Christmas brings all joy to the world. Gifts sharing, family gathering, Christmas tree and songs, and the holy atmosphere are around. People share affection and presents to their loved ones. Euphoria is all Christmas takes to us.

That is also what we do, sharing affection to our beloved ones, you, in this blessing Christmas. As maybe some have known, we have released our “XMAS20″ coupon for our Premium Hosting plans as our Christmas gift so that you can subscribe our Premium Hosting with 20% off the hosting price.  So no worries you can’t afford to subscribe anymore!

Premium Hosting allows you to get the latest technological standards - MySQL5, PHP5, PERL5, Ruby On Rails, MS-SQL 2005, Cold Fusion 7.0, ASP 3.0, .NET 3.5 - plus a new brand server of IBM XSeries Blade Server, and Quick Fix Customer support to solve issues. These are only for you and just you.

Completing the excitement of Christmas is the coming new year 2009, bringing us all the new hopes for a better improvement. New year is the time when we ring out the old year and welcome the coming year with open arms, eyes filled with new dreams, and heart full of new expectations.

And as the year goes by, we have been one of the most trustworthy web hosting companies and will keep doing so. We review our service and improve by updating our features, offering reliability with rock-solid server performance, and enhancing our customer service for you.

Through the upcoming new year of 2009, we’ll learn from our past, fix our mistakes, and be an even dreamier web host for you. We evaluate your needs, investigate what is still lacking from us, and learn how to satisfy you further for your website needs.

To be where we can be the one and the only for you, we’ll accept any suggestions or any valuable feedbacks from you so we can continue to offer profitable web hosting deals for you all. We also thank you for your choice to be with us, giving us the chance to prove that we are the best web host ever. Merry Christmas 2008 and Happy New Year 2009! May the warmth and wishes surround you throughout Christmas and New Year. See you in 2009…

~Gaby C~

Web hosting industry has been an incredible money maker nowadays. As long as internet exists, web hosting will be money making machine for you. However, do you really think you can succeed in this business if you have no experience and enough capital yet? Well no worries, there’s a profitable option as a start up. Be a web hosting reseller! You can keep on going your current work if you have one and web hosting business at the same time. Only few dollars of investment needed.

Why Should You Really Start from Reseller?

Starting it all, as I have mentioned earlier, being a web hosting reseller doesn’t require you to invest thousands of dollars in the bussiness. You need only few or tens of dollars as your budget to begin with. If you open your own web hosting company, you have to buy your own data center, server, license, etc that seem too much for any beginner to start. You want to get more cash, but in fact, you just spend more than you need at the beginning. While on the contrary, with a reseller package, you spend less but receive more than you expect.

Being a reseller becomes a good start when you seem you’re just a web hosting newbie. You have no experience and still get lack of knowledge to really open your own web hosting business. Reseller hosting will be your “light in the darkness”. You get your own dedicated reseller specialist to help you when there are issues with your reselling. You are not alone! Hand in hand with the dedicated reseller specialist, there will be a reseller guide in a reseller package to help you out. Your reseller hosting provider won’t leave you by yourself. Help is always available.

Even better, although you are a reseller, you can perform as your own company brand. Most reseller hosting providers offer white label reseller, meaning that you will stand on your own brand. Create your own brand name and your reseller provider will stay undetected and hidden. When your end customers are satisfied with your web hosting service, you are the one accepting all the awards and respects. And the incredible revenues will come to “inhabit” in your bank account only, not your reseller provider.

By the time you have reached successful progress in reselling, been sure you want to get fully involved in web hosting industry and realized that reseller program is no longer suitable, you will always have the chance to really start your real own web hosting company. However, when you are sure you still start from zero in web hosting, reseller package is always highly recommended.

~Gabrielle~

Yippie! Finally it’s coming. Our Premium Hosting is now available for sale. As the answer to what you’ve been looking for this long, our Premium Hosting will cover anything you may require for a successful website online.

