Internet Marketing Blog » Hosting

Dotcom refused bail for the second time as he’s deemed a “flight risk”

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:55:49 +0000

MegaUpload co-founder Kim Dotcom, or to use his real name Kim Schmitz has been refused jail for the second time. Unlike Bluehost, MegaUpload hosted files rather than websites, and has been closed down pending charges of online piracy by the US Federal Government. Dotcom was arrested in New Zealand, and has been prevented from being bailed because he is deemed a “flight risk” before being extradited to America. Arguing against this, Dotcom made his first public utterances since being arrested. He disputed the reasons for him being refused bail:

“I’m aware that if I go to Germany I would be unable to unfreeze my assets. What I want to do is stay here to fight and get my money back. What would I do in Germany with five kids and a wife with no money? It is not an option for me.”

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Dotcom is a German citizen and as Germany has no extradition policy with the United States, he would escape trial in the US. Dotcom states that he hasn’t got the money to support himself and his 5 children, and wants to face the charges in the US so he can unfreeze his assets which are approximately $40million currently. US prosecutors feared that Dotcom may have more money and this played a part in the New Zealand court refusing bail for the second time. Justice Asher said:

“He may or may not have the means to bring about such a scenario, however it was open to the judge and constituted a significant risk which could not be mitigated by [bail] conditions.”

The fact that he could use a helicopter or another “unorthodox route,” the fact he was a wealthy man and possibility of returning to Germany, all played a part in bail being rejected. Dotcom is expected to appeal for a third time against being rejected for bail. The assets that have currently been seized are $6million of cars, $23million in Hong Kong as well as $10m worth of New Zealand government bonds. The dispute over online piracy will go on, and despite the SOPA and PIPA acts in the US being put on hold, websites and web hosts such as Bluehost are still uncertain about the future.

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Is Mega Upload’s Controversial Shutdown The Start of a Crackdown?

dtully — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:50:11 +0000

The controversy surrounding Mega Upload’s after it was shut down by the US government continues. The file sharing site and web host tool, had seen massive growth since it was established six years ago and at one time was the 13th most popular site on the internet, meaning it would have needed to be on a substantial server supported by the likes of Bluehost, as well as other hosting companies.

Mega Upload has however continued to court controversy during this time as it has continually been accused of sharing pirated material on its website. Although not the largest site of its kind online, the website was still making huge amounts of money and the US government has seized $50million worth of assets and claims that the $175million which the company earned over its six years in existence came mostly from copyright infringed content.

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Still, Mega Upload had quite public with its claims it wanted to remove copyrighted material from its website. It provided copyright holders an option to hunt down illegal content which had been put on its website, and also had signed and registered with the US government under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was aimed at stopping piracy online.

For some then, despite there being worse sites online for illegal content, the US government has used Mega Upload as a symbol representing its stance on piracy online, which is costing the US economy billions per year. This shut down has followed all the news surrounding the equally controversial SOPA and PIPA acts which were making their way through congress.

Both acts have been put on hold for the time being after large sites such as Wikipedia held black out protests against the acts, because they believed they would hinder freedom on the internet. Web hosts such as Bluehost, also oppose the act because of the tough sanctions it could impose on them.

The developments of both the Mega Upload shutdown and SOPA/PIPA acts has put online piracy at the forefront of the news in the past few weeks.

Starting up a new business on the internet

dtully — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:04:26 +0000


by edkohler under CC BY with wpseopix.com

When you are starting up a new business, it can be quite a busy time, but one thing you shouldn’t forget about is setting up a website to market your business. Online marketing is now a very popular way of getting cheap advertising and coverage for your business and it is a very important to get right in this modern internet age. Finding the right web host, such as Bluehost, is a crucial starting point for any business online.

Before you even think about web design and content issues, finding a web hosting that is both economical and reliable is of paramount importance. For this reason, it is key to find a web hosting company that understands the needs of small businesses. Bluehost is one such company as their entire web hosting plan is based around accommodating the needs of small businesses.

