Web Concepts

Your .htaccess file, with any Apache based server or hosting account is a very powerful tool that if you can learn to use for your advantage can help you complete many time consuming or difficult tasks with ease. How do you create one though for your web hosting account? This is a question that we hear often, and below is your solution using either cPanel or LPCP (Lunarpages Control Panel).

cPanel

Login to your cPanel with your user name and password, then once you have made it in, head over to your File Manager. Now the File Manager’s interface is a very familiar Windows-styled look at your files on your hosting account. You will want to click on your folder icon next to your public_html link next, that will take you to the insides of the public_html folder.

Inside you will see all your web site files. You need to scan down the page till you see the bold text, Create a New File. Click that and you should get in the upper-right corner a box with a few more setting to fill in. In the empty text box, put in .htaccess. Keep the drop down box on Text Document and then hit the Create button.

Now you have your .htaccess file inside of your public_html folder all with the help of cPanel and your helpful File Manger.

LPCP

To create a .htaccess file in LPCP, log into the LPCP, and then go to your File Manager. Click on the text link labeled, ” public_html” to navigate yourself inside the public_html folder.

In the empty text box to your upper-right type in .htaccess, make sure the drop down box is set to “File” and then hit the button labeled, “Create”.

Your .htaccess file will be created in your public_html folder on your LPCP powered account.

• Find out how to manually create and upload the .htaccess file to your web hosting account!

For more LPCP help, tips, tutorials and more, be sure to check out the web hosting wiki. Hundreds of guides have been published there to help you get more out of your web hosting account at Lunarpages.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Amy

Since today is Friday, and things are pretty calm here in the Lunarverse – I thought today would be a perfect day to take a look  back at some great guides, links, tips and tutorials of 2010. 

Wait, what do you mean 2010 isn’t over yet? Well, then let us look at the best of the best articles posted in 2010 on the Lunartics blog (…so far).

10 Best Google AdSense WordPress Plugins

Are your web site advertisements not performing like they should?  Would you like to have more control over your Google AdSense ads and how they are displayed in your WordPress powered web site?  I have searched the Web for the ten best Google AdSense related plugins.  We have plugins here that will help you manage your ads better, put them in better places, offer other adverting opportunities and much more.

Fun “Guess What I’m Drawing” Game

Looking for a fun way to spend a few extra minutes of your day?  If you are looking for an escape from your Monday morning blues – give Gartic a try.  This web-based drawing game is a lot of fun.

Get Free Google AdWords Credit!

Did you know that Lunarpages is giving to its customers upwards of $50 to $100 in free Google AdWords credit?  If you have never tried advertising your business or web site on Google, and you are Lunarpages client – you just lost your last excuse not to at least try it out.  You can now reach a global internet audience using Google AdWords and your Lunarpages web hosting account.

Is Google Down?

This is the sentence that we all dread to hear ask.  Is Google down?  Now, you can always pull up Google in your browser, and check for yourself – however I have a better place for you to check and see what problems are going on with Google.

5 Most Popular .htaccess Tips and Tricks

There are tons of things you can do from the .htaccess file inside of your web hosting account.  From redirecting the users to controlling who can get in and who can get out, it is a very useful file to have on your hosting account.  To help out the new web hosting clients and to act as a reminder to the old pros around here, I thought I would go through five of the most popular .htaccess tips I know.

Free Layouts from Open Web Design

For general free web site designs, you can do no wrong at Open Web Designs.  This web site highlights some of the best free open source web design layouts on the Web.  With well over 3,000 to choose from you are bound to find the right layout for your next web site project.

UnderCon – Perfect WordPress Pre-Launch Page

Are you working on launching or maybe even re-launching a WordPress powered web site?  If so, you might want to slap up a quick “under construction page” to keep people happy until the final version of the web site is ready.  UnderCon, a great theme for WordPress will help you do that with style.

10 Most Popular Joomla Security Extensions

Joomla is one of the most popular content management systems out there.  Being the most popular does have it’s price though, you have to pay more attention to security related issues.  To help you out, I thought I would find then of the most popular security related extensions for the Joomla CMS script.

