There are tons of things you can do from the .htaccess file inside of your web hosting account.  from redirecting the users to controlling who can get in and who can get out, it is a very useful file to have on your hosting account.  to help out the new web hosting clients and to act as a reminder to the old pros around here, I thought I would go through five of the most popular .htaccess tips I know.

Redirect to a Maintenance Page

This is a great one to use if you need to make some quick web page edits, and you don?t want the public to see you edit your web site, while it is still live.

Options +FollowSymlinksRewriteEngine OnRewriteBase /RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/offline.html$RewriteRule .* /offline.html [R=307,L]

This will redirect anybody who checks out any web page on your web site to the "offline.html" file.

Force the use of ?www? in Front of a Domain Name

If you want to keep the www in front of your domain name, no matter how somebody types it in, here is the ?bit of .htaccess magic you will need:

Options +FollowSymlinksRewriteEngine onrewritecond %{http_host} ^mydomain.com [nc]rewriterule ^(.*)$ mydomain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Once you have done so, both mydomain.com and mydomain.com will both send you to mydomain.com

Remove the ?www? from in Front of a Domain Name

You can also force your domain to drop the www from the address when typed in, if you would rather have it the other way around. In that situation, you would need to add this to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com$ [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This will make both mydomain.com and mydomain.com send you to just mydomain.com.

Manually Create Custom Error Pages

Ever check out some of those customized error pages and wonder how it could be done? just use these snippets of .htaccess code to tell people where to look for your error pages.

ErrorDocument 400 /errors/400.html ErrorDocument 401 /errors/401.html ErrorDocument 403 /errors/403.html ErrorDocument 404 /errors/404.html ErrorDocument 500 /errors/500.html

This tells the server to look inside the ?errors? folder and that specific page for each of the different error types. That is not all of the error codes, but they are the ones that will be ?hit by your users 99 percent of the time.

Block Visitor By IP Address

Need to keep somebody from checking out your web site?  This next tip will give you the ability to deny somebody based on what their IP address is:

order allow,denydeny from 123.45.6.7deny from 012.34.5.allow from all

The above blocks access to the site from 123.45.6.7, and from any sub-domain under the IP block 012.34.5. (012.34.5.1, 012.34.5.2, 012.34.5.3, etc).

That is it for this round up of tips.  for more help with the .htaccess file, and many more things you can do with your web hosting account, be sure to check out the Lunarpages Web Hosting Wiki.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting – Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Twitter makes for a pretty nice way for a web host to get it?s message out to their customers quickly.? You can send a message to everybody that is following you, or you could answer just one person, if needed.? Screenr is the way to get that job done.? You can instantly record a screencast, all with web based software ? and share it anywhere.

Quick and Easy Screencast Creator

The thing that makes Screenr so twitter-tastic is that it gives you the ability to login with your Twitter account, and instantly tweet your video tutorial when you are done.? The recorder is powered by Java, so there is no extra tools to have to download either.? Just hit the record button, drag that tool over the space you want to record and your ready to go.

Here is a demo video I created with about five minutes of planning and production time:

As you can see, sometimes you can be helping one person on how to do something ? and show many more in exchange.? I am sure there is a metaphor in that statement somewhere having do to with teaching that man how to fish too.? You can try Screenr for free at Screenr.com.? When you do come back and show man what you created.

Add me on Twitter! come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!

© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my firefox help site and my tech blog too!

The internet is a place for so many things. This includes socializing, sharing information and blogging. Many people have grown to like the internet. in fact, even businesses acknowledge the popularity of the internet. they?ve started advertising their products and services on the web. they also have their own websites so that web surfers can know more about their business. so if you have your own reason to have your own website, then what?s stopping you? you may be thinking that you have to spend a lot of money to have your own website. But that?s no longer necessary because you can build a website totally free. how can you make your own website for free?

