Author: 4GHadmin

April 25, 2016

Domain Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

In this article we will help bring you up to date with current website development standards. HTML5 was a many year project that was launched in 2014; mostly as the concerted effort by the W3C organization. The plan was, from that point forward to continue to publish regular incremental updates to the HTML standard; but a few things didn’t happen as planned. Now a newly named organization, the Web Platform Working Group (WP WG) is working towards a HTML5.1 to be released within the next 6 months. The project centers around a general workflow; which means the group will be releasing a stable version of HTML, as a W3C recommendation, about once annually moving forward. HTML Specification Goals The core goals for future HTML specifications are to: * match reality better, * make the specification as clear as possible to readers, * to make it possible for all stakeholders to propose improvements, * and to understand what makes changes to HTML successful. HTML 5.1 Timeline The current schedule is to ship an HTML5.1 recommendation in September 2016. This implies they will need to have a Candidate Recommendation by the middle of June 2016, following a “Call For Consensus” based on the most recent working draft. The updated working draft is published approximately once a month; changes are noted within the specification itself. They practice an evolutionary schedule of “rinsing and repeating”; making regular incremental updates to HTML that is relatively straightforward to implement. If you are interested you can see current chatter from the working group members @HTMLWG on Twitter. read_more Specification development The HTML 5.1 specification is on a public Github server so anyone who can make a “pull request” and can propose changes. Simple changes will generally be accepted by the editors after their review. The group is tasked with generally removing things which don’t have adequate support in at least two shipping web browser engines. HTML is a quite a large specification. It is developed from a set of source files. This automates links between the various sections; such as sectional element definitions. For substantial new feature requests/implementations, they prefer submissions separate modules to be developed or...

April 18, 2016

Hosting Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Every day across the internet, hackers, malicious users, and cybercriminals, for whatever motive they may have, compromise thousands of websites. Their hacks are even sometimes invisible to users, but can remain harmful to visitors viewing the page, including the site owner. Unbeknownst to webmasters for some amount of time, their site has become infected with various forms of harmful code; some have shown able to record keystrokes on visitor’s computers, and even steal login credentials for financial account or online banking. You may ask: Is it my web host’s responsibility to protect my website? The answer is: both yes & no. Your web host, like 4GoodHosting, has implemented strong network security mechanisms and various other security measures to ensure your website works optimally. However, keeping each website secure is also the responsibility of the webmaster. Shared hosting is also by nature an “unmanaged” environment. This implies that each customer is responsible for updating their applications, website code and implementing security precautions to protect their website files and CMS (Content Management Service - such as Wordpress/Drupal/Joomla). Over the years we have seen various and some recent vulnerabilities with popular applications such as WordPress. Sometimes these breaches through Wordpress have impacted customer websites; because the site owners’ did not keep their applications up to date - even after receiving notifications that their installation needs to be patched due to vulnerabilities that have been identified. Some examples of these attacks are: SQL injections, Code injections, template holes and many more. If your site gets hacked what should you do? Here is where you should ask yourself: “Do I want to handle it myself? Or get help?” Here at 4GoodHosting we follow a well thought out and rigid methodology that enables us to automatically scan for and identify malware/hacks on our customers’ sites. We have built a rigorous process to resolve and fix the attack, “hack” as soon as possible. We employ the following steps: 1) 24/7 Monitoring 2) Scanning of the site 3) Assessing the damage (hacked with spam or malware) 4) Identify the vulnerability 5) If necessary, Quarantining the site 6) Validating backup files 7) Clean and maintain the website read_more However,...

April 11, 2016

Domain Related

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Truly a picture is worth hundreds or thousands of words. Often we do not apply that knowledge towards improving the quality of our personal and small business websites. Images are naturally better, in many cases, because they are much much more conducive at communicating emotion, setting a mood or creating impact. There are many different kinds of visual media: video, artwork photographs, charts, infographics. Video is the new black Wherever presentable, video is becoming a “must-have” media for almost any professional marketer. Amazingly, all you need today is a smart-phone. We have all become video camera men and women. It becomes easy to film a basic overview or any kind of video on your phone, and touch it up by utilizing many video editing software applications which make it ready to add to your blog or website. Video can even create more engagement than static graphics; making it easier for you to allow your brand to shine. It can make it easier to explain the value of your products in a more engaging style and in more detail. People have limited time and limited attention span on the internet: so try to keep your video: smart, basic, and simple. Photography Today we have high definition cameras in our pockets and persons in the form of a smartphone. Ironically we still seem to find it a chore to present great or the best images for small business websites. If you’re not a DIY photographer, there are dozens of stock art websites. Here is our recent blog post detailing that: read_more https://4goodhosting.com/blog/two-dozen-free-valuable-wordpress-plugins/ Regardless of the imagery or video source, once in a while, spend time to make sure your site provides powerful & relevant images that will bring various content of your message to life. Graphs & Charts It turns out most people especial enjoy information when it presented visually; near 99% of time no matter who your customers are. For example, you can diagram the value of or the savings your product or service creates. You can also chart the performance of your product vs. a competitor? Intuitively simple graphics which express ideas in a focused, visual style; can have great...

