happening on the web this year and I look forward to seeing it in all its glory when it gets released.

Word of mouth is no more

Not that long ago the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) released a report about the evolution of e-commerce and the online shopping habits of Europeans in 2008. Around 80% of all Internet users bought a product or service online in 2008. This figure was 40% in 2004. There has hence been a 100% increase in just four years all over Europe. Each user has in average shopped for 747€, during the first six months, which means a total sum of 1.3 billion Euros.

The products that people buy are 1. Travel tickets (54%) 2. vacation trips (42%) 3. books (40%) 4. concert tickets (38%) 5. clothes (33%). Out of these online shoppers do 59% consider the brands own websites to be a good resource for information on products, and a majority of people think that search engines is a greater source for information rather than personal recommendations.

This means that we in average trust the Internet more than we trust word-of-mouth. And keep in mind that word-of-mouth is the marketing technique that as good as all experts have proclaimed as the best marketing method these latest years. Maybe the new direction is not that strange either. On the Internet you are able to read hundreds of reviews on a single product. Your friend might be wrong about something but can a hundred people be mistaking?

Why all the fuzz about Virtualization?

I don’t know if you are as tired as me about hearing how great and “happening” virtualization is, but I am getting pretty sick of hearing about it. However, there’s a lot of truth to all the positive things that’s being said so I thought that; maybe I should publish a post about Virtualization as well…

First of all, what is virtualization? I guess that it can be explained from a very techy point of view or from a more basic aspect. I’m gonna go with the latter; Virtualization allows you to run several different virtual machines on one single physical system. This means that you for example can have your file server, DNS and print server all operating at the same time.

The advantages with Virtualization are plenty but the main advantage, at least according to me, is that it cut downs power and hardware costs. Another benefit with Virtualization is that it will simplify operations as well as ensure data protection and availability for people or businesses that are involved in a project on the web.

So, that’s my short and concise contribution to all the fuzz and buzz about Virtualization. Hopefully you feel a bit more informed on the issue now and if not – browse the web, there are thousands of articles on Virtualization…

Monitis Review Pt. 1

Keeping track of the status of your servers can be something that keeps you up worrying at night. With Monitis monitoring services however, you can rest assured that your servers, site traffic, rankings and overall performance are being tracked.

IT monitoring is high on demand and whether you run a small e-shop or a multi-site empire, Monitis’ professional web monitoring and management services may be a useful addition to your toolbox. If anything, a simple way for you to monitor your web hosting provider.

On the market since 2007, Monitis is already trusted by companies like Acer, BMW, Arizona State University and many more. With an easy sign up process and a devoted customer services team, choosing and setting up Monitis various service packages is fairly straight forward as well.

Divided into two plans, Monitis services comes with external monitoring, internal monitoring, transaction monitoring and traffic watches, each plan differing in volume. The basic plan costing a mere $95.80 a year and the plus plan $383.80, it is safe to classify this web monitoring tool as affordable.

Of the three main service packages, Monitis Central is perhaps the one that with the broadest customer base. Additionally, all services are provided as a managed service, which requires little effort from the customer. Notifications on monitoring results can be sent through SMS, Email, Twitter, IM or RSS on a monthly basis.

For more in-depth information about included services with Monitis check out part two of our review next week. Sign up for our RSS feed.

Monitis Review Pt. 2

Originally launched as a free service (Mon.itor.us), Monitis SaaS has now released the Monitis Central, Cloud Edition and Web Load Tester, all provided as a managed service. And while many of the services apply to large online commerce sites mainly, there are still some highly useful tools for the small website owner. Here, we take a closer look at Monitis Central as a selected review for you the site owner.

Monitis Central

Offering up to six different services, Monitis Central makes sure to cover the vital needs of any website owner, self or remotely hosted.

External Monitoring

This service includes monitoring from the US, the UK, Germany, China, Australia and Panama, thus including all continents except Africa. Watching your servers 24 hours a day and seven day a week, if your website is performing poorly or becomes unavailable from any location worldwide, you will be notified instantly.

External monitoring requires no software or local installation.

Traffic Monitoring

Through Monitis Central service package you are also offered the option of including a site traffic statistics tool, Traffic Monitoring. Rather than having Analytics set up, thus adding yet another tool to monitor, you can track UV (unique visitors) page views, referrers, browsers, OS, geography etc. And while Traffic Monitoring offers little else than most standard site statistic tools, if you are planning to use Monitis it may be smart to include it.