Use Gmail With Your Domain’s E-mail Account

I have a rather wacky e-mail setup, due to the fact that I have so many accounts to manage.  With that in mind, I found the perfect solution for my e-mail needs, and hopefully it will work for you too.  Did you know that you can use Gmail as a POP3 e-mail client?  This way you can both send and receive mail as you@yourdomain.com through the Gmail interface.

Lunarpages Takes On Tough New York Times Web Hosting Questions

The New York Times recently asked some very interesting questions as it pertains to what people should be looking for when it comes to finding the web hosting service that is right for them.  As a web host, I thought I would tackle some of the questions they brought up one on one.

Double Save Your Work to a USB Drive

Nothing kills your will to live faster than losing a lot of work you have been spending hours upon hours creating it.  Not that I am bitter about my own paste experiences or anything.  With that thought in mind though, I thought it might be a good time to introduce you to Back4Sure. 

What would you like to see more of on the Lunartics blog?  Leave a comment and let us know.  We would love to hear your suggestions and feedback.

&copy Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch

Since today is Friday, and things are pretty calm here in the Lunarverse – I thought today would be a perfect day to take a look  back at some great guides, links, tips and tutorials of 2010. 

Wait, what do you mean 2010 isn’t over yet? Well, then let us look at the best of the best articles posted in 2010 on the Lunartics blog (…so far).

10 Best Google AdSense WordPress Plugins

Are your web site advertisements not performing like they should?  Would you like to have more control over your Google AdSense ads and how they are displayed in your WordPress powered web site?  I have searched the Web for the ten best Google AdSense related plugins.  We have plugins here that will help you manage your ads better, put them in better places, offer other adverting opportunities and much more.

Fun “Guess What I’m Drawing” Game

Looking for a fun way to spend a few extra minutes of your day?  If you are looking for an escape from your Monday morning blues – give Gartic a try.  This web-based drawing game is a lot of fun.

Get Free Google AdWords Credit!

Did you know that Lunarpages is giving to its customers upwards of $50 to $100 in free Google AdWords credit?  If you have never tried advertising your business or web site on Google, and you are Lunarpages client – you just lost your last excuse not to at least try it out.  You can now reach a global internet audience using Google AdWords and your Lunarpages web hosting account.

Is Google Down?

This is the sentence that we all dread to hear ask.  Is Google down?  Now, you can always pull up Google in your browser, and check for yourself – however I have a better place for you to check and see what problems are going on with Google.

5 Most Popular .htaccess Tips and Tricks

There are tons of things you can do from the .htaccess file inside of your web hosting account.  From redirecting the users to controlling who can get in and who can get out, it is a very useful file to have on your hosting account.  To help out the new web hosting clients and to act as a reminder to the old pros around here, I thought I would go through five of the most popular .htaccess tips I know.

Free Layouts from Open Web Design

For general free web site designs, you can do no wrong at Open Web Designs.  This web site highlights some of the best free open source web design layouts on the Web.  With well over 3,000 to choose from you are bound to find the right layout for your next web site project.

UnderCon – Perfect WordPress Pre-Launch Page

Are you working on launching or maybe even re-launching a WordPress powered web site?  If so, you might want to slap up a quick “under construction page” to keep people happy until the final version of the web site is ready.  UnderCon, a great theme for WordPress will help you do that with style.

10 Most Popular Joomla Security Extensions

Joomla is one of the most popular content management systems out there.  Being the most popular does have it’s price though, you have to pay more attention to security related issues.  To help you out, I thought I would find then of the most popular security related extensions for the Joomla CMS script.

Use Gmail With Your Domain’s E-mail Account

I have a rather wacky e-mail setup, due to the fact that I have so many accounts to manage.  With that in mind, I found the perfect solution for my e-mail needs, and hopefully it will work for you too.  Did you know that you can use Gmail as a POP3 e-mail client?  This way you can both send and receive mail as you@yourdomain.com through the Gmail interface.

Lunarpages Takes On Tough New York Times Web Hosting Questions

The New York Times recently asked some very interesting questions as it pertains to what people should be looking for when it comes to finding the web hosting service that is right for them.  As a web host, I thought I would tackle some of the questions they brought up one on one.

Double Save Your Work to a USB Drive

Nothing kills your will to live faster than losing a lot of work you have been spending hours upon hours creating it.  Not that I am bitter about my own paste experiences or anything.  With that thought in mind though, I thought it might be a good time to introduce you to Back4Sure. 

