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Web Hosting, Web Hosting UK, Dedicated Servers, Managed Hosting, Dedicated Server | CWCS
In these increasingly perilous times, with cyber crime, other types of crime, even the unpredictable effects of climate change, all presenting a range of threats to your data, it’s more important than ever to have a sound backup strategy for your web site.
As well as the inevitable Plan A, you should have a Plan B, even a Plan C.
Plan A should be the backup service provide by your web hosting company, which should be included as part of your package. Make sure that this backup service is provided when negotiating your package.
Plan B is the backup system you set up as part of your own home or business. The first step is to decide what kind of backup you want to run. Let’s take the example of a business with a medium-sized website. You could acquire a brand name external hard drive and make a nightly copy of your web site from your web hosting company’s servers on to the external hard drive attached to your PC or laptop. You would most likely make that copy using an ftp programme.
Furthermore you could go the extra mile and have a Plan C. This could take the form of purchasing an online backup account, and running a nightly backup to the online company, which complements the backup to the external drive.
Here at CWCS we are confident and happy to be your Plan A for backup: we offer secure, regular backups of your site as part of all our web hosting packages.
Viral marketing is a largely web based or word-of-mouth form of product promotion, in which a marketing message is passed from user to user often exponentially.
There are potential benefits to your website, and your business, in a well-planned and run viral marketing campaign.
Web-based email companies have attracted large volumes of new users, in part, by appending a self-advertising message at the bottom of every email sent. This type of subtle marketing contrasts with more lively one-off set pieces, such as the web video promoting a guitar tuition site, which showed a young man strumming brilliantly in his bedroom, and attracted some 45 million views.
The main advantage of viral marketing is that it can be a low-cost way, effective, global form of promotion. Furthermore, it could the best type of PR you can get for your company.
Some tips: Make sure your message is wrapped up in a catchy, spontaneous package. A fun video, entertainment news story, or catch-phrase, are possibilities. There should also be something inclusive about your project: don’t restrict yourself to niche audiences.
If you use social networking sites, make your presence on them focussed and professional.
Finally, be prepared for a surge in hits on your website should your campaign be a big hit: make sure your web hosting package is up to it. Here at CWCS we might recommend, for instance, that you upgrade to a more high capacity web hosting package before embarking on your viral marketing campaign.
It’s almost inevitable that, during the course of setting up and running your website, you will need to contact your web hosting company’s technical support department for assistance.
Some of the problems you may experience are: you have forgotten how to access your control panel, you want to add or remove a mailbox, you’re concerned that your site may have been sabotaged by a hacker, your site seems to be “down” or you have stopped receiving emails.
All these and more are reasons for contacting the tech team, and here at web hosting company CWCS we are passionate about technical support, both by phone and email.
When first contacting tech support, try to define the problem as clearly as possible. Writing down the issue helps. The more specific you can be the better. “I can’t see my homepage” is a lot less useful than “Since 9.00am this morning I have been unable to reach my homepage on my home PC”.
Also, whilst picking up the phone and calling support is always tempting, emailing tech support is, except in urgent cases, probably better for you in the long run. Email gives you a chance to provide more details and attach any screen grabs. Furthermore, you get an instant “paper trail” in your inbox, including a case reference number, making it easier for both sides to monitor progress.
Emails are also useful should the case need to be looked at by another person in your company, and at CWCS we provide tech support by phone or email to ensure that your web hosting is always up to scratch.
“Spam” is the common word for unsolicited emails usually sent in bulk to unwitting recipients. Spam is the email equivalent of the leaflet through the door selling promising pizzas made with an amazing new type of crust. You won’t know the sender of these mails and at times they can be sleazy and offensive in nature.
There is one effective step you can take, at least as a starting point, towards ridding your life of spam. This is to switch on the spam filter that comes with the mailbox provided by your web hosting company. This switch can usually be found in your site’s “Control Panel” interface.
At web hosting company CWCS for example, we provide a spam filter for free with the Starter Package, so that you can rid yourself of spam emails.
The advantage of enabling the dedicated server spam filter is that unwanted emails get “headed off at the pass” before even being downloaded on to your home computer’s email programme.
What’s more, there should be no fears about losing emails which get mistakenly labelled as spam. All spam software suffers these “false positives” occasionally. Using the Control Panel you can set your spam not to be deleted automatically, so it will be stored in a “junk mail” folder in your webmail software. Then you can set yourself a reminder every few days to review that junk mail for just these false positives.
