Easy Ways to Add More Security to Your Cloud

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Terry Myers

The big advantage of using a cloud hosting service is the time and money you save by not having to maintain your own servers. In fact, the emergence of cloud options has essentially eliminated the need for small businesses to spend money on server hardware. But even “outsourcing” all of your site hosting and file storage needs does not mean you can take a passive approach to security. There are still a handful of important security responsibilities that cloud consumers must stay on top of in order to protect their data.

Software and Platform Updates

You can be confident that a trusted cloud supplier is constantly working behind the scenes to block attacks on their servers. However, they still rely on customers to play an important role in security. Your tasks begin with maintaining software and service updates as they roll out.

Did you know that the majority of software updates are security related? You are likely familiar with the frequent updates sent out by Windows Operating Systems, Adobe programs, and CMS platforms like WordPress. The important thing here is that you stay on top of these updates to prevent viruses and attacks from entering your network. Now your cloud provider does have additional systems in place to prevent the spread of infected files, but by maintaining every layer of security you will significantly decrease the odds of a major problem.

Security Training

The more employees you have on your network increases the odds of security breach. This is why it is essential for business owners to train all employees on the best practices for network security. From how to identify phising attacks to proper file management strategies, you simply cannot expect your employees to follow protocol unless you have instructed them in detail. A half-day seminar led by your IT manager has the potential to save you several days of lost work if user errors are prevented.

Semi-Annual Audits

Taking a proactive approach to cloud security includes keeping in touch with your provider. Just like a regular checkup at the doctor, scanning your cloud account for problem areas is a pivotal part of avoiding long term issues. Your account manager will do most of the technical work here, but you will need to answer usage questions and discuss strategy. One thing to update during the audit is your emergency contact list. Make sure you have a way to contact the cloud support team at all times. You don’t want to wait until business hours to reach a technician, especially if a problem occurs over the weekend.

Employing the three strategies listed above should be an easy and inexpensive way to maximize the security of your cloud hosting service. Keep in mind that the most important step is to choose a trusted provider from the beginning. But even the best service in the world still requires your company to do their part. Network security is a team effort, and playing an active role will go a long way to keeping your data secure.

This article is brought to the internet experts at http://internet.inmyarea.com We help you save money on residential internet service by comparing the best companies and offers in your region.

Planning your webhosting business

Posted on August 17, 2012 by sbechara

In my last article, I talked about the factors which should be present in order to become a successful webhost. In this article, I will talk about planning for the success of your webhosting company.

In order to become successful, you will need to plan for your webhosting company’s success. At the heart of your planning phase is a business plan. A business plan helps you put all your thoughts on paper prior to starting your webhosting company, and helps you identify any issues which need to be addressed prior to launching your business. A business plan is primarily composed of the following sections:

Products and Services
Market Analysis
Marketing Strategy
Sales Strategy
Milestones
Management Summary
Financials

Since it is technically impossible to cover all of the above aspects in one article, I will start by taking a look today at the products and services a webhost can sell, and will discuss the subsequent sections in later articles.

Products and Services to consider selling:

Domain registration services: Usually, there isn’t much profit to be made here. However, if you’re offering shared and reseller hosting services, you will need to offer domain registration options, because many clients bundle their domain name with their shared or reseller hosting service.
Shared hosting services: While there is a margin profit to be made here, you will need to provide very good support, since all your competitors are doing it. I highly suggest you hire a service company which provides outsourced hosting support. This will ensure that you’re providing 24/7 support, at the fraction of hiring a full-time employee.
Reseller hosting services: This offering is very similar to shared hosting services, except that you’re allowing your clients to resell hosting services to their clients. Therefore, your support will need to be even better since your customers are business owners, and will lose money every time your service is unstable.
Dedicated Servers: A dedicated server is a physical hardware computer with high specifications, which will be dedicated to one client only, whereas a shared hosting account resides on a server shared with other accounts, as the name implies.
VPS hosting services: A virtual private server (VPS) is a part of a dedicated server, functioning as a dedicated server, through a software technology called virtualization. This technology allows you as a company, to sell a VPS to your customer, which almost functions as a dedicated server, at the fraction of a price of a dedicated server.
Cloud hosting services: While a VPS server is usually part of a dedicated server, a cloud server usually sits on top of a server farm, which usually consists of hundreds of physical servers or more. This allows your server instant upgrades to virtually unlimited resources and failover abilities.

