Green hosting is our ticket to a more natural and healthy environment. Of course it is! This is a famous statement that we hear nowadays in the hosting industry. Everybody wants to claim themselves as a green host. Why? Being a green host will make people consider them as a noble host, doing well for a better living and environment. However, do you think they are all really a green host? To tell you the truth, there are few types of hosts calling themselves “green”.

Using Wind Power and Solar Energy

The first type of a green host is those who build data center and have servers with wind power and solar energy. They run servers with renewable energy. Also, their offices and servers use biogas, solar, wind, or geothermal energy and they also produce their own energy in house. Even further, some hosts have acquired Renewable Energy Certificate, ensuring they run eco-friendly power for their hosting business. For this one, we can really consider them as a good green host as they really use renewable energy to ensure that they keep the environment safe. Moreover, of course that means a good green hosting costs more expensively than the regular hosting.

Tree Planting

However, not all hosts claiming themselves as green hosts doing those stuffs as it is costly. The second type I will share with you now is those preferring to plant more trees to be considered “green”. Planting a tree to offset your carbon use sounds great; however, is there a real value out of it? Of course it is much cheaper and there is a real value somehow. I call it somehow as growing trees are not in an instance. However, it takes years or decades to really get the good effect. For hosts choosing this way, it seems that they just take the easiest and cheapest way for their own credibility.

My Point?

I am not saying that any of them is a bad idea. On the contrary, I am touched that any of us prefer to show their care to the environment where we live now and later. However, it will be very necessary that we also try to analyze whether they really do good for a better living or just try to get credibility for their own business by taking the simplest way only for them. Just look and feel.

~Gabrielle C~

Last time we have discussed about Horde webmail, one of the most powerful and suitable for great number of emails with large size attachments. Now, I’d like to introduce another popular webmail interface that I’m sure many of you are also familiar with.

Simplicity and light interface are the keys of Squirrelmail, suitable for you who are keen of anything simple. That’s what people keep saying about it, also known as nuts mail. But no need to doubt its capabilities in handling emails! This webmail is famous for its customizable ability, spam assassin setting ability, lightness, and newbie friendly features.

Explore the Amazement behind the Simpleness
Being simple is not always being the least. That is what you can prove in Squirrelmail. Although people have defined it as a light webmail, you can still see its awesome performance. The first of many is that it allows you to customize your preferences. This includes customizing your display - themes, mailbox, and message - with the one suiting your choice best. There are many beautiful themes that you can pick based on your liking.

You can also setup how your mailbox will be displayed. For example, how many messages will be shown in one page view. Also, you can edit how your message will look like according to your likeness. Even better, you are also able to customize personal information, including your displayed name and the signature you’d like to use everytime you send email.

Not only customizable, Squirrelmail is also able to setup spam assassin, a brilliant email filtering system that can identify unsolicited bulk emails and filter them as spams. With this ability in Squirrelmail, it is able to filter and reduce the spam emails in your inbox. You don’t need to bother about getting annoying junk emails again.

Moreover, even if you receive the spam emails, the spammers will not be notified for that since Squirrelmail does not contact the sender unless you want it, meaning that they don’t know if your email address is valid. And no worry for viruses. With Squirrelmail, email viruses will never be automatically opened since there is no downloaded attachment unless the download task is activated or clicked.

As another plus, this webmail is also perfect for its lightness and newbie friendly features. It offers you with simple interface which is very friendly for newbie users. Even when you feel you are slow in understanding the features, you can always find the how to guide from the help link at the top of your SquirrelMail screen, the “Table of Contents” link for any information about SquirrelMail. You will have all you need to know about Squirrelmail and no more confusion.

What’s Next?
Don’t let your emails unaccessible! Now that you have known the great features, it will be wasteful if you don’t take the advantages. Have yourself on your computer and browse your emails with Squirrelmail.

