There are tons of things you can do from the htaccess file inside of your web hosting account.  From redirecting the users to controlling who can get in and who can get out, it is a very useful file to have on your hosting account.  To help out the new web hosting clients and to act as a reminder to the old pros around here, I thought I would go through five of the most popular .htaccess tips I know.

Redirect to a Maintenance Page

This is a great one to use if you need to make some quick web page edits, and you don’t want the public to see you edit your web site, while it is still live.

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/offline.html$

RewriteRule .* /offline.html [R=307,L]

This will redirect anybody who checks out any web page on your web site to the “offline.html” file.

Force the Use of “www” in Front of a Domain Name

If you want to keep the www in front of your domain name, no matter how somebody types it in, here is the ‘bit of .htaccess magic you will need:

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine on

rewritecond %{http_host} ^mydomain.com [nc]

rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Once you have done so, both mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com will both send you to www.mydomain.com

Remove the “www” From in Front of a Domain Name

You can also force your domain to drop the www from the address when typed in, if you would rather have it the other way around. In that situation, you would need to add this to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mydomain.com$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This will make both mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com send you to just mydomain.com.

Manually Create Custom Error Pages

Ever check out some of those customized error pages and wonder how it could be done? Just use these snippets of .htaccess code to tell people where to look for your error pages.

ErrorDocument 400 /errors/400.html

ErrorDocument 401 /errors/401.html

ErrorDocument 403 /errors/403.html

ErrorDocument 404 /errors/404.html

ErrorDocument 500 /errors/500.html

This tells the server to look inside the “errors” folder and that specific page for each of the different error types. That is not all of the error codes, but they are the ones that will be ‘hit by your users 99 percent of the time.

Block Visitor By IP Address

Need to keep somebody from checking out your web site?  This next tip will give you the ability to deny somebody based on what their IP address is:

order allow,deny

deny from 123.45.6.7

deny from 012.34.5.

allow from all

The above blocks access to the site from 123.45.6.7, and from any sub-domain under the IP block 012.34.5. (012.34.5.1, 012.34.5.2, 012.34.5.3, etc).

Before you go off and plant htaccess everywhere, read through this and make sure you don’t do anything redundant, since it is possible to cause an infinite loop of redirects or errors if you place something weird in the htaccess.

Also…some sites do not allow use of htaccess files, since depending on what they are doing, they can slow down a server overloaded with domains if they are all using htaccess files. I can’t stress this enough: You need to make sure you are allowed to use htaccess before you actually use it. Some things that htaccess can do can compromise a server configuration that has been specifically setup by the admin, so don’t get in trouble.

As a customer, how can you protect yourself against fake, shill or sock puppet reviews? How can you research potential hosts without being influenced by falsified information? Below, we’ve put together a checklist for spotting fake reviews as well as some top tips for helping you to search and find genuine reviews.

It’s very important to identify these fake reviews. The reviews that are sound too good to be true are likely to be self composed. To identify fake web hosting reviews, we highly recommend following checklist: Look for detail – fake reviews will lack detail because whoever’s writing them will likely have very little real experience of using the host. A proper review will include details such as uptime and customer service anecdotes.

Too good to be genuine ? – No host is the perfect match for everyone all the time, so if a host comes across as too good to be true, you’re probably dealing with a shill reviewer. This is particularly obvious if there’s a whole list of 5-star reviews all saying identically positive things.

Established reviews – the higher quality review sites will grade reviews according to whether they are ‘verified’. There are different ways to do this, but the most common is when the reviewer has to use an email address that comes from a domain hosted by the host they are reviewing.

The ‘look’ – fortunately, most sock puppet reviews are pretty obvious – they just won’t look genuine and you’ll be able to spot them a mile off.

Marketing Speak – a genuine reviewer probably won’t use ‘marketing’ speak (for example, words and phrases like ‘guaranteed’ or ‘100% satisfaction’) when they describe a host, so look out for anything that looks as if it’s been written by the sale department.

Discount code or link – make sure to check where the reviewer links to in their write-up. If a link is broken or looks suspiciously like an affiliate link, you can probably disregard the review.

Timing – if a host has a long list of reviews on a certain site, check the timestamp; you might well find that all the reviews were posted within minutes of each other. Highly suspicious!

Duplicate reviews – a neat little trick to check the validity of a host review is to copy and paste a section of it into Google; if lots of direct matches come up, chances are this is either an automated review, or someone is being paid not very much to litter the web with positive feedback.

Extreme Stars – reviews of either 1 or 5 stars deserve more suspicion than anything in between.

NB. Remember to look out for fake negative reviews as well. Some hosts and their affiliates aren’t above trying to make their competitors look bad to boost themselves up the rankings.