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You might ask the question; doesn’t every web host accommodate small businesses? Well, most do but different web hosting providers have different web hosting plans which tailor to different markets. Bluehost and Fatcow web hosting for example offer a range of eCommerce solutions for their clients which are targeted towards small businesses.

They can provide as part of their plans, shopping carts, financial transaction technology as well as free online advertising on the likes of Google and Yahoo. These elements make a company like Bluehost’s plan very economical and geared towards start up businesses.

In addition though, as I have said before, you will want your web host to be reliable too as otherwise your hosting could cost you more trade through downtime issues than through cheap monthly fees. Having excellent customer support to resolve issues and an uptime of close to 100% makes Bluehost a highly recommended web hosting service to choose. Make sure then that you take these elements into consideration when finding web hosting for your new business website.

GoDaddy sales still strong despite SOPA controversy

dtully — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:18:48 +0000


by renatomitra under CC BY-SA with wpseopix.com

If you haven’t followed the story, web hosting firm GoDaddy has been run through the mill in recent weeks after it had decided to support the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) through Congress. Wikipedia co founder Jimmy Wales announced on his Twitter account that his web site would withdraw from using GoDaddy’s services because of GoDaddy’s support for the act. Most other web hosts and websites, including Bluehost, have voiced their opposition to the act because of a number of question marks of the freedom it would give the United States government to shut down sites without any recourse to mediation and subsequent fines to web hosts for hosting the aforementioned banned sites.

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GoDaddy have since withdrawn their support for the bill as they had been growing unrest in the online community of their support. They had even been a day planned to get people to withdraw their services from GoDaddy, and boycott the website. Still, it can be revealed that the web host didn’t do all that bad from the controversy.

According to Empowered News, comparing the traffic between five of the most popular web hosts including Bluehost, Hostgator, GoDaddy, 1and1 and Host Monster, there has been no overall change to the percentage of visitors, or overall daily reach, they have been getting. It was thought that a boycott of the web hosting company would lead to some sort of dip but perhaps it is too early to say.

On the day of the boycott though, probably due to all the publicity, GoDaddy actually had more visitors on the 29th December and was their busiest day during the last week of December. They in fact may have added 20,000 domains, making up for the amount they have lost.

Still, the SOPA is still making its ways through the House of Representatives and will be going to a committee vote this month. We will keep you posted.

The Rise of Hacking in EV SSL Certificates

dtully — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:16:08 +0000

Many web hosts, like Bluehost offer SSL certificates to their users as a way of ensuring secure transactions between users and the website. There are however ways in which hackers can attack these Secure Socket Layer Protocols. Only recently, a report from Netcraft suggested a phishing attack directed at Paypal came from an Extended Validation SSL certificate.

It means a hacker had infiltrated the EV SSL certificate by hacking a sub directory of a website called FastPay which used the certificate to perform transactions. The hackers set up their own PayPal phishing scam site on the sub directory and attempted to take down customer personal information rather than it ever getting to Paypal themselves.

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The fact the hackers managed to hack such a site with an EV SSL certificate means that customers must be even more careful. The phishing attack had more legitimacy because of the green address bar which indicates a secure site, and Netcraft have reminded people to be more wary in future, and look out for more than the green bar in the browser address line.

It is an area where hackers are becoming increasingly effective at infiltrating and the report by Netcraft suggests that tighter controls are needed for websites that carry such SSL certificates and that more guidelines are required so such websites cannot be hacked with such ease and then leaving customers vulnerable to being scammed.

One of the most obvious ways would be to ensure that every applicant for such a certificate should go through a security assurance test first to make sure their site cannot be easily hacked. Especially for those not too experienced in owning a website, and may require a certificate for eCommerce services, make sure you go with a web host, like Bluehost, who can provide you with extra security applications.

