php – Daleisphere

Self-hosting using DynDNS.com was working out well until recently. However, there are several reasons why I moved to Media Temple’s Grid-Service:

Cost: Not including the original home-server cost (I had been using a $600 Dell desktop), it was cheaper to use DynDNS.com for my initial 3 or 4 domains. As I add new domains, the cost of DynDNS was about to become more expensive than Media Temple which allows me to host up to 100 domains for $200 a year.

Future Sites Planned: I have several websites planned for the future. I’m hoping one of those will take-off or get Dugg – where I’ll need the surge capacity that media temple can support.

Bandwidth Caps: As of August 2008 Rogers imposed a 95 Gig per month bandwidth cap. Unlike in the U.S. where a typical user accounts have 200+ Gig caps, the 95 Gig Rogers cap was attached to their highest price consumer account. I have bumped up against and surpassed that cap over the last few months (Rogers charges $2.95 per Gig above the cap). Note: Bell’s highest end consumer account cap is 100 Gigs.

Continue reading “Why I moved to Media Temples’ Grid Service from Self-Hosting with DynDNS”

For weeks now I have had a persistent problem with my wishhh.com service. It was taking an inordinate amount of time to connect to the service (sometimes as much as 2 minutes or more). After ruling out every possible issue, I decided to upgrade my Apache server to the latest release (version 2.2.10). I’m delighted that the upgrade solved my problem.

I had installed Apache server three years also and made only a few changes to its configuration files since. Being a bit rusty, I searched for an online ‘how-to’ upgrade guide. The only guide I found was Evaria.com’s upgrade tutorial here. It was helpful but a little bit for my tastes. I followed that tutorial and took notes along the way. This post fleshes out the details a bit further.

Note: This post describes my upgrade from Apache version 2.0.54 to the latest version 2.2.10 (as of December 1, 2008). If you are upgrading from a different version, you’ll need to make adjustments to the instructions below to reflect your specific circumstance. If needed, you can view my server specs at the end of this post for.

Before you Begin

Gather Your Info: Information on the latest version of Apache HTTP Server can be found here.
Download the Package: Before de-installing your current version, be sure have the latest version at the ready. You can download it from one of the mirror sites linked into here. I downloaded this ‘Win32 Binary without crypto (no mod_ssl)’ .msi installation file was:
apache_2.2.10-win32-x86-no_ssl.msi
Upgrade Info: Basic upgrade information can be found here. Unfortunately, I could not find step-by-step upgrade instructions on the apache.org site - hence this post.

Continue reading “How to Upgrade to Apache 2.2.10 with Windows XP”