Finally we can take some conclusions about what iPowers offers for hosting different website content.

Let’s see what they offer for Pro Plan package:

• Storage space: 1,500 GB – this is a lot, and for a small or medium size company it’s hard to reach this limit, and even this characteristic is oversell still remains on top.
• Transfer/Bandwidth: 15,000 GB/month – it is OK for awhile.
• Domains Allowed: unlimited, and one is personalized and for free. Available extensions and prices.
• Support for: CGI-BIN + PHP 4 & 5. Perl, Python Server Side Includes, Secure Socket Layer etc.
• MySQL Databases: 25 – this could be not enough, depending on your demands.
• Web Statistics: AWStats – good enough to compare with Google Analytics reports.
• Access and CGI Error logs.
• FTP accounts management
• E-mail features: 2,500 email addresses with extensions your-name-domain.com or your-account-name.ipower.com.
• vDeck Control Panel – the graphic interface for managing your account.
• Possibility to install different web applications (CMS’s, e-commerce solutions etc.) through this graphic interface.
• Archive Gateway: the possibility to compress the files on the server.
• Marketing Services: A marketing guide, some free credits for Google and Yahoo advertising search etc.

The knowledgebase offers the possibility to find answer to your questions. There are more than 100 tutorials and how to’s covering many aspects, such as: configuring different email clients, account management, domain registration and services, e-commerce services, scripting, site add-ons etc. iPower Knowledgebase for more and detailed resources.

You have to note that your resources are located on a shared server and knowing the IP address of your domain you can find which are your neighbours. As an example, lostresort.biz is stored among another 460 domains, quite a lot inactive. A shared server if is configured properly you will not have to worry about security issues at a group level. Also be aware of the writing permissions you set for your folders or files.

MySQL databases are just 25 for this package and could be a serious limitation if you need more than this. Through Control Panel you can create or drop databases.
You have to know that is no support for Java. Also no support to manage your files through SSH connection. It seems that this limitation is for security reasons. Working with Java involves many resources than PHP applications. So, if you are a JBoss or NetBeans lover you are unable to watch them in action on an iPower web shared server.

One of the most important service provided by a web hosting sustainer is the technical support. Problems occur even is the user’s fault or not. iPower offer 3 ways for contancting support personnel: by phone (I did not use it), by a chat console (I did not use it) and through a console in which tickets are created (I use it often). So far I did not encountered fatal errors or persistent problems with my applications. If you are using the Service Ticket Console you have two possibilities to get you answer: within 24 hours from your request (or maybe less), and faster if pay some extra money. The longest time I had to wait until my request was solved was 7 days. But it was solved. I’ve noticed that the support service limited to a certain technical level is outsourced to some Indian companies. To be honest, I’m not very glad with this but so far I don’t have serious motives to complain about. If you search over the internet about iPower complains you’ll find a lot of negative comments. Some of them are right, but I do not agree with the comment that says “leave ‘A’ hosting provider because it is worst, and go to ‘B’ hosting provider because it is the best”. I believe that this is not an unbiased approach.

Even if you don’t buy a hosting plan form iPower at least you have something to compare. I hope that what I wrote on this post and on previous is helpfully for anyone who wants to take the decision to resort to a web hosting provider.

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Marketing Services

In this area you can have access to resources for marketing your on-line presence, payed or freely available.

Marketing Guide

This could be a good reference to gain some knowledge before you start building your successfully on-line presence.
You’ll find useful tips about Design Essentials with focus on planing, clarity, content, personality and other important properties related to your website. Other aspect covered is how to take benefits of meta tags, keywords, link popularity and another resources that may improve your ranking on search engines’ results.
The materials are not intended for “MUST READ”, but they are good as starting reference if you are not sure about what you should do to build your website with a marketing perspective.

Google AdWords Credits

Google AdWords is advertising that puts your business above or next to Google.com search results, and you can take it’s benefits using the 50$ credits offered by iPower. Instructions how to activate your promotional code are also provided. Google AdWords account registration and approval is required before you can use this feature.

