Stretching my dollar - a new domain registrar

My current registrar has served me well for the past 4yrs but I am looking if I could stretch my dollar more. A quick search on the web shows that my registrar is not in any of the top five domain registrars which is pretty odd. Surprising GoDaddy is one of the recommended registrars although I have heard many horror stories about it. I suppose the more popular you are, the more feedback you will have and there is a tendency that only disastisfied customers will give their feedback.

It didn't take long for me to find myself a new domain registrar - Namecheap.com

Here are the main reasons:

1) Voted best domain registrar 2010 by Lifehacker
2) Free Whois protector for one year or $2.88/yr thereafer for one website. My current registrar charges $9.99/yr

Do I need a seperate domain name?

I currently have two domain names. The first is my website and the second is used as a re-seller account that was shared with a few friends. Although I am now on my own, I have decided to retain the second domain name for the following reasons:

1) In my environment, all ports except 80 and 443 are blocked. This means I will not be able to access:

Port 2082 -> Cpanel default port
Port 2083 -> Cpanel over SSL
Port 2086 -> Cpanel Webhost Manager (default)
Port 2087 -> Cpanel Webhost Manager (with https)
Port 2095 -> Cpanel Webmail
Port 2096 -> Cpanel secure webmail over SSL

WHM has now included a feature to access the above using port 80.

WHM includes a feature that lets your customers access the following from behind a firewall, using port 80:

•cpanel.example.com — The customer's cPanel account.
•whm.example.com — The customer's WHM account.
•webdisk.example.com — The customer's Web Disk account.
•webmail.example.com — The customer's webmail account.
(In these examples, example.com stands for the customer's domain.)

You can enable this feature by selecting On for the follwing Tweak Settings options in WHM:

•Proxy subdomains
•Proxy subdomain creation
You can learn more about these options by viewing our Tweak Settings documentation.

Or, if you prefer, you can use /scripts/proxydomains to reconfigure the DNS entries manually.

Source: http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/AllDocumentation/AllFAQ/WHMsFAQ#Is there a way to access webmail

Hence, a domain name is essential.

2) I cannot use my acutal website domain name because my current site is already live. If I were to use that to configure my WHM and cPanel, there might be a lengthy downtime. Changing the name servers alone may already take up to 48hrs! I also intend to update my wordpress and plugins and this will take up more time and increase the chance of errors.

3) An additional domain name is useful for testing purposes. Although I can create subdomains later on, I would prefer to create them under a seperate domain. By testing on a seperate domain, there will be no chnace of corrupting any files in my live site.
There are some considerations when getting a separate domain name:

1) Cost: pretty obvious but fortunately the cost of a domain name is relatively inexpensive.

2) Privacy: ICANN requires that every domain registrar maintain a publicly viewable "WHOIS" database that displays personal contact information (including home addresses and phone numbers) for every domain registered. Most domain registrars now offer WHOIS privacy at an affordable rate.

3) Vulnerability: An additional domain name means another avenue for an attack. Therefore it is important to find a realiable domain registrar. Some even provide additional security measures but at a cost.

Having another domain name is useful for people like me who are not very knowledgable in web hosting technoglogy, require as little downtime as possible or as an added insurance (testing). If you are on VPS, I believe you take your site seriously and having a seperate domain name will come in very handy.

VPS control panels in a nutshell

Gosh, I didn’t know that there can be so many ‘control panels’ link to a single VPS account. This is made worse as each control panel has a different port and login credentials. Hence, I am summarizing all of them for future reference and maybe someone else might benefit from it.

Although the names below are reference to myhosting.com, it should be very similar to most VPS web-host.

manage.myhosting.com

This is the probably the first control panel that you will receive prior to the completion of your VPS account. It usually contains your particulars, the general information of your VPS server and status, the services/applications purchased, billing, latest news etc.  It will also contain the links, IDs and passwords to your other control panels. Once you have taken down all the relevant information, you probably won’t look at it again unless during renewal, upgrade or cancellation of your subscription.

VZPP - Virtuozzo Power Panel

VZPP is a powerful web-based VPS recovery and management tool. With VZPP you can easily do the following:

• VPS Start/Stop/Reboot
• VPS Services Management
• VPS Resource monitoring
• VPS Backup/Restore
• VPS Repair
• VPS Re-install
• VPS Actions Log audit

Source: http://support.lunarpages.com/knowledge_bases/article/408

Most VPS web host will offer this panel free of charge which I believe is due to licensing. Unless you are a geek, this panel will be sufficient for managing your VPS.

Root Access

For the more technical inclined, root access give you the ability to take full control of your server. This may be important for those who run special applications and tweaking is required. For Linux-based VPS host, SSH connection is required. I am using Windows 7 and installed a Putty (Link). I also have a similar program ConnectBot installed on my Android phone.

However, it seems that not all web-host will grant you full root access. Chances are if your login name is root, you will have full access to your VPS.

A quick way to check is to enter this command:

whoami

It will show you the user name that you are using.