Taking this action will give you a great first line of defence in the battle against spam.
With almost any web hosting package, you’ll be offered a number of email mailboxes as part of the deal. A hosting package with CWCS will give you up to 200 mailboxes as standard.
A mailbox provides you with an email address that matches your company’s domain name, such as peter@example.co.uk – which becomes the email address for an employee at “example.co.uk”. Your email address then becomes an instant, remarkably simple marketing tool that promotes your business whenever you email someone.
You should also explore webmail. This is a way of viewing, writing and sending emails through your web browser, and it’s provided as standard by most web hosting companies.
If you intend to use a lot of email, you should avoid treating your webmail as your main email programme, because the amount of mails the mailbox can hold at any one time is restricted by the amount of dedicated server space you’re renting.
A tip is to set your home email to “always delete from the dedicated server” when retrieving from your domain’s mailbox. That way you keep the size of your rented mailbox under control.
However, as a method of viewing your new emails whilst you are on the road, webmail has some big pluses: it’s an advert-free zone, unlike some mass-market, browser-based email programmes.
Furthermore, by using webmail you are looking directly at incoming emails in real time, the very second they arrive. Most desktop home email programmes cannot match this level of immediate access. Webmail is a great way to catch those business-critical emails you need to see “like yesterday”.
If you’re a small business setting up a website it’s likely you won’t have a designer in-house, so you are almost inevitably going to find yourself needing a website designer and external dedicated server.
Before speaking to any design companies clear your head and your desk, switch off your mobile and computer, sit down with pen and paper, and think long and hard about what you really want from your company’s website.
The costs for small business websites do vary but can range from £250 to thousands of pounds depending upon complexity. Be aware that adding an e-commerce feature in particular can increase website design costs.
The trick is to find a designer who understands you, your company, its vision, and whom you feel you get on well with, at an affordable price.
Don’t rush this procurement. Consult colleagues, any friends in the web industry, and scour competitors’ websites. Plus, if you find a company you want to work with don’t necessarily be deterred by an expensive first quote. You can always try some amicable negotiation.
Once you’ve found your designer, you should feel confident to let them talk direct to your web hosting company.
At CWCS we are happy, with your authorisation, to talk to third parties. In fact it’s often better to let the experts talk directly, as long as you’re kept informed. We can help your designer decide such matters as the best hosting package for you, and whether to go for a Linux server or Windows server.
It is not uncommon to hear of website owners complaining about their web hosting services. Before owning a website, most business owners would not have understood the term but when things start to go wrong, ‘web hosting‘ can become the dreaded words that you do not want to hear when you are trying to represent your firm online.
A top example would be to find that your websites are down – or perhaps even worse, alternate up and down so frequently that it is difficult to prove how or why to your web hosting company. This problem is compounded if you are unable to get in touch with a representative from the web hosting company, even if they are in the UK. Raising a service ticket can be frustrating if they do not respond in a timely fashion – or even worse, appear to go into a black hole.
There are so many real and genuine complaints against bad website hosting services. Looking through the array of reviews on different servers, identifying which companies give you good service and which don’t is a minefield. The biggest most, concurrent problem is with service. Not answering complaints, not refunding a client, and no information as to why the server is down.
At CWCS, communication and service are our best skills. We pride ourselves in good clear communication and excellent service at all times. It has to be, or we would not be an award winning web site hosting server that has helped clients for over 10 years. Call us and see what we can do for you.
Microsoft is one of the world’s largest companies, selling computer technology across the world. They created the Windows Operating System and also the industry standard Windows Office package that can be seen in almost every business in the UK today. Microsoft also produces a Windows server, which currently runs over 80% of operating websites around the world. There is a huge burden of responsibility on Microsoft and its founder Bill Gates to get it right:
“I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication, they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.”
The Windows server 2008 package is specifically designed to be user friendly. Built to look like Microsoft’s new operating system Windows 7, the new server is both clever and looks fabulous. And with their new media streaming upgrades, Microsoft are putting on the final touches to an already astounding programme.
“If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.”
In this Windows server, Microsoft have achieved both targets admirably. The new system is much better implemented than the previous 2003 model, with easier to understand navigation and a more straightforward installation process.
“The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.”
And Windows server 2008 seems to be the right server to get your business there. At web hosting company CWCS we can show you how windows server 2008 can give your business a boost.
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