Author: 4GHadmin

October 1, 2019

Domain Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Bandwidth is a term that’s bandied about fairly regularly in the digital world these days, and not surprisingly given how not enough of it can mean the ‘lag’ that nearly everyone has major difficulty tolerating. Truth is a lot of people that might be decrying a lack of it may not actually know what it is, and are more simply regurgitating what they’ve heard others says when voicing similar complaints. Sufficient bandwidth is an absolute necessity for providing reliable web hosting, and here at 4GoodHosting we’re the same as every quality web hosting provider in Canada in that the success of our business depends on having it to the extent that it’s needed for websites hosted with 4GH. Nothing out of the ordinary there, but what is worth mentioning is that – in addition to having a basic understanding of web hosting bandwidth – there are measures that webmasters can implement themselves to increase available bandwidth. All of that to come here in today’s blog entry, but first let’s have a basic look at what exactly web hosting bandwidth is and why you certainly can’t do without it What is Web Hosting Bandwidth Nearly all of you will be familiar with what it’s like to be driving in rush-hour traffic, or even observing it from a distance. We can think of bandwidth like the lanes of a highway and each vehicle represents the web traffic moving towards your site. Too many of them on those roads leads to long delays and frustrated drivers, while at the opposite end too many lanes mean excessive infrastructure costs for the city and a network that’s difficult and expensive to maintain on the taxpayer dime. To the point, web hosting bandwidth is the amount of data that a website can deliver to its visitors over a certain period of time. We can conceptualize bandwidth as the capacity or diameter of any one or more of the ‘tubes’ of the internet – high bandwidths mean stronger, larger connections that can deliver more traffic and data, while low bandwidths mean more restricted connections or networks that often result in backlogs and slower loading speeds. Web hosting...

September 23, 2019

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

There’s a whole spectrum of people who have to have at least some level of familiarity with search engine optimization. Those that have SEO anywhere in their job title are a given, but there’s a number of other people who need to be catering to SEO realities with their work. Those of us who create content are a good example, but there’s others too. Even if you’re an absolute lay person when it comes to this stuff, you’ve probably heard how Google and other search engine powerhouses prevent people from becoming complacent with all this by constantly changing the algorithms that determine the value of SEO. Here at 4GoodHosting, as a top Canadian web hosting provider this stuff is very much front and centre for us nearly all the time. We know it has some serious importance for a good number of you too. Page rankings are serious stuff if you need to have your business as visible as possible online, and as such many people make an effort to really stay on top of best SEO practices. Now we don’t claim to be the best of experts, but here are 3 guaranteed effective SEO enhancing moves you can make to help your website climb to higher spots in SERPS (search engine result pages) Move 1: Publish Better Long-Form Content More Frequently You’ve probably already heard the expression ‘content is king’, and likely more than a few times too. Fact is it’s as true as can be. Google rewards quality long-form content provided it is written in ways which benefits the users of the site. To ensure this, you need to review your service pages and give them priority. With a top-to-bottom, most important to least approach. you can identify spots where you can add informative sections of FAQ to expand the value of upon page. Why FAQs though, you may be asking. They are an excellent means of naturally working in keywords – and especially for FAQ questions that you can foresee being made with voice searches more frequently. Testimonials are another useful resource for this that many people won’t be aware of, and working with the same principles....

September 17, 2019

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

If you were to take a poll of everyone who has their own personal website for ‘self’ ventures – whether that’s a blog, a forum for ideology, or anything else ‘self’-oriented in a similar way – you’d find that the majority of those sites were built on WordPress. Despite the fact that it’s as old as one can imagine in the world of web publications resources, it’s still as present as ever in the online world. This makes it so that it’s worthy of mention anytime an external force threatens the well being of websites built on WordPress. This isn’t the first time the software suite has been the target of hackers, and it very likely won’t be the last. Here at 4GoodHosting, we think part of being a leading Canadian web hosting provider is keeping our valued customers up to date on developments that may influential to their online well being. Considering we can go ahead and assume that a good many of the sites hosted through us are WordPress sites, we’ll dedicate today’s blog to making those of you aware of this new risk. The Skinny These new serious vulnerabilities in at least 11 plugins for WordPress started to be seen last month, and it appears they are currently being used in an ongoing malware campaign. This was reported on in the circles where it needed to be, but what’s new with all of this is that that the hackers appear to have changed their tactics over the course of the last two weeks. The first instance of this featured malicious code being injected into sites to prompt them to show pop-up advertisements, or – worse – redirect the visitor to rogue websites. Then about 3 weeks ago, on the 20th of last month, the hackers changed their code and it is now also able to determine if a visitor has the rights to create user accounts on the site. Should someone with admin rights log in, the malicious code then is able to created a new admin account that won’t be noticed the principal authorized user. To catch this, be on the lookout for email addresses reading...