For the geeks, you can type:

cat /etc/passwd

Look for the line with the word “root” at the front and verify that the third value is zero.

Example:

Root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bish

This is the UID and zero is reserved for root giving the account unrestricted/unlimited access.

For more details:

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/understanding-etcpasswd-file-format/

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-more-on-user-id-password-and-group-management.html

cPanel and WHM

The cPanel is one that most website owners will be familiar with especially if you are on a shared hosting. Unfortunately this control panel is not free. Some VPS web-hosts offer this as free but they would have already factor this into their pricing. I believe a single license will give you both cPanel and WHM. There is no way to just take one or the either.

To give you a brief difference between the two : -

cPanel is used to administer one website where WHM is used to administer multiple websites and the hosting server itself. Users that register a domain will use cPanel to manage various aspects of their site. Resellers and web hosting companies will use WHM to administer multiple domains (create, modify, delete, etc.), but not to manage individual settings for each domain.

Source: http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/what-is-the-difference-between-cpanel-and-whm.html

I opted to have cPanel and WHM installed since I familiar with it and would make my site migration easier. Correct me if I am wrong but I don’t think VZPP can be use to manage a website(s).

Others

There are several other panels available e.g. Fantastico, RVSkin, RVSiteBuilder, Plesk  and WHMCS. All of course have to be paid for. For windows VPS, Plesk would be the obvious choice as WHM is built for Linux platform.

Reply from myhosting.com

I finally got a reply from myhosting.com after I demanded a refund.

Apologies for the delayed responses as the ticket was at another queue,...

Their explaination is kind of lame. I made it a point to send to two email addresses "vps@myhosting.com" and "virtual-server@myhosting.com" so what do they meant by another queue? It was only in my last email to "support@myhosting.com" did I get a reply.

In that case, why bother to send me this email:

Should you need any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us at virtual-server@myhosting.com.

I'm going to scrutinize their service and support for the next 20 days. If it is really bad, I will insist for a refund and pay for the more expensive option. Although I come from a IT background, VPS is still pretty foreign to me and I may need some help to migrate my site. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

myhosting.com

I am beginning to regret selecting myhosting.com. It's been almost 24hours and I have yet to receive a welcome email stating that my account is ready. It was stated that it would take approximately 5hours. I did manage to log into their portal and saw several applications failed to installed. I think they have a technical problem but still no excuse. Not keeping your promise is one thing. The lack of updates is equally frustrating. Customers hate being in the dark!

I have email to their support twice and got back to me after 4hours saying they will check and that's it. Even their automated acknowledgement email takes about an hour or so. Inmotion acknowledgement mail took just a few minutes!

I was given 48hrs by my existing host before they shut down my site. Time is of the essence.

Choosing a VPS Host

I was informed by my web host that my website is using a lot of resources and is affecting other websites. I was advised to move to a VPS and my site was suspended. It's not the first time that it happen and my web host is unable to pin point the cause or provide me with the details as to what is the resource I am hogging. If I were to move to a VPS, I would need this information to do the appropriate sizing.

My main concern in choosing a VPS host is cost. Mine is a personal website and the average VPS cost US$50 on their lowest plan. My second concern is on the resource allocation. Although I do not have the details on my site's usage, I do not believe that I am using an exceeding high amount of resource - I have about 1,000 visitors a day. Hence, I want to find a VPS that offers the minimum resources so as not to waste my money on unused resources. Finally, is scalability. For example if you are a small site owner like me, you would welcome the option to increase your storage by denominations of 1GB rather than in blocks of 5 or 10GB. Of course support and money back guarantee is important but so much choices available, these are now the norm rather than a value add.

After some research, I narrowed down to these:

1. Inmotion hosting: surprise surprise. This is actually my current web host. I do not deny that their service is pretty good but the lack of details is simply frustrating. As much as their technical support want to help me, I think they are bound by some secrecy act not to reveal the full details to me. Unfortunately, their VPS package is one of the most expensive around and I just couldn't afford it.
2. Myhosting.com: The cheapest around and this is what I choose. However, they are not without it's flaws which I will explain later.
3. HostGator: Price is very close to Inmtion and I would rather choose Inmotion at the same price.

*Tip: Check out for any discount code available - either from searching or asking their online sales team directly. You can find them in vpshostreviews.com

Prior to purchasing a VPS plan from Myhosting.com, I talked to their online sales. I would advice you to do the same to address your questions and also to get a feel of their 'support' structure. If you stay in the same country, pick up the phone and call them. Unfortunately I am staying thousands of kilometres away. I wonder why web hosts don't offer Skype support. Anyway, back to their online sales. I would agree with most of the recent comments I found on the Internet that their support is not really very knowledgeable - I asked how do I do a site migration and I was told that I can use the control panel to do it. When probe further, they point me to their knowledge base. I know they have a knowledge base, then what is their online support for? Even their command of their English is poor - I asked if there are any other information that I should know before I make a purchase. Their reply was thanking me for choosing myhosting.com. I was like duh. 

At US$13/mth for a VPS host (after discount code), the price is just impossible to beat.