Archive for May, 2006
A new version of Apache (1.3.36) was just released for Cpanel servers. We don’t recommend upgrading rightaway, because you quite often wind up with more problems than the upgrade is supposed to fix. It is a ‘fact’ that almost every new version of any software (mysql, php, etc….) that has been released by Cpanel has been unstable in the beginning first few weeks of the release. This isn’t their fault, it is just the nature of the beast. The latest version of any software that is just released quite often has bugs or some sort of problems.
This Apache update for Cpanel was just released yesterday, so we recommend to wait at least a week or two at the very least before upgrading to make sure it is stable.
As for the warning message you see when logging into WHM, naturally since the version currently installed is not the latest, the message will say your version is insecure, regardless of any actual real security threat or not.
It’s a balance between stability and security, and only you can decide what you want to side with. This decision is always controversial, because neither having an insecure nor unstable server is any good. In our opinion, we recommend to wait at least a week or two, based on past experiences and what we are already hearing from customers that already attempted this upgrade. People have already upgraded Apache without asking us and have run into problems, problems ranging from Apache not starting to Apache modules not loading to Apache crashing constantly and more. You can also read about problems others are having at the cpanel forums, there’s many complaints there already.
What makes this even worse is that there is no option to even downgrade, so it has to be manually reinstalled or recompiled which results in HTTP downtime during this process.
May 25th, 2006
In the Philippines, cheap and affordable are interchangeable in the web hosting market. plogHost tries to seperate each one from the other.
Cheap hosting means that you get more for less and thus gives the impression that clients get a huge bargain for cheap web hosting. This is usually measured in peso-per-megabyte in the resource allocation for disk space and bandwidth.
On the other hand, affordable hosting is a little different in our definition. Affordable reflects the ability of the consumer to be able to acquire such a prodyct or service, whether or not it is cheap.
Case in point, fully managed dedicated servers nowadays are cheap and could be had for around Php8,000 in the Philippine web hosting market. However, not every person who wants to get a web host can “afford” such cheap servers.
Thus, a more affordable alternative is to go for shared hosting. It may not be cheap, but most people can afford it.
May 23rd, 2006
We have disabled the Mchat, Cgiecho, Cgiemail, Guestbook, Counter and Formmails from CPanel’s system wide cgi-sys directory. The are the most commonly exploited scripts since they are in the same location on every CPanel server in the world.
We have learned our lesson that it is better take the side of security rather than convenience. If you are using these scripts, they might not work anymore. We will provide you with alternative scripts to replace them.
May 16th, 2006
Since register_globals is disabled on the servers for security purposes, some of your scripts and Fantastico installs might not work properly. However, you can enable it on your individual accounts thru .htaccess.
All you need to do is edit your .htaccess in the root folder of your account (or create one via the File Manager if none exist).
Place the ff. line of code in it:
php_flag register_globals on
That’s it.
May 16th, 2006
Fantastico auto-installer has been installed on Tauren recently. This will replace the old and un-updated Scripts Library (Auto-Installer).
The Fantastico icon can be found at the bottom part of your cPanel. Installations are a breeze as a scripts wizard will guide you and provide tips on what is needed and which directory the script will be installed.
May 9th, 2006
We’ve been getting a couple of inquiries about Ruby on Rails hosting support. In as much as we wanted to, we are still constrained withe the technical knowledge that our support team has in order to properly assist clients on RoR.
We’re still studying things and we’re looking forward to be able to provide hosting for Ruby on Rails in the near future. Stay tuned.
May 6th, 2006
