SEO and Web Hosting – The Connection
Search engine optimization is the best way to get consistent traffic to your web site without having to continuously invest money in advertising and other forms of marketing and promotion. By optimizing your web sites properly you can bring in a steady flow of traffic and forget about marketing and other annoying and repetitive aspects of online business. In fact, many webmasters spend the majority of their time trying to find more ways to increase their search engine ranking and traffic. Unfortunately, many webmasters don’t realize they’ve already hurt their chances of being as successful online by choosing the wrong web hosting plan. Contrary to popular belief, there is a solid connection between web hosting and search engine optimization.
IP Addresses and SEO
For the advanced SEO expert that routinely does link building through various web 2.0 properties, the most obvious aspect of a web hosting plan that has an impact on SEO is the amount of IP addresses given to each webmaster. When search engines index web pages they do so with automated crawlers that index every aspect of the page and site, including the web site’s IP address. If you own a network of web sites and you would like to build a link network using these sites, then you will need to have a separate IP address for each web site. Fortunately, IP addresses are not a major factor for webmasters that don’t own a lot of web sites that are interlinking in the same niche.
Hosting Reliability and Features
Most people don’t realize that an unreliable hosting network can have a negative impact on a web site’s search engine ranking and site indexing. When your web site is down (as it often may be with unreliable web hosting) search engine robots will be unable to index your new pages. This may have a very negative impact on the amount of pages that are indexed for your site, and how often updated pages are indexed in the search engine results.
A powerful hosting plan will also be able to handle more software installations and tasks, which can be especially useful if you are using automated software for link building or to perform other mundane tasks involved with SEO.
Robots.txt
The robots.txt file is another overlooked connection between your web hosting plan and your SEO efforts. The robots.txt file is a file that is located on your web server, which dictates how robots (particularly search engine bots) interact with your web site. If the robot.txt file is set to dis-allow all robots then your site will not be able to get ranked by any search engine, leaving you without any form of SEO traffic. Most hosting companies leave this file blank or do not include, so it is important to verify whether or not the robots.txt file is present in the web server that hosts your web site.
The Plone 4 CMS
The Plone community has raised the bar on their flagship content management system with the release of Plone 4. With the and of Plone 4, this is proving a busy week for fans of this CMS that runs on the -based application server.
“Plone 4 is much faster, requires less memory, and performs well even when serving up massive files. “, says Plone co-founder and Firefox User Experience Lead Alexander Limi. “They [Plone users and developers] also didn’t want us to sacrifice what we do well to get there — and we haven’t. Plone 4 is not just more powerful — it continues to improve in areas Plone has always been known for: usability, security, and a CMS that is easy to install, upgrade, and looks great right out of the box.”
Some of the significant changes and improvements in Plone 4 include:
- Notable performance improvements
- New theme
- Search and indexing improvements
- Group Dashboards for a Customized User Experience
- Massively improved handling of large files & media
- New, faster folder implementation
- Improved management of users and groups
- Dynamic forms framework based on jQuery Tools
- Improved first-run experience
- Smooth upgrade experience
- Reduced memory footprint
- Upgraded infrastructure
Interestingly, the announcements and even the Plone 4 discuss the “” improvements available in the CMS in preparation for Plone 5. That’s right, they’re already talking about Plone’s future with Plone 5.
For addttional details about the Plone CMS be sure to visit .
Colocation Hosting – Is it Right For You?
Colocation web hosting is very different from every other hosting service, primarily because it is not a service in which web servers are leased. Instead, colocation hosting is a web server storage service in which adequate server storage space is provided in a state-of-the-art data center that is equipped with highly trained staff and maximum security 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.
In essence, you are simply paying for storage space so that you can store your dedicated server without problems such as hardware damage and theft occurring. While this may seem as if it is a great service that everyone should use, only a small percentage of webmasters will ever need colocation hosting. If you are not sure whether or not your business needs access to a colocation hosting service then you may want to consider the following information.
Do You Own a Web Server?
If you do not own a web server then you should know that you will need to purchase one before a colocation hosting service will be of any use to you. Web servers can cost anywhere from $1500-$10,000, depending upon the model and its capabilities. If you can afford to invest that much money in to a web server, and you are ready to pay for the monthly cost of colocation hosting, then it may be within your budget ton purchase a colocation hosting plan. However, if you are like the majority of webmasters, then you will not be able to afford or justify such a purchase.
What Kind of Sites Do You Own?
If you own a single medium sized web site then you may not have a need for a dedicated server at all. Dedicated web servers are ideal for people that have dozens of web sites or a single corporate web site that needs to be maintained professionally and kept at peak performance. With the availability of cheap and powerful web hosting you should be able to find a plan that will accommodate your needs with ease. Dedicated servers and colocation hosting is only recommended for corporations and enterprises, or people that own hundreds of sites.
