Author: 4GHadmin

January 16, 2024

Hosting Related

Reading Time: 10 minutes

There is always everything to be said for simplicity and when you need to put something together yourself as much of it as possible is preferable. This can certainly apply to people assembling their own website. If you’re a multinational corporation or anything similarly sized you’ll need the impressive and supremely dynamic website that a professional webmaster will build for you. But for a lot of smaller ventures of all different sorts it makes more sense to do it yourself and nine times out of 10 people do that with a WordPress website. If that’s you then you pretty much need a Canadian web hosting provider like us here at 4GoodHosting that provides Linux server hosting for websites. Linux hosting is optimized for WordPress sites and the fact it’s an open-source OS means that these hosts will be able to offer WordPress hosting Canada for less – something that is going to be very appealing for certain small business owners too. Even VPS hosting with a Linux server may be the best choice for any business website. So the basics of it is that any WordPress site that has Linux server hosting behind it is off to the best start possible when someone is bringing their website online for the first time. It will have the best array of resources made available to it, and of the aspects that makes it even easier to modify your site on your own here is with our cPanel controls. Some of you may be just starting to explore that yourselves, and so what we’re going to do here with this week’s entry is explain some approaches to optimizing WordPress on Linux hosting servers. Page Speeds Prominent And it is wise to make optimizing your WordPress one of your top priorities. Nothing speaks to this more than the importance of page speeds these days and also considering that Google’s ranking algorithm has adapted to this new reality given the importance website browsers will put on it. It is well known that a slow site means less visitors and if you have a WordPress website for a small business or venture you won’t be able...

January 11, 2024

Domain Related

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Choosing Linux hosting for your small business is important There are plenty of people who have extensive business acumen running successful and profitable businesses who at the same time won’t know the slightest thing about web hosting. In fact that’s likely the case the vast majority of the time, but as we all know there isn’t going to be any more than a handful of such businesses that haven’t taken themselves online. The reason businesses put so much emphasis on digital market and search engine optimization for their sites is explicitly in the fact that nowadays the number one way a business secures customers is when they’re prominently visible on the web. We likely don’t need to spell it out here, but without reliable Canadian web hosting any business in the country isn’t going to have their site locatable on the world wide web, but what’s good to understand is that not all web hosting is equal. There is a reason why a cheap linux server is always going to be in demand, and that’s because most of the time Linux cloud hosting is better than Windows web hosting or other types based on the universality of it and how it’s best for reliability, uptime guarantees, as well as promoting maximum performance for websites that have a lot more to their functionality than others. Economy Linux hosting with cPanel is even more of a better choice for small businesses, and in large part that’s because the open-source nature of Linux means that Canadian web hosting providers like us here at 4GoodHosting can offer quality hosting at lower prices. Another part of that, however, is that small businesses may have a WordPress website and Linux web hosting is far and away the best performance fit for WordPress sites. Superior Open-Source Hosting OS Linux cloud hosting got its start in 1991 as something of a spinoff of the Unix operating that eventually became a free operating system for Intel x86-based computers. Since then it has grown in popularity and has become one of the most widely used open-source operating systems in the world. Any discussion of a cheap...

January 5, 2024

SEO Related

Reading Time: 8 minutes

A large percentage of the client websites we host are based on Wordpress. We are sometimes asked for plugin suggestions. Having the right mixture of plugins can help you take your business or otherwise hobby website to the next level. With over 44,000 free plugins available in the WordPress depot, there is no lacking of any amount on utility that can be easily added to your website by installing one of them. There are literally thousands of plugins providing features that you might have not known to exist. However, it can be quite time-consuming to sort the great ones from the bad ones, so we are giving you a list of the best plugins that you must have in the most essential categories. We also list an alternative for many of the categories. All the plugins considered here are free and can be installed on your website within a few minutes. A. W3 Total Cache Speed is one of the most important SEO factors. Faster websites rank higher in Google, this means more visitors for your business website and more conversions. W3 Total Cache allows you to serve compressed and cached files to your visitors. This reduces the load on your server and your website becomes faster. B. Soliloquy Sliders on your WordPress landing pages allow you to easily display your featured content, products, and announcements in a beautiful interactive way. Soliloquy is the best WordPress slider in the market. It allows you to easily create your own beautiful sliders and add them anywhere on your WordPress site. C. OptinMonster OptinMonster is the most popular conversion rate optimization software. It allows you to convert abandoning website visitors into email subscribers. If you want to grow your email list, then this is a must have WordPress plugin in 2016. If you don’t have a firewall on your website, then add one today. D. BackupBuddy While we’re talking about security, there’s no better security than having a reliable backup system. As a business owner, you cannot afford to lose your business and customer data in case of a hardware failure or an attack on your host’s servers. The first thing you should...

