HostEase Hosting Blog

PHP5: Hypertext Preprocessor, PHP is a powerful and easy-to-use scripting language.
With the fast updating of PHP, the coming of PHP5 official version marks a new era of PHP in July 2004. PHP5′s greatest feature is the introduction of object-oriented mechanisms with the retaining of the downward compatibility. In addition, the integration of aspects of the object is no longer a problem. PHP5 can also improve the function of creating dynamic images to support a variety of image formats (such as PNG, GIF, TTIF, JPGE, etc.). It is very simple and efficient to make image processing. And PHP5 can use a series of powerful ways to deal with XML documents. Its future development prospects must be impressive.

MySQL Database: It is an open source relational database management system because of its speed, reliability and adaptability concern. MySQL database system uses database management language – Structured Query Language (SQL) for database management. It provides programming language and other programming interfaces (APIs) to support a variety of characters segment type. The combination of MySQL and PHP can provide some effective methods and practical tools for dealing with database operations perfectly. The enhancement of the Web-based database and speed of implementation of the project are absolutely wonderful. Many large web sites use mysql database so that mysql development prospects are very bright.

CGI: Common Gateway Interface .It is a tool that can make other programs on the machine connects with HTTP server and the procedure should be run on a network server. The vast majority of CGI programs are used to explain the process data from a form input information and generate a corresponding treatment in the server, or the appropriate information back to the browser. CGI program can also make web pages with interactive features.

PERL: Practical Extraction Report Language, Perl is a high-level language which has the power and flexibility to show high performance. As scripting languages, Perl does not require the compiler and linker to run the code, but all you have to do is to write and tell Perl to run programs only. This means that Perl programming problem for the small quick solutions is very satisfactory. Perl interpreter, as open source free software, can be run on most operating systems. People can easily migrate to different operating systems. Perl is a language to complete the task. In the beginning, Perl on the design as simple tasks can be simplified without losing the ability to address difficult issues of language. It can be very easy to operate digital, text, files and directories, computers and networks, in particular, is a procedural language.

Python: It is an object-oriented computer programming language, which is also a powerful and complete general-purpose language. With 10 years of history, Perl is a mature and stable programming language. This language has a very simple and clear syntax features, suitable for the completion of a variety of high-level task, and can run on almost all of the operating system. At present, this language is related to the rapid technological development, the rapid expansion of the number of users and relevant resources.

SSI: Server Side Include is a server-based web production technology. The content is sent to the browser before you can use the “server-side include” directive text, graphics, or application of information in web pages. It is a simple way to use the include file. , this statement is directed into the appropriate Web server, moreover, the use of include files can be done only in one place.

Cronjobs: Cron jobs are scheduled tasks that take place at predefined times or intervals on the server. A cron job is a series of simple tasks executed from a script file in Linux. Cpanel offers this screen as a tool for setting up cron jobs you have already done on the server.

Curl: It is a file transfer tool working to use URL syntax on the command line. Curl language is also a programming language, which was designed to write network program. To make Curl run smoothly, an operating environment must be installed on client-side.. It is very easy to learn programming with high efficiency and support multiple inheritance, generic data types such as object-oriented programming language.

GD: graphic device. As an image toolkit and graphics library, GD is an extension of php processing library. GD library provides a range of APIs to process images. GD library can help to process or generate images.
ImageMagick: It is a stable set of tools and development kits that can be used to read, write and deal with a variety of basic format of the image files. People can not only gain web applications according to the needs of dynamically generated images, but also make an image or picture sequence of changes in the size, rotation, sharpening, and the results of operations can be kept in the same format .The operation of the picture can be carried out through the command line, but also can be programmed to complete. Now, ImageMagic could focus on performance and providea stable API. It is a totally free powerful tool.

Gzip/Deflate: Gzip has become a commonly-used data compression format, or a file format. GZIP encoding on the HTTP protocol is used to improve the web application performance technology. GZIP compression technology allows users to experience a faster speed for the websites. There are two obvious advantages, one is to reduce the storage space, the other is to transfer files across the network to reduce the transmission time. It is very convenient and easy to use. Deflate has changed into Zip which can provide a free compression utility gradually applied in more fields. Compressed files were not allowed to read data from stand-alone document. Zip is a very simple difference in compressed archive format for each file.

PDOmysql: The PHP Data Objects (PDO) extension defines a lightweight, consistent interface for accessing databases in PHP. Each database driver implements the PDO interface can expose database-specific features as regular extension functions. People cannot perform any database functions using the PDO extension by itself; they must use a database-specific PDO driver to access a database server. PDO provides a data-access abstraction layer so that people use the same functions to issue queries and fetch data.