/>The solution to this problem is another website. there are tons of websites out there that gives you the opportunity to build a website totally free. All you need to do is to search these kinds of website on the internet. But you have to be aware of some things. For instance, you need to make sure that the website is offering free website hosting, not just a free web page space. The difference between the two is that a website is a group of web pages, so a free web page space offered by other websites is simply not enough. If you think you?ll find it hard to look for a good website that offers free website building, then here are two examples:

Microsoft offers free website building and hosting through their website ? office.live.com. Although Microsoft stated that this service is intended only for small businesses, anyone can actually make an account and create their own website here. Microsoft?s free website building service is feature-rich. The service offers a lot of free website design templates created by professionals, so if you find it hard to design your own website, choosing one of the many templates is a good idea. furthermore, you can customize the website through Microsoft?s simple design tool. The tool lets you customize text and the design. you can also choose from a free fourth-level domain name (e.g. yourwebsite.web.officelive.com) for your website or buy an affordable domain name (e.g. yourwebsite.com) for your own website.

Weebly is another website that offers free web building and hosting. they also offer free professional design templates for your website. An easy-to-use drag and drop website editor is also available if you want to edit the template. you can even choose to enable or disable advertisements. you see, some websites that offer free website building obliges you to put unwanted advertisements on your website. you can add any kind of web content here, from photos, files to videos, RSS feeds, flash games and such. on Weebly, you can disable such advertisements. or if you want to earn money by adding advertisements on your website, you can simply enable the feature. Weebly also gives you the opportunity to get your own domain for free.

With so many options on the internet, you can easily build a website totally free.

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(The Hosting News) - McLean, Va. ? ServInt, a pioneering provider of managed web hosting for businesses worldwide, today introduced its new line of Managed Enterprise Dedicated Server solutions. ServInt?s new dedicated servers, starting at $199 per month, offer peak stability and reliability for companies with consistently high-performance web-hosting and application-hosting requirements.

ServInt?s competitively priced dedicated servers are ideally suited for established e-commerce sites, resellers and mid-size companies seeking high value, high redundancy and manageability.

The introduction of ServInt?s new Managed Enterprise Dedicated Servers is the perfect complement to the Company?s industry-leading Virtual Private Server (VPS) solutions. Today?s announcement demonstrates ServInt?s ability to stay ahead of rapidly changing market demands and meet the hosting requirements of any type of business.

?Our goal has always been to offer our customers the widest possible range of hosting solutions to fit every stage of their business growth,? said ServInt Founder and Chief Executive Officer Reed Caldwell. ?While our SuperVPS hosting solutions are designed for dynamic web sites that need burst resources, our new dedicated servers offer the higher base power demanded by companies with consistently high resource requirements. As our customers evolve from entry-level hosting to enterprise hosting, they can easily move between these solutions to select the smartest option ? without being committed to a specific service.?

Caldwell concluded, ?Customers with moderate hosting requirements still can benefit from the high-performance and redundancy of our award-winning VPS solutions. now, customers who are ready to go solo with a powerful dedicated server can choose from a wide range of ServInt Managed Enterprise Dedicated Servers to meet their specific needs.?

New Solutions Feature Virtualization Layer

All of ServInt?s new Managed Enterprise Dedicated Servers incorporate a virtualization layer, which enables easier off-server backup. the virtualization layer also enables better scalability by facilitating easy movement of server content from one hardware environment to another, with little downtime. the benefit of the virtualization layer also increases redundancy, as it makes the dedicated server comparatively easy to rebuild in case of hardware failure.

While the virtualization layer uses Parallels Virtuozzo Containers as an engine, ServInt?s proprietary methodology for hosting and managing dynamic servers ensures the highest server density, performance and availability.

ServInt?s new Solo Express dedicated servers start at $199 per month, with promotional launch coupon. ServInt?s new Solo Pro dedicated servers start at $289 per month. ServInt?s new Solo Enterprise dedicated servers start at $599 per month.

Those interested in learning more about ServInt?s new Managed Enterprise Dedicated Server solutions can call 1-800-573-7846 or visit servint.net.

ServInt is a pioneering provider of high-reliability, managed web hosting for businesses worldwide. ServInt?s commitment to Green IT services is demonstrated by its award-winning Virtual Private Server (VPS) solutions. ServInt was founded in Northern Virginia in 1995 as one of the first web-hosting companies to offer a Managed Dedicated Server solution. from multiple world-class data centers, ServInt now provides its scalable suite of VPS and Managed Enterprise Server packages to thousands of customers in more than 60 countries. for more information, please visit servint.net.

ServInt introduces new Enterprise Grade Managed Dedicated Server solutions

(The Hosting News) - we all know that Twitter has grown quickly and become extremely popular. in fact the service has become so popular that it even has it’s own awards. however, I came across some interesting and enlightening growth information on Twitter recently while conducting research for reseller hosting provider 34SP.com. Twitter has just sent out its 10 billionth tweet.

