[General] Search Engine Ranking Myths

Searching engine ranking based on a website’s IP address is still a topic that has a lot of discussion. A lot of people still believe that in order to maximize their search engine ranking, specifically with Google, that they must have a dedicated IP. This is a myth. This has been stated several times by people and developers from inside Google.

Matt Cutts is a developer for Google. He runs a blog – http://www.mattcutts.com – where he discusses some of the ins and outs of the Google algorithm. He made a post way back in 2006, where he actually reference a slashdot post from Craig Silverstein, Google’s Director of Technology, concerning this:

I can’t just deny it? What are my other choices? Actually, Google handles virtually hosted domains and their links just the same as domains on unique IP addresses. If your ISP does virtual hosting correctly, you’ll never see a difference between the two cases. We do see a small percentage of ISPs every month that misconfigure their virtual hosting, which might account for this persistent misperception–thanks for giving me the chance to dispel a myth!

Why is this important?

You may have heard recently, and if you haven’t you will in the coming months, about the death of IPv4 address space. IPv4 allows for a maximum of 4,294,967,296 IP addresses. That may seem like a lot, but keep in mind the world’s people population currently stand at about 6,973,738,433. That’s a difference of 2,678,771,137. Also factor in that of the 4,294,967,296 IPv4 address space, you have to dedicated about 18,000,000 for private networks (which aren’t Internet routable) and 270,000,000 multicast IP addresses. That leaves you with only 4,006,967,296. Again, that may seem like a lot. But just think, every Internet connection, every smartphone, every Internet connected device, every web server, requires at least 1 of those IP addresses. There just aren’t a lot of available IPv4 addresses any more. We can’t get them, our datacenter partners can’t get them, they’re just not there to get. IP allocation systems (ARIN in North America) are being much more strict with their requirements for releasing IP addresses, so that only users that really need a dedicated IP address will be able to get them.

In order to consolidate IPv4 space, the HTTP 1.1 protocol revision was written to allow for “VirtualHosts” on a web server. This essentially allows a web server to disperse web traffic based on the hostname that is sent along with each HTTP packet, instead of via an IP address, allowing IP address space on a web server to be shared. Google, Bing, and all of the major search engine providers know this. They would be fools if they did not. Perhaps it used to be common place for websites to have their own dedicated IP address, this is no longer a requirement (accept for in case of SSL secure certificates, but that’s another topic, and most websites do not have SSL secure certificates).

If you haven’t heard about the death of IPv4 you will soon. The Internet is very quickly approaching a move to IPv6 which allows for many, many, many more addresses (approximately 3.4 x 10³⁸).

So how does this affect search engine ranking?

Having a dedicated IP address has no bearings on your pagerank. If you really want to improve your search engine ranking, then you need to focus on the content, the quality of content of your website and get others to legitimately link to your site. If your sole purpose of building sites is to link back and forth with the hope of increasing your page rank, this is a violation of Google guidelines, and it won’t matter if you are on a dedicate IP address or not, this type of activity will have a negative impact on your pagerank.

This is discussed specifically from Google:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors?

So pagerank and search engine visibility is based much more on content than anything else. If you have solid content that people want to read about, this is the number one thing that will move you up the search engine ladder.

So remember, if you want to increase your pagerank and your visibility on search engine result pages, a dedicated IP address is not necessary for this. SEO techniques that advise a dedicated IP address are a marketing ploy used by companies to try and get more money from you. If you really want to improve your pagerank you need to focus on the content of your website and getting legitimate users to link to your site. If you try to circumvent Google’s pageranking system by building link farms and backlinks, then this can have a negative impact on your site’s pagerank, defeating the whole point of the links.

Steven

[General] PHP 5.3 Script Compatibilities

We are still seeing a lot of issues with the PHP 5.3 upgrade we are rolling out. Please understand that this is an upgrade that has to happen. All software has to be upgraded eventually. This is why you do not see very many companies still using MSDOS 6 and Windows 3.1 or Windows 95/98. Microsoft stopped supporting those pieces of software and companies have to decide do they want to prop it up and support it in-house – which requires a ton of resources and means that you just fall further and further behind as future upgrades are delivered to the public – or they could upgrade and upgrade their underlying software and procedures to work with the updated operating system.