Let’s say PHP5, PERL5, MySQL5, AJAX, the popular Ruby on Rails, MS-SQL 2005, .NET 3.5, Cold Fusion MX 7.0, ASP 3.0 - we have them all! Beautifully packaged in our Premium web hosting plans, those latest technological standards complete the plans in two main platforms, UNIX and Windows.

UNIX SPECIALTIES
For Unix enthusiasts, we have specified three different Premium plans with the latest standards for UNIX - Advance, Professional, and E-Commerce. Our Premium UNIX is completed  with the latest features of UNIX you’ve been wanting such as PHP5, MySQL5, PERL5, CGI, AJAX Support, and Ruby on Rails (Professional and E-Commerce).

Provided with sufficient ample of resources, you’ll be able to create a wonderful website depending on your dreams and wishes. With storage ranging from 5 GB for Advance to 25 GB for E-Commerce and bandwidth ranging from 150 GB for Advance to 500 GB for E-Commerce, you are just one step away from success.

And remember, with E-Commerce plan, you will have your very own Dedicated SSL Module and Dedicated E-Commerce setup. So choose your UNIX plan now! Starting from only $10.95/month, you wil get nothing more than satisfaction.

Windows Lovers
And Windows seekers, Premium Hosting is also here for you with three different plans - Business, .NET, and Ultimate. Following UNIX offers, we include the latest Windows technologies too on stage. We have specialized the features in each Premium Windows plans.

When you require for simple but perfect use like ASP 3.0, PHP 5, PERL5, MySQL 5, MS-SQL 2005, and AJAX support, we offer you to use our Business Windows, starting from only $12.95/month with 5 GB storage and 150 GB bandwidth.

But if you require for .NET features, we have Windows .NET with .NET framework 3.5 and ASP.NET 2.0. Starting from only $15.95/month, you already get to use 15 GB storage and 200 GB Bandwidth provided. Additionally, it is completed with MySQL5, MS-SQL 2005, and AJAX support.

Last but not least, we have Ultimate Windows with everything in it. How? Starting at only $19.95/month, have Cold Fusion MX 7.0, ASP 3.0, Custom DLL Components, PHP5, MySQL5, PERL5, AJAX Support in one. You also receive 25 GB storage and 300 GB bandwidth to build your online kingdom.

There Is still Even More for You…
To even complete the Premium web hosting better, we have purchased 20 IBM Xseries Blade Servers with an upgraded Storage Area Network to improve access and uptime. We have Acronis® disaster recovery system and a muliti-tiered OC48 network backbone. Using our Quick Fix ticketing, you are guaranteed an hour reply for your Premium account tickets. Only full satisfaction guaranteed! Take advantages from it now and save your valuable time…

~G4br13lle~

Get ready for an upgrade! We proudly inform you that we will perform MS-SQL upgrade for your accounts. All accounts using MS-SQL 2000 will be upgraded to either MS-SQL 2005 or MS-SQL Express 2005. We have specified the upgrading process.

All accounts using our old cluster (old plans) will be upgraded to MS-SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. Moreover, those having accounts in our all new Premium Hosting (the new cluster) will use the MS-SQL Server 2005 Standard. What’s so special about both MS-SQL 2005?

MS-SQL Server (SQL 2005 Express)

From the first of many pluses, The Express edition is a fast and easy way to develop dynamic applications, which is easy-to-use and lightweight. With MS-SQL Express 2005, you’ll be able to build robust and reliable applications. Simple but powerful application development is in your hand.

It offers you with attractive features for website development and performs fast There is full-text search features to provide powerful query capability over textual data. Additionally, You can also easily load databases to a hosted environment with XCopy feature. Native XML is also supported inside the database to ensure Web environment easily interoperates with other applications through Web services.

Another plus is that SQL Server Express cooperates with SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services to create interactive reports. Complicated reports with tables and charts are no longer impossible tasks to do as SQL Server Express reduces the complexity with graphics and integrate them in applications.

And What about MS-SQL Server (SQL2005 Standard)?

Many users recognize MS-SQL Server 2005 as the successor of the previous version, MS-SQL Server 2000. Just like the Express edition, it also has many advantages you can take from.  For example, the native XML support, that helps to manage XML data. MS SQL Server 2005 has the massive support to manage efficiently the Extensible Markup Language data.

