The best question a client ever asks me is “How do you make money off of this solution?” I usually reply with “My job is to provide small business owners solutions that they need, and to partner with companies that will provide them longevity for their solutions, as well as outstanding customer service.” I am usually considered the go-to guy. I would rather make a person happy recommending the right hosting company that they will want to stay with for life then make a small amount of change for recommending a bad hosting company. In the end its your recommendation. While each client is different I have access to a few partners who are able to meet my clients needs with no problems. After I resolve the original issue that they were encountering I know that I won’t have to worry about future hosting issues.

If I recommend the right hosting to my client it just makes my job easier. I know that the hosting company has by default the features I need to help my clients wordpress site stay secure, work with popular themes, and plugins. In some cases my clients’ websites have matured to the point where they need VPS hosting instead of shared hosting. “How do I know when I need to upgrade?” Some hosting companies will send you an email that you are overloading the server, your site will become slow and take a long time to load, your traffic logs will show a steady growth in traffic over time. Most hosting companies let you use only 10% of the CPU and RAM resources. They never really tell you how much is 10% and some automatically suspend you without notification.

One thing you can do before trying to upgrade is to peed up your wordpress blog. Installing wp-cache, optimization your database, removing plugins you are not using are a few simple steps you can take. Locking down comments so that robots can’t post fake comments can greatly improve the performance of your site as well as reduce the amount of time you have to spend to administrate spammy comments. I use wp-register on my sites, and I make sure that the administrator always has to approve comments before they appear from the settings->discussion are of wp-admin. I also set the “links in a comment to hold for moderation” to 1.

Most hosting companies offer wordpress through fantastico as an auto install feature. When it comes to how wordpress works, what plugins need to installed, how to set widgets in your sidebar you should seek advice from a wordpress expert. Most small hosting companies will know what wordpress is but support beyond, is the server up and running is beyond the scope of their expertise. They are responsible for the server to be optimal, to have backups on hand, to be able to show you how to use their control panel features. I only choose hosting companies with cpanel because it is easier to manage your email, mysql databases, files and backup without having to contact anyone at the web hosting company for help.

One of the most common issues I run into running a web hosting brand and providing support and consulting for wordpress, is auto installation of the newest version of wordpress. While fantastico is great for providing scripts for clients a lot of this can be done automaticlly by tying the CMS into the order form. For example when a client places an order for wordpress hosting you could move the wordpress files to the created account through cpanel skeleton. I like to package the newest version of wordpress and my “wordpress foundation” files. These files may include client specific theme, recommended plugins, proprietary plugins and scripts as well as the newest version of wordpress 3. This solution is a great starter solution because it doesn’t depend on what billing software you are running. IF you are running multiple CMS platforms for your clients you could have one server skeleton directory of wordpress and one running a skeleton directory of joomla.

1. Log into whm, click Account Functions >> Skeleton Directory, here you will see the target directory for the reseller, or server account. Mine shows /root/cpanel3-skel will be referred as [skeldir] in the rest of this tutorial.
2. SSH into the server in terminal or putty. Command: ssh [user]@[ipaddress/servername] hit enter then type the password for the server.
3.SSH Command, change directory: cd [skeldir]
4.Get current wordpress.org version. using wget: wget wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
5. My team uses a special “WordPress Foundation” Zip file that includes common plugins, and themes commonly requested by clients so they would use scp [fullpath_to_foundationfile] [user]@[ipaddress/servername]:/root/cpanel3-skel
6. Next extract the tar.gz/zip file: tar zxvf latest.tar.gz or unzip [zipfile]
7. Remove foundation file: rm [filename]
8. change to the wordpress dir: cd wordpress
9. Move wordpress files to public_html folder: mv -f * [skeldir]/public_html
10. Verify files and folders moved and not into a subfolder: cd [skeldir]/public_html [enter] dir [enter]
11. Remove wordpress folder rm -rf wordpress
12. Create a new account on the server to Verify the process works and your done

Client Issue:

I’m having difficulty connecting to my MySQL db. I’m fairly sure I have the correct username and password. For the host, I just used my server’s IP and for the Port, I have 3306. When I try to connect, I receive the following error…

MySQL Error Number 1130
Host ‘<IP address>’ is not allowed to connect to this MySQL server.

