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.

Why choose dedicated over VPS?

• VPSs (Virtual Private Servers) allows hardware to run at a higher utilization rate.
• Management issues as VPS requires more Ethernet cables, networking and switches.
• Hardware can run at a higher utilization rate with VPS.
• Disk I/O performance may back up due to additional disk frags.
• Vulnerabilities are more common and involved with VPS.
• It is time consuming and not efficient to manage many IP addresses.
• There are sometimes software licensing advantages when running VPS.
• It can be challenging to make backups of one or two versions of less mainstream software and programs.
• They are cheaper since usually they have less power costs than one physical server.
• VPS need costly drivers like multi-port network adapters.
• VPS are more affordable requiring less power than one dedicated server.
• It is difficult to manage large number of IP addresses, MAC addresses etc
• VPS overhead is less than 5% on some modern visualization software like Virtuozzo.
• Maintaining a VPS is still more costly and patching all virtual servers with various operating systems on many physical servers requires their own maintenance.

It looks like the answer is Dedicated Web Hosting!  Check out LPDedicated.com, Lunarpages Web Hosting’s brand of dedicated affordable solutions

RootCheck scans the system looking for possible  trojans, scans the ports for malicious activity ,and checks for rootkits, and also the logs, permissions and more.

Installation Instructions
Login to your server and su to root.

wget http://www.ossec.net/rootcheck/files/rootcheck-0.4.tar.gz

tar -xvzf rootcheck-0.4.tar.gz
cd rootcheck-0.4
./install

This will take you to an interactive installation. Make sure you have CPAN on your box because rootcheck requires the Perl Modules IO::Interface.

If the installation is finished you will get this message

————————————-
Compilation successful. Ready to go.

That’s it! If everything went ok, you should be ready to run RootCheck. If you any doubts about installation, please refer to INSTALL file.
————————————-

Scanning the System
Now you are ready to run rootcheck.

There are quite a few options butthe simplest one is

./rootcheck.pl

If the installation was perfect you would get a progress screen of the scan after which the results will be written into results.txt the result is quite explanatory and gives details of all suspected files.

Hope that helps you with your dedicated web hosting RootCheck issues.

When looking at any dedicated hosting option, hardware failure plays a very important part.  In the event of a power supply blowing, your CPU going crazy or somebody kicks the server’s power cord – you want to know your information is secure and safe.

Now with most web hosts, if you purchase any managed addons they are usually added to the internal monitoring that the web host’s server admins do.  They will now what to do with any failure the moment it happens.  In turn, depending on the situation, it might take up to/around two hours for a repair. 

Now lets say, in the case of a storage failure, are the hard drives imaged or raided in any way? 

In most cases, there is only one hard drive in the sever by default, so there are not any fault tolerance setups like images or raid.  Now if you purchase a secondary hard drive for your server, this is something that could then be setup with ease.

SSL (secure socket layer) Certificates are designed to keep your website files protected, but a lot of ecommerce webmasters require something even more secure in order to accept monetary transactions via their websites.

So when is it time to get a pro SSL certificate and when is it okay to have just a basic shared SSL?

Shared SSLs

• These are good for personal or business websites that do not require an active ecommerce website. So if you are not planning to take credit card payments directly on your website through a merchant gateway, you can use a shared SSL just fine.
• Shared SSLs are just that – shared! So know that you are sharing a secure space with multiple users. The IP address for this certificate will be shared among most likely very different websites. Some customers fear being associated with an adult website or moneymaking scheme in this way, so they opt to upgrade. Most customers will never have to worry about this.
• If you are using PayPal to receive payments or referring your customers to a website outside of your own for payment, you do not need a pro SSL.
• If you purchase a dedicated server hosting plan, you only have the option of purchasing a pro SSL since your server isn’t ‘shared’ with anyone else.

Pro SSLs

• Pro SSL certificates are best for websites that require ecommerce payments to be made directly through their websites.
• If you are working with a payment gateway to take payments through your website, more than likely you will be required to purchase a pro SSL.
• Pro SSL certificates secure all transactions made on your website and ensure your customers feel safe about their purchases.
• On a dedicated web hosting account, you must purchase a pro SSL, as shared SSLs are not an option.

This is how you would setup a remote access key in Web Host Manager (WHM).

The first thing you would need to do is login to WHM. From the front page, click on “Cluster/Remote Access”. Next, click on “Setup Remote Access Key”.

If you are incorporating an external script that automates account creation and management, it will ask you for a remote access key. WHM automatically creates the encrypted code for you. Simply generate the key, copy and paste into your script. To generate the new key, hit the button marked “Generate New Key” button.

After doing so, you will be able to setup a remote access key in WHM.

