Archive for the 'General' Category

Invest in a good webhosting

Published on March 3, 2008 in General and Tutorials. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

After two years with the same host, I realised that I wasn’t satisfied with their service. I’d often get spike lags, down times for no reason which was frustrating. But you can’t expect an overselling web hosting to provide a service of high quality. Everything come down to a price.

I believe that by buying my own web server (dedicated) I did the best decision I could because now I have total control over it. No one is limiting my usage (in term of sql query, bandwidth, cpu usage, etc). The only down side is that I have more management to do, but I like that down side since I wanted to learn about web hosting, and specifically how I could do it myself.

Here’s a quick tutorial of what I did:

1. Installed the operating system
I opted for Fedora, which is a solid solution based on Red Hat.

2. Install Apache/PHP/MySQL
Those are the easiest to setup, mostly because they are pretty much correctly setup from the beginning, so issuing a small

yum install httpd mysql php

would do the trick.

3. Install mail
This was a bigger problem than expected. Installing a mailing software is not as easy as you’d thought it would. I’m not going to go into much detail but if you aren’t familiar with software installation, I’d suggest you get a friend or someone who’s good at it to help you out, like I did.

4. Install mydns/Bind
Since you’re most likely going to act as a server, you need to be able to manage your domain name, but this is not necessary. I found that mydns was the easiest to setup and it works with mysql. Managing it is also a piece of cake.

5. Transfer
When your installation is complete, it’s time to transfer your data onto your new server. I had ssh access on my old server, so I simply did a

tar -cfv base.tar.gz /

in order to get all my stuff into a compressed archive.

I also did get a backup of my mysql databases with a simple

mysqldump –all-databases

With all that done, I simply put that stuff onto my new server and I was good to go.

Remember to always check out if everything is working fine. Some of the time, due to different server settings, thing may work while others may not. I often had to correct the permissions over the files I had transfered, which was a SMALL pain in the ass compared to the new control I have over my stuff.

Become your own boss, at 19.

Published on March 2, 2008 in General and Tutorials. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Many wants to quit their jobs because they are boring and repetitive, or because they want more freedom. The problem with that is that it’s not easy to do. What would you actually do if you didn’t have that job? You need money to buy food, various services such as internet, cable, telephone, etc. So what do you do?

The first idea that comes in mind is to start your own business. But which business? Is there anything you like? Well, for me, programming and/or anything related to computer is great. Currently managing many websites is a really interesting job that keep me passionnated. If it’s not your kind of stuff, maybe you should think about what you actually want to do… Maybe you like to interact with people, help people, work on machines, buy stuff for people, sell stuff for people. You can make any profession your own. If you didn’t notice, most of the “geniuses” in our world don’t have diplomas. They started as self declared whatever they wanted to be. If they liked robotic, they just played with a lot of robot until they were recognized has an expert in the field.

Most of the time when you go to apply for a job, what employers are looking for is experience. Do you know how to deal with various stuff? If you do, then you’re most likely their best choice.

This small story of mine should help you understand how this idea works.
At age 18 and before, I had a huge interest in websites. I did my first website out of Geocities, at age 13. From that point forward, I learned a lot about computer and programming. I was so interested in the topic that I was often ahead of my peers in the domain. I had seen the potential computers had and I wanted to take part of it.

At age 18, I began to manage around 5 websites, mainly blogs which I would try to update regularly. At first it was fun, new. Then routine made the whole thing a chore. I was bored to do all the work alone. At that moment I had no idea what to do. I was making money out of the advertising on those website I owned and because I didn’t see a drop in how much I was making even though I wasn’t writing anymore, I though that if I’d stop, it wouldn’t make a huge difference. For a year I did nothing on those sites, but still, revenue was in. I was partially happy, partially because I did money, but not totally because I knew I could do much better. At the moment I though I could do better, which was around age 19, I said to myself I had to find a solution to my biggest problem: generate content without it being a chore.

So my first solution was to find people to write for me. I though about friends and family members, but most of them where not as passionate as me for the topics I was writing about. I waited for some months until I read the 4-hour workweek by Tim Ferris. In the book, I learned about elance and registered there. I decided I would try to get some people to help me write content, even though it would cost me up to 300$ of my personal money. I engaged 3 different writers to write about my main blogs topic and gave them specific instruction.

After a month, all the articles were ready and I began to put some of them on my blogs. Some articles were great, some sucked huge time, but I didn’t have the time to do it myself anyway. I began to see revenue increase, I was beginning to see some results. I told myself that it was actually time I tried again to write on those blogs.

Still, it’s a huge task. I believe the best solution is to find some friends which would agree to write for me for a small amount of money per article. With that idea, the business became.

I’d pay my friend over 5$ per article, which is similar to what I would pay over elance, but the results would be much better and since those people were my friend, they had a better understand of what I was looking for and they often had the same interest as me. From that moment forward, managing my blogs and website was a piece of cake.

What I want you to grasp about that story is the how I did it. Notice that I wasn’t able to do what I wanted at first, but after a while, I succeeded. It’s not because you fail once that you’re necessarily going to fail twice…

How to start a website at 15, with no money?

Published on March 1, 2008 in General, Tutorials and Your questions. 0 Comments Tags: .

This was the first question I had when I wanted to start my own website at that age. Without any way to get money from my parents in order to buy myself a hosting package (may it have been 5-10$ per month, or 17.99$ at that time), I had to find another solution.

When you don’t have money, you look for what is free. But how could free web host be possible if there’s a business for it? Well, because some people like to give for FREE. At that time, I went to my best friend, Google, and asked him “free hosting” please. Most of the free host you’d find would have a nasty side effect: “banners”. I didn’t want banners, but it seems it was the only possible option. I lived with that for a long moment, maybe one and a half year. Later, I found it was enough and went ahead to look for another host. That time, I found what I was looking for: a free hosting package with PHP and mySQL for free, without any banner.

5 years later, my needs in term of webhosting have changed. I have a much more broad understanding of how to manage web servers and for that reason I have different needs.

This article topic is on how to find that web host you’re looking for, at age 15. May it be to host a blog or to write on a specific topic, this should give you a general idea of what to do.

1. Find the topic you want to write on.
Do not begin to look for a web host before you have any idea about what to write on. If you’re doing this solely for the purpose of wasting time, reconsider that. If you could be doing something else more productive, do that instead.

2. Search on the topic to see if you can write a lot about it or not.
With some research you can see whether or not the topic you want to write about is interesting, broad and targeted. If you want to write about honey production in the mountains, maybe you’ll have to look again… (or not).

3. Start looking for web hosting.
Many websites have as primary task to help you find free hosting. For free, check out http://www.freewebhostingtalk.com/, and for paid services http://www.webhostingtalk.com/. Those forums allow you to get information about various hosts such as positive and negative reviews.

4. Register to the web host.
Go to their website, check out if you like how they look. A web host that takes time to make a good first impression is often a good host afterward, but not ALL the time. If the host you’re looking at look cheap, it probably is. When you’re decision is done, simply go to their sign up page and sign up!

5. Write/Design your web site.
This step could have been done before step 3 and 4. Here you write about what you want. You design your website the way you want it to look. If you’re having trouble, never hesitate to find help online, many forums are dedicated to that task.

6. Upload your web site.
Using one of the various softwares called ftp clients, upload your website (put the files from your computer onto the server).

7. ENJOY!
This is pretty self-explanatory.