September 9, 2019

Domain Related

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Fair to say that these days - more than ever before - it’s necessary for parents to establish some boundaries as to where their children are able to go on the Internet. We imagine that’s fairly apparent, even for those who aren’t parents. Impressionable minds do need to be kept safe from bad influences, and accordingly more and more Moms and Dads are actively seeking ways to restrict their children’s use of their mobile devices and where they ‘go’ with them. Many of us here at 4GoodHosting are similarly minded, and as a Canadian web hosting provider we know it’s safe to assume that this is a priority for a good many of our customers too. For this reason we’re choosing to make a review of the best parental internet browser controls our topic for the blog today. And considering most parents are extremely busy people who’d prefer to spend as little time as possible on any one task, we imagine this review will be well received. The Pocket Problem It’s easier to keep tabs on your children’s browsing habits when you’re at home, and parental controls for desktop and notebook computers are much more commonplace and understood. When it comes to putting constraints on what they can do with their smartphones, however, it’s much more of a grey area and more challenging as a result. It’s something of a pocket problem, because they can be accessing data or finding a Wi-Fi connection pretty much anywhere, and not only are you not around to oversee them, but you may have thought there’s nothing you can do to their device to put restrictions on it. Fortunately, that’s not the case. There are good smartphone parental controls out there, and so let’s not waste any more time in getting to discussing which ones are best. The best parental control apps offer ways to limit time spent on devices, track usage and location, and block apps or games. There are some free parental controls built into most devices nowadays, so you may not need to pay for a third-party app at all. There’s Google’s Family Link, Amazon’s parental controls are excellent, and Apple...

September 3, 2019

Domain Related, Hosting Related, Security, Security Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Shopping online is pretty much a ubiquitous activity for people all over the world these days, and - not surprisingly - so much so that it’s now the preferred means of shopping for many people. Especially for certain goods, and not only do these people want selection, good prices, and the like, but they also want to be able to enter their credit card information and not have to worry about it being exposed. Offering that peace of mind is absolutely essential if you’re in the e-commerce world, and nothing is more important in this regard as having your online transactions guarded by an SSL certificate. Even if you may not know exactly what these are, you’ve probably seen the ’##-Bit Encryption’ tag prominently on display once you get to the checkout when you’re shopping online. Here at 4GoodHosting, not only do we offer very competitive prices on highest-quality SSL Certificates but like any good Canadian web hosting provider we have plenty of customers who are trusting our web hosting to ensure they’re ‘open’ for business 24/7 and all day, everyday. Probably safe to say that there’s few if any of those folks who don’t already have their SSL Certs in place, but for those of you who are new to your business online then we thought we’d dedicate one post here to discussing SSL certificates and what you need to know to choose one for yourself. Overview There is a plethora of certificate types, and several categories and plenty of CAs. In advance of highlighting the different SSL certificates and how to choose the right one, we’ll first discuss why an SSL certificate is so important nowadays. The reach and strength of cyber crimes has grown rapidly over recent years. So much so in fact that cybersecurity has become the #1 concern issue for both web users and website admins. The truth of it all is that cybercriminals can cost online businesses millions. The worldwide economy loses unimaginable amounts of money every year due to cybercriminal activity. What SSL certificates do to protect agains this is that they enforce a secure connection between a server and its web users....

August 27, 2019

Security, Security Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Most people have claimed a reward of some type at some point in their lives. Return someone’s smartphone to them, for example, and they’ll probably think your honesty in returning it is worth $50 at least. Or maybe you return someone’s precious pet to them and get a whole lot more than that for your effort or, more likely, good fortune in having it cross your path or end up in your backyard. But what if there was up 30K in reward money to be had? Well, up to that amount is what software development mega-giant Microsoft is offering anyone who can find flaws in their newest Chromium-based Edge browser. Now the likelihood of most people – myself included – even having the ability to do that is pretty slim, but for those who are web development savvy it’s definitely something worth taking note of. Now to be sure, just as it would be for any Canadian web hosting provider we’ve got some talented people on staff who do have the wherewithal required for something like this. They’re aware, and now you are too so let’s get into discussing what exactly all this is about and whether or not this would be not just easy money, but a LOT of easy money. Beta Stage Bonuses Microsoft recently released the beta version of its Chromium-based Edge and then introduced the Insider Bounty Program along with it. As mentioned, there’s apparently up to $30,000 to be had for those who find out unique vulnerabilities in this beta version of their new browser. Yes, that’s what you can do when you have deep pockets to this extent. You’d have to find a thousand+ lost phones and pets to come even close! To clarify though, 30K is only available if you find a flaw that is a vulnerability that leads to escape from the WDAG container. The majority of would-be rewards included in the Microsoft Edge Insider Bounty Program are in the range of $1,000 to $3,000, depending upon the bug’s severity and – take note – the quality of the submission (see thoroughness – less work for them = more $ for you)....