January 4, 2024

Hosting Related, Security, Security Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Today, websites mostly run either on a Linux or a Windows based web server. However, a large chunk of sites run using Linux hardware. If your site is a HTML-based static web site, the operating system of your hosting server won't make any difference but, it makes difference when your site uses dynamic scripting languages like ASP or PHP/Perl (Linux technologies). Yet there has been success when websites run on PHP and Perl on Windows OS for years together. But, the licensing and technology for running ASP and Microsoft databases is being ironed out. A Windows server runs an MS Windows IIS (Internet Information Server) and is important for websites based on ASP/.NET scripting languages whereas, a Linux server is used for running the remaining websites, which is more in usage because of its availability at no cost. How the hosting computer is compatible with your home computer? Some people are worried about the compatibility of their system with the web hosting system. They are unnecessarily worried whether their system is compatible with the web hosting system. In reality, you won't run any program from your system on host's web server. And, the host won't run anything on your system. So, it doesn't matter what type of system you use. The only thing that makes a big difference visible is a Windows server runs a Plesk control panel. On the other hand, Linux uses cPanel to manage the hosting accounts of the users. Does your website need Windows technologies ASP or .NET or MS SQL or MS Access? If you need Windows technologies for your website and your website or web applications are executing directly ASP or .NET code, or if it is using MS Access or MS SQL or possibly using advanced databases/interfaces that connect remotely to the required Microsoft-based web servers, it is essential to sign-up for a web hosting package that uses Windows. There are also other ways of using Windows applications on Linux systems. But if your site is depending on the Microsoft technologies, you may face a smaller number of challenges and concerns. If you are going to use a Windows server and if you...

January 3, 2024

Hosting Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Being known as the software with the cute Penguin mascot may contribute to marginally to the popularity of Linux, but the reason that most Canadian web hosting providers will offer Linux-based hosting to their customers is because of its overall robust nature and reliability as a web hosting OS. Plus it has a greater degree of compatibility with different types of websites, and all three of those advantages along with super flexibility and cost-effectiveness grow out of the fact that Linux has been built on open-source code. That may all sound fine to many who aren’t as tech-inclined as others, but many of those folks who have a website that is front and center for the profitability of their business will need more tangible explanations about why they should choose a Linux web hosting provider in Canada like 4GoodHosting. The obvious answers for those who are in the know will be to tell them that being open-source means that Linux-based hosting tends to be less expensive, and then there’s also the fact you won’t need to add an additional antivirus 99+% of the time. This is just scratching the surface of what makes Linux server hosting the best and most cost-effective choice for a business’ website, and if you compared packages you’ll find that cheap Linux hosting does exist and none more so than with our shared web hosting packages here at 4GH. But many of these sites will need more ‘elbow room’, and in those cases Linux VPS web hosting is unbeatable and will get our nod as the best Linux web hosting in Canada. Programmer / Developer Friendly Continuing with our promotion of Linux server hosting, it really is a robust and versatile operating system and capable of supporting a number of languages and scripts. This is the reason it is one of the most preferred platforms for programmers and developers. Again, that’s wonderful but how does that translate into tangible benefits for the web hosting client who’s looking for maximum return from their website and overall web presence? It's easy to provide an answer to that; if greater and immediate control over your website and the ability...

December 28, 2023

Hosting Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Coming End for Tracking Cookies in Google Chrome There’s all sorts of examples where something that was once an extra, an addition, or whatever else it is you’d call it becomes much more integral. That’s definitely the case with cookies, and of course we’re not talking about anything edible at all considering what we write about here each week always has some relation to websites and web hosting. Instead we’re talking http cookies, and if you’re not familiar with what they are here is a brief explanation. Cookies are text files with small pieces of data used to identify your computer as you use a computer network, and HTTP cookies are used to identify specific users and improve a person’s web browsing experience. Now in that sense they are something of an extra, as the extent to which a person is pleased with their browsing has no relation to whether they can literally browse or not. There are factors that will determine that, and this is where any Canadian web hosting provider will chime in and say that none of that even gets off the ground unless you’ve quality Linux-based web hosting behind the sites you direct your browser of-choice to. But cookies themselves haven’t been such an integral component of a website. Until recently that is, as what has happened is that for some websites they are unable to function properly without them. And so all of this is relevant now with news that tracking cookies will no longer be utilized with Google Chrome – the browser of-choice for most nowadays and likely to continue as it – and the reason for that being to improve user privacy and stop websites from tracking people as they visit different URLs. The last part of that is something that many people have put a lot of emphasis on when it comes privacy concerns related to how they use the Internet. So this is what we are going to dig deeper into with this blog entry. Option to Re-Enable All this is happening as part of Google’s Privacy Sandbox project. January 4th of next month is when they...