This is what is happening with PHP 5.3 (and later PHP 5.4 and PHP 6, and so on). We are having to upgrade in order to fall in line with what is publicly available. Unfortunately we do not have the resources to support PHP 5.2 on our own, and even if we did, we would have users wanting the features and benefits of PHP 5.3 and later versions, making it not only impossible to indefinitely support PHP 5.2, but also making it unwise.

I implore you to check the scripts you have installed on your website. Find out what version you have installed, what the latest version of that script is, and if that script is compatible with PHP 5.3. You should also check and make sure that any plugins, components, extensions, or themes, or anything pertaining to your scripts is up to date and compatible with PHP 5.3. We have seen some issues where a script, such as Zen Cart, is up to date, but an addon module being used on the Zen Cart install is not up to date and not compatible with PHP 5.3. This breaks the functionality of the website in PHP 5.3 even though the base script (in this case Zen Cart) is up to date.

Insuring that your scripts are up to date is the best way you can insure that your website will remain functioning when PHP is upgraded on your server.

How do you do this?

1. Know what scripts are installed on your website. Are you using a popular script or scripts to drive your website? Are you using a script that you downloaded from another website and installed on your website? Are you using a custom made script, either made by you or someone you hired? These are questions that you need to know the answers to. We can help you identify some of the scripts on your website, but unfortunately we can’t identify everything. For example, if you are using “Joe’s PHP Website Creator” to drive your website, we may not know anything about it. “Joe’s PHP Website Creator” (this is a fake script name we are using to underline the point that there are many non-descript PHP scripts available on the web) isn’t a very popular script so we have no way of identifying it. If you installed something on your website, you should know about it.

2. Know what extensions/components/plugins/addon modules/themes you have installed for this script on your website. These terms all just signify extra packages you can install inside a script on your website to extend it’s functionality. WordPress refers to these as plugins. Joomla! refers to these as components. The terms essentially mean the same thing. A theme is like an extension that tells the base script how to display information on your website. Unfortunately, these are all inside a script. We really don’t have a sure-fire way of identifying what plugins you have installed. For example, we have a procedure for identifying WordPress scripts installed on our servers. But we have no way of knowing what plugins and themes and extensions you have installed on that WordPress script. There are just too many plugins and extensions available for WordPress for us to be able to accurately identify them. The same is true for Joomla! and any other script.

3. Once you have a list of the installed scripts and their versions and the installed extensions for each of those scripts and their version, then you need to contact the developers of that script and find out if those versions are compatible with PHP 5.3.

Most of the popular scripts, such as WordPress and Joomla! have community forums where you can interact with other users of these scripts and ask questions. I would recommend asking there, if what you have installed is compatible with PHP 5.3. Note: I would not recommend disclosing your website in these community forums.

Some of the popular scripts and their support forums and communities are below:

WordPress – http://wordpress.org/support

Joomla! – http://forum.joomla.org

Drupal – http://drupal.org/forum

phpBB – http://www.phpbb.com/community

SMF – http://www.simplemachines.org/community

Gallery – http://gallery.menalto.com/forum

Coppermine – http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net

Zen Cart – http://www.zen-cart.com/forum.php

Moodle – http://moodle.org/forums

These are just some scripts, there are many other scripts available. You would just have to identify what scripts you have installed, what extensions you have installed, and then find a community forum or contact link for the developer of those scripts or extensions. Some scripts may not have a community forum and you may have to contact the developer directly.

If you are unable to find the developer or any contact information for the developer of the script or if the developer does not respond to your inquiries, then this can be a sign that the script you are using is an abandoned project. The problem with an abandoned project is that it is no longer being maintained. If you are using an abandoned project as a script on your website, then your website may be open to various, unknown, and unpatched security holes. If you find out that you are using an abandoned project, then you really need to investigate using a newer script. You can try and keep using the script with PHP 5.3, but there’s no guarantees that it will work with PHP 5.3. This is part of the price that is paid when you decide to use an abandoned and unmaintained script.

4. If you are using a custom made script, either written by you or if you hired someone to develop the script for you. You either need to contact that developer or research this yourself. If you wrote your own script, you should have an idea of what it does and how it does what it does. I would encourage you to read through PHP’s guide to migrating to PHP 5.3 from PHP 5.2:

http://www.php.net/migration53

5. Once you have identified if your scripts are compatible with PHP 5.3 or if there is an upgrade path available to you to make you PHP 5.3 compatible, I would recommend upgrading and following that path as soon as possible (assuming that the upgrade path is safe for non-PHP 5.3 environments). This will help insure that your website remains only when it is transitioned to PHP 5.3.

