Archive for November, 2007

Drupal 6.0 Beta3 Released

Friday, November 30th, 2007

The Drupal Team, after winning the 2007 Overall Open-Source CMS Award, (And a sum of $5000), have went on to release their 3rd Beta of the up-and-coming Drupal 6.0.

This Beta update includes 180 bug fixes since Beta2, and while they claim “our code is getting more stable by the day”, the Beta3 is now available for download from their website, here

6.0 boasts lots of new features, to name a few- more efficient SQL usage, stronger core, HTML Validity fixes, faster performance and an easier to use template system. Also, on a more useful scale, it includes better language support, OpenID support from install, easier to use installer, and at last it has the Update Status module included from install too – You can now check for updates and bug fixes directly from your Drupal installation.

I know I’ll be testing the Beta3, leave me your comments on how it goes for you

Posted in Reliability, Scripting | 1 Comment »

SEO Web Hosting and how its good for you

Thursday, November 29th, 2007

If there is a phenomenon that is making waves in the web hosting industry in recent times, it would be SEO Web Hosting. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Web Hosting basically encompasses all the strategies involved in ranking well for a particular country-specific version of a popular search engine.

Leading search engines especially Google and Yahoo have country-specific versions for several countries across the globe. The mere fact that one’s website would necessarily rank better if hosted in the target country has given birth to the new genre – SEO Web Hosting.

According to Travis aka “The Farmer“:

SEO Web Hosting is the art of hosting your marketing efforts across multiple IP ranges using multiple name servers. By doing so you are ensuring the true success of your online business.

What web hosts do is to provide multiple IP addresses and multiple nameservers spread across different countries such that the website appears to be hosted in these different countries and thus have the chance of ranking better in the respective countries. The specialized SEO packages typically have the following range of specifications: [20 IPs / 10 class C; 2 IPs per Class C; 10 Nameservers] and [120 IPs / 60 class C; 2 IPs per Class C; 60 Nameservers].

Understandably, these SEO Web Hosting packages come at a relatively high cost since immense effort is put into sourcing this different IP ranges. This makes it feasible for companies with deep pockets, who are specifically targetting web users in specific countries.

It is important to point out however that aside web hosting that provides local IP addresses, successful search optimization for international markets may require professional translation of web pages, registration of a domain name with a top level domain in the target market.

If SEO Web Hosting is not for you and you still want to rank better in specific countries, you want to consider registering your domains under the Country code Top-Level Domains (cc-TLDs) for your target countries. You would then have to put up localized content for maximum effect.

Posted in Hosting News, Uncategorized | 16 Comments »

Sedo auctions CHRISTMAS.co.uk and other generic christmas-y domain names

Saturday, November 24th, 2007

We can all feel it folks, it’s coming up to Christmas, and Sedo.co.uk have decided to unravel their Christmas Auction domains – Including christmas.co.uk, christmasbreaks.co.uk, christmasgifts.co.uk, christmashampers.co.uk and stuffing.co.uk.

Sedo’s UK Operations Director,  Nora Nanayakkara, tries to attract more businesses and individuals to the process:

“The UK is forecast to spend around GBP13bn(i) on presents in the online Christmas shopping period, more than any other European country. By purchasing a generic co.uk Christmas Internet domain name at auction, organisations can capture a bigger chunk of the growing UK online festive spend.

“With over 27 million online shoppers in the UK, owning a quality generic Christmas co.uk Internet domain name will attract a large volume of natural traffic. As well as improving search engine rankings, a generic Christmas co.uk Internet domain name also strengthens a company’s online brand. We expect Sedo’s Christmas co.uk domain name auction to attract plenty of watchful eyes.”

A full list of the domains available is listed at http://www.sedo.co.uk

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Posted in Domains | 3 Comments »

4 Month Old Acer Laptop – Should be fine, right?…… right?!

Wednesday, November 21st, 2007

After purchasing my wonderful Acer laptop, I was more than exstatic about the features I was to encounter.

SignalUp Enhanced Wifi Capabilities, Intel HD Audio, 15.4 inch widescreen LCD, Pentium 4 and 1GB RAM had me perfectly happy for 4 months… but then…

I booted up; Logged On and started Firefox as per any usual day. I browse to Web Hosting Search, read a bit and suddenly my screen freezes, goes blank, and I hear an almighty “bang” as what I later found to be my PSU and MotherBoard, had – for lack of a better phrase – ‘blown up’. Watch out folks… This had me offline for a week and a half; Not what I expected from Acer, and not exactly safe either.

