Over the last few months we’ve been busy running promotionals and in the process we’ve added a lot of new host clients on our servers, but growing our hosting side of the business means that there was some additional work needing to get done.

Now that we are the primary hosting for our clients I thought I’d dive into some server security hardening over the weekend via mod_security tools and settings. The first thing I always do is slap in my http://www.projecthoneypot.org/home.php – api key and then turn on and configure (tweak) the process settings of some of the other tools/options – then when your done a simple restart of your httpd – DONE.

I mention all of this so that anyone else doing their own VPS should know some basics of running a non-managed server so I thought I’d add some MUST:

1. First thing is to recompile apache with all of the proper server hosting requirements.
2. Next to do is to install and configure a firewall – I use this one http://www.configserver.com/ (along with 3 of their other items as well).
3. Next login and modify the server php.ini AND my.cnf file.
4. Configure server backups for daily,weekly,monthly.
5. Next thing I do is to log in to servers root CRON and I add in the ability to delete all domains+backups error+debug logs every night. (if you don’t do this then customers sites will grow MASSIVE log files that they don’t even know about that ultimately waste valuable server space. )
6. Finally login and configure the mod_security tools and settings and be sure to add in your honeypot api.

That’s the “basics” of what’s needed to properly setup your own server or VPS – SO – unless you know what the freak you’re doing you really should let someone else handle it for you or pay for a “Managed” server or vps until you’re a DIY IT pro.

If you’d like to hire us to do your Server or VPS setup for you we charge 100 dollars to do the whole process and we only do Cpanel setups and installs.

Anyone needing the cheapest VPS Cpanel License here is the place to buy it and the code to enter so that you can get it for only 13 dollars per month.