HostEntrepreneur

One of the things you’ll find is that things tend to go wrong at the worst possible moment… like when you’re not near a computer. MidpSSH lets you establish an SSH session to your server via using your Blackberry or many other models of phones. While it’s not the easiest to use and there are some quirks (like needing to select “type” from the menu before typing commands), but in a pinch it can be a life saver!

Sorry it’s not a better picture… but you get the point. The type is small but even my aged eyes can see it well enough to be useful. I wouldn’t want to use it all day long though.

One of the cool undocumented features is the ability to use an alternate port for SSH to connect to… Like we discussed before, you want to run SSH on another port other than 22. While in most cases security through obscurity isn’t a great idea, changing your ssh port actually cuts the attempts to break in down drastically. It could be that I missed it in the docs, but I didn’t see the ability to use an alternate port. However, it’s easy to do. When you enter the details for a session, on the end of a hostname just add a colon and the port number, so it looks like  alpha.mydomain.com:12322  where alpha.mydomain.com is the hostname, and 12322 is the ssh port in this example. Of course, use your real hostname and port number.

And yes it can use key pairs for authentication. It took a little work to get them to the server. In my case I hooked up the blackberry to the pc to get the public key off of it and then put it into the auth file with cut and paste in PuTTY. Once that was done I was able to authenticate with them quite easily.

Remember about your data charges to your wireless provider and don’t go overboard. But this little gem of a program can get you out of a tight situation when nothing else is available. You can find it at: http://www.xk72.com/midpssh/

FTP is just not secure by itself. So if you value your server’s securely you simply won’t use it for uploading or editing your site. We highly recommend a program like WinSCP, http://winscp.net/eng/index.php,  to upload or edit your site. WinSCP can use your editing PuTTY key pairs with SSH to get to your server. This is MUCH more secure, and you never expose your password.  

We do recommend that you make changes to you site’s files on your local machine and then upload them (with WinSCP) all at once.  But what if you need to make a change on the fly? Sure you could log in with PuTTY and use vi,vim, nano, or one of a dozen other editors. But WinSCP can help you out there too.   You can use your existing Windows based editor with WinSCP. Personally, I love EditPlus, http://www.editplus.com/, it’s small fast and has a lot of features. But it doesn’t work over SSH (at least not last time I looked anyway).

First, setup WinSCP to get to your server like you normally would. It will need the FQDN or ip address, port number (you’re not using 22 anymore right?), your login, and your key file.  Go ahead and save the session… Now on the left side tree menu, select Preferences, and then select the Preferences… button, and a new window should appear with new left side tree navigation.  A few down, there is a leaf called a Editors, select that. It should look like this:

Click the Add button.  Select the External Editor radio box, then click Browse. Find the path to your editor, in my case that was c”\Program Files (x86)\Edit Plus 3\editplus.exe - you’re may be different depending on OS version and what program you want to use. Under editor autoselection, you might want to change the association, say EditPlus for php files or .conf files. There’s another option there too… Inside the Add dialob box, there’s an “Associated Application” – then specify the type of files you want opened with your default Windows application for that extension. For example, I use CorelDraw for .cdr and .psd files, and Windows will automatically open CorelDraw for me if I double-click in Explorer. With the Associated Application radio box, that is extended into WinSCP as well.  So inside of WinSCP if I double-click a .cdr or .psd file, CorelDraw opens automatically, and when I click save it is transferred back to the server. This is even great for using different types of editors for different files.

You probably need to change the order in which programs are checked in the list. WinSCP goes from top to bottom until it finds an editor it can use for the file. So I’d put “Associated application” at the top, then your prefered text editor(s), then WinSCP’s internal editor at the bottom.

Sometimes, you’ll have issues with backup copies that programs make, or you may just want to keep them saved locally… Sometimes this is easily accomplished. For EditPlus, go to Preferences, then Files. There is a checkbox called “Create backup file when saving”, check it if it’s not. Then hit the button next to it “Backup Options”, select your local backup directory, and check the “Create backup file of remote file in backup directory” box. And you should be good to go.

Caution… As with any changes to a system, before you use this for real (ie a real configuration file that matters to you), create a dummy file out in a directory you don’t care about, and TEST it. Make some changes to that file. Check that it works as you expect BEFORE using this for real production files. Of course, best of all is to not use this on production files directly, but to edit them locally then transfer when you’re sure they’re right, but as you know life doesn’t always work that way.