It also has embedded some database file extensions to the T-SQL engine to allow further embedding  in any XQuery inquiries in T-SQL.  Moreover, MS SQL Server 2005 clearly identifies new file extensions named XML and DML, permitting modifications on the query based on the XML data.

Additionally, it delivers powerful and productive management tools for DBAs and simplifies management with integrated management environment to monitor and manage plus adjust all  databases and associated services throughout your enterprise. An extensible management infrastructure (easily programmed) using SQL Management Objects (SMO) is also provided, enabling you to customize and extend their management environment and build additional tools as you’d like to.

That’s why we decide to upgrade our MS-SQL into the 2005 Standard and Express, clearly nothing more than to provide more awesome web hosting experience for all users. So prepare now for perfection…

~ Gabrielle ~

Basically nowadays, since http 1.1, one IP address can host many domain names. For examples: abc.com, def.com, ghi.com, etc are shared in one IP address like 77.898.232.10. This has been common and transparent to most users.

To know how many domains are hosted in one IP, you can reverse your IP address and use domain check. Reversing IP is the easiest way to find all the .com, .net, .org, .biz, .us, and .info domains hosted on one IP address. Enter an IP address and you will get the list of domains hosted on the same IP.

What is actually the purpose of it? It is definitely because shared IP, used for many domains, affects  your site from the purpose of SEO and website filtering issue. How is it so?

From SEO Purpose

One method done by popular search engines like google, yahoo, msn, etc of detecting a website is based on its IP address. Usually, if websites are in the same IP address, search engines will consider that it is most likely they are operated by the same individual.

So unfortunately, search engines will devalue links from web sites pointing to other web sites hosted on the same IP address. On the contrary, search engines will highly value links from web sites hosted on different IP addresses as they consider the domains are operated by different individuals.

However, an outstanding Search Engine Optimizer will be able to ensure that all of their domains are registered under different registrars with different registrants. They do not use the same template on more than one web site and erase all traces showing that their sites are operated by the same individual.

But anyway, it will be better to prepare for precautions right?!

And from Website Filtering Issue,

Usually, many domain names that are hosted within the same IP address (shared IP) will  also gain problems when there is website filtering based on IP address. Why? It is because when a website is blocked based on its IP address, it will result on overblocking of the other websites hosted under the same IP too. Shared IP host many domain names. That means if one website is blocked based on its IP, the others will get blocked too as they share the same IP.

Take as an example when abc.com contains adult contents in the websites. And when there’s website filtering to block adult sites based on IP address, the other websites in the same IP will also be blocked. No matter they have no pornography at all, they will also get the effect from overblocking as they share the same IP. I am sure you have no willing of this happening to your website.

So What?

Well, if you think your site is unimportant, then no need to consider about it. However, if your website is very critical and all your life is in it, I suggest that reversing IP is very necessary to be done to find out what other domains are hosted under that same IP, IF your site is hosted within a shared IP address.

~Gabrielle Capstick~

Hello there! Here we’re again to provide you with the transparency of our Uptime record in November 2008. As we did in October, our availability was averagely 99.99% as guaranteed. And now, let’s evaluate our uptime in November to keep track on it.

November 2008 Availability Chart

from the record in November, the uptime was tracked in several different services including FTP, HTTP, Email, and MySQL service as done in the previous month.

From the FTP service, we reached 99.99% of uptime and had 0.010% critical time record (downtime) tracked. The downtime recorded was resulted from the regular maintenance scheduled to improve all of our servers.

For the http service (website uptime), availability reached 99.989 out of 100%. There was 0.011% of service outage when there was regular maintenance to improve server performance.

Email service including POP, SMTP, and IMAP reached 99.99% in average for November, with only 0.001% unavailability recorded for regular maintenance.

And our database service even reached 99.992% uptime recorded and just had 0.008 unavailability tracked in the servers averagely from the scheduled maintenance.

Averagely in November, from all services in all servers, the availability of Host Department servers reached 99.989% out of 100%, which is rounded off to 99.99%.

