Author Archives: Kenny

About Kenny

Kenny is owner of webhostpark and has been working in hosting industry since 2006. We provide unbiased hosting reviews and release the latest promo news. Follow me on Google plus

Why Inmotion Hosting is Best for Joomla?

why inmotion hosting is best for joomla?

Supporting joomla! is simply installation of PHP & Mysql database on hosting server. What makes Inmotion Hosting different than other providers? Being a leading and reputable business web hosting provider, inmotion is configured to work the best for most open sourced CMS softwares like wordpress, drupal etc. How it performs when referring to Joomla? In order to show their efforts in supporting this project, we carried out this article with in depth reviews.

For people who use joomla! for website development, mostly it's going to be a medium to large size project. That means you're going to add lots of stuff to the framework for various requirements. Because of this, a cheap server hosting service can not handle it properly since it's always heavily oversold. So before you search a potential joomla hosting service, make sure to learn about the logic.

Joomla World Conference Activity

Inmotion Hosting has been joomla! world conference continous platinum sponsor. They join and discussion with joomla passionate developers from each corner of the world. By sponsoring such events, the inmotion tech team knows exactly how this project being promoted by the community and what kind of technologies used. In this way their people can fully understand the software server end requirements in order to optimize their hosting server properly. Those optimization such as web server setup and PHP/mysql configuration etc are all based medium to large size websites requirements and live experience.

Inmotion Joomla Hosting Plans

There's no dedicated hosting plan for joomla! because their people fully optimized all hosting servers to handle the script properly. They highlight their service with advanced security, performance and support. Inmotion group provides following joomla! hosting advantages to ensure you have a secure and high performance website.

Blazing-fast Hardwares
Inmotion group use 100% DELL server production and leading hardware configurations. Server hard drives are all 15,000 RPM SAS disks in a RAID-10 configuration. I/O speed is max optimized via proper server structure and network configuration.

Besides hardware level configuration, InmotionHosting also deeply optimized their network. In order to deliver the best connectivity to people from different locations, their group setup data centers on both east and west coasts with max speed zone. They also have wide cooperation with lots of reputable CDN service to shorten your website response time in different place.

inmotion joomla hosting features

Enhanced Server Security
All servers are protected by some of the most secure firewall and network monitoring systems in the industry. Each server is installed leading anti-virus softwares with frequent updates. System OS and all application softwares are kept up to date with frequent security improvements and patches. For Joomla! applications, it's executed by suPHP which is the best practice for php protection. It's not available from most other hosting service because it requires more server resources to work with.

Powerful Joomla Support and Tutorials
Inmotion Hosting group premier support team provides full time support for all hosting products. Sales, tech and even billing support is provided 24*7 from our personal experience. Besides the support availability, their professional and helpful working style mostly impressed us.

With regard to Joomla!, their tech team provides detailed documentations on how to install and use the software. Their FAQ and Video tutorials can be recognized the standard knowledge base for this cms.

Besides all above points, what really makes inmotion hosting leading in supporting joomla is their selling policies. Being a respected business hosting provider, they have been strictly followed no overselling rules so every server has sufficient hardware resource to deal with different size websites properly. That's the real point makes their service outstanding.

Inmotion Hosting Joomla plans promo

It's easy to get your joomla site hosted on inmotion hosting server. Their service is 100% standard cpanel backend with one click installer. Joomla installation is simple few clicks in control panel center.

In order to support more clients with their leading service, inmotion hosting has downgraded their price several times and if you register their service today you can enjoy 40% discount. This price absolutely put their hosting on top of cheap hosting lists.

inmotion hosting joomla promo

Is it Safe To host In China?

is it safe to host in china?

Is it safe to host your website on China hosting server? According to a recent US congress report, the Chinese cyber espionage is pretty active that could put your web properties at risk. Especially when referring to the closely connection between Chinas ministry of state security and cloud computing. It's recognized a potential threat to foreign companies who might use this service in this area.

Is that true? Why China is always criticized for internet business? We reviewed a lot of articles from both China and US professionals and concluded following points.