-Gabrielle Capstick-

When emails are very essential for your business, webmail is no longer a new stuff. Using it, you can access your email accounts and grab your emails wherever you are as long as your computer has internet connection and web browser.

Speaking of which, let me introduce you to one of the best, Horde webmail. Horde allows you to manage your emails easily with its rich features and stability. If you go on reading further, you will know how it rocks in its performance and features.

Server Stability
As you may have known, Horde is perfect for its stability when you have a large number of emails and attachments in your account. Let say you already have thousands of emails in your account and many of them have large size file attachments, Horde will not suffer in performance. There is no need anymore to delete any important emails that you may need to re-read in the future.`

Also, You can handle larger attachments and save more emails in your account without hesitating about the server load and speed. And as an additional benefit, Horde also allows you to download a large number of attachment files in zip files, making it easier for you to collect and save your attachments.

Message Filtering (Spam filter)
I bet you are surely unwilling to have your inbox filled with junk emails everyday. To get over this annoying problem, Horde lets you filter your emails into folders and block junk emails by generating filter rules for the incoming mails. You just need to edit the filter rules and set from which address is identified as spams. By using this feature, you will reduce the possibility of getting more junk emails, that is wasting your precious time and taking your attention.

HTML Composition, WYSIWIG editor, and Graphical Emoticons
What is even more interesting with Horde is you can compose your emails with HTML to make it neater and well-managed instead of writing it in plain text form only. And when you don’t know how the email will look like at the end, you can edit it with the WYSIWYG editor to ensure everything is right and meet your need. Even better, it also provides you with graphical emoticons that make your emails more attractive and have personal touch to the receiver. Horde offers an interesting composition to your email message.

After little introduction…
Now that you know how to access your emails wherever you are practically, you will not lose any chance to grab them on time for the importance of your business. Horde will help you much in handling your emails, anytime, anywhere.

-Gabrielle Capstick-

Wanna know the update Host Department’s having at the moment? We gladly announce that we have launched a new cost-efficient bundle plan, No Limit Double Deluxe Special, providing you our famous No Limit Developer Unix and Windows .NET in a single plan. This unique bundle allows you to take the advantage from the features and technologies of both Unix and Windows at a single cost only, $7.95 per month.

For the first time, we combine our two powerful plans, the Developer Unix and Windows .NET plan, to let you enjoy the amazing technologies of two hosting environments. This is the answer for your hosting needs - the Windows-exclusive technology including ASP.NET, SQL Server, ODBC and IIS6, together with trusted UNIX features like PHP, PERL and CGI - beautifully packaged into one perfect plan.

Why Do You Need to Subscribe?

Usually, you pay one you get one, always like that. When you need both Unix and Windows, you pay twice and it’s cost-taking plus pain in the ass for your saving. With our special plan, you just pay from only $13.95 per month (monthly payment) until $7.95 per month, very affordable pricing when you sign up for 36 months.

As a reminder, the regular No Limit Developer Unix costs from $8.95 monthly to $5.95 per month for at least annual payment. Moreover, No Limit Developer Windows .NET costs you even higher, from $10.95 in a monthly basis to $7.95 the cheapest for annual billing or more. Now, calculate how much you will spend for two plans if both of them are required for your hosting needs but don’t scream ok! Why should you pay one and get one when you can pay one and get two?

Stop yourselves from wasting your money unnecessarily!

Throw your confusion away when you need both Unix and Windows. We offer the best solution to solve your worries. Get the most from our No Limit Developer Unix and Windows .NET and sign up now!

For further details, visit http://www.hostdepartment.com/doubledeluxe_webhosting/

-Gabrielle Capstick-

Scams - they come from many different flavors. Some are downright obvious, like eBay and PayPal sites stealing your identity. Then, there is a generous Nigerian who is willing to give you millions in cash. Yet, other scams can be a little hard to detect. These scams do not directly target you. Instead, they may target your business (or your online business) and can have very damaging effects if you are not cautious.