What would you like to see more of on the Lunartics blog?  Leave a comment and let us know.  We would love to hear your suggestions and feedback.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch

Want to take our blog (your favorite web hosting blog, Lunartics!) with you to Google Reader or the iGoogle homepage?

It is easy to do.  It is also free for both Lunarpages and non-Lunarpages clients!

The first step would be to visit this link here:

• Add the Lunarpages Blog to Google

That in turn, will give you two more choices.  You can choose to see our newest tips, tutorials and features on the iGoogle homepage or in Google Reader.  Alternatively you can skip this step by using one of these two links:

• Add the Lunarpages Blog to iGoogle
• Add the Lunarpages Blog to Google Reader

Now you will be able to monitor all the cool new tutorials, tips and more we post here every single day.

Subscribe via Really Simple Syndication – You can easily subscribe to the Lunarpages blog by taking the RSS feed and plugging it into any service that accepts them.  There are dozens of RSS readers, widgets and more around the Web to use too. 

I have a question for all of you now, how do you subscribe to this site?

© Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don′t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch

The March edition of the Lunarpages customer newsletter is packed full of great web hosting news, tips and tutorials.  To top it all off, Lunarpages announced two new contests you can enter too.

• Some of the other features from this month’s edition include:
• Better Server Access Logs Come to LPCP
• Your Affiliate Web Hosting Checklist
• News on Google’s Real Time Search Future
• 20 of the Web’s Best News Sources
• and much more!

So do not hesitate any longer, go see what all the fuss is about, and read up about the latest Lunarpages news.  Go check out the Lunarpages web hosting newsletter!

© Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch

There are tons of things you can do from the .htaccess file inside of your web hosting account.  From redirecting the users to controlling who can get in and who can get out, it is a very useful file to have on your hosting account.  To help out the new web hosting clients and to act as a reminder to the old pros around here, I thought I would go through five of the most popular .htaccess tips I know.

Redirect to a Maintenance Page

This is a great one to use if you need to make some quick web page edits, and you don’t want the public to see you edit your web site, while it is still live.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/offline.html$
RewriteRule .* /offline.html [R=307,L]

This will redirect anybody who checks out any web page on your web site to the &quotoffline.html&quot file.

Force the Use of “www” in Front of a Domain Name

If you want to keep the www in front of your domain name, no matter how somebody types it in, here is the ‘bit of .htaccess magic you will need:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^mydomain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Once you have done so, both mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com will both send you to www.mydomain.com

Remove the “www” From in Front of a Domain Name

You can also force your domain to drop the www from the address when typed in, if you would rather have it the other way around. In that situation, you would need to add this to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mydomain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This will make both mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com send you to just mydomain.com.

Manually Create Custom Error Pages

Ever check out some of those customized error pages and wonder how it could be done? Just use these snippets of .htaccess code to tell people where to look for your error pages.

   ErrorDocument 400 /errors/400.html
   ErrorDocument 401 /errors/401.html
   ErrorDocument 403 /errors/403.html
   ErrorDocument 404 /errors/404.html
   ErrorDocument 500 /errors/500.html

This tells the server to look inside the “errors” folder and that specific page for each of the different error types. That is not all of the error codes, but they are the ones that will be ‘hit by your users 99 percent of the time.

Block Visitor By IP Address

Need to keep somebody from checking out your web site?  This next tip will give you the ability to deny somebody based on what their IP address is:

order allow,deny
deny from 123.45.6.7
deny from 012.34.5.
allow from all

The above blocks access to the site from 123.45.6.7, and from any sub-domain under the IP block 012.34.5. (012.34.5.1, 012.34.5.2, 012.34.5.3, etc).

That is it for this round up of tips.  For more help with the .htaccess file, and many more things you can do with your web hosting account, be sure to check out the Lunarpages Web Hosting Wiki.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don′t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch

Who doesn’t love a cupcake or two? 

In celebration of National Cupcake Day, I give you some web site tips that will be sure to leave your web development sweet tooth wanting more.

Socialize Yourself

There are many easy ways you can plug your social profiles or micro-blogging services out there.  Here we have a source that will give you cute icons for the following social networks:  Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, MySpace, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and Twitter.