1) Beware of reviews that are sound to good to be true. 2) The customer report should show proof of website hosted with the web hosting company. 3) The customer report should show proof of service uptime, with monthly uptime statistic. 4) Too many positive reviews compare to negative reviews. Via survey, we learn that unsatisfied customer tend to write testimonial online. Happy customers are unlikely to post testimonial voluntary. 5) A professional web hosting review site will have Intel and insider information, and even offering special coupon discount.

How To Search For and Find Genuine Reviews

Running through the above checklist every time you read a review can be a time-consuming business; the best way to avoid shills is to find a source of reviews that are trustworthy in the first place. But that’s easier said than done!

Generally speaking, the more detailed the better (but beware of unnecessary repetitions of product names); once you find a good source of well thought and detailed reviews, consider trying to add your own and see how many hoops you have to jump through to do so – the more the better!

visit: www.version-next.com

Life is so much easier once you have a clearly defined target market. You know what type of product to create, how much to charge for it, how to position your brand and where to advertise your services. Make the product fit the customer, not the customer fit the product.

2. Be creative with your marketing budget:
You can’t compete with the large web hosting company’s marketing budgets; it’s a simple as that. They spend £1m+ per year and if you try to go toe to toe with them, you’ll probably go bust. I’ve seen it happen a couple of times over the years I’ve been working in the industry. For example, the most competitive keywords advertising on Google are off limits to all but the biggest spenders with the average cost per click for “web hosting” currently running at £8. Some ideas you could pursue include:

• A lot of web hosts haven’t really got their head around social media. They have twitter accounts and pages on Facebook, but I’d argue 85% of them are poorly thought out or token efforts. That’s a gap for you to fill.

• Online press releases are great ways to announce news to a large audience, establish authority and build quality incoming links. At only £100 per release through a distribution service, this is great value for money.

• I personally would not go near the most competitive keywords through Google AdWords if I was on a limited budget but I would still use the Google Display Network. Put together a tight list of target sites and advertise your service there using graphical banners.

3. Assemble your customers:
Excellent customer support and product performance will lead to customers spreading the word without much encouragement. However, you can be more proactive than that and get even more customers to refer you to other people who are looking for web hosting. A refer a friend program with a financial incentive is a tried and tested way of getting customers to refer people. This can be in the shape of cash, credit or vouchers. Review sites are a big part of a customer’s journey. Unfortunately the reviews being left on these sites tend to be from customers who have had a bad experience, certainly much more than those who are happy. Companies are becoming wise to this and starting to counter the negativity by asking their customers to review them, and there is no reason why you can’t do the same.

4. Get to the know the web hosting industry:
You are not competing in a vacuum and the more you know about the industry you are operating in, the more successful you will be. Who are your competitors, where do people go to research web hosts and who are the major web hosting news outlets with the most authority? If you can answer all those questions, you can relax. If not, here are some links to get you started…

5. Sell the core products:
Shared hosting, domain names, dedicated servers email solutions are the bedrock of non-managed web hosting companies. They also offer huge cross sell and up sell opportunities. For example:
• Domains: More domains, email, shared web hosting, domain privacy
• Shared web hosting: Dedicated servers, Hosted Exchange, search engine submission, SSL certificates, higher spec hosting
• Dedicated servers: Server back up, higher spec servers, cpanel, MS SQL, Hosted Exchange, SS certificates

6. Get visitors to trust you:
If you are asking a customer to essentially look after their web site and make sure it is secure and always accessible, there has to be an element of trust on the part of the customer. The challenge is to make them trust you enough to hand over their money. You can reduce the level of perceived risk through an attractive and modern website. Nothing screams “Stay away” more than a website that looks like it escaped from the 90’s.

Beyond being sexy to look at, all but the most carefree of people like to know they are part of a group, it makes them feel more comfortable. Positive customer reviews and testimonials go a long way to relaxing potential customers. If you can source them, case studies are a great way of showing visitors their peers are already your customers.

For more blogs visit www.version-next.com

In order to publish a blog or website online and make it accessible to computers connected to the Internet you need a Web host. A Web Host is also sometimes referred to as a Web Server and it is just like another computer somewhere else in the online world that provides a convenient and safe space to store your blog and website pages and files so that people can access to them 24/7/365 via the World Wide Web.

You can also link your domain name to your web host so as to allow online users to access your website pages and files via your domain name. When you first link your domain name to your web host it is assigned with a unique IP that points to your data stored on the server. And whenever people who wanted to access your web-pages and files from any place on the internet enters your domain name into their browser’s address bar, what happens is the IP-address associated with it is located and website is loaded from your web host.