Yahoo! Sponsored Search Credits

Sponsored Search by Yahoo! is one of the most effective ways to reach the customers you really want – the ones already interested in what your business offers. With text ads that appear in search results, you promote your business to people who are actively searching on-line for your products or services. And you pay only when your ad is clicked.
By signing up to Yahoo! Sponsored Search you will get a 25$ credit to advertise your business.

Best of the Web – Search Directory Service

Best of the Web’s search directory is one of the oldest on-line directory. It is often that search engines index the content of such directories, and subscribing to them can be a boost for your on-line presence. As a iPower customer, you can try Category Sponsorship FREE for 90 days in the Web Directory or in the Blog Directory of Best of the Web Search Directory. After this period if you want not to lose your submission an additional cost will be charged. You have to pay 79.95$ for a one year subscription or a 239.95$ one-time fee to be included in Web Directory, and a $39.95 one-time fee to be included in Blog Directory.

Community Toolbar

Adding a toolbar to your visitor’s user agent, that links to your site and has his favorite gadgets, could be a very useful resource. It is powered by Conduit and you can have it for free. Customizing the way the toolbar looks is achieved in a few steps. Also you have the possibility for later edit of it’s appearance. Following this link you can see how lostresort.biz toolbar looks. You have the option to install it as an extension for Firefox or to download and install a version for Internet Explorer.

Website Grader

Website Grader is a free SEO tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. You can gain information about website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It may help you to improve your marketing appearance.

YellowBrix Content Feeds

Using this feature you have the possibility to help your visitors keep up with news headlines, sports, horoscopes and more by having news articles hosted on your site. Simply choose the topics you want to display on your site to generate the code needed to create a news feed. Then plug that code into the page where you wish the feed to appear, and watch your visitors come back for more.

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Domain Control Panel

In this area you have the possibility to manage your domains or subdomains.

Domain Central

This is a console where you can reserve a new domain and add it to your account. Also you have information for your existing domain about the expiration date and the Registrar of your domains.

Add Domain to account

This option is helpful when you already have a domain name and you want it to be hosted on iPower.

Custom DNS Record

This is a console where you can create and manage Custom DNS Records and MX records for your account at iPower. This tool is intended for use by advanced users only.

Domain Pointing manager

Domain Pointers are domain names that are managed through your account. You can set the type as Home Directory, Subdirectory, Parked and URL, and you can point them to a psychical address (a directory on your operating system). Also you can point other domains to your account from a different Registrar.

Domain Guard

By enabling this feature your domain name will be renewed as long as you maintain your account with iPower.
For your domains to BE ENROLLED AND remain eligible for Domain Guard, your hosting account must at all times remain an active paid account in good standing, hosted by iPower and in compliance with their Terms of Service. (Good standing is defined by iPower’s accounts receivable department as having a valid credit card number for billing and having no outstanding payments PAST due. If your account is not in good standing, or is otherwise ineligible for Domain Guard, iPower reserves the right to suspend your domain(s) from the program.)

Registrar Transfer

In this area you may transfer any of the domains currently associated with your account or add domains to your account so that they can be transferred. Following this link you can find registry requirements for registrar transfer which are good to know before you proceed with transfer process.

Subdomain Pointing Manager

The Subdomain Pointing Manager allows you to point a subdomain related to your domain to any subdirectory on your site. This task is done by accomplishing only a few steps.

Scripting & Add-ons Control Panel

Archive Gateway

The Archive Gateway allows you to compress all files and to archive all directories relating to your Web site. The format for archived directories must be .tar or .zip. Another option is to compress files using GNU zip compression utility or the UNIX compress command.

CGI and Scripted Language Support Control Panel

Form E-mail

This is a basic script that converts the contents of a form to an e-mail message. A tutorial will help you to create the HTML form, the input fields for the data you wish to collect, and to set the destination URL after the visitor performs the submit action (could be a goal for you). This script is simple and efficient. Note that it does “strip” HTML code from the body of your message, but you need additional resources if you wish to validate the data for some input fields.

Clickthrough Tracker

Using this script you can generate the tracking code necessary to collect data for the number of times visitors click on certain links. By inserting the code generated into your pages’ HTML code the information will be gathered.

