Author: Patrick Hawkins

Running your first webserver can be daunting. Even if you are familiar with running a cPanel account, there is much to learn regarding Web Host Manager (WHM). The first step to successfully running WHM is creating a cPanel account.

So your business has grown, and you need to increase your number of servers to two or more. Now is the time to decide on a hostname scheme for multiple servers. Picking a hostname scheme that works for your endeavor pays dividends down the road in terms of keeping your setup organized. While the topic may seem trivial, the wrong hostname scheme can make your day to day work needlessly complex.

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) can be extremely useful when administering your servers, which is why Liquid Web offers a Cisco VPN with our firewalls. Logging in to the device can vary among operating systems. Here are some instructions for logging into a VPN from Windows systems:

As important as DNS is to web hosting, it is a good idea to make it redundant when possible. If you have two or more cPanel servers, you can use cPanel’s DNS clustering to lower the risk of a DNS failure on a nameserver taking down all of your sites. Here’s how to set that up:

One of the most common tasks that a website owner will do is upload one or more files to their site. While it is a simple task, there are many ways to go about accomplishing it, each with their own quirks and best practices.

If you manage a domain, sooner or later you are bound to receive e-mail at your domain for an address that does not exist. Most of the time this mail comes from spammers, guessing that “abc123@example.com” might be a viable email address at your domain. It might also come from someone who mistyped the first part of your legitimate email address.

Liquid Web’s Content Delivery Network is a fantastic way to get elements of your site to your global customers in a timely manner. As part of the set up process, you may need to add a Canonical Name (CNAME) record to your domain’s DNS.

Linux has a robust permissions system. This is a very good thing, as it enables a clear separation of roles among users, especially between the root user and your average user. Sometimes, though, you might want your average user to have some or all of root's privileges. In Linux, this is accomplished with sudo.

Any time you move a domain to a different IP address, you will run into at least some DNS propagation. While it cannot be avoided entirely, its effects can be minimized.

Liquid Web provides two types of DNS service: hosting your own private nameservers on your fully-managed server, or using Liquid Web’s nameserver cluster. While the linked articles show how to set each of those options up, they do not give an overview of when either of those options might be in your best interests.