The China's Internet access is not free

It's not about price but the freedom on internet surfing. Comparing to most other areas on the planet, there're too many restrictions. Not to mention what kind of content you can host on website, you are also restricted to visit some websites. For example, the popular websites like youtube, twitter and facebook are not accessible directly. Recently, the IT ministry even require real name registration for internet access which is unbelivable by most people. In year 2012, there're several information leak events on multiple China's famous website. Those information include people's sensitive privacy that could bring critical issues.

It's Not so easy to get a website online

We have briefly introduced the complex process to get your website hosted from a China hosting server. The requirements were updated recently. Users need to provide more detailed personal information based those already submited materials. This includes your full home address, ID card scan and your personal photo with authorized hosting company images. If you can't pass through the ICP license checking, your website will be put offline until you submitted all required information correctly.

That's for website hosting. But now you also need to get ICP license for your domain name. The required information is the same as website license. Basically, if you want to ensure the site to be hosted properly you need to ensure the domain information and website informaiton to be matched.

Aditionally, website contents will be checked by hosting providers and cyber security organizations. You will get warnings once they found any "illegal" material on your website.

The law allows government direct access to electronic communication instruments

Means if there's need, government can access to IT equipments without notification in advance. There's no clear explanation what kind authorization they have but definitely its not good news to users because your web properties do not get necessary protection. Especially when the equipments is connected to oversea service, it brings potential security threat to the entire network.

The real cyber activities

It's not a surprise to read about various cyber espionage activities because it's popular all around the world. The US government itself is even involved. The difference in this country is such activities are from all sides and probably leaded by military organizations.

However, regardless any kind restriction, the main impact is for those big commercial groups because they're handling lots of sensitive information. In China, most personal or enterprise websites are small showcase sites. Few of them doing real business transaction directly. The ecommerce platforms are mainly operated by several popular sites like Alibaba, Taobao and amazon etc. These sites is handling more than 90% ecommerce business.

What if you operate a business in China?

Hosting is no more a complex service today. For big groups they always have their own IT department and all their web properties are hosted on their company servers in their office. To ensure the best security and reliability, it's highly recommended to setup your company IT structure. From recent events from Chinese government, they're doing lots of reforms in multiple areas and foreign telcom services will possiblely share a piece of the market in near future. So the overall security will be improved for sure. If you deeply concern about cyber security, it's suggested host your web property from a reputable oversea server service.

China cyber security reports

BetterServers Review

betterservers review

BetterServers is one of the most popular projects leaded by Matt Heaton – the founder of bluehost and hostmonster. From its official announcement, betterservers is the next generation of technology to come from hosting industry experts with the mission to improve your IT experience. Since 2009, the company setup their own data center structures and powering lots of famous hosting brands with their modern equipments and technologies.

The history of betterservers

Betterservers project was born from bluehost company when Heaton is still CEO there. After years fast business growth, he found some weakness of their server and dc facilities. For example when there's heavy loading then their servers can not handle the traffic properly for guaranteed performance. Thus their team applied "CPU throtting" which is criticized by lots of people. The faster their business grows, the more problems being produced. In order to solve such problems, their management team two popular projects – Betterlinux & Betterservers. At the meanwhile, new data center construction is being prepared.

Products of Betterservers

Betterservers group is aimed at providing the best performance hosting servers. Their products/plans focus on the latest server and network technologies – Cloud. They provide cloud/hybrid servers as well as virtual data center service.

  • Cloud Servers. Fully customizable. CPU cores can be vary from 1 to 32 per instance, DDR3 RAM can be up to 128 GB. You have opportunity to use individual or blocks of IPv4/6 addresses. The biggest difference comparing to all existing server plans is its high speed haredware I/O and network. From live testing, its storage I/O speed is up to 4GB/s.
  • Virtual Data Center. You have opportunity to build your own virtual data centers other than limited by private cloud environment. You will get 8 networks per virtual datacenter with free security setup. VPN is included free so user access to your facilities can be well controlled. The smart dynamic balance design be able to handle any size load and ensures you have enough resource to work with and don't pay extra. There're sophisticated caching and mirroring technology and 10Gbps port speed which is dedicated to your network, means your server will not be slowed down.

