In this post we outline steps that you can take to make sure you purchase the right hosting.

1. Get a Linux server that supports PHP and MySQL
   Most PHP, MySQL runs well on Unix server, Linux is popular operating system but you also have FreeBSD.
2. Check the requirement of the scripts you are going to run
   Almost all scripts will list the requirement somewhere. Sometime they are hidden somewhere under different names, for example
   WordPress: Hosting WordPress
   phpBB: Documentation:Requirements
   CMS Made Simple: User Handbook/Installation/Requirements
3. Ask the web hosting company for a phpinfo output
   Most competent webhost will respond to this. The output looks something like this:
   
4. Ask the webhosting company directly
   Alternative, if you don’t want to deal with the technical mumbo jumbo, ask the hosting company directly.
   We recommend though that you try it yourself. It is a good learning process anyway.

Once you have done the above steps, you need to know what to look for. Let’s take the example from the WordPress requirements.

PHP version
This is displayed right on top, for example 5.2.5. WordPress says it need PHP version 4.2 or greater, so we are good (5.2.5 is greated than 4.2).

MySQL
On the phpinfo output page search for “Client API version” (Ctrl+F on IE and Firefox). Check the number give against WordPress requirement which is MySQL version 4.0 or greater.

Apache mod_rewrite
This is optional but is useful for SEO friendly URL and such. So if you need that, check for it. Do a search on the page for “mod_rewrite“. It should appears under the Apache section.

And you are good to go!

For other scripts, there may be other requirements such as safe_mode, magic_quotes_gpc, gd, iconv, mbstring. Simply do a search on the page for them and see the corresponding details that follows.

Most of the time they have very self-explanatory values like “on”, “off”. Sometime the presence or absence of the word suggest it is there or not.

Just follow these few steps and you can easily determine if you can your script on the host.

If you have question about whether your host can run a script, send us a note we can help you take a look.

Instead of just bookmarking links, we do our best to give each link a comment so that you see a little more details about the script than just a link.

Also collected are web tools and services including those omnipresence Web2.0 services.

So if you are on del.icio.us, add us to your network or recommend some related links to us.

Looking for ways to stop spams on your blog, wiki or forum. Using a reCAPTCHA plugin could help.

reCAPTCHA is a interesting idea that gives a new twist to the war against spam. This post will give a quick introduction to reCAPTCHA and you can learn more about it here.

CAPTCHAs are those colorful images with distorted text at the bottom of web forms. Their purpose is to separate humans from spam scripts.

Spammers usually use scripts to spam thousands of post in forum and blog comments. However most scripts are not as clever as human eyes in identifying the characters so they are blocked. Nice try spammers.

reCAPTCHA took this idea a step further. Instead of throwing away the text you had correctly entered, it is actually used to digitalize books. Books are scanned and broken down into words. As users enter the words in the CAPTCHA, the content of a book is slowly being typed out by users all over the world! (Curious about how this is possible? Read about the technical details on how it is done on reCAPTCHA website.)

reCAPTCHA is available as a PHP library and as plugins for WordPress, MediaWiki, phpBB, vBulletin, Joomla, Drupal.

If your blog, wiki for forum is suffering from spam, using reCAPTCHA could stop the spam. At the same time you are joining the worldwide effort to digitize books. What can be more simple!

If you need assistance to install reCAPTCHA, send us a note.

On our website (www.opensourcer.com), we provide Script Installation & Upgrade Services. We can install and setup for you your very own blog, forum, wiki, or pretty much any script you want or need. Or, if you have some blog/forum/<script name here> that needs updating, we can help you with that too! If you don’t have time to update, upgrade, repair, etc. your scripts, we will do it for you.

All our installation and upgrade services are very affordable, professional, and fast. We invite you to take a look at our services page, FAQ, and homepage to find out more about us and what we do.

On our blog (www.opensourcer.com/blog), we talk about different scripts from the different categories (like blogs, forums, wikis, etc.).

We will be blogging about the latest news on scripts and web applications, as well as ways to improve, tweak, modify and customize your script for your maximum pleasure.