My next article will talk about additional streams of income for webhosts, by selling products and services which will complement your webhosting offerings. Stay tuned!

Samer Bechara is a business consultant who specializes in business planning, online marketing and web-based technical solutions. He can be reached through his website, Thought Engineer.

Command Line Basics Part 2: Unix File System

Posted on August 13, 2012 by csteffen

In the most recent post in this series I talked about the commands you use to move around the file system. Now I'll look at some of the places you might want to go.

Linux (and other Unix-like operating systems) inherited their file system layout from a long history going back to the original Unix incarnations in the 1970s. Over time various versions changed where things were located. The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard is an attempt to standardize this. It probably doesn't cover all Linux/Unix installations perfectly, but it's a fairly good guide of where stuff is in a modern installation.

The most common place you'll visit when administering a system is the /etc directory tree. That's where the configuration files for applications installed on the system reside. So if you need to change an application setting, you'll go to that application's configuration directory under /etc. For instance, if you have a web server, the configuation files will be under /etc/apache2. Here's a listing of the contents of that directory:

The right column in this display is the name of the file or directory. The first character is "-" for files and "d" for subdirectories. apache2.conf has basic setup for the apache web server. The directories mods-available and mods-enabled are used to control what optional software modules are set up to be used with the web servers.

Another important configuration on a system is the configuration of Secure SHell (/etc/ssh):

2012 08 13 1046 Command Line Basics Part 2: Unix File System

The file ssh_config is controls how ssh works to connect from here to other systems. sshd_config (ssh daemon config) controls how ssh accepts connections from other systems.User's home directories are usually in the /home directory. So if my username is "me" then my home directory will be /home/me. (Side note: every unix-like system has a special user called "root" that has priviledges to do everything. root's home directory is a separate location, /root.Installed commands have their executable commands in directories like /bin (for normal commands) and /sbin (comands that the SuperUser, or root, use). Other directories used for those purposes are /usr/bin and /usr/sbin/. You mostly won't do anything in those directories (doing so could interfere with installed system software). If you create scripts or executable programs for everyone on your system to use, you can put them into /usr/local/bin. System package tools leave that directory alone, you can put stuff there and it won't be disturbed.

Modern Linux kernels have a window into the functioning of the kernel built into the file system, under the /proc directory. It's filled with virtual files that don't really exist on disk, but the contents of those files are populated by function calls to the kernel. The file /proc/cpuinfo, for instance, contains the kernel's information about the processor (the "more" command just prints the contents of a file to the command line display):

(I've only listed part of the output here). /proc/meminfo is useful too; it tells you information about virtual and physical RAM.

Finally, data for installed applications lives in the /var file system. The default location of the directory where the files for the apache web server live is /var/WWW. So to edit files on a new web server, you'd go to the /var/WWW and set up your files there.

So this is a very basic overview. Most of the files you'll need to get at as an admin will be in /etc or /var. Next time, I'll talk about options for editing files.

Craig Steffen cut his command-line teeth on MS-DOS 2.11 round about 1986 or 87; his first Unix-like OS was NeXT-Step on NeXT computers in 1991. He used Solaris, Irix, and increasingly Linux in graduate school, and runs mostly (Ubuntu) Linux nowadays. He lives in appalachia but oddly works for a mid-west University. In his spare time he mucks around with his vintage VW and occasionally flies small airplanes. You can see more at his blog and on twitter.

Remarketing and What it Means for Small Businesses

Posted on August 10, 2012 by kchandler

It has happened to all of us. You visit a website to checkout a new video game or the benefits of a new air miles credit card. Then, for the next two weeks no matter how many sites you visit, you see highly targeted ads related to that exact product. The first thing that runs through our mind is, “how do they do that!?”. Well it’s called retargeting and their niche in the digital marketing space just got a little crowded.

Previously if you wanted to run this style marketing campaign you were forced to go with the pricey systems like Retargeter or Ad Roll with the huge minimum ad spends that only big brands could afford. However, it is now in reach for us small businesses thanks to Google’s Remarketing, an extension of Adwords.

