My Website Journey

Now that I was able to get Apache, PHP and MySql running on my CentOS 5 64-bit VPS, I have to actually build a website.  I decided to go with WordPress because it is one of the best Blogging/CMS systems out there.  After all this site is powered off of WordPress as well.  So I purchased a domain, http://www.popcornblogs.com/ set up the DNS servers to point to my VPS from Burst.NET.  Now that everything is setup, I just need to go to the WordPress website to download the latest version.

WordPress can be obtained by visiting http://wordpress.org/.  Download the latest version and extract the contents into your webserver’s directory.  After you have extract the contents to your webserver’s folder.  Navigate to the home directory and a page should come up stating that a configure file is required.  Click to configure your WordPress blog and input your database information (Database, server, login, password).  If you click next and you come up with the same prompt again, that means that your file permissions aren’t set correctly. Read more…

So at about 1am this morning, Burst.Net finally got my server up and running for me to use.  Unfortunately for me, I was already sleeping and I had work today so I wasn’t able to actually play with it until tonight.  Like other VPS’s and dedicated servers out there, the server is usually bare boned with no software except the operating system.  For me I decided to use CentOS 5 64-bit edition to get my web server up and running.  Burst.NET had Apache 2 pre-installed on my VPS for me but that was pretty much about it.  So I had to scramble around and search for an easy way to install Mysql and PHP to go with my Linux Apache server.

After some searching, I realized that it is really easy because Linux CentOS 5 comes pre-bundled with Yum.  Yum is a feature that allows you to download and install software automatically.  It will determine all of the dependencies and take care of the rest.  I determined which packages I needed and sent off my command: Read more…

As I start my website journey, I decided to purchase a new hosting package from Burst.NET.  I will be reviewing it over the next couple weeks and see how I like it.  As of right now I have hosting through 1&1 and GoDaddy but I want to expand as I get new websites in my collection.  Burst.NET has the advantage of being very very cheap for a VPS.  I am currently only paying about $6 a month to get a VPS with 1ghz and 512mb.

I have been really happy with GoDaddy’s VPS service.  They have very prompt with assisting me with any of the problems that arise.  For the past 3 years, I have had no issue with the reliability and speed of GoDaddy’s VPS hosting.  I am currently paying $40 dollars for a Windows VPS machine.  Why did I choose Windows?  I have a couple ASP sites from when I first started web development that are running that require a Windows environment.  With Godaddy, I am able to get Remote Desktop services which is great because I can have admin rights.  I am trying my best to move away from Windows because it has a big overhead.

The VPS I ordered from Burst.NET is going to be running CentOS 5 64-bit edition.  This sounds like the best distribution of Linux for Web Hosting, with the least amount of overhead and the fastest speeds.  Hopefully Burst.NET will be able to keep up with the load and speed requirements that I need.  It is important to run a VPS instead of shared hosting because it will allow you to perform backups and snapshots with rsync.  I will post information about rsync in the future.  It is GREAT for making backups and snapshots of Linux machines without using much bandwidth.