These are steps you can take to insure a smoother transition from PHP 5.2 to PHP 5.3 for your website. If you have used the same script for many months or many years without have to upgrade it or maintain it, then this is probably more of a sign that your script will not be compatible with PHP 5.3. The value of a script isn’t ranked by how few upgrades and few maintenance steps it requires, the true value of a script is how well it is maintained, how often the developers release updates to the script to fix security holes and other bugs. A developer or software group that ignores the progression of the PHP language and does not readily update their scripts performs poorer than a developer or software group that stays on top of the latest PHP language developments and how to properly utilize those developments.

Steven

[General] PHP 5.3 Transition – maverick – attempt #2

We are again scheduling the server maverick.wznoc.com for transition to PHP 5.3 by default. This event is scheduled for Tuesday, July 17th.

As with our previous post we are making this change to bring our servers more up to date with the current state of PHP.

To find out what server your account is on and if you are affected by this transition see our server identification tool at:

http://amshelp.com/identify.php

You need to insure that all of your scripts are up to date and compatible with PHP 5.3 before this transition is made. If you need help determining what scripts and what version of the scripts you have installed, contact us and we can help you.

Below is a list of popular scripts that are known to support PHP 5.3.

- WordPress

- Joomla! 1.5 (version 1.5.15+)

- Joomla! 2.5

- Drupal 6+

- phpBB3

- SMF

- Gallery

- Coppermine

- phpList

- Zen Cart (version 1.3.9+)

- Moodle

We strongly encourage you to keep your scripts up-to-date. Even if you don’t feel that it is necessary for you to update your script, please understand that failing to keep a script up to date is the number one reason why websites are hacked and defaced.

Steven

[General] PHP 5.3 Transition – maverick – postponed

Due to the kernel panic issues we had on maverick yesterday, we decided to postpone this PHP 5.3 transition that was scheduled for today.

We are going to reschedule this transition to happen next week, Tuesday July 17th. We may add another server and transition two servers next Tuesday, but that has not yet been decided.

If you haven’t already done so, you should check to make sure that you are using all up-to-date scripts on your website. Also check and make sure that you are using up-to-date plugins, extensions, components, and themes. This will help to insure that the transition to PHP 5.3 goes smoothly for you.

Steven

[General] PHP 5.3 Transition – maverick

We will be continuing our PHP 5.3 transition next week July 10. We will be converting the server maverick over to PHP 5.3 by default. As with our previous post we are making this change to bring our servers more up to date with the current state of PHP.

To find out what server your account is located on, try our server identification tool at:

http://amshelp.com/identify.php

Below is a list of popular scripts that are known to support PHP 5.3.

- WordPress

- Joomla! 1.5 (version 1.5.15+)

- Joomla! 2.5

- Drupal 6+

- phpBB3

- SMF

- Gallery

- Coppermine

- phpList

- Zen Cart (version 1.3.9+)

- Moodle

Steven

[General] PHP 5.3 Transition

We are going to be beginning the process of transitioning our servers over to PHP 5.3. Whereas right now, all PHP scripts on the server (unless you have requested otherwise) are running under the outdated and deprecated PHP 5.2 system, after this transition PHP scripts will execute under PHP 5.3 (the latest version of PHP 5.3, which right now is 5.3.13). We are set to begin transitioning to PHP 5.3 around Tuesday, June 5th.

This will begin a move to bring our servers more up to date. PHP 5.2 is outdated and no longer being supported. A transition to PHP 5.3 really should have happened several months ago, but because we wanted to make sure all of the popular scripts were updated to support PHP 5.3, we held off on performing this transition.

Pretty much every script you use should be compatible with PHP 5.3, because after all, PHP 5.2 is deprecated and no longer being supported. If you are using a script that does not work with PHP 5.3, then this should be a sign that it is outdated and insecure and no longer being properly maintained. It may be the case that you are using an outdated version of a script that has since added support for PHP 5.3. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is for you to keep your scripts (and your themes/plugins/components/extensions) up to date. When you don’t upgrade your scripts you are leaving your website open and vulnerable to an attack. It is up to you, as the website operator, to keep your scripts up to date.

