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Enjoy!

Apache Vs Nginx

Most hosting companies currently run the Apache web server, there are other options and from our testing Nginx (pronounced engine-X) is a real stand out. Nginx is extremely good at serving static content quickly with low and predictable memory usage.

Nginx is one of a handful of servers written to address the C10K problem. Unlike traditional servers, Nginx doesn’t rely on threads to handle requests. Instead it uses a much more scalable event-driven (asynchronous) architecture. This architecture uses small, but more importantly, predictable amounts of memory under load. Even if you don’t expect to handle thousands of simultaneous requests, you can still benefit from Nginx’s high-performance and small memory footprint. Nginx scales in all directions: from the smallest VPS all the way up to clusters of servers.

Generally the ability to change web servers is not something offered by most hosts, however DreamHost does give this option with their Web VPS service, this article is a tutorial on switching your Apache server to Nginx and setup the W3-Total-Cache plugin to speed up your WordPress install.

Before We Being

Switching to Nginx is a big change, there are major differences between Apache and Nginx, among the most important is that your .htaccess file (that magic thing that makes your pretty permalinks work) will NOT work! Prepare to have some downtime if you are using permalinks.

Prepare for the Move

I generally recommend making this switch one site at a time, that means if you have more then one website  on your VPS setup a second server running Nginx, leave your original running Apache, it’ll cut down on the amount of downtime you have during the move. For the sake of this tutorial we’re going to pretend you’re only running one website on the VPS.

1) Log into ftp and create a folder within your home directory called nginx, within that folder create another called yourdomain.com, so for wheretohost.net it looks like this:

nginx/yourdomain.com/

This folder is where your website specific nginx rules are going to go, although these rules  can be complex we’re all very thankful that the basic WordPress rules are very simple. You’re going to create a file with the extension .conf, I normally put my wordpress rules into a file called wordpress.conf and it contains the following:

if (!-e $request_filename) {

rewrite ^.*$ /index.php last;

}

Making The Switch

As long as you have a Web VPS, DreamHost makes this part easy. Visit the DreamHost control panel and visit the VPS->Configure Server page. You’ll want to change the HTTP Server setting to “nginx”. Enable the PHP cache setting for that extra special boost only opcode caching can provide, plus we’re going to be using that as the basis of our WP cache setup! Save your settings and go get a cup of coffee, it’s going to take anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes for the change to take affect.

VPS Configure Server Page

Test Your Site

Finished that coffee already? Awesome, well welcome back! It’s time to check out your website, it should be responding already and doing so rapidly, unless you had a special setup everything should simply work.

Now it’s time to setup so cache, so let’s visit your WordPress dashboard. Go on, log in… good stuff!

Install W3-Total-Cache

W3 Total Cache Settings

Check your plugins and make sure you disable any other cache plugins – such as WP-SuperCache or wp-cache.

Visit your Plugins->Add New page in the dashboard and do a search for W3, the first result should be W3 Total Cache. Click on the “Install Now” link, confirm the install request, if all went well on the next page you’ll be able to click on the “Activate Plugin” link.

Configure Cache

If everything has gone smoothly you’ve now got a new menu on the bottom left of your WordPress dashboard section, it’s called “Performance”. Go click it, then check out the screenshot, since you’re running on a VPS and have XCache enabled use the opcode caching method for page, database, object cache, and minify.

That’s it, enjoy!

DreamHost Green Hosting

With so many companies out their saying they are green and listing the many different ways they adhere to that statement, I would like to start by breaking down “green”. Green is more than just a color; it has become a well known word used to describe eco-friendly businesses, products, people, and has become a symbol of environmentalism (we all know the political party by that name as well). Then there is that “carbon footprint” phrase being thrown around. So what IS a carbon footprint? Well, Wikipedia describes a carbon footprint as “the total set of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by an organization, event or product”. For simplicity of reporting, it is often expressed in terms of the amount of carbon dioxide, or its equivalent of other GHGs, emitted.”

