Dedicated Server Hosting » Articles

What is PHP?

Dedicated Diva — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:06:48 +0000

Hypertext Preprocessor is too hard to remember, so most people just call it PHP, and it should be available free to you from any reliable dedicated hosting provider. But what is PHP?

PHP is a framework that is maintained directly on the server. Server-side frameworks like PHP make coding lightweight and cross-browser compatible, so your PHP code will work almost anytime, anywhere. Similar to HTML, PHP is also open source, which means many of the coding has already been created for you and like with HTML you can copy and paste to your heart’s content.

What PHP means for a Dedicated Server is that you do not have to be a brain surgeon to understand how to create flawless forms, amazing images, and an overall incredible website, utilizing PHP.

Be careful in choosing the best dedicated web host, though, as many hosts do not offer the latest versions of PHP. There is a major difference between PHP 4 and PHP 5, and having the ability to work in either or both is key to the PHP framework.

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What is an SSL Certificate?

Dedicated Diva — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:25:19 +0000

An SSL Certificate is one of the most integral aspects of any Dedicated Server, especially if you are running ecommerce. SSL simply stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is nothing more than a trust certificate that secures and encrypts all sensitive data and payment information processed on your website. Without an SSL Certification, your website will not only be accepting information that could possibly be stolen or transmitted unsafely across the internet but your customers will likely not trust your website enough to even purchase anything.

Also, you’ll want to note that you will not be able to process credit card payments through a payment gateway without an SSL certificate.

Any good dedicated hosting provider will offer several SSL options to suit all your expenses for your ecommerce website.

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What is Ecommerce?

Dedicated Diva — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:26:19 +0000

Ecommerce website hosting is a large part of any business’s online services. If you have a product to sell, you need an ecommerce hosting plan that can be tailored to your website’s specific needs.

Ecommerce hosting is just a term to describe an online business website, where the primary function of that website is to sell goods or services. While many small ecommerce sites can be hosted on a shared server, most if not all of the big ones (such as Amazon.com, Shopzilla, Overstock.com, etc) are hosted on a dedicated web server or many dedicated servers clustered together.

There are several things you need to establish to run a successful ecommerce website, including:

* a reliable web host
* a Dedicated IP address
* an SSL certificate
* a Payment Gateway

Once you have all these things, you can begin to create your ecommerce website and watch the money start rolling in.

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What is Necessary for an Ecommerce Website?

Dedicated Diva — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:26:29 +0000

Having an ecommerce website is a big responsibility for any webmaster, and oftentimes you need to do a lot of research in order to get started. Here’s a quick list and brief description of the things you’ll need to have in order to start your ecommerce website.

* Dedicated IP Address

This is necessary in order to get an SSL Certificate, as only one site (yours) will be using this IP. In a shared server environment, many websites might share the same IP address, while if you are running on a dedicated server, you’ll likely need your own dedicated IP anyway. Purchasing one ahead of time will save you time and money in the long run.

* SSL Certificate

This certificate secures your website and all purchases made within its pages, so that each transaction is safe, secure, and fully encrypted. Without an SSL certificate, your customers’ critical payment information could be shared across the internet, as their information will not be encrypted without one. Having an SSL certificate also normally gives you a “trust logo”, which assures your visitors and all potential and future customers that you are a safe and reliable seller.

* Reliable Web Hosting

Whether you are searching for shared, dedicated, windows, or VPS hosting plans, our recommended web hosting provider, Lunarpages Web Hosting, has all the solutions under one roof. Having a reliable web host to rely on will assure your business saves money and your web presence is only 24/7.

* Payment Gateway

Finally, in order to actually process monetary transactions on your website, you need a payment gateway. Payment gateways take the internet transaction and process it into actual funds that are deposited wherever you want them.

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Amount of RAM on Dedicated Servers

Dedicated Diva — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:33:49 +0000

Having a large amount of RAM is important to any web hosting server but especially to any Dedicated Server Hosting plan. RAM (or Random Access Memory) is basically computer data storage that allows a user to access any “memory” on the server. The more RAM, the faster your server is going to run and the quicker your website will load.

So how much RAM do you need? That depends what you’re planning to host. If you require a Dedicated server to resell space like a Reseller and the sites under you are small or don’t require much CPU or bandwidth, you’ll likely be find with the default amount, while if you’re planning to become the next Myspace or will be on the front page of Digg often, you’ll want to look into adding more – remember, you can never have too much RAM!

If you’re looking into Virtual Private Servers (VPS), Lunarpages offers 512MB RAM guaranteed, which means your site is going to experience optimized performance from a Shared Server.

If you’re planning to go Dedicated, you should take the following things into consideration in choosing the amount of RAM you add to your server:

* How popular is your website bandwidth-wise? High bandwidth sites require more RAM.
* Are you running a large database?
* Are you running CPU-intensive scripts?

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Shared Web Hosting Vs Dedicated Web Hosting

Dedicated Diva — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 00:18:38 +0000

Most web hosting providers do not offer both Shared website hosting and Dedicated website hosting, but if you do not know the difference, your website may suffer from slow loading or lack of processor speeds.

A Shared Hosting Plan is a website hosting plan in which your website shares server space with 200-500 other websites. While you do not share website files, pictures, or emails, you are essentially sharing the allotted disk space and bandwidth assigned to one specific server. In a typical shared hosting environment, you are only allowed to use a certain percentage of the central processing unit (CPU): i.e. the computer processor that handles all requests made to the server.

If you own a small or personal website that does not receive heavy traffic, downloads, does not store a variety of pictures, video, or audio files, and/or which does not require SSH/Shell Access for installing applications or programs, you can get by with reliable shared website hosting.

