WebMe - Website Design & Development

A lot of web hosting companies, including ourselves, make bold claims about offering unlimited web hosting features such as unlimited web space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited databases etc. We see a lot of discussion on forums about what this actually means and questioning how anything can really be unlimited when no one (not even Google or Microsoft) can have an unlimited number of servers to draw power from.

What we mean by unlimited is that we have so many resources at our disposal and we have invested so much money in to our infrastructure that our customers never have to worry about hitting a limit because the allowance available is so large it won't ever be stretched to breaking point.

Unlike other web hosts our business model is not based around running servers at capacity to wring every last cent out of the bottom line. Why? Because this ignores the unpredictable nature of internet usage. If one customer has a sudden and dramatic spike in traffic it could bring the entire shared server down, affecting hundreds of other customers. We just don't think it's worth the risk.

With this in mind, we build in extra capacity in to a server and don't allow any server to get even near maximum capacity so that no customer can drain a server's performance levels. The same goes for bandwidth, database servers and mail servers.

Labels: choosing, general info, hosting

In this day and age it is vitally important that you keep your PC secure and safe. Fortunately this can be accomplished without cost.
Here are three tools that will help keep your PC safe and secure for free:

• AVG Free Virus software - Free anti virus software from firm AVG. This is a great piece of software with on-access file scanning, email scanning and web site scanning - informing you of potentially dangerous websites with an icon in search results.
• Spybot Search & Destroy - A spyware scanner and also a dangerous website blocker. It can automatically prevent bad cookies and images using it's built in Immunisation functionality. You can also use it to prevent system settings being changed without your knowledge.
• Windows Firewall - Does the job it's supposed to and comes for free with Windows.

Just make sure you keep these products up to date once you have installed them and you should have many trouble free years using the internet.

Labels: general info, security

If you are on a hosted mail system like Microsoft Exhange Server you may find that the costs are running away with you.
Fortunately there is a cheap, and just as effective, alternative: Google Apps Premier.
For just $50 a year (at the time of writing) you can have all of the functionality of Exchange Server.
Transition is made very easy by the Google Apps Sync application, and from within your WebMe Domain Control Panel you can make all of the necessary DNS changes with just a click of a button.

Labels: email, general info

There was an article published on the BBC news site today about the number of co.uk websites that are setup by Chinese organisations to con UK surfers into buying non-existant goods. The Beeb suggest a few things to prevent the unwary surfer from being caught out by these sites: They advised people to reduce the risks of being duped by:

• Searching for any user reviews of the site;
• Double clicking on the padlock symbol in the corner to reveal details about the company that registered the site; and
• Trying to connect the site to the real world by finding phone numbers or UK addresses.

Another great method is to use FlagFox (http://flagfox.net/). This plugin for FireFox gives you a little flag icon in your search bar letting you know where in the world the site is hosted. Great for finding the true geographical location of a website.

Original article here.

Labels: firefox, general info, security

There are many tools out there to shrink long website addresses and turn them into small URLs.
We have just launched our own here: mini2u.com.
If you have a long website address, but a limited amount of space to post it (e.g. Facebook status or Twitter tweet) simply copy the address (URL) into the box on Mini2U.com and it will generate a tiny URL for you.
Coming soon: hit counter - count how many hits your Mini2U URL receives.

Labels: general info, url

A common question that we get asked on our managed servers is "How do I send Ctrl+Alt+Delete to my server via a Remote Desktop session?" Well the answer is very straight forward: Whilst in your Remote Desktop session simply press Ctrl+Alt+End.

Labels: general info