Today, let me share a little about a “harmless” scam that seems very above-the-board at first, but is really not so when you dig deeper beyond the obvious.

Domain name is the most important item for a company to have in the Internet. Without it, there will be no such company. People can’t visit your website with ease (just imagine remembering all those IP numbers). Regarding that simple but significant issue, domain can be one of the prime targets for scammers. who are they and how do they trick you out of your domain?

Most scammers nowadays come from the China domain registrars; they e-mail you, say that there is third party trying to steal your trademark, and suggest you to register all China extension domain names referring to your company (like .cn, tw, hk) with them. It’s not new for my company as during the last one month, there have been few typical e-mails sent to us.

Dear Manager,

We are Fexon Technology Limited, which is the domain name register center in China. I have something to confirm with you. We have received an application formally, one company named “Chesterton Holdings LLC” applies for the domain names(hostdepartment.com.tw hostdepartment.com.hk, hostdepartment.net.cn, yourcompany.org.cn, etc.) and the internet Brand Name(yourcompany)on the internet Apr. 3, 2008. We need to know the opinion of your company, because the domain names and keywords may relate to the usufruct of brand name on internet. We would like to get the affirmation of your company, please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible. Please let someone in your company who is responsible for trademark or intellectual right contact me freely.

We didn’t know it was just a scam. I searched in search engines and found out these cases have been undergone by many companies. China domain registrars contacted them, told them that another company was trying to register domains referring to their trademark, and advised them to register the domains with the China registrar. What did I do next? I replied them politely and said that our company has no plan to expand to China; so, there is no need to register the domains with them.

Did it stop? Wrong guess! Two or three weeks after, we received another e-mail from another China domain registrar. Awesome! Two companies but the same type, scam. It said like this:

Hello
We are Shanghai NIC Internet Service Co.,Ltd, an oversea domain name registration organization. On April. 28th 2008, we received the Aiffida Investment company’s application that they want to register the ¡°hostdepartment¡± as their CN domain name and the Internet Brand. It’s our duty to tell you this matter in order to avoid the unnecessary Intellectual Property dispute .We want to confirm whether you have authorized the company to register. If you haven’t, please let me know whether you need to protect your domain name and the Internet Brand or not. According to the register principle, the original owner of the trademark has the priority to register. The priority time is 5-7 workdays, if your company give up the priority, we will accept the Aiffida company’s register request and help the company register after the time is over. Best regards!

Dylan Lan, China Internet Network approve Organization -Shanghai NIC Internet Service Co.,Ltd

Regarding the ticket, we sent a polite reply, saying that nobody can steal any company’s trademark and if there is, necessary lawful action will be taken; but tell you what, he sent another e-mail, the same point in paraphrased sentences. They sounded the same to me honestly, annoying huh?

Hello
We are now auditing the application of Aiffida company. Hereby I need to tell you that Aiffida company is using the trademark “hostdepartment” to register the top domain in China “transactiondirectory.cn, hostdepartment.com.hk, hostdepartment.com.tw, hostdepartment.net.cn, hostdepartment.org.cn ” and internet brand “hostdepartment”. These domain names and internet brand involves your company¡¯s benefit and reputation, according to domain name registration principle, we are responsible to bring this issue to your attention. If you want to object Aiffida to register ,there is only one way is to register these domain name by yourself and prevent other to register it . If you need to register it ,we will send you an application form according to the procedure of registration .After you fill out ,please send me back .We will use it to reject Aiffida’s application and help your company to finish the registration

Best wishes! Dylan

Don’t you think it was already unbearable anymore? Replying this, we were not that tolerating anymore. We stated directly that they are included in the list of scam registrar companies and asked for their explanation. This was effective because no more e-mail again from them since then.

What to Learn from the Lesson?

I found articles about people’s similar experiences and even the law document about China domain registration. It’s true we will impossibly expand our business in China regions if a third party registers domain names referring to our company since the law doesn’t allow different organizations refer to the same trademark. On one hand, it seems they are helping to save our trademark from being stolen. However, be aware that the cases are not rare and it is silly to straightly trust them and register some domain names in a rush. We should at least check them out for their reliability.