A Dedicated Hosting Plan is a website hosting plan in which your website encompasses an entire web server. What you do with this server is completely up to you, so you can host your entire website without sharing hard drive resources, CPU, or bandwidth with any other website in the world. You can host unlimited domain names and customize the server to your specifications by choosing the amount of hard drive storage space, bandwidth, RAM, backup space, and by adding managed hosting services, choosing your own control panel, and even operating systems.

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What is a Self Managed Dedicated Server?

Dedicated Diva — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:30:57 +0000

When you purchase a dedicated server from your new web host, you’ll need to decide whether you want to manage your own server or if you’d like the web hosting provider to manage it for you. You’ll more than likely have to pay for even the most basic Managed Hosting options, so if you’re not prepared to spend the extra money every month, you can manage the server internally yourself. However, be careful with a self-managed solution – if you are not technically savvy, you are going to want to pay a little extra to have the dedicated hosting provider help you out.

So what is self-managed? A self-managed dedicated server hosting plan allows you to take over the maintenance and installation tasks associated with running your own dedicated web hosting server. These kinds of solutions are best left to experienced professionals who either have extensive System Administration knowledge or have managed their own dedicated server in the past, considering setting up and maintaining your dedicated server is not an easy task.

With self-managed hosting, you have complete SSH/root access to your dedicated server to install anything you’d like. The basic things you’ll need will be a control panel to manage the server, applications to run your website, and anything else you need to make your website appear on the internet.

Knowing what is available for tools to self manage your dedicated server will help you out a lot, so do your research well.

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Registering Your Name Servers

Dedicated Diva — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:47:20 +0000

Domain Name Servers (DNS) are an important part of setting up and configuring your Dedicated Server. Without them, nobody would be able to find your website online or see any of the content you have hosted there. In a Dedicated Server Hosting environment, you’ll need to create your own name servers, instead of using ready made ones as you would in a Shared Hosting environment.

So why register your own name servers? Without your own registered DNS on your dedicated server, you would be forced to have your Dedicated web host maintain an A record and point your website to the server’s primary IP address. This means that your web host is the only entity that can add subdomains, park domains, etc. Registering your own name servers also associated all content within the search engines and helps with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and getting your site ranked properly for its keywords and content. Registering your own DNS will also facilitate faster lookups for your domain on the server, resolving connections to your sites much quicker.

How much does it cost to register name servers? Your domain name registrar should offer this service completely free!

How do I register my name servers? This depends on where you registered your domain name. If you registered it with Lunarpages Dedicated Hosting, you’ll simply need to follow these easy steps:

1. Login to https://manage.opensrs.net
2. Click the “Manage Nameservers” link or change the address to
https://manage.opensrs.net/index?action=manage_nameservers
3. Scroll down to see “Create nameserver”
4. Server Hostname as –> ns1 and Server IP as primary nameserver info, we sent you.
5. Repeat the process for ns2 also with the IP of the secondary nameserver,.
6. Once you did that, choose “NameServers” in the top menu and change the primary and secondary nameservers.

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Domain Name Servers (DNS)

Dedicated Diva — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 08:47:08 +0000

If you are hosting a website or even just visiting one online, you are using domain name servers (DNS) – probably without even knowing it. Domain name servers are an important part of what makes a website work when you type it into a browser. Understanding how they work will help you understand how to change them when you set up your own Dedicated Server.

So what is a domain name server and how does it work? Every time you type a domain name (www.YourWebsite.com) into a browser, you are using the Internet’s domain name servers (DNS) to translate the familiar word-based domain name into the technical machine-readable Internet Protocol (IP) address. Domain name servers basically transfer your domain name into its IP address, so that you are properly directed to your website. Without domain name servers, typing in a domain name would come up with blank results.

Hosting your website on a reliable Dedicated Server means you will need to create your own domain name servers, so that anyone who visits your website will be directed properly to its content and the server in which it’s hosted.

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Linux Vs Windows

Dedicated Diva — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:44:52 +0000

In the Dedicated Hosting environment, you are able to choose your own server operating system, which for some webmasters is a tough decision. If you are familiar with Linux and Windows operating systems, you should already know which one best suits your website’s needs. If you’re new to working with Dedicated Servers, however, you may be interested to know the difference between working in Linux and Windows environments.

It is extremely important to note that you do not have to run Linux on your home computer to run it on your web hosting server. The same goes for Windows – even if you have Windows XP on your home computer, you can use Linux for your Dedicated Server OS.

The biggest differences you’ll notice between a Linux and Windows platform is the cost – where Linux is an Open Source (or free) operating system and can thus be offered by your Dedicated Hosting Provider for free, the many different Windows systems come direct from Microsoft and thus carry a licensing fee for any server that runs them.

Another rather large difference between Linux and Windows is the kind of databases and website scripts they work with. Linux servers tend to work with most capabilities you may be interested in, but if you need ASP, ASP.net, MS Access, Frontpage, Windows Streaming Media support, and/or MS SQL integration, you’ll want to take a look at a Windows Server. As a rule of thumb, anything that has a license through Microsoft will generally need to be on a Windows server, but you’ll want to double check with your web hosting provider as well to see if the applications or programs you want to run will work through Linux as well.

Overall, though the two operating systems are unique and may require further knowledge of programs you need to run, both Linux and Windows Dedicated Server hosting plans do about the same thing and can be used for the same purposes.

Our recommended hosting provider, Lunarpages Dedicated Hosting, is available to give you a custom quote and can help you decide which OS is best for your website