That’s a ten with nine zeros after it: 10,000,000,000.

When you think about it – it’s not surprising. after all, this was the site that grew 1,382 percent in one year from February 2008 to February 2009. the site attracted 475,000 visitors in February of 2008 and surged up to 7,038,000 users just one year later. according to published data,Twitter currently pushes out a daily average of 50 million tweets. Those 140 character or less messages are racing out onto the Internet, phones and various other devices at the rate of over 2 million every single hour of every single day. the Official Twitter blog noted a few weeks ago these growth trends, ”Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. by 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day?that’s an average of 600 tweets per second. (Yes, we have TPS reports.)”.

The Twitter service was developed in 2006. On March 21, 2006 Jack Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 9:50 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST). That message was: ”just setting up my twttr”. Since then Twitter has become a huge social media phenomenon – although the company has struggled over the past few years to develop a truly compelling revenue model to benefit financially from the service’s popularity. according to Wikipedia the company has raised over $57 million from venture capitalists.

The ten billionth tweet was estimated to have been sent sometime in the past 24 hours. the uncertainty comes from the methodology used to determine exactly how many tweets have been sent. the method used relies on historical data and rates of tweeting to arrive at a number. Most major news sources were turning to a fun application entitled GigaTweet which simply has a counter that continuously counts up tweets.

GigaTweet estimates that the next billion tweets will have been sent out within the next 20 days. That’s quite a few tweets.

Twitter Passes 10 Billion Tweets

What if you could test practically any operating system from within your current computer setup?? by setting up a virtual machine inside of your current computer, you can do exactly that ? and the best tool to use to get this done is Sun VirtualBox.? I am far from being any sort of operating system geek, but even I was able to get Ubuntu up and running from within my Windows Vista machine, so anything really is possible.

So why would you want to run a virtual machine from within your own computer?

Well, there are a number of reasons.

• To Test Your Web Site in Multiple Environments
• To Play with a Different Operating system, without Ruining Your Current Setup
• To Raise Your Geeky Street Cred

So then, how do you get started?? First things first, you must go to the Sun VirtualBox web site, and pick up the latest version of their software. they have versions available for Windows, Mac and Linux.? Once you get it up and running, you can click the New button from the program?s interface to start the program?s wizard up that will guide you through the rest of the setup process.

Name Your New Virtual Machine

First, you have to give your virtual machine a name, and decide what operating system you wish to install.

Base RAM for the Virtual Machine

Next, it will ask you how much RAM (memory) you wish to allocate to the virtual machine, best to leave it now to the level it sets as default. You can always tweak it later if needed.

Setup the Virtual Machine Hard Drive

After that, select a hard disk image to be used as the boot disk.? Once again, I would suggest to go with the defaults it suggests for now, and you can tweak things later if needed.

Dynamic or Fixed Storage Types

Time to create your new virtual hard drive disk for your virtual machine to use. for the hard disk storage type you can select to dynamically expand your storage or set it to a fixed storage size, that does not grow.

Virtual Machine Hard Drive Space

Now, you will need to decide how big the virtual hard drive will be.? I would keep this under 10 GB, so you do not use any disk space that you might really need for your actual computer.

Final Virtual Machine Setup Steps

After that, confirm your settings are correct and hit the button labeled, ?finish?.? Your virtual hard drive disk will then be created for you.? Once it has been created, then you will be asked to confirm your creation of your new virtual machine.? Click the button labeled, ?finish? for it too, and you will almost be well on your way to virtual machine land.

As you can see, this is a pretty easy process to go through, as long as you don?t get freaked out by making a few geeky decisions. in my next article, I will be showing you how to get the operating system installed for your brand new virtual machine.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting – Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

(The Hosting News)? Certification Authority firm GlobalSign officially announced the introduction of GlobalSign?s Code Signing Certificates for Individual Developers. GlobalSign Code Signing Certificates support many popular developer platforms ranging from Microsoft Authenticode (including the new Windows 7 and VBA) to Adobe AIR.

