Eco Hosting Blog

Stop Spam

admin — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:33:31 +0000

With the large increase in spam across the internet in recent months, we thought it best to share some of the ways we can all help to reduce the problem.

As a company, we are proactively and consistently making improvements to our systems and processes all the time to avoid the spread of spam and the problem of blacklisting, but we can be even more successful if you as a customer remain vigilant. Browsing and developing websites safely and securely and using email carefully can help us all fight the ongoing battle against spam, and ensures an even better and faster experience for all our customers.

There’s a mountain of spam and security advice available on the internet, and there are countless things you can do to avoid contributing to internet spam, including:

Keeping control over your website

Moderate interaction – If you run a blog, forum, gallery or similar, don’t set it to automatically approve comments – hold them in a moderation queue and delete any spam comments.

Stay up to date – Ensure you’re running the latest versions of all the software you’re using and only download directly from trusted sources (rather than third party sites that may have edited the code). If you have a lot of websites and/or a lot of software, make sure you keep a secure record of what you have installed where so you don’t lose track. If you have the option of subscribing to software updates then do so!

Spring clean – Delete all unused themes, plugins, hacks, add-ons etc., and review them on a regular basis to ensure you only have what you need. Never advertise the versions of scripts and software you’re using anywhere on your website.

Install Google Webmaster Tools – It’s free and helps you keep track of what links and keywords are going out from your website (which can help highlight significant spam problems and sources).

Manage your emails

Don’t post your full email address publicly on the internet in a plain text format, and delete spam emails as and when you receive them. Never reply to spam emails as the spammers will then know that your email account is active.

If you have multiple email addresses, delete any you aren’t using. If you have forwarding set up, especially for multiple accounts, make sure you aren’t just having spam forwarded between accounts.

Stay secure

Use encrypted SSL connections (https:// instead of http://) where possible, including to social network sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Password security

Be extremely careful when entering passwords in public places, particularly on touch screen phones and tablets where someone can easily look over your shoulder. Don’t stay logged into any accounts on portable devices, and ensure your passwords are as secure as possible.

Scan your computer regularly using industry-standard and up to date anti-virus and anti-malware programs, and keep on top of technology news, particularly that relating to holes and bugs in scripts.

5 New One Click Installs Added

admin — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:19:45 +0000

We’re happy to announce that we’ve added another five one-click installs to the hosting control panel, so if you have a hosting account with us, you can get set up in minutes (depending on which package you have). The new software available is:

Piwik Analytics

Quite a few people have requested this open source web analytics solution, so we’re pleased to announce it’s been added to our library. It’s a good alternative to Google Analytics and Open Web Analytics, or can be used alongside them for a wider scope of information.

Features include:
• Real time web analytics reports
• Powerful API
• Easy to use interface
• Customisable dashboard and widgets
• Build your own plugins or take advantage of those on offer
• Large, active community

Check out the demo

Simple Machines Forums

If you’re looking for an attractive message board solution, Simple Machines is definitely worth checking out. It’s already a popular choice with plenty of our customers, and now you can install it quickly and easily.

Features include:
• Template system for easy editing
• Advanced permissions and user management
• Multi-language support
• Open and well-documented source code
• Tracking of new and old unread topics
• Designed for optimal performance and scalability
• SEO friendly
• Package manager for automatic install/uninstall of mods
• File based caching for better performance

See Simple Machines in action

Zen Photo

Zen Photo is ideal if you want a user-friendly and hassle-free way to present your photos online. This gallery software can be used for displaying digital art as well as photos, so it’s one to consider if you’re a designer or photographer. It’s also a good choice for family albums.

• Lightweight and low maintenance
• Easy to use
• Good variety of plugins/extensions
• Photo commenting
• Stats to automatically show the number of clicks per album and per photo
• Search capabilities
• Search engine friendly URLs

See the demo

Status.net

Microblogging is huge at the moment, so creating your own network is a great way to share information and communicate, whether it’s within your business or simply with your site’s visitors. Collaborate, ask questions, and share resources in real-time using Status.net software.

