And who are they? Here’s what they say about themselves.

ComfortHost.NET have been here since 2004 offer high quality web hosting solutions. All SpotVPS nodes are fully owned hardware and are colocated. All servers used by SpotVPS have been bought with internal cash. Our only monthly cost for these servers are the actual colocation. We are financially healthy and profitable since day one. We are NOT going out of buisness any time soon. We are in it for the long run!

ComfortHost on http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1110770

Here’s the plan that I got.
$6.99/mo Ultimate Plan
Memory: 2048mb (2gb)
HD Space: 50gb (50,000mb)
Bandwidth: 1,000gb (1TB)
Monthly Price: $6.99/mo
Setup Fee: FREE!
FREE GIGABIT PORT – FREE WEEKLY BACKUPS – FREE HARDWARE RAID
Location: Orlando, FL at DimeNOC
Test IP Address: 72.29.87.105

2GB RAM for $6.99. That’s sweet. Want to try it yourself? ORDER NOW

Word of caution,though. This plan (and all other dirt-cheap vps that I know of) comes with very limited support. You are usually given your VPS, IP and OS install and you have to do the rest. I installed mine with NGiNx, PHP, MySQL and it’s already up and running for 7 days straight now.

Here’s the result of the test I made on my VPS.

[root@vps ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 14.9939 seconds, 71.6 MB/s

100%[==============================================================================================================================>] 104,857,600 66.8M/s in 1.5s
2011-11-24 18:10:36 (66.8 MB/s) - `100mb.test' saved [104857600/104857600]


I’ll try to come up with a review together with my other hosting providers.

**** NOTE : If you notice, it’s still a draft. It came from a number of sources but these are the steps I use. So I know it works. **********

update apache
yum -y update

install utilities and compiler
yum -y install zip nmap fileutils gcc-c++ acl

install make
yum -y install make

MySQL Installation


yum -y install mysql mysql-devel mysql-server
chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on
mysqld start
/usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation


Install PHP

yum -y install php php-devel php-gd php-imap php-ldap php-mysql php-odbc php-pear php-xml php-xmlrpc curl curl-devel perl-libwww-perl ImageMagick libxml2 libxml2-devel

Upgrade PHP to 5.3
rpm -Uvh http://repo.webtatic.com/yum/centos/5/latest.rpm
yum --enablerepo=webtatic update php

Install ProFTP

yum -y remove vsftpd --to remov vsftpd if it's existing
cd /tmp
wget --passive-ftp ftp://ftp.proftpd.org/distrib/source/proftpd-1.3.3e.tar.gz
tar xvfz proftpd-1.3.3e.tar.gz
cd proftpd-1.3.3e
./configure --sysconfdir=/etc; make; make install
cd /tmp; rm -rf ./proftpd-1.3.3*
ln -s /usr/local/sbin/proftpd /usr/sbin/proftpd
touch /etc/init.d/proftpd
chmod 755 /etc/init.d/proftpd
vi /etc/init.d/proftpd


Paste the following settings and then save.

#!/bin/sh
# $Id: proftpd.init,v 1.1 2004/02/26 17:54:30 thias Exp $
#
# proftpd This shell script takes care of starting and stopping
# proftpd.
#
# chkconfig: - 80 30
# description: ProFTPD is an enhanced FTP server with a focus towards
# simplicity, security, and ease of configuration.
# It features a very Apache-like configuration syntax,
# and a highly customizable server infrastructure,
# including support for multiple 'virtual' FTP servers,
# anonymous FTP, and permission-based directory visibility.
# processname: proftpd
# config: /etc/proftp.conf
# pidfile: /var/run/proftpd.pid

exit $RETVAL


vi /etc/proftpd.conf

Group nobody
DefaultRoot ~
IdentLookups off
ServerIdent on "FTP Server ready."


chkconfig –levels 235 proftpd on

Install suPHP

cd /tmp
wget http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el5.rf.i386.rpm
rpm –import http://apt.sw.be/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt
rpm -K rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el5.rf.*.rpm
rpm -i rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el5.rf.*.rpm
yum -y install htop
yum -y install mod_suphp
edit /etc/suphp.conf
make sure these lines are there:

webserver_user=apache
x-httpd-php=”php:/usr/bin/php-cgi”
x-suphp-cgi=”execute:!self”

edit /etc/httpd/conf.d/suphp.conf (which is the global configuration for suPHP).
vi +/suPHP_Engine /etc/httpd/conf.d/suphp.conf

change it to suPHP_Engine off

6) Set suPHP to work with VirtualHost, add these few lines inside tag.

suPHP_Engine on
suPHP_UserGroup username groupname
AddHandler x-httpd-php .php .php3 .php4 .php5
suPHP_AddHandler x-httpd-php

Example :

ServerAdmin support@yourdomain.com
DocumentRoot /usr/kitty/yourdomain.com
ServerName yourdomain.com
ServerAlias *.yourdomain.com
suPHP_Engine on
suPHP_UserGroup kitty kitty
AddHandler x-httpd-php .php .php3 .php4 .php5
suPHP_AddHandler x-httpd-php
ErrorLog logs/yourdomain.com-error_log
CustomLog logs/yourdomain.com-access_log common

Source : CentOS Additional Packages

1. auto-approve legitimate comments even if it has emails in it
2. prevent email scrapers from harvesting email addresses left by the commenters
3. send for manual approval any comment with one or more URL other than emails

Just place the code below anywhere on your template’s functions.php.

function Kwatog_NoSpamEmail($text){
$pattern = '/([a-z0-9])(([-a-z0-9._])*([a-z0-9]))*@([a-z0-9])'.'(([a-z0-9-])*([a-z0-9]))+'.'(.([a-z0-9])([-a-z0-9_-])?([a-z0-9])+)+/i';
preg_match_all($pattern, $text, $emails);
$symbols = array("@", ".");
$safeChars = array("[at]", "[dot]");
foreach ($emails[0] as $email){
$emailsafe = str_replace($symbols, $safeChars, $email);
$text = str_replace($email, $emailsafe, $text);
}
return $text;
}

add_filter('comment_text','Kwatog_NoSpamEmail');
add_filter('pre_comment_content', 'Kwatog_NoSpamEmail');


Here’s the sample output after I put in this code.

