Hosting Websites

No more charging sales tax on Website Hosting in Texas

Oct 13, 2011 by Paul White

The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts emailed me yesterday with a update of changes to the Texas State Tax Codes.  As I glanced down this 16 page PDF, I noticed House Bill 1841 ( Effective Immediately ) Use of Internet Hosting Does Not Create Nexus.

"This bill provides that a person whose only activity in this state is as a user of Internet hosting is not engaged in business in Texas."

This tells me that I no longer have to charge sales tax to my out of state clients who host their websites with me.  Awesome!  However don't take my word for it.  Texas Tax code is rather complex, and I plan to call tomorrow and ask the Texas Comptroller myself. 

Server Colocation and Cloud Hosting Houston and Dallas

Oct 4, 2011 by Paul White

If you need a datacenter to colocate your hardware, or if you need a really fast cloud, then I can't say enough good things about FastPCNetworks.  I have colocated my server with them for about 1 1/2 years.  The truth is you don't really know who you are hosting with until something goes wrong.  Its not how they treat you when everything is up and running. Its about how they treat you when things go down.  I have been with plenty of hosting companies.  Before I brought my server to FastPCNetworks, I had been on  Shared Hosting, VPS, dedicated, and cloud with some of the largest hosting companies in the world.  Eventually after dealing with terrible technical support, and some of the cheapest hardware, I decided that it was about time I build and colocate my own server.  At least that way when it goes down, I can fix it myself, instead of waiting for a ticket to make it to tech support days later.

Internap Houston Data Center Colocation Review

Apr 13, 2011 by Paul White

After being colocated at Internap's Houston Datacenter with FastPCNet for 6 months I feel I have enough experience to give an honest review of the two companies, and their customer support.  So if you have a server and are trying to find a good great The Best datacenter to colocate it, Call John with Fast PC Networks.  He will get you taken care of.

How much traffic can a single server handle

Mar 22, 2011 by Paul White

This question is one of the most asked questions I hear from non IT people.  Of course there is no 100% answer to this.  But what we can do is go through all the different bottle necks in a server and its network, to figure out the theoretical maximum performance of a server.

Bulk import IPs into your Windows Server 2008 R2 Firewall

Feb 4, 2011 by Paul White

If you are like me you take server security very seriously.  You lock down all your ports, and you even firewall IPs that try to use exploits.  But eventually you determine that non of your clients do business in China or Russia, and its easier to just block those countries, rather than trying to block individual IPs.  Well this brings another problem.  Windows Server 2008 R2 has no user friendly way to do a bulk import of IPs.  Luckily I found a VB script that you can run and it will automatically add the IP blocks you want to block.

moved my server to internap houston data center

Nov 6, 2010 by Paul White

At the end of September 2010, my old Data Center had some lease issues, resulting in the data connection being pulled from the data center.  So I moved my 1U rack server to Internap.  Many are wondering why I choose Internap, hopefully this blog will provide some answers.

Acronoc Closing Houston Data Center

Oct 4, 2010 by Paul White

As some of you might have noticed my website and blog were down for a few days between Sep 28, 2010 - Sep 30, 2010.  Both my website and my client's are hosted on my colocated server, that WAS colocated at Acronoc's Houston Datacenter.  To make a long story short my server is now colocated with Internap. Click for the longer version of this story.

Website Security Tip remove catch all bindings

May 23, 2010 by Paul White

A few months ago I noticed that one of my clients websites seemed to be getting spikes of traffic.  However with spikes in traffic most clients would report an increase in sales or business.  When looking at the stats server, the requests were for pages and files that were not even on the server, and were for technologies ( PHP ) that I do not run on m box.  If you see requests for files like /prx2.php, /phpmyadmin/config/config.inc.php, /roundcubemail/readme, or /webmail/readme.  You might want to read this article.

What sender score and IP reputation is really worth to your mail server

Feb 19, 2010 by Paul White

Most webmasters and server admins are relatively clueless as to what makes email really run.  Recently I was forced to migrate all my websites to new IPs.  I knew I was going to take a hit for this but I didn't realize how much.  This whole experience have given me a new perspective on how to get into yahoo's inbox with your bulk emails and newsletters.

Class C IP RBL blacklist not cool

Dec 5, 2009 by Paul White

Today I went through getting one of my new clients setup on the Feedback Loop with the major ISPs.  Most of the them came back saying I was approved to their feedback loop system, but one of them said I was not approved because I was found on an blacklist.  This is not something you want to see.  Allow me to explain.