• User profiles
• Activity streams – incorporate content from business processes, applications, content streams etc.
• Public and private user group functionality
• Direct messaging
• Upload and share documents, images and video
• Searchable conversations and archives
• Follow topics of interest
• Taggable content
• 3rd party application support
• iPhone and Android apps available
• Integrated analytics
• Plugins and extensions available

See it in action

Lime Survey

If you’ve ever spent ages searching for free survey software only to be frustrated by the limitations, then Lime Survey is for you. Whether you’re conducting extensive research or simply want to ask your visitors a few questions, Lime Survey is packed with useful features and, best of all, lets you create unlimited surveys.

• Unlimited questions and participants in a survey
• Unlimited surveys at the same time
• Multi-lingual surveys
• 20 different question types
• WYSIWYG HTML Editor
• Image and video support
• Conditions for questions depending on earlier answers (skip logic/branching)
• Anonymous survey options
• Open and closed group of participant surveys
• Sending of invitations, reminders and tokens by email
• Option for participants to buffer answers to continue survey at a later time
• Survey expiry dates for automation
• Enhanced import and export functions to text, CSV, PDF, SPSS, R, queXML and MS Excel
• Basic statistical and graphical analysis with export facility
• Screen reader accessibility

See the demo

goMobi Upgrade

admin — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:08:42 +0000

If you are a goMobi customer, next time you log in you will see there are some fantastic new features for you to use. There’s nothing you need to do either – the update happens automatically across all goMobi accounts. The new features include:

Analyse traffic with complete site analytics
Site owners can view traffic data for their mobile site by day, week, month, or a specified date range, via a new Analytics tab in the Site Manager. Traffic data can be exported to CSV and includes:
- Number of visits
- Unique and repeat visitors
- Average number of pageviews
- Average time on site
- Average new visits
- Click-through rates on features
- Mobile device used
- Language of device
- Geolocation based on IP address
- Traffic sources and search engine keywords

Create and print a QR Code-enabled marketing flyer
Site owners can now generate a QR code for the mobile site, and a printable marketing flyer that contains the QR code, the URL, and an image of their mobile site.

Upload images to a new hosted image gallery
Site owners are now able to upload up to 16 images with descriptions to create their own image gallery. Images will be displayed in a 4×4 grid on the site.

Enhancements to existing features:
- More icon sets
- Support for multiple locations and coupon codes
- Ability to connect with popular location-based services (foursquare, Facebook Places, Google Places, Yelp and Gowalla
- Better social network support (especially on higher end devices)
- Improved colour choices for backgrounds and text/titles

Six New Scripts Added

admin — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 16:00:00 +0000

The new one-click installs are:

PrestaShop

We’ve had a lot of requests for the award-winning PrestaShop, so if you’re looking for an ecommerce solution then it’s one to check out.

Features include:
• Wishlists and customer review functionality
• Customer groups feature
• Referral program and loyalty system
• Returns management
• PDF invoices and delivery slips
• Extensions available
• Pre-configured support for PayPal, Hipay, Moneybookers and more
• In-depth visitors stats
• SMS alerts
• Multi-language support

See the demo

TomatoCart

As an ecommerce software finalist in the 2010 Open Source awards, TomatoCart is renowned for its user-friendly admin panel and lightweight framework. It’s another option for ecommerce websites looking to focus on usability and speed.

Features include:
• Well-designed and intuitive admin panel
• Multi-language support
• Gift certificate and discount coupon integration
• Customer reviews, newsletter and wishlist functionality
• Integrated Piwik web analytics
• Lightweight
• Complete content management system

See the demo

Simple Invoices

If you have a business, whether it’s web hosting, web design, or even offline, you can use Simple Invoices to bill customers, track payments and much more – for free.

