Our Premium SPAM Filtering Service Has Been Upgraded03/16/2010

We have some great new features to the MX Force Premium SPAM filtering service that we offer.  These new additions have been designed with simplicity and security in mind. Here are some of the new features you can start to take advantage of:

High Performance Administration Console

The most obvious feature is the complete redesign of the administration console. The new console is built entirely on AJAX technology enabling it to look and perform like a desktop software application, not like a website. Administration tasks can now be performed in less than half the time.  Of all the improvements that have been made, this is the one that we had the most requests for.

Exporting & Reporting

With the click of a button, you can now export your users, domains, quarantines and more into a CSV file for internal logging and diagnostics. The reports dashboard has been redesigned making it even easier to view the effectiveness of the solution. Also, all report data can now be easily exported or printed for internal reporting purposes.

Command Line Interface & API

Thee service has been build on a new framework enabling you to automate tasks such as adding, deleting, and changing users and domains. This is made simple by the new Command Line Interface. Administrators can now easily perform many tasks from their own command line without having to log in to a console. But most importantly you have the ability to write batch and shell scripts that automatically keep you in sync when, say, a user is added to your LDAP directory.

Quarantine Feeds

Finally, the most unique feature is the “Quarantine Feed”. Your users no longer have to wait for a quarantine summary, or manually log in to the console and wade through countless messages. With Quarantine Feeds, your users can locate and view quarantined messages right in their favorite email client. It even works with smart phones.

If you are using our premium SPAM filtering service, these features are already available.  If you aren’t using it and are sick of dealing with the junk email, contact us and we will give you a free month trial to try out this service.  You can find more information on our SPAM Filtering Service page.

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What is Web Hosting?09/13/2009

It’s surprising but this is one of the most common questions we get from potential new clients who want a web site.  If you want to maintain a website, you probably need to know what web hosting is.  Web hosting has developed into a very important service for most business owners. Almost every organization needs a website for their operations, which is why there is a great demand for reliable web hosting companies. So in case you are looking to find out what is web hosting, there are a few very important points for you to consider.

To begin with, when you have a website that you want others to see over the internet a web hosting company would provide you with online space on which you can upload your website. After your website is uploaded on the internet, your website becomes visible to people who browse through the internet. However there are a few points that you need to be aware of with web hosting services.

The Internet and Web Hosting: A Brief History

Looking back through history, the internet and web hosting services are still in their stage of infancy. It was not before 1991 that web hosting services finally materialized into a practical tool for businesses and organizations. The internet on the other hand had seen its birth only thirty years before that, in the year 1962.

How it all started …

JCR Licklider pioneered in bringing in the idea of the internet though the articles he wrote for his research work at MIT in 1962. Even though there was no such infrastructure present, he talked about a global network of computers connected to each other, sharing information and resources. This led to the formation of ARPA or the Advanced Research Projects Agency. The US military was closely related to ARPA as they worked towards developing a network for defense purposes as well as for space research for NASA.

Slowly the concept began to spread amongst the scientists and researchers like Lawrence G Roberts and Thomas Merril, who were successful in linking two computers in the US through telephone lines over a dial up connection at 2.4 kbps. While AT&T helped with the telephone line, the computers that were connected were TX-2 at Massachusetts and the Q-32 at California.

But the slow speed at which the network performed was a huge handicap. This further lead to the formation of the ARPANET in the year 1969. This network linked the computers amongst a few universities and research centers like the UCLA, the University of Utah, the University of California and the Stanford Research Institute. And the network kept building till emailing was introduced in the year 1971 by Roy Tomlinson.

Slowly and gradually TELENET was developed, which was much more commercialized. It was not till the 80s that the term INTERNET was used for the first time. A number of introductions were made, like TCP/IP and DNS. Finally in 1991, the World Wide Web or WWW came into existence with the help of the researchers at CERN.

This is how the web hosting got its shape to what we use today. And the internet still grows a much stronger presence with every passing day!

Let us further look at some of the main components of web hosting for a clearer idea.