Web Ranking Monitoring

An exceptional additional service with Monitis Central that many other traffic monitoring tools lack or overcomplicate (e.g. Google Analytics) is Web Rank Monitoring. This service makes it super easy to track you current keyword position, search engine ranking and backlinks.

Monitis Central is truly a full serviced website monitoring tool that may seem overcomplicated upon first glance. This is however understandable and soon forgotten and replaced with amazement. Monitis Central comes with all the features you need as a site owner. Before purchasing, try out the 15 days trial offered.

Yahoo and Microsoft Partners Up Against Google

Microsoft and Yahoo recently released details regarding a web search and advertising revenues alliance, all according to Reuters.

The alliance is going to be complex (as expected when dealing with two giants) but the companies will for example split the revenues coming from online advertising and Yahoo will use Microsoft’s search engine Bing on their sites. Yahoo will be the company in charge of managing the revenues from the advertising on a global scale.

“Through this partnership with Yahoo we will be able to create innovative search functions, add value to our clients as well as providing consumers with an alternative to a market that is dominated by one single company”, says Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive at Microsoft.

Steve Ballmer obviously refers to Google, who is getting increasingly dominating on the search engine market. With this alliance Yahoo and Microsoft are stepping up their position in the battle against their enemy Google.

The alliance can lead to around 500 million dollars in increased revenues per year, according to a press release in Reuters.

“This deal means a lot for Yahoo, for our users and for the industry as a whole. I believe that it creates opportunities for a new era of innovation and development on the Internet”, says Carol Bartz, Chief Executive at Yahoo.

The contract will tie the two companies together for a period of ten years. This arrangement was preceded by an 18 months long attempt from Microsoft to get Yahoo to join them in the battle against Google. I for one am looking forward to see how all of this will present itself in the future. Beating Google is not the easiest of tasks.

Power Admin-Windows Server Monitoring Review

October 2nd, 2009

When it comes to setting up your site, there are countless things that need to be taken care: finding your host, designing the site, developing content and so on. Once the site is up, although the difficult work is done, there are still many things that need to be dealt with. The largest of these things being the monitoring of the site, after all, a site that is not up is of no use to you or your users. You may recall awhile back that we looked at a few different monitoring solutions and reviewed one specifically. Since that period a few people have recommended that I look into the solution offered by Power Admin. They offer a number of monitoring solutions but their flagship piece is their server monitoring software.

The good news about this software is that it has a 30 day free trial, and unlike many other pieces out there, it is an actual full trial without any of the “This Feature is Only for Registered Products” or whatever. Installation is pretty straight forward and then the configuration process starts up. Of the monitoring services I have tried out, this one had one of the easier to follow configuration processes and it only takes a few minutes. Once this is finished, the program will populate with details from the server. At this point, those few minutes of work pay off with loads of info (some of which is vital , others may not be of any interest to you).

The server monitor has tons of features to it and can monitor a lot of different things. Here is a list of some of the things it can be used to monitor:
• Event Logs
• CPU, Memory, Network Usage
• Disk Space
• Running Services
• Log Files
• Server and room temperature
• SNMP Object Values
• Running Processes
• Ping Response Time
• Directory Quotas
• Changed files and directories
• FTP Servers
• POP,IMAP and SMTP mail servers
• Web Page content and load times
• TCP port response
• Citrix Monitoring
• And additional resources through user scripts
As many of you likely noticed, we have recently implemented a redesign on our site (at the same time we shifted CMS). So a few of these areas were particularly interesting to check out as I had not done so since things went live.
The page for content and load times is quite nice. In here you enter a specific page you want monitored and it will track the load times over a period of time and allow for the data to be made into a graphical representation. Load times are always of the utmost importance to us, as it is to all site owners, so it is nice to be able to take a look at this data and see how it compares to earlier designs on that page to see what the average response time is. Similarly, the ping response tool was also one of interest to me. It was a pretty straightforward tool with only a few options in it, but it does allow you to schedule a ping test and to graph out the data. The interface feels very familiar and is easy to navigate. Overall the specific tools were very easy to use and their site offers information on how to configure each one if you cannot figure it out on your own.

If you decide to use to register the solution for permanent use, the costs are reasonable. It can be registered for one server at $49, but for larger scale operations can be bought in packages to allow for up to 20 servers to be monitored from a single location. Enterprise licenses are also available if that is of interest to your needs. Before doing any of that though, check out their site and give the software a trial for 30 days.

