Earlier today, I officially canceled my reseller account for Dakota Hosting.  I started the account at the same time I started to build websites as a side business.  I finally decided to stop pushing the hosting business not because I was losing money, but because it wasn't personally rewarding.  I learned a lot about the business and decided Web hosting just isn't in my blood.  I will build a Website now and then for a friend or acquaintance, but to be honest my IT job during the day keeps me plenty busy.  I'd rather find some new challenges using my free-time for doing good instead of the sole goal to make money.

What I have found rewarding these past few years is blogging here at CMSReport.com.  I enjoy not only taking a look at the various content management systems in the market, but also getting to know the people behind the application.  I tend to be drawn more to the open source projects than the propriety content management systems due to some of the cool people behind those projects.  With business fast becoming dependent on the same social network model that their customers use, I can't imagine the propriety-only business model having as significant of a future as it once had in the past.

So, with one less "side business" to worry about, I hope to keep the promise I made to myself more than two years ago.

WebDeal, which is both a world-class eZ Publish expert and an IBM Business Partner, has now brought together the best of two worlds to the benefit of its enterprise customers.

Large enterprises need to run the best, most stable software solutions, but not even top-notch solutions will work well unless they run on powerful server systems. These server systems must in turn be sustained by an excellent hosting infrastructure.

After performing a battery of quality assurance tests, WebDeal’s technical team can now attest that the combination of eZ Systems’ eZ Publish Content Management System (CMS) and IBM System z hardware is possible on WebDeal’s premium hosting environment. WebDeal’s System z users will be able to run eZ Publish without having to make any changes to their existing server platform.

This announcement further establishes the concept of “Technical Excellence” that has become WebDeal’s trademark.

eZ Publish is eZ Systems’ award-winning, Open Source CMS for web publishing, media portals, intranets, e-commerce and extranets, while System z is IBM’s mainframe platform for the enterprise. WebDeal is the world’s leading eZ Publish hosting provider, and therefore also the most qualified to unleash all the potential of eZ Publish on mainframe platforms.

The last few seconds before projects and Internet hosting companies officially support PHP 5.2 via GoPHP5.org.

Therefore, the listed software projects have all agreed that effective February 5th, 2008, any new feature releases will have a minimum version requirement of at least PHP 5.2.0. Furthermore, the listed web hosts have agreed that effective February 5th, 2008, they will include PHP 5.2 (or a more recent version) in their service offer.

If your PHP-based software or Web server still does not support PHP 5, I would conclude they are living in the past. I personally would be looking for something with a better vision of the future...

The following are some links for installing the Drupal content managmenet system on a virtual private server (VPS) hosted by Linode.com. Please feel free to comment or add links about your own experience of installing and maintaning a CMS (doesn't have to be about Drupal) on a VPS or even a dedicated server. If the reference is good, I'll add it to the list.

• Victor Kane's aWebFactory: VPS! Getting Drupal up and running on a linode
• Jeff Beeman: Just got rolling with a VPS on Linode (Part 1)
• Jeff Beeman: Just got rolling with a VPS on Linode (Part 2)

By the way, CMS Report is hosted on a VPS at Dakota Hosting (a reseller account I own). I've had very good luck with the virtual server at Dakota Hosting and would recommend them any day over shared hosting.

Honestly, I'm not trying to put so much focus on Drupal when you consider CMSReport.com is a site that is supposed to put focus on at least 29 other content mangement systems.  It's just that there is so much coming out from the Drupal community that it is hard to ignore.  The latest is Victor Kane's experience with setting up a virtual private server (VPS) for the Drupal CMS.

Well, after realizing the limitations of shared hosting for Drupal development, I decided to go with the big boys and use a dedicated server or VPS solution, at least for development. So I can make a multisite install for the docs and I can make subdomains for each development site.

So after perusing various options, I decided for linode. After checking out the various plans, I decided on the Linode 300, and got 50% more disk space by paying for a year.

The good news for non-Drupal users, is that the VPS how-to can easily be applied to other CMS applications.  Check out the complete story.

Yesterday, I upgraded the PHP version on my server from 5.2.4 to 5.2.5. PHP 5.2.5 brings improved "stability of the PHP 5.2.x branch with over 60 bug fixes, several of which are security related". I also reintroduced eAccelerator back onto the server. I stopped using eAccelerator last spring, not so much because I had any real issues with it, but because I spent the summer months hosting my sites on the cheap.

This time, when I compiled the new version of PHP 5.2 onto my server, I also made the decision to not load the latest version of PHP 4. Although most of the Web applications I run on the server are PHP 5 compatible, I've always made sure I also had access to a version of PHP 4. The time has finally come though where I really don't have a need or desire to host a content management system that is only PHP 4 compatible.

Last weekend, both Linux Today and Linux.com provided links and excerpts to an article I posted here at CMS Report.  You can see some of the stats on my newly quantified site at quantcast.com.  While those managing large sites shouldn't be too impressed with those numbers, I'm personally pleased with the current level of traffic this little 'ol site of mine is seeing.  I'm not only "Wowed" with the number of people visiting my site to read the posts, but I'm also grateful for the opportunity to learn from those of you that leave some quality comments for all to consider.

More importantly, this past weekend's traffic bump was the first real test I had for CMSReport.com since it's been hosted on the new VPS.  I've done very little tweaking of the VPS, so I'm looking forward to seeing how much I'll be able to improve the server's performance once I find some free time.  Either way, it is very doubtful that CMSReport.com would have stayed up under the previous shared hosting plan.  The VPS gives me a lot of room for growth...oh yea!