HELM, WHM/cPanel, Windows, Linux, web hosting talk, Search Engine Optimization, PHP, ASP discussion blog Blog is dedicated for web hosting talk, SEO, programming issues, Databases, server administration etc.

There are many hosting providers which provide the free web hosting. You do not need to pay anything to host your site on their server. Generally they put their ads in your website or place the popup or banner in your website. The free website hosts often make the money in other ways like putting the banners, popup or popup ads on your web pages. Some hosts do not place any ads or banners or popup but they are in hope that you may upgrade and pay for the advance features. Are free web hosts reliable?

Generally NO. Free web hosting is not reliable for the commercial use. Most of the free web hosts do not provide any kind of technical support for your website. You have to manage your site yourself. If the free web host allows anyone to signup and if they provide the features like PHP or CGI then some users may try to find way to abuse it, which cause the service interruption or it may possible that they need to shutdown the server which will lost your website as well as your data. You have to choose selective free web hosts which allow hosting only quality websites.

The best place to find the free web hosts is free web hosting directory. You will get the users review of the free web hosts from the web hosting directory. That may help you to choose the free host. Before you sign up for the free hosting, you have to check the disk space and bandwidth they provide. You need to go through their Terms of Services (TOS) before sign up.

It would be hard to recommend any free web host as different people need different web hosting features and most of the free web hosts provide different features. Free hosting is recommended for business. That means if your business depends on your web site then it is not recommend using free web hosting as generally they do not provide any kind of technical support and any uptime guarantee of the server.

Kailash Aghera

Posted under Web Hosting

Once you host your web site (domain) through any web hosting provider, you will need some interface to manage your web site (domain). Without any interface, it is hard to manage your web site. The interface through which you can manage your web site (domain) is called web hosting control panel.

There are many web hosting control panels available. Some of them are HELM (only for Windows server), cPanel/WHM (For Linux server), Plesk (Windows and Linux servers), DirectAdmin (Linux) Ensim etc. Using the control panel, you can manage your web site (domain) easily from any where. It allows you to create the email accounts of your web site (domain), to set the email forwarder for your email accounts, to add the domain alias (domain parking), to modify the web pages of your web site through file manager, to create the databases for your web site (domain) etc. Many control panels allow you to modify your DNS zone of your website. Hence, you do not need to contact your hosting provider in order modify some records in the DNS zone of your domain (i.e. A record, MX record, add CNAME). In same way many control panels allow you to upload your web pages directly through control panel and you can zip or unzip the folder through control panel itself.

If you have your own dedicated server then you can manage the web sites without any web hosting control panel. However, it would be easy to setup your server using the hosting control panel as it provides the user friendly interface.

Below are the some web sites for web hosting control panel product:

http://www.cpanel.net
http://www.webhostautomation.com
http://www.swsoft.com
http://www.directadmin.com

You should upgrade your control panel regularly to fix the bugs in the current version of the control panel and improve the security of your server.

Kailash Aghera

Posted under Web Hosting Control Panels

Link popularity is one of the most important factors to determine your website’s search engine ranking. What is Link popularity, why it is important to increase the page rank of the website and how Google measure the link popularity? Before we start talking about how Google measure the link popularity, we need to clarify some fundamentals.

Link popularity means the number of sites that are linking to your site. The search engines use the number of inbound links to your site to calculate the ranking of your site. The actual number of links to your site is not the only variable used to calculate your link popularity but the search engines also examine the relevance of the links to the subject matter of your site.

For example, if you have a website related to web hosting has 10,000 inbound links, but the source of most of the inbound links are websites that are not related to web hosting, then the algorithm that search engines use to determine link popularity will take that into account, it calculates the link popularity accordingly. Hence, it is possible that if you have small numbers of inbound links but most of the links are relevant to your website then the link popularity of your website and website ranking, may higher than the other websites which have more inbound links than your website but most of the links are not relevant to their website.

Now, I hope you may understand what link popularity is and how it works. Now, we will look at how Google measures the link popularity. Google uses a number of variables in their algorithm to calculate the overall link popularity. Higher the score of your website, higher rank in the search listing.

