Are you looking to start a blog, but don’t know what to write about? The good news is – the world is your oyster. There are blogs out there on all kinds of topics, and some you might never have given much thought to before. Whatever your interested or your niche, there’s a blog topic…

We’re huge fans of Pi-hole – mainly for it’s blocking of trackers.  I previously published a guide on installing a LetsEncrypt certificate to the standard Lighttpd server to enable access over https.  For our use, I’ve now replaced this with the wonderful Caddy server and would recommend this method. For this guide, I’ll assume you…

It’s been 20 weeks since we switched to home working, but we are finally back in our lovely Lancashire base.  It feels very strange and I’m a little nervous.  It’s great to see my colleagues again, albeit at a larger distance than we used to with the new layout. It’s been a difficult time for…

Google Analytics is a free website analytics, or statistics, tool.  It’s provided by Google and offers very powerful and detailed information on visitors to your website.  As the most popular analytics service by quite a large margin, it’s estimated to be used by over half of websites. This proliferation, however, is also what can lead…

NetWeaver runs a public mirror, currently for three projects.  CentOS, RemiRepo & ArchLinux.  In all cases, we offer this up for use as an official mirror to support the projects. Mirror Hardware & Software Our mirror runs on an Intel Xeon E3v6 processor, with 16GB of RAM and lots of hot-swap storage.  As usual, this…

‘Eating your own dog food’ or more colloquially ‘dogfooding’ is a phrase used to describe a company that uses its products.  The source of the phrase is disputed – but most commonly attributed to Lorne Greene of Alpo dog food.  He pointed out, in his commercials in the 1970s, that he fed Alpo to his…

As coronavirus continues to spread, we wanted to offer a few ways we may be able to help you. Payments If your cash-flow has taken a beating and you need an extension to your account, let us know. We’ll be able to help you. Home Working If you or your colleagues are starting to work…

Climate issues are currently big news due to an increasing number of climate events and protests.  It’s now over 10 years since we started powering our servers with renewable energy and introduced our environmental policy.  It’s easier than ever to stay green now, with paper-free billing pretty much ubiquitous and a wide choice of providers…

Nobody likes receiving spam, yet it accounts for over 50% of all email.  As such, spam filtering has become big business.  We use a combination of RBL, firewall rules and heuristics to help prevent spam in your inbox.  We’ve recently been further developing our email delivery systems to ensure your sent mail arrives at its...

Pi-hole is a wonderful self-hosted advertisement and tracker blocking DNS server.  It was original designed for use, as the name describes, on a Raspberry Pi but also compatible with most common Linux distributions. We’ve used a Pi-hole for some time across our office and home internet connections. This guide has now been superseded by this…

If you have read our last article “What is WordPress?” Then you will have seen we mentioned plugins. One very popular plugin is WooCommerce with over 5 million active users, but what is WooCommerce? WooCommerce WooCommerce is a free to use open-source online platform that allows you to turn your website into an E-Commerce site….

So you just started hosting your website with NetWeaver. The next step is to design your website, but how? One answer is WordPress. What is WordPress? WordPress is an online free to use website creation tool that is based upon PHP. The Content Management System (CMS) is renowned for its easy to use interface and…

As we head deeper into the 21st century, the threats facing humanity are changing. Since the end of the Cold War, the risk of nuclear annihilation appears to have subsided, but it’s given way to a new issue: climate change.  Many researchers believe that climate change and environmental degradation pose a severe threat to standards…

With the increasing number of data breaches, and the ever tighter regulation surrounding data security – it’s now more important than ever to ensure you securely erase old data.  Physical destruction of hard drives is widely acknowledged as the most secure method, but isn’t always possible.  If, like us, you use cloud servers, you don’t…

As we increasingly use HTTPS to secure access to our websites, DNS becomes a natural target.  A target for both surveillance and intercepting.  DoH has been developed to remove this threat. The Firefox browser, as of version 62, offered support for this.  It is widely viewed as a positive step for security and privacy, but has...

