Archive for the 'Guides' Category

Choosing The Right Solution. Image source: planetgreen.discovery.com

Last time we spoke about making a choice of a Virtual Private Server in terms of the configuration varieties. Today we are going to continue our research and tell some useful facts about types of websites, applications and services one may use on a VPS and the related dependencies.

There are many types of websites and online services on the Internet that differ by system requirements, performance or way of work. Sure, most websites work with a standard configuration and software set but some websites and especially services need an accurate configuration pick and fine software tune up. In this regard we are going to list the most popular services and applications in the today use and find a correspondent VPS-based solution for each. Well, let’s start.

1. Email and ftp transfer services

Email and FTP transfer

VPSes are widely used for establishment of certain separate services on them. If you want to get a simple email or ftp server which would need no constant web-access, you may get the simplest custom configuration of your virtual server, which would include just the OS and basic mail exchange/file transfer services. If you wish to run some additional scripts, you have LAMP installed as well (you will anyway need Apache in order to provide webmail access or check the uploaded files via web). In such cases the control panel is not essential (some users do not even include it to their orders) what makes the choice of the OS not crucial as well. Neither is the choice of the virtualization type. Such web-inactive resources do not usually require severe monitoring or many maintenance efforts, especially when strict connection quotas and transfer rate limits are set. CPU/RAM parameters may also be minimal, however those exactly parameters will let you define, which limits to set. Read the rest of this entry »

Choosing The Right Way. Source: thefrisky.com

When website owners decide to purchase a Virtual Private Server for their websites, they are often concerned about its configuration. If upgrading from a shared hosting account, a user may pick a too weak server and put it down right after the website launch, as virtual servers do not have such strict limits on resource usage set, as shared ones do.

If someone is purchasing a VPS at once, without having the site actually tested elsewhere before, its owner may pick a wrong software configuration and not even have the website started (we don’t think that error pages hosting is funny or profitable).

A fair question is “Which VPS configuration to choose to provide my website with the most optimal hosting solution?” Here go the answers.

VPS Configuration Types

Virtual private servers differ in their configuration by many parameters. Those usually depend on their vendors’ likes and commercial interests; presence of trained personal, able to work with this or that software; welfare and funding, etc. Studying the market of VPSes we can define the following main configuration options: Read the rest of this entry »

You probably remember our articles on how to pick a platform for reseller hosting business and Reseller billing software comparison. As we continue the series of useful articles for resellers, the next thing we are going to talk about is domain reselling.

What Does It Work For?

Domain reselling business is to some extent easier to run than hosting reselling, and because of this many people choose to conduct this business. The advantage is obvious – unlike a hosting reseller, you don’t need to administer anything but the name servers (in most cases only once – after the domain purchase) and you are not supposed to resolve any technical problems, as there can hardly be any. What you need to do is just watch them being updated on time.

Taking into account the latest trends of services unification, it becomes understandable that in order to attract more customers a company should provide a range of services. Thus, to become a successful professional hosting reseller you also need to provide domain reselling. Your clients will be really glad to realize that they can pay for several services using one client area. Additionally, this will make things easier for both you and them in terms of support – you will be able to manage your customers’ domains.

How It Works?

Domain reselling is a special service, offered by domain registrars. The idea of this service is to increase the domain sales by attracting new registrants not directly, but through a reseller. This idea became very popular since domain reselling is more profitable for both the registrar and the reseller, than an affiliate program, which is not that easy to manage, considering the amount of domains sold annually.

Being resellers, registrants are able to control all their resold domains under their own accounts and to set custom prices. Branding is allowed as well. Branding option may be useful, if a simple reseller wants to become a featured one or even a domain investor. Usually, domain resellers choose a range of TLDs they are going to offer. Usually, the so-called popular TLDs: .COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO, .BIZ. Domains with such TLDs used to have a floating price on the market and considering the discounts, the registrars provide their resellers with, the latter can make a good profit out of it. Additionally, being a domain reseller, a hosting reseller can make such marketing moves as free domain provision for the top hosting plan.

Summary

Reselling is a nice small business solution for those who do not have their own platform to start an own independent company. Such business, however, is a perfect launch pad, so it should be organized so, that it would look professional. We hope, that tips we publish will help you with improvement of your business. Next time we are going to bring out more ideas on how to improve your reseller business, as it may grow into a standalone company one day.

Picking a domain name for your website is always a responsible step. If it is a business website – the responsibility is times higher. This article outlines couple of tips to help you make the right decision.

Register a Domain Before Your Website Goes Live

If you are only starting your online business, you are not likely to launch your website off hand. It does take time to work out a strategy, to have the website developed, to find reliable hosting, etc. If a web page is an additional marketing or media source for your business, it will take even more time – time which may be enough for someone to “steal” your domain name. Therefore, it is always better to register a domain name in advance. Maybe you will be paying extra, but it is anyway better, than trying to find the desired name on a marketplace or end up with no domain at all.

