Linux Community Magazine

Once you have designed the pages on your site, you have to search for asuitable hosting server depending on your website requirements. Webhosting is a process by which your website can be placed with a companyserver to display and maintain your site. The effective web presence isbuilt by using Windows or LinuxWeb Hosting.

Linux Web Hosting permits business corporations to design their websites on the Linux Operating System, which is an open-source variationof the Unix Operating System. Using this hosting for web developmentallows companies to control over the best and most popular inopen-source technologies such as PHP, MySQL, Python, and XML. Most ofthe Linux based web hosting alsoincludes control tools to allow easy management of sites via the webbased technology.

Linux is inclusively an operating system, which operates on a widevariety of hardware, ranging from Intel and AMD CPUs to hardware suchas Digital Alpha computers, PowerPCs, and Silicon Graphicsworkstations. Moreover the most unique characteristic of Linux isthat it is freely shareable.

Linux Web Hosting alsooffers tools like the Gateway Defender anti-spam and anti-virus serviceto help you to remove electronic message threats and avoid theirpossible damaging effects. Gateway Defender tool is your bestprotection against spam and viruses. The Linux Web Hosting is asingle-source solution for all of your website hosting needs.

The shared Linux web hosting is the best principle of users who arelooking for reasonable hosting options for smaller sites. With sharedhosting the resources of your server such as CPU, memory, hard disk,network capacity are shared with other sites. Make sure when selectinga shared web host provider that they have strict policies on how much aserver is loaded up by other sites. The Linux web hosting has a policyof loading restricted sites to overcome the problems of virus. Linux web hosting offers the services like 200MB+ disk space, PHP andMySQL and Perl, User friendly Control Panel, FTP, FrontPage access,multiple email accounts.

RedHat Linux is the conventional Linux web hosting thatinfluences web sites with the characters of consistent and dynamicplatform. The most affordable and reliable web site hosting packagesare Linux based. The features included with these packages aremultitasking, virtual memory, the best TCP/IP drivers, multi-usercapacity tools and so on.

You require professional assistance to know about Linux web hosting andhave to be cautious on choosing a web hosting company that providesthis product. To help you in searching for these services werecommend using a reliable WebHosting Directory.

About the author: Since 1998 Compare Web Hosts has been providingvaluable and comprehensive information on cheap web hosting companiesand their services. The information is verified and provided objectively. Our aim is to offer people cheap web hosting, dedicated servers, web hosting reviews, managed server, windows and linux hosting, asp and coldfusion web hosting.

Introduction on Web Hosting: A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own websites accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies or individual those provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Service scope: The scopes of hosting services are very wide. Web page hosting is generally sufficient only for personal web pages. As the in the question of complex sites, this calls for a more comprehensive package that provides database support and application development platforms like PHP, Java, and ASP.NET that facilitates customers installing scripts for applications like forums and content management somewhat like e-commerce for which SSL is also required. The web hosts may also provide a Web interface control panel (e.g. cPanel or Hosting Controller) for managing the Web server, installing scripts an d other services like e-mail. Obtaining hosting, Web hosting is often provided as part of a general Internet access plan; there are many free and paid providers offering these services. Such considerations include database server software, scripting software, and operating system. Most hosting providers provide Linux-based web hosting which offers a wide range of different software. A typical configuration for a Linux server is the LAMP platform: Linux, Apache, My SQL, and PHP. Web Hosting in Pakistan: Pakistan is also making its mark in the web hosting business, many companies and individuals host web sites of not only in its own country but also other Asian countries and other countries in American and European continents. The Pakistani web hosts also offer other services like SEO (Search Engine Optimization), email-marketing, web-site evaluation and banner evaluation and mini site development at different prices and rates depending on the web-site to be hosted. Web Hostin g Provider: Your business name] also provide web hosting services for personal web pages and complex company websites for free. A typical configuration for a Linux server is the LAMP platform: Linux, Apache, My SQL, and PHP. Web Hosting in Pakistan: Pakistan is also making its mark in the web hosting business, many companies and individuals host web sites of not only in its own country but also other Asian countries and other countries in American and European continents. We provide 20 MB space with 500 MB bandwidth which is a greatly considerable offer provided that the client should already be having its own domain, along with these We allow user at our host to create My Sql database, Sub domain, perform unlimited email forwarders, Domain Parking and Web static's to view the traffic flow. This offer package is beneficial personal and small business community interested to generate revenue through google adsense. We use most of the web hosting scripts from fantastic scripts which are like one click installation provided by the world famous developers, no programming experience required for that. When you join Google's Adsense program, Google will place Adsense ads on your site that are directly related to the topic that you are writing about. When a visitor clicks on one of the ads, you are paid for that click. The amount you are paid will depend on what the advertiser is paying for that ad and only Google knows that. The more traffic you get to your site, and the higher your click through rate (CTR), the more money you can earn.