December 18, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

The 25% rise of Global Internet Traffic for 2024 There are plenty of things we all become aware of that come as no surprise. Seeing ever greater parts of our lives moving into the digital realm is to be expected, and it’s increasingly common for people to be online because of their need for productivity rather than simply browsing the web for whatever it is that interests them. The growth of the Internet of Things is something that very much goes alongside all of this, and there are likely to be other major trends and developments in the future that will increase our reliance on the World Wide Web. That’s something that is very relevant for us here at 4GoodHosting in the same way it would be for any good Canadian web hosting provider, and as this year comes close to ending it seems that Internet traffic has gone up quite considerably over the last 12 months. The 25% rise in global internet traffic definitely reflects an increased reliance on online services, and it’s also not surprising that Google retained its position as the most popular internet site. The other leaders were Facebook, Apple, and TikTok, and Instagram and Twitter/X also ranked high for where Internet users are spending most of their time. Another noteworthy trend seen with Internet use over the year is the way financial organizations were prime targets for cyberattacks. The most common of these threats were deceptive links and extortion attempts in emails. The fact that were so many Internet outages - over 180 incidents worldwide – is something that is more of a problem because of the increased reliance we talked about earlier. There ere only 150 reported internet shutdowns in 2022, and it’s been reported that a lot of the increase is attributable to government-imposed shutdowns Also not surprising is seeing that smartphones are the primary way people access the internet. In 2023 more than 40% of users who went on the Internet did so via a mobile device, and one-third of the with an Apple device. Another contributor in all of this is the way SpaceX Starlink is becoming...

November 27, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

If you say you’ve got a lot riding on something, it doesn’t necessarily mean someone or something is in the saddle or anything of the sort. There’s no actual riding going on, and instead what it means there is the potential to be successful or unsuccessful with something you have value in. For any business of any size these days they will have a lot riding on their website, and the value they’ll have it is growth and profitability. You go into business to make money, and a website is increasingly how your customers are going to find you these days. So reliable Linux web hosting in Canada is going to be a priority for these folks. And fortunately consumers do have options as there are many web hosts in Canada that have reasonable pricing for reliable web hosting. Competition exists in any business, but in ours here we need to have exceptional customers service to go along with everything else people will want to be assured of with their web hosting – uptime guarantees, dedicated Linux server hosting for large e-commerce websites with heavy traffic from online customers, SSL certificates for transaction security, and much more. And that’s what we strive to do here. The majority of Canadian web hosting providers will have online help feature for customers and you get live real-time assistance related to anything with your web hosting package. We do too, and we also make a point of offering a money-back guarantee that our Linux web hosting in Canada is as rock-solid and affordably priced as you’ll find anywhere in the country. Right Touch Customer trust when it comes to web hosting isn’t built exclusively on technical capabilities. Yes, you need to be known for web hosting that has sites alongside the information superhighway all day every day and reliably, but there also needs to be a very responsive human element to the way you offer customer service. We see customer service as a term that encompasses the overall perception and interactions a customer has with a company during the time that they are receiving a paid service. The majority of customers like the affordability...

November 20, 2023

Hosting Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Unveiling SSD Storage: Enhancing Performance in Our Hosting Plans There was once when tubes were on the top of the electrical circuit kingdom but since then solid state drives have really taken over based on their reliability. Vintage guitar amp enthusiasts will argue otherwise, but everyone else who has an understanding and appreciation of this kind of engineering will know that solid state really is tops for working reliability and the ability to withstand shocks to the system. Without going into too much detail that’s the reason that SSD storage is a big part of why SSD web hosting is superior for most. That reliable performance has everything to do with these drives’ integrated circuit assemblies and the way the make data storage different – and better. Traditional hard disk drives wouldn’t have had tubes, but that’s not the point here. What is the point is that the reason SSD drives are better is because they don’t run as hot, they don’t run as loudly, and they are a lot more shock resistant. But what is even more important as it relates to being better is that they use less power, are much less likely to fail mechanically, and – last but not least – you don’t need to defragment them. Your Canadian web hosting provider will need to be writing them over, and sometimes much more frequently than you’d think so using these drives in Canada is the sensical choice to be offering hosting customers who only have one priority with this – reliable uptime for their website and reasonable prices on SSD web hosting in Canada. These compact storage devices have become the backbone of modern hosting plans, and they’ve given websites a whole new level of performance and reliability. NAND Flash Plus 1 A simple definition for SSD drives is that they are a type of storage device that uses semiconductor memory technology equipped with NAND Flash memory rather than spinning disks to store and retrieve data. They are almost like a larger-scale and speedier version of the USB flash drives you have at home, but sitting in a computer instead. Faste access...