Instead of using a web server as a central place on the internet to get access to your website pages and files you can also host yourself using your own personal server at the comfort of your home but it is not a preferred choice for many because of the fact that it is very complicated to setup, maintain and also to ensure that your server is running 24×7. So, it is much more affordable, reliable, simpler and hassle free to use a web hosting service instead of doing it yourself.

There are different types of hosting depending on the services provided by the web hosting companies.

Here are some of the most common ones: Free Web Hosting,Shared Web Hosting,Reseller Web Hosting,Dedicated Hosting,Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) Hosting,Colocation Web Hosting,Cloud Hosting,Clustered Hosting,Grid Hosting etc.

The most popular factor when a business is considering a dedicated server is cost. Most linux operating systems are completely free, which enables gogax to offer cheap dedicated servers. As opposed to a Windows Dedicated Server which requires licensing fees for the operating system, people will tend to prefer linux for that matter.
Another factor is how reliable and secure the linux operating system has grown to become. We have seen some linux servers running for over 4 years without a single reboot needed. If we compare that to windows servers, they often need reboots after os updates, software installation and other tasks performed on the server. For a personal user this is no big deal, but if online presence is crucial to your business or online store, a reboot can mean loss of business. Many people will argue whether linux or windows is more secure and stable. With time, we personally have found that linux is more stable and can run as a web server for years without any intervention. Unfortunately, it is not the case for Windows servers today.
Linux has some great functions on dedicated servers. It does http web server (apache), php programming language, mysql database and many other features. Those are included in a default setup of the linux operating system. All these elements together offer very stable and secure performance. The best part of it all, many developers have made great free software that runs on linux operating systems. Those are all freely available on a linux dedicated server.
Security: One of the main reasons that people like Linux is that it’s more secure than Windows. The main reason for this is that Linux hasn’t been around as long, and there aren’t as many viruses built to get into it yet. This means that your website information can be somewhat safer on a Linux host.
Cost: Because it’s open source software, Linux hosting solutions are cheaper than Windows hosting options. Although most shared server options are really affordable right now, Linux often presents even more affordable options.
Scaling: If you’re going to start your website small and work it up to a larger site without changing servers, Linux hosting is definitely a good option. This type of service has very efficient scalability, and it’s really easy to keep your website going on the same platform without making any major changes.
Options: Because Linux is one of the most popular hosting options on the Internet, there are literally tons of options with it. You can find hundreds of hosting companies, many of which offer excellent services and extras to their packages.
So why not use a linux dedicated server.

Resellers can set up and manage customer accounts via a web interface, usually point and click “Control Panels.”

cPanel is a Unix based web hosting control panel that provides a graphical interface and automation tools designed to simplify the process of hosting a web site. cPanel utilizes a 3 tier structure that provides functionality for administrators, resellers, and end-user website owners to control the various aspects of website and server administration through a standard web browser.

In addition to the GUI interface cPanel also has command line and API based access that allows third party software vendors, web hosting organizations, and developers to automate standard system administration processes.

cPanel is designed to function either as a dedicated server or virtual private server and it supports CentOS, Red Hat Linux, and FreeBSD.

Application-based support includes Apache, PHP, MySQL, Postgres, Perl, and BIND (DNS). Email based support includes POP3, IMAP, SMTP services. cPanel is commonly accessed on port 2082, with an SSL-secured server operating on port 2083.

cPanel was originally designed as the control panel for Speed Hosting. cPanel 3 tended to be buggy and did not have a good user interface. The interface improved when Carlos Rego of WizardsHosting made what became the default theme of cPanel. Eventually due to internal problems between VDI and J. Nick Koston, cPanel split into two separate programs called cPanel and WebPanel. WebPanel was the version run by VDI. Without the lead programmer, VDI was not able to continue any work on cPanel and eventually stopped supporting it completely. J. Nick Koston kept working on cPanel while also working at BurstNET. Eventually Nick left BurstNET on good terms to focus fully on cPanel. cPanel has been updated and improved over the years. It is now a stable and reliable control panel.

The typical web hosting reseller might be a web design firm, web developer or systems integrator who offers web hosting as an add-on service. Reseller hosting is also an inexpensive way for web hosting entrepreneurs to start a company.

While there is a multitude of web hosting service providers available, there are only two main types of web hosting, free hosting and paid hosting. Free webhosting is great for individuals or for new businesses with a small budget for their web presence. Paid web hosting is more suitable for established businesses, and provides more space and features for the hosted website.

If you search online for a paid web host, you will find you have many different choices. The price you will pay for web hosting largely depends on the type of services provided. Shared web hosting, where your website is one of hundreds located on a particular server and has a shared IP address, will be significantly cheaper than dedicated web hosting, where your site is the only site that resides on its server.

