BuyHTTP Corporate Blog

We’ve been receiving periodic reports of tutorials not wanting to show on tutorials.buyhttp.com but were having problems tracking down the issue since we were always able to see them. It turns out the problem was related to the different issue that IE and Firefox use to get source information for flash files. We’ve isolated and fixed the issue, so you should be able to view all tutorials from IE now.

We are proud to offer a new security check service for your Joomla and Mambo sites. We will do a full audit of your site and automatically implement a number of security features as well as give you a checklist of additional items and best practices.

We will implement the suggestions outlined in the Joomla Security Checklist and make sure you are setup for a secure future. This setup covers everything from changing the username of your admin user and setting up a more secure password to stopping some of the worst attacks before they even reach your site.

In conjuction with this service we are also offering discounts on some of our most popular addons and services. If you order the security check service you will also receive:

• 25% off our daily backup service (BuyHTTP web hosting customers only)
• 25% off a Joomla or Mambo upgrade
• Free hack recovery if you signup for the daily backup (BuyHTTP web hosting customers only)

You get all of this for only $99 if you are a BuyHTTP web hosting customer. Sign up now!
If you use a different host or have your own server the cost is only $149. Sign up now!

We have added a series of 10 iJoomla Magazine tutorials. The series goes through installing iJoomla all the way through getting your content displayed. You can view the tutorials as our tutorials site.

We have moved our helpdesk to http://support.buyhttp.com. Please update your bookmarks.

If you upgraded to WordPress 2.1.1 you need to upgrade immediately to 2.1.2.

From the WordPress notification:

Longer explanation: This morning we received a note to our security mailing address about unusual and highly exploitable code in WordPress. The issue was investigated, and it appeared that the 2.1.1 download had been modified from its original code. We took the website down immediately to investigate what happened.

It was determined that a cracker had gained user-level access to one of the servers that powers wordpress.org, and had used that access to modify the download file. We have locked down that server for further forensics, but at this time it appears that the 2.1.1 download was the only thing touched by the attack. They modified two files in WP to include code that would allow for remote PHP execution.

You can download WordPress here.

We are now putting all new accounts on state-of-the-art Dual Xeon Clovertown servers. This gives the server 8 physical processing cores giving your site the most power possible.

If you want to get on the new servers you can place your order here.

On a somewhat regular basis we are asked what the difference is between a semi dedicated server and a VPS, and why we’ve chosen to offer semi dedicated hosting. Before offering any new product or service we tend to spend countless hours researching the various options available, and little else seems to spark as much debate as semi dedicated vs. VPS. In the end, we found our decision to offer semi dedicated servers to be a very easy one to make.

While each option has it’s pros and cons (which we will go over shortly) the few pros of VPS are far outweighed by the cons.

Semi Dedicated Pros:

• Very few sites per server allow for quick loading, even with resource intensive sites
• Fewer sites on the server means fewer chances for downtime due to hacked sites
• Every site has full access to all server resources as needed
• Same ease-of-use as shared hosting

Semi Dedicated Cons:

• No customization of core applications (PHP/mySQL/etc.)
• No “guaranteed” resources

VPS Pros:

• Full root access to your part of the server
• Ability to have custom core applications (PHP/mySQL/etc.)
• “Guaranteed” resources (more detail below)

VPS Cons:

• Responsibility to keep all server software up to date
• Many sites on each server, similar to normal shared hosting
• Access to only a portion of the server’s resources
• Price (more detail below)

One of the biggest factors for us was the pricing of each. With a semi dedicated server the costs involved are: the server, bandwidth, one control panel license, and admin costs of maintenance. VPSs carry all those costs plus: a control panel license for each VPS on the server, a separate control panel to manage the VPSs, and admin costs to maintain each VPS (each VPS is a separate “server” and needs to be maintained as such).

On a normal semi dedicated server we have 5-10 sites. So let’s say we are putting together a server to have 10 separate VPSs on the same server. A normal control panel license comes in around $30. Management time comes in around 5-10 hours per month. VPS control panels can cost $100+/month. Just on those 3 factors you’re spending an additional $370/month and 45-90 hours of admin time providing VPSs.

The other major drawback is the resources offered with a VPS. An average entry level VPS comes with 128MB of guaranteed RAM. The problem is the most common control panel (cPanel) suggests a minimum of 256MB RAM, just to run cPanel. So if you have a VPS with 128MB RAM, you will be running from SWAP all of the time and your loading times will be horrible. Even with 512MB RAM cPanel tends to be a little laggy. Let’s assume you go with a VPS with 512MB RAM and a high powered server will have around 4GB RAM for all accounts, that’s only 8 VPSs they can fit on the server. Or is it? The beauty is, you can “guarantee” more RAM/CPU than you have available on the server.

With semi dedicated hosting, users are able to run their sites without any worries about keeping the server up to date as it works exactly like shared hosting… You just get a lot more resources. And full access to everything the server has to offer.

You can find more info on our semi dedicated hosting here.