How to Embed a YouTube Playlist

Thanks to relist.tv, you can now deliver a nice flash playlist player for your YouTube videos.  How does it work?  Well, after visiting relist.tv, you just fill out the options and then grab the code to copy and paste into your site’s design.

Tons of WordPress Fun

For our WordPress using clients, these tasty links will be the icing on the cake.

• 25 Most Popular Twitter Plugins for WordPress
• Add Fixed Social Buttons to WordPress
• 4 Great Wooden WordPress Themes

Is that not enough?  Ok, let us top it off with 55 of my favorite WordPress plugins and the best blog hosting guide out there.

May you all have a very fun and fattening cupcake day!

© Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch

The important key thing to remember about any password is to keep it easy to remember, but hard to guess.  It might be overlooked by some, but having a good password can mean a lot when it comes to web site security.  Hackers can often guess your password if it is a person, place or thing in the dictionary – even with trailing numbers or letters.

The best password advice I can give to you would be:

• Use Several Capital Letters
• Use Some Symbols (if allowed)
• Toss a Few Numbers in There
• Also Use Some Lower-case Letters Too

Let’s do a little test.  Which one of these password do you think would be more guessable by a hacker.

password1234 or 6P☛W0r|>9

The second one of course, silly. 

Now how you store your password is just as important as the password itself.  Never write down the password and keep it in plain sight.  Jotting it down on a sticky note and then putting your password on your monitor is about as logical as using the 12345 as a password.

So there you have my general password advice I think everybody should use and follow.  Picking a good password is not hard to do.  When you stop and think about it, common sense goes a long way when security comes to mind.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don′t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch

Lunarpages affiliate program members get a lot of tools to use, when it comes to marketing.  An affiliate advertising campaign is a great way to track the success of one particular affiliate link, in comparison with another one.  At Lunarpages, you can track your own affiliate tracking campaigns with just a simple quick edit to your Lunarpages affiliate program address.

The first thing you need to, is add this to your address:

&campaign=CampaignName

to the end of your affiliate tracking address. 

So for a campaign tracking a 100×100 banner for the affiliate ID "blog", the campaign URL could look like this:

http://www.lunarpages.com/id/blog&campaign=100×100

To see all clicks made from this campaign, login to your affiliate stats, click on the "overview" tab and then the "references" link off to the right. You will see the following:

If you have one banner for Lunarpages and a text ad, you could format our campaign tracking to manage all clicks and sales for each placement and, at the end of the month, take a look to see which performed best. Did your audience prefer the text link or the banner?

You can create unlimited campaigns and can track these from multiple websites, as well as view the results by day or month.

Want to get paid $65 for every person you refer to Lunarpages?  Be sure to check out our Lunarpages Affiliate Program. 

© Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch

The world of reseller hosting might be a little confusing to some.  However, with the right tips in hand – anybody can be a reseller hosting success. In a nut shell, reseller hosting is a form of web site hosting where the account owner has the ability to use their allotted space and bandwidth to host their own or a third parties’ web site.  The account owner can sell the allotted space and bandwidth to the third party in question, and (in most cases) make a profit.

To help you get started in the world of reseller web hosting, here are a few tips you might look into or follow:

• Start off small.  Don’t think you have to sell 10 or 20 accounts in one day.  Start out with a couple, and expand as need. 
• You don’t actually have to sell the space.  It is up to you how you want to setup the web sites on it. 
• Go to friends and family members first, if you are looking for your own customers. 
• Go visit webmaster related forums, and look for web site designers or customers that might be looking for a new or a different web host.  Then pitch your own service to them.
• Look for your own unique perks or services you can give to your own clients you are reselling to, so that you can make a good first impression.
• Keep a watchful eye over those you are hosting, to make sure they don’t get you in trouble with your reseller hosting provider.
• Get a billing manager in place to help manage your own accounts you are reselling.  The Lunarpages Webmaster Reseller plan comes with a nice one you can add as a service, AccountLab Plus.

Speaking of Lunarpages, we now offer two great plans for web hosting resellers out there.  Check them out here:

• Reseller Web Hosting at Lunarpages

I hope those reseller web hosting tips will be of some use to you.  If you have any more tips, be sure to share them in the comments.  Would love to hear your own web hosting reseller success stories too, if you have them.

&copy Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don′t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch