Recently in php Category

Our technical team are always working on new and cool things behind the scenes.

The latest project to bear fruit is the launch of Windows Server 2008 with IIS7 on our shared hosting.

What does it give you?

The hosting plans are identical to the Server 2003 versions, but instead of IIS6 you get IIS7 basically.

Php on Windows Server 2008 with IIS7 is meant to work a lot better and there are other improvements and options that ASP.net developers will appreciate.

So to celebrate this launch we're doing a nice little special offer.

The first 100 signups for our new Windows Server 2008 Minimus plans will get a 20 euro discount (no coupons required). So you can get all the power of Server 2008, IIS7 and all the other features we offer as standard for a mere EUR 29.95 for the first year!!

How do you get this offer?

Just signup online - remember to choose the Windows 2008 / IIS7 option from the dropdown and the discount will automatically be applied.

The small print: The offer is valid only for the first 100 signups. Offer only applicable on annual signups for Minimus plans using Windows 2008 / IIS7

We've been inundated with queries about magento over the last few months. Today we've rolled out some php5 upgrades to all linux shared hosting machines so we can now support Magento. Please note that this only applies to our minimus, medius and maximus (linux) plans.

Also this upgrade now supports imap and imaps so you SugarCRM users can get cracking and start using those e-mail features that are built into Sugar.

As I mentioned yesterday, we've just relaunched our website with a whole new set of hosting plans.

Over the coming weeks I'll be exploring some of the new options available to you and hopefully include a couple of screencasts as well (the stress is on "hopefully"!).

Our new entry level plan is called the "minimus", but there's nothing that small about it.

While it is "small" compared to our other hosting plans it comes with 20 times more space than its predecessor!

So what do you get?

To start with you get access to our new super-duper control panel. (You'll have to excuse all the superlatives - we're ever so slightly excited about this!)

The control panel is the "hub" for the entire system.

If you want to see what orders you have with us, be they domains, hosting accounts, vps or anything else, then you can login there and check their status.

To show you the kind of cool things you can do from within the control panel we asked our friends over in DemoDemo.com to put together some Flash tutorials for us.

If you have a look at some of the tutorials you'll probably get a "feel" for how things work.

What about other features?

The minimus, like all our hosting plans, allows you to host multiple websites on the one account.

You can now host up to 30 independent websites on a single hosting account.

If you want database support for a blog, forum, shop or anything else you will be blown away by the range of options available.

Not only are we offering you a choice of MySQL, PostGres and MS SQL 2005, we're also offering you the choice between MySQL 4 and MySQL 5, so if you need to move a site over from another provider you don't need to worry so much about database compatibility.

At the scripting level we're offering a choice of Php5 and Php4, though we would always recommend that you opt for php5.

If you want asp or asp.net there's no problem there, as we offer both Windows and Linux based web servers. You can simply choose which one you need during signup (we've got rid of the windows / linux plan pages since they just cause confusion).

What about pre-installed scripts?

We've a new application installer that offers a wide range of scripts and software for you to use with your site.

You can see it in action here

What about email?

We know how important email services are to our clients, so we've deployed a whole new range of email services and servers.

The "minimus" is not short on email features!

POP3 Mailboxes: Unlimited
Forwarders: Unlimited
Autoresponders: Unlimited
Mailing Lists: 5
IMAP
Email Filtering
Webmail: @Mail

If you want to access your email on the move then you'll love our new webmail service, which is powered by the very slick and powerful AtMail.

What about your site builder?

We've been offering clients a basic sitebuilder for quite some time and we were amazed at how popular it has proven.

We're now offering a much more powerful sitebuilder to our clients which comes with a nice range of templates to choose from.

What about ..... ?

There are a lot of new and cool features available for clients, so if you have any queries don't be shy! Let us know either by posting a comment here or simply emailing our sales team (sales@blacknight.com)

We've been offering Wordpress via an automated installer for quite some time and it's proven to be very popular.

Unfortunately Wordpress' use of SQL is far from optimal and this can easily lead to a popular blog or site causing serious issues on our servers (or anyone elses for that matter!).

We don't like enforcing certain policies on our users, but we're not left with much choice.
Due to the recent issues regarding busy WordPress websites affecting the performance of shared hosting servers, we are contacting all of our customers that are using WordPress and asking them to please look into enabling caching.

I just wish the Wordpress developers would listen to reason and enable saner caching by default.

There are two possible solutions:

- use a blogging / CMS solution that is a bit "saner" in terms of SQL and / or caching content (You'll notice that this blog has always been running on MT for this very reason!)

- install one of the available Wordpress plugins that will provide caching

There are currently two caching plugins available that we know of:

- WP Cache
- WP Super Cache

What the caching does is take the load away from the MySQL / PHP processing so that the web server (Apache) only has to serve static content, which it does very well!

If you do not enable WP Cache (or similar) there is far greater chance that if your WordPress site experiences a period of high visitors or similiar, then it could cause issues on the server.
As per our Acceptable-Usage Policy, we might have to suspend any site that causes issues like this. Putting it simply - if you're not being a considerate neighbour we might have to shut you down until you behave.

Setting up caching should only take a couple of minutes and if you have any issues or need assistance our support forum is available, as is our helpdesk

EDIT: Gary, from our technical support team, has put together a short document to help people install and configure WP Cache. You can get it from here

Zend just sent me an email about a webinar that might be of interest to our clients:
Migrating from PHP4 to PHP5 - Presented by Ivo Jansch, CTO iBuildings

This webinar is aimed at both developers and IT managers who are still using PHP4 and considering migration to PHP5. This session will address the question, “What are the benefits of migrating to PHP5 and equally importantly, what are the risks?” Following this webinar you will be in a better position to make an informed decision between PHP4 and PHP5.