See examples of WenderHost websites.

Greater Emphasis on our Core Business
At WenderHost, we design, build and host websites. This new theme reflects that core business model. The home page features screenshots of WenderHost websites and an overview of our process and competencies.  Our goal is to give our potential customers and clients a good introduction to us before they ever pick up the phone or write an email.

In addition, this blog has certainly languished during the past year. I've been doing most of my blogging over at my personal blog, and my work has kept me too busy to keep up with things over here. In the meantime, I've been working on a redesign which will be less blog-centric. In the next month or two, expect to see a redesigned WenderHost.com that will emphasize some of the sites I build and host along with information about my hosting packages and capabilities.

1. If you haven't already, be sure to start by creating an account in WHM for your client's domain. We'll use http://newclient.com as our example.
2. Login to the cPanel for a domain whose DNS already resolves to your WHM server. The most logical choice would be your reseller domain. In my case, I would login to the cPanel for http://wenderhost.com.
3. Create a subdomain for your client's site from the cPanel you accessed in step two.
4. Login to your WHM control panel. Choose DNS Functions > Park a Domain. Select your client's domain for the "Domain to park on top of." Type in the subdomain you created in step three as the "Domain to park." Click "Submit" and now you have a temporary domain that points to the new account.

The Problem
Initially, I simply copied the files from /httpdocs/ to /httpsdocs/. This allowed my client to access both the public and admin areas of WordPress via SSL. However, we ran into problems when we tried uploading files and inserting them into posts.

Under SSL, WordPress would upload the files to /httpsdocs/wp-content/uploads/; however, the WordPress WYSIWYG editor would link to the files via a non-secure hyperlink. This would result in a broken link since the files weren't being stored in the non-secure upload folder.

The Solution
My first idea for fixing this problem was to add some mod_rewrite rules to /httpdocs/.htaccess. I planned to add some rules which would redirect all non-secure links to /wp-content/uploads/ to secure links. However, after a bit of searching, I found that there is a simple configuration checkbox in Plesk that is designed to handle scenarios such as this.

Under the setup page for a Plesk domain, there is a checkbox that reads "Use a single directory for housing SSL and non-SSL content." Checking that box and saving my settings was a quick and easy solution to this problem.

Great Specs Lead to Fast Development
Sevier Heights Baptist Church got in touch with me last month with this request: "We have designed and laid out a website for our college ministry. Now, we need you to implement our design on a live web server." In addition, they needed the project finished in one week.

This type of project can easily become quite daunting; however, thanks to an excellent specifications document submitted by the Sevier Heights design team, it turned out to be a relatively painless task. Along with a Photoshop comp of their design, Sevier Heights also provided me with a Word document which contained all of the content and specifications for every page of their site.

In the final analysis, I built insidethewalk.org with the help of the following tools:

• WordPress - content management system
• WordPress plugins:
  • cforms II - provided for the quick and easy development of various contact and signup forms
  • Event Calendar - along with some custom coding and CSS to control its display, this plugin serves as a great way for the content managers to post information on upcoming events
  • FAlbum - displays photos from the Inside The Walk Flickr account
  • Image Manager - allows for easy management and editing of photos in blog posts
  • podPress - handles the Inside The Walk podcast
• Image Cross Fader - JavaScript which smoothly transitions images on the home page
• XSPF Web Music Player - site-wide music player

An Inbox Surprise
Around 5pm one Friday afternoon last month, I checked my email to see that I had received a Paypal payment. This was rather confusing as I hadn't sent out any invoices lately; however, upon closer examination, I remembered the payment's source. Last October, I posted a tutorial showing how to embed WordPress into a vanilla install of OS Commerce 2.2. As an accompaniment to the post, I posted a demonstration of my technique complete with two products: 1) an OSC Commerce/WordPress install plus hosting and 2) an install without hosting. The payment was for option two.

Before leaving the office for the day I sent a quick email to my new client informing him that I would get to his request on Monday morning. This was the beginning of what has been a very good business relationship brought about by a website I hadn't thought about for a while.

$post_obj = $wp_query->get_queried_object();
$post_ID = $post_obj->ID;
$post_title = $post_obj->post_title;
$post_name = $post_obj->post_name;

For anyone else who needs such a tool, feel free to use my online SWF Downloader.

My quick answer to that question is, yes, at least as far as Google search results are concerned, your description meta tag does appear to influence the content displayed with your search results listing. To demonstrate this, I'm going to give you a couple of examples from this blog based on search terms people are using on Google to find this site:

Search for "google apps cpanel":

Search for "widget subpages":

Search for "mirror cpanel server":

You will notice that the description under the link for each of these search results is "Unique insights on PHP, WordPress. and Open Source". This description corresponds to the description meta tag on each of these pages. Unfortunately, this description is ambiguous with regards to the specific content on each page.

What appears to have happened is Google has indexed these pages because they provide relevant content for the given search terms, and while indexing these pages, Google has included the description meta in the result. I am pointing this out because the key to each of these pages being listed is an accurate page title and relevant content. So, the description tag doesn't appear to have as much influence on how these pages are getting listed; however, having a better description would make these listings more useful.

To change this behavior and add more meaningful data to my search results, after publishing this post, I am going to install the Add Meta Tags WordPress Plugin by G-Loaded. This plugin will give me more control over my meta description tag. Once Google re-indexes these pages, their search listings should start displaying the new descriptions thereby giving more meaningful search results.

Update (June 20, 2007)
It is now five days since I updated the description meta tag on my blog posts, and as I suspected that description data is now showing beneath the Google search results for each of the search terms I mention above.

Now a couple of months after his request, I am happy to report that I have successfully setup a mirror of my client's CPanel/WHM server. My technique combines the right combination of service providers, public key ssh authentication, rsync, mysqldump, and DNS Failover switching.

The Scenario
In this tutorial I am going to show you how to mirror a web server using two shared hosting accounts. Our mirror web server will automatically backup all scripts, files, and databases on the production web server. In addition, this tutorial will also describe how to setup DNS fail over switching that will monitor the status of the production server and automatically switch the DNS to point to the mirror server should the production server fail.

As this technique involves five distinct steps, I have divided this post into the following sections:

• Step 1: Selecting your service providers
• Step 2: Setting up public key ssh authentication
• Step 3: Using Rsync to mirror data between servers
• Step 4: Mirroring MySQL databases with mysqldump
• Step 5: Enabling DNS Failover Switching