Make Out a Neat Catchy Name and Pick a Matching Extension

If you want your domain to become a word of mouth and a Google ranking rock star, make sure the name you make out is relatively short and easy to remember and to spell. Abbreviations may work in some cases, but make sure that they are understandable for your visitors.

Talking about domain extensions or TLD’s (Top Level Domains) for business websites, we usually mean such popular ones, as .COM, .NET and .BIZ. Additionally, the Internet was recently shocked with the launch of another TLD, perfectly fitting to companies and corporations – a .CO, which is now becoming more and more popular. The choice of the extension is essential, since some names may not match some TLD’s in terms of spelling and pronunciation, while some may hit a bull’s-eye (e.g. a Women’s Business Center, which launched womenbiz.biz).

Another thing to bear in mind is local search ranking. If your business is operating in some specific geographic area it is recommended to get the corresponding ccTLD (county-code Top Level Domain) like .co.uk, .de, .com.mx and so forth.

Try to have some relevant keywords in domain name

If SEO is one of your key promotion strategies, then consider registering a domain name with some of your main keywords included. This will help with your SEO efforts and will you’re your site more relevant in the eyes of potential customers. Moreover, when the search query is included in the domain name, search engines automatically make them bold, which increases the chances of getting higher CTR from organic listings. If you deal with car rent, a carsforrent.com domain would hit the spot. On the other hand, you should be careful with making out a domain name from keywords solely – this may make it spam-like and hardly attract any clients, as it won’t be memorable and easy-to-spell.

Create Aliases

Just one domain is not always enough for a serious business project. It is advisable to also have an alias. Aliases may play different roles. For instance, you have a mybizpage.com domain as a main one and register a .CO domain in addition. You add this mybizpage.co as a parked domain, so now you have two domains displaying the same content.

If you a running a blog or a forum along with your main website, you may use an alias for it. First, it is more secure for the main account, than having it hosted in the main domain’s subfolder (mybizpage.com/myblog); at second, you receive another domain for cross-linking and SEO. That’s where abbreviations and shortenings may come in handy.

Don’t Let Typos Steal Your Traffic

There is no spell check for domains, so people may have your domain name misprinted. In this case they will get a “not found” error message… unless a misprinted domain is registered and redirected to the correct one. Namely, you need to figure out, which typos are most likely to be made and register domains with those misprinted names. Then you set a simple redirect to your website, which will make you sure that all your potential customers hit the right site – yours. If you take your business seriously, you should take care of this; otherwise your competitors may do this and then all the traffic will be redirected to their website.

Conclusion

We hope those little tips will bring you some big assistance when you face a question of website launch and domain registration. In case you have already had some thoughts about starting your own web project, it may be worthy spending a couple of minutes browsing through our pages and studying the plans we provide. Our shared hosting for small business and big projects come with a free domain, so you may start making up a name for your website with the tips above in mind.

Ever since Internet became available to the public and started being used on commercial purpose, the problem of SPAM emerged. There are many types of spamming – via e-mail, through instant messengers, even by posting forum threads or replies and blog comments. Today we are going to tell about ways of fighting the most irritating type of spam – e-mail spam.

What is SPAM? Ways It Works, Impact It Makes

SPAM’ed PC Image source: http://www.pc1news.com/

E-mail spam a.k.a. unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE) started spreading in the early 90’s. Since most spam messages have commercial content, it is also called unsolicited commercial email (UCE). SPAM is usually sent through zombie networks (or botnets) – networks of virus or malware-infected computers. And if UCE just irritates the mailbox owner by the fact of its delivery, fraudulent or virus-containing spam may cause bigger problems – credit card information leaking, password and other security data loss or even making the recipient’s computer another zombie.

Nowadays all Internet, web hosting and public e-mail services providers have a ruling in their Terms of Services and Acceptable Use Policies (TOS/AUP) regarding outgoing spam delivery prohibition. Spammers cause much abuse, as the complaints sent to the administrators of the servers, where bulk mailers are located, may lead to the servers’ IP addresses getting into an IP blacklist. In some cases, when the complaints are multiple and the spammer cannot be taken out (sometimes it is really hard to trace and locate a spammer on the server) – the server may get null-routed. If it is a shared server, (spammers usually choose non-expensive shared plans to perform a “one-shot” bulk mail delivery or spam until the account is suspended/terminated) – it is usually a disaster for a hosting company, because when an IP address gets blacklisted – it may take up to a week to have it “delisted”. Now imagine how much time it will require for the upstream provider (datacenter) to review the null-route removal request (not counting the time required for the investigation).

User-end Spam Protection Measures Read the rest of this entry »