Wikipedia withdraw from using GoDaddy as SOPA Backlash continues

dtully — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 16:00:37 +0000


by AmyStephen under CC BY with wpseopix.com

For those of you unaware of the SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, I have written a previous article explaining the in and outs of the bill, along with another Protect IP Act. Basically, they were designed to help prevent online piracy but they will have unintended consequences for web hosts, like Bluehost, and websites which could see a site be removed from the internet without any proper justification or appeal process. Web hosting companies and large web sites have however been strongly opposed to the bill, with only a few, like GoDaddy supporting the act through congress.

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This has led to an online backlash against the web hosting firm with it losing 20,000 accounts in a single day. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales also announced a week ago that Wikipedia would no longer have its domain names with GoDaddy, providing the domain registrar with another blow.

The Dump Go Daddy Day held on Thursday has also seen the company lose more customers and this is despite the fact that GoDaddy’s president has announced that the company has withdrawn its support for the SOPA bill. Warren Adelman announced in a statement that they would only support the bill:

“When and if the Internet community supports it.”

This is however not a full revocation of their position and there have been various protests across social networking sites, who feel that the bill restricts freedom on the internet and that GoDaddy where completely wrong to support the bill in the first place. It has been the case of GoDaddy trying to keep damage to a minimum but the SOPA case has demonstrated how an online community can really rally round a cause and change the stance of a business.

The SOPA and the Protect IP Act are expected to be passed by congress but the Save Hosting Coalition has been set up in the hope of persuading members of congress that the two acts need assessing for their full ramifications and must be reconsidered.

How to test the performance of a web hosting company

dtully — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 17:00:57 +0000

It is not particularly easy to find a reliable web host which is completely consistent to the promises it claims on its website. For a few examples, how do you know that the sites that run on their servers run fast? How do you know whether their interface and control panel are easy to use and straightforward, and is their customer service comprehensive when dealing with issues?

Before signing up to a web host like Bluehost, or perhaps prior to their money back guarantee runs out, it is wise to find out how these components of the web host actually perform:

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Speed – In regards to speed, the only sure fire way of getting accurate numbers for this is to sign up with a web host and see for yourself. Go on Google and search for a “website speed test” and then test with your site fully operational, how fast your site is actually running at. Remember that almost 80% of visitors to a website leave after seven seconds if the site doesn’t load. This has to be in the forefront of your mind when you are looking at web hosting. If you are not happy with the speed, state so to your website provider and get your money back before the guarantee runs out.

Customer service – Before even signing up with any website, it makes complete sense to check out the standard of care that a web host gives to their users. If they don’t have full details with phone, email and live web chat, don’t even bother with the web host. If they have a customer service number, call them up and see how long they take to respond, and provide them with some testing questions to see if they can cope with the level of support your require.

Control Panel – The last thing you will want is an awkward control panel, and the best web hosts have great interfaces normally supported by cPanel. A web host like Bluehost allows you to log on to a demo control panel to see how all the features interact, and this sort of demo interface is fantastic to see how easy and straightforward it is to use. You should therefore look for a web host who provide this demo feature to prospective customers.

What good web hosting could do for your website

dtully — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 18:00:37 +0000


by B.Garry under CC BY with wpseopix.com

There are so many other considerations to take into account when setting up a web site; it can be easy to forget that web hosting, like Fatcow, can play a key role in how well your site performs. Not only will your SEO work, email marketing, social media marketing and advertising determine your site’s success, to some extent the fifth element is web hosting as you not only want your site to be reliable, but also conducive to greater sales.

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How does web hosting, like Fatcow really affect these aspects of the site then? Well, there are four crucial elements to consider:

The location of your server
The speed of your site
eCommerce options
Customer support.

If we start off with the location of the server, I have mentioned this briefly before in a previous post, but search engines assess the location of the site in their search algorithms. This means that if you want to rank well on Google.com for example, you may want to have your server based in the USA. If you are targeting customers in a specific country or location, you would be wise to get a web host based in that said country or location.