I've always preferred to make money constantly even if the project is only half done or in progress. I find it gives me incentive to keep going.

Indeed, complex features, like e-commerce, database utilities and bulky dynamic pages invite different nature of web hosting requirements than a much simpler and lighter web site. Obviously small scale web masters cannot afford to surpass their budgetary constraints in order to chase technology at its latest. In the given scenario, triggers on the search for cheap and efficient web hosting services for across the board scales and sizes of websites by their respective web masters. And as the quest for cheap web hosting services assumes pace, all hopes turn to Linux web host services for obvious reasons.

Linux web hosting, being an open source software product, is not only substantially cheaper, but also provides a lot of scope for customizations and enhancements at advanced stages. Apparently, Linux - based hosting is most popular with small scale business owners vying to make it big on World Wide Web.

Delving deeper into the advantages of Linux hosting over windows -based hosting reveals that there are different layers of reasons that put Linux -based web host services over and above the Windows -based web host services.

To begin with, the licensing fee for Linux hosting plan is way lower than Windows hosting that contributes to its cheaper status.

Further, Linux web hosting servers can support much more complex nature of websites with equal ease as they sustain the simpler websites. What's most noteworthy about it is that quality is not at all compromised in the process.

Also, a Linux hosting server is conveniently convertible to a Windows based website without any hullabaloo.

Linux web host services are compatible with all kinds of web - based database systems, including My-SQL and MS-SQL. Likewise, all kinds of open source scripting languages like My-SQL, PHP and Perl can easily communicate with your website through Linux web hosting.

Not to mention, the extent of security offered by Linux based web hosting services is matchless, as compared to any other hosting service.

Given the breadth of advantages of Linux web hosting, coupled with both technology and ambitions on a rise; it is ubiquitously witnessed on a global scale that there are more companies working on the Linux hosting, than on any other web host services. Linux web hosting is an easily predictable future of all web host services, because it is safe, fast, friendly and cheap.

This post assumes a working knowledge of Windows and Linux, but if you're the family tech support guy, then you're probably good to go.

Whenever I build or rebuild a computer for my family I always plan ahead. I leave about 20 GB free at the end of the hard drive for a restore partition. What this restore partition does is allow me to image their newly installed (and clean) hard drive for future restore.

As you know, once that PC is out of your hands it will be infected with every virus and piece of malware known to man. If your relatives are like my parents, then every person who comes to their house must bring a CD or DVD full of infected software resulting in endless calls to me because "it's slow" or "the computer is acting weird".

Here is my Hard Drive layout.

Install Windows and Applications

I then go ahead and install the necessary software programs on the D: drive. Here's what I typically give them (in addition to the Antivirus software I already mentioned).

I use free software when I can. They brought me the PC because they are too cheap to pay to get it fixed so we all know there's no money coming our way. Ah the curse of being the family IT guy!

Once I get the extra software packages all installed (on the D: drive) I re-scan with Antivirus.

Linux Install (Dual Boot) aka restore partitionNow comes the fun part, I reboot off of a linux CD (typically Debian or Ubuntu) and install a "core" system on the partition I originally set aside at the very end of the hard drive.

