gunwitch

Whoa! I'm for a 3.5+ years with you, and have known you guys are cool, but would never have thought you have an access to the control panel of the Great Firewall of China and can handle unblock requests.

Yes, Fowler is right -- once bots found the site is active, they will be hammering to a list of the standard paths for CMSs, which have known vulnerabilities. If you have a CMS installed, which captures 404 errors into a log file (like Drupal do), you'll see a hell LOT of such automated requests. From time to time I'm getting such for the Microsoft Word directories and .dll's You should make sure the scripts you run are updated to their latest versions, including the plug-ins you use. Known vulnerabilities there are frequently used to compromise a website and it doesn't depend on a host you use. Also don't save password in your FTP client -- a lot of viruses have the default function to search for the FTP clients installed on an infected machine and steal passwords saved there.

I have never been running my own VPS, but looks like I may need to upgrade soon and now trying to decide if I'll be able to manage it properly. I'm using HawkHost shared services for 3+ years, but everything is pre-configured there and it's CloudLinux. So could you please advice: which OS is the better option, if amount of memory is low (most basic VPS with 256 or 384 MB of RAM)? CentOS 5 or 6? Or Debian 5? (I don't think that I'll be considering Fedora, Ubuntu or Gentoo) According to your experience, do these OSs somehow differ in speed and memory requirements?

I have a similar question: When ordering a new VPS, on step 3 there are following options available: Configure Server: NS1 Prefix: [...] eg. ns1(.yourdomain.com) NS2 Prefix: [...] eg. ns2(.yourdomain.com) So according to your answer, there is no way to somehow "link" the NSs mentioned above with the HawkHost? Like redirect them to nsX/nsY.hawkhost.com? I'm totally new to VPS (but experienced with the HHs shared hosting) and just didn't understand how I can run my own NSs on the same machine they need to point requests to. Although, I know about 3rd-party DNS services (and even use ZoneEdit for one of my sites), but not completely understand how they will work standalone (I use ZoneEdit as an extra NS, so it fetches all the config info from HH nameservers). Or I'll just need to type all the records manually?

My "not-even-completely-started-yet" Wordpress site is being totally hit by comment spammers (300+ comments/day), so I started looking into the caching plugins. What I understood is that W3 Total Cache is great for blogs hosted at VPS or dedicated servers, cause it has plenty of additional settings, which allow you to rock big time if you have access to the server settings. I'm on the HH.Shared and my site isn't that popular, so I would really like to hear some reviews from the users of Hyper Cache or Quick Cache. These plug-ins seem to do the job and look like a good alternative (at least) for the first time.

Thanks! I have added SPF record manually (wasn't that hard) and enabled DomainKeys in cPanel. Although the DomainKeys section displays a strange warning, emails sent by phpList, are shown as DK signed in Gmail and Yahoo

Thanks, Brian. This is what I actually thought, but decided to make sure and ask here. So, if I can't set PTR-record, what else I can do to protect my newsletters from going into 'Spam'? Should I add the SPF-record (TXT), which allows 208.43.246.222-static.reverse.arandomserver.com to send emails on behalf of my domain?

I have a website hosted on one of HH's shared servers. Now I'm planning to start using PHPList (mailing script) for sending newsletters to registered users. So I started reading about that and found that correctly set PTR record is important for proper delivery of my e-mails (avoiding spam filters). Currently my PTR-record is: 222.246.43.208.in-addr.arpa IN PTR 208.43.246.222-static.reverse.arandomserver.com Can I make it more "personal" (e.g. include my domain name) if I'm on shared server?

OK, thanks. Just added my credit card to the profile, as it was before expiry. Unfortunately I'm far away from Canada, but my credit card company/bank doesn't charge any extras (I have seen here your notice about that before). I'm paying with MasterCard, linked to the non-US$ bank account.

My credit card has expired recently, so it was removed from payment profile and now I have to set up a new payment method. So I decided to add my 2 cents of appreciation of your business and ask before paying my invoice: which way of payment is better FOR YOU? (lower fees, less hassle to withdraw, etc...) Credit card or Paypal? I can use any of them

Is there any noticeable functional difference between these two versions of PHP? As for me, I completely share Cody's opinion regarding the "test period" for new software releases. This is a good practice and I see absolutely no reason for the rush here

Interesting news, thanks Tony! What about HH, will you purchase server(-s) in Europe if SL open a new DC there?

Voted and sent link to friends. IMO, you guys completely deserve to be the first :]

I'm unsure about licensing details of these scripts, but I think that HH pays some money for using them. As for me, I'd prefer not to have any of such auto installer scripts, but get a bit cheaper service instead (actually your prices are already very good ). I never use anything like this, cause I prefer to control everything by myself. Also, modern scripts are user-friendly (and getting easier all the time), so I don't think that many of your customers will use any of these script packages. P.S. I completely understand that not all of your clients are techically-minded, so maybe it's better to offer auto installers on some servers, while keeping others for more geekish persons P.P.S. Also I think that making some servers "less supported" and offering them to IT people at discounted price isn't bad idea at all - you can get more clients, but save on customer support and server management (due to lower amount of installed apps). But currently this is just an idea which needs to be tested.