August 19, 2019

Hosting Related, Security, Security Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

A while back we had discussed some of the particulars with of the latest revisions available to people running desktop and notebook running Windows 10. Needless to say that encompasses a great many of them purring away at any given time all around the world, and it’s for that reason that some frequent undesirable occurrences seen with the most recent Windows 10 update are sufficiently noteworthy to the point that it makes sense for us to write about them in this week’s blog. Here at 4GoodHosting, a part of what makes us a leading Canadian web hosting provider is the way in which we’re proactive in sharing information that’s easily identified as having value to our customer base. Given how ubiquitous the Windows OS is for personal computer users and the reality that’s unlikely to change, we’re going to discuss more than a few problematic issues that users are encountering quite frequently with the most recent Windows 10 update. Reason enough to have less faith in the OS? That’s for you to decide. The Issues Where there’s smoke there is fire. While there had been rumblings about shortcomings with the latest Windows 10 update for a while, the way it is in the biz is that you don’t really take heed of these sorts of things until these sort of expressions of dissatisfaction become a little more numerous than just a few people here and there. That’s the case now, and the consensus is that the latest update for Windows 10 is causing a string of issues for users. The update comes with patches against two critical vulnerabilities, but it seems they’re leading to problems. Among them are random reboots and inexplainable installation failures. The update was made available on Tuesday of last week, and was created as a defense against a pair of remote code execution vulnerabilities which were deemed ‘wormable,’ - which means they are able to jump from one infected computer to another. Microsoft owned up to these vulnerabilities and informed users about the patches in a blog post, with users being encouraged to update their operating systems without delay. Primary Problem 1, with Fix Some users,...

August 12, 2019

Hosting Related, Security, Security Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

The scope and extensiveness of malware risks for computing devices is more pronounced than ever before, and that’s pretty much the story from one month to the next these days. At a recent security conference in Las Vegas, the Eclypsium security research team announced they had dug up some serious security flaws in at least 40 device drivers from 20 different vendors. These vulnerabilities could increase the likelihood of devices being infected by malware. While this type of development in itself is nothing out of the ordinary, what makes it noteworthy is the sheer number of different drivers that may be affected. Here at 4GoodHosting, we’re like any other reputable Canadian web hosting provider in that we strive to make our customers aware of risks to their digital security when they arise. When one is as potentially far reaching as this one, we’re almost always going to make some sort of announcement regarding it. The Latest The research team’s report is stating that this malware targets system BIOS or system components for the purposes of updating firmware, running diagnostics, or customizing options on the component. By doing so what the attackers have done is take the same tools used to manage a system and then turn them into powerful threats that can escalate quickly on the host. Once the driver is infected it then provides the attacker with optimized access for means of launching malicious actions within all versions of Windows, and Windows Kernel most notably. Do note that all these affected drivers are ones certified by Microsoft: American Megatrends International (AMI) ASRock ASUSTeK Computer ATI Technologies (AMD) Biostar EVGA Getac GIGABYTE Huawei Insyde Intel Micro-Star International (MSI) NVIDIA Phoenix Technologies Realtek Semiconductor SuperMicro Toshiba The Why All of this is related to a specific design flaw in Windows device drivers. They have a functionality that can be taken advantage of to perform a read/write of sensitive resources without being restricted by Microsoft. Some are suggesting that bad coding practices are to blame for this, and while that can’t be substantiated it is true that there is a more pressing need for better ones these days and older work can...

August 6, 2019

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

With the fact that they barely blinked then slapped with a $5M dollar fine recently with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it’s a reminder that Facebook is as deep-pocketed as one can be. Not surprising that the world’s social media mega giant is so wealthy, and as such we can also assume that they have the bucks needed to get into whatever venture they choose to. The fact that they’re doing so in cryptocurrency is one, however, where they sheer magnitude of what this could mean within the world of online e-commerce. Here at 4GoodHosting, being a quality Canadian web hosting provider put us in a more natural position than most to be attuned to these kinds of developments and what they can mean for the ‘general public’ of the 21st century digital world. We’ve talked about Blockchain here in our blog before, and it’s on this game-changing piece of fintech (financial technology) that this - and all types of cryptocurrency - are based on. This kind of industry disruption is one of the more defining aspects of the digital world these days, and the ‘disruption’ that could come from this is really one to talk about. No doubt the banking world won’t be particularly enthusiastic about it. So what’s this all about? New Way to Pay Facebook’s digital currency-to be will be called Libra, and the ‘crypto wallet’ you’ll use to carry it is called Calibra. What you’ll do is download the Calibra digital wallet application, purchase the Libra digital currency through a financial network, and then exchange payments with peer-to-peer digital money transfers through Calibra standing alone as an app. It’s reported that users will also be able to do the same thing through Facebook's subsidiaries WhatsApp and Messenger. The Libra platform is expected to launch sometime next year, in 2020, and it’s being promoted as a cryptocurrency app that will let Facebook users send, add or withdraw money as weill as allowing someone to fill their wallet, cash out or split a restaurant tab all using Messenger. Further, you may eventually be able to pay bills, buy a cup of coffee with the scan of a code, or...