Wednesday 20 March 2013

Basic guide on choosing web hosting for successful WordPress blog

Before we start over with the first installation of WordPress we need a web space.
Now of course is a requirement that it should not be too expensive and server uptime is over 99% with a decent speed. You are just starting this blog project and it is not sure if it ever really end on a success. Therefore, there should be a good quality and expenditure balance. Also it does matter if the costs are minimal, but your website is painfully slow and every now and again not available. What is the problem of such web host? spider simply can not index your pages faster. Yes, speed of crawl is directly related to the speed and uptime of your web server. You can the data from your webmaster crawl and downloaded graphs.
Of course there are many cheap providers, where you can save even one or two Dollars per month. But with mass host people complains in different blogs about their bad experiences. The performance deteriorates sooner or later, and just to move to from one server another is not so simple.

Server requirement for WordPress installation

There are a few requirements that have to meet the needs web server to easily run to WordPress:

  • As a minimum prerequisite, the current version is 5.3.6 but you should ideally have PHP 5.2 or higher enabled, for the upcoming version of WordPress 3.2 is supposedly need PHP 5+ You can always check which version of PHP is now in use from official PHP web portal.
  • MySQL
    A similar situation arises when the database is needed. WordPress currently runs with MySQL version 4.1.2, but WordPress 3.2 is require at least version 5.0.15. Here is the official website of MySQL.
  • mod_rewrite
    The Apache module “mod_rewrite” is responsible for ensuring that WordPress can be equipped with nice looking URLs. It should therefore be present. Here is the official website of Apache.
  • Memory Limit
    First of all, the reason for having a memory limit is to prevent poorly written scripts for eating up all available memory on a server (from the PHP Manual). So the original idea of this setting is to set the memory limit in the servers configuration. That is normally the job of the administrator and an application should not deal with it on it is own. Otherwise there would be no need to have such a limit.
The conditions are so straightforward, but the above points should be fulfilled. If the host is not indicates these details on the order page, then just write an email and ask for it. This has the additional advantage that one can thus test the same time support.
PHP, MySQL, Apache and WordPress: all are open source (and free), unlike closed source (for example Microsoft Windows). You must understand that, for these open source platforms, today we can create a website: otherwise it would be very costly for us. Read more on Wikipedia on open source.

Server location

This is important. You can test our website from Webpagetest website; change the location from U.S. (where our server is located) to India (where I live and writing this!): you will see the difference. More the geographical distance from  the visitor’s location; the page load time will be more. It is simple logic and needs no explanation.
What is the importance of this information? If your target visitors are from India, obviously you should choose a server that is located in India. On the other hand, if your visitors are from U.S. , definitely you will choose a server located in U.S.
We previously wrote about page loading speed and its impact on SEO.

WordPress installation

The WordPress installation itself is done quickly and easily.

Option 1 :  Pre-installed by Hosting service provider

Some providers offer the option to install with a few clicks with several well-known open source software solutions.

Option 2 : Manual Installation

You need some FTP tool ( FileZilla is recommended) together with FTP .
In addition, you must first create a new database in the web space and admin password which are then required for installation. WordPress itself has written five minutes very nicely.

Other information

If you need faster website, you have to think of dedicated server, cost will be definitely high. CDN (Content Delivery Network) is also needed along with a dedicated server for better performance. If you are thinking of dedicated server and CDN, it is better to consult with professional, because it will be a mess and only loss of money without fruitful result if the right combination is not chosen.
We prefer Linux server (over Windows server) which are cheaper and more reliable (above 98% servers uses Linux). servers are said to be great with very low downtime, but the cost is very high.
We are using NameCheap hosting service’s Business plan; which as you can see, almost works as good as dedicated server at a lesser cost.
To know more, please visit our website : http://thecustomizewindows.com/

Moving WordPress Blog or Website : Full Guide For Every Situation

Moving Blog or Website can be one of the toughest job, if you think it is quite popular blog, that has been hacked, database corrupted, the server which are you in is worst than a hell, is giving legal threatening to save delicate Microsoft Windows users in SERP – “This Website can harm your computer”. We had to move this WordPress blog such dangerous situation and after that excellent experience of moving WordPress. So, in this article we will guide you for moving WordPress.
Before Moving WordPress
Before Moving WordPress it is important to evaluate the current situation. If you are moving WordPress from one host to another good one, then it is very important to do the work using either a fresh formatted computer with some Linux distro or from someone’s Linux or Mac computer. There is every possibility of having malwares on Windows and Shell commands are easy to run by default from UNIX based system.
Next evaluation is how much you know or rather how much you can learn in the process of Moving WordPress. Marriage, typically happens once in life, so is about Moving WordPress. If you are Moving WordPress for 5th or nth times – you will admit that your host was never good and it was the sole reason for Moving WordPress – you must not get the pain of moving WordPress again by selecting a good host.
Probably you are moving WordPress from a bad server to a good server.

