It’s been some time since I wrote a blog post. Talking about that, I have time, just that I don’t have access to my own computer and when I am on another computer, I simply don’t feel like doing it. That’s why there is no new posts recently.

Anyway, let’s get to the point. I am going to teach you how to create your own SSH proxy with your VPS. This is a simple process and doesn’t take a long to set up if you know the steps.

Creating a SSH tunnel is mainly for security. Wikipedia says,

A secure shell (SSH) tunnel consists of an encrypted tunnel created through a SSH protocol connection. Users may set up SSH tunnels to transfer unencrypted traffic over a network through an encrypted channel.

You need better security, then my suggestion is to use your own proxy rather than using a public proxy where you risk your personal data and even credit card information.

Check your current IP assigned by your IP before doing anything -http://www.whatismyip.com/.

First you need a VPS(if you don’t already have one). My recommendation for Asian users is a European provider as said in
Here is the link to Burst budget VPS: http://perfectz.info/budget-vps
I am personally recommending it though there are many providers who provides VPSs’ for cheaper prices. Burst is budget and a trusted provider. And you can use this VPS to any other task as well. SSH Proxying doesn’t require much resources.

However there are few other providers as well. But I don’t have personal experiences with them. Try them at your own risk.
www.minivps.co.uk
www.buyvm.net
» Read more: Create Your Own SSH Tunnel Using Putty — Complete Guide

My server provider had some node high load issues in the past month. They rebooted the node few times to make things normal. And I can’t blame them for doing that. Rebooting a node server takes few minutes and we won’t have hours of downtimes.
I was busy with my new job(I hate it!). However, I wasn’t able to touch my server under those circumstances. And every time my provider rebooted the server, Apache wasn’t starting automatically and therefore, my server suffered lots of downtime.

Since I have installed Apache from the source, I need to manually start Apache after every reboot. But that is a big problem if you are not in front of your server 24/7. That’s when we need to find a solution.

The solution for the issue is to add the Apache start to the default runlevel. It is something like Startup on Windows systems.

Follow the instructions below to add Apache start to the default runlevel.
» Read more: Start Apache at System Reboot

I wanted to send out a newsletter to all of my clients. So I can use WHM/cPanel or THT(billing system) to send them out. But it is possible that the emails would not reach it’s destinations. Or it is possible that I end this up with blacklisting my server’s IP address.

So I needed another solution and came up with sending the emails through MailChimp – A professional EMail marketing service. So they will handle everything and I will have a complete report of the EMails I send out.
But the thing is, I didn’t had all the email addresses of my clients anywhere except for the database of my billing system. And when I try to export the MySQL database to a local file and import emails through it ended up failure. Because there are more fields in the MySQL table rather than emails itself.

There is a possible way to extract only the emails from a MySQL database. That is to use phpMyAdmin to execute a custom query to display only emails and export the view.
This is how you can do that.

1. Login to phpMyAdmin
2. Select the database and choose the table which contains the email addresses. Click on the Browse button.
3. Click on SQL and execute the following command.
   SELECT 'email' FROM `your_table`
   email should be replaced with the name of the field which contains email addresses while your_table should be replaced with the table name which contains email addresses and other information.
   Usually, it is already set. So you won’t need to change a thing except for email.
4. Click on Go and phpMyAdmin will show a view that contains only the email addresses.
   
5. Click on the link Export at the bottom of the page. Not the Export in the Tab bar.
6. Export it as your desire. Personally, I like to have an .CSV file.

From this method followed, you will have a CSV file which contains all the email addresses from your users.
It is possible to use the same method to extract email addresses from your forum, wordpress blog or any other MySQL database which contains email addresses. Just be sure you won’t use them to spam your users.

Have you ever tried to change nameservers of your website? What happens then?
Your domain registrar changes them into your new nameservers and then they update their records of your nameservers. And let those new nameservers to be public. And when your ISP(Internet Service Provider) accesses the registrar’s database, they find the modification to your nameservers and update their records as well. So then you can access your website which is on different nameservers now.

This looks like a 1-2-3 process. But it is not.

This whole procedure takes lot more time. Most likely, it is about 24-48 hours. This is because ISP’s don’t update their records very frequently. So even if it takes 5 minutes for you to change your nameservers, it takes 24-48 hours to see your website in your new server.
This is where we need Google Public DNS.
» Read more: Google Public DNS – Use and Boost your DNS Caching Speed

United States(US) is the place where the largest datacenters exist in the world. Not only large, they have very large number of datacenters situated in the US(mainly in North America) and also has good connectivity providers like Level3, Cogent and HE(Hurricane Electric).

It is said that HE maintains a good connectivity to Asia. And I believe it is true. But my suggestion is to avoid hosting your websites in US if your main audience is from Asia. Why is that?
I would post you some ping results rather than explaining it first.
» Read more: Asians, why it is not good experience to host your website in US?