Features include:
• Browser-based, so accessible from anywhere (great if you want to create, update or print invoices for clients whilst you’re with them)
• Send invoices as PDFs
• Export to Word, Excel or plain text
• Total and itemised invoices available
• PayPal payment support
• Recurring invoices
• Create receipts, estimates and quotes as well as invoices
• Payment tracking and reports

See the demo

Vanilla Forums

Another requested one-click install, Vanilla Forums is an attractive and user-friendly solution for anyone wanting to add discussion functionality to their website.

Features include:
• 500+ plugins
• WordPress and Blogger integration
• Easy embedding
• Lots of themes
• Social network log ins
• Full mobile compatibility
• Easy imports from popular software such as phpBB and vBulletin
• Ability for users to upload files
• Free community support

See Vanilla Forums in action

Pligg

Ever fancied creating your own Digg-style website? Now you can install a script to do just that in under a minute. Your visitors can submit links and rate other people’s, and you don’t need to be able to code or have to pay someone to do it for you.

Features include:
• Groups for members
• Private messaging
• Ability for users to rate and comment on articles
• Free and paid modules available to extend Pligg’s capabilities
• Smarty templates for easy modification
• Easy upgrades
• Well-integrated RSS functionality

See the demo

Moodle

Moodle’s an open-source software veteran with over 44,000,000 users, so it seemed only right that we add it to our list. If you’re looking for a learning-based content management system, Moodle is your best bet. As well as being suited to educational sites, you can also use if for your own courses, tutorials, tutoring and more to increase your authority in your industry.

Features include:
• Scalability
• Additional activity modules (e.g. forums, databases and wikis)
• Support community
• In-depth developer documentation
• Multiple language support
• User-friendly
• Easy to organise courses, modules, assessments
• Support for images, videos and other downloadable files for easy access

See the demo

Open Web Analytics Added

admin — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 15:54:02 +0000

Open Web Analytics is a great way to track your website statistics if you’re looking for an alternative to Google Analytics, or an additional source of information about your visitors. Packed with features and fully open source, OWA is a great tool to improve visitor experience as well as helping you keep track of what’s popular and what needs more work. We’re pleased to announce that it’s now available as a quick and easy one-click install from your control panel!

Features include:

• Open source, running on PHP, MySQL and JavaScript
• No limits on data logging
• Ability to track multiple websites
• Heatmaps, conversion goals and goal funnels
• Mouse movement tracking
• Optional command line interface for admins
• PHP and JavaScript tracking clients
• Full integration with WordPress and MediaWiki without the need for third party plugins
• Plugin support for Drupal

And much more!

Opencart Added To Scripts

admin — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 15:52:30 +0000

We’ve had lots of requests for a one-click install of OpenCart, and we’re happy to announce OpenCart hosting is now available via your hosting control panel.

What is OpenCart?

OpenCart is a powerful ecommerce solution packed with features so you can create your own online shop. If you’ve thought about selling online – or your customers have – then OpenCart is an attractive and user-friendly way to create a store and start making money.

Some of OpenCart’s many features include:

• Unlimited products and categories
• Multi-currency support
• Product reviews and ratings
• Template designs
• More than 20 payment options and 8 shipping options
• Integrated discount code system
• SEO benefits
• Sales reports and printable invoices
• Back up and restore tools
• Automatic image resizing
• Guest checkouts

Jetpack Added

admin — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 15:42:57 +0000

You may have notcied we have now added Automattic’s Jetpack to all new WordPress installs. Jetpack is a bundle of the most popular WordPress plug-ins that you can add to your WordPress site in one easy install, saving you a lot of time.

All web hosting accounts will automatically have this added. The plug-in pack includes:

• WordPress.com stats
• Twitter widget
• Gravatar hover cards
• WP.me shortlinks
• Sharedaddy

and more…

To install Jetpack on your WordPress site, once you have completed the set up process click on ‘Plugins’ in your left hand navigation. You will see you already have Akismet, Hello Dolly and now Jetpack.