Secondly, in regards to speed of site, it is not only good to have a reliable web site which stays online, you want to have one that runs quickly also as patience of visitors can be very thin and it is best to make sure your web host can supply both a reliable and quick service.

Thirdly, most web host companies, like Fatcow, offer eCommerce tools such as shopping baskets and financial transaction systems, but all have different levels of functionality and different standards of integration into your site. Research this before signing up to a web hosting provider.

Lastly, but just as important, is customer support. For beginners especially, you may run into some unsolvable problems in terms of web hosting and being able to interact with friendly and supportive technical staff is vital. Test out their support services before signing up to their web hosting plan.

cPanel announce new feature for their web hosting control panel

dtully — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:00:23 +0000


by Zahlm under CC BY with wpseopix.com

The control panel of many web hosting companies like Bluehost, cPanel has announced that goMobi is now available via the platform. The mobile website builder goMobi is designed to make building mobile websites very easy indeed and all cPanel web hosting companies will now have the tool included on their platform. Aaron Phillips, cPanel vice president of operations said:

“We are pleased to have goMobi in the suite of tools cPanel users can offer their clients. Web hosting companies are seeing a daily increase in the demand for a solid, but simple, mobile web solution. And that is exactly what dotMobi offers with its goMobi service. It’s a cost-effective way for any business to create and manage a mobile website while giving hosting companies a profitable way to help those customers.”

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Mobile websites are becoming ever more prevalent as those using mobile devices to surf the internet increases. The inclusion of goMobi on cPanel will mean web hosting companies, like Bluehost, who use cPanel, can provide an easy to use mobile site building tool, completely integrated and straightforward to set up.

The tool offers complete integration with social media sites, the ability to generate a mobile site from present or new content, the ability to add Google maps, as well as creating automated QR coding. CPanel have also got an enhanced version of the software which means there are many more templates for those who want to use goMobi to set up a mobile site.

GoMobi also comes with m-commerce tools such as Google checkout and Paypal included so you can easily set up your online business on a mobile site. In addition, web hosts, with cPanel, users will be able to add and embed video content onto their mobile platform and create customized contact, opt-in and other types of forms. If you are with a web host like Bluehost, who use cPanel, you will have another option available to create a website.

A Critical Question For Internet Marketers

dtully — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 18:00:55 +0000


by ivanpw under CC BY with wpseopix.com

Where should you go for web hosting? As I have said many times before, web hosting can be critical to how successful your business runs online. The last thing you want to happen is just when your site is becoming more popular and is improving in search engine page results,your web hosting starts becoming unreliable because of a small jump in visitors, or because the service you are using doesn’t have a good enough uptime percentage.

We all know it is tough out there trying to get your business up and running currently and this may be a reason to go with a cheap web hosting service. The problem with some of these web hosting services is that they don’t last very long. Some people start up web hosts thinking they will be able to make a lot of money and they soon realize that they need to have as many people on as few servers as possible to make a good income.

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If they don’t get enough users, the entire venture can become unprofitable very quickly and the chances are that they shut down their operations and servers quickly because their low rates are not competitive in the market. This means that you will be left high and dry without web hosting for your web site.

You may think my advice would be to go with a massive web hosting company who will be both reliable and efficient, but you would be wrong. There are stumbling blocks here too as their hosting costs can be very expensive for the little service that they provide. In addition, there are generally hidden charges if you go over their limits despite many advertising unlimited bandwidth and disk space.

What your really require is a hosting plan focused on small businesses, startup companies and individuals, and Fatcow is an ideal partner. Especially for internet marketers, they fit the price range for web hosting and Fatcow are reliable with good customer support. Don’t always trust that either going with the cheapest or the most expensive will be of most benefit to you, shop around, look at the fine print and go with a web hosting company which both cater and understand your needs.