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Install mod_pagespeed on cPanel

Oct 17
Posted by Fawkes in Advice, cPanel

In the world of web hosting, speed matters more than price to clients and this lesson has been taught time and again when users cancel services and cite speed or lack thereof the primary reason.

So, today’s bit of feature enhancement focuses on speed for Apache via the addition of Google’s mod_pagespeed module.

Mod_pagespeed has been in the Google incubator since about 2010 and is a module with one purpose, speed up websites through on-the-fly optimizations. Its sole purpose is to increase site speed leading to higher viewer engagement, conversions and yes, even retention of traffic. In fact page speed so important, Google uses it as a primary signal in the famous Google Pagerank algorithm that ranks sites for listing in search results.

Let’s get started!

(more…)

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cPanel vs. DirectAdmin

Sep 13
Posted by Fawkes in Advice, cPanel, Review

Web hosting in and of itself is nothing without an easy to use set of tools and interfaces designed to control, maintain and monitor a hosting account commonly referred to as a control panel. Typically these control panels are installed, managed and maintained by the web hosting provider and can be installed on most VPS and dedicated servers by end-users if desired. The key advantage of a control panel is the ease-of-use it provides you to control your account via a graphic user interface which means you do not need to know or understand, at least not completely, operating system specific commands and information to perform common tasks for your hosting.

Control panel features normally include easy web-based methods of:

  • Manipulating Files (eg. File Manager)
  • Monitoring Quotas (eg. disk space, bandwidth, mail accounts, etc…)
  • E-mail Accounts (including creation, modification, termination and checking mail, auto responders, forwarding and more)
  • DNS Management (eg. creating, modifying or removing A, TXT, CNAME and MX records among many others)
  • FTP Accounts (including creation, modification, privileges of said accounts and more)
  • Domain Management (eg. creating separate addon domains, parked domains and subdomains)
  • Database Management (eg. creation, modification and removal including of database users among other tasks)
  • Statistics (eg. unique visitors, page views, search engine crawls, etc…)

A fast performing, reliable and feature-rich webhosting control panel can significantly increase the productivity and versatility of any website be it a personal site, a business site or a project site. With the right set of tools webmasters can perform the most crucial administrative procedures with ease. Without such a control panel however, every webmaster and user would need an extensive knowledge of Internet and server operating system training including various program configuration to effectively use their hosting accounts.

There are many solutions to the problem of an easy to use control panel for web hosting but the market has essentially made two industry standards out of cPanel and DirectAdmin. This is due to the unique set of features and capabilities provided with each of these separate solutions and due to their popularity with end-users. Although both cPanel and DirectAdmin have a Windows variant typically under a new name but, both are regarded as a Linux hosting platform control panel.

(more…)

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Reading Comprehension and Support

Aug 09
Posted by Fawkes in Random

It never fails to amaze me in my own interactions with technical support how many fail to comprehend what is written. For instance I just had an exchange with a certain service provider whom I won’t name with regard to obtaining an API key for a cPanel module.

It went a little something like this…

Me: “Yes I’d like to obtain an API key so as to integrate your module in my service platform, how do I go about that with your service?”

Them: “Could you tell me a bit about your service? Your domain seems to be redirecting to another service.”

Me: “Yes, it was originally a free hosting provider a few years ago and I shut it down maybe two years ago.

The domain has been parked since that time and to better enable people to get what they came for at the time, I parked it on another hosting provider I work with.

I am now in the process of building a new paid service on the domain and would like to incorporate your module for my users.”

Them: “I’m sorry, we don’t provide our services to non-commercial hosting providers.”

Now I can’t even get a response from their staff to read the more thorough explanation that I provided trying to clear the confusion.

If you are in technical support reading comprehension in the language you’re responding in is a must. Yes, you can ask for clarification if the other party says something you do not quite understand but on the whole you must be able to understand the basic concept and words.

In this case I gave a bit of history, yes it was a free hosting provider a few years ago but it hasn’t been in operation since that time, I redirected the domain to a paid hosting provider to better assist those who may stumble on that domain and I explained I was basically going to repurpose the domain for a new paid service.

So now, here I am, playing the hope and wait game, hoping that my waiting for a reply will pay off with someone responding positively so I can move forward.

