PHP Nuke is a content management system. As a CMS the hosting requirements are PHP and a database system like MySQL or PostgreSQL or other. MySQL and PHP are supported on all Lunarpages linux and windows hosting plans. PHP nuke is a powerful CMS script with lots of features for creating online websites. Many webmasters have chosen this CMS script for their online presence. Although it is free and licensed under the GNU GPL license there is a license fee for downloading, after you download it you can redistribute it for free. The installation is simple and easy. No programming knowledge is required for installing or using this script, though it is required for creating PHP Nuke modules that add extra functionality. Theme system is also available that separates desing from code. Overall it is excellent cms and can be installed on Lunarpages account.
Official site: phpnuke
On lunarpages account you can run Oscommerce shopping cart without any problems. All hosting requirements to run this software are fulfilled. The latest PHP and MySQL are available for best results. SSL options are also available for maximum security for your online store.
Oscommerce Shopping cart
Oscommerce is a shopping cart script built with PHP, uses MySQL database as a storage engine, free and licensed under GNU General Public License, that allows you to create an online store or ecommerce site. You can sell both physical producst or allow virtula product downloads after purchase. It is one of the oldest shopping cart and includes many features: payment gateways (paypal, authorize.net, 2checkout and others), localization, web admin panel, currency support, unlimited categories and products and lots of other features. There is built-in add-ons system that allows developers to extend features without altering core code. To date there are over 6000 addons available in official OSCommerce add-on directory with lots new features. The new version 3 will include even more features and object-oriented core code programming design.
Lunarpages offers shared SSL certificate on their web hosting accounts. Shared SSL will only work with static html files and will not work with dynamic pages like ASP, JSP and PHP, and will also not work on windows hosting accounts. If you want SSL to work with these dynamic pages you will need a dedicated SSL cert. Like ll hosts also a dedicated IP address is required to be available on your account. On lunarpages dedicated IP address is available for $4.95 per month. You can purchase directly from Lunarpages or you can purchase from third party. The better option maybe is the first one. Just login in your control panel and go to upgrades/addons menu and there you will find the SSL upgrade option. There are two certificates available: basic and pro, $99/year and $119/year respectively. Installation is free if you purchase here. If you buy from third party company, there is a $14.95 fee to generate CSR and $29.95 installation fee.
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
SSL is a must for e-commerce sites, banks or any other sites where there is sensitive data transferred between the server and the client (like credit cards, passwords or other). Also the customer is more confident when they see the site seal in their internet browser and the https prefix when accessing your website. With SSL the connection is encrypted and secured.
Lunarpages nameservers are sent to you in the welcome email address where also the login information for your control panel is sent. If you did not get the nameservers address sent an email to support@lunarpages.com . Your domain name needs to be pointed to those name servers in order to show the website hosted at lunarpages.
Namerservers
Nameservers are part of DNS (Domain Name System) and are used to resolve domain names to IP address. Once you hit the enter button on your browser then the process of resolving domain name begins. The browsers asks these nameservers where the domain is actually hosted (the IP address). Once it gets the IP address of the server it connects to it and request the web page in question. Once it gets all the contents of the page it renders them and the page is showed in your internet browser. You may ask yourself how the browsers know for which domain which nameservers are. They ask your internet connection dns servers (assigned from your ISP internet provider), and if they don’t know they ask the root servers who are authoritative (one and only) servers who hold all domain information.
On shared hosting usually your hosting account shares the same IP address with many other accounts. If you purchase dedicated IP address it will be assigned only to your account (it will be shared only with between your web sites). Having a dedicated IP address is not mandatory, but it is good because it may help you get better rankings in search engines, or if you want to install SSL certificate for your websites. SSL certificates required dedicated IP address and allow secure transfer of data between the visitor(client) and website server(host). Also your primary website will be accessible by just typing the address in your favorite browser(firefox, opera etc). To buy dedicated IP address from Lunarpages (available on every hosting plan), login in your control panel at https://account.lunarpages.com, and go to upgrades/addons page where you will find an option to buy. Price is $4.95 monthly and it will take few days to be assigned to your account.