Below is a list of popular scripts that are known to support PHP 5.3.

- WordPress

- Joomla! 1.5 (version 1.5.15+)

- Joomla! 2.5

- Drupal 6+

- phpBB3

- SMF

- Gallery

- Coppermine

- phpList

- Zen Cart (version 1.3.9+)

- Moodle

Again we will be beginning this transition to PHP 5.3 around June 5th. You can help to minimize any problems on your account by insuring that you are using the latest version of any script on your web hosting account and insuring that it is compatible with PHP 5.3.

Steven

[Updates] Joomla! 1.5.26 Released

The Joomla! developers have released an update to the Joomla! 1.5 software.

This is a security release and fixes a known security issue. All users of Joomla! 1.5 need to update to this new version.

http://www.joomla.org/announcements/release-news/5419-joomla-1526-released.html

If you are not using Joomla! 1.5 or Joomla! 2.5 you need to upgrade to one of these version, as other versions have gone end-of-life. For more information see our post at:

http://blog.amssupport.info/?p=476

Steven

[Updates] Joomla! 1.7 End-of-Life Announcement

The developers of the Joomla! CMS product recently released a new version of their popular CMS application, Joomla! 2.5. This application is replacing their former product, Joomla! 1.7. Joomla! 1.7 will be going end-of-life on February 24th, 2012. This means that no further updates or releases will be made for the Joomla! 1.7 line of products. All Joomla! 1.7 users need to upgrade to Joomla! 2.5 before February 24th, 2012 so that their website can remain safe and secure.

For a better understanding of this, let’s take a look at all of the current Joomla! products:

Joomla! 2.5
Currently the latest version of Joomla! 2.5 is version 2.5.1. This is the latest version of the Joomla! 2.5 series. All users of Joomla! 1.7 need to upgrade to this release tree.

Joomla! 1.7
This version of Joomla! is being retired and being replaced with Joomla! 2.5. Versions of Joomla! 1.7 include: 1.7.0, 1.7.1, 1.7.2, 1.7.3, 1.7.4, and 1.7.5. If you are using ANY of these versions of Joomla! then you need to upgrade to Joomla! 2.5.1. Support for Joomla! 1.7 will be ending on Friday, February 24th, 2012. This is coming directly from the Joomla! developers. What this means is that after February 24th, if you continue to use Joomla! 1.7 on your website and a vulnerability is found in the Joomla! 1.7 line of products, the Joomla! developers will not fix this security issue. Your website will likely be defaced, hacked, and your web hosting account will be compromised. We may to to suspend or disable your web hosting account if this happens. PLEASE upgrade your Joomla! 1.7 script to Joomla! 2.5 as soon as possible.

Joomla! 1.5
This is a legacy release of Joomla! As far as I am aware of, there is no direct upgrade path from Joomla! 1.5 to Joomla! 2.5. But as far as I know, Joomla! 1.5 is not going end of life on February 24th, so users of Joomla! 1.5 are being allowed to continue to use this version of the script. The latest version of Joomla! 1.5 is 1.5.25. As long as you keep this updated to the latest version of Joomla! 1.5, you should be safe and secure.

Joomla! 1.0 or others
If you are using Joomla! 1.0 or any other version of Joomla! on your website, then it has long since been end of lifed, and is extremely outdated. Anybody that is still using this version of Joomla! is highly at risk for being attacked, hacked, defaced, and having their website completely compromised.

—–
(Update: 02/14/2012 5:12PM CST)
Perhaps a point was not clear in this post. If you are using Joomla! 1.5.25, then you are fine. There is no need for you to upgrade or do anything else.

• If you are using 1.5.xx, some other version than 1.5.25, then you need to consider upgrading to version 1.5.25, the latest version of the Joomla! 1.5 tree.

• If you are using Joomla! versions 1.7.xx OR 2.5, then you need to consider upgrading to Joomla! 2.5.1

• If you are using Joomla! version 1.7.xx please realize that support for this version from the Joomla! developers and community will cease on February 24th, 2012. That is why these users need to upgrade to Joomla! 2.5.1.

• If you are using Joomla! version 1.0.xx OR version 1.6.xx please note that these version have already reached their end-of-life and are no longer being supported or maintained. If you are using one of these versions of Joomla! then you missed the end-of-life cutoff for those respective releases. You probably need to upgrade to Joomla! 2.5.1 but I am not sure what your upgrade path is. I would recommend posting in the Joomla Forums to see what the exact steps are that you need to do.

