lowendbox.com: A place to look for cheap-ish VPS and Dedicated Server – Less than USD7 / month!

lowendbox.com is a website that lists bare minimum VPS or Dedicated Server offerings with the lowest price.

For VPS, the category is divided by the virtualization technology and the operating system, as well as the geographical location of the data centers.

low end box VPS

Additionally lowendbox.com provides discussion forum for optimizing web server and databases for the bare minimum servers!

3 Reasons Behind why I Hate CPanel Web Hosting

Adding Subdomain / Domain creates a subdirectory
Adding Subdomain, and add-on Domain is a pain-in-the-ass as it creates a subdirectory in the root web directory, meaning that any web-users can abuse this by adding trailing subdirectory ‘subdomain’ http://yourdomain.com/subdomain/ to access http://subdomain.yourdomain.com/

Outdated Pre-package Software
Cpanel came with outdated pre-packaged software, PHP, MySQL and PostgreSQL and other libraries that is outdated compared to the one available on the host operating system. The problem is not about how outdated the software packages are, but the how often these package are being patched. CPanel vendor very notorious for not providing timely patches which would compromise the security of the web application.

Can’t change DNS setting easily from the panel
Unlike DirectAdmin, CPanel does not offer an easy way to change DNS record of domain easily as the option is not offered by default to the control panel. Although this can be mitigated by having your domain points to a 3rd party NS, it’s still one of the thing that gets me down with CPanel.

My Thoughts
CPanel is an excellent control panel for beginner as it offers a lot of options and functionality with a simple user-interface. However, personally, I prefer to use other control panel such as DirectAdmin or Plesk for my web hosting use.

p/s: Currently I’m on VPS without standard control panel.

Grab Dreamhost Promo Codes and Crazy Offerings!

Usually I don’t post things such as promo codes and offerings on my blog, but I’ll make an exception for this case.

Dreamhost has made available 5 promo codes that gives you special offer on their already generous hosting plans, which includes :

  • Disk Storage up to 500GB
  • Monthly Bandwidth at 5TB
  • Secured Shell access (SSH)
  • Unlimited Domain host
  • PHP5, Python, Perl, Ruby On Rail support
  • Custom DNS configuration
  • CVS, SVN Repository and WebDav support
  • User management control, you can add user in your own hosting accout, each user can accesss their own shell!
  • and other exciting features…!

Oh they have a Dreamhost Wiki page too
The Promo codes gives you :

  • Four (4) times the normal disk and bandwidth!
  • If you choose their five-year plan, you’ll get $150 off!
  • If you choose their ten-year plan, you’ll get $200 off!

Here’s the list of Promo Codes (to be entered in “Promo Code” field when you sign up) :

636483915637
514918435181
204341432012
459119241428
055333272979

Alternatively, you may choose to enter “KIROSTUDIO” promo code, to get USD 70.40 discount on their web host offerring!

All promo codes except “KIROSTUDIO” expires on 15 October 2008, so hurry up!