Web Server

A web server is like a container in which you upload your HTML files to make your website available online. A web server runs on software that accepts requests from internet users and returns responses in the form of web pages over HTTP (or hypertext transfer protocol). Web servers generally run on either Windows operating systems or Linux.

There are various applications like databases, web applications, etc that are very specific to the operating system the web server uses. For example, a Linux server will be compatible with PHP and MySQL, whereas a Windows server can support MS SQL Server, ASP, etc. One of the major things to understand when you learn what is web hosting is what are the applications that you need to use and hence what operating system would suit your requirements.

FTP and Email Hosting

When you upload pages and images on to your website, this happens through FTP or file transfer protocol. Some web hosting providers may allow you to use software like Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Dreamweaver to upload your web pages and content, while others might allow you to use simply an FTP client.

Web hosting companies also provide you with web mails or customized email clients that you can use to send and receive emails through their servers. It is a good idea to consider these features when you check out the services of a web hosting company for the best results.

Data Center

A data center is a setup where the web hosting companies may house their servers and associated hardware like switches, routers, hubs, etc. Often domain hosting companies lease the servers belonging to these data centers to provide their clients the web space they require.

At other times web hosting companies might shift their hardware and servers to these data centers and pay them to provide the infrastructure required to host the servers. This is also known as colocation. It generally becomes much cheaper for web hosting companies to rent the services of a data center than to maintain their servers themselves. Data centers deal with a huge number of clients, making their overhead costs go down.

Domain Names

You need to register the name of the website you want to host through a domain name service. Most of the companies who provide domain hosting services would also be able to offer you a domain name for your website. Without a domain name (or an URL), you will not be able to host your website. DNS is an important topic for you when you look at what is web hosting.

Other Considerations

There are some other technicalities like the requirement of web designing software, consideration on the reliability of a web hosting company, the infrastructure and the services provided with the web hosting service, and the price that you have to pay to enjoy these services.

So if you were after your own website and wanted to know what is web hosting, the above information should at least give you a good start.  We have been offering web hosting since 1997 and would love to help you and your business get online.  You can read more about our services on our Web Hosting Page.

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On Page Search Engine Optimzation08/17/2009

SEOmoz, a leading resource for all things related to search engine optimization, posted a fantastic article on their blog about on-page optimization.  On-Page optimization is any optimization you can do on the actual page to help that page rank better in the search engines.   Optimizing your actual web page is only a portion of what Google looks at when it ranks your web site but it’s one of the easiest parts of the equation for you to control.

The article by SEOmoz, does an excellent job of breaking down all the elements that you should pay attention to when trying to get better rankings on your site.  You can check it out by going to Building an Optimized Page

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Advertising on Facebook07/12/2009

Over the last couple of months we have been testing out some ads on Facebook and overall, we have been pretty happy with the results.  I think Facebook has some work todo before they become a major player in the PPC world but what they have put together is a great start.  Facebook has something very unique that Google, Yahoo and most other PPC search engines can’t offer and that’s targeting by very specific demographics.

Getting Started

With over 200,000,000 active members, there is no question that Facebook has an impressive reach.  To get started with the standard Facebook PPC ad campaign, point your browser to the Advertising page.  They give you a decent amount of information and tips to get started but there is still a lot that is a mystery.  They give you some basic guidelines for what they expect in an ad and what you can target.  We recommend that you take the time to read through their suggestions since the approval process can be a bit fuzzy even if you know what you are doing.  The ad consists of a 25 character text headline, a 110 x 80 image and 135 characters of text below the image to describe your service or product and give them an incentive to click.  Put some thought into how you want to present your ad before you get started and come up with several variations so you can test, test test.

Ad Targeting

The great thing about advertising on Facebook is the impressive targeting you can do to reach exactly who you want to reach.  When users of Facebook setup a profile, they are supplying info that most marketing firms would pay a pretty penny for like their age, marital status, location, interests, language spoken and gender.  Sure, Google let’s you get pretty specific on location, just like Facbook does but with Facebook Advertising you can tell there system that you only want your ad to show to engaged women, between the ages of 25 and 39, living in Berk County Pennsylvania with knitting as one of their interests.  It’s pretty powerful.  It even tells you as you select options to target, exactly how many active Facebook members fit your criteria.  If the number is too small, it may not be worth your time or you may need to adjust your criteria to be more inclusive.