Are you thinking about building your business brand online? If so, you need to create a website. A website will ensure that you have a platform where you can share content and engage with an audience online.   To build a website, you can use a CMS or content management system. There are many examples of…

As is the case with many geeks, we always like to have a little side project on the go.  Where we create a successful project which we want to continue, it ends up in NetWeaver Labs.  This has created a small portfolio of useful services which are all completely free and operated for the benefit…

We’ve run our own Stratum-2 time server, operating as part of the ntp public pool, for some time.  In the past we’ve synchronised this clock with a number of public Stratum-1 servers provided by organisations such as Leo Bodnar Electronics and the University of Suffolk.   Inspired by the setup at Bytemark, we set about creating our…

The dot uk domain from Nominet Ever since the dot uk (.uk) domain was made available by Nominet, where it matched an existing domain it has been reserved for that registrant.  This is coming to an end on the 25th June 2019.  If you haven’t secured your domain by then, it will be available for...

PHP 7.3 is now available across all hosting and MultiDomain accounts.  It can be selected from your control panel. PHP History Originally released in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf, as Personal Home Page Tools, later shortened to PHP.  By 1998 an estimated 1% of web servers were able to process php scripts.  Our first web servers,…

Where traditional SSL certificates lasted for at least a year, LetsEncrypt certificates last for just 90 days.  As such, it makes sense to setup automatic renewal so you don’t need to do this manually. We’re assuming you already have your SSL certificate(s) installed through certbot, on NGINX. First, so we don’t get trapped in vim…

It’s a commonly held thought that launching your own website takes hundreds of hours spread over many months.  What if you want to do it in just 15 minutes?  Not possible, surely? With the combined power of NetWeaver and WordPress – we think it is.  You’ve got an idea for your site, you’ve decided what…

When co-founder of Fathom Analytics, Paul Jarvis, yesterday tweeted a tip about using plus signs in email addresses – I thought I’d share a guide on this powerful feature.  I’m going to assume you’re using our web hosting for this guide, but it will also work with other providers such as Gmail.  You should be…

WordPress is a content management system used by millions of websites all over the world. But what exactly can you build with it? Is WordPress just about publishing blogs, or are there other applications too? It turns out that you can do a lot more with WordPress than publish blogs. Yes, WordPress is a content…

What is IPv6? Historically the internet has used IPv4 to assign IP addresses to individual devices – however, these are quickly running out so IPv6 was introduced to solve the problem.  There are a theoretical 3.4×1038 IPv6 addresses.  The rollout of IPv6 has been very slow, it was released back in 1998 and still isn’t…

Follow this handy guide to install Seafile and setup basic security. What’s Seafile? Seafile is open source file sync and share software – similar to Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive – but you host it yourself, keeping your data private. You first need to setup a server or vps – the requirements are small, a…

February 27, 2001, was a very exciting day for us – it’s when we officially launched.  Today we’re celebrating our 18th Birthday and 18 years of lovable, independent web hosting. Thank you to our amazing customers, both past and present.  We treated ourselves to a little cake from Finch Bakery to celebrate and look forward…

We’d like to wish all our customers, partners, suppliers and friends all the best for Christmas and the New Year. Support will be open throughout the holiday except for Christmas day. Nothing says Christmas quite like some statistics: Average daily users of our free Mirror service : 35,006 Average number of active connections to our…

  Why should I buy local? Before your next purchase from a large online retailer or a large multinational corporation stop and think, “Can I buy this from a local small business?” Although you may believe that choosing to give your business to large companies will result in a better end product, as well as more support and…

PHP 5.6 – originally launched over 4 years ago in August 2014 will reach end of life on the 31st December 2018.  After this point, it will no longer receive security updates and should, therefore, no longer be used.  The newer PHP 7.0, dating back to December 2015, will reach end of life even sooner…