Mostly, their strategy in tricking us is just exactly like our experience. They contact by e-mail and say that a third party company (is there any?) is trying to register some China domains referring to our brand and it will influence our trademark badly on the sight of our customers. No doubt about that (if the case exists). However, to tell you the truth, what they are doing is just trying to fool us for their profit since the Domain Name Registration usually costs higher than the usual one.

Even worse, are you sure it will guarantee your brand is safe once you register those domains to them? The answer is no since they just manipulate our money by selling the domains expensively at $20-$50 a year for one China domain. If we really want to register the domain names and protect our trademark, do it with reliable domain registrars to ensure that our trademark is really protected.

For information, the China government internet network institution, CNNIC, has exposed the lists of China domain registrars that are scams, as you can have a look at http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=6944670. In the provided link, you’ll be assured that these companies have grown abundantly in number, meaning that you should be more concerned when any of these registrars contact you through e-mail. Even more, who knows if the number has increased? Just beware! You don’t want to lose some money worthlessly for sure.

So, don’t get tricked by the domain scammers. Just inform them that we can take any lawful action for trademark thief and if they insist, let them realize what they should know about themselves.

-Gabrielle Capstick-

When your site seems to be your whole life, SEO and SEM are no longer unfamiliar in your ears. However, do you really notice that they are different “roads” to take although they share the same idea, to drive more traffic to your site? Have you figured out which one to use for improving your site traffic? Or, deciding the best is still a big question mark for you? If so, let me help you erase all the confusion.

How is the Idea of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Everybody must have the picture of what SEO is in your mind. Nevertheless, nothing wrong to review it again. Frankly speaking, SEO refers to the strategies of increasing traffic site with appropriate keywords or tags, site design and structure, coding, or whatever directed to natural site optimization to target different search types such as usual search, image search, or others.

SEO is done through the calculation of mathematics, computer languages, and linguistics to define what people search for and to attract more clicks on a website. It basically aims to improve the site rank in search engines, especially those leading search engines such as Yahoo, Google, or Microsoft. Why do you think rank is important? Very simple. The higher your site rank is, the better chance for attracting more visitors. And the higher traffic your site has, the higher your chance to grow your business and gain success.

And what about Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

People say that SEM is almost or exactly the same with SEO since they share the same purpose, to drive more traffic. However, when you dig deeper, you will know they work on different paths. When SEO has stuffs to do with coding, computing languages, calculation, designs, and structures (simply free of charge if you can do it by yourselves), SEM already includes SEO and paid listing or inclusion. You get what you pay for. Webmasters define SEM as internet marketing strategies.

This term, SEM, didn’t appear suddenly. SEO developed as SEM when it began to expand the strategies into marketing and advertising chances, pioneered by leading search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, by paying some amount of money to get included or listed. These are obviously beneficial for your site traffic. You pay and they’ll do the job for you. When you decide to use SEM, that will cover all possibilities to increase your site traffic and rank, involving payment for inclusion in search engines and listing in directories, online marketing strategies, and the SEO itself.

To Decide which One…

This now depends on how far the online success you want to achieve. It is now very crystal clear that both are very essential for your website revenues. There is none that  is exactly the best. The combination between them will be a great chance for you to develop online. What you need to do is calculating how much budget you want to spend since SEM is more costly than SEO only. However, money does talk. You can say that what you pay is what you get.

-Gabrielle Capstick-

Setting up your website database is complicated and hard? That means you have to try SQLite. If you are not familiar, let’s have a glance.

What is SQLite?

It is a self-contained, zero-configuration, and transactional SQL database system that makes your database management simpler and easier than you can ever imagine before. It has mostly all features of SQL92.

Not just stopping there, this system also supports transactional feature with the ACID capability, which stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability. It generates the idea that with this capability, nothing can really disturb any database transaction.