Javascript Update

admin — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 15:33:09 +0000

We have had a “Javascript Generator” page in the hosting control panel for some years now. They were nice in their time (circa 2004) however scripts such as “bookmark us” buttons would just show text in modern browsers, the “popup page” would routinely be blocked nowadays, and the “frameless popup” only work in IE6. Simple widgets for a simple time.

Because of this we have replaced them with modified versions of some of our own code which can give your site more of an interactive feel. They’re all relatively simple code which you should be able to customise without much trouble.

There are a lot more scripts to choose from and we have also changed the way this page works so that it updates the page in-line rather than going to a new page. The page also puts in the name of the site being administered (where relevant) automatically.

Getting started
These are all live and ready to use for all our web hosting customers. Simply log in to the hosting control panel, scroll down to ‘Web resources’ and click on the ‘Javascript maker’ icon.

The features…

AJAX include
This basically behaves a lot like using an , but without actually using an and is launchable via Javascript. It’s the same kind of thing that Facebook does when loading the news feed.

Auto-refresh
Automatically reloads the page after a set interval. This is similar to a refresh except that it potentially gives you more control.

Break frames
This is an updated (and essentially unchanged) one. If your page is being loaded from a frame, it will reload itself without the frame.

Click to expand
This is probably one of the first things people would want to do with Javascript. You click something, something expands. You click it again, it goes away. There are many ways to do this; the approach used in this case should be accessible to novices.

Date picker
This is a pretty common use of Javascript that you see out in the Internet. You click on a text input, and instead of having to type a date (or use awkward dropdowns) it presents a simple calendar interface.

HTML5
placeholder
There are situations where you want to demonstrate what to put into an
box, but don’t have the screen space to do it. A common technique to deal with that is to put some text in by default which gets wiped when you first click in there. This is an improved version of that technique, which emulates support for the
attribute on browsers which don’t support it.

Image swapper
Swapping images around like you see on Amazon and similar sites is really easy. This snippet just requires you to put your thumbnails somewhere predictable, and basically takes care of the rest.

Inline popup
Provides a pseudo-popup, like we use in some places. It’s useful to provide in-front information without getting caught by popup blockers. To close the popup, you just click anywhere in the background.

Get title from

This is another one that we use ourselves, to save having the title written twice in each page.

Language
This is another pre-existing snippet, although rewritten to be easier to use. It detects the browser language and redirects to an appropriate page.

Logo branding
This is another pre-existing one – it used to suggest that you could make your site look like Geocities by slapping a logo in the corner. It still does that basic task, but in a simpler way.

Sort table rows
This is a task that’s quite commonly handed off to a CGI/PHP script, but it doesn’t need to be. The snippet shows how to sort by any column you like.

Word tooltips
This is the same basic way that we provide glossary information in support database articles and tickets. For a pre-defined set of words, if you hover over the word a “tooltip” appears.

Password Security

admin — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 15:21:20 +0000

As a web host, security is something we prioritise. In no particular order, here are our top tips for choosing and using passwords:

1. Avoid the obvious
Don’t use your name, the word ‘password’, your username, your date of birth, your website name or similar. You may be rolling your eyes at this advice because it’s the most obvious in the world, but there are a surprising number of people still doing this.

This is particularly important if you’re setting up an account for someone else as they may not remember to change the initial password you’ve given them.

2. Change assigned passwords
If you’re assigned a password rather than choosing your own, change it at the first possible opportunity. Not only will it make it easier to remember, but it will save you hanging on to old emails.

3. Don’t write your passwords down
This includes storing them in emails, having them in documents on your computer or writing them on paper. You’ll be able to reset your password if you forget it.

4. Think carefully about your answers to secret questions
Secret questions were designed to make it easy for you to reset your password or access your account if you forget your original password, by asking you for your first school or other personal information. However, people you know offline will probably be able to answer the question(s) easily enough, and sometimes this can be an issue (for example if you’re resetting a password for something like a Hotmail account where answering the questions correctly will allow you access to emails). If you have the option to create your own secret question, then take it and choose something very obscure. If you don’t have that option, then deliberately choose a wrong, but memorable answer to your question, e.g. using your grandmother’s maiden name instead of your mother’s, or the name of your first child rather than your first pet.

