syamsul's domain

A couple of months ago I wrote about how I’d migrated this blog to a Virtual Private Server (VPS)  from a shared hosting provider. Well, since then I’ve moved back to a shared hosting provider.

Why the switch back? At the time, I was learning how to manage a VPS for work-related purposes so it was exciting to apply what I’d learnt to my own personal blog. But it only took a few months for a few things to sink in:

1. Managing a VPS takes quite a bit more time than a shared hosting account – not just the setup, but also the maintenance of security patches etc
2. A VPS with enough resources to take the same traffic as shared hosting service costs more than the latter
3. A VPS with managed services (so that you don’t have to deal with the maintenance) costs US$30 upwards
4. My blog doesn’t really get so much traffic that it needs the resources of a VPS (a little ego-shattering but true)
5. I run a standard install of WordPress (plus a few plugins) which are well supported by just about every shared hosting service

Ultimately, a VPS gives you a great deal of flexibility and power – but if you’re only going to be hosting a simple low-traffic blog on it, then it’s overkill in terms of cost and effort (i.e time). Perhaps some day when I have more need for the resources will I switch back to a VPS.

Right now I’m on a US-based shared hosting provider by the name of powerMonster.

Don’t be put off by the odd sounding name – the cost is low, speeds are fast (I’m on their Litespeed/DirectAdmin server in Los Angeles) and they have excellent technical support – responding to my support tickets in 15 minutes or less! I’d greatly recommend anyone looking for a fast webhost with good service to check them out!

I’ve just been with Sparkstation for slightly more than a day on their Linux VPS ( and not, it’s not necessarily the same VPS this blog is presently on!)  I thought I’d share some initial impressions, seeing that there is nary a review of their VPS hosting services to be found anywhere!

I chose their cheapest VPS plan (VPS Value) without any control panel because I’m comfortable with managing my VPS without Cpanel or Plesk etc. Also, I wasn’t sure how this experience would turn out, as I was more familiar with (cheaper) VPS hosting in the United States.

I got my welcome emails for my VPS barely minutes after I made the payment via Paypal- very refreshing indeed! I logged in by SSH and checked that the processor was indeed an Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5420 @ 2.50GHz (8 cores), as claimed.

At first I felt rather let down when I tested the connection speeds – it felt no more responsive than a VPS in the USA! I submitted a trouble ticket on Sat evening, and that very evening they diagnosed that it was an upstream issue, offered to move me to a different IP and did so shortly after I confirmed that I’d like this to be so. Very professional and quick resolution!

I’d ordered a VPS with Debian 4 thinking I would upgrade it to Debian 5 myself, but doing so proved to be troublesome and also broke the capabilities of Plesk Power Panel. Unlike with most OpenVZ hosting solutions, the user isn’t given the ability to rebuild his VM and switch Linux distributions on the fly (e.g. switch from Debian –> Ubuntu -> Fedora etc). This is probably a limitation of Parallels Virtuozzo? Anyhow, since CentOS 5 is the most updated Linux distro offered, I submitted a ticket to technical support on Sunday morning requesting for a complete rebuilding of my VM to one based on CentOS 5. Before Sunday noon, I got an email saying this was completed

Now, these 2 support incidents showed that Sparkstation support is indeed available over the weekend! They may not have 15 minutes response times, but then again they do not claim to provide it. For both incidents, they responded to my tickets in about 2 hours which I find to be decent.

I was initially worried about 256MB RAM not being enough at all for even small sites because with the OpenVZ VPSes I have been on, I quickly end up creeping into the (unreliable) “burst RAM” with a LAMP stack and a simple Joomla site. But it seemed that I needn’t worry after all – the SLM system that Sparkstation has chosen to implement in its Virtuozzo VPSes are noticeably more efficient in memory utilisation. I also like how this means that should a flood of visitors hit my site, it won’t shut down and require manual “rebooting” (as is wont to be the case on an OpenVZ VPS in my experience).

Finally, I find the pricing to be very reasonable, comparable to say renowned US-based Knownhost’s VPS when ordered without a Control Panel? The comparison doesn’t quite work with a control panel though – it seems like the likes of Knownhost or Media Temple are able to offer steep discounts on control panels, probably due to their sheer size? And they bundle managed services too…. Regardless, Sparkstation does appear to offer the best pricing among Singapore based hosting providers offering unmanaged, control panel-less Virtuozzo-based linux VPS.

Will post an update after I’ve spent some more time with this VPS.

And  I should probably post about the other VPSes I’ve been with too!

It has been 2.5 years now since I changed hosting providers for this blog.

As you (probably don’t) recall, this blog began its life on Blogger. Not satisfied with the limitations of Blogger (which has since joined the Google family), I was excited to discover WordPress which I then found the super affordable Focushub to host on. A year or 2 later, I needed a little more and went on to hosting by Oryon Networks (by the way, Oryon Networks is an EXCELLENT webhosting – the hosting is incredibly speedy and any emails and support tickets I sent to them were responded to in about an hour or less – even on weekends!)

Today, I’ve finally made the next step, from a hosted solution (Blogger) to a shared hosting (Focushub & Oryon Networks), and now a Virtual Private Server (VPS).

Now what is a VPS you ask? Basically it works almost like a dedicated server, only that it’s much cheap since you’re paying for a virtualised instance of a dedicated server, utilising a fraction of its resources (CPU, RAM and hard drive). The advantage of using a VPS is really root access – you can install ANYTHING, compared to a shared hosting environment. You also have more RAM available to you, where in a shared hosting environment this will be shared with all the other websites on the same server (probably up to 150 or so – or even more, if the hosting provider engages in overselling!).