Before we start – you will need root access to your WHM/cPanel server to be able to follow this guide. What is Fathom? Fathom is a privacy centred analytics system written by Danny and Paul.  By not collecting any identifiable data, or tracking users between different websites, Fathom is designed to be ‘easy to use and treats citizens…

Assuming you’re setting up services to use IPv6, you may have noticed slightly odd behaviour.  When making an outbound connection, the most recently added (or last listed in the config) IPv6 is used.  This can be annoying when connecting, for example, to IP restricted APIs or even for sending email. Whilst it’s possible to add…

Drupal is a free and open source content management system (CMS) used by over a million websites. It is most effective in the hands of advanced web designers who create powerful websites capable of handling large quantities of visitors and content. However this comes at a cost as it is less user friendly for beginner…

Even if you have sufficient memory in your server, it’s still a good idea to have a swap file.  In order to reduce disk IO, many cloud providers don’t include one as standard – so you may need to add your own. If you need a server to try this out on, we recommend our…

What is a Cache Plugin? Cache plugins create a static version of your site’s content and deliver it to visitors. This reuses data from previous requests so that visitors don’t have to request the same information every time they view a page. Why is this important? Caching reduces the amount of fresh information that a…

SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimisation. It allows websites to reach a higher position in a search engine’s search results. This leads to more traffic reaching your website and is therefore crucial to a successful site. Luckily WordPress offers many plugins that make SEO an easy task. Since you only need one SEO…

If you keep up to date with tech news at all, then you’ll be aware that as from version 68 (which is out today, July 24th, 2018) – Google Chrome will begin labelling websites which don’t use https as ‘Not secure’ Obviously, this is likely to put visitors off using your website. Chrome is the…

Image compression is a process that reduces the size of an image file without greatly affecting its quality. It converts an image file so that it takes up less space than the original file. This allows your website to run faster. Images are necessary to make your content more engaging and improve the general look…

UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall) was originally released for Ubuntu as a simple way to manage netfilter rules.  It makes managing your Linux server firewall extremely easy and is now also available for CentOS. If you’d prefer a managed server, with the power of a VPS – check out our semi-dedicated hosting package. How to setup UFW…

TLS is a system used to establish encrypted connections between two computer systems – such as when you visit a secure website or connect to a server to download your email. TLS 1.0 History It was first introduced in 1999 as an upgrade of SSL Version 3.0, written by Christopher Allen and Tim Dierks of Consensus…

One of the first steps for many businesses nowadays is picking a domain name for their website. Choosing a domain name is a crucial process. Your domain must work now and for the future of your business. One wrong move and it could break your business while one genius idea could make it.  It is…

When considering the cost of a website, whether for personal use or a business, the prices can vary considerably. There are many aspects to think about and price up, from hiring a web designer to give your website a unique look, to instructing a developer to set up a particular function for your site. For…

It’s our birthday today – 17 years since NetWeaver.com Limited was officially formed at companies house. 27th February 2001 It was a Tuesday, probably quite cold (being February). Atomic Kitten was at the top of the charts with ‘Whole Again’. British crime comedy, Snatch, written by Guy Ritchie, was top of the DVD charts. Hannibal…

Want to know how you can host your website? You probably need to start by having the understanding of what it means to host your site. Web hosting is ultimately the provision of storage space and access for a website. If you want to create a website and allow others to access it, then you…

NVMe (Non-volatile memory express) is the latest way to attach storage to a computer.  Rather than using the IDE or SATA connectors of previous drives, it connects directly to PCI Express to allow for faster access. Our history of storage Our first servers, back in 1999, used IDE connectors to connect to our hard drives….