With the US economy the way it is, any chance of saving a couple bucks becomes a huge incentive to buy now. Buying a dedicated server is no different. So here are 5 tips to save you money on dedicated server hosting.

1. Shop Around.

You know how when you’re buying gas you search for the absolute lowest price, even if that means waiting until gas has gone down or until your tank is running near empty?

Buying a dedicated web hosting account should be no difference. Make a list of the providers you like and shop around for the best deal for the features you need. Keep in mind, any good web hosting provider should be able to cut you a deal if you give them specifics of must-have features and budget.

2. Evaluate Billing Cycles Vs Budget

Set an absolute top dollar you can afford and do not waver in your quest to meet this budget, because money is the key issue in today’s economy. Then, evaluate the possible payment options that your chosen dedicated host provides.

For example, let’s say you set a budget of $1000 every year for web hosting. Paying monthly for your dedicated server costs $99 each month – plus, there will likely be some kind of setup fee, so let’s add $100 to that. So yearly, with this monthly billing cycle, you will be over budget by $288 (99pm x 12m + 130setup)! So consider the longer billing cycles if they save you money or add extra features that are must haves for you, such as more RAM or free months hosting.

3. Negotiate

Call the dedicated hosting provider up and ask them questions! Tell them your budget and make them work around you. After all, they will want your business and will likely negotiate with you if your demands are reasonable.

4. Ask About Long-Term-Agreements

Also known as LTAs, long term agreements are contracts you sign with your dedicated web host, promising you will be a customer for X amount of months, usually 1 year or more. In exchange for your signature to their terms, the web host will only bill you monthly but offer discounts and benefits of longer contracts. Lunarpages Dedicated Hosting is especially famous for providing affordable LTAs for specific customer needs.

5. Dedicated Hosting Coupons!

Simply put, use a coupon! The easiest and most effective way to save money instantly.

It is important to keep your eye on your resources when you have a dedicated hosting plan so that you know when and if something is about to or has gotten out of hand.  Here I hope to give you a few handy tips when it comes to monitoring your site resources and statistics in Plesk.

First thing you need to do is login to your Plesk control panel, and click on Limits.  As you can see Limits displays the resource limits allocated to your account.  It lists such details as:

• Maximum Number of Subdomains
• Disk Space
• Bandwidth
• Maximum Amount of Traffic
• Maximum Number of Web Users
• and more…

Now click on Up Level at the top of the Limits window for your domain, and click on Report.  The Report will show you all account resource limits & usage, as well as users and a full list of all available scripts, utilities and resources.

FTP Stats will show you a history of FTP activity on your site – both in upload as well as download. 

Traffic History will display information on traffic usage by Months and Years on your dedicated hosting account.  To view the detailed traffic statistics used by various services at the domain, click on the Traffic button.  The page will open displaying the traffic usage table.  You can send a copy of the report to an e-mail address you specify too at the bottom of the Report screen.  You can also set up a schedule for automatic delivery of the reports. 

The last detail about monitoring dedicated resources inside of Plesk is the Web Statistics Preferences screen.  From here you can set some of the preferences that will dictate the display of refers in your stats.

Now you should be a little more handy when it comes to stats and resources inside of your Plesk control panel via your dedicated web hosting account.

Via Web Host Manager (WHM), upgrading and downgrading a package or site you have installed is an important aspect to master.  To start off, login to WHM.  Occasionally, you will want to upgrade or downgrade your hosting packages inside.  This is how you get that done.  Click on “Account Functions” and then go to “Modify an Account”. 

From the Modify an Account page you can select the exact account you wish to modify.  All you have to do is click on the domain for the package and click the “Modify” button.  Here you can see several things you can change. 

You can change the domain name, the cPanel theme, the language, the user name, the max e-mail accounts, the max ftp accounts, the max mailing lists, the max subdomains, the max SQL databases, the max parked domains, the max addon domains and if you can, you can add or remove shell access.

Once you are done changing the settings, hit the “Save” button on the bottom of the screen and you should be all done.  Now you can login to the cPanel for the account you edited to confirm all was changed correctly.

This dedicated server hosting checklist is designed to help you understand what it takes to run a dedicated server. After all, it’s not just about purchasing a box – you need to know how to manage and work with it too. So here’s what it takes, your checklist for running a dedicated server:

• A powerful web hosting platform
• Managed Hosting
• 24/7 technical support – through email is best, so you can document errors and solutions
• State of the art data centers – the more data centers a provider runs, the better chances of redundant uptime for you and your server
• Guaranteed RAM
• Easy upgrades
• Great dedicated hosting deals – amazing coupons to help lower your monthly costs or incentives for staying longer
• Ability to perform website backups