Things to understand Before Moving WordPress

The basic logics for Moving WordPress :
  • You need to download the full FTP content before Moving WordPress. Its quite time taking process. If you are great in using UNIX commands and have the shell access, simply tar it and download on your hard disk.
  • The next step for moving wordpress is to get the MySQL backup. Best is to use PHPMyAdmin and select all the tables and compress it to download.
  • So you got everything ready for Moving WordPress. Ideally this is the proper full backup that should be taken not only for  Moving WordPress, but for regular safeguard too.
But in case you can not access the PHPMyAdmin :
  • Then use some plugin to get the MySQL data needed for Moving WordPress. Search in WordPress repository for such plugins.
  • You need to download the full FTP content as usually.
In situation where you have no access neither FTP nor PHPMyAdmin :
  • In this case there is nice plugin named PressBackup. it, it will make the whole thing in to a single compress file.
WordPress default export function for Moving WordPress :
  • Practically useless for bigger websites as there is restriction in size, but yes this is a method to restore the MySQL database.
  • FTP content as usually will have to be downloaded for this method of Moving WordPress.

WordPress is not a Suitcase to move

The biggest point is, Moving WordPress is basically not an ‘by default’ feature. Quite obviously with any CMS this is true. Best method for Moving WordPress in complex type of case is to use PressBackup plugin. Simply it will recognize which folder and database is of whom. These bad habits of improper setup are usually due to cPanel. With cPanel everyone is WordPress expert now. They run those nasty scripts to install WordPress. Basically they are careless about the FTP or MySQL database hierarchy. If you are thinking if you ask them for such Moving WordPress which they themselves made – they will simply blame the innocent user for nothing or delete many important things to ease their process for Moving WordPress.

Final Steps for Moving WordPress

So you got the backups of the full website. The final steps for Moving WordPress are :
  • Change the Name-Server to point to new server
  • Add the old domain to new server
  • Install a fresh WordPress on it
  • Restore the FTP content
  • Restore the MySQL content

Making moving WordPress easy with shell commands

We use easy methods for moving WordPress for our Managed WordPress service. If you know UNIX commands, its practically becomes very easy. Easy does not means it has no risks – at any time if a backup fails in this process to move, you have to cry. That is why, we usually either use a test domain or use offline Installation to test the backups whether working or not, before moving WordPress.
To know more, please visit our website : http://thecustomizewindows.com/

HTML Pages Generated from WordPress : Implications and Usages

Pages Generated from WordPress has the advantage of being delivered from any server or can be distributed via CDN easily at less cost in some situations. This is very tricky way and safe way for the commercial websites with webpages practically never changes.
HTML Pages Generated from WordPress : Implications and Limitations
We are pointing to use the HTML output from WordPress for following the method to serve HTML Pages Generated from WordPress, just like we described in an tutorial Creating a WordPress Generated Website on Rackspace Cloud Files.
So basically you will have :
HTML Pages Generated from WordPress
  • The slimmed down version of WordPress without any PHP file
  • There is no question of any MySQL database
  • There is no question of getting hacked via SQL injection
  • PHP still can be executed within the HTML pages, if the server supports PHP
  • Simple Apache server is enough
  • No caching is required
  • Page loading Speed will be faster
  • URL can be controlled by .htaccess
  • Easy to add conversion tracking codes
  • Costs less as simply a CDN and domain name can be used for hosting
 Limitations :
However, this method has limitations for using HTML Pages Generated from WordPress for a complete website too :
  • Impractical for blogs or where the dynamic PHP is required too much
  • Technically difficult to implement
  • Demands some PHP to be retained for full potentiality of WordPress
  • Every time FTP access / CDN access is required

HTML Pages Generated from WordPress : More Tips

Now you know how to create virtual appliance on your computer. That knowledge can be combined to make the more versatile. At least some of our websites, which we use WordPress, but need not to change any thing regularly, are quite good candidate to use this method as it preserves the URLs.
To know more, please visit our website : http://thecustomizewindows.com/

Wednesday 27 February 2013

All About Virtualization

All About Virtualization is a comprehensive article on various aspects of Virtualization, be it server or desktop as well as the associated terminologies. Unlike traditional systems, Server Virtualization directly related to the physical processor and the main memory of the host hardware. Simply video card, network adapter, hard disk controller and peripheral being emulated. There are some manufacturers can create the software to connect hardware directly to the virtual machine. In this case, users lose the mobility of the VM. This means that they are no longer in a position to move a VM to the current operation to a different host.Through the use of logical devices, a hardware independence is achieved.…

Read more: All About Virtualization

Working With WordPress MySQL through PHPMyAdmin Video Guide

Working With MySQL through PHPMyAdmin Guide is created for any level of users for power usage for optimization, backup and how it works. In this guide article on Working With WordPress MySQL through PHPMyAdmin, we are giving you the example with , where PHPMyAdmin can be accessed separately and it uses a Fully Qualified Domain Name in case of Rackspace Cloud Sites.
To read more-  http://thecustomizewindows.com/