phpBB software
phpbb (PHP bulletin board) is a popular internet forum software written in PHP web programming language, open-source and free licensed under GNU GPL license. Uses MySQL or other database system(MS SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL and others). With phpbb you can create online community where users can register and post threads/posts in forums. Subforums are also supported and there is a powerful permissions system for users/usergroups, moderators, administrators. The look of the forum can easily be changed with style manager (there are tons of free templates available for phpbb). New features can be added by simply downloading mods(modifications) and installing them into your phpbb forum. For preventing auto registrations there is a captcha (optional) visual confirmation code. There are many other features included: categories, acls (access control lists), bans, email confirmation etc etc. Check the folllowing page for list of phpbb features: http://www.phpbb.com/about/features/ .
Lunarpages phpbb Review
I have installed phpbb forum on lunarpages account and it was running great. Installation went smooth, without any problems, and all features worked. I recommend lunarpages for phpbb host. Good luck with your online community!
After three months with Lunarpages I can say that they are very good hosting company. I haven’t had any issues/problems so far. The uptime have been very good (average 99.302% and average response time of 0.466 seconds). I have tested a few scripts on Lunarpages including wordpress (this blog), drupal – content management system – cms, joomla cms and other web applications. All tests passed successfully without any problems. Haven’t test support because I have not had any problems. In the next months I will test more scripts including: phpbb (forum software), mybb, zencart (shopping cart), some galleries scripts and other apps, and will post results here. If you want to submit your own review please submit comment on this page. This lunarpages review blog is hosted with lunar pages.
MySQL is the best open-source relational database management system available and it is the most popular. It is used by many sites for storing data including google, wikipedia, facebook and zillion others. Its popularity, is because is free and open-source, and because is used by the most popular web applications: wordpress (blog and content management system – CMS), joomla – cms, drupal – cms, phpbb – forum software, wikimedia (wikipedia), galleries, shopping carts and many other web scripts. So it is part of the features of almost all hosting companies (I have not met a web hosting company that do not have MySQL included in their list). PHP, Apache HTTPD server and Linux (LAMP) platform is the most widely used platform for creating web sites and it is the most used setup by hosts.
LunarPages MySQL
Lunarpages is no exception to this but they also offer windows hosting. Currently the latest version of MySQL is installed on their servers. To create new databases/users use cPanel control panel. To make it easier to you to install web software (wordpress, drupal etc) you can use Fantastico De Luxe one-click installer.
February 26th, 2010
admin
Drupal is free web site content management script written in PHP that uses storage system like MySQL for storing data and options. It is free, open-source licensed under GNU GPL license. It offers many features to webmaster including content creation, content management (blogs, forums, polls, static pages and custom content types), have powerful user privilege system, template system (separates design from code), extensions (add new features without altering core modules) and many more. Since its creation in 2001 have grown in popularity in recent years. Many websites are powered by Drupal, even large corporate and government sites use it as a backend for their website management and content creation. Drupal provides good interface to developers with many core api functions. The latest version is 6.15 (at the time of writing this).
Drupal on LunarPages Review
Lunarpages is good drupal host. PHP is up to date with the latest version, and so it is MySQL. Custom PHP.INI is supported on Lunarpages, and there is also .htaccess support for clean urls. I have an account with Lunar Pages (this blog is hosted ther) and on my test drupal was running great, fast without any problems. I recommend them for a drupal host.
February 18th, 2010
admin
When I first setup this blog I also setup a monitoring service with serviceuptime.com. Serviceuptime.com offers free monitor service for your website. They have servers all around the world for their monitoring services. The check interval is 30 minutes. In January 2010 the average uptime for this blog (it is hosted by Lunarpages) was 99.25%. Out of 1467 checks only 11 have failed. Here is a screenshot of the monitoring report:
You can see the live report anytime by clicking here. The uptime is great, and most of the hosts have this uptime. 0.75% is a little downtime., so I can tell that lunarpages passed this test successfully. But we will see in the following months how the uptime will be. Thanks to serviceuptime.com for providing free monitoring service.