So why isn’t everyone on a VPS? Even though the prices of VPSes have fallen rather dramatically especially recently, you do need to be a little more adept technically as you have to essentially become a system administrator for a (virtualised) server. Asking for easy-to-use control panels like cPanel, or even getting the hosting company to manage the VPS for you will incur additional (and sometimes, substantial) costs.

For me, I’ve come to a stage where I’m willing to learn how to manage my own (virtual) server. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that my hosting provider also offers semi-managed services for free i.e. hand holding for times I mess up bad

In preparation for the launch of my school’s blogs community site, I set about migrating the school band’s website over to the WordPress MU platform.

Now, the Band site was running on Joomla 1.0x. It featured an integrated Gallery2 for photographs, MSO Shoutbox for a shoutbox and discussion forums via the Joomlaboard component. Alas, the site was getting dozens of spam posts (including some from Band haters??) What this meant was that there were several registered users that were undesirable and ought not be transferred to the new site.

Importing posts from Joomla was very fast and easy thanks to the Joomla2Wordpress Import Wizard. Static content were not imported and I had to copy-and-paste the content into Wordpress manually, though this probably wouldn’t have been necessary had I first migrated the site to Joomla 1.5 and assigned categories to the static pages.  Images didn’t seem to transfer well though, and needed to be re-inserted manually too. Users were not imported, which was also fine with me.

The Joomlaboard migration on the other hand was not quite as straightforward and needed  a bit more searching. The ubiquitous phpBB3 or SMF would be too massive for the site’s purpose, and a fast loading forum was a priority, which lead to the decision to use PunBB. But the complication was that the Joomlaboard project seemed to be defunct and there did not seem to be any direct way to import it directly into PunBB. So in the end, the migration process would be

Joomlaboard –>upgrade to  Fireboard –> import to phpBB2 –> import to punBB

Here’re the links to the relevant pages and downloads:

• Fireboard 1.04 component
• Fireboard to phpBB2 import script ( I used the XMAS Script 0.3. Also note that it imports to phpBB2, not 3)
• PunBB Migration Tool 1.40

The migration tool only worked for PunBB 1.2x though, but the import did complete successfully without hitches. After verifying everything was OK, I then upgraded the install to PunBB 1.3 with no problems encoutered. All users and posts have been migrated successfully from Joomlaboard to PunBB True the forum and blog are no longer closely integrated (an intentional move), but the forum’s latest posts are reflected via an RSS feed block.

In all, the migration went very smoothly and the most time consuming part was sourcing for the best migration path.

Now, the next step would be to determine what is the best way to integrate Gallery2 (visually) into WordPress, and check out viable shoutbox type blocks that can be moderated (even more important now that the site is more closely integrated with the school websites).

With the launch of the Jesus phone iPhone locally, I thought it would be a nice time to take a look back at all the mobile phones I’ve owned…and also see how far phones have come.

Siemens S25

My first ever mobile phone, it was really advanced in in its time, featuring 8-colour screen at a time when most phone displays were still monochrome! Very sturdy and had much better reception than most other phones available at that time. Got it for FREE too with my first 2-year contract with Starhub in 2000.

Siemens SL45i

The black-and-orange was a step down from the S25, but it was the first ever mobile phone to feature actual MP3 playback! Yes, play MP3s! The included (proprietary) headphones sounded pretty good too. Bought it with my second ever paycheck in 2002.

Sony Ericsson T610

Finally made the jump to a color mobile phone. The interface was intuitive with nice icons and the phone even had a built-in camera too! No more antennae either. Bought this in early 2004.

Motorola RAZR V3

It wasn’t easy to resist the phone. Its sleek metallic finish and futuristic clamshell design are stunning even today. Its amazingly slim size and light weight meant it was infinitely pocketable. The interface was not quite as intuitive as the Sony Ericsson’s though. Traded the T610 in for this in mid 2005.

Palm Treo 650

I’d always hated the fact that I was lugging my phone, PDA, iPod and camera everywhere I went, so when I stumbled on the (second-hand) Treo 650 being sold at an amazing price, I just jumped on it. This phone did not disappoint – Palm had clearly tweaked the Palm OS so that we would have a smartphone rather than a phone with an operating system for PDAs tacked on. Of course, having the ability to run the thousands available Palm OS apps didn’t hurt either. The only thing was, I really hated the antennae – something I hadn’t had to contend with in 4 years! Voice quality wasn’t too hot either. So I had this for all of 2 months in late 2006 before replacing it with…

Palm Treo 680

Ah, an update to the Treo 650. Slightly slimmer, better voice quality and slightly improved interface too. Thumb typing was amazingly fast on this phone and finally got me to send hundreds of SMSs every month..Bought this in early 2007.

Palm Centro

A repackaged Treo 680 essentially – but smaller, slimmer and lighter, had longer battery life and was more stable. Yes, no longer could my colleagues joke about me lugging around a “brick weapon” which was my Treo! The thumb board was changed – the keys were smaller, but ended up being even easier to use because of its elevated and rubbery feel. Probably my last phone with Palm OS inside….Bought this in early 2008.

So what will my next phone be? Will it be another Palm – whether Windows Mobile or Palm OS Nova-flavoured? Or the iPhone? Or even a Blackberry? One thing for sure – it’ll definitely be another smartphone!