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.

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.

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.

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.

Binary Canary’s, http://www.binarycanary.com, slogan in “We alert you first”. For the past several months we’ve been trying them out, and honestly… they DO! We run redundant Nagios systems – one in each datacenter monitoring pretty much everything. But often Binary Canary will be the first to let us know if something happens.

The service has been excellent. We had tried out Just Uptime, and had an account with Hyperspin for a long time. Just Uptime’s service had false positive as well as negatives, and had several outages that we never heard a word about except through hosting forums. Hyperspin performance is excellent but comes at a price. Service wise, Hyperspin and Binary Canary seemed about equal. There are differences in reports, but as far as notification goes both seem to be of very high reliability.

So it comes down to price… Hyperspin for 10 monitors at 1 minute intervals is $120 per month ($86 and change if you’re a reseller). Binary Canary on the other hand is $5! No I didn’t leave off a zero. It’s $5 for 10 1 minute monitors! And if you upgrade to the Power Plan you get for 30 monitors, letting you  monitor the same 10 sites from EACH of their 3 facilities (Seattle, DC and London) for $10 a month. That’s a bargain! … Now if they’d make it where I could get multiple uptime badges on a single page for a server status page (something happens with the javascript I think where it shows the same badge repeatedly – but didn’t really dig to see what’s happening), that would be icing on the cake.

Disclosure: We have NOT been compensated by binarycanary.com in any way for this review, nor do we expect to be. We have found a service we feel to be reliable while providing quite a bit of value at an extremely reasonable price, and we thought we’d share that with you. (We’re like that.)

Quick Update: Binary Canary’s developer did some work yesterday, and now in FireFox the uptime badges work like you would expect. IE 7 and 8 have issues (but then when don’t they???)  You have to give them credit… within hours of hearing about my wanting multiple badges on a single page they started addressing the issue.  I suspect they’ll get the IE goofyness ironed out too. If you want to see multiple badges on a page you can go to our server status page at http://www.LagniappeInternet.com/servers.php