Although released in beta in early 2010 it has finally been opened up to all Adwords accounts during the latest UI updates from Google. With this update it allows business that have small budgets but big ideas succeed. Here is an example/campaign that helped a small power supply company make the most of its ad budget.

Case Study:

With a recently launched redesign of their website they had a targeted conversion point for customers which was a request a quote form. Their current paid search conversion on this form was a measly 0.96%. After a little research we found that the majority of the customers were not comfortable with the amount of information that was needed to fill out the form. So in order to educate them more on the products, we re-engaged them:

Not only did this achieve a conversion rate of +6%, it only cost them $0.20 per click and an ad budget of $10/day. It really breaks down to three major pain points that Google solved for small businesses with Remarketing:

Price Point: It lowered the price barrier allowing companies with budgets under $10,000 a month to do effective marketing. In fact, the only minimum budget that Google requires is $0.05 per click and a daily budget of $1.00.
Ease of Use: They integrated a complex marketing approach in a familiar environment, Adwords. Many online marketers are already aware of this software and are well versed in using it.
Reach + Relevance: Unlike traditional or outbound marketing you have the vast reach of the Google Display Network but the highly relevant impressions with customers that are already engaged with your brand.

So my challenge to you is to go out and start playing around with this neat and easy to use tool. The possibilities and layers of engagement are endless. If you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments below. I also frequent the Adwords/Analytics help forums as well as SEOMoz’s Q&As - so feel free to reach me there as well.

Cheers - Kyle

Kyle is a search engine marketer for a full service design and marketing agency out of Cleveland, Ohio. Throughout his career he has worked with brands including Purell, Cleveland Clinic, Fazolis, American College of Radiology, Cleveland Cavaliers and BMW. You can learn more about Kyle’s work at his personal portfolio, www .kyledchandler .com .

Are you a member of the Drupal Association?

Posted on August 9, 2012 by ltrudeau

If you answer: yes, of course! I say thanks very much for supporting the best open source community ever! You should skip to the bottom to learn the ways you can help the Drupal project.

If you answer: what is this Association? I say:
The Drupal Association (DA) is a not-for-profit organization with the mission to help Drupal flourish. We help the Drupal community through a variety of programs and the benefits are seen in the Drupal project. Since Drupal is growing every day, the DA works to keep the growth sustainable by handling the day-to-day tasks that fall outside of working specifically on Drupal software. In fact, the DA has no authority over the planning, functionality, and development of the Drupal software because all of this is decided by the Drupal community.

Instead, the DA focuses on several key projects:

maintaining Drupal.org infrastructure and upgrades
empowering project contribution
providing Community Grants
hosting DrupalCons and funding DrupalCon Scholarships
organizing Global Training Days
legally protecting the Drupal project

There are many ways to get involved in the DA. Membership costs $30 (€22) year for Individuals or $100 (€73) year for Organizations. Your company can become a Supporting Partner or you could give time towards key projects to help make possible our strategic community initiatives.

Join Us Today! https://association.drupal.org

If you are ready to jump in and give time to help Drupal, there are many options:

search the issue queue for open issues that would benefit from your knowledge or opinions http://drupal.org/project/issues/
join your local Drupal User Group or a group that shares your interests on groups.drupal.org
check out the forums where people are asking and answering all kinds of questions drupal.org/forums
dig around on Drupal.org since there is a wealth of information there for you.

Reasons for becoming a webhost

Posted on August 8, 2012 by sbechara

So you have decided that you want to start your own hosting company and become the next VPS.net? Congratulations for your enthusiasm! However, if your reasons for starting a webhosting company are ill-founded, then failure becomes a close reality, rather than an educated risk.

A lot of businesses fail before they have started, because they have been founded on incorrect assumptions, or simply founded for the wrong reasons. Incorrect assumptions could be rectified through business planning, which I will cover in the next articles. In this article, I will be focusing on the right reasons for starting your webhosting company.