Zend Optimizer: It can make the optimized code increase the php application’s execution speed. The principle is achieved for those who have run to optimize the code generated, prior to implementation by the compiler. Normally,, the implementation of ZO can not make the php program much faster. This means that site visitors can browse the web faster to complete more tasks It also means faster response can save hardware investment and enhance the services provided by websites. Therefore, the use of ZO, is equivalent to increasing e-commerce profitability. ZO can bring php users many benefits, especially those who operate the site. Running php program can significantly reduce the server cpu load and response time

phpMyAdmin: Based on PHP, phpMyAdmin is a MySQL library management tool which build up on websites with web-based framework. People can manage the entire MySQL server and single database. In order to achieve the purpose, they will need to set MySQL users reasonably. phpMyAdmin is a third-party tool included with Cpanel, used for manipulating MySQL databases over the Internet. Using phpMyAdmin, they can add and drop databases, create, alter, and delete tables, add, edit, and delete fields, execute SQL statements, and manage users, keys, and permissions. It is very powerful.

.htaccess: .htaccess files (or “distributed configuration files”) provide a method for the directory to change the configuration, that is, in a particular document directory, an instruction can be placed in one or more documents to the role of this directory and all subdirectories. And the command used is limited. Administrators can set up Apache to AllowOverride directive. Htaccess can help us to achieve such purposes: Folder and password protection the user automatically redirect, Error pages customizing changing your file extensions, banning a specific IP address of the user, to allow only specific IP addresses of users, to prohibit directory listings, and the use of other files as index files, and some of the features.

Custom php.ini : it is a configuration file in which shared web hosting can be revised. It is very convenient to deal with such problems promptly.

Custom error page: An error page informs a visitor when there is a problem accessing your site. Each type of problem has its own code. For example, a visitor who enters a nonexistent URL will see a 404 error, while an unauthorized user trying to access a restricted area of your site will see a 401 error. Basic error pages are automatically provided by the web server (Apache). However, if you prefer, you can create a custom error page for any valid HTTP status code beginning with 4 or 5.

Cpanel: Cpanel is the best among all the control panels available. It has many features which are attractive because of these easy-to-use and friendly elements. It is very popular and inexpensive, but it uses Linux only as its platform. Cpanel allows people to manage their sites completely and give them total control in management as a next generation management software application and website configuration. The Graphical User Interface is very easy- going and friendly to use freely.

Hotlink protection: Hotlink protection prevents other websites from directly linking to files on your website. Other sites will still be able to link to any file type that you don’t specify below. An example of hotlink would be using a <img> tag to display an image from one site to somewhere else on the net. The result is that the other site is stealing your bandwidth. One should ensure that all sites linked directly. Hotlink protection is actually using a server-side programming to prevent software through the url filtering technology.

Awstats: Awstats is a free, powerful and personalized tool to bring advanced network, traffic, FTP or mail server statistics graph. This log analyzer shows all possible information contained in your log on several graphical web pages as a CGI or from the command line. It uses part of the archives to handle a large number of log files quickly. And it can analyze log files from all major server tools.

Tags: .htaccess, Awstats, CGI, Cpanel, Cronjobs, Curl, Custom error page, GD, Gzip, hostease, Hotlink protection, MySQL Database, PERL, PHOMysql, PHP5, phpMyadmin, Python, SSI, Zend Optimizer

Softlayer Data Center is one advantage of our HostEase. We make our servers locate in Softlayer Data Center. HostEase just employs high-quality hardware equipment in the datacenter to provide a wide variety of services for the customers. SoftLayer Data Center is well-known in America. SoftLayer provides global, on-demand data center and hosting services from facilities across the U.S. It can take advantage of best-in-class connectivity and technology to innovate industry leading. It also gets automated solutions that empower enterprises with complete access, control, security, and scalability.

SoftLayer was founded in 2005. As a powerful strength in web hosting industry in the United States, It likes a dark horse full of vigor. There are a lot of good remarks about it in many hosting forums so that customer satisfaction is very high.

By the end of December 2007, following the SoftLayer data center in Dallas, United States established the second data center in Seattle- the world’s third largest Internet Data Center. The third data center was built in Washington DC In May 2008.

SoftLayer servers come with one of the industry’s most complete set of standard features and services at no additional cost. 10G optical fiber was adopted to connect various data centers which integrated through proprietary automated tools. SoftLayer data centers have a lot of advantages, such as 40G bandwidth to the rack, 100% Cisco network, redundant backbones, Cisco ASA hardware firewall, virus and spam filtering and server 10/100/1000Mbps port access options.

They provide high-performance web hosting with affordable price. What they offer can cater to those people who are very satisfied with all things in accordance with foreign customers comment on their best services .What’s more; many clients from China enjoy the fast speed to visit the websites easily.

