How to Change the PHP Version on Your Site
At Alpha Hosting we support multiple PHP versions. Throughout this article you will learn how to change the PHP version of your site using your cPanel account. Step 1: Log in to cPanel Step 2: Scroll to the SOFTWARE section and select
WordPress Toolkit for cPanel
Alpha Hosting has recently introduced the WordPress Toolkit for cPanel! We are excited to announce that this toolkit is now available for free in all our cloud hosting packages. The WordPress Toolkit for cPanel allows you to install, configure, and
What is WordPress?
WordPress is the most popular and diversely used way to create your own website or blog. It is an open-source content management system that powers almost 40% of all websites. WordPress’s system makes building a custom website easy and doable
Magento 2.4 and Elasticsearch
With the recent Magento 2.4 update, there have been a lot of changes. In this blog we are going to primarily focus on the Elasticsearch portion. In this platform refresh, Elasticsearch 7.6.x has become the default catalog search engine for
Web Hosting Buyers Guide
Despite what your momma or teacher told you there are definitely bad questions. Questions can be good things and you should definitely be asking them before choosing your next web hosting company. We’ve outlined good and bad questions to ask
Solving 400 and 500 Error Codes
Error codes suck and can be intimidating especially when you don’t know what is causing them. Oftentimes, the error codes themselves can actually help you navigate the problem and find the solution. Throughout this blog we will be discussing how
Top 5 Free Drag and Drop WordPress Plugins
Are you looking to build a completely custom WordPress site, but don’t know complicated coding? If so, this is the blog post for you! We have compiled the 5 BEST and FREE page builder plugins, and compared their features. When
What Are PHP Workers?
Everyone seems to be talking about the importance of PHP workers, but what are they exactly? Throughout this post, we will explain what PHP workers are, how they influence your site’s performance, and how to determine how many your site
How to Make a Maintenance Page for Your Site
When you need to work on your website, but do not want clients who visit the site to have problems while the site is being worked on. A maintenance page is the perfect way to take down the site, while
Inside Alpha Hosting’s Tech Stack
At Alpha Hosting we work to build an environment that allows businesses to thrive. To do this, we make sure our technologies and infrastructures are industry leading. Throughout this post we will explore all these technologies, explaining what they are
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best way to decide which package is right for my website? There are two main factors you should look at when choosing a hosting package. First, you want to make sure the package you’re choosing has enough storage
The Complete Guide to Customizing Text in WordPress
How to update text in WordPress Welcome to the blog for all things fonts in WordPress! When creating your website the text and text style can influence the overall readability and feel. Throughout this guide you will learn basic CSS for
How Magento 2 Deployment Modes Can Impact Your Site
As a Magento user, you may have wondered what the different deployment modes do, and if switching to a different deployment mode could help optimize your site. The different modes are optimized for different uses, so it may merit a
Transport Layer Security
For as long as people have been communicating, there has been a need for two parties to conduct their communications securely. Pulling aside someone and whispering in their ear is a form of “secure communication,” although to what degree the
PHP Sessions
What are PHP sessions? One feature of PHP is a way to track and store information about visitors to the site by a session ID. The session ID, by default, is passed to the client in a cookie named "PHPSESSID," but
Adjusting PHP Configuration in cPanel
Sometimes you may find it necessary to adjust a PHP configuration, such as when you are installing a web application and it requires that PHP be configured in a special way, or if one of your applications reaches a timeout
PrestaShop Update v1.7.4.1 Released
PrestaShop has released an important update, version 1.7.4.1. Per the PrestaShop website, some of the highlighted bug fixes in this website are: Back Office: Fix error while duplicating a product when catalog specific price rules are stored Fix display when
Important WordPress Security Update 4.9.7
WordPress has released an important security update, version 4.9.7. Per the WordPress.org website, the highlighted bug fixes in this version are: Taxonomy: Improve cache handling for term queries. Posts, Post Types: Clear post password cookies when logging out. Widgets: Allow
Preparing for Magento Upgrades, Patches, and Improvements
When looking to make changes to your store such as installing security patches, themes, importing products, or module removal/installation, it is important to take measures to aid recovery in the event that things go wrong. Here at the Alpha Hosting office,
Install ssh2 pecl package on cPanel
PHP developers may want to use SFTP to transfer website assets and code to a cPanel server with their favorite programming language. This scenario may seem impossible if php throws an error when attempting to call the underlying SFTP software and server refuses to install the necessary dependencies.
Ten things that cripple your Magento Store (that you might not even realize you’re doing)
The first thing your potential customers see of your site will normally be the blank browser window that displays as your site begins to load after they clicked on a search result link to your website. That’s the moment the
How to Make Site Backups
If you're human like most of us, then you have probably had the unfortunate experience of losing hours (or even days) worth of work due to an accidental coding mistake or mis-typed command. When this happens, the end result is spending even more time trying to duplicate the work that was lost. Wouldn't it be nice if there was an "easy" button that could be used to instantly revert such a mistake? This article will explore how you can create your very own "easy" button by manually backing up your site which will allow for instant rollbacks when needed.
TMUX primer and cheat-sheet
Tmux is a terminal multiplexer that can greatly improve your productivity on the command line. You can use tmux instead of opening multiple terminal windows on your local machine. With tmux you can ssh into multiple systems from a single terminal session without wasting time touching
Getting serious about WordPress security
WordPress has been overwhelmingly the most popular Content Management Systems for so long that most people aren’t aware of a time before it was dominant. Its ease of extensibility have made it a quick and easy way for content designers
Troubleshooting 500 Internal Server Errors
The dreaded "500 Internal Server" error is one of the worst errors you can encounter on a website! Not only is this troublesome error very generic in appearance, but it can require an extensive amount of digging across a plethora of
Installing and Configuring Pure-FTPD on RHEL / CentOS 7
This article will teach you how to install and configure Pure-FTPD on CentOS 7 without a control panel (such as CPanel). Pure-FTPD is a simple File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server. It is designed to use resources efficiently and supports useful features like secure connections, IPv6, and virtual users (for jailing security). *Important Note: Do not follow this guide if you are using a control panel such as CPanel or DirectAdmin! Pure-FTPD is already installed and can easily be configured with a point-and-click interface. Before we get started, you will need a CentOS 6 installation with either root or sudo access. The entire installation will take approximately 15 minutes.
Backup your own website with FTP
One of the most popular methods of accessing website files is FTP (File Transfer Protocol). This method is also useful for making a simple backup of your domain to a local machine. There are some caveats to FTP that you should be aware of before using it as your go-to backup method.