Alternative Free Hosting Accounts

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Genesis

Administrator
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Some of you have asked me to recommend alternative free cpanel hosting, which I did. @Binil has set up a 5 star cpanel hosting for us - you can follow the steps below to get a hosting account:
https://www.gigarocket.net/forum/thread-16409-post-90825.html#pid90825

In addition, another member, @Fitkoh is providing an alternative to cpanel which I personally see as an improvement over cpanel because of how simple the panel is. He set up a free CyberPanel that works very fast and intuitive and is definitely worth trying out. Only snag is that like the above cpanel account you also need a TLD account for CyberPanel so that you can set up your own DNS at your Domain Registrar. Or you could ask Fitkoh to set you up with a sub-domain. The account doesn't come with DNS, e-mails or FTP. The File Manager that comes with the account is however very efficient. You can use the File Manager to upload files to the root of the domain, extract and zip folders, edit files, and almost all of the regularly used functions that cpanel has.

If you want to read more about how it works you can check out this discussion at Post4VPS:
https://post4vps.com/Thread-Cyberpanel-with-Remote-Database?pid=39642#pid39642

Or you can PM @fitkoh at Gigarocket (this) Forum.
 

fitkoh

Member
Genesis said:
Only snag is that like the above cpanel account you also need a TLD account for CyberPanel so that you can set up your own DNS at your Domain Registrar. Or you could ask Fitkoh to set you up with a sub-domain.

Another viable option is to use a free dns service, such as https://afraid.org - I believe their free plan gives you 5 free subdomains, and there are literally thousands and thousands of domains to choose from. Just make sure you research your selection so you don't pick something that's blacklisted.

You can use a free smtp relay if you want to send emails from your domain, such as https://mailjet.com or https://sendgrid.com, and you can use phpsendmail for transactional emails.
 

Genesis

Administrator
Staff member
Sounds brilliant @fitkoh. Would be great if you let us know how you managed to do this.
 

fitkoh

Member
Genesis said:
Sounds brilliant @fitkoh. Would be great if you let us know how you managed to do this.

It was fairly simple. Using cyberpanel (with PowerDNS installed):

First, in cyberpanel, click DNS zone for your domain (if you need to) and create nameservers for the associated zone/domain (ns1.yourdomain.com, ns2.yourdomain.com) - they should point to the server IP address.

Then go into "add records" and copy all the records for your domain at your domain registrar/current dns host.

Then go to domain registrar and create records for your nameservers. Usually at least 2 records are required for redundancy. I used ns1 and ns2, and set the answer to the IP of your cyberpanel server. Using namecheap, I had to change from default nameservers to custom nameservers; the process should be similar but maybe a little different depending on your registrar.

So far the only issue I've had with self-hosted dns is a small increase in latency: with my registrar my dns lookups returned in about ~ 55ms; self hosted is taking about ~70ms - probably due to being further away.

No problems yet with email deliverability or lookup timeouts: and $dig shows the nameservers serving the requests.

For the final test I've created a test subdomain and waiting to see if it resolves.
[edit] it took a couple hours but the subdomain did resolve. I ran another test on a .tk tld and it resolved almost instantly. Very cool. [/edit]

I'll need to set up a second server (ns3 and ns4) for redundancy and then I can port the service onto it. There's settings in cyberpanel for master and slave dns servers, which will need to be tested, but I'm hopeful to have it all worked out soon.
 

Genesis

Administrator
Staff member
fitkoh said:
So far the only issue I've had with self-hosted dns is a small increase in latency: with my registrar my dns lookups returned in about ~ 55ms; self hosted is taking about ~70ms - probably due to being further away.
I thought that would have been a good thing though? Improved latency. Latency has already been better than excellent though, so now it has to be even faster than before.
 

Genesis

Administrator
Staff member
OK I understand for global application. Individually though I also scored with getting DNS from my Registrar instead of my Web host. I'm convinced the DNS from my Registrar contributed to an even greater speed (on top of the minimalist setup speed increase bonus) as the DNS from the Registrar is that much more improved and responded faster. This was my first experience with getting DNS from my Registrar instead of my Web Host and a very positive one.

The absence of a mail manager, FTP and DNS also helped. The minimalist factor genuinely contributed to great speed rewards for me compared with what I was used to before.

But OK for an overall service to members who have issues with getting a TLD domain or are unable to figure out how to get a free domain and want it dished up as part of the service, I understand. They would also want FTP. And e-mails.

Would have been nice though to provide a niche free host service that is different from the norm. Maybe called "The minimalist free host" or something along those lines. I wish I could hang on to this great service for just a little longer as it is hosting I've never had before like this.

So, does this mean our hosting accounts on your system will have to be recreated from scratch when you add different components to it?
 

fitkoh

Member
Genesis said:
Would have been nice though to provide a niche free host service that is different from the norm. Maybe called "The minimalist free host" or something along those lines. I wish I could hang on to this great service for just a little longer as it is hosting I've never had before like this.

So, does this mean our hosting accounts on your system will have to be recreated from scratch when you add different components to it?

As for now, upgrades or not, I don't think you're in any immediate danger of losing your service.

I'm still not quite ready to pull the trigger on upgrades; I'm not convinced yet I've explored enough options.

As for hosting accounts: This is something I need to investigate and experiment with. Cyerpanel doesn't have any native way to backup/transfer users, so I would have to devise another method to transfer user accounts, and firstly I would need a better understanding of what database fields and unix users relate to cyberpanel user accounts; but I might be able to figure it out.
 

Genesis

Administrator
Staff member
fitkoh said:
As for hosting accounts: This is something I need to investigate and experiment with. Cyerpanel doesn't have any native way to backup/transfer users, so I would have to devise another method to transfer user accounts, and firstly I would need a better understanding of what database fields and unix users relate to cyberpanel user accounts; but I might be able to figure it out.
That would be interesting if you find a way @fitkoh. Would be nice if you would share this with us if and when you've found an answer to this.

The hosting you provide is still the fastest I've ever come across before. Thanks for still offering and supporting these accounts.
 

Genesis

Administrator
Staff member
@fitkoh Just to thank you for the continued hosting of my two domains on Cyberpanel. This is much appreciated. What is great is that the amazing speed that was available in December, is still there. The service has been consistently excellent since December when you set it up for me. Today I updated the two domains and the speed with which plugins were updated was still the best I've seen. I guess this is a testimony of a really great FREE panel as well - Cyberpanel. :cool:

Thanks for providing this continued hosting. If you wish to remove it for any reason, will be grateful if you could let me know. It won't be any hardship for me. However this hosting presents a unique hosting for me, as I don't think you will find anything similar anywhere else on the Web. With the way you've set it up. I don't think anybody would ever be able to copy it with the exact same result.

BTW I see that Let's Encrypt SSL is enabled until end of May. I possibly can work it out at that time to see how it gets updated, but was wondering whether there's a quick answer to this? Will it enable itself, or is there a process that I need to follow in Cyberpanel?

Cheers! Hope the fact we haven't seen you at post4vps in a while is because you're very busy and doing well.
 

fitkoh

Member
@Genesis

I believe the LetsEncrypt renewal is automated. As far as I know, your SSL cert is issued for 3 months, so this would probably be your second renewal. If you didn't have to do anything the first time, I don't imagine you'll have to do so again.

However, if for some reason the automatic renewal does't take, you can request a new cert from inside cyberpanel. Go to:

Websites >> List Websites >> Issue SSL

Trying to keep myself busy while waiting for the world to put itself back together. Glad you're still enjoying the hosting.

Cheers :)
 
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