Resolution:

In addition to allowing your IP in WHM, you have to create a new user account on your mysql server with a host specification that will allow you to connect. you can do this in phpmyadmin. In WHM->SQL Services->PHPMyAdmin->Privilidges->add a new user
Create a new mysql user with a very strong password under options:Database for user, Grant all privileges on wildcard name (username\_%) Select all Global Priviledges. Hit Go, and now you should be able to connect to this account using tools like Navicat.

ssh into the server using the root password for the server.
copy all the lines following

cd /usr/local/src

wget http://www3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/essential-20061022.tar.bz2
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/9225/flvtool2_1.0.5_rc6.tgz
wget http://easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/lame/lame-3.97.tar.gz
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ffmpeg-php/ffmpeg-php/0.6.0/ffmpeg-php-0.6.0.tbz2
wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/ogg/libogg-1.1.3.tar.gz
wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/vorbis/libvorbis-1.1.2.tar.gz
wget http://www3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/essential-20061022.tar.bz2
wget http://ftp.penguin.cz/pub/users/utx/amr/amrnb-6.1.0.4.tar.bz2

bunzip2 amrnb-6.1.0.4.tar.bz2
tar zxvf flvtool2_1.0.5_rc6.tgz
tar zxvf lame-3.97.tar.gz
tar zxvf libogg-1.1.3.tar.gz
tar zxvf libvorbis-1.1.2.tar.gz
bunzip2 essential-20061022.tar.bz2
tar jxvf ffmpeg-php-0.6.0.tbz2

sed -i -e’s/^exclude=.*//’ /etc/yum.conf; yum update
mkdir /usr/local/lib/codecs/
mv essential-20061022/* /usr/local/lib/codecs/

yum install subversion
yum install ruby
yum install ncurses-devel

svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg
svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk mplayer
cd /usr/local/src/mplayer
svn update

Fix few Lib issues for next steps
Add this line in /etc/ld.so.conf via pico /etc/ld.so.conf
/usr/local/lib
then run
ldconfig -v

Compile LAME
cd /usr/local/src/lame-3.97
./configure
make
make install

Compile libOGG
cd /usr/local/src/libogg-1.1.3
./configure
make
make install

Compile libVorbis
cd /usr/local/src/libvorbis-1.1.2
./configure
make
make install

Compile flvtool2
cd /usr/local/src/flvtool2_1.0.5_rc6
ruby setup.rb config
ruby setup.rb setup
ruby setup.rb install

Compile MPlayer
cd /usr/local/src/mplayer
./configure
make
make install

Compile AMR for 3gp conversion
cd /usr/local/src/amrnb-6.1.0.4
./configure
make
make install

Compile FFMPEG
mkdir /usr/local/temp
chmod 777 /usr/local/temp
cd /usr/local/src/ffmpeg
./configure –enable-libmp3lame –enable-libvorbis –disable-mmx –enable-shared
make
make install

Finalize the codec setups
ln -s /usr/local/lib/libavformat.so.50 /usr/lib/libavformat.so.50
ln -s /usr/local/lib/libavcodec.so.51 /usr/lib/libavcodec.so.51
ln -s /usr/local/lib/libavutil.so.49 /usr/lib/libavutil.so.49
ln -s /usr/local/lib/libmp3lame.so.0 /usr/lib/libmp3lame.so.0
ln -s /usr/local/lib/libavformat.so.51 /usr/lib/libavformat.so.51
ln -s /usr/local/lib/libamrnb.so.2 /usr/lib/libamrnb.so.2

Few tasks before compiling FFMPEG-PHP
yum install automake
yum install autoconf
yum install libtool

Compile FFMPEG-PHP
cd /usr/local/src/ffmpeg-php-0.5.0
phpize
./configure
make
make install
nano /usr/local/lib/php.ini
add

service httpd restart

To verify that the above things do work

You can test it like this

ldd ./ffmpeg
php -i | grep -i ffmpeg

If it returns this message

ffmpeg
ffmpeg support (ffmpeg-php) => enabled
ffmpeg-php version => 0.5.0
ffmpeg.allow_persistent => 0 => 0

Then its done

Today I ran into an error while installing some mysql databases. I was able to find some information to help resolve the issue.
Issue:
CPanel of any domain shows following Error on MySQL Databases Section of Left Hand Side Panel

Error while connecting to MySQL. Failover enacted.

Additionally adding new users and databases is generating “already exists” errors.

SOLUTION:
This error comes when Perl modules for database are outdated OR not installed. You can install them using following Commands:
1. Perform the following commands from root ssh command
/scripts/mysqlup –force
/scripts/perlinstaller –force Bundle:BD::mysql
2. Run EasyApache Update through whm
3. Run the following update commands:

root@server [~]# perl -MCPAN -e shell

cpan> install Bundle::CPAN
cpan> reload cpan
cpan> install HTTP:ateate
cpan> install HTTP:Date
cpan> install Net::AIM::Connection
cpan> install Net::AIM
cpan> install Tie::IxHash
cpan> install DBI
cpan> install DBD::mysql

Restart MySQL.

After this you should be able to log into cpanel for the client and see the proper users and databases.

Let me know if you have any questions regarding whm or wordpress hosting, wordpress hosting experts at your service.