This means that even if when there is power failure, operating system crash, or program crash when using SQLite, it will not interrupt the transaction process of database management system and you don’t have to recover any files due to these circumstances. I am sure you will find this brilliant.

What Makes It Better and Simple?

What you have to know first about SQLite is that you have nothing to worry about dizzying database installation that often comes up in your mind. SQLite provides you the easiest way. Zero configuration is required when you set up or install SQLite since it doesn’t need any configuration files to be running.

Using SQLite, there will be no need to tell the system that it is installed, no restarting and no stopping for configuration. It works automatically. Even when power failure or system crash happens, it doesn’t need to recover and will keep running normally as it does. The idea is all about simplicity.

Other database engines may not always be applicable in most platforms (not cross-platform). However, it’s not the way SQLite operates. So far, SQLite has been used for 125 millions copies in Mozilla Firefox, 20 millions installations in Mac OS X computers, 300 millions uses in Skype, also in Unix (Linux), Win32, and WinCE, meaning that it can be copied, downloaded, and used in possibly most ports or systems since it is a cross-platform database system.

Even better, not only in computer, you can also have it in your gadgets such as PDA or other cellular phones that operate with Symbian system and in MP3 players and ipod too. What a practical and portable database engine if I can say.

Additionally, SQLite performs much faster than the usual SQL. In some tests, it has been proved that SQLite 2.76 performs about 10 or 20 times faster than the default PostgreSQL 7.1.3 installation on RedHat 7.2 for most common operations. Other example, in a test between SQLite 2.76 and MySQL 3.23.41, SQLite performs twice faster in most operations. This means that SQLite has better speed than other popular client or server database engine.

The unbelievable excellent features of SQLite make it unbeatable. You better download and install this remarkable tool right away since many possible uses and applications are guaranteed such as for application file format, gadgets database, small to medium sized websites, internal or temporary database, stand-in for an enterprise RDBMS, and many more. Make up your mind now since the new version, SQLite 3.57, is now available and recommended for all users. Trust me, you will never regret.

Read more at http://www.sqlite.org/

- Gabrielle Capstick -

For those who are familiar with website monitoring services, I bet you all must know about AWStats, an open source web analytics tool for analyzing data from internet services like web, streaming media, FTP server, or mail with graphical analysis. With AWStats, you can get outstanding benefits since it provides complete reports, analysis, and ready to use features that help perform your site well. Curious about how it helps for your site growth? Have a look at its wonderful features and offers.

Complete Tracking and Full Log Analysis for Your Site

Willing to know how the progress of your site is from time to time? You can check number of visits; visit durations; most viewed, entry, and exit pages; visits of robots, worms attacks, keywords to find your site in search engine, how many times your site is added to favorite bookmarks, and many more by using AWStats monitoring tool. Nothing to worry about losing any site progress that may happen when you use this tool. With the complete analysis, you will know how your site performs and how accessible it is to users whether it is hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly visit report.

Checking HTTP Error Pages

Additionally, AWStats monitoring tool is able to check HTTP pages like HTTP error pages including 404,403, 301, 400, 302, 206, 401, etc happening to your website when someone tries to click it. Sometimes users often find these types of error pages and might get confused. By using AWStats, you can know how much these error codes are shown when users visit your website so that you can improve your site for better future performance since you don’t want your users or potential users leave your site forever, right?

With these awesome features, I bet you are now convinced to use it for your site. However, some of you surely still doubt about how to use it well if you don’t know technical skill. On the contrary, I’m sure you don’t want to lose any of these profitable offers just because of technical stuff.

Still Doubting Since You Don’t Know Any Technical Skill?