SoftLayer data centers can offer dual-processor single-core server, dual-processor multi-core servers, quad-processor multi-core servers, equipped with powerful hard-proof facilities. The industry’s management and data transfer via VPN over dedicated carriers segregated from public network.

SoftLayer’s innovative infrastructure, solutions, and automation capabilities provide unique advantages for virtualized solutions and a truly virtual data center so that it is very promising and prosperous.

Tags: hardware equipment, hostease, Softlayer data center

HostEase.com provides three kind of shared web hosting packages: Blog hosting, basic hosting and business hosting. Business hosting package provides free dedicated IP and other two packages also support dedicated IP. Why should we use dedicated IP? Do you know the advantage of dedicated IP?

We all know that we can visit a website via the IP after using a dedicated IP. But this will be impossible when we are using a shared IP. And there are still two obvious advantages of using dedicated IP:

1. Using dedicated IP can circumvent associated risks from shared IP condition, that is, if a single user is shielded by associated organization or even a country for suffering attacks (such as DDOS), violations (such as pornography), or just because of the abrupt policy, other users will also be implicated. Therefore, when using the shared IP, the whole server will be affected if there is something wrong with one user. Such problem can be only resolved by using dedicated IP.

2. A dedicated IP can greatly enhance the opportunity of being included by search engines. Search engines may think the website has a good quality if a dedicate IP is corresponding to it, and then raise its level when including it. While in the situation of shared IP, there are hundreds of websites under an IP, search engines may think the quality of the website is not high, and accordingly lowers its level when including it.

Therefore, if you plan to purchase shared hosting from HostEase.com, it’s sensible for you to buy a dedicated IP at the same time. It will only cost you $2.5 per month and I’m sure you will benefit much from it. It’s also possible for HostEase’s old customers to upgrade in their client area so that they can get a dedicated IP.

Tags: hostease, IP

To provide service on a best-effort basis, HostEase schedules upgrade or maintenance regularly.

The recent upgrade schedule will fall on 1:00 ~3:00 am, Jan. 21st, PST, which is an upgrade of HostEase’s Customer Home. During the maintenance, the service of customer login and product order will be unavailable; customers may access their hosting accounts through cPanel (http://yourdomainname/cpanel). www.hostease.com will also be accessible then.

HostEase Technical Department
Jan.20, 2010

Tags: hostease, upgrade

Sometimes, you may encounter such problem you have to get a new domain name for your website, while you’re worrying about losing the current rank in Google or other search engines. For example, you want to change your current hostease.com domain into a simpler and more catchy one such as host.com. However, the hostease.com has already established in Google and other search engines and even ranks high. Therefore, you may worry about if the rank of your website will drop after the domain name is changing.

Well, of course it will affect Google and other search engines rank. But if you can do it as follows, it will be the best way for you to keep the original rank of your site.

To relocate the site, you’d better follow these steps:

1.First of all, test the contents of the migration process of the entire site by moving a directory or sub domain. Then use the 301 redirect feature to redirect the original site to your new website. This method can be adopted by the search engines: your site has been permanently relocated.

2.Check whether your new site’s pages can appear in the search engine’s search results or not. If you are satisfied on the small-scale migration, you can move the entire site. Please do not redirect all the traffic of the old site pages to your new home page. Although this across-the-board redirection will avoid a 404 error, it can not provide a good user experience. Although the page-to-page redirect (each page of the old site are redirected to the corresponding page of the new site) will bring about a greater workload, but will also give you a more consistent user experience and clarity. If the web pages of the new site cannot exactly match the old one, we must at least ensure that each page of the old site should be redirected to a page with similar content on the new site.

3.If the domain name is changed because of website renaming or redesign, the migration can be divided into two phases: the first stage, move your web site; the second phase, start re-design. In doing so, you could not only control the user experience at every stage of the change in migration, but also make the entire process more smoothly. Change control to a minimum allows you to more easily identify and solve a variety of unforeseen circumstances.

4.Check your site’s internal and external links. Ideally you should contact each administrator of other sites which are linked to your site, so that they can link them to the corresponding page under your new domain name. You should also check and update all the internal links of your old site, so that they point to the new domain name. When you have the site ready for the new server, you can use a link checking tool to verify whether your new site links are all available. This is particularly important, if your original content included absolute links rather than relative links words.

5.In order to prevent confusion and chaos, you’d better continue to hold authority control of the domain name to the original website at least 180 days.

6.Add your new web site to the Webmaster Tools account and verify your ownership of the site. Create and submit a sitemap to show all the new web site URL, so that search engines will know your new site’s content is now available for crawl.

7.Finally, ensure that your new and old sites in the webmaster tools are verified, and check crawl errors regularly to ensure that the 301 redirect from the old site is working, at the same time the new site will not show the 404 error that we do not want to see.