How Technically Skilled Are You?
As mentioned, a colocation hosting service is simply a web server storage service, which means that most colocation hosting plans do not come with technical support. As such, you will need to provide your own technical support for server maintenance and administration. Most administrative duties can be done remotely, however this requires an advanced level of knowledge in the way web servers work. If you do not have a decent amount of experience in dealing with web servers then you may want to consider a colocation hosting solution that includes technical support.
Unfortunately, in order to have full technical support included with your colocation hosting plan you will need to pay an extra fee each month. When you add this fee to the mountain of other expenses associated with colocation hosting, it becomes clear that this type of hosting solution should only be utilize by highly successful online businesses.
Tiki Receives Best of Open Source Software Applications Award
Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware has been awarded a 2010 Bossie award (Best of Open Source Software) by InfoWorld, in the Applications category. InfoWorld’s Best of Open Source Software Awards (aka the Bossies) is chosen annually by Test Center editors and reviewers, and recognize the best open source software for business users.
The editors called Tiki “a powerful, integrated, Web-based application” that can “build and maintain websites, wikis, groupware, CMSes, forums, blogs, and bug trackers, as well as make them multilingual.”
The review continues, citing Tiki’s “fine-grained role-based privilege system” as a differentiating factor against classic wiki models, such as MediaWiki. Read the full article on InfoWorld.a: .
And don’t forget to nominate Tiki for the Packt 2010 Open Source Awards ().
Tiki Receives Best of Open Source Software Applications Award
Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware has been awarded a 2010 Bossie award (Best of Open Source Software) by InfoWorld, in the Applications category. InfoWorld’s Best of Open Source Software Awards (aka the Bossies) is chosen annually by Test Center editors and reviewers, and recognize the best open source software for business users.
The editors called Tiki “a powerful, integrated, Web-based application” that can “build and maintain websites, wikis, groupware, CMSes, forums, blogs, and bug trackers, as well as make them multilingual.”
The review continues, citing Tiki’s “fine-grained role-based privilege system” as a differentiating factor against classic wiki models, such as MediaWiki. Read the full article on InfoWorld.a: .
And don’t forget to nominate Tiki for the Packt 2010 Open Source Awards ().
Content Management System Built for Cities to have Presence at NAGW Annual Conference
Auctori:city, a and built for SEO, is a sponsor of the which will be held at the Millennium Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri September 22-24, 2010.
A silo of the friendly web content management system, Auctori, an innovation of , the Auctori:city solution provides cities with the opportunity to strengthen their Internet presence and their overall brand reputation by giving users a professional and the power to maintain their web content in real-time.
“We are looking forward to attending this highly anticipated conference and introducing Auctori:city to the NAGW community,” said Andrea Bemis, Brand Manager, Auctori. “Our unique CMS integrates controls that give individual departments the power to edit components of their website, such as news, community calendars and business directories, making the general maintenance of a city website very straightforward and less time consuming for webmasters.”
CoreLink Making Big Changes
CoreLink Data Centers, an industry-leader in providing colocation hosting and management services, recently announced a major move of their headquarters from Phoenix, Arizona to Mount Prospect, an area outside of Chicago. In addition, the operations of their newest data center, also located in the Chicagoland area, are fully functional.
The data center is 80,000 square feet and linked to the companies four other colocation data centers in Seattle, Las Vegas and Phoenix. The new data center is located on 5.4 acres of land and provides all of CoreLink’s solutions under one secure roof in control environments.
The center features the latest security and management technology. Some of these features include; diverse connections to the internet, redundant emergency power equipment, the best fire detection and suppression systems as well as biometric security scanners. Also, neutral connectivity, uninterruptible power supplies N+1 cooling and critical redundancy on all equipment.
The center will provide customers with extra expansion capacity, reliable and redundant access to the internet and high-density installation. This is the perfect addition to the area.
CoreLink has selected Chicago because it has become a booming business and technology epicenter. This will have a considerable impact on the local economy through investment in the community as well as job creation.
The biggest focus of the new data center is the scalability. Due to the size and server technology, it can accommodate all business needs as they continue to evolve and consume resources.
The primary highlights of the new data center include:
- Scale systems up
- Decrease labor expenses
- Lower capital costs
- Add redundant systems
The ability to scale information technology systems up or down is major draw to many large corporations as the needs of their business constantly change. Also, the new center will provide efficient facility management thus decreasing labor expenses. By outsourcing internal infrastructure, the company will save on overall capital costs.
Finally, the new data center provides redundant systems that do not contain a failure point and have a maintainable infrastructure that is capable of handling critical applications. These include; e-commerce, email systems and website connectivity.