Dedicated server and storage service are also being prepared as explained on their website. Generally speaking, their people use the best hardware configuration in their modern data centers to deliver the best performance.

Betterservers and Betterlinux

Relationship between the two names are exactly the same as bluehost and hostmonster. But they're offering different service. Betterservers provides server service directly to hosting groups and individuals while betterlinux is a server optmizer. From their official explanation, all betterservers platforms are optimized using betterlinux. The optimizer is provided as commercial service for $9.9/mon. Once configured, it will optimize your server based its hardware configuration. It's not just one time setup, it will work and monitor your system lively and apply necessary changes if needed. The mission of betterlinux is to ensure you get a secure and high performance server environment.

Their Clients

Till present, the betterservers service is used by multiple leading hosting brands of endurance group including bluehost, hostgator and justhost. It's also used by lots of IT companies who have high requirements to server performance and security.

Because you have opportunity to setup your own virtual data center, you get dedicated resources, security and scalability. The system simply works the same as a physical data center but you don't have to handle the setup & configuration. Everything is prepared by their tech teams, then you get full access to all service. What makes it outstanding is you get a web portal access to all products. You can start/suspend a server directly without logging into the actual server instance. All servers statistics such as CPU/RAM usage and traffic status are lively produced and well organized.

Web portal demo: https://www.betterservers.com/control-center/dashboard

By checking the industry you will find there's not another IT group provides similar service as betterservers. It's mostly like they will be another industry standard in near future. Their successful experience from bluehost and hostmonster will help promote this new service to more and more people. Their products are currently powering some famous hosting services so it's just a matter of time for other companies to follow up.

Check out this video about their CEO introduction for betterservers

Is Justhost Good WordPress Hosting Provider?

is justhost good wordpress hosting provider?

Justhost is one of the most popular budget hosting choice with unlimited feature support. With regarding to wordpress this simple but powerful website script, how does justhost work like? Because most bloggers don't want to invest a lot for simple blog site, thus a cheap service provider like justhost is always hot choice. This article provides a detailed guidance for justhost wordpress support and something you should aware.

Firstly, let's check out the justhost current promo. With no need any coupon code, justhost provides $2.95/mo promotional price which was only available after 50% discount before. It's absolutely good news for everyone who liked their service.

View justhost promotional plan features at http://www.justhost.com

Wordpress Hosting Features

Justhost server is absolutely 100% wordpress compatible. All available features are actually more than enough to support wordpress software. Their unlimited disk storage and mysql databases let you setup multiple websites without paying extra. WordPress is just a part of their hosting spotlights because their service is not just optimized for wordpress but also compatible with lots of other website scripts. Their people even provide a sitebuilder wizard to help with quick website creation in case you don't have one and don't want to deal with technical issues.

Because justhost support a large number wordpress sites on hosting servers. Their tech team provide a resourceful support knowledge base for it. This includes setup FAQs, Video tutorials and step by step guidance in using this software. Recently, their people have applied all available support resources from bluehost/hostgator site since they're now sister brands.

Wordpress Website Performance

With our personal testing on simple wordpress site, the justhost server performance is pretty fast. We loaded a basic wordpress site within 2 seconds during day time. We also tried to add multiple pictures on single page and the waiting time is around 5 seconds. Normally, the server hardware configuration determines website speed directly. Justhost professionals use standard linux server and management control panel software. System OS is CentOS 6.4 with betterlinux optimization. Every server comes with minimum 24GB RAM and Dual core Intel® Xeon processor.

Especially after migrated to bluehost data center, there's more than enough server bandwidth to support existing clients. The modern data center is created to meet up with the next 30 years IT requirements as said from its founder.

Ease of use

Justhost provides standard cpanel hosting service with all add-on service. From control panel center people can install the latest version wordpress by few clicks. Once all files are loaded to your account you can use the platform right away. CPanel is the industry leading control panel software that's used by most users. No matter if you have used this software or not before, you will find its user friendly and profession in handling website service.

Upgrade Availability

Started in middle of this year, justhost provides VPS and dedicated server opportunity to all people. The initial month service is provided with 50% discount. Unlike traditional server plans, the justhost vps and dedicated servers are cloud based with instant provision. Means your server is ready once payment is confirmed. Such advantage is not available from another server company.

Customer Experience

Well, like all other big hosting providers that come with both positive and negative reviews. Justhost received tons of great and bad feedbacks. Their management team did not filter such comments but just provided there directly from testimonial area. Personally, we don't have met any serious problem with justhost service because we just host a simple test site on their server. But that definitely doesn't mean everything is perfect with their service. To use justhost or not will depend your exact requirement. Before you register, you might ask yourself the following questions:

  • How much web storage/traffic do you need?
  • What kind of website you're going to promote?
  • What level support do you need for the website?
  • What kind of uptime you can accept?
  • How much you like to invest for the product?

Basically, the justhost web hosting service is budget choice that's best for small to medium size wordpress site. If you just focus on their low cost plan then most probably it will result in failure. If you could carefully answer above questions then you will be guided in right direction. WordPress is a simple support for most hosting service but since it allows you to promote any kind website, not every hosting service be able to support it properly. You might find it perfect with justhost for simple personal blog, but if you use it for business purpose with big traffic, you probably need a business hosting provider or simply check out their vps server.

justhost $2.95 special promo

Database Concurrent Connections Limit Explained

database concurrent connections limit

Every hosting company can announce to provide unlimited databases but no one can guarantee unlimited concurrent connections. Why is that? This article provides side by side reviews of database concurrent connections and guide on how to use it properly. We'll also guide on how to fix the popular errors caused by concurrent connection limits.

About Database Concurrent Connections

Concurrent connection refers to the number of concurrent open connections to database. We can think in this way to understand this theory, for example there're 100 people opened phpmyadmin on their computers and all of them connected to the same database, here the database concurrent connections are 100. Concurrent connection can be opened manually via database tools or from script connections.

As we know, each connection will use up some server resources. Hence if the number of connections increase then more server resources will be used. If all databases being connected like this on hosting server then performance can not be guaranteed. That's why every hosting provider set a reasonable limit of database concurrent connections.

But please note the limitation is only for mysql database not mssql. There's no such limitation for mssql database.

How to configure Mysql concurrent connection limit?

Mysql concurrent connection limit can be setup during installation. You can also make the change after setup. Take windows server mysql setup. The installer will guide to configure each parameter. Concurrent connection is specified from the last step as showed below

mysql concurrent connections setup

You can also ignore it directly to have mysql running first then define all parameters based your requirements. All mysql configuration is stored in my.ini file from installation directory. For linux server, the file is provided as my.cnf which is normally located at /etc/my.cnf. In this file there's a parameter called "max_connections". You can give the appropriate number based your requirement.

What's the limitation on hosting server? We personally have been working with 10 hosting providers. From our examination, most providers offer 10 or 15 connections per database. One hosting service provides up to 20.

How many concurrent connections we need?

Because concurrent connection is strictly limited and it seems so little, how many we need exactly to power our website? Actually, if our website is programmed properly, we need very few connections to database. A single connection will handle most tasks. What we need to understand is the number of database concurrent connection is not the same as website visits. Your website might be browsed by 1000 users concurrently but it might doesn't require database connection at all. Database connection is opened when your website has to read/write data from/to database such as artice editing, user registration etc. You don't have to open multiple connections to complete those tasks.

But please remember to close the connection after use. Or else it will be always opened there so after you opened connection multiple times the concurrent connections will be huge. Once you reached the server limits, you will get database connection failed error such as "Error establishing a database connection". In order to fix this error, you must contact server admin and run "flush hosts" command to clear out the connections.

In order to operate a healthy database driven website, it's very important to choose a well coded platform no matter if you use cms software or program by yourself. Always remember to close connection after use it. Normally, a popular cms software is pretty reliable because many users have used the platform so the project team could find various bugs then apply fixes quickly.

Top 10 Live Chat Softwares

top 10 live chat softwares

Live chat is perfect solution to keep your website visitors with instant support. No matter if you manage a big a small website, live chat feature adds more scores to your website success. Choosing the right chat software is quite important to simplify and professionalize your support process. Hence, we evaluated the most popular live chat softwares/service and generated a list of top 10 solutions.