Check Error Logs

This is a panel in which you are able to see errors (if any) occurred on your server for any script you have installed and running in your assigned directory. Useful to know what is wrong with your applications, information which may lead you to correct the errors.

Perl Scripting

In this area you will find out information about How Perl works at iPower. To ensure that your Perl scripts work smoothly, you will have to know the following information before you get started: how to write the path to your web directory (this is important, as most of your scripts will need to specify this location); which is the path to Perl (/usr/bin/perl); information about Perl version and Modules installed (good to know if you want to be sure that your scripts will run properly on the server); the file extension for your script (.cgi and .pl) and the recommended path to your script files if you have a domain name or just an account on iPower.

PHP scripting

iPower’s PowerPack allows you to write scripts using PHP. The default version is PHP5, but if you want you can use also PHP4. This control panel allows you to chose between these two versions of scripting language and to edit the php.ini file for each major versions.

Python Scripting

This means that you have support for Python applications, and in this area you have similar information like you’ve founded on Perl Scripting panel.

Form Builder

This is a Form E-mail Wizard, and following the instructions you can have the code for the form you wish to create.

InstallCentral Control Panel

InstallCentral makes it easy to add and upgrade select third-party applications – such as photo galleries, bulletin boards and content-management systems – quickly and easily.

iPower does not provide support for the actual application. If you have a question about the application, please refer to the application-publisher’s web site for more information.

Also you have information about installed applications and if you have the possibility to upgrade them and a list of applications available for installation. The list has the following applications: Joomla, PHPNuke, WordPress , phpBB, Gbook, AgoraCart, osCommerce, x7chat. These all application are open source or freely distributed under Licenses. Besides these applications you have the option to install and manage others (but you have to pay 12.95$/year) such as: Coppermine, Gallery, WebCalendar and Gregarius.

Java Applets

You may choose between 3 (three) Java Applets that can show a clock, a countdown timer and the date on your website.

MySQL Management

This tool will help you to create and to manage your MySQL database(s). When you create a database you have the option to set the name of the database, the admin login and the password for the administrator. After creating the database you have the option to generate other login names and to revoke or to give privileges to them, so they will be able to perform (or not) the following queries: Select, Insert, Update, Delete, Create, Drop, Index, Alter, Tmp, Lock for any tables within database. The administration tasks for these databases are accomplished through the mysqladmin client. iPower offers you the possibility to backup your databases.
Note that the maximum number for databases is limited to 25 (twenty five), which may be an inconvenient for you.
If you want more databases you have to pay an extra amount of money.

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Finding a good web hosting provider today is much a referral and less a choice based upon an offer of some characteristics. Besides figures and numbers an opinion counts before you made a decision. And my intention is to share some of my experience with my web hosting provider.

Back in 2005 I’ve decided to buy a domain and also to find a good web hosting provider. So, I’ve “googled” some “web hosting” and if I remembered correctly iPowerWeb Web Hosting was the third result on the searching results first page. Sounds interesting “IPOWER” so I landed on their home page and I bought the “lostresort.biz” domain name. The price was lower than other competitors’ offer and their message convince me to go ahead and make a purchase.
After one year I made my mind and finally I bought the “Pro Plan” web hosting service. For what do I need for my plans is more than enough.

The iPower “Pro Plan” web hosting service

iPower offers two platforms for web hosting, one based on Linux OS and the other with Windows Server. The “Pro Plan” service, which I use, is based on Debian, a free operating system which uses a Linux kernel, but the basic tools come from GNU project. Debian is one of the most robust and reliable OS among Linux distributions.
The HTTP server is based on Apache HTTP Server Project, which is also available for free.
Basic features for this service are: storage space of 1,500 GB, Transfer/Bandwidth of 15,000 GB/month, one free personalized domain name, international domain name support and the possibility of hosting unlimited domains.
The access to the hosting account it’s accomplished trough vDeck Control Panel which is the interface used for account configuration and navigation through all available features.

