Dedicated Server Reviews

Although we've taken many an opportunity to speak to c-level execs, marketing VPs and industry analysts at all the conferences we've attended, rarely have we actually sat down and interviewed those typically-endearing, developer "geeks," about the newest and coolest applications they've been developing on, yes, your servers :)

However, while at LT PACT 2008 we were introduced to the co-founders of Woopra, Elie Khoury and Jad Younan, by Layered Tech's marketing guru, John Pozadzides (who also happens to be the ever-enthusiastic CEO of Woopra) and after hearing an in-depth spiel about their intriguing application (as well as their tumultuous journey to get to the US from Lebanon!) we felt compelled to share their story with you.

Woopra is a real-time web analytics tool with a unique socialization aspect woven into it (by which I mean, full-out two-way chat functionality with ANY random visitor on your website), and has been garnering a reputation as one of the hottest new "blogger-must-have" applications today. However, that's not to say that "serious" businesses can't benefit from this as well, especially with some of the new updates Elie and Jad are planning in the next few months.

In an exclusive WHIRtv interview, Elie and Jad talk about their beginnings, the challenges along their journey and their future goals with what is easily one of the most fascinating, dare I say, revolutionary, applications on the web today.

MySQLTuner 0.9.8 is now available for download and it is full of new changes! So far, MySQLTuner has been downloaded almost 24,000 times. Thanks for making it so popular.

Easy download!
You can download it simply by running wget mysqltuner.pl. You will automatically be redirected to the script.

Access servers remotely
If you have multiple servers that you need to tune and monitor, simply download MySQLTuner onto one machine. You can run it against other servers by specifying a hostname, port, and login credentials. Two new options are available: --host and --port.

Pass login credentials on the command line
Two new options are available: --user and --pass. You can pass a username and password on the command line to log in quickly. This can be especially helpful in conjunction with cron.

Manually set the amount of RAM and swap memory installed
I’ve received a few bug reports where users on certain virtual environments saw incorrect memory calculations when they ran MySQLTuner. You can now set the current amount of RAM and swap memory installed with --forcemem and --forceswap respectively. (Thanks to Jason Gill for the patch and the bug report!)

Checking for updates is now optional
Some operating system distributions and environments can’t allow for automatic update checking due to security concerns, so I’ve made update checks optional. The --skipversion option has been removed and it was replaced with --checkversion. As a side note, the only data that I collected was the version number being run and the IP from which the update originated. This data has only been used for aggregate statistical purposes.

As you might imagine, MySQLTuner 1.0 is just around the corner. I’ve been holding out for the MySQL 5.1 GA release, but I may release the script sooner. Don’t worry - as soon as MySQL 5.1 becomes a GA release, I’ll be hard at work to support any new optimization options which it provides.

Dedicatedserverhosting.com was designed to give you an in-depth look at managing your dedicated server, along with helpful resources to purchase servers, upgrade, or decide what kind of server is right for you. That often includes defining lesser known dedicated server terminology that you are probably unfamiliar with.

One such term in the server realm is “SSI”, which stands for Server Side Includes.

What are SSI?

SSI are directives that are placed inside normal HTML webpages and which can be evaluated on the physical server as your website loads and serves the pages.

What can SSI Do For Me?

SSI can add another layer of dynamic content to your existing HTML pages without having to go through the serving process via CGI or other dynamic website technology. This eases the strain on your website, allowing for faster loads and more dynamic retrieval.

One word of warning about SSI, though – it is best used for loading small pieces of your site, like the current time, etc. However, if you are looking for a solution that will assist with larger portions or applications, SSI will not really do the trick.

Overall, SSI can help balance your dedicated server hosting by easing the load of running small parts of your site.

Have a trouble maker in your dedicated server?

Now we will explain how to suspend a user account in Web Host Manager (WHM).  Now there are a variety of reasons you might need to temporarily suspend an account.  Examples would be non-payment, breach of your own TOS, overages in bandwith and more.  Now lets say you have a trouble maker your hosting on your dedicated account and you want to suspended him.

Login to WHM, then click on Account Functions.  From there, click on Suspend/Unsuspend an Account.  Now you should see a two columned list of all the accounts your hosting on your dedicated server.  Select the account you wish to suspend.  Now you need to enter a reason for the suspension (keep it short and sweet) and then hit the suspend button.  Now if you want to unsuspend an account go into:

Account Functions > Suspend/Unsuspend an Account

Then click on the account you wish to unsuspend, and hit the unsusupend button.  Your done!  Now you can have a little more control using WHM with your hosted accounts under your dedicated server.