As a webmaster, you know the importance of a good spam blocking and virus protection program, and maybe you have learned from our dedicated server tutorials how to set con jobs for scheduled tasks, how to protect your system or administer backups, but did you know that there may be things you are unaware of trying to hack your server?

One of these necessary evils of dedicated server hosting is called a rootkit. A rootkit is simply a program usually designed by hackers who attempt to take control of your dedicated server without authorization. They can gain complete access to your system or install themselves as drivers, kernel modules, or other malware. They often go undetected and can seize control of your operating system and obscure the presence of potentially harmful viruses, commands, or Trojans.

Oftentimes, once a rootkit has hidden utility programs in your system, they open a backdoor to your server at any time of the day and can thus be severely harmful to the health of your dedicated server.

If your dedicated web host has a Managed Hosting option, you should look into it, as they often perform rootkit checks to ensure the security of your dedicated server. Remember, a good dedicated web hosting provider doesn’t want your server brought down either and will do everything in their power to keep you a happy customer.

Using a good anti-virus program is key to protecting yourself, your visitors and the server from being infected by something nasty.  Here is what you need to do to use Dr. Web Antivirus in Plesk.

Select the mailbox for which you wish to configure Dr. Web. Once you have clicked on the e-mail address from the Plesk mail management screen,  you can enable Dr. Web for both incoming and outgoing mail.  Select the choice you want, and then hit OK.  Also it is worth taking note of the fact that you could do it for an either/or situation too.

That is all you have to do.  Now your protected from any viruses getting to you from this direction.  Did you know that Dr. Web offers leading frequency of updates and a comprehensive database of viruses? 

They track more than 100,000 of them. 

The heuristic virus scanning technology detects new and unknown viruses without the traditional virus fingerprints and this makes Dr. Web an effective anti-virus solution.

Using cron jobs can save you time, money, and lots of headaches! But do you know what a cron job is and what it can do for you and your dedicated server hosting?

To start, you can impress your friends and tech-geeks alike by letting them know that ‘cron’ comes from the Greek word ‘chronos’, which means ‘time’. And in fact cron jobs manage things in a time-based banner – for example, every minutes, every hour, every day, etc.

Cron jobs are simply scheduling devices and work through SSH shell without you. In other words, once you set up a cron job, it will essentially perform its task in the background while you sip margaritas and watch the money roll in. Okay, maybe they won’t make you rich, but they will save you time and money by performing the same tasks you need to implement without costing you any trouble. Once you set them up once, they do what they’re told until told to stop.

By using cron jobs, you eliminate the middle-man. You can set tasks for your website like checking for new subscribers, deleting inactive website members, sending email newsletters and more. Especially for email marketing on a dedicated server, cron jobs can help manage the amount of emails sent per hour and eliminate the worry of getting blacklisted for normal email marketing and newsletter distribution.

Big businesses and even startups and web 2.0 networks all have one thing in common – they need to market their website audience and they need to do it well and without getting spam-blocked by the end-user.  There are actually several ways to avoid getting blacklisted, because unfortunately, even on a dedicated server, this can happen to you.

The first way to avoid getting blacklisted is to only market to customers or pre-sales clients who know they are entering into your mailing list and/or will need your product or service. Make sure you are using a mailing list client that has the option to include an unsubscribe link, as your marketing techniques are illegal otherwise. Also, if you have the ability to have customers opt or even double opt-in to receive the promotions and marketing materials, this would be a great idea.

Another thing to keep in mind is the number of emails you are marketing to. If you have a customer or marketing base that consists of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of email addresses, you’ll need to be especially careful. Sending out over 500 emails in one hour is the biggest concern of any dedicated server hosting customer, because not only can you get spam-blocked for sending out that many emails that quickly but your server might also get blacklisted by certain email providers like AOL and Yahoo, who are quick to act on spam-related issues.

A good way to keep the number of emails sent per hour down to a safe amount is through using cron jobs, which can be scheduled to send, for example, 5 emails per minute. If you have a customer base of 1500 recipients, that will only take 5 hours to complete. The best way you can handle this many emails is to talk to your dedicated web hosting provider upfront to see what their specific restrictions are for sending emails and marketing customers using mailing lists.

When you purchase your Windows or Linux Dedicated Server, you have the option to add the Plesk Control Panel, one of the most powerful control panels on the planet. And if you do decide to add Plesk as your control panel, you also have the ability to add the Plesk Power Pack, a series of amazing add-on modules similar to cPanel’s Fantastico Script Library.

So what do you get with your dedicated server and the Plesk Power Pack?

• Application Pack – With the Plesk Power Pack’s Application Pack, you can pretty much do everything you need, all from one simple administrative panel. The Application Pack comes complete with the Mambo Content Management System (CMS), a Website Builder Tool to create dynamic websites, support for post-Nuke Web Hosting, osCommerce Ecommerce software for ecommerce web hosting, phpBB software, picture gallery software, phpBook for guestbooks, bbClone for website statistics, and gtChat for chat web hosting.

• Anti-Spam Solutions – Plesk’s Power Pack utilizes SpamAssassin’s Anti-Spam solutions software to eliminate spam forever.

• Tomcat Web Hosting – Tomcat java servlet support allows you to manage and deploy Tomcat web applications and run Tomcat’s JSP web hosting.

• ColdFusion Web Hosting – Administrators can configure and enable/disable ColdFusion right within the hosting panel. Perfect for ColdFusion web hotsing.

• MS SQL Hosting – Need the world’s most popular and powerful relational database manage system? You got it with Plesk Power Pack’s support for MS SQL web hosting. You can deploy and manage MS SQL databases on local and remote instances. Your Windows Web Hosting solution is complete. Also perfect for Windows Server 2008 Hosting!

• Multi-Level Helpdesk – Now you can run your own HelpDesk solution for answering tickets and support inquiries via a powerful integration system within Plesk’s Power Pack.