In order to have a successful webhosting company, three factors should be present: Market need, skills, and passion:

Market need:

Before you start your webhosting company, you have to think if there is a real need for your service, that is, if someone is really interested in buying your service. If you’re trying to sell sand in the desert, then your idea is obviously a bad one, because sand is available everywhere in the desert, and for free!

For example, setting up a website which offers shared hosting, reseller hosting and dedicated servers while expecting clients to come in is a very bad idea. Why? Because there are thousands of reputable webhosts who are already doing it, are able to offer a better service, and can be profitable at a much competitive price. Would you rather buy a VPS server from vps.net, or from an unknown webhost operated by an unknown individual from an unknown place?

The answer lies in differentiating your services, while ensuring there is still a market need for them. You can differentiate your services by targeting a different group of customers (Engineers, non-profits, local clients, Spanish-speaking clients…); offering added-value with your services (Free website design, free marketing report, Basic SEO package…) or a mix of both. I will be taking an in-depth look on how to differentiate your services in later articles. For now, keep in mind that you will have to stand-out and shine in order to make a difference.

Skills:

Do you have what it takes to operate your business? Being technical enough to run a webhosting business is no longer a qualifier. These days, with hosting providers like VPS.net offering 1-click hosting options, the barrier to entry has become much lower for non-technical people. Based on my experience as a previous 6-year hosting company owner, here are some of the most needed skills:

People skills: Even if you’re considering starting an online hosting business, you will still need to have the skills to deal with people. Whether you’re providing support for your clients, communicating with your employees or with your upstream providers, you will need to use your communication skills. So if you’re someone who prefers to be alone, and doesn’t like talking to people very much, then webhosting is probably the wrong business for you.
Marketing skills: No matter how a great service you’re offering, if you can’t communicate the value you’re providing to your potential clients, you’ll not have a lot of new signups. You will need to communicate what makes you different from other webhosting providers, and why should clients choose you over other providers. I will be writing about this in a later article, but you need to know that communication skills are a must.
Technical skills: You don’t need to be a technical person, but you still need to know the difference between technical terms, such as FTP, HTTP, browser, server… Clients will use these words while communicating to you, so you’ll need to understand them.

Passion:

If you’re becoming a webhost just for the money, then you’re doomed to failure. In order to succeed as a webhost, you’ll need to be doing it in order to create a difference around you, in a way which keeps you fulfilled and looking for more. Ask yourself the following questions:

Why am I starting my webhosting company? What difference am I looking to create?
How would my clients’ conditions become better once they start using my service?
If it wasn’t for the money, would I still be doing it?
Is fear driving my actions, or passion?

If you can answer positively to the above questions, then you’ve got the passion needed to start your own hosting company.

Now that we have determined the reasons for becoming a webhost, the next articles will cover topics which will help you take your webhosting company from an idea to a real success.

Samer Bechara is a business consultant who specializes in business planning, online marketing and web-based technical solutions. He can be reached through his website, Thought Engineer.

AdWords vs. SEO…a Surprising Winner?

Posted on August 1, 2012 by rholmes

We hear it all the time from prospective clients, “I’m willing to use AdWords for a while until the SEO takes hold; I’ll turn off AdWords as soon as we rank organically for our important keywords.” This has been a tried and true strategy for many years—pay for traffic until the free traffic starts rolling in. And, it’s how many Internet marketers actually sell their bosses/clients on getting started with AdWords. Everyone has the dream of not having to pay Google...just having your homepage at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs), kicking back, and watching the money pile up.

However, AdWords shouldn't be considered simply a bridge to the promised land of SEO. It’s a real contender and should be just one of the tools used to drive traffic to your site. Here’s why:

AdWords Often Clicked More Than Organic Results
AdWords is taking more and more screen real estate in Google’s SERPs. They are giving more and more tools to AdWords users to make their ads bigger and bigger: between location extensions, phone extensions, sitemap extensions, Google+ extensions, and image extensions, more and more ads are larger than just a headline, two lines of text and a URL.

Ever Expanding Screen Real Estate
More and more often, searchers on Google are seeing results that look like the screen shot

AdWords vs Organic Screen Real Estate 300x244 AdWords vs. SEO...a Surprising Winner?

Screen shot on my 13” laptop for the keyword
“basement water cleanup.

to the right; the organic results are pushed lower and lower by the ever-expanding ad sizes.