Obviously, Google uses the inbound links to your website but it also measures the quality of your inbound links. That means, your site should have relevance links to your site. Also, you can post your link to the blogs and forums which are related to your web site. That will lead you higher link popularity and Google page ranking for your site.

Kailash Aghera

Posted under Search Engine Optimization

You have seen the message “Boot disk failure” while starting your PC. The problem behind this is that the hard drive is detected but the operating system doesn’t load. You will need to reinstall the operating system or you will need to rebuild your master boot record to fix the boot problem. Below are few troubleshooting options to get rid of:

If you are using the dual boot system then it may possible that the boot loader getting corrupted. For example, you have a system running Windows XP and Linux using Lilo as boot loader. If Lilo gets corrupted, you can not boot in either operating system. In such situation, you have to boot into the system using some other media such as floppy or Windows CD. After booting go to the command prompt, type fdisk /mbr and hit enter key. If you are using Windows 2000 or Windows XP then boot into the recovery console and shoot out the command fixmbr to clear the MBR (Master Boot Record). After restarting your system, it will boot to Windows directly without any booting option. Now, you can reinstall the Lilo from your Linux CD or you can install the boot loaders such as XOSL from Windows.

If you are not using the dual boot system then boot into the system through floppy or Windows CD. If you have Windows 2000 or Windows XP, you should boot into the recovery console. Go to the command prompt and give the command fdisk /mbr and then give the command sys C:. It will clear the MBR (Master Boot Record) and makes the bootable partition C:. Windows 2000 and Windows XP users should give the command fixmbr and fixboot C: to do the same. Then restart your system.

If you are still receiving the error then you might have a virus on your PC’s boot sector. In such case, connect your hard drive to another system and scan with an anti virus software.

Kailash Aghera

Posted under Operating Systems

Sometimes, you may receive an error “Invalid boot.ini file. Booting from c:\winnt and then after your PC boots normally. You are receiving this error because boot.ini is either missing or corrupted. To resolve this problem on Windows 2000 operation system, create a boot.ini file in C: drive with following contents:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT=”Microsoft Windows2000 Professional” /fastdetect

This is not applicable if you have Windows XP or more than one Windows operating system. In that case, boot using the Windows CD and when you see the “Welcome to Setup” message, press [R] to start the Recovery Console. If you have more than one Windows operation system then select the one for which you want to created boot.ini file. At the command prompt type the below command:

bootcfg /rebuild

The above command scans the hard disk for Windows installations. Follow the on-screen instructions to add entries into boot.ini for all Windows installations. If you have dual boot (installed two windows operating systems) then you will need to mention in [operating systems]. This will allow you to select the operating system during the boot.

Boot.ini works as a boot loader if you have installed multiple Windows operating system. But if you have installed other operating systems viz. Red Hat Linux etc. then it will install its own boot loader. For example, Red Hat Linux will install the boot loader called LILO. In case if LILO gets corrupted then you will not be able to boot in your Windows operating systems. You will need to reinstall LILO to fix the system boot problem.

Kailash Aghera

Posted under Operating Systems

Unfortunately, msconfig is not included in Windows 2000 operating system but there is another way to check which programs are loaded with Windows and you can also remove it from the start up. First, go to startup folder from the start menu and delete the shortcuts you do not need. Now, go to the registry (Go to Run from start menu and type “regedit”). In registry, go to the below location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Currentversion\Run

Each key in this folder starts an application when we start our system. Remove the key that you do not want to start during the system start. However, it is advisable that do not remove any program that is located in the C:/winnt or C:/windows directory because they can be operating services.

Another option is to try to copy msconfig.exe file from Windows 98 or Windows XP installation and use it on the Windows 2000 system.

Kailash Aghera

Posted under Operating Systems

In the beginning, the host table was the only tool to map the host name to IP address. All Linux systems still have a host table, which is located at “/etc/hosts” file. The host table contains the IP addresses and host names. Below is the sample example of the hosts file:

$ cat /etc/hosts

# Table of IP addresses and host names

127.0.0.1 localhost
165.2.3.5 myserver

All the lines in the host table have same format. Lines begin with the IP address and it followed by a list of names that map to that IP address. Using above host table when a user specifies myserver; the system will return the IP address 165.2.3.5.

Uses of Host table:

The host table has limited role but it is important that your server should have a host table. The host table is used when the DNS is not available for your server. The basic role of the host table is to convert the IP address to host name and vice versa. Hence, it is also used for the reverse DNS (convert IP address to host name). Now a day, most of the systems that have access to the internet rely on DNS for name to address and address to name resolution. But if you have a small network and it does not connect to internet then the host table might be enough for all your needs.

Limitation of Host table:

The host table is a simple text file and you can edit it easily but it is not very easy to search. The file search sequentially for ever host to address and address to host mapping. If the host table size is small then there is no problem but if the size is big then it is not reliable to use host table.

Kailash Aghera

Posted under Web Hosting

Most of the people have less time to develop their websites. To develop professional look website in small time period, you can use the website builder tool to build your website. Now a day, many hosting providers provide free website builder tool with the hosting packages or you can purchase it additionally. Using website builder tool, you can make professional look website in short period of time. You can develop a good website without having a programming knowledge. You just need the simple knowledge of computer. It is not mandatory that you have a programming skills.

Before purchasing the website builder tool, you have to first check whether it will meet the criteria of your website or not. For example, if you are willing to design a gaming website but the website builder tool that you have purchased doesn’t have any themes related to game then it is useless. Hence, before purchasing it, you can either test their free trail or demo of their website builder tool. Most of the vendors allow you to check their website builder tool on trail basis or demo.

In the demo mode, all the work that you have done will be lost as soon as you will close your browser windows. It will not save your work. But in the free trail, you can save your work and you can upgrade it any time which will save your time as well. Using website builder tool, you can edit your website easily. You can change the lookup of your website in few clicks. You do not need to edit your each and every page. If you have built your website by professional web developers or programmers than you have to contact them to modify your website and it is a little bit time consuming.

Many website builder providers provide the shopping cart, guest book, message board, photo gallery etc. with theirs tool. You can directly use them on your website. You do not require writing a piece of code to use them in your website. Website builder is easy to use and also it saves the time and money to design your website.

Kailash Aghera

Posted under Web Hosting

Hi,

Once you complete the setup of your site, the next step is how can I get traffic from search engines. It’s not easy to get higher position in search engines but it’s not difficult too. Today I will provide you few tips to get top position in the search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN etc.

[1] Increase the backlinks for your site:

The first step is, increase the backlinks for your site. Backlink means the number of sites that directly links to your site. The best way to increase the backlinks is to exchange your site links with other sites. It is very important that you submit your site with other sites which are related too your site. For example, if you site is web hosting related then exchange the link with other sites which are web hosting related. Only quality backlinks are counted by search engines.

[2] Directory Submission:

Now a days, there are thousands of free directories available on the Internet and you can submit your site to these directories. It is advisable to use different titles and descriptions for your site to submit it to free directories. These will also increase the backlinks for your site. Also you will need to submit your site to relevant category in the directories.

[3] Unique site contents:

Your site contents should be unique. Search engines hat the duplicate contents. Also you will need to update your site contents on regular basis. You can also write the articles and upload them to your site.

[4] Social Bookmarking and forum/blog signature:

You can use social book marking to get backlinks for your web site. The examples of social bookmarking are Dig, Stumbleupon etc. You can also use your web site links in the forum and blog signature. You will get traffic from them too.

The above are the few tip for search engine optimization and to get higher rank in search engines.

Kevin

Posted under Search Engine Optimization

Hi,

Now a day, virtual private server is most cost effective solution who are looking for full control for their server without paying more. There are many software available in the market to create a Virtual environments. Some of them are Virtuozzo, OpenVZ, Xenserver, Windows VPS server etc… All have their own method to create a virtual environment. The major concern in VPS is the security of your server. If the server is not configured properly then there is a chance that your resource may be used by other server.

I want to know which software do you recommend to use for Virtulization. Because it is an important factor in Virtulization.

Kailash

Posted under Web Hosting