Showing posts with label Web Hosting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Web Hosting. Show all posts

Shristi.org: the Series of hurdles

I've been approached to build and launch the the website for the Techno - Management Festival of my university. I've designed and developed a couple of websites on my own and so it wasn't a big deal, or at least i thought so, for me at FIRST. Things however, have been going pretty weasy and confusing with various hurdles and problems i've to face which are quite unexpected and uncool.

The very first hurdle was when znetindia.com took 3 days to process my domain registration order. The second one came when i found out that znetindia doesnt bundle DNS control with the domain registration; and for which i've to activate an extra addon for the domain paying extra money. The third was the unfriendly user interface structure of the znetindia account manager area (if you are a starter, i bet you won't be able to find out where you should change your nameserver if your are changing your hosting service to some other service provider!). The fourth was when i realise that the TTL values for the DNS at znetindia was quite huge, which means any update in the DNS, A, MX, CNAME, NS, TXT etc will take time for its propagation. This happened when i mistyped the NS records and then i realise i mistyped it, i had to change it and for the change to propagate, i had to wait the whole day.

Later when everything from the domain point of view is working, unfortunately, my PC breaks down... or at least i thought so, coz later on i found it was my wireless modem problem. As an engineering student, and in the CSE branch, i use to do a lot of stuffs on my PC and it is not uncommon that i install a fresh copy of Windows a couple of times every month. This time, i'd already formated my PC 4 to 5 times since my semester starts, and that would be from the 1st week of Jan and i've already made it by heart the serial number to my copy of the windows. For development purposes, i've created a lot of complex structures, programs and databases that i don't want to lose but i'd to compromise some to make my PC working again.

Now, everything is set, the site is up (www.shristi.org, though still under active construction) and i'm using joomla cms for a quick built. A problem which i'd never faced before arises to my joomla hosting then. At the same hosting company, with the same apache, php and mysql configuration, i'm hosting another joomla website and it's not showing any problem but however in this website, problems after problems showered. I'd the problem fixed temporarily although it's not the best way to fix the problem.

The Joomla problem was that, whenever you try to upload/ install a component/ plugin/ module/ template etc, you got an error message "Warning! failed to move file".

This happens because of certain settings and file permissions on your joomla host. There are methods to overcome this problem but they are not the best yet known. For some, setting CHMOD to 777 for the" public_html/tmp" file seems to work but for others it's far from solving. Some solved it by disabling the FTP layer at joomla, but some solve it by just changing the temporary path "public_html/tmp" to "public_html/temp" or the vice versa. Other ways to solve includes giving the php file more space changing the php.ini, which requires contacting your hosting company. The best method, however, seems to be disabling the php "Safe Mode", which also require you to contact your hosting company.

For now, as my works need to be completed in a short period, i'd changed all the files/folders concern to 777 giving permission to change and execute to all while making the installation and then changing back to the normal CHMOD file permission after the installation is over; leaving no ways for hackers to poke their nose in. If you are having this problem, u can do it as i've done as it is the simplest and will always solve it regardless of the FTP, php.ini, apache or any other settings.

NovaTechNetwork has done a great job with there hosting servers. I prefer them.

Anyway, let me see if there're any other problems that are gonna pop up in front of me..

Portfolio

Welcome to pTAMz.

Current work I'm taking up is developing KanglaPark.com.

KanglaPark
Kanglapark.com is the Manipuri social networking site. An approach to connect the people of Manipur. With the emergence and the unpopularity of sites like manipurfriendfinder.com, there still are works to be done. I hope KanglaPark will get some attention though.

KanglaPark.com is powered by Joomla with Joomunity. Joomunity component is just released as
Beta 2 and there still are some really unwanted bugs and I'm working on correcting the php codes and some errors. As soon as the bugs are free, I'll be releasing KanglaPark.com as the beta version. Let's see how far KanglaPark can go.

KanglaPark: Get Social Icon


NERIST

The most recent work I've done is developing a website for our college at www.nerist.ac.in. Since I'm not much an expert in the new CSS plateform, the site has some 'looks' problem on Firefox and Chrome; although everything is perfect with IE 5 and above. The site has been launched under Phase 1 as still there are a lot of changes to be made. You'll fing many links still under construction as they are in the process of development. The main server, who originally was hosted my ernet at New Delhi, India was shifted to NERIST E.T. Cell and so, updation can be done in a flash. With usual college stuffs and exams approaching, the next phase is likely to fall next year.



Training and Placement NERIST
Before this, I've developed the NERIST training ang Placement Website at www.tnpnerist.com. Searching for cheap domain registrar and hosting service was a challenge. However, I made it at the end and I enjoyed developing the site. Currently, around 140 users registered to the site and it is functioning properly.


Here are a few stuffs I've prepared myself: logos, posters and general stuffs I've created over time. I'm sharing those which i've rendered at Coreldraw, Photoshop, Illustrator, and simple MS Paint!!.



Re Designed NERIST Annual Festival Logo (Orginal Design from
Deviantart.com)



Sample Poster Design



NERIST Web 2.0 Logo



Plain Ball Point Pen



Custom Banner



Wall Painting (Using Fabric)



CorelDraw



JNVthoks Logo

Free domain hosting account

It's been some time that i've been searching for a free webhost to host some of my sites. This time i need a larger web space and a greater bandwith capacity since i'm planning for a community social networking site (i'll let you know when i launch the site) and i need the sendmail function to be active there.

I've googled a lot of web hosting service providers and  i found out that there's nothing as a free thing. Well i've hosted some of my blogs at www.000webhost.com, www.freehostia.com and blah blahs. (000webhost doesnt accept the last 2 or 3 requests i've made to open a hosting account. I dunno what's the problem but in there forum, i read that they don't allow hosting service to some countries..maybe thatswy. However, a year ago they were accepting signup from India and i'm, right now, hosting one of my blog at 000webhost and and I like there service , but recently they didn't give any response to my account opening request.
I think that's really bad of them coz if they don't provide their service to any group of people, at least they could inform them...coz watever it be, they have still time to send me refferal mails..huh!! And freehostia,  their service is great but i need a larger webspace, not just 250mb and sendmail to be active)
The webhost, when searching, have some or the other disadvantages... like if it's offering large space, sendmail is off, or it has forced banners or textlinks... or if everything is what i want, it is hosted through LayeredPanel, while cPanel is what I want as it gives more control over your account..or a subdomain given by the service provider is attached forever. What i want is to host my own domain and if a sub-domain is attached to it, it's not good for SEO and besides it degrades the quality of the site.

The next option i tried is - a host for post service; this means you've to post a certain number of posts in the service providers' main forum to pay for your hosting expenses. These option seems to be a really good option as they provide the right thing i want, like large web space (it depends on the number of posts you can make per month); cPanel hosting, sendmail function activation and large bandwidth and so on.

So i'm right now checking out the host for post service at www.novahost.org and www.blazincash.net. And if you know any great free webhost provider, kindly let me know.