5. Have different passwords for different accounts
This makes things more complicated alongside #3, because remembering your passwords can get quite tricky. However, third party websites can suffer from hacking, and security flaws in social networking sites aren’t uncommon. Many people make the mistake of using the same password for all their accounts, which can cause a lot of problems – particularly if websites send you unencrypted password reminders.

6. Be aware, but don’t panic
When popular sites suffer from security breaches, it’s often news sites and social networking sites that will draw your attention to the problem first. Avoid scaremongering comments and always search the problem to see if it actually exists (to make sure it isn’t media spin or a scam). You can then take the steps to change your password, freeze or close your account etc. accordingly, depending on the scale of the problem and what’s affected.

7. Change passwords on a regular basis
Again, if you have a lot of different passwords then this can be a pain, but it’s an effective security measure and worth taking the time to do.

8. Choose strong passwords
Dictionary words are easier to crack, so avoid these and use a combination of letters, numbers and special characters where possible. Most sites require you to have a password of at least 6 characters, and longer is often better. Many websites analyse your password when creating or changing it to give you an estimate of how strong it is:

Use a combination of letters, numbers and special characters where possible, and try to use at least 8 characters. Always mix uppercase and lowercase letters, don’t use keyboard patterns (e.g. ‘qwerty’) or sequential numbers (e.g. ‘123456’). Avoid repeating characters (e.g. ‘999zzz’), and passwords listed as examples of how to choose a good password.

9. Never disclose your password for anything to anyone
No one should ever contact you to ask you for any password via email or another form of web communication – so don’t reveal it, even if it seems like a request from a source of authority.

10. Keep your security up to date
Check your computer for spyware, malware, viruses and so on on a regular basis, and always keep your anti-virus software up to date. Use the Internet sensibly: don’t click anything that looks suspicious, make sure all your website’s scripts are up to date, and only use third-party add-ons from trusted sources.

11. Keep organised
Be aware of where your details are stored (particularly for email accounts and websites which have your billing information). Close any unused accounts you have and make sure you stay up to date. Don’t have multiple accounts for the same website if you can avoid it – this will also help save you time in searching through emails and so on.

12. Log out
Always log out of sensitive accounts after you’ve finished using them, and try to avoid using critical accounts on public computers where possible.

13. Don’t let your guard down in public
If you use your computer or a smartphone in a public place, be aware of your surroundings and who’s looking at your screen or watching you type in your passwords. Try to avoid saving passwords on your phone or tablet computer as these are much easier to lose or steal on the go.

Optimise Your Website For Mobiles

admin — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 15:07:51 +0000

With mobile internet usage growing by 267% last year, mobile accessibility is becoming one of the key considerations in web design. Automatically detecting which device a user is browsing with and serving the appropriate version of the website accordingly, goMobi is the easiest way to optimise your website for mobile users, without compromising on quality.

Compliments your existing website
While your main website is aimed at giving a full and comprehensive picture of your business, a goMobi mobile site allows you to deliver immediate access to what matters most when on the go. The two sites are complimentary and work together to make sure your customers are getting the most appropriate experience for their context and their device. Alternatively, goMobi can also be set up as a standalone website if you wish (but it does need a domain name to work).

Easy set up wizard
The goMobi Setup wizard provides a step by step process for website owners to customize their mobile website. The mobile website wizard is ideal for first time users, guiding them quickly and easily through the process. Additionally, it offers a rich set of capabilities for more advanced or experienced users that can be accessed as needed.

The key features:
• Works with any domain name
• Your existing website, just optimised for mobile phones
• Features designed to increase mobile conversions
• Automatic device detection
• Quick & easy to set up