Keen readers will remember a post recommending enabling gzip to make your website load faster.  We’ve now added a new compression method to make your website load even faster – Brotli. What is Brotli? Brotli was developed by Google engineers, Jyrki Alakuijala and Zoltan Szabadka.  It’s a Swiss-German word, literally meaning ‘small bread’. Claiming to offer…

We love Macs.  We’ve used them in the office for years.  Alan uses Solus – but the rest of us are macOS diehards. When we watched the unveiling of the new iMac Pro, we got a little excited.  All the svelt, reliable and rapid goodness of an iMac but even more powerful, and in a…

CyberPanel is an open source hosting control panel powered by OpenLitespeed. It includes a simple firewall management interface but lacks the advanced features of CSF (ConfigServer Security & Firewall) which is developed by Way to the Web Ltd. Luckily, it’s very easy to combine the two. How to install CSF on CyberPanel Log in to…

Solus is a desktop operating system based on the Linux kernel and has been growing rapidly since its release a couple of years ago. Version 3 is the most recent instalment and with version 4 coming soon I thought I would share my thoughts on what Solus Budgie 3 has to offer. How easy is…

Managing your mail can be a real pain – especially for people with multiple accounts.  Here is a look at some of the apps that are striving towards providing a better email service for macOS. Newton Mail Newton Mail comes with a bunch of what it calls “Superchargers”. These are special features that are designed to help give…

What’s Solus? Solus is a Linux operating system designed for desktop use.  Unlike many Linux flavours, it’s not a fork from one of the major distributions.  Instead, it’s been developed from the ground up for desktop use.  The desktop interface, from the same team, is called Budgie. We’ve dabbled with Solus a few times and…

What is a VPN? VPN stands for Virtual Private Network.  It allows two separate devices or networks to communicate, privately, across the internet.  It does this by encrypting the connection between them such that it cannot be read if intercepted. They are now commonly used when you want to connect your computer or device to a…

I seem to post a lot about DNS, it’s an important part of the internet.  For most people, it’s just something your ISP does for you.  But, it can actually be much more powerful. A number of years ago Google launched their public DNS resolvers, which they promise not to track if you choose to…

Why use single page WordPress Themes? One page websites have recently become a trend amongst web designers.   An obvious reason for this is they are able to display content in a simple, easy to digest format.  They provide greater space for information and also create a more fluid experience as scrolling as opposed to clicking is…

Getting in touch with us Here at NetWeaver, we want to make it as easy and as pain-free as possible for you to get the support you need.  We understand that sometimes our customers will need a helping hand as well as information on what we offer.  There are various methods that you could use…

What’s NTP? NTP (Network Time Protocol) is used to ensure that the clock on your computer is correct.  With newer, very time critical features, such as 2FA, this is important.  Don’t worry though, it’s very easy to synchronise the time on your server, you just need to setup NTP. If you need a server to…

DNS is a very important part of your website.  It ticks away in the background, busily directing visitors to the correct server.  When you type in a web address into your browser, DNS changes that into an IP address.  e.g. www.netweaver.uk to 185.182.62.3.  This allows the browser to find and display your website. This has to…

Instagram Feed plugin The first thing you will need to do to get your Instagram pictures and videos to appear on your website is to install a relevant plugin.  The one we will be using is ‘Instagram Feed’ – although there are tons of different options available this is by far the most popular which is always…

Why is security important? WordPress security should be of huge importance to every website owner.  Users want to know that their data is safe and that there is no risk of hackers stealing information, such as their passwords.  If your website is a business, it is your responsibility to protect your customers, therefore, you will need…

What is HTTPS? When you visit a website, there are 2 basic options – HTTP and HTTPS.  HTTP is the original and has been used on the internet for a long time.  HTTPS is the encrypted version of HTTP.  When you visit a website you can tell the difference by looking for the green padlock…

Cache Plugins If you have a WordPress site then you want it to be as fast and responsive as it possibly can.  Fast load times can help boost your traffic, increase your Google search rank and increase your websites overall performance.  Luckily for you, there are many free or low-cost cache plugins available.  Caching is effectively…