It has been shown that so far, Host Department still meets their uptime guarantee. Well anyway, see you guys next month

~Gabrielle~

Hello everyone! Over these years, Host Department has proven to provide the
best web hosting service for all of you with rock solid network and outstanding
service. We are now here for you to show the transparency of our Uptime Fact.
Average Uptime Record October 2008




Service
% Time OK
% Time Critical


FTP
99.994%
0.006%


HTTP
99.996%
0.004%


MySQL
99.996%
0.004%


SMTP
99.999%
0.001%


POP
100.000%
0.000%


IMAP
100.000%
0.000%




As pictured in the table, in October, Host Department averagely reached
99.994% out of 100% uptime for FTP service. There was only 0.006% critical
time when there was scheduled maintenance and data center migration.

On the other hand, the http service reached out of 99.996% availability and was in
0.004 % critical time in October for the website service. It was because we have scheduled
maintenance resulting in the service outage. 

For email services including SMTP, POP, and IMAP, we were available for 99.999% in average
in October, interpreting that we were passing over our uptime guarantee. 0.001% critical time
was for the regular maintenance.

Our database availabilty, MySQL, reached 99.996% averagely in October with 0.004% critical time
when there was scheduled maintenance and server migration.  

The Point from the Uptime Record
These uptime record is provided for all of our readers so that you can evaluate
 on how we rock on our uptime and we can keep improving our service now and then.
We will continuously update this record in each month in our blog at
http://www.hostdepartment.com/blog

Many have questioned about the importance of a dedicated IP for a website and why if they just use a shared IP. If you are one of them, let me help you make this clearer as “crystal”. Nevertheless, before we move on, shall we begin with the definition first?

Dedicated IP address (also called static IP) means that a website has its own IP address. So this works that either you type in your URL or the IP address number, both will take you to the same domain.

On the other hand, shared IP address means the same IP is shared for multiple websites.  Then, the web servers  will determine which website is being requested by the domain entered in the user’s browser. And if you just type in the IP address, it will bring you only to some kind of generic page instead of the specific site you are requesting.

So What’s the Importance of a Dedicated IP?

Having a dedicated IP is strongly significant, especially, when you have an e-commerce website and have to accept Credit Card payment online that seems too risky if you haven’t ensured the safety. To make it secured, you need to have your own private SSL certificate as a secure e-commerce website must have an SSL certificate to accept credit cards online. And to have private SSL certificate, a dedicated IP is needed. Since you surely do not wish to experience any Credit Card fraud, you will definitely need a dedicated IP.

Another reason to use a dedicated IP is that it is required when you’d like to use anonymous FTP. With anonymous FTP, anyone who uses the FTP software can access files in a special directory of your site. It’s called Anonymous FTP because the user’s name who tries to access remains “anonymous.” Many Web hosting providers require a static IP (dedicated IP) so that the anonymous FTP can function to work properly.

Additionally, what’s better is when your website is inaccessible and you want to access it through FTP or Web browser, you can still do it if you have a dedicated IP even when there is something like domain name propagation periods. You have no need to worry such thing when you use a dedicated IP.

Is There Anything Wrong with Shared IP?

Well actually, there is nothing wrong with shared IP. However, under certain circumstances, using a dedicated IP helps you a little bit more than using a shared IP. For example, when your website shares the same IP address with known spam or adult sites, it may raise a warning flag in search engines. Consequently, some of them may respond by banning the entire IP address from their index.

Of couse, nowadays, search engines are already able to ban anything based on a domain name instead of based on the IP address itself. However, I am sure it is much better that you prepare for precaution by using a dedicated IP for your website. Especially, when your website is a very profitable e-commerce site, which your life and business depend so much on it.

How to Get Dedicated IP?

Most hosts nowadays usually offer dedicated IPs at $2 per dedicated IP to their clients. However, I am gladly telling you that there are hosting companies that already provide free dedicated IPs to their clients. And if you want to save more but get more, I strongly recommend you to get the free ones.

Why do you need to pay for dedicated IPs when you can get them for free?