Creating Your Ad

Once you get the general concept down and you know what you want to advertise, it’s time to actually create your advertisement.  When you create your ad, make sure you keep in mind who you are putting this ad in front of.  I don’t mean the specific targeting methods I mentioned above, I mean that you should think about the site and what the people who go to the site are doing there.  They are going to Facebook with a purpose, they are going to see what is on their wall, to post a comment, to play a game or edit their own profile, etc..  They aren’t going there to look for your ad, you need to make sure your ad grabs their attention and is targeted to their demographics and interest.  100×80 isn’t a lot of space to do that so you have to make sure you make the most of the image you post.  Don’t try to build brand awareness with your Facebook ad,  grab their attention and get them to read what you have posted.  More importantly, get them to read the ad and click through to your site.

When they click through, make sure you are sending them to the most relevant page for what you are advertising.  For instance, in our web design ad, we wouldn’t send them to the home page, we want them to land right on our web design page.  You can even take it a step further and create a custom landing page just for Facebook users.  Be creative.

Facebook manually reviews every ad before they approve it.  I have heard complaints from quite a few people that the approval process takes too long and that they are completely arbitrary as to what they will approve.  Thankfully, our experience has been different, all of our ads have been approved in just a few hours and we haven’t had any ads that were denied.

Test Your Ads

The most important thing about creating ads for Facebook is that you need to test.  This is where most people fail, they create an image, create a headline, write the ad, post it with the criteria they think makes most sense and then sit back to watch what happens.  If the first try doesn’t work, more often than not, they stop.  I am amazed at how many people not only stop after that first try but end up being very vocal about how it doesn’t work.  Your first ad may not work, you may not know the magic formula, you have to test until you find the right combination of text, image, demographics and landing page.

Go into it with 3 - 5 different ads and test, test, test until you find out what works best.  Make sure you are only testing one thing at a time so you know is working best.  So, maybe your first 5 ads should have the same image, ad text, demographics and landing page but a different headline.  Run them for a few days, see which headline works best and then test something else.  If you test everything all at once, you won’t know what is working and what isn’t.

Budgeting

Facebook let’s you determine the maximum you want to pay per click and how much you want to spend each day.  They suggest a range for the ppc amount but the don’t do a very good job of telling you what you should expect for the bid, what the other advertisers are bidding at, and what would happen if you go higher or lower than the expected range.  It’s one of the areas they really need to improve on and you really need to include in your testing.  Make sure you select a rate that makes sense to you and a budget that isn’t going to drain your resources.  You can hope to make money right off the bat from your ad but you should go into it expecting to loose and know you have to test and tweak until you find something that works.  If it’s profitable right away, great, then you just need to make it more profitable, but if it’s not, at least you didn’t select a budget that is beyond what you can afford to lose as you test your ads.

In conclusion, we recommend Facebook as an excellent way to advertise but do it smart, take your time and test.  We find that Facebook advertising works exceptionally well for local or regional advertising.

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Happy 4th of July07/04/2009

We just wanted to take a quick break from our fun and celebration and wish all of our customers a fun and safe 4th of July.  If you are outside of the US, well, we still want to wish you a fun and happy Saturday night :)

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All Web Hosting Accounts Have Been Upgraded06/16/2009

If you have logged into your Cpanel account this week, you may have noticed a big difference in the amount of storage space and bandwidth you now have access to.  This past weekend, we did an overhaul of the packages we offered and increased both storage and bandwidth by 50% - 100%.  Nothing will change with the pricing because of this upgrade, we are doing our best to offer you more without it affecting our pricing.  This is really just the first step, in the coming months we will be bring you more features, more services, more resources and more ways to communicate with us.

You can check out the details of these changes on our Web Hosting Plans comparison page.

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