Getting a grip on all this web server hoopla (10)
As many people find themselves I'm trying to decide what the best route is for my web server setup.
First after much reading I'm thinking beyondhosting would be a good avenue since it already utilizes lightspeed. Now if i went this route (and this may seem like a dumb question) would lightspeed eliminate the need for cpanel?
Also I've read some posts about having two separate web servers 1 for tracking and 1 for landing pages. How is this done? Do I need to sign up twice or can 1 web server be split in half, or is that a bad idea as it would still share the resources.
When I was previously working under someone else they had all this setup so I never had to deal with it. When I would point the domains host record there was a go and static address which was a different ip then the primary, and a cdn cname. Can someone enlighten me to as to what the purposes of go cdn and static are?
Another thing I'm curious about is if I am running multiple campaigns in multiple countries (AU, UK, FR, BR, and USA) do I need a separate web host close to each target demographic.
LiteSpeed and cPanel are two completely separate things - cPanel is a graphical frontend that allows you to configure some things on your server, primarily sites, ftp accounts, domains etc. LiteSpeed is just an http web server - it serves pages to users visiting your domain and that's about it. I believe it has a graphical interface for configuration but this won't let you do many of the things that cPanel does (e.g. creating FTP accounts). However, if you don't really need anything from cPanel you may be fine without it. Might want to be comfortable using SSH/console access though.
You will want one server only and can run tracking and landers on it. Don't over-complicate things. A single fast server is a better starting point than having two separate servers for landers/tracking systems.
I'm not sure what you mean by a go and a static address but you can configure domain names to point wherever you want via the DNS settings. Likely they had domain.com > some server, go.domain.com > another server, and cdn.domain.com > CDN bucket or container with e.g. Rackspace or Amazon CloudFront.
A CDN is used for serving static content like images and css files. Basically, you upload these files somewhere and they get geographically distributed to 100's of servers. When a user loads your page, cdn.com/myimage.jpg will be downloaded from a server that is physically close to the user, enhancing load speeds. You offload this content delivery to CDNs as they are very good at it and your server is only in one place - the further away the user is the slower content delivery typically gets.
However, CDNs aren't like your VPS or other servers - they are generally for just delivery of this static content and little else.
If you're just getting started as a solo affiliate, as it sounds like you are (please correct me if I'm wrong and I'll give advice more appropriate to your situation), I'd strongly recommend you keep it simple until you have a pressing need for a more complicated setup.
A Beyond Hosting server will do everything you need for now, and you won't have to do any setup or installation of your tracking systems. You will still need CPanel, as it performs a very different function from Litespeed - Litespeed is a web server, the piece of software that communicates with web browsers to serve your pages, whilst CPanel is a tool for controlling the setup of your server.
(As Zeno says, you can get away without using CPanel if you're happy to use text input via SSH - but that's generally considered a more techie way to do it. Some people like me prefer it, though, but it does require more learning off the bat. )
The reasons for having separate servers for landing pages are largely to do with serving those pages faster to a specific location in the world. Likewise, a CDN makes your pages faster to load for people a long way from your server. If you want to use a CDN, Beyond Hosting also offer an easy-to-use CDN that is pretty competitive with all the other CDN options on the market.
Hope that helps! If you'd like me to explain more on any point, let me know and I shall go into more detail!
Thanks for the replies that clarifies a lot me. Now back to the multiple servers if I was getting traffic from europe and the USA how much of a difference would it make in page load speeds running 1 web server vs 2. Do you think it would dramatically change conversion rates enough to warrant the extra cost? i know if I was sending enough traffic through it would but at what point do you think this really makes a difference. In my previous experience with Facebook the campaigns I was running would be getting 20k-40k clicks a day, and I want to be able to hit those same numbers knowing my back end will support it. Unfortunately I focused most of my efforts on creatives and dodging that mighty Facebook ban hammer, and didn't pay too much attention to the structure that held it all up.
It is definitely worthwile getting an EU-based VPS and a US-based one if you are running campaigns in both countries. VPS are cheap and readily available so there is little point in copping the disadvantage. For many VPS providers you can also port server images from one region to another. (e.g. Digital Ocean).
Now if Im using cdn would that eliminate the need for a vps close to my target demographic for my landing pages. i assume a landing page generally would be static, or am I mistaken
CDN will only help improve your static content load time.
Dynamic stuff like tracking/dns will still be slow. So having a sever for serving dynamic content near visitor is always beneficial.
I run VPS in pretty much every country I advertise in. It does make a difference. Don't get too hung up on lightspeed. Even the fastest server is slow running bad/bloated code.
Here is the site I use to find my VPS's worldwide http://lowendbox.com
On all my servers I monitor the application performance using a tool called New Relic. http://newrelic.com
Once your pages are set up test them using a web page speed test. I like this one or the one from pingdom: http://www.webpagetest.org/
If you are uber geeky have a look at docker. It's a container deployment that I use pretty much everywhere. meaning I can set up a new VPS in about 5 minutes complete with my codebase and it "just works".
http://docker.io
Originally Posted by theboss
Yah take lowendbox recommendations with a grain of salt. I prefer to go with companies that have multiple datacentres rather than chasing cheap solutions on a per country basis. VPS.net have a lot but I'm not entirely confident of performance - at least the US VPS I was testing in the past was crap cf. my Ramnode and DO instances in terms of network speeds and general time to install things.
I have gravitated toward Ramnode, DO, Linode and Edis as reasonable places to go.
Anyway, if you are running HTML only pages (no PHP at all) then a CDN is fine but having a VPS backup is advisable. Your tracking system general dictates whether you will be able to use a CDN only for page delivery or not.
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