Up until recently, developers of downloadable software had little choice on how to secure their application, protect their brand identity, and reduce download abandonment due to un-trusted warning messages that result from unsigned or self-signed code. more and more operating systems insist that code available for installation be digitally signed to provide the recipient assurances that the identity of the publisher has been verified by an independent and trusted source and that the code was not altered after it was signed. Pop-ups ranging from Running Unsigned Code / Executables can be dangerous! to Publisher = Unknown; ?are you sure you want to install this application to you computer have significant negative business impact, slowing distribution as would-be installers are cautioned to pause or even abandon installation completely.

GlobalSign will continue to offer Code Signing Certificates to publishers affiliated with legal organizations such as enterprise, educational institutes, and government entities; however independent software developers will now be provided an alternative method to obtain a ?vetted? digital identity using alternative identity verification processes focused on the individual applicant.? in both the case of individual software developers and organization software vendors, the end user experience will be the same in that a trusted message will appear encouraging increased downloads and installations.

?GlobalSign sees expanding publicly trusted code signing to individual developers as an important way to increase the security model for applications developed on key platforms such as Microsoft Authenticode and Adobe AIR. Delivering a secure method to publish software to both Organizations and Independent software developers moves the market one step closer to expecting publically verifiable code as the standard for acceptance.? according to Lila Kee, Director of Product Marketing.

GlobalSign Issues Code Signing Certificates for use By Individual Software Developers

At this hostgator review blog, you could find the information about hostgator backup service and also the backup feature provided in cpanel. We run the backup service and tested the feature. However, those are manual backup action that the account holder can carry out at anytime they desire. For more than that, hostgator hosting also include automated data backup service. Hostgator hosting data backup is carried out each week, and its an off-site data backup services. Your web files and data are backup at remote server location, this is to ensure best data security and totally prevent data lost on contingency event.

Hostgator hosting is from $4.95 per month, 20% cheaper when you use our hostgator coupon code, and its come with automatic data backup service.

Update: this took place and was a big success. HostGator employees answered a ton of questions about backups, VPS solutions, Windows hosting, affiliates, and more. we appreciate people taking the time to come by and ask questions.

This upcoming Thursday (July 2, 2009) at 5 PM CT (Houston-time), HostGator is going to be hosting an Open Session where potential and existing customers alike can come chat with HostGator employees and each other.

The Open Session is going to be pretty informal, but for some context, some things we do want to do include:

• Question and answer session with HostGator employees
• Tips and suggestions on how to get the most out of your HostGator account and website from our best support people
• Suggestions from customers about how HostGator can improve (customer service, Terms of Service, procedures and policies, etc.)

This is the first time HostGator has done something like this, but we think it will serve as a great opportunity to talk to our customers and hear their questions, opinions, and suggestions. If you have any particular items you’d like us to discuss or research, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Oh, and we’re also going to be giving out some free hosting during the session for both attending and participating.

Logistics:
We’re going to try hosting this session with TalkShoe, which allows us and other folks to call in using the phone and/or chat or listen online. If it works, we’ll continue to use TalkShoe. If not, we’ll explore other options. If you live outside of the US central timezone, check out this site for a list of corresponding times around the world. When Thursday at 5 PM CT rolls around, head over to this page for instructions on how to join the session (it’s very simple).

Overview:
What: HostGator Open Session
When: Thursday, July 2, 2009 at 5 PM CT
Where: HostGator on TalkShoe

Two online services out there are really battling it out for your attention and use.  Disqus Comments and Intense Debate are both top notch commenting systems.  Which one though will really help you make your web site?s comment section look more appealing to new web site visitors?

Disqus Comments

Disqus Comments is the perfect comment solution, if you are looking for an easy way to add more features to your web site?s commenting system or you need an easier way to manage comments for multiple blogs.  Setup is easy, and it is a lot of fun to use. once it is in place, your users can login to comment on your blog via Disqus, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo or an OpenID. 

• Learn more about Disqus Comments!

Intense Debate

As another commenting system, Intense Debate also does a great job at giving your web site a better looking comment system.  you get features like comment voting, reputation scores, reply by e-mail and much more.  

• Learn more about Intense Debate!

Which one is right for you?  it is hard to say ? since the two commenting systems are so similar.  I went with Disqus Comments on some of my projects, and have been pretty happy thus far.  Not to say I wouldn?t be as equally as happy with Intense Debate, I just haven?t had that much experience with it.

What do you say, which comment system do you like the most?

© Lunarpages Web Hosting – also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!