So, we covered green, and the footprint, but what about a green business? According to Green America Today (http://www.greenamericatoday.org/) “Green businesses operate in ways that solve, rather than cause, both environmental and social problems. These businesses adopt principles, policies, and practices that improve the quality of life for their customers, their employees, communities, and the environment.”

What about green hosting? Thats what I really want to know!! Are they just green businesses? Well kind of, yes, but there is a bit more to it than that. More and more web hosting companies are finding ways to offset their carbon footprint, create their own energy, plant trees for new sign-ups, eliminate paper in the offices, switch to biodegradable cups and mugs, aluminum water bottles for the employees, offer incentives for carpooling, and more.

1 and 1 Green Hosting

There are a few ways that Green Hosting companies provide green hosting solutions to the customer. The first is with “eco-friendly” hosting, which makes up the majority of green hosting companies out there. Eco-friendly means that the particular web host purchases Renewable Energy Certificates or carbon credits which offsets their carbon footprint. Others, use things like solar or wind power to directly generate their own power. Most hosting companies, no matter which method they choose to power their servers, are using multiple methods to help the environment.

Being a green host, rather then a non-green hosting company, doesn’t necessarily make one host better than another. You should still weigh everything that is important to you and your business, such as what applications they support, the uptime, the price, whether they are eco-friendly or not, and more, before you make your decision. Green hosting, is however, a great way to add that little extra bit of help to the environment.

Installing Magento Commerce on DreamHost – A PS machine is recommended! Click the link to read more.

1) Follow @WhereToHost on twitter: http://twitter.com/WhereToHost

2) Send a message @WhereToHost telling us who your favorite web host is and why.

We’ll look over the messages and select the most creative, that person will get a free domain – heck we may give more then one.

–The WTH Team!

JJ

BlueHost

Bluehost.com president Matt Heaton posted to his blog on the 20th of January about the pain of backups. Included in this post is information regarding the solution they have developed and plan to release; a kernel patch that creates a list of modified files which should be backed up. Matt claims that using this system has given Bluehost an increase of 10x over their previous method of creating backups.

They also plan on releasing the addon they are creating. Check out the post over on Matt Heaton’s blog.

When looking over DreamHost and their compatibility with zenPhoto I found that they have an “Easy One Click” install available. This means two things:

1. It extremely simple to go from nothing to installed in no time flat.
2. DreamHost and zenPhoto are extremely compatible.

In fact I put together a quick video of the installation process. Enjoy!

[See post to watch Flash video]

Signup For DreamHost! – Get $50 Off With “WTH” Promo Code

Features of zenPhoto – from the zenPhoto website.

• Internationalization/localization
• Multi-lingual titles and descriptions
• Plugin system
• Slideshow
• Automatically generated thumbnails, custom crops possible!, and sized-down images
• Upload via FTP or via the admin interface
• Move/copy/rename images and albums without loosing any data
• Upload images, albums (folders) or even zip-archives
• Comments on images and albums with powerful spam filters
• AJAX-powered edit-while-you-browse
• Sub albums; interface for moving/renaming images and albums.
• Video support for Flash Video (.flv), MPEG4 (.mp4), Quicktime (.mov) and 3GP (.3gp)
• Audio support for MP3 and MP4
• Password protection for gallery and albums
• EXIF and IPTC support
• Watermarks for images
• Powerful search with boolean expressions
• Tags: Categorize you images with tags
• Image and album rating
• Dynamic albums: Generate albums from searches!
• Highly customizable theme engine
• rss for gallery, albums and comments
• Multiple administrative users with varying rights
• Cruft free, search engine friendly URLs with mod_rewrite

DreamHost

It looks like DreamHost has had specials running since the first of the year! Unfortunately people who are barely hearing about this missed out on the 95%, 90%, and 80% off two year deals!

The currently running discount (as of 01/07/09) is 20% off two years of hosting by using the 227 promo code.

http://www.dreamhost.com/