The top 10 live chat softwares are provided in two categories: server installer and web app. Server installer requires both server and client end installation while web app can be added directly as regular website software. The first 5 ranks are all server solutions and rest ones are web apps.

Sightmax
One of the most powerful live chat solutions programmed on asp.net platform. Using the latest .net and database technologies, sightmax provides secure and fast communication tunnel for small to large website solutions. It has 52 languages included and multiple packages for different requirements. Spotlights of sightmax include

  • Group/private chat enabled
  • Real time analytics/monitoring
  • Social media included
  • Live view of chat history

Because sightmax is windows software that requires server end installation. If you don't have a server yet or don't want to manage the service by yourself, the sightmax group provides a hosted service where you just need to purchase the amount of operators directly.

Sightmax official site: www.sightmax.com

Livechatinc
The mission of livechatinc is to deliver fast & simple communication between ecommerce owners and shoppers. The software project is supported by 28 passionate IT professionals and trusted by thousands of happy clients. Livechatinc provides total of 3 plans with small technical difference. The biggest advantage of livechatinc is its simplity where you can make quick integration.

Livechatinc official site: www.livechatinc.com

Comm100 Live Chat
Comm100 live chat is designed with the goal to make online chat easy for anyone without professional training needed. Being an award winning chat solution, their service is serving more than 100,000+ registered business users around the world and rated Top 3 in "2013 Best Enterprise Chat Software" on TopTenReviews. 15 days free trial available with no billing info required.

For more details, please visit website www.comm100.com/livechat

Chat4support
A similar live chat solution with sightmax but provides much better price. Chat4support has all necessary functions included for live chat communication like stats report, canned message, keywords research and ticket system. You can also capture screenshot if needed. As low As $6/month you can make full use of available features. You can also purchase the server edition by one time payment if you want to have full control.

Chat4support official site: www.chat4support.com

Liveperson
The most popular choice by lots of business sites. Liveperson is a hosted service based cloud technologies, the service provides much more than traditional chat softwares. It comes chat, voice, personalized messages and video chat, it's able to learn from every interaction, creating a feedback loop that enriches intelligence and optimizes future engagements, further enhancing business results.

Liveperson official site: www.liveperson.com

CraftySyntax
Craftysyntax is a php/mysql web application that's provided for both commercial and free editions. Because of the very few system requirements, you can setup easily on all hosting servers and do needful customization based your requirements. There's no difference in using craftysyntax comparing to all other website softwares. The most important is you can integrate to your existing site easily from code behind.

Craftysyntax official site: www.craftysyntax.com

Mibew Web Messenger
Mibew Messenger (also known as Open Web Messenger) is an open-source live support application written in PHP and MySQL. It enables one-on-one chat assistance in real-time directly from your website. Both admin and client end is pretty clean setup and you won't find a problem in using all functions.

Mibew official site: www.mibew.org

FlashChat
FlashChat is a fully customizable chat software based php/mysql technologies. FlashChat includes a set of advanced administrative options so that you can easily manage rooms, users, bans, messages, and much more. It provides full documentation on how to integrate the service to your existing website, especially for most existing cms sites. You can try out for free or purchase via $5 one time fee.

FlashChat official: www.tufat.com/script2.htm

LivechatScript
This is a hosted service where you just need to emble the codes directly. It comes with free and pro versions. The paid version costs $9.99/month and you have full access to its functions. The free version provides less features and there's link back to official site.

Livechatscript site: www.livechatscript.com
Livechatscript Pro site: www.livechatscriptpro.com

PHPFreeChat
PHPFreeChat is a simple ajax based website chat software. There's no database required but most leading features are incluced. You can easily install and customize to fulfill your different requirements. This software provides multiple languages support with professional translation.

PHPFreeChat official site: www.phpfreechat.net

Free or paid solution?

There're both paid and free solutions available for live chat service. Which should you go? Absolutely, the paid version provides much more features and actually more professional with better support. You should evaluate your business requirements then decide which will serve you right. For example if you operate a huge business that requires high security and professional support, you can never choose freeware. If you just run a personal store or just want to launch simple chat to your visitors, you don't have to pay for it.