Making website graphics used to be both hard work and expensive.  You needed to be imaginative, have an eye for colour.  You needed expensive software such as Photoshop or Illustrator.  Thankfully, there is now a whole range of free graphics tools that even the most design shy can make use of.  Here are our top…

Online reviews In recent years online reviews have become huge evidently shown by websites such as TripAdvisor and Rotten Tomatoes.  Consumers love to hear feedback from people who know what they are talking about – a study shows that 88% trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from people they know.  If you are a…

Benefits of using the WordPress App The WordPress app for iOS allows you to run your website from your pocket.  You can take pictures, record videos and write quick blog posts whilst on the move and instantly add them to your site.  As your site grows you may need to be able to access it…

Make the most of your host This is a range of blog posts about included features of your hosting.  You may not know about them, or what they are – so we’re sharing them with you. Why enable compression on my website? The faster your website loads – the better.  Many studies have shown that…

Why is Google Analytics useful? When you have a WordPress site, one of the main goals will always be to get more traffic.  This could be to have more people reading your blog or to attract more customers to your eCommerce shop, either way, we all want to be reaching the largest possible audience.  Google…

What is bandwidth? Sometimes referred to as ‘data transfer’ – bandwidth, in web hosting terms, is simply how much data your website sends to visitors. When it comes to choosing a web host, there are many baffling bandwidth options to consider.  These range from as little as 250mb per month, through to ‘unlimited’ bandwidth.  We…

There are two versions of PowerDNS: PowerDNS Server – used to power authoritative DNS servers PowerDNS recursor – used to provide a resolver, typically not open to the public Why run your own DNS? You may want to run your own DNS resolver if you have a number of servers or a large network of…

Virtualizor is an excellent control panel for managing multiple virtual servers on one or more servers. It’s released by the same people that make the popular Softaculous auto-installer software. There is a built-in firewall system, but it’s probably the weakest aspect of the whole system.  I’m a big fan of CSF – provided free by…

It’s common to run a server for multiple users, running multiple different services. Sometimes this can make it a little difficult to track down who might be causing a drain on resources.  However, using NetHogs, it’s nice and easy to trace big bandwidth users. Picture the scene, your server or VPS is running along quite…

Free vs Premium When starting your WordPress blog one of the first things you will need to do is choose your theme.  This is crucial to your success as you want something that is aesthetically pleasing and nice to use for users, but also practical and functional for what you need it to do.  One…

What is WooCommerce? WooCommerce is a free eCommerce WordPress plugin that allows you to sell both goods and services.  It now powers 30% of all online stores – more than any other platform.  Although the plugin itself is free, to get the best use out of the platform you will have to add various add-ons and…

Why block libwww-perl? Any business is concerned with their websites search engine rankings.  There are a number of online tools which analyse your site and give hints as to how best to improve your results.  I’ve been trying some of these out for a future article and one of them recommended blocking requests to your…

Why do I need to set the PHP timezone? Most commonly used PHP scripts allow you to set the timezone as one of their settings.  WordPress, for example, has a drop-down list within the Settings > General menu.  However, this isn’t always the case.  To ensure that the time on your scripts matches your local…

How to install WordPress through cPanel The first thing you need to do to install WordPress is logging into your NetWeaver cPanel account and scroll down to the ”software” heading to locate the Installatron application. Click on the Installatron icon. Once this is loaded go to “Applications Browser” and you will need to type “WordPress” in…

What’s a Web Application Firewall (WAF)? A Web Application Firewall, or WAF,  is a special type of firewall that stands in front of your website.  It monitors the requests going to your website, looking for signs that a bad actor is trying to exploit some of your code.  When it detects signs of this, the…

What is EPEL repo? Many online guides talk about the EPEL (or Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) repository for CentOS.  It allows the easy installation of additional packages through yum.  These packages aren’t distributed as standard with RedHat Enterprise Linux or any of the downstream versions such a CentOS, Oracle or Scientific.  Additionally, it’s easy…

