Sunday, 12 May 2013

Free Cloud Hosting For Wordpress

Cloud Infrastructure services are becoming popular because of the pay-as-you-go model. A lot of people started hosting their website and other web based applications in the cloud. Amazon, Windows Azure, Rackspace etc,. Are the main players in cloud infrastructure services. There are few cloud based services , which offers free , reliable hosting. You can sign up for a service and host your WordPress in the choice of server you want. Your WordPress site will be up and running in minutes. Here am going to discuss how you can host your WordPress site using free cloud resources. Also I will discuss the advantages and effects of cloud hosting on SEO using cloud based hosting services.

 1. Free Wordpress Hosting On Amazon EC2: Amazon EC2 (Elastic cloud) is an infrastructure service provided by Amazon AWS. EC2 deals with virtual servers. You can deploy a server of your choice within minutes. Amazon offers a free tier package, which includes one year free usage of a micro instance. You can deploy both windows and Linux based servers which comes under the free tier usage. The best thing about cloud hosting is that you can control the whole server, unlike shared hosting. Amazon also provides s3 storage under free tier, using which you can host your images related to your website. 

Steps to Host Wordpress on EC2: 

  1. Sign Up for Amazon AWS: You need a credit card to sign up for Amazon AWS. Initially you will be charged $1, just to check the credibility of the user. It will be credited back once your account is verified by Amazon.

 2. Launch an Ubuntu instance: launching an instance is pretty easy. Amazon has a nice documentation for launching instances. You don't need to be a geek to do this. All you need is a little Linux OS knowledge. 

 3. Install Lamp Server: Install lamp server just like you do it in your windows or Ubuntu desktop. 

 4. Download the WordPress file to the www folder of lamp server. 

 5. Install WordPress using the public DNS of your instance. 

 6. Create an Elastic IP for the instance you created and point to your custom domain to the elastic IP. 

 Tutorial: How to Setup Wordpress on Amazon EC2

 2. Appfog: Appfog is an excellent app hosting service, You can host eight applications for free and you don't need a credit card for signing up. It means you can host eight Wordpress sites for free using appfog. You can setup the Wordpress site with a few clicks. The Appfog Wordpress app will be hosted on amazon, windows azure and Rackspace platforms. We can choose the service and the region. Mysql database service will be automatically bound to the Wordpress app when you configure Wordpress. Wordpress installation is like normal installation. You will be given a subdomain of the appfog for your Wordpress site. You can point to your custom domain to the appfog subdomain. 

 Steps to Host Wordpress on Appfog.com: 

 1. SignUp for Appfog.com 

 2. Click create app and select Wordpress and then select the infrastructure service and region.

 3. Give a name to for your app and hit the create app. Thast it !! Your Wordpress site will be up and running in minutes. See a demo site created on appfog. Appfog Demo 

 Tutorial: Setting Up Wordpress On AppFog

 3. Owncloud Storage: Owncloud storage is an open source toolkit to deploy your own cloud storage. You can deploy it on amazon EC2 and you can host and share your images. It is almost same like other cloud storages eg, Dropbox, box, etc,. 

 Tutorial: Setting Up Owncloud On Amazon EC2

 The advantages of cloud hosting:

 1. Load balancing and failover features: You can set up a loadbalancer by hosting your sites in different regions, so that your website will never see a downtime. 

 2. Highly scalable: Handles high traffic by scaling in and out by setting up the autoscale option. 

 3. Firewall Options, data privacy, free security features and full root access. 

 4. Pay-as-you go model lets you pay only when the server is up. You can stop and start the service anytime. You will be billed only for what you used. 

 5. Customized billing alerts. 

 Effects of cloud hosting on SEO: Cloud hosting has inverse effects on SEO because of the location where the servers are deployed. The region where the server is deployed is important for SEO. Lets say your website target audience from US and you have a top-level domain www.example.co.us and your cloud server does not have a location. This invariably affects the google search precedence. It is not considered as a big issue since the Google algorithm changes now and then.
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Wednesday, 8 May 2013

Affordable Cloud Storage

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One striking difference is that each cloud storage is supposed to have distinct personality , in addition to, perhaps , some differences in functionality, pricing , security and ease of access. So choosing the right cloud storage with good features and affordable cost is kind of a tough task. There are lots of cloud storage solution in the market now. They offer different functionalities and pricing. The popular cloud storage solutions are Dropbox, Google drive, Amazon S3, Box etc,. These cloud storages doesn't come really cheap. Justcloud.com offers affordable cloud storage when compared to other services.

As an end user, few things we look into when it comes to cloud storage are
  1. Reliability
  2. Affordability
  3. Ease of Access
Sign Up for justcloud here : Justcloud SignUp

Reliability: When it comes to cloud storage, reliability is the main concern. Just cloud provides good security for your files uploaded to the cloud. They use 256 bit secured socket layer encryption to secure your files , Which is quite reliable. Moreover , they have 24 hrs monitoring service to secure all the data which are being transferred to justcloud. 

