E-mail forwarding is the most effective way to recieve email address sent to multiple addresses without creating multiple POP3 e-mail accounts. The most common redirects are webmaster@yourdomain.com,sales@yourdomain.com,support@yourdomain.com,                     info@yourdomain.com etc. You can use your control panel features to create redirect for these or other addresses and send all the mails to addresses delivered to POP3 accounts of your choice. This is an most easy way to send emails to several members of your company which avoids hassle of creating and monitoring multiple accounts in yur email client.

Autoresponders is a method of automatically replying to an email with information. Using autoresponder with a redirect would allow you to capture rmail adress of the person requesting information. You can also use CGI email form in combination with an auto responder and a redirect to capture more detailed information about the requestor.

E-mail forwarding and autoresponders can be of great help if configured correctly. However, a small mistake in configuration may result in problems affecting all mail delivery associated with your account. Read the manuals before using this features.

Configuration errors that encounter include:

a.Incorrect “default” redirect
The first entry in e-mail forward list should be “default” followed by the primary account login (e.g., yourdomain@yourdomain.com).

b. Incorrect naming
Redirects and autoresponders must not share the same name as a POP3 user or a maillist.

Hosting accounts has an access to a shared secure server. Its not really a separate server but the web pages are displayed through an encrypted connection. Every page on a website can be called through this secured server.

You can access the web pages through the secure server using following path:-

Replace “servername” with the name of the server on which your domain is hosted. Replace “yourdomain” with your domain name without the TLD extension, and replace “filename.html” or “scriptname.cgi” with the name of the file you want to call through the secure server.

https://servername.safe-order.net/yourdomain/filename.html

Use this path to access scripts located in CGI-BIN-

https://servername.safe-order.net/cgi-yourdomainscriptname.cgi

Note: Always use “https” instead of the usual “http”. Secure calls require the use of the “https”.

Sometimes actions performed by the attacker on the server may affect its functionality. So its always advisable to check server’s security to avoid attack on the server. Always check the resources of server which might be affected.

You can check the CPU usage by firing top command and look for the application or scripts that consume your CPU

For strange processes you can check with ps -awux command.

Check /tmp directory and /var/tmp directory for scripts and binaries copied there.

The attacker might use the server to host IRC bot like psybnc or eggdrop which connects to port 6667 when a server is compromised . You can if any of your applications connect to that port with sockstat:

#sockstat | grep 6667

If there’s not much traffic on your server you could use netstat command to see if suspect connections are made.

#netstat -a

Install and run regularly an rootkit finder application (for e.g /usr/ports/security/rkhunter).

Look for the other open ports that you run other than the ones you use for your running services.

Today, many people are branching out into selling web hosting services. This is made particularly easy with reseller hosting being widely available allowing suppliers to purchase large scale hosting and sell small chunks on to consumers. With this easy access to web hosting, it is easy to make a profit from this sort of business providing you get a good original host.

Obviously this type of business can be expanded as more customers join and this means businesses often want billing sytems etc. which deal with all the processes themselves, minimising human input. There are several of these on the market all having differing features and as such, differing price. In this article, I will try and outline some of the main features of the systems in general and outline a few points about some of the programs available.

In general all of these programs let you specify types of hosting accounts including specifications (bandwidth etc.) and many link in to payment systems such as Paypal, Google Checkout or more traditional methods such as cheque and bank transfer. Also, these systems often allow you to include the purchase of domain names with a sale providing you have a reseller account with a domain register e.g. ENOM. Obviously when dealing with payments which are likely to recur, you would expect the system to be able to handle that and most programs today do.

The cheapest of all the these programs is phpCoin with a price tag of £0.00 (currently!). The system is freeWebWare allowing anyone to install it on their server without paying a penny and as such, it makes it a very attractive option for small scale hosting. The fact it is also installable through Fantastico makes it also very handy.
Although a very good system, I found it had one major disadvantage that ruled it out for me personally and that was it could not set accounts up on the server automatically. As such, it needed a manual intervention which adds time and inconvenience. Further more, the program is undergoing development of its next release and for this, there will be a price increase depending on the number of clients and also to remove the phpCoin copyright from the bottom of every page.

Another program which is available to install through Fantastico is Accountlab Plus. This program is from the same people who make Fantastico and as such, gives a similar excellent performance. In this program everything is automated (although currently there is some intervention needed for some payment method) so once payment is received and marked in the system, the account gets set up on the server automatically and the “Welcome” and “Activation” emails go out to the clients. This makes the process very simple with minimum time required to keep the system up and running. There are a vast number of payment methods in built to the system making it only a few clicks to tie in to Paypal etc. or a domain reseller such as ENOM. Also, the themes can be customised to match a business image and unlike some systems, it provides long term technical support and updates for only $15 a year (after an initial $45 for the first year).

Although there are several clients available, not all of the work on Windows based hosting. Even when you find one program that does work with your server operating system, it might not integrate with the control panel you are using and as such, it is always important to check the technical specifications required before purchasing a license when some of these can be a $170 on of payment with ongoing technical support being extra. Three Windows based systems are Whois.Cart, AWBS and Modernbill however some of these are not compatible with certain control panels.

Each program has its advantages and disadvantages and as such, it is important that you work out what you need your system to do before parting with your cash! For small scale operations, phpCoin may suffice as you will have relatively few customers to process however if you are getting 60 new customers every day, trying to create all these accounts on a server would not be sensible and as such, a more automated process would be required. The selling of domain names is also a useful area to make a profit however for things like this, often online payment is required and as such you would need the system to integrate with a payment method you felt comfortable with.

So to briefly sum up, there are many systems out there, each with individual quirks and interfaces. Have a play with demo versions on the manufacturers websites to see if they work for you and investigate the features fully. Also remember that your business may grow so consider some potential for adding new servers or handling further requests. This will help save you time and money in the future but most importantly help take a lot of the admin side out of the job of web hosting.

Comparing between a SystemDNS connection & a non DNS connection to databases, the latter always seems to do better. This would be even more noticeable for sites which run a multitude of simultaneous connections to the database. However, experts seem to be recommending an OLEDB connection as against the above two. The fact that a faster speed in accessing data as well as establishing database connections is easily achieved  using OLEDB contributes to this. If one sits to compare a DNS-less connection, a SystemDSN connection & an OLEDB connection, the last of the three scores above the other  two.

The connection string for an OLEDB connection would be as follows.
“Host=HostName; Data Source=DatabaseSource; Initial Catalog=DatabaseName; User ID=UserID; Password=Password”

In the registry, search for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PLESK\PSA Config\Config . Also the value of USE_WSB_VERSION (REG_SZ) should be set to that of the sitebuilder with which you want to integrate. Once done, the correct version number should be displayed on “Components Management.”

To use a secure protocol (https) specify USE_WSB_SCHEME, USE_WSB_LOGIN, USE_WSB_PASSWORD & USE_WSB_LOGIN, USE_WSB_PORT. For a regular protocol, just set values for port & password.

Except for localhost, all other IP’s are banned for usage of webservices by Sitebuilder. To match this, go to the Service Facade folder in your IIS. Navigate to Websites & then Sitebuilder. In there, put in the IP of the server followed with the path as Properties -> Directory security -> IP address and domain name restrictions -> Edit