.. Or why you should pay attention to your use of grammar, style, and punctuation in your  correspondence.

I’m often amazed how some will complain about not being taken seriously or referred to as a “kiddie host”, those hosts stated typically by teenagers that get into hosting thinking they’ll make millions sitting at their desk while doing homework. There are some great hosts started by young people, HotGator was started while Brent Oxley was in college. He dropped out and went to work full time for his company. So, yes, even ”kiddie hosts” can be taken seriously and make a success of it.

I suspect that part of the problem is they manner in which younger folks will communicate in their day to day business dealings.  If I was looking for a provider and started a chat session, and got something along the lines of “How r u?”, I would say that it would be hard for the company to regain the trust that they were a serious host that they just lost.  You may be thinking that it’s “not fair”, or “shouldn’t matter”, but the fact is that it does. There’s no face, no intonation in the voice, no firm handshake so to speak with purely internet based dealings. So any little reason is brought to the forefront.  In this case, if they’re too lazy to type 4 extra keys, one begins to wonder what else are they too lazy to do?

You may not agree with this thinking, and that’s fine. However, others are going to judge you and your company based on your writings in chat, forums, company website, and emails. So you need to adjust your thinking and take the time, and care, to represent yourself and company in a professional manner if you are wanting your new hosting business seriously. I’m not saying you have to be a “grammar nazi”, there’s no need for that. Minor mispellings, slightly off grammar, and some incorrect capitalization isn’t going to have the same effect as using “u” instead of you, “r” for are, or a sentence in an ad like “hi come try our services we r the bestest in world we beat all pricez wit unlimited space and traffic we hav l33t h0st1n t00″. That would be fine on some forums, perhaps some frequented by the apparently intended market, but on the more respected forums such a WebHostingTalk, that ad just isn’t going to fly.

What is “premium bandwidth”?   If you’re searching for hosting, vps, dedicated servers, colocation, etc., chances are you’ve run across the terms “premium” and “mixed” bandwidth. But what does it mean? And what if it isn’t premium or mixed?

Basically there are 2 recognized levels of bandwidth: premium, and not – which we’ll call “value” bandwidth. Often value bandwidth is Cogent. They provide a lot of bandwidth to a lot of providers and do it at a very reasonable rate.  Cogent is huge… not that the other’s aren’t. But they are the number 1 name that pops up talking about value grade bandwidth.

Permium bandwidth, on the other hand, is made up of Tier 1 providers like: AT&T, Sprint, Saavis, Level 3, etc. These are the REALLY BIG boys with large international networks at very high speeds.  Look into these networks if you ever want to put your home cable or even FIOS in perspective.

So that’s 2 types… Premium and Value, but you often see “Mixed” as well. Simple, it just a combination of the 2. Done right, it can be the best of both worlds, better pricing, and better connectivity as well.  Typically, if you’re seeing either a dedicated or shared unmetered connection it’s probably going either be or at least have come value bandwidth in there, if not all. I’d look for a mixed bandwidth connection unless you absolutely need 100% pure premium bandwidth, and if you had read this article to find out what it was, you don’t.

There are a couple ways of getting charged for bandwidth. You could by an “unmetered” connection rated at a given speed, say 10 or 100mbps. Sometimes those lines are shared so you won’t really be able to use it all, but that’s another discussion. But if you’re buying an “unmetered” connection, be absolutely sure to ask if it is shared with others. If it is, you’re at their mercy.

Also available are x GB or x TB of “bandwidth”. Technically it’s not really bandwidth, but traffic. Again that’s another discussion… But you’ll see it either way. The question to ask there is it incoming, outgoing or combined. You want to know ahead of time depending on what you’re doing.

Lastly is probably the fairest of them all, but also the scariest for smaller providers when buying… it’s called “95th percentile” billing. In this case you will typically have a port speed (10,100,1000mbps for example) as well as a “committed rate”. That committed rate will be how much you’re paying for every month regardless of usage. So if you commit to 5mbps, and only use 1, you still pay for 5. But the more you commit to, the less you pay generally per mbps. Even though you commit to say 5mbps, your connection is burstable all the way up to the capabilities of the line – 10,100,1000mbps (minus ethernet overhead, bottlenecks, etc.). 