Proper web log analysis tool configuration and report interpretation surely requires a bit of technical and business knowledge that not all people expertise in the subjects. However, don’t bother about this since AWStats provides us with complete documentation that will guide us clearly about its enormous features, how to set up and configure, and also some interesting topics such as AWStats comparisons with other log analyzer, FAQ, or troubleshooting matter. Even more, AWStats also provides us with user community forum in which all its users can share their knowledge, ask whatever comes to their mind, and get solutions for their problems in using AWStats by communicating with other users and helping each other. You just have to create a forum account and post a thread every time you have inquiries and many will be pleased to help you.

What Should You Do Next?

Considering there are so many genuine pluses AWStats can offer for your site, be sure that it is very profitable for you to use this tool for monitoring your site if your business depends on your site. Don’t waste more time to rethink more since we all know every single second is valuable for achieving your online goals.

-Gabrielle Capstick-

What is in your mind when you hear the term “Green Hosting”? It involves the idea of a new hosting solution that offers hosting service without negative impact towards the environment. Green Hosting makes use of renewable energy and also offsets the carbon use (carbon neutral). Why do you think I strongly suggest this hosting service?

Energy Conservation and Money Saving

Green hosting helps us to save more energy since it uses wind power, solar power, hydroelectric power and bio fuel that can be renewed automatically at any time. We have nothing to worry about running out of energy since they will never run out. By using these resources, we can conserve the non-renewable energy and use it for another beneficial purpose. Moreover, with the usage of these renewable resources, we can save more and cost much less than if we use the non-renewable energy. These clearly make better difference between the non-renewable and renewable energy

Better Living for All Creatures

Additionally, the green hosting service also provides better places to live for all of us since it is carbon neutral and pollution free. Even more, it avoids deforestation that contributes to the cause of flood and the lack of fresh air. As a better option, green hosting promotes more to reforestation by planting more trees that helps to rebuild a good environment and land to live in. With the friendly environmental energy and more tree plantations, green hosting influences the development of better nature.

As an alternative to Solve Global Warming

Global warming has been a great concern of most people in this world these days and it has been increasing widespread recently. Due to this fact, having green hosting will be one of effective alternative solution to overcome the issue. How can it help? Well, one of the green hosting projects is offsetting the usage of combusting methane, which is known to have greater possibility of global warming potential. By offsetting the use of methane, green hosting has helped to reduce the issue of global warming.

The Point Taken is…

By joining the green hosting plan instead of the regular hosting plans, I’m sure we can do much better good that is mutual for us and the environment. The time has come for us to consider not only for our own profit but also for the creatures’ life and the environment too. With green hosting, we prove ourselves to be better humanity.

-Gabrielle Capstick-

Although Google hasn’t started any business in web hosting, I believe they’ll surely succeed and grow significantly when they do. By the time they decide to enter the competition, there could be a serious pendulum shift in their favour. Why?

For starters, web hosting is a promising industry with huge untapped market. So far, only a very small amount is hosted by large web hosts (4-5%) while others are gathered in small or middle hosts (more than 10,000 accounts). What Google has is tons and tons of money to start a web hosting business and expand it into a world class act. Before we know it, Google will be eating up our customers.

There are no major obstacles for Google to get into the business, really. In a web hosting business, as long as you have a web connection, you can easily resell hosting. And, Google have that and more…

Many will eagerly pay to get pay-per-click. Google can easily give up #1 spots on the search list to market a their Web hosting packages. Or simply create new marketing spot above the search results to accommodate it.

To build a great hosting company, you need the skilled staff to provide smooth traffic for the customers; block harmful viruses, worm, and hackers; and maintain the 100% uptime to avoid server downtime. Google has all of them.

A desirable e-mail extension is one of the perks from having your own domain name. Why can Google enter the business? Gmail of course! Although wasn’t flawless, at least Google has mail service. They already have huge amount of e-mail customers, meaning they’re familiar with e-mail management and can promote hosting service to uncountable customers.

Most will only do business with a brand they trust. And, Google *is* a household name.

To counter such an act will require tremendous amount of effort, not to mention, deep enough pockets to offset any marketing campaign made.

Original article: Web Host Crunch