If your control panel does not bring Nano with it, here is how to install this text editors:

Obtain a copy of Nano at http://www.nano-editor.org/download.html and upload it to your system, pick the version ending in i386.rpm

1) Log into SSH and issue the following commands:

Code:

mkdir /home/temp (if temp doesn't already exist) or cd /home/temp

cp /pathtotherpm /home/temp/rpmname.rpm (where pathtotherpm is the path to the location where you uploaded the rpm and rpmname.rpm is the name of the rpm file such as nano-1.2.5-1.i386.rpm)

rpm -i rpmname.rpm

There you have it.  Once you are done, you will have the Nano editor installed.

Here are three great articles to help you get yourself informed about disaster recovery.

Blocking an IP Address on Your Dedicated Server

You may be thinking why do I want to block IP addresses from my dedicated server? If you have never run a dedicated server before, you might not be aware that there are people who attempt to hack entire servers to bring websites down. There are many types of server attacks, and one of the most popular can occur from a single dedicated IP address – a DdoS attack!

Data Center Checklist

As you realize the importance of a reliable dedicated hosting provider, you’ll also notice that that correlates to the reliability of the web host’s data center. This is because the data center is the backbone of the entire web hosting operation – if the data center is not secured or unsafe or loses power, your website could go down as well for the same undetermined amount of time. So choose your reliable dedicated hosting provider carefully!  Just for your safety, here’s a Data Center Checklist for you to use when comparing dedicated web hosts and their data center operations.

What is Disaster Recovery?

What does disaster recovery mean for you? You know that it sounds good – I mean, who wouldn’t want to be recovered from a disaster. Do you know what that covers though when it is one of the filled in check mark boxes at your dedicated web host of choice?

What do you do in the time of a disaster?

What time is the best time to move to a dedicated hosting account?

It is not hard to manage dedicated server without a lot of experience, if you purchase control panel for it. If you have experience with cPanel on the shared plan, I would recommend purchasing this control panel for your dedicated server as well. cPanel gets installed on most dedicated servers with similar setup like our shared ones have.

As for when to switch to the dedicated server, there can be two reasons. First is you need some component that can’t be installed on the shared server. Second is resource consumption by your site that overgrows the allowed limits for shared plan. The most important limits are CPU, memory and MySQL connection utilization.

If you don’t have access to the resource stats for your site and you can ask the support to provide them from time to time to see, if you are near to or in the the red line. However, my recommendation would be upgrading to the dedicated server before when you are expecting traffic and client amounts increase to avoid possible downtime or hurry with site switch to the new server.

Having troubleshooting problems with your dedicated hosting account?  Checking over the server’s error logs might be a good way to help you find the solution to your problem.  Inside, error logs can often contain helpful ‘bits of information about any problems that might have recently happened. 

Where do I find the server error logs on a dedicated server?

There are multiple logs on the server, you need to specify what type of service you are talking about to get the exact reply. The common place for logs is /var/log usually.

Now, next time you have a dedicated server issue – you know exactly where the error logs should be that you need to check. 

How difficult is it to move from shared to dedicated web hosting?

It is not hard to manage dedicated server without a lot of experience, if you purchase control panel for it. If you have experience with cPanel on the shared plan, I would recommend purchasing this control panel for your dedicated server as well. cPanel gets installed on most dedicated servers with similar setup like our shared ones have.

As for when to switch to the dedicated server, there can be two reasons. First is you need some component that can’t be installed on the shared server. Second is resource consumption by your site that overgrows the allowed limits for shared plan. The most important limits are cpu, memory and mysql connection utilization.

Unfortunately, you don’t have access to the resource stats for your site and you can ask the support to provide them from time to time to see, if you are near to or in the the red line. However, my recommendation would be upgrading to the dedicated server before when you are expecting traffic and client amounts increase to avoid possible downtime or hurry with site switch to the new server.

Many people may like to backup their dedicated server using fsdump.  The question is which folders should you backup?

In most cases, you should only need to backup your website’s content, databases and e-mails.  Other things like PHP, Apache and some applications don’t need to be backed up because those can be eaisly reinstalled in case of some issue.

I would encourage backing up httpd.conf and any other configuration files that you’ve changed though.  Re-installs might get Apache working if the drive went bad, but it would be a bare bones re-install without the virtual host stuff you might have added.

So that should give you a little more information on backing up your dedicated hosting account.

On a dedicated hosting server, Fuse may be needed.  However, you may need to do a few things before you can get it up and running if you are using CentOS as your operating system of choice.

To have fuse installed, first make sure you have the rpmforge repository installed. If not, refer to:

http://wiki.centos.org/Repositories

Once rpmforge repository is added, install fuse, dkms and dkms-fuse packages using yum (dkms and dkms-fuse install the fuse kernel module).

Now you should be good to go!

One quick and easy way to tell if your (or any other) web site is down is:

downforeveryoneorjustme.com

I know the URL might be a little long, but this tool is an awesome one to keep in your web hosting tool belt. The simple interface just has “Is ‘text box here’ down for everyone or just me?”. You put your domain name in the text box and hit the linked “or just me?” text and it will spit back a yes or no answer.

If you want an even easier way of using it, just type in their domain name, put a slash in there and then your domain name, such as:

http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/yourdomain.com

There you have it, instant site checking. Some people have reported problems with false positives – but with a little fine tuning I am sure this web site will become an instant classic for those of use who need to keep tabs on if a web site is up or not.