Website administration panel

.htaccess Editor

As you cans see in the screenshot first item is an editor for the .htaccess file for the Apache HTTP server. This panel have features to modify some characteristics for the web server or for the directories and files on the server. You can set: Hotlink Protection for your domains which means that you can prevent unauthorized URLs from loading files within specified directories at your site, which uses your bandwidth (also called bandwidth theft and leeching); Custom Error Pages for the standard server error message pages; Password Protection to protect directories and files with user access lists; URL Redirect to redirect requests for a specific file or directory to a new destination; MIME Types to add or override system MIME types; Open Directory Browsing to control access to the directories of your website; Block IP Address which allows you to block users from specific IP addresses or a range of IP addresses from accessing your site.
Also you have the option to view and edit the .htaccess file directly for root or a selected directory.

Disk Usage

In this section you can allocate the space for the web site, the space for the mailboxes and to view the level of the used storage space.

FTP Management

After you have build your site you can use any FTP application to upload the files of your site to your iPower account, or any other files you may need. Also in this section you can set FTP accounts and can view information about last login and status or you have the options to edit, disable and verify these accounts.

File Manager

In this section you have the ability to create folders, upload, rename, delete, move and copy files. Also you have the possibility to change files’ permission to the necessary value. For security reasons files’ extensions allowed for uploading, using File Manager, are: asp, aspx, bas, cfm, cgi, css, csv, doc, dwf, gif, gz, htm, html, ico, inc, jpeg, jpg, js, mdb, pdf, php, php3, php4, php5, pl, pm, png, ppt, py, shtm, shtml, sql, swf, tar, txt, wav, wmv, xls, xml and zip.

FrontPage Management

By enabling this feature you will be able to create your site using Microsoft FrontPage. But, because Microsoft does not support this web application anymore, you won’t be able to update or to receive patches from Microsoft. And because it is a proprietary of Microsoft is well suited to work fine with Internet Explorer web browser, another Microsoft product. This means that if you create your site with FrontPage there is a slightly chance that your website will look good with Internet Explorer, but in some cases not well with other web browsers. Because MSIE is loosing share on web browsers market you should take this into consideration when you are creating your web site.
I don’t have this feature enabled.

Google Webmaster Tools

This is a portal to the well known service Google Webmaster Tools.
Google Webmaster Tools provides you with detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Google. Using this feature on your iPower account will only generate a sitemap for your site which will be submitted to Google, and redirect you to the link I’ve posted above. So, it’s up to you if you create by yourself the sitemap for your site and submit it directly to Google or, you use this feature available on Control Panel to do this job for you.

Secure Server

This means that you can access your web pages via Secure Socket Layer (SSL). Note that you have to point your file location using an address like:

https://your-account-name.ipower.com/<anyfile>

Server Information

As the name it suggest you'll find information about server configuration like: platform type, MySQL, Perl and PHP Versions and installed PEAR and Perl Modules.

Set Site Editor

In this area you have the option to set the editor for your website pages choosing from: SiteDelux Web Site Editor, Microsoft FrontPage, WebSite Creator by CM4all or you can use your own text editor or custom HTML editing tool.

Visitor Statistics

You have access to your log files' information using AWStats analyzer which is also free.

E-mail administration panel

Mail Central

In this area you can create mail boxes or forward email addresses.

WebMail

You can access your email messages using one of the following web mail application: Atmail, SquirrelMail and Horde.
Note that being a third party application you don't get support if something is going wrong with these web mail application and maybe it will be better to use an email client such as: Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Evolution Mail, Eudora etc. to read and create email messages and to store them on a local machine.

Autoresponders

In this area you can create a message that will be automatically sent as a response to any received message. It can be done as one message for all email recipients, or a message for each email recipient.

Change Catch-All

This feature allows you to choose what is happening with the messages you receive on your email server, if the destination recipient is not configured. You have the option to bounce them (the message will be returned to the sender), to save them (in a temporary mailbox) or to trash them (permanent delete).

Manage Spam Filter

In this section you have the possibility to set if the emails will be scanned to determine whether or not it looks like spam and what is happening with the messages which appear to be spam. Also you can create a White List or a Black List for the sender's recipient as an email address or domain, or the network address of the sender's mail server(s), or the IP address.

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