Opening a new data center and relocating the headquarters is a major move for CoreLink. They will benefit from the numerous technology companies in the Chicago area while creating jobs and providing a boost to the local economy. In the end, all parties will benefit from this move.
Ruby on Rails 3.0 is available
I’m not much of a programmer but I can appreciate the value of a good programming language when I see it. While I know Python and dabble with PHP, I’ve always appreciated and . There is something about the Ruby development scene that perks my interest in this programming language.
Ruby on Rails 3.0 was just released this week. The development of Rails 3.0 has been two years in the making. David August :
Rails 3.0 has been underway for a good two years, so it’s with immense pleasure that we can declare it’s finally here. We’ve brought the work of more than 1,600 contributors together to make everything better, faster, cleaner, and more beautiful.
Some of the biggest changes and additions in Rails includes:
- New Active Record query engine – makes it easier to build complex queries over several iterations.
- New router for Action Controller – the syntax has been modified to to favor the REST style
- New Action Mailer
- Manage dependencies with Bundler – Bundler allows you to specify the libraries, frameworks, and plugins that your application depends on.
- XSS protection by default
- Encoding issues resolved
- Active Model: Validations, callbacks, etc for all models
- Official plugin APIs
- Documentation
If you’re interested in Ruby on Rails 3.0, check out the download page at .
A Walk through the Mail Section in cPanel
Many cPanel sections and their numerous functions have been reviewed. Another important area within the cPanel software is Mail. Within this module users can add and manage email addresses, filters, spam blocking and engage many other features.
The basic menu contains the following items:
- Email accounts
- Webmail
- SpamAssassin
- BoxTrapper
- Forwarders
- Auto Responders
- Default address
- Mailing Lists
- User Level Filtering
- Account Level Filtering
- Email Delivery Route
- Import Addresses/Forwarders
- MX Entry
- Email Authentication
- Additional Login Methods
The email accounts option allows users to find information and add, delete and manage all email addresses on the site. Webmail is a common and convenient feature allowing the owner to utilize their web browser to access email. Both BoxTrapper and SpamAssassin are modules featuring many configurations for blocking unwanted email.
Forwarders are configurable options which forward email from one address to another, similar to physical mail forwarding from the post office. AutoResponders are excellent functions for internet marketers as it automatically responds to all incoming email with a specific message.
A default address catches any unintentional email that is sent to your domain address. Mailing lists are another beneficial feature for internet marketers. They allow mass emails to be sent to those on the list. This can help promote a new product, send out a news letter or just keep in constant contact with customers.
User level and account level filtering allow the webmaster to create mail filters for a specific address as well as for the domain’s primary email account. Email delivery route is a nice visual that shows the path of any emails you send from your domain. The important addresses/forwarders feature helps you add several email addresses or email forwarders at once simply by uploading a list of names.
MX Entry lets you route incoming mail from a domain to a specific server location. Email authentication adds extra security to both your email and mail servers. Finally the additional login methods area is helpful for users that need to login to their sent and spam email folders instantly as a shortcut.
Within each of these selections are additional options that allow for more functionality and customization of email management within a website. User-friendly features are some of the primary reasons cPanel is at the forefront of the control panel industry.
CMS Made Simple hosts its annual "Geek Moot" conference Sep 15th – 17th in Amsterdam
CMS Made Simple© “Geek Moot” Conference
CMS Made Simple hosts its annual conference, “Geek Moot”, in Amsterdam September 15th – 17th
PHILADELPHIA – CMS Made Simple© (“CMSMS”), an open source content management system, is hosting its annual international conference, “Geek Moot”, scheduled to take place September 15 through 17, 2010, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Geek Moot is the official international conference for the CMS Made Simple content management system platform. CMS Made Simple founder Ted Kulp will be presenting “The State of CMS Made Simple” on September 16th; also celebrating the recent milestone achieved of generating 1 million downloads.
Attendees of this conference will consist of CMS Made Simple users of all expertise, including technology firms, marketing and advertising agencies, web designers, developers, and other users and fans of the platform.
September 15th, the first day of activities, will be filled with pre-conference educational workshops discussing various topics facilitated by experts in their respective fields. These topics will consist of “Advanced Design Integration, “Instant Modules”, SEO & CMS Made Simple”, “A Beginner’s Walkthrough of CMS Made Simple”, “jQuery”, and “CMS Made Simple Extensions”.
September 16th & 17th are going to be information-packed conference days, full of sessions discussing topics such as the much-anticipated launch of version 2.0, current and future marketing efforts, e-commerce, mobile, modules and development, front-end users, flash video, along with time for Q&A with members of the development team.
Registration for Geek Moot Amsterdam is only €150. All attendees will be able to attend two full days of sessions and lunch will be provided. Register at . All workshops are priced individually.
To learn more about “Geek Moot” Amsterdam 2010, please visit .