Pricing: Justcloud quite stands out first  when it comes to affordability. It is really affordable when compared to other cloud storage providers. Their pricing is quite attractive and it targets the home users who want an affordable cloud storage. It basically has three options, home, premium and unlimited. Justcloud offers several discounts for their users. Once it had 70% discount on every plan a user chooses. Now they have a 20% off on all subscriptions.Check out the pricing details below

1.Home(75GB):For one year plan it comes around $59.4.



2.Premium (250GB) : For one year it comes around $71.4, which is quite a good plan. Other cloud storages cost you $100 for 100GB. Premium plan is good for personal use and also for website owners who wants to host images and codes.


3. Unlimited: For one year it comes around $95.4. Here you can see the affordability when compared  other cloud storage services. Unlimited plan can be used for business purposes.


3. Ease of Access: Just cloud has apps for all the mobile phones. The user interface for mobile device is great, You can easily upload the files to justcloud. It's fast and the seamless uploading is the next best thing to consider.You can share your files with all the devices which has been synched with justcloud. You can use n number of computers to back up your files. By default the automatic sync option will be activated, you can change it in the app settings. You back up your PC if you want. Just cloud has an option to backup your PC.

What more you want?? You can sign up for a free trial Here, JustCloud Free Trial

I hope this article will help you buy an affordable cloud storage. Leave a comment for any queries!!
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Tuesday, 30 April 2013

Amazon AWS Cloud Computing Certification and Training

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There is a high demand for cloud computing architects, developers and administrators. Amazon announced its certificate program for AWS , which will help organizations to choose the right people based on their needs. As of now AWS has only solution architect certification. Hopefully they will launch the Administrator and developer certifications very soon.

Certifications:

1.Solution Architect:
A  certified solution architect is capable of handling distributed applications and systems. He should posses good knowledge about the cloud infrastructure, networking ,cloud application architecture and cloud security.

2.SysOps Administrator:
A certified SysOps administrator is capable of maintaining the operational health of an application running on Amazon cloud. He should possess good knowledge about the application deployment, how it is automated and how it is monitored and controlled.

3.Developer:
A certified AWS developer will be able to build AWS based application and he will be responsible for operating the application running on the AWS cloud.

Signup for an exam here: SignUp

AWS Training:

Aws also provides training on three cases

1. Setting up an Ubuntu server on EC2: This tutorial shows you step by step process to launch a Ubntu instance on Amazon EC2. Follow this link for the tutorial. How To Setup A Ubuntu Serven On amazon EC2

 Screencast:


2.Installing Joomla On Amazon EC2: This tutorial teaches you how to install a drupal content management system on amazon EC2. Follow this link for the tutorial. How To install Joomla On Amazon EC2 Ubuntu Instance.

 Screencast:

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Saturday, 27 April 2013

How To Host Wordpress and Drupal Websites For Free On Appfog

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Appfog is an excellent platform-as-a-service which offers free application hosting up to 2GB of memory. You can deploy 8 application instances for free, in which the 2GB memory will be shared among the applications. Your applications will be deployed with Amazon, Windows Azure and Rackspace cloud. Which are the top solid cloud computing infrastructure providers, so your applications will be running 24X7 without any downtime. Appfog supports Java, PHP , ruby on rails, Django framework and much more. You can create applications and test it for free. It is kind of "all in one " platform. Another amazing thing about appfog is , using a custom domain for your applications, even if you use the free plan. You can use the free plan for learning and testing purposes. You can also use it for low traffic website, like your family website etc,.. In this tutorial am going to explain, how to deploy Wordpress and Drupal content management systems on appfog and use custom domain for the deployed website.

Getting Started: To get started , you need an appfog account, which you can create here Appfog.com. Login to your appfog account and follow the steps given below.

Step 1: Click create app button on the top menu.


Step 2: You you click create app button, you will see a list of applications. Select application based on your development platform, here we are going to select a Wordpress application.


Step 3: After choosing the application you have to choose the infrastructure to deploy your application. You can choose the infrastructure region which is close to your country. Here I am going to select amazon singapore region.


Step 4: Give a name to your Wordpress site and click create app. It will have the appfog extension, but later you can change it to your custom domain name. If you don't have a custom domain , you can use the default appfog domain name to access your Wordpress account.


 Step 5: Now go to the homepage, there you can see the application status and how much memory the application is using. Click the subdomian of the application you created. It will take you to the initial Wordpress configuration page.


Step 6: Provide the necessary credentials and configure Worpress. Here you don't want to create a database because a mysql database will be automatically configured by appfog. You can see the created mysql database under services. You can login to the Wordpress account using the subdomain followed by /WP-admin, like a normal Wordpress login. You can see the installed Wordpress site demo here. Wordpreess Demo

Installing Drupal is same like installing Worpress. You just have to select the Drupal application instead of Wordpress when creating an application.

Setting Up A Custom Domain For The Deployed Wordpress:

Open the application dashboard by clicking the application name from the homepage. Select domain name from the application dashboard. There you can see the record values for the root domain and subdomains. Using the record values you can point to your custom domain to the application deployed in appfog.


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