~Gabrielle Capstick~

Who doesn’t know H-SPHERE? It was released in 1998 by Positive Software, previously owned by Comodo and the ownership has now moved to Parallel since 2007. H-SPHERE represents all the capabilities a Control Panel can do. Many recognize it as the most complete Control Panel of all.

Multi-Server Hosting automation solution

Not all Control Panels support multi server hosting automation in them. However, H-SPHERE doesn’t work the same way. With H-SPHERE, you can have multi server hosting covering both Linux/Unix and Windows platform. When you already support Linux/Unix platform, you have no need to purchase another Control Panel to support Windows. H-SPHERE provides it for you. Additionally, it is also applicable with multiple database servers too, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL, ODBC. This will be a perfect solution for you.

Has-Everything-Built-In Control Panel

Another benefit for using H-SPHERE is that you don’t have to bother about using add-ons to complete the features in the Control Panel. H-SPHERE has all the necessary tools built in it - billing system with around 20 payment gateways supported, integrated support center, integrated PHP/MySQL applications, electronic mail system with anti virus plus anti spam filter, and integrated WebMail – covering all you require only with one Control Panel. Forget all the add-ons you may have to add with others.

Multi Language Control Panel (Inbuilt or Integrated)

Originally, H-SPHERE has already built many languages in it - English, Russian, Italian, French, Spanish, Dutch, German, Portuguese(Brazil). You can use which one that suits your mother tongue and you are comfortable with. However, if your desired language is not any of them, you can integrate the one you want in H-SPHERE.

Secure and Reliable Control Panel

You can also define H-SPHERE as a rock solid control panel if you have installed and configured everything properly. If you seem to find it complicated, there is a good server side documentation onsite to assist you . Using H-SPHERE, you will not find bugs in it compared to other Control Panels. It is very stable or more than stable if I may say.

Overall, H-Sphere has proved to perform as the best and the most complete hosting automation. It is not just another control panel. With H-SPHERE, you have the power to do all you can dream of in a single Control Panel.

~Gabrielle~

Yippie!!! Halloween’s around the corner! Get ready for the spooky Halloween, which is believed as the time when the boundaries between the worlds of the living and dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause some chaos like failed harvest or illnesses. You can celebrate this wonderful occassion with its famous activity, the trick or treat campaign. But don’t worry! We won’t trick you out of your hosting experience with us or do some chaos to your websites. Instead, we’d prefer giving you awesome web hosting deals as a treat for you in Halloween.

No Limit Website Hosting Hotdeal

With our No Limit Hotdeal, enjoy great discounts from 10% to 50% for all of our No Limit Web Hosting plans. Choose the one that suits you best at a very low cost from only $3.95/month for No Limit Website Hotdeal to $6.48/month for No Limit E-Commerce Hotdeal the highest after discounted if you subscribe for an annual payment. Get all the no limit features - domains, storage, bandwidth, MySQL databases, FTP, e-mail accounts - with our no limit plans!

Read more at http://www.hostdepartment.com/webhosting_hotdeal/

Mega Saver Resellers

Searching for a reseller package with generous bandwidth and storage but at a very affordable price? We have the best offer for you. Get a domain-for-life, manageable reseller account and your own reseller specialist! Not only that, all the necessary technologies such as ASP, PHP, PERL, CGI, MySQL, ColdFusion, Domain Aliases, Shell Access are also included. Starting from only $14.03/month, you can start your own web hosting company now!

Read More at http://www.hostdepartment.com/resellerhosting_mega_promo.php

Addfunds Promo with 20% Free Hosting Credit

Hey wait! We still have another offer for you, the Addfunds promo, allowing you to earn extra 20 percent hosting credits when you top-up any amount of money into your account. Either domain purchase or billing cycle extension, you can choose which you’d like to do with the extra credits. How? Use Credit Card as your payment, submit your username or account number to us, and let us know how much you want to add. Then, we’ll do the rest and provide you with the additional 20% hosting credit.

Read more at http://www.hostdepartment.com/earn_webhosting_credits.html

So what else are you waiting for? Have some more fun and treat for your Halloween now with our deals!