WordSteam, a PPC consulting company, noticed this trend and decided to do some research. Their results were quite surprising. They found that for highly commercial keywords (example: “basement water cleanup”), “Clicks on paid search listings beat out organic clicks by nearly a 2:1 margin for keywords with high commercial intent in the US.” Check out their very nice info graphic on their results.

Highly Relevant Results
How can this be? If the screen shot above isn’t enough to convince you ads can get more clicks that organic, consider this: more and more people are becoming good at playing the “AdWords game.” As the competition heats up, the players’ skill level tends to rise. More and more of those using AdWords are starting to use best practices: small ad groups of highly related keywords paired with well crafted ads that point to highly relevant landing pages. All of this means that the ads are ever more appealing (“hmmm...that looks exactly like what I’m looking for...”) and more often provide the information the searcher is looking for. And reviewing my Psych 101 textbook, that positive reinforcement means that people begin to repeat the clicking-on-ads behavior more often.

WordStream points out many other reasons AdWords is winning the click war. However, they make the important point: on the whole there are more clicks on organic results than on paid results. However, they immediately point out that not all keywords are equal and that informational queries like “who was the 18th president of the US?” tend to not have many ads and organic gets the clicks. However, for people looking to find the closest place to buy self-leveling concrete may find the organic search results buried under a large number of Home Depot and Menards ads.

Positive ROI Required
But just because ads get a lot of clicks doesn’t make AdWords a good business decision; you have to keep the bottom line in mind. And the goal of a positive ROI is getting more and more difficult due to the increased and highly skilled competition.
However, if you know what you’re doing with AdWords, do excellent keyword research, organize your campaigns well, write compelling ads that point to compelling, highly related landing pages that do a great job of selling, you will make money. And make no mistake, there are a lot of companies that make a great deal of money with enormous ROI even in today’s competitive market.

So, if your AdWords account is making a positive ROI, why would you turn it off, even if your SEO is bearing fruit and you’re getting more organic traffic? We have never seen a client ever follow through on the “shut down AdWords after my SEO kicks in.”

Rod Holmes is a partner at Chicago Style SEO, a full service Internet marketing firm. You can read more of his thoughts at ChicagoStyleSEO.com/blog/ or on Twitter: @chicagostyleseo

CMS Spotlight: PyroCMS

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Terry Myers

About the project
PyroCMS was started by Phil Sturgeon as an in-house CMS in 2008 and was released to the open source community in 2009. It soon picked up momentum and as I'm writing this it has received contributions from 100 different developers and designers and has been translated into 23 languages.

In 2011 we created 2 slightly different versions: Community and Professional. Community is free and always will be while Professional appeals to those of you who need features such as Multi-Site (create additional websites from the interface) and Rebranding (replace our logo and copyright information in the admin interface with your own). There is currently a team of 5 of us responsible for the project and business management:

Phil Sturgeon - Developer
Jerel Unruh - Developer
Adam Fairholm - Developer
Scott Parry - Designer
Mike Wilding – Support

Our Philosophy
The philosophy of the PyroCMS project is simple: a CMS doesn't have to do everything out of the box but everything it does should be intuitive to the user. You can quickly add additional functionality by installing or creating add-ons such as Modules (MVC packages), Widgets, Plugins, or Themes. PyroCMS is built from the ground up as a modular system and consequently extending it comes naturally for developers. Built with the MVC architecture it is used by many developers as a starting platform when creating custom applications.

Themes
Usually themes are the first thing you will encounter when working with a CMS. Creating a theme for PyroCMS couldn't get much easier. If you know HTML and CSS you are well on your way. A theme folder will typically contain the following items:

theme.php - This is a simple file that gives PyroCMS information such as the author's name
screenshot.png - A preview thumbnail to display in the theme switcher interface
img - A folder where all theme images are stored
js - A folder for all the necessary JavaScript
css - The folder for storing cascading stylesheets
views/layouts - The folder where you place your default.html template file
views/partials - Optionally break the default.html file into smaller chunks (such as header.html)

Not all of these items are required... you could create a theme with only theme.php and views/layouts/default.html!