Oh well, I guess that’ll teach me not to overclock :-D

If you’ve had a similar experience, why not comment it in to me?? I love to hear from y’all :)

Posted in Platforms, Reliability | 3 Comments »

2Checkout now accepts Paypal. And so what?

Wednesday, November 21st, 2007

Not too long ago, 2Checkout added Paypal Express Checkout to their checkout process “by popular demand“. The essence of this blog post is to examine the impact of this on the web hosting industry.

Online payment systems are very popular with web hosting [and domain name registration] companies. Paying online speeds-up the order process for getting a new web hosting account and leading the pack of online wallets is Paypal. Aside Visa and Mastercard credit/debit cards, online wallets like Paypal have become increasingly popular online. What makes Paypal even better is that it can function as a 3rd-party credit card payment processor. Paypal has thus been enabling several Small-Office-Home-Office [SOHO] businesses worldwide to accept payment online.

That said, Paypal is not available in every country and available in some countries on a “Send money only” basis. This makes accepting payment online via Paypal very difficult for online merchants in such countries where Paypal is not fully functional or not available at all. The fact that 2Checkout now includes Paypal as a checkout option empowers millions of online merchants [web hosts included] to accept payment from Paypal’s over 130 million users. Several leading global brands have increasingly been adding Paypal as payment option on their respective websites, in recent times.

According to 2Checkout’s blog post on this issue:

This will allow customers to pay for products and services with the funds in their PayPal account, even if the supplier does not have their own PayPal account and only uses 2Checkout.

The PayPal payment option will be available for all non-recurring orders in the following currencies:

  • Australian Dollar (AUD)
  • Canadian Dollar (CAD)
  • Euro (EUR)
  • British Pound (GBP)
  • Japanese Yen (JPY)
  • U.S. Dollar (USD)

2Checkout is much easier to join and use though they would verify your information if they have any reason to suspect you/your business.

In case you’re a web host helping your clients with e-commerce solutions, the e-commerces scripts under Fantastico (if you’re using CPanel) have modules that allow merchants to accept payment via 2Checkout. CubeCart, OSCommerce and Zen Cart are all available for installation via Fantastico and there are several other equally good e-commerce shopping scripts out there that integrate well with 2Checkout.

Do you run a web hosting business? How do you accept payments online? Has the addition of Paypal to 2Checkout’s checkout process had an positive/negative impact on your web hosting business or online store? Share your thoughts here and now.

Posted in Hosting News, Linux, Platforms | 3 Comments »

Windows Server 2008, cPanel, And You

Friday, November 9th, 2007

July past, Microsoft attended HostingCon 2007 to talk about their new addition to the Windows Product line – Server Edition 2008. This boasts new IIS7.0 with its out-of-the-box PHP support, enhanced Management Console and further debugging / error handling improvements; DotNetPanel – A New Web Control Panel from a new partnership with Microsoft and DotNetPanel Software Company; and built-in Virtualization support.

They also announced – wait for it – cPanel Web Control Panel for Windows Server 2008! That’s right, you heard me, cPanel for Server 2008. Woah, at last cPInc =)

With 111 days from date to launch of this new Server OS however, we may as well forget about it for a good couple of months, and with limitless price possibilities for Microsoft, for some of us, forever.

Posted in Control Panels, Hosting News, Platforms, Scripting | 4 Comments »

cPanel 11 Review and Report

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

cPanel Inc. released their stable version of their world-used cPanel 11 on August 15, 2007 – complete with a makeover and masses of new features; making it more compatible to the end users desires.

This powerful web panel has served the industry for years, and with its new oncoming of the x3 theme, with ajax, DHTML galore and friendly tips and reminders, it is the latest up-and-coming product for web users everywhere.

This massive update includes the following:

Enhanced Security
Foolproof Aesthetic Design
Friendly Video Tutorials
And Further Compatibility and branding options

cPanel 11 promises a click-and-its-done interface, intuitive help system, new Web Disk (WebDav) access built-in, and more email configuration options. I have tested this new update for a couple of months now, and in my opinion is it a more than worthy upgrade for all you system admins out there; with its new and improved speed, reliability and ajax form checking, your users will finally recieve what they want from their web control panel, and this edition doesn’t exclude human beings.

Posted in Control Panels, Hosting News | 1 Comment »