Regardless of the provider you select, your web hosting service will provide your website with many benefits. The first and most basic is a simple presence on the internet. This provides you with storage space for all of the files and data that comprise your website, including pictures, audio or video. An average amount of space that a web hosting service provider provides to a webmaster is approximately 1GB, but some more expensive website hosting packages can provide as much as one hundred times that amount, or even more.

Another great benefit that comes with your web hosting package is bandwidth. Bandwidth is a measure of the amount of data traffic that can occur between your website and the rest of the internet. If you have a sufficient amount of bandwidth for your website, your site will be easier for visitor to view the site. If you do not have adequate bandwidth, items such as pictures, audio and video will not be able to load onto the page quickly, and can be very frustrating for those attempting to use the website. Providing your website with enough bandwidth is a critical function of your web hosting service provider. Most providers have different web posting packages with differing amounts of bandwidth included to meet the varied needs of different types of websites.

As you can see, web hosting services provide you with a whole range of options for this essential piece of your website puzzle. No matter what you need, there is a package for you.

The promise of cloud computing is huge and many of us in the hosting industry have solutions or ideas on what the hosting future looks like. The only fact that remains constant is the constant amount of change that moves through this industry.

It is our belief that hosting providers and datacenters need the right set of tools to manage the increasing complex computing configurations customers demand. CloudLinux was created for just this purpose. As we look to the future, there are some themes we at Cloud Linux think are important to consider when thinking about what lies ahead.

Space
For hosting providers, space is a big deal. Whether it is space on a shared server or space in your datacenter, space costs money. There was a time when bigger was better – the more servers you had, the more important you must be. But that may be changing. With the cost of datacenter space, electricity and cooling on the rise, it is time to reconsider this idea. There just is no such thing as infinite datacenter space or unlimited dollars to cover management costs.  So how do you maximize the space you have? Density and stability are the keys to solving the growing space issues. Improving server stability and therefore increasing density helps hosting providers do more with the same amount of infrastructure.

Security
Another key theme for the future is security. Headlines are filled with cyber threats and identity theft. Consumers, enterprises and small businesses alike are increasingly concerned about security.  Because of this dynamic they will continue to put pressure on their service providers to improve security and protect their data, identities and networks.

Efficiency
As the complexity of computing grows, we need to take efficiency to the next level. To keeping servers running efficiently as well as making our technical staff manage more and more complex solutions, it becomes increasingly important to maximize the efficiency of operations. At Cloud Linux, our solutions are purposely built with this goal in mind.

The main features and benefits of FileZilla include: Easy to use. Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, BSD, OSX and more. Available in many languages. Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB. Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue. Drag and drop support. Configurable Speed limits. Filename filters. Network configuration wizard.

FileZilla 3.3.4.1 is a FTP Software product from filezilla.sourceforge.net, get 5 Stars SoftSea Rating, FileZilla is a small but strong FTP client with many features. It includes a site manager to store all your connection details and logins as well as an Explorer style interface that shows the local and remote folders and can be customized independently. Its very easy-to-use.
FileZilla support for firewalls and proxy connections as well as SSL and Kerberos GSS security. Additional features include keep alive, auto ascii/binary transfer and more. A nice software for beginners and advanced user alike.
FileZilla is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface. Among others, the features of FileZilla include the following:
1. Easy to use
2. Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
3. Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, OSX and more
4. Available in many languages
5. Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB
6. Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue
7. Drag & drop support
8. Configurable Speed limits
9. Filename filters
10. Network configuration wizard
FileZilla Features:
* Ability to resume Uploads/Downloads (if the server supports it)
* Custom Commands
* Site Manager with folders
* Keep Alive system
* Timeout detection
* Firewall support
* SOCKS4/5 and HTTP1.1 Proxy support
* SSL secured connections
* SFTP support
* Upload/Download Queue
* Drag&Drop
* Multi-language support
* GSS authentication and encryption using Kerberos
* FileZilla is a fast FTP and SFTP client for Windows with a lot of features. FileZilla Server is a reliable FTP server. SoftSea.com had fully tested, reviewed and uploaded the install files, FileZilla does not contain any adware or spyware, the latest version is 3.3.4.1, you can download this ftp software software (6.01 MB) from special server of SoftSea.com. The license of this networking software is Free, you can free download and free use this ftp software software.

Web hosting is an online service that allows organizations and individuals to post a website or web content on the internet. A web hosting service basically houses your website on the internet.

Doteasy web hosting services meet the needs of a variety of users. Whether you want to manage a personal website, or an e-commerce website for a business, we’ve got the perfect web hosting package for you.

All of our web hosting packages include an ample amount of web storage space, data transfer, and email accounts. FTP access also comes standard, and you’ll also get reliable web hosting with a 99.9% uptime!