I’ve been using my previous hosting provider (PowerVPS) for over 10 years now! They had incredibly reliable service so I never switched. But for the past few years so many smaller companies have been providing much more competitive options. However I was just too lazy to make the switch. Just for fun: the last tweet by @PowerVPS was to me from the last time I purchased a server from them!

I have a VPS which is host to many websites. Some of those sites are permitted ssh access for their admins. However I am the admin to several sites myself. Each site has a different username (login/password) for administration. Additionally I have changed the ssh port to a different number (instead of the default 22) to avoid some script/bot attacks. All of this makes for very inconvenient ssh usage and plenty of typing errors.

I spend way too much time and effort tweaking my SpamAssassin settings on my server just so I can get my email and spam situation manageable. Anyways, I’m getting sick of the trouble so I am trying out Google Apps for Domains. This allows me to use my own domain name, but using Gmail for email and other Google web based applications (such as “Docs” and “Calendar”) all for free. It is basically the whole set of Google applications made to work from your own domain.

I noted some sites started pushing to PHP5 with the announcement last year that PHP4 would be EOL (end-of-life) in 2007. In truth I understand that there is no longer a compelling reason to remain with PHP4. The biggest obstacle was older software that did not support PHP5 (since version 5 is incompatible with version 4 in some respects). However there is no reason why most of that software cannot be updated, and if so I am pretty sure that some alternate version 5 compatible software exists.

The need for PHP4 has not changed much since Fedora Core 5 (FC5). Hence I have taken the time to update the SRC.RPM that I had originally distributed for FC5 to support Fedora Core 6 (FC6). Included are several security updates as well. FC5 users who used this file previously should update. The updated source RPM package is provided on the following guide: PHP4 on Fedora Core 6 Steps provided should work for FC6, FC5 as well as FC4.