Once you have the files in place you just inject the CMS output into your html file using the {{ template:body }} tag. Similarly you would use the {{ template:title }} and {{ template:metadata }} to let PyroCMS place the relevant meta data in your theme. That's it! You now have a working theme!

Modules
The PyroCMS core itself is built from modules: Pages, Blog, Files, etc are each a module. Modules are the only type of add-on that is accessible via the url. For example: site.com/your-module. Since modules are MVC packages you can create applications as simple or as complex as needed. They can collect data from users via forms, display all sorts of things, or even act as an API to communicate with other websites.

Widgets
Widgets are simple chunks of logic that you can embed anywhere. Suppose you wanted to embed a map on your site and have a non-technical user change the address once a week. This would be a good job for a widget. Widgets can be embedded anywhere on the front-end of your website using a tag that looks like this: {{ widgets:instance id="1" }} Once that is embedded the client can go to the Widgets interface in the admin panel and select that map widget. A form will open and they can edit the address details.

Plugins
Last but definitely not least let's talk about Plugins. Plugins are somewhat similar to Widgets except that they have no user interface. Plugins are intended for designers and others who want precise control over how data is output. They are called by embedding their tags in theme files or in Page content. Here is a quick example of using the File plugin to output a list of uploaded files:

{{ files:listing folder="our-vacation" }}
<img src="{{ url:site }}files/thumb/{{ id }}" alt="{{ description }}"/>
{{ /files:listing }}

The example will loop through all files in the "our-vacation" folder and for each one it will output an image tag.

Summary
Hopefully you've enjoyed this quick flyover of PyroCMS. We think you will like PyroCMS for the same reasons many others tell us they do:

Search engine friendly by default
An admin interface that users just "get" without training
A full featured free version with a paid version available if needed
Developer friendly due to its clear MVC and modular architecture
Installable on nearly any server supporting PHP 5.2 or greater and MySQL. (we have a hosted product too if you prefer)
Simple and concise tag system for outputting data

Drop by our site at PyroCMS .com for more information. You are also welcome to talk with @pyrocms or myself @jerelunruh anytime.

Jerel Unruh started using PyroCMS v0.9.x in 2010 and soon began contributing to the project. He stuck around for the long haul and now heads up the US office and is credited with writing some very popular features in PyroCMS! When not wielding his web development tools he works with virtualization and server administration and spends his offline time on various automotive and mechanical projects.

Command Line Basics Part 1: moving around the file system

Posted on July 3, 2012 by csteffen

Previous post in this series available here.

One of the advantages of a command line over a graphical control system is that you have a very very rich set of commands to run, and very fine-grained control over how they're run. The dis-advantage is that you don't have "menu"s to choose commands from, so you need a base of knowledge before you can do anything. This post and the few after it are my attempt to give you a crash course on the vital basics of doing stuff on a (perhaps) virtual Linux machine with a remote command line login.

The first thing you'll do is "log in", or establish a connection to your virtual server. You'll use some sort of tool to do that, depending on the operating system of your local machine. If you already have a unix-like machine (including Linux), you'll probably open a command window and connect to the remote machine using the command "ssh" for "Secure SHell". If you're on a Windows machine, you'll use a program like "PuTTY". In either case, when you first get logged on you'll see a blast of general information from the machine and then a "prompt":

The prompt is the thing at the bottom that is basically the remote machine saying "Ok, I'm ready for your next command". I've set up my prompt to tell me my username, what machine I'm logged into, what time it is, what directory I'm in ("~" in this case), then the "$" character indicates the end of the prompt and that's where the cursor sits, ready for you to type.

Directories in these machines are in a hierarchy. Unlike Windows (or DOS), the file system in a Unix-like machine isn't relative to a physical drive (like "C:"). Directories are mapped to underlying media, but in a way that's mostly invisible. All directories stem from a "root" directory that doesn't really have a name; it's just referred to as "/". The root directory of a file system will have 0 or more sub-directories, each of those will have 0 or more sub-directories, and so on down. Files can reside in any of these directories. Below briefly explain three important commands which tell you the current directory, change it to a different one, and see what's there.