That great in that if you get slashdotted, or digg’ed, your might be able to keep your site up… assuming you server, etc. can handle it. But you bandwidth is going to spike. The 95th percentile method computes the bandwidth usage as how much line is required to handle the load 95% of the time.  That is to say if chop off the top 5% or the usage TIME wise, that’s how much you need. There’s about 720 hours in a month (30 days times 24 hours a day),  5% of that is 36 hours. So if we chop off the peak 36 hours, how big of a line would be needed to handle the rest… THAT is what you’ll pay.

Using the normal logs, you can usually tell how much traffic you sent in and out. Or at least get a good estimate. That works for the “x GB / x TB” scenarios. With the “unmetered” scenario, you don’t really have to care provided you’re getting all the bandwidth you need, as there’s no overage charges… thus why people like them, even if they are shared as they often are. But (and it’s a big hairy one), your website logs are almost useless for telling what your 95th percentile usage is… Almost. It can give you an idea if you should get worried, but that’s about it. Think about it, anything less than 36hours at the full 100mbps and < 5mbps the restof the time, and there’s no overage charge with just a 5mbps commit. But 36 hours and 5 minutes (a common sampling rate) at 100mbps, and you suddenly have a 95mbps overage charge. Even if it’s $10/mbps (a pretty decent rate for mixed, excellent for premium) and you have a new $950 bill to pay. Scary huh?  The key is that any provider selling to you at 95th percentile should (and I’ve not seen one that doesn’t) provide you with real-time stats of usage.

cPanel has an option to cluster cPanel servers for DNS services. This allows you to have a true secondary, or tertiary, or… , dns server for your cPanel based hosts. This option is called Clustering and is installed but turned off on the default installation. But fortunately, the it is easily enabled. And if you don’t have a second cPanel server, cPanel offers a freely licensed “DNS Only” version. This is basically just the dns portion of the software… but for clustering acts the same as a standard cPanel server does.  If you want the DNS Only version it can be obtained here: http://www.cpanel.net/products/cpanelwhm/related-server-software.html

Step 1 – Get your 2nd cPanel server (or cPanel DNS-Only server) up and running… we’ll call it “ns2″, assuming “ns1″ is on the main server.
Step 2 – Log into ns2’s WHM at http://your.ip.address:2087/  with your root password
Step 3 – Under ”Cluster/Remote Access” on the left side, select “Configure Cluster”
Step 4 – Under “Modify Cluster Status”, enable dns clustering if it is disabled.
Step 5 – Back under “Cluster/Remote Access” select “Setup Remote Access Key”.
Step 6 – Go ahead and “Generate New Key” for some reason I’ve had trouble with the existing key the 1st time.
Step 7 – Copy the Current Access Key, make sure you select the WHOLE KEY … scroll down to get it all.
Step 8 – Log in to ns1’s WHM with your root password
Step 9 – Under ”Cluster/Remote Access” on the left side, select “Configure Cluster”
Step 10 – Under “Modify Cluster Status”, enable dns clustering if it is disabled.
Step 11 – Under the Servers in your cluster section, add the ip address of ns2 and click configure.
Step 12 – When prompted for the access key, paste the whole key into the box.
Step 13 – Back under “Configure Cluster” your new ns2 should now be listed, change the Role to “Synchronize Changes” to start sending dns to that server.
Step 14 – Under “DNS Functions” on the left pane, select “Synchronize DNS Records” to push existing records to the new server.
Step 15 – You should now be able to query the new nameserver with nslookup for existing domains that you serve.
Step 16 – If all went well, update your registrar with the new name and ip address of your new secondary nameserver.

 This is the perfect application for a small vps… We even offer a secondary cPanel dns only vps service that we install it for you, and only handles dns for a rather reduced rate of $5.95/month at Lagniappe Internet, http://www.LagniappeInternet.com/ . Perfect for vps resellers who don’t want the expense of maintaining their own secondary cPanel server but want the redundancy of a real secondary dns server.

First, let me apologize for the late post… I thought I had a post scheduled for today but missed it. I’ll try not to do that again… but no guarantees – life happens!

For new hosts, this is probably not on your list of high priority items, but it should be! Every host, or every business for that matter, should have a stated refund policy.  Plus that policy should be publicly available. The reason being is it makes the issue when (and it is when not if) a refund request comes up, you can simply refer back to the policy for how to handle it.  You should put some thought into it now, and not have to think about it when it finally does happen. And actually as a newer host, it is more likely to happen sooner than later. 

Of course there will always be exceptions, and you should account for that in the policy itself… for “unusual circumstances”. It should not be your way of getting out of giving a refund without cause. But if you say that there’s a 30 day money back guarantee, you should honor it. But personally if the user knowingly abused the service, and your Terms of Service permits it, a refund is not warranted. But notice the TOS reference… your stated refund policy should reference accounts terminated for TOS violations and how they will be “normally” handled – if there is such a thing as a “normal TOS violation”.  Ideally it should be a part of the TOS itself. So that customers explicitly agree to it on sign up… You are having them agree by checkbox, or other method right?

Having a stated refund policy helps build trust in your new hosting company. It shows the customer that you are thinking things through… That you are flying by the seat of your pants… You have a plan, and are working it.

One of the other benefits is when a customer leaves, voluntarily or not, when they want a refund and start the threats, etc. You can refer to your refund policy. If you don’t have one, you’re at somewhat of a disadvantage should it go any further than the threats. Payment providers will want to know the terms that the customer agreed to, and if it’s not spelled out, it may mean that you will lose any challenge.

So go ahead and start working on your refund policy if you don’t have one already. Or review the one you have… You want this in place sooner rather than later.

The Visa Busines Network,  , is on Facebook… and for a limited time they are giving away $100 Facebook ad credits just for signing up! It’s a simple 3 step process.

1. Signup with a simple basic info form – name, email, create a password, etc. and click the link in the email to confirm the account
2. Request an ad credit… It’s 1 click! And they email you a coupon link.
3. Redeem the credit by clicking the link in the email and creating your ad and facebook account (if you don’t have one already).

A credit card will be required to sign up for the ad program, but does not have to be Visa (I tried a MasterCard just to check). The credit is instantly applied to… Just remember to shutdown the ad after the credit runs out to not get charged. And set a daily limit in case you forget. But don’t forget – go set a google calendar reminder or something. BTW, ads can be per click or per impression.

Get started here:  http://www.visabusinessnetwork.com/    You should see the ad on the first page there… if not use this link:  http://apps.facebook.com/visabusiness/adcredit/step1

I know you’ve worked hard to get your Google positioning where you’d like, or are in the process of attempting to do so… time to start re-doing it. Google has announced “caffeine” their new search engine technology. You can play with caffeine at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/  and there’s a cool tool that let’s you compare the existing results to the new engine’s results at http://www.comparecaffeine.com/

Google’s Matt Cutts had this to say

“The new infrastructure sits ‘under the hood’ of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.”

Part of the revision is said to address the growing implications of social networks on search results. Supposedly it is also faster. Come claim twice as fast. I personally never really had an issue with Google’s speed. I suspect speed matters more to Google themselves as more efficient typically means less hardware required. Less hardware means less expense in capital as well as operation, administration, etc. down the line. That means more money is Google’s pockets. So I could see how they would want that…

The more you can make your customers self sufficient the less time you need to answer the same questions over and over. That leads to more time available for other things such as building services, finding new customers, etc.  That’s why we all start working on Knowledgebase (KB) building pretty quickly. But some people aren’t good at visualizing. That is they don’t take written instructions and mentally translate that into what they will see and do. Others do… For the ones that do,  knowledgebase articles work great. I’m one of those people. I’d rather a short KB instruction and then I can go do it… Others need to be shown. That’s where DemoWolf hosting video tutorials comes in.

DemoWolf has over 3600 ready made tutorials for practically any hosting related subject you’d want. Not only are there the normal cPanel, WHM, DirectAdmin, etc. but other subjects such as PuTTY, Paypal, and transfering domain names. They have tutorials that are textual with pictures (think pop up video  but instructional not comical) as well as with voice-over.

I highly recommend DemoWolf tutorials… We’ve just recently started to use them ourselves and are getting positive feedback already. Check out their site at http://www.DemoWolf.com   and check out the bundles and save 50% or more. If you have questions, I’m sure you will find them most helpful as well.