[GLLUG] Web Hosting Options
Patrick Collora
collorap at msu.edu
Wed Nov 2 21:40:54 EDT 2011
Hey Everyone,
Do any of you have any recommendations regarding reasonably priced
Linux/Apache web hosting without too may restrictions? I was previously
using A2 Hosting <http://www.a2hosting.com/>. They were a good host
until recently when they began limiting our CPU usage and number of
connections. Routinely our site would simply be inaccessible during
peak hours, especially if a search engine was indexing the site. We
never exceeded the 50GB transfer limit of the account. Now I'm using
LiquidWeb <http://www.liquidweb.com/>. Performance is excellent, but
immediately we started having trouble with 403 errors and IP addresses
being blacklisted. I discovered that the culprit is ModSecurity
<http://www.modsecurity.org/>. ModSecurity looks for patterns in form
input and blocks the HTTP request if it appears malicious. For example,
one site member had text like "system (blah blah blah...)" in a photo
description. It was blocked because it looked like an attempt to call
system(). I found I can't even type the text "/bin/bash" into a form
input on their server because it looks like a command. If a user makes
several attempts to submit a blocked request, they permanently blacklist
the IP unless someone requests to have it removed. They were unwilling
to provide me with a report of the IP addresses blocked, so I have no
way of knowing how severe the problem is. Anyway, it looks like we may
be leaving LiquidWeb soon. I was surprised because I've seen them get
good reviews from people, even some on their list, but to have them
start blocking legitimate users and requests because some text vaguely
matches an attack signature is simply unacceptable.
My website is http://www.lighting-gallery.net
Thanks.
--
Patrick Collora
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