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cPanel Named: 127.0.0.1#953 Connection Refused

Aug 06
Posted by Fawkes in Commands, cPanel, Linux, Software

Last night I was building a fresh cPanel server, after installation and configuration I went to edit a DNS zone and upon saving, I got an error in WHM. The first words out of my mouth, “Crap, now what’s wrong?”
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Finding a Good Hosting Provider

Jul 28
Posted by Fawkes in Advice, Random

You wouldn’t buy a car without shopping around, looking at other vehicles, checking out the reputation of the seller and the like would you? Why then do most people jump into bed with the first web host that waves a little sign saying discount or sale? A good website is one that is backed by a good hosting provider and for any of it to be good it starts with having a relationship with your provider, no not the kind that involves candies, valentines or a ring but one of trust, understanding and communication.

If you want a good hosting experience you should start with these things in mind…

(more…)

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Computing for a Better World

Jul 01
Posted by Fawkes in Advice, Random, Software

In 1999 I joined with thousands of others in providing my computer resources to analyze data for the SETI@Home project. Now, 3 years later, I’m back in the game with multiple systems running analyses that could help change the world.

So now, you may find yourself asking why am I talking about giving my computing time to third-parties to analyze data. Good question!

Here’s why… (more…)

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IMAP vs. POP: A Simplified Explanation

Jun 27
Posted by Fawkes in Advice, Random

Mail access via mail clients primarily comes down to two protocols, IMAP or POP.

But which is right for you? (more…)

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Google Authenticator SSH on CentOS 6

Jun 16
Posted by Fawkes in Advice, Linux

If you run a VPS or dedicated server, security of your SSH access is paramount.

First, I’m going to assume you’re already using pubkey authentication rather than just simple password verification and that you have already changed your port from 22 to something less obvious. I’m also going to assume you’ve already got your fallbacks and sane firewall policies in place.

Now, here’s where you’re really going to have the security, let’s take it a step further by requiring a physical key token of the user!

I’m going to show you how using Google Authenticator…

(more…)

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Fix User Permissions for cPanel

Apr 09
Posted by Fawkes in Advice, Commands, cPanel, Linux, Scripts

One thing that annoys me is when cPanel users (or cPanel) chmods themselves out of ownership or rights, so for WHM admins here is a nifty script that is an improvement of sorts over Quick and easy CHMOD fixes…

#!/bin/bash
#permfix by solutionsfox
echo "Type the user you want to fix followed by [ENTER]:"
read user
 
#check the user
echo "Checking for valid user..."
grep -q "^$user:" /etc/passwd > /dev/null
if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then
	echo "$user is an invalid user"
	exit 1
else
echo "Running perm fix for $user..."
	if [ -d "/home/$user/public_html" ]; then
		cd /home/$user/public_html
		find /home/$user/public_html -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
		find /home/$user/public_html -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
		find /home/$user/public_html -type f -name "configuration.php" -exec chmod 444 {} \; #for joomla
		echo "Do you need to repair ownership? y/n"
		read response
		if [ "$response" == "y" ]; then
			echo "Repairing ownership..."
			cd /home/$user
			chown -R $user.$user /home/$user/*
			echo "Finished."
		exit 0
	elif [ "$response" == "n" ]; then
		echo "Finished."
	exit 0
		else echo "ERROR: Check last input."
	exit 1
		fi
		else echo "ERROR: Check home directory manually."
	exit 1
	fi
fi

So, grab the script, put it on your server, make it executable and from then on sh /whereyouputit/fixperms.sh and you’ll be prompted and what-not to fix a user account. Enjoy.

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Support security fail.

Apr 04
Posted by Fawkes in Advice

Slashdot has an interesting article up from zzzreyes:

  “I got an email from my cloud server to reset the admin password, first dismissed it as phishing, but a few emails later I found one from an admin telling me that they had given a person full access to my server and revoked it, but not before 2 domains were moved from my account. I logged into my account to review the activity and found the form the perpetrator had submitted for appointment of new primary contact and it infuriated me, given the grave omissions. I wrote a letter to the company hoping for them to rectify the harm and they offered me half month of hosting, in a sign of good faith. For weeks I’ve been struggling with this and figure that the best thing to do is to ask my community for advice and help, so my dear slashdotters please share with me if you have any experience with this or know of anyone that has gone through this. What can I do?”

So where did things go wrong? Let’s find out…  (more…)

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