Blackbeagle

There are several solutions that require the Apache module mod_rewrite to provide clean urls for better search engine optimization. One common problem if you are seeing 404 errors is the default settings in Apache does not allow you to use mod_rewrite.

By default the settings for AllowOverride is set to None. For mod_rewrite to work AllowOverride at a minimum needs to be set to FileInfo Options. Options isn’t required for mod_rewrite but is commonly required if you are using .htaccess.

Apache Docs for mod_rewrite

Amazon’s developer connection has a great tutorial on using Amazon S3 for hosting your sites media files.

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List of hosts I have experience with and would recommend.

Steadfast Networks – I currently have a clustered pair of dedicated servers and a reseller account. Personally I prefer H-Sphere, which they use in their reseller accounts, over Cpanel based shared accounts.
Server Axis – I used this host for approximately a year with good results.
Liquid Web - My Liquid Web Review, Aug 06
Planet Argon – Planet Argon Review, Oct 06

Devco.net has an article describing how to patch Bind to send client requests to the closest server based on location. You can also download RPMs to install a patched version of bind for CentOS 4.

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Devco.net has an article that describes bonding multiple ethernet interfaces using Linux.

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Several months ago I reported the results of four hosting providers I was researching. The report was written after using each host for approximately a month. This review can be seen here. In the review all four hosts were found to be acceptable and would meet most users needs. However I narrowed the finalists down to two hosts.

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Greylisting is a method of blocking significant amounts of spam at the mailserver level. It blocks spam based on the behavior of the sending server, rather than the content of the messages.

What happens is that each time a given mailbox receives an email from an unknown contact (ip), that mail is rejected with a “try again later” message. This, in the short run, means that all mail gets delayed at least until the sender tries again – but this is where spam loses out! Most spam is not sent out using RFC compliant MTAs; the spamming software will not try again later. This process is transparent to the user sending and receiving the message.

This is a very lightweight process. Especially compared to other common spam prevention techniques which read the content of the message or check blacklists. The only disadvantage is this technique will delay email being delivered from unknown contacts.

Most implementations of greylisting only delay a message for a few minutes. They also keep a database with previous email so this delay is only seen the first time a message is received.

In my experience greylisting prevented almost all spam from being delivered to my mailbox.

A list of software that can be used to implement greylisting can be found at:
greylisting.org

When compiling PHP on a 64 bit system don’t forget to add “–with-libdir=/lib64″ to the configure statement. A typical configure statement would be:

./configure –with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs –with-mysql –with-libdir=/lib64

If you forget ./configure will fail in the mysql section with the error:

configure: error: Cannot find libmysqlclient under /usr.
Note that the MySQL client library is not bundled anymore!

A few months ago I opened an account with shared account with Planet Argon. They offer shared hosting and typo blog hosting. Their typo hosting starts at $3.00 per month and shared hosting at $11.25 per month. There is no setup fee but they require signing up for either six months or annually.

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