The code is not actually foolproof but it will be able to trap 90% of the scenarios. Also, the auto-change is applicable for existing and new comments.

I have no intention as of this time to convert snippet into a WordPress plugin so feel free to create one if you feel like it.

Step 1: Get webtatic PHP 5.3 Repository
rpm -Uvh http://repo.webtatic.com/yum/centos/5/latest.rpm

Step 2: Update PHP
yum --enablerepo=webtatic update php

Step 3: Verify PHP version
php -v

Expected result should be like below

PHP 5.3.6 (cli) (built: Mar 19 2011 08:30:07)
Copyright (c) 1997-2011 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2011 Zend Technologies


*** NOTE ***
Though webstatic stated that the repository is created for CentOS 64bit, it still worked for my 32-bit installation.

Source:

http://www.webtatic.com/packages/php53/

1. AJAX Carts does not display items
2. When clicking checkout, the cart becomes empty
3. After clicking update, the cart becomes empty

If you look at the symptoms, you’ll notice that every time you move to another page of your website, the cart is emptied. It only mean that the session data is not being saved. And with that, you’ll have to check your PHP save_path session settings in PHP.INI. Most often than not, the current value is /etc/php/sessions. You’ll have to check the folder permission. On my case, the folder is owned by root and the group is apache.

Since in suPHP, I use users other than apache and for nginx, I’m using user nginx, PHP cannot write into the folder. So a quick fix that I did was to add my users to apache group. Just like below.

usermod -a -G apache kwatog

That solved the problem but there’s a catch. Since the user (in the example, kwatog) has read+write access to the session folder, he can then read the session files that other users have in that same folder. For me, that’s not a problem because only me has access on my VPS. But for others, this could pose a problem. The solution proposed here is by overriding the save_patch settings via .htaccess. Here’s the code.

php_value session.save_path "tmp"

However, I haven’t tried it. Actually, I did but it failed and I don’t have time to investigate. Since the usergroup fix solves the initial problem, I’ll just get back to this at a later time.

By the way, if you don’t know where your PHP.INI is, it is most like in /etc/php.ini. However, in case you’ve installed it somewhere else, then you better read my How to Find PHP.INI Path

After going through a checklist, I found out that PHP CGI is not running. All I had to do is jumpstart it and everything is working as before.

/etc/init.d/php_cgi start


The experience thought me some valuable lessons. I list some below.

1. Make a regular backup. This saved me from a lot of trouble. If I didn’t have the backup, all the data will be gone. And make sure you have an offsite backup.
2. Keep your system updated. I found out that my nginx is outdated(I installed using the repository). If possible, compile instead of install
3. Create a checklist of things so that in times of fuckups like what happened earlier today, you have a guide on what to check
4. Schedule essential programs in the startup. When I setup my vps, I just followed someone else’s procedure. Unfortunately, the chkconfig portion was omitted. And being a noob, I didn’t know how to set that up. So, RTFM.


/* 
*   Converts the likes of '2010-08-01 14:57:15' to 'August 1, 2010, 2:57 pm' 
*/  
$datetime_value ="2010-08-01 14:57:15";
echo date(  "F j, Y, g:i a", strtotime( $datetime_value ) );  


Here’s another example which you will see on some of my templates.

<?php echo date('Y-m-d', strtotime('next month')); ?>


For more formats, go head to PHP Doc.

Reference:

http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

NOTE: This is in CentOS 5.

Syntax to get Apache Version

httpd -v


Sample:
[root@vps ~]# httpd -v
Server version: Apache/2.2.3
Server built: May 28 2009 12:50:07

Syntax to get PHP Version

php -v


Sample:

[root@host ~]# php -v
PHP 5.0.5 (cli) (built: Apr 26 2006 09:47:41)
Copyright (c) 1997-2004 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.0.5, Copyright (c) 1998-2004 Zend Technologies


First, let’s take a look at array_keys. It’s a function that returns an array containing the keys of an array.

<?php
$a = array("foo"=>"1","bar" => "2");
$keys = array_keys($a);

print_r($keys);
?>


Second, of course, is array_merge. As the name implies, it just merge the two array.

<?php
$a = array("foo" => "1", "bar" = "2");
$b = array("name" => "Juan", "gender" => "male");
$c = array_merge($b, $a);

print_r($c);
?>


So here’s the final code we have.

<?php
$a = array("foo" => "1", "bar" = "2");
// keys to be added
$b =array("name" => "Juan");
$c =array("gender" => "male");

?>


The code above is too simplistic ( we didn’t even use the array_keys function) but if you are not certain with the keys you of the array to be merged, then this functions become handy. Example as below.

<?php
$a = array("foo" => "1", "bar" = "2");
/* let's say $b comes from a function that returns
array with (i.e, array("name" => "Juan", "gender" => "male"))
*/
$b = my_function_ret_array();

?>


Again, I must remind my readers that there might be better way of doing this. It all depends on the situation and for the time being, this is the functions I used. If you want to suggest a new one, please share it in the comment box.

The command will return something like
Configuration File (php.ini) Path => /etc/php.ini