Dedicated Server Reviews

While we were at Layered Tech's third annual partner event LT PACT 2008, we sat down with Jack Finlayson, the CEO for Layered Tech, and discussed some of the major changes he has made with the company, his thoughts on the event, as well as his overall vision for what he hopes Layered Tech can bring to the virtualization and managed space.

We also collected some video feedback from conference attendees here.

Layered Tech's third annual partner event LT PACT 2008, wrapped up late last week (you can read about the conferencing experience here and here) and, as we so often do, we chatted to some of the speakers, exhibitors and attendees at the event to get an overall sense of what their thoughts were on the conference.

We'll be bringing you feedback from the organizer's side later this week through an interview with Layered Tech's new CEO Jack Finlayson, where he also discusses the recent changes seen at the company as well as his greater vision for Layered Tech.

We've also captured the conference on "digital" film (what do you refer to them now?) so check out some photos from the event here.

One of the first rules of security they teach you is to have a good password and to change it often.  If you have Plesk installed as your control panel of choice on your dedicated hosting plan this is how you would get that done.

First, login to Plesk and then click on "Domain Administrator".  From there, you will get All of your domain’s preferences as they are seen by Plesk.  The boxes you are looking for are labeled:

• New Password
• Confirm Password

Type your new password into the "New Password" text box.  Make it a 6-8 alpha-numeric combination, and it should not include your user name or anything else that would easily be guessed.  Type it again in the Confirm Password text box and then scroll down the page till you see the OK button.  Click it and you are done.

To change your FTP password, go back to the main Plesk start page and click on "Setup" under "Hosting".  Again make sure it is a 6-8 alpha-numeric combination.  Type it into the New FTP Password and Confirm Password boxes and then scroll down and hit the OK button yet again. 

Now your Plesk powered dedicated account has a fresh set of new passwords and is a ‘bit more secure than it was before.

By now you have already installed Apache onto your dedicated server. Now, let’s configure Apache to run with PHP4 or PHP5, whichever is your preference in scripting.

For PHP4, it’s as simple as apt-get:

apt-get install apache2 php4 libapache2-mod-php4

Since PHP5 can be automatically installed if you don’t specify the package ‘4’, you can do that or apt-get:

apt-get install apache2 php5 libapache2-mod-php5

To test and ensure that you are now hosting with PHP4 or PHP5, create a test file called test.php in /var/www folder with phpinfo() function as follows:

nano /var/www/test.php

php phpinfo();

Now, just point your web browser to http://ip.address/test.php and you’ll be able to see your php config and default settings. If you don’t, check with your dedicated server administrators or web hosting provider.

From there, you can also edit necessary values or setup virtual domains, enable CAPTCHA, and more.

Here's an image of the new Layered Tech logo I tried to describe to you last week. Hopefully I did it some justice.

Here's that description again: a stylized "L" and "T" put together to form a blue square on top of black line layers that are supposed to depict a stack of servers.