Tutorials

cPanel is probably the most popular web hosting control panel in the world. It’s reliable, affordable, secure and intuitive. It’s also packed with useful features. Here are five useful cPanel tricks to try on your site. (Remember: your host may use a skinned version of cPanel, so you may have to hunt for these options […]

When you buy hosting, you normally get support as part of the deal (unless you’ve bought an unmanaged hosting plan). But sometimes, there’s no need to rely on support. Here are three things that could happen often – and might be easy to fix. 1. Site is Down First, be honest: did you do something? […]

Fundamentally, all content delivery networks (CDNs) operate in the same way. Content is served to visitors speedily from various locations, depending on their proximity. However, to the webmaster, CDNs vary massively. Types of CDNs There are two different types of CDNs: push and original pull (or simply ‘pull‘). Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Some […]

  photo credit: getButterfly via photopin cc From database hosting to servers hosted in the cloud, Amazon offers a wide variety of Web services. However, most webmasters find themselves considering just one of the two: Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) or Amazon Cloudfront. While Cloudfront is actually built on top of Amazon S3, these two […]

VPS hosting is often marketed as an ‘insulated’ hosting solution. But there are some things that you still share with your neighbours. In this article, we’ll look at the potential risks of VPS hosting when compared to a dedicated server. VPS vs Shared First, let’s backtrack and look at the main reasons for upgrading from […]

Technical support is a big plus point for most hosting customers. The majority of firms offer 24/7 support and multiple contact methods. No Support Linux Hosting, however, has decided to go a very different route. On its home page, there’s a photo of a woman reclining in an office chair; “We ignore the support questions […]

Do you know your host’s uptime guarantee? Is it 99%? 99.9%? Or maybe even 100%? In practical terms, it doesn’t actually matter. Hosting companies make a big deal about uptime guarantees. But they rarely compensate customers if they break them. Uptime guarantees are attractive when used in a marketing pitch, but even the best guarantee won’t […]

For many IT users, platform is a matter of preference. The same is true of hosting control panels. There are fans of different packages, and some people always argue about the pros and cons of each. Often, your choice will come down to your own personal needs. If you just want straight answers about the […]

Most Webmasters know that, when you start seeing referral traffic from Digg it’s a good idea to batten down the hatches and prepare for a Digg effect. However, Digg is not the only site or service that can delivery a tremendous, potentially server-crushing spike in traffic to your site. There are several other ways you […]

As our hosting reviews prove, web hosting is a competitive industry. Some marketing tactics might bend the truth slightly. Some hosts go as far as to mislead, although thankfully they are rare. But even misleading statements are worth looking out for. Here are five examples of promises that might not be all they seem. 1. […]

June 1st marks the beginning of hurricane season for the east coast of the United States and the Gulf of Mexico. As a New Orleanian, this day means a lot of things to me. It’s a chance to check and make sure my insurance information is up-to-date, a chance to catalog my personal items, to […]

Hostgator has recently set up a new arm, SEO Hosting. It specialises in a small but growing niche: hosting across multiple Class C IP addresses. It joins a few other companies in this market, including SEOWebHosting.net and Got Web Host?. But is SEO hosting worth buying anyway? What is a Class C Network? To understand SEO hosting, […]

Spam operations are never commendable, but you have to admit that the technical skill involved is pretty impressive. Spammers can control tens of thousands of sites and domains, countless servers and dozens of advertising accounts from automated control panels. What can we learn from the way spammers work? The Shotgun Approach Let’s look at the […]

So you want to buy an SSL certificate, or move away from your host’s shared SSL certificate, but you’re intimidated by the prospect of having to install a certificate on your server. Don’t be. If you have CPanel/Web Host Manager (WHM) running on your server, installing a custom SSL certificate is actually very easy, and […]

In April we covered the launch of a new cPanel backup service, Site Auto Backup. We decided to give it a try and see if it lives up to its claims. Our Site Auto Backup Test For the purposes of the test, we used a single VPS on Servint hosting around 12 domains. Six of these are […]