Here's where the magic happens. I chose a core install so I do all of this via command line in a shell. After the install reboot and make sure that you have the grub boot loader options for linux and for Windows listed.

Once you are booted into linux log in and modify the grub loader to simplify it. I like it to have Windows listed first and as the default OS then below that have it say "Emergency Restore CAUTION" instead of "linux" or whatever it would have said before.

Install partimage and sudo packages with this command: "apt-get install partimage sudo"

Imaging and minor shell scriptingVerify your partition names with "fdisk -l". I have /dev/hda1 yours might be /dev/sda1 or some other setup. Make sure to use whatever your C: drive corresponds to instead of /dev/hda1.

create an image of the c: drive for restore purposes"partimage -b -z1 -c -d -o save /dev/hda1 /opt/Windows-image-file"

Now there should be a fairly large file in /opt called Windows-image-file (or whatever you called it)

I then create a script in /opt called partimage-restore.sh (again make sure to use your partition if it's not /dev/hda1)

#!/bin/shsudo partimage restore -b -z1 -f2 /dev/hda1 /opt/Windows-image-file

Make sure to "chmod +x /opt/partimage-restore.sh" so that the file is executable.

Here's where I like to run the script "/opt/partimage-restore.sh" in theory it should reimage the c: drive then auto reboot.

If it successfully reimages the windows partition and reboots, check out the Windows install and make sure it all works properly.

If all is well reboot, go back into linux.

Now the real test. Log out of linux, log back in as "restore" and the reimage should auto run and reboot. If not something is amiss, read this post again or Google that stuff. If it does work, return PC tonaiveend user, I mean "really great close relative".

Happy Ending to the Inevitable support callNow next time your relatives, friends, or other high maintenance support user calls you with "it's slow" or "it's just not working right", you can walk them through the restore procedure:

Since we backed up files, moved My Documents to D: and we installed all applications on D: there should be very little data loss.

This makes full PC restore a matter of minutes instead of a phone call that lasts for hours.

If you are a computer enthusiast and want to experiment a little with the Operating System of your computer or tired with virus, malware, adware or spyware you might consider an Operating System which is both secure, fast and at the same time free, try Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu Linux which is just a distribution of Linux Operating System is available free of cost. You need to download the ISO file and burn it using your favorite CD/DVD burning software or if you have a slow internet connection but still want to try out the Operating System you can order for a CD from Ubuntu's home page. Ubuntu Linux is available for Desktop, servers and Notebook. Ubuntu Linux licensed by a UK based company Canonical Limited. This implies that anyone can reuse, study and modify the code and that the code is free and can be freely distributed or copied.

Ubuntu Linux was first released in the year 2004 October. After that Canonical does release a version after every six months and a LTS version (Long Time support) after two years. The LTS version was so called because Canonical will give support for this version for three years and five years for Server. The last LTS version was released in April 2010 and hence was called version 10.04. The naming convention is YY.MM. After six months in the month of October 10th 2010 the next version was launched by Canonical which was naturally 10.10. The next version will be probably 11.04 which should be released in the year 2011 in the month of April.

Before proceeding with features and other important aspects let's see how to install Ubuntu Linux. Some may have conception installing Linux is very tough and you need a UNIX conception if you want to install Ubuntu. But things have changed over the years and now loading Linux is very easy. For Linux set up support, you can talk to a remote computer support service provider. The full installation is GUI based where a click of mouse is sufficient for things to be done quickly. Further if you are extremely happy with your existing Operating System and you don't want to remove it you can use the installation CD of Ubuntu Linux as a Live CD.

This means that you don't need to install or create partition for trying out Ubuntu Linux. Just boot your computer by selecting CDROM drive as first boot device and you will get a screen where you will be given options of either to Try Ubuntu Linux or Install Ubuntu. Choose Ubuntu only if you are absolutely sure and backed up all your data. Or else click Try Ubuntu. In no time you will get the desktop with complete set of software like Open Office, Firefox browser, Movie Player and other software programs as well.