WebHostingSearch Gets a Makeover

October 9th, 2009

It is finally here! After a lot of work the new design of WebHostingSearch is finally launched! As you probably have noticed the site is looking quite different and we hope that you like its new look and feel. If you browse around a bit we hope that you also notice that the design is not the only thing that has changed – we have also added a lot of new content that is intended to help you when working with anything that is related to the web, and of course web hosting in particular. Things that I’d like to recommend you guys checking out are for example our new step by step guide on how to start up your own website, where you will learn everything from the different types of hosting to what domain name to choose and how to upload your files using FTP. Another great tool is the comparison chart that helps you find hosting matching the needs of your website. Please navigate your way around the site and comment on what you think about the new updated version of WebHostingSearch.com!

Blog Action Day: Climate Change

October 15th, 2009

I’m really excited today that we will be working with I Wear Your Shirt to show off Web Hosting Search on a t-shirt. If you’re wondering what IWYS is, it’s an awesome web concept created by Jason Sadler, a Jacksonville, Florida man. Everyday, without fail, he wears a shirt that someone/some company sponsored. It can be for marketing or simply wishing a Happy Birthday to grandma. We decided to get a shirt today, October 15th, in order to commemorate Blog Action Day. That’s what this post is really about.

What is Blog Action Day? BAD started in 2007 by Collis and Cyan from the Envato network. This year they turned over their efforts to something bigger with Change.org.
BAD is the day for bloggers all over the world to discuss the year’s topic: Climate Change. How YOU can help? Write about climate change and how it affects you, your community, and even your environment. Do you have ideas to share or even eco friendly products to promote? Do it now! Tell everyone why you think this a huge issue.
Later today Iwearyourshirt will post a video about BAD and WHS so we hope you come by later!

WebHost Manager Tutorials

• Becoming Familiar With and Navigating Around WHM
• How to Create Hosting Packages
• How to Limit Bandwidth Usage in WHM
• Using Multi-Account Functions in WHM
• What is the Difference Between WHM and cPanel?

Plesk Tutorial

• Becoming Familiar and Navigating Around in Plesk
• How to Back Up and Restore Files
• How to Create a MySQL Database in Plesk
• How to Use File Manager in Plesk
• How to View Website Statistics in Plesk

Helm Tutorial

• How to Add a Domain
• How to Add Extra Features to Your Account
• How to Backup And Restore Your Files
• How To Create a Mysql Database in Helm
• How to Create an FTP Account in Helm

H-Sphere Tutorial

• How to Backup And Restore Your Website in H-sphere
• How to Change Your Hosting Plan And Billing Period in H-sphere
• How to Create a New Domain in H-sphere
• How to Create Additional Ftp Accounts in H-sphere
• How to Login to Your H-sphere Control Panel

cPanel Tutorials

• An Introduction to Using Fantastico
• How to Back Up Your Website
• How to Create a MySQL Database in cPanel
• How to Create a Pop Email Account
• How to Create a Subdomain
• How to Create Additional FTP Accounts
• How to Create an Add-On Domain in cPanel
• How to login to cPanel
• How to Park a Domain
• Using File Manager

Content Management Systems Tutorials

• How To Install Wordpress 2.7
• How To Manage Your Plugins in WordPress

Video Tutorials

We know that it's not always the easiest thing in the world to know how everything works and how to set up various programs. Everyone has been in that situation at one time or another. The fact that manuals and instructions often are non-existing or incomprehensible doesn't help make it easier.

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Working with Blogs

• Blog Engines - Everything you Need to Know
• 21 Wordpress Plugins Of All Time
• How to start a Blog
• Installing Wordpress Locally - XAMPP lite
• Six Easy Steps DIY: Move Your Wordpress.com Blog

See All Working with Blogs Articles

Web Design and Programming Articles

• Excellent AppleScripts Speeding up Tasks
• Implementing SEO on Your Website
• 15 Amazing Abstract Photoshop Tutorials
• Open Source Linux Apps for Web Developers
• 15 Free Apple Apps for Web Designers

See All Web Design and Programming Articles Articles

All About Domain Names

• All about Domains
• Different types of TLDs
• Domain Names and Registrars
• Domain Registrars Vs. Web Hosts!
• Domains By Proxy - The Best Private Domains Registrar!

See All All About Domain Names Articles

Learn the Basics of Web Hosting

• 3 Steps in Publishing Your Website
• cPanel - Complete Web Host Control Panel
• Different Types of Web Hosting
• Epages - Host Online Shops!
• Helm Control Panel - Offers exactly what Web Host Clients Need!