Tags: Domain Name, search engine rank, traffic

Choosing a domain name may be one of the most important parts of website online development. Your domain name is your identity on the web, which is included in your web hosting package. There’s a good chance that you’ve already picked a domain name for your website before picking a web host. But is your domain name suitable for your website? Will your visitor be impressed by your domain name? In a word, will your domain name bring you benefit?

Here are some tips on how to pick a great domain name:

1. Memorable
This is the first keyword of a great domain name.
With the bookmark feature of web browsers, Internet users now don’t have to note down the domain names of their favorite websites. But a memorable domain name can impress the visitors a lot and make your website more easily found by others.
The features of memorable domain names:
*Short enough
*Easily understood

Car.com is such a memorable domain name, not only short (three letters, and there are certainly domain names shorter than “car”.) but also easily understood. As you can see, the content of the website is mainly about cars. If you are interested in cars and find car.com helpful, the next time you are looking for information on cars, you can simply type www.car.com in the address bar of your browser. This is the magic of a memorable domain name. While as a matter of fact, nearly all short domain names have already been squatted or registered.

Fortunately, an easily understood domain name will also impress your visitors. Here “easily understood” means a visitor can judge the appropriate content of a website from its domain name without first accessing the website. For example, Hostease.com would be the domain name of a hosting provider who wants to ease users’ hosting, and wordpress.org would publish information on a blogging system called WordPress.
When you are picking a domain name, have “memorable” in mind.

2. consistent with your content
Perhaps you’ve got a short domain name or an interesting one, but this domain name is independent of your content, sorry, this is not a great domain name. Such domain name can be embarrassed. Imagine the scene you enter car.com in address bar with the result of information on clothes on the web page, you will probably leave with disappointment.

So while picking a domain name, try your best to integrate it with your niche.

3. be cautious about top-level domains (TLD)
A perfect domain name is very important, while a suitable top-level domain also affects a lot.
According to a report of VeriSign, by the end of May, 2009, “.com” is still the most popular TLD. And .com, .cn, .de, .net, .org, .uk, .info, .nl, .eu, .biz are respectively top 10 TLDs in terms of size.
Which one will you choose as your top-level domain?

4. Purchase domain name through top-lever domain registry or well-known domain name resellers
In consideration of the stability of your website, please purchase domain name through top-level domain registry.

5. If the domain name you want has already been registered by someone else….
If the domain name you like has already been registered by others, check on which day will the domain name expire, then go to a domain registry or a web host and wait for the name to expire, and grab it as quickly as possible.

Alternatively, consider another domain name.

Hurry up, check for availability now and get a domain name of your own.

Tags: Domain Name

When it comes to getting the right web hosting plan, there are a lot of factors that you should take into consideration. There are thousands of web hosting companies, tens of thousands of hosting plans, among which there’s only a few are really suitable for your website. In order to get the right one for you, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

What is the type of the website you are going to host?

If you have a small website or blog for personal use, estimate the appropriate resource the website will consume and purchase a hosting plan that provides a little more resource than you estimated in case of exceptional situation. If the hosting plan offers less than your need, your website will not run smoothly, and a hosting plan that offers too much will make you suffer unwanted cost. Your small website can be host on the same server with some other small websites to cut down the cost, but you shouldn’t need any more than that, so it won’t be an issue.

When you are hosting a business site or portal site, it is important to make sure that you get strong web hosting. A dedicated web host is often the best choice for larger sites, which means that the bandwidth you have belongs only to you. You don’t have to share it with anyone else. Even if there are a lot of people on your site as shoppers or readers, your site won’t run slowly or fail to load.

How much do you have?

Web hosting plans vary greatly in price.

Some of them are cheap. You can get a web host including 2000M storage, 1 domain and other features with only $3.95 per month.

Some of the hosting plans cost more than others. The most expensive type of hosting is collocation hosting, where you actually own a server, or make payments on it, which can cost over $1000 per month.

Some cost nothing (free web hosting) but they will put ads on your web page and you are limited by a number of features and resources. Free web hosting is a good choice for personal web pages with very little traffic.
What script is your website on?

It is important to check out the scripts a web hosting plan support. You will never choose a web hosting plan that doesn’t support the script your website developed on. And it will also be a mess if you want to change your ASP into a PHP one but your web hosting plan doesn’t support PHP.

Some common programming language scripts include ASP, APS.NET, PHP and JSP.

What your website need is at the discretion of you, don’t let the hosting provider talk you into something you don’t want or is less than you have expected.

Will you get enough support and guarantee for the hosting plan?

7×24 customer service support will benefit you a lot. Besides, unconditional money-back guarantee within a certain period is your best bet. With a money-back guarantee, you can demand a refund whenever you find your website unstable or the service unsatisfactory and minimize your loss.

Tags: business, money-back, personal, Web Hosting, Website