Unmanaged dedicated servers – basic security to make it secure

Once you outgrow shared hosting or you want to move from your reseller hosting account to having your own dedicated server, you have two options, you can get a managed dedicated server (the server company or a third party manages security, applying patches, updates and the general wellbeing of your server) or you can get unmanaged dedicated server which you have to manage yourself. The going rate for third party managing a dedicated server seem to to start from about £100 per month.
If you prefer to save money and manage the server by yourself, you can certainly do this, all you have to do is apply some tried and tested setup to update and secure your dedicated server. The list below gives some of the most important things you need to do on your unmanaged server to ensure its secure.
Disable direct root login – By default you can login directly to the root of Linux/Unix servers, add an extra layer of security by disabling this so that you need to login as admin first before you can login as root. Naturally you should set two different passwords for root and admin users.

Difficult complex password - Set hard password that includes alphanumeric numbers, upper and lowercase letters for both root and admin account.
Install a firewall
Spam protection – Setup rule import rfxn.com, spamhause.org and dshield.org
Setup the spam assassin
Set up “logwatch” to monitor logs and send email to you should a security related even take place.
Install automatically root kit scanner - This scans your server every day to see if root kit is installed on your server. (Set cron to run this and send report to you).
Set minimum password strength for accounts on your server to 10
Enable brute force protection
Enable open base dir protection for PHP to prevents users from opening files outside of their home directory with PHP
Create a custom/changed sendmail script to log spammers whose want to use form found on your server to send spam.
Enable secure FTP (anonymous ftp should be disabled.
To reduced server resources use change your mail server to Dovecot if it comes with Courier, have very high memory usage.
Setup the log rotation to delete or store old log files
Recompile Apache and PHP with the options SuPHP, and all security related modules.
Install GD for image manipulation, openSSL, mod auth, mod bandwidth
Install Ion Cube and Zend.
Setup Hardened PHP (Suhosin). Is the same PHP version 5.2.8 just with enhanced security (http://www.hardened-php.net/)
Setup and enable automatic updates for the server.
Update the server and system software.

Please not that the above should not necessarily be done in the order listed above and you may not even need to all especially if you are not reselleing hosting space on the server.

Reseller Web Hosting – Profit From Web Hosting

The major reason why the trend of web hosting reseller is getting more and more popular among the people is the extra benefits it offers. It gives you a chance to earn more than other people who are in the same field of web hosting and earning a lot less by doing almost the same thing and putting in almost the same effort.

Before we go any further in to discussing benefits of becoming a web hosting reseller, it is essential that you understand the concept behind being a reseller web hosting service provider. Web hosting resellers passes on a reseller hosting account to the consumers who themselves wants to become a reseller who then provides with optimum space and bandwidth to their own clients which is available in plenty anyways.

It is very important to choose the right web hosting reseller service for this purpose as there are many services which offers a very lucrative package but later on prove to be a complete failure in terms of fulfilling promises. It is very important that you search for a web hosting reseller who has a good and strong back up in terms of customer care and support.

This will enable you to provide support to your own customers even though you might not be very sound with the technicalities. Web hosting reseller will provide you with all the tools and gadgets which are necessary for you as a reseller so that you do not fall back in anyways in providing essential service inquiry with legitimate solutions.

Web hosting reseller are in actuality companies or may be even a person who are authorised by the mother hosting company to provide products and services for which they get discounts as well as commissions from the web hosting reseller company. They can even provided customised hosting accounts sell it back again to the customers playing the role of mother company here themselves.

However, one should make sure while dealing with reseller web hosting company as many of the very much needed and benefiting privileges will wash out from your hands and you may suffer some virtual loss.

The chances are that if you develop right kinds of offers and provide customers with exactly the kind of customer support they wish to have, you will gradually with time develop a good market reputation and attract more customers which means more money. For this, it is very necessary that you find a web hosting company who can provide with multiple hosting accounts so that you can directly host your client’s websites and earn more money.

Now you must be wondering from where the money comes in? Well, the answer is simple as over here you are your own boss after striking the deal with web hosting company and becoming reseller web hosting service provider. Profit will come because you will be the one to decide your marketing strategy, prices of the products and services provided and money will come to you directly without any third party involvement. Thus, as you can see the most important factor is striking the right deal with the right company and planning a beneficial strategy to take on from there. A reseller also earns from the sales made by customers who are authorised as resellers.

There are many ad-on services which can be purchased from the web hosting company at a much discounted rates and the discounts can range from 35% to 50%. These services in turn can be provided by your reseller company to your customers at a price which you decide which will definitely be much higher and profitable.

The extra services here also depend upon the web hosting companies from who you are taking services yourself. Many of the web hosting companies provides you with array of services while many others do not or provide only handful of services. Thus, make sure you have done your homework well and analysed various web hosting companies, services they offer, rates and selected the right one.

You can discuss reseller web hosting at the web hosting forum section of Webmaster serve , webmaster forum.