See All Learn the Basics of Web Hosting Articles

Great Articles Covering Industry Insights

• nterview with Robert Schovenberg, CEO of CM4all
• Greener Internet Focus for Obama's Team?
• An Interview with Chris Spooner of Blog at Spoongraphics
• Are Site building tools the new e-hype?
• Barrie North: Joomlashack, technology, and the future

See All Great Articles Covering Industry Insights Articles

Knowledge Base

Here's an idea. Why not take a break from your googling and net-adventures and dive into our deep and refreshing article archive? We offer in-depth as well as basic articles about the web hosting industry, its various components and possibilities and how you can get web hosting that is right for you. When you have brushed up on your hosting knowledge with the help our articles you might also want to check out the video tutorials. Kick off your shoes, sit back and learn how to get started in just a couple of minutes.

Whether you're looking to learn more about web design, web development, the Top Level domain market, blogging, control panels, CMS, the web hosting industry or the perfect hosting provider, you're bound to find some real good reading right here.

This is your library, dedicated in offering the best and most valued reading on web-related topics. But if there is a topic or issue you feel we haven't yet to address, we would be honored if you would let us know.

So make your pick. Our articles are just waiting to be read.

Web Hosting Reviews

Finding web hosting that matches all of your needs might sometimes seem as a difficult task. We know this and have therefore created objective web hosting reviews, making sure that you get what you're looking for. Of course, we only review trustworthy and serious hosting providers. Read, compare and learn about the various hosting companies before deciding upon one to partner up with. Let our top-lists and in-depth reviews guide you!

Search for a Domain Name

f you are on the lookout for available domain names you do not have to look any further. With the web being more popular than ever many domains are already taken. It is however not impossible to find a real gem. Use our domain search to find out which domain names are available.

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You can either search by using keywords or type in the exact domain name you want.

Dedicated Servers

Choosing a good and stable dedicated hosting provider can be complicated, so we have made it a little easier for you. The list below is the result of our vast market research, our effort to bring you the best and the most reliable dedicated web hosting providers. These companies deliver good value for the money, have high commitment to quality, and have extremely stable server racks. Because every dedicated server customer has his own specific needs and requirements, it is difficult to single out the provider that will suit you the best. Therefore, we recommend that you visit the company websites yourself and have a look at the different hosting offers. Some of the companies have very cheap dedicated server plans so it is important to note, reliability and service do not suffer.

Virtual Private Servers

A virtual private server is a great alternative for you who's looking for "that thing" filling the gap between shared hosting and dedicated servers. It's not only the price and disk space which varies when it comes to VPS hosting. In taking part of our reviews you'll learn all the pros and cons of some great providers. Have a look at our top list before deciding which one you want to partner up with!

Reseller Web Hosting

Reseller web hosting is a certain kind of web hosting where you buy server space, market it yourself, and sell it on to your own customers. Most of the resellers are web designers, consultants or marketers, who want to offer their customers a complete package with hosting included. Since you're selling a service provided by someone else, it's extremely important that you can trust your provider. Below, you will find a list of companies that we've found to be reliable, and that offer really good, profitable reseller deals

eCommerce Web Hosting

n setting up your eCommerce business, it is crucial to choose the right web hosting provider. You want your online store to welcome your customers, not turn them away, so usability, both for the customer and for you, is a key factor. Also important are dependability and excellent customer service support.

Below we list the best eCommerce hosting plans available. Ones that are good deals money-wise, offer first-class software and are from trustworthy companies.

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• Windows Web Hosting

  This toplist is for all of you looking for the best Windows Web Hosting. Low fees and top quality.

• Virtual Private Servers

  Great web hosting alternative for all of you looking for that thing in-between shared hosting and dedicated server. Much appreciated among for example medium sized online businesses.

• Server Colocation

  This toplist is dedicated to all of you that are into server collocation. Quick and reliable solutions.

• Shared Web Hosting

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• Cpanel Hosting

  Cpanel is probably the most popular control panel of them all and here is a list with web hosts offering it along with some great hosting.

• ASP Hosting

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• Drupal Web Hosting

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• Free Domain Hosting

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• Web Hosting Plans

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• Mac Web Hosting

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• Web Hosting Packages

  Web hosting is not only “hosting” – you will sign up for a complete package. The web hosts offer some of the greatest web hosting packages on the market.

• Web Hosting Companies

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Cheap Web Hosting

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