Any time you have a prompt, you have some notion of your "current" directory. The command "pwd" (Print Working Directory) tells you which directory you're in. pwd is usually used without options.

The command "cd" (Change Directory) is used to change the current directory to a different one. It can be invoked several ways. "cd XXX" changes to a subdirectory of the current directory with the name XXX; this is a relative directory change; where you end up depends on where you are. "cd /XXX" changes to the directory /XXX/ no matter where you are (the leading slash makes it an "absolute" directory change).

There are a couple of useful other invocations of cd. "cd .." is a relative directory change, but instead of changing to a subdirectory of the current directory, it changes to the parent of the current directory (the name is not required since each directory is only the subdirectory of one parent). In other words, in general, running "cd XXX" then "cd .." puts you back where you started.

One other invocation of cd is "cd" with no arguments. That's a special case that is an absolute directory change that puts you back in your "home" directory. Every user on a unix-like system has a point in the file system where your own files are stored (as opposed to the files that make the system run or are part of the operating system). You store your own files there as well as files that will set up your environment (another post).

The third command, command "ls" (for "list", I guess) is used to list the names of the files and the subdirectories in the current directory. With no arguments, list just gives a complete listing of all the contents of a directory, including subdirectories and files together. (How to distinguish them will be a later post.)

Here's an illustration of me logging in and moving around in the directories on my virtual server. You'll notice that my prompt here tells you what the current directory is at each step, so using "pwd" is superfluous here. However, no matter what your prompt is, even if it gets messed up sometimes, pwd will always tell you where you are, so I've used it that way here. (Words that appear like this in the trascription aren't actually part of the session; they're notes to you, the reader.)

This gives you a very basic idea of the mechanics of moving around the directory tree. The best way to try this is to log into your own server and see what's there. If you ever get confused about where you are, the command "cd" by itself will always return you to your home directory, and "cd /" will always return you to the root of the file system.

Next time, I'll talk about the file system layout in general and some of the useful places to go.

You think you know a lot about cPanel & WHM? Prove it with cPanel University.

Posted on June 29, 2012 by tellis

cPanel University (cPU) is the brand new set of exams to test the technical and sales skills with cPanel & WHM. These are not your basic, participation ribbon certificates. cPanel University Professor Todd Thrash says, “The tests are brutal and passing means you possess functional, concrete knowledge of cPanel & WHM.” The tests are designed to be hard and boasts a passing rate of only 30%. cPanel offer two tracks, sales and technical, to concentrate focus on the different aspects of the product.

There are five phase levels of testing - Base, Professional, Expert, Veteran, and Master. When cPanel had two leading web hosting companies take the test, only two students passed 3 out of the 5 testing levels and went onto the fourth level - the Veteran Test. "With 5 years of experience with cPanel this test was a challenge to pass, although I only got to Expert I am confident with more focus and training I can get Master Certified," said Matthew Harris from leading web host. “The test definitely touches base on Linux knowledge as well as advanced cPanel skills and is a good measure of who really knows cPanel."

Why should you get cPanel Certified?
I am glad you asked. You did ask, right? Of course you did. The cPanel Certifications are a benchmark of what the staff knows about the product. They prove how much cPanel & WHM skill a person has.

Who should get cPanel Certified?
Sales and Technical people should take the respective exams. Any company that wants to ensure their sales teams are not just being effective but maximizing the profitability of their cPanel offerings should ensure their sales teams are certified.

I want to take this awesome test, how do get in?
There is no need for an application or interview, head to university.cpanel.net and sign up now. There are five per track, one basic and four advanced. The basics are available 24/7/365 and are online.

When can take the advanced exams?
The advanced are only administered when cPanel University Proctors are on site at select venues. The two key events planned for 2012 are HostingCon and cPanel Conference.

Can’t get enough of the awesomeness that is cPanel University? Get over to univerisity.cpanel.net to check out the test and learn more!

Travis Ellis is a Marketing Associate at cPanel, Inc. Travis creates content, works with event planning, and contains a unique blend of SysAdmin and Communications Nerd. This allows him to go from command line to entertaining guests in no time flat. Travis is the Marketing Contact for cPanel University and works with the cPU team.

VPS.NET

Category Archives: Guest Bloggers