If you are running anything other than the latest version of your respective Joomla! release tree, then you are using an outdated version and are susceptible to being hacked or compromised. I did find this post on the Joomla! forum that echos why it is important to use an up-to-date script.

I hope this helps to clear up the confusion.
—–

Backing up your account
Before attempting a Joomla! update we encourage you to create a backup of your account. Joomla! may have a backup component in it’s system, but I am not familiar with that. We do provide a backup method which you can use via your cPanel, to back up your entire account. For instructions on this see:

http://manual.amstechdns.com/userbackup

It’s always a good idea to keep a backup copy of your website, in case something happens to your website. While we’d like to believe that upgrading your Joomla! 1.7 to Joomla! 2.5 will be seamless, in the event that something goes wrong, having a backup of your website can be a life saver.

Upgrade Instructions – Non-Softaculous Users
Upgrading from Joomla! 1.7 to Joomla! 2.5 is suppose to be easy. The Joomla! developers have placed an instruction guide on their website:

http://docs.joomla.org/Upgrading_from_an_existing_version

I have personally tried the Extension Manager: Update method and the Admin Tools method to upgrade a non-production level version of Joomla! to version 2.5. This worked without any issues. But I would stress that I did not have any extension or components installed and the Joomla! website was non-production level.

If you have questions about the upgrade process, I highly encourage you to speak out at the Joomla! forums:

http://forum.joomla.org

They have a lot more experience with Joomla! than we do and can likely better answer and upgrade questions you may have.

Upgrade Instructions – Softaculous Users
If you installed Joomla! through Softaculous, then you should be able to upgrade Joomla! to version 2.5 from within Softaculous. Unfortunately, I did not have a test site involving this, so I do not know how well this method works. If it fails to work, you may be able to complete one of the Non-Softaculous methods from above to upgrade your website.

If you are a Softaculous Joomla! 1.7 user and have attempted the Softaculous Joomla! 2.5 upgrade, we would like to hear about your experiences with this, so we can share this information with other users. Leave us a comment on how this procedure worked for you.

The one thing I can tell you is that if you ignore this warning about upgrading your Joomla! 1.7 website to Joomla! 2.5, then you are putting your website at risk of being compromised. There will be no further updates to the Joomla! 1.7 release tree, and so continuing to use Joomla! 1.7 means that you are continuing to use an outdated and unsupported piece of software.

This is all a continuing effort to keep our web hosting users informed and aware of security implications on their accounts. I can speak from experience, trying to recover from an account hack can be more difficult than taking measures to prevent a hack. Running up-to-date and supported software is one of the best things you can do to keep your website secured.

Steven

[General] PHP 5.3 Now Available

We have recently updated our servers to support PHP 5.3 (currently 5.3.8, but we will keep this up to date with the latest version of 5.3).

We are currently running a dual system with PHP, supporting both PHP 5.2 and PHP 5.3. Everything still defaults to the normal PHP 5.2 version. But if you have a special need for PHP 5.3, we can enable PHP 5.3 for your website.

Just shoot us a support ticket and we’ll be happy to switch your account over to PHP 5.3.

Eventually all systems will have to be switched over to PHP 5.3 by default, but we don’t have any time estimate for when that will be. When PHP 5.3 was first released there were a lot of compatibility issues with scripts due to changes in PHP 5.3 from PHP 5.2, so that is why we did not immediately upgrade and it’s why we are not switching to PHP 5.3 by default.

If you have any questions at all about this, please feel free to open a support ticket and our support team will be glad to answer any questions you may have.

Steven

[Security] Joomla 1.7.1 Released

An updated to Joomla! has been release, version 1.7.1. All Joomla! users are encouraged to upgrade. This is a security release and fixes a security hole in previous version. Failing to update can lead to your website being hacked.

For more information see:

http://www.joomla.org/announcements/release-news/5387-joomla-171-released.html

Steven

keep looking »

Find It
Recently Written
Categories
- Apache2
- cpanel11
- General
- Maintenance
- PHP5
- Security
- Updates
Monthly Archives
Links
RSS Feeds

Find It

Recently Written

Categories

Monthly Archives

Links

RSS Feeds