Our history with CentOS Back before the millennium – before Jacob was even born – we tried a few different linux distributions to see which would fit best for our exciting new web hosting service. Eventually we settled on RedHat Linux, version 6.0 at the time – known as Hedwig – later used as the…

Whether installing a new physical hard drive to a server or adding an additional disk to your cloud server or VPS, you’ll need to configure CentOS to be able to use it. If you’d prefer a managed server, with the power of a VPS – check out our semi-dedicated hosting package. We’re going to assume…

Memcached is a “Free & open source, high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load.” It’s nice and easy to install and implement with cPanel, so long as you’re happy using SSH.  As a pre-requisite you should be running the…

To keep ensure your logs are easy to analyse and some scripts operate correctly, it’s a good idea to set your server timezone to match where you are. Display the current zone (and time) by using the ‘date’ command: [user@server ~] date Tue 22 Aug 13:32:27 BST 2017 From the above, you can see my…

Whatever your views on the moralities of blocking adverts, there’s no denying they can be ridiculously intrusive at times.  There is a whole host of ways to block them with plugins being the most common.  They can, however, slow down your browsing at times so when we heard about Pi-Hole we wanted to give it a…

When Sam, manager, and player for Helmshore FC got in touch to ask if we would help them out with some sponsorship we were delighted to help them out. Who are Helmshore FC? Helmshore FC (previously known as Astro Athletic) are a group of lads who play in the Spring Junior League: Division 1 at…

We now accept payment by Apple Pay for users of Safari on macOS and recent iPhones. Apple Pay is simple to use and works with the devices you use every day. Easily pay with your debit cards and credit cards with just a touch. And because your card details are never shared by Apple when you…

We’ll be open throughout the Christmas period, though we may be a little slower to respond during Christmas day and New Years day – don’t worry though, everything will be monitored throughout.  As always, thank you for your custom this year. We’d like to with you a very Merry Christmas and all the best for…

We offer free SSL (that is, https access) with all our hosting packages, we believe all sites should have it and don’t see it as an upselling opportunity.  What is the cost of SSL with other providers?  You may be surprised! I searched ‘web hosting’ on Google – and checked out the cost with all…

Here at NetWeaver we are big fans of linux and it’s many derivatives.  We have used CentOS and Ubuntu exclusively for our servers for a number of years now, and even use a form of Linux for most of our desktops – allbeit ChromeOS (with the rest running OS X, a BSD spinoff). I decided to try…

The 27th February 2001 saw the launch of NetWeaver.com Limited and today we celebrate 15 years of hosting. 15 years ago A lot happened in 2001 : Sven-Göran Ericsson became the England manager We saw the outbreak of the Foot and mouth crisis The Eden Project opened to the public Manchester United won the FA Premier League title for the third season…

You are now able to use two-factor authentication when logging into your accounts. Two-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security – when you login, you also need to enter a code that is generated on your smart phone. This is very beneficial as it provides another security measure to your account. Enabling two-factor authentication…

NetWeaver were approached by the marketing team from Haslingden High School to see if we would sponsor their new rugby team. We were delighted to help and agreed to sponsor them. The team was part of a series on Sky Sports 2 called ‘Boots N’ All – War of The Roses’ that was about the build up…

Darren Dowling runs a very popular website – Scouting Resources. www.scoutingresources.org.uk Tell us about your website This website aims to provide useful information and resources for those in the Scouting movement. Scouting is an international, uniformed youth movement. It provides young people, from 6 years of age upwards, a wealth of opportunity to develop and…

Our WebCentre control panel has served us well for over 10 years, however, as we move into 2014 it has said its goodbyes. The WebCentre was developed entirely in-house, based on PHP and using a distributed architecture it was ahead of its time when first launched.  It was first released in 2002, to replace our…