March 29, 2016

Domain Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

This article brings to you information about how you can find freely-distributable copyright free photos and images for you website designs. The following 10 easy to use and searchable websites offer you images free of any cost. StreetWill.co StreetWill organizes and present owner-submitted photos under the increasingly popular Creative Commons Zero license (CCO). CCO permits you to use the images in any way that you want; from person to commercial uses, without cost, or even have to mention the photographer/artist. Stokpic.com StockPic allowing individual images to be freely downloaded from their site. They are bundling new highly rated images into weekly emails. Images on the site are lightly watermarked for their marketing purposes, but when they are downloaded watermark-free and high resolution. Stockpic has its its own distributional license which allows the images free for commercial use and no requirement creator attribution (although giving credit is always a nice touch). The only logical license restriction is that the images cannot be redistributed; so their site cannot just be cloned. LifeOfPix.com LifeOfPix.com hosts hi-res photos and artwork provided by the Leeroy Advertising Agency in Montreal, free for personal and commercial use. Life of Pix also offers videos via a related service, Life Of Vids. read_more U.S. Government Image Search USGIS and most government agencies are obligated by law to make any graphics they produce freely and publicly available; paid for already through taxes. This site allows visitors to search US government image archives. This includes assets of the NASA Goddard Space Centre Flickr account , the US Nation Parks Service, and the US Marine Corps Instagram account. UHDWallpapers.org UHDWallpapers.org provides wallpapers in UHD (4K) resolution under Creative Commons CC0 . While the images presented for personal desktops, they are of very high resolution and CCZ0 licensing permits them to be used on your website as well. Superfamous.com Superfamous offers a limited but exceedingly beautiful collection of photographs: Scenic natural landscapes, architecture, abstract art, and even fonts. The images are complimentary of Folkert Gorter, and provided under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license. Kaboompics.com Kaboompics offers downloads of individual images and eMail subscriptions. This site features mostly Food, Fashion, Interior design, and...

March 21, 2016

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Most of us haven’t built and don’t operate a e-commerce store but all of us are consumers! Buying things online is also so easy these days, as you know. And when we have the desire to consume, as easy as it is these days, we don’t even having to leave home... just a couple of eager and willing clicks is all it takes. So have you ever bought something and regretted it as soon as the hour after the purchase? Surely it has happened to most of us at some point. We can just see an advertisement on a webpage, and one moment, click on some new website, and if we feel the need to just buy something, we can spend hundreds by just entering a credit card number or a paypal email address. Poof! Your money/credit is now in other hands; and your real-life shopping bag is physically still empty. Next we have to wait for the product to arrive, if we can actually trust the retailer, and some kid on a skateboard doesn’t steal the box from your doorstep. Usually not long after you buy something important, you might then re-balance your checkbook; maybe finding out that you have went too close to your limit. There can be a multitude of reasons that can make you feel regret. Here are some good tips on how you can minimize buyer's remorse. A. “Planning ahead” is best prevention for post-purchase impulse-buy regret. Advertising is designed to manipulate us to buy. Advertisements are not overall bad, but so many utilize manipulative tactics to influence us in psychological ways. "Limited time offers," such as those 1-day deals, and plenty other marketing tactics - can easily trip some of up. So first, take at least 10 minutes to think of meditation to sense if there is anything about the purchase that could cause you feelings of regret. If you can wait, make a rule to wait a week before pulling the trigger on substantial purchases; perhaps anything over $80, or $100. Then jot in a reminder note in your calendar to remind you to buy it a week from now; or equivalently stick...

March 14, 2016

Domain Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

To allow for your business to grow maximally you probably already know you need to be on social media. For best results, it is important that have a thought-out strategy strategy. Here are a list of common issues that tend to minimize results. A. Not having a separate profiles for your business Imagine having your business mixed with your personal life on facebook. That could easily be a disaster, so the same applied for other social media channels as well. This will create an atmosphere of purely business conversation with your audience. B. Not responding to messages If you have many social media account, then you will have the more places that you are going to have to manage and check for messages. If you are able to forward your messages to your email, that will help you keep track of everything. Generally ignoring messages or not responding in a timely manner will only produce dissatisfaction customer in your customer base. Start small r with social platform first and then only build another network after you have mastered and feel comfortable with engaging your current audience. Start with the social network which has the highest percentage of your target audience online. C. Boring your audience Are your status updates too similar, or exactly the same, each day. If you are tuning out, your customers probably are too. To cure that, brainstorm some more. Also you can also try different themes/styles once in a while, perhaps ever quarter, or 3 months to help keep a fresh image. Humor is also good medicine to insert in place of writing blocks. You can easily search google images for various humorous images Also check out Buffer.com where you can profile and analyze your social media statistics; to find the content type & style that audience will like the most. read_more D. Talking about yourself too much The full definition of “social media” is about two-way conversation. If you are promoting your own offerings and not talking about your audience, or lettering them speak, or new people; then there is a good chance that your channel(s) audience will dissipate as fast as you can build...

March 7, 2016

Domain Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

For the past 1-2 weeks your Google desktop search results pages have begun looking a little different; depending on how much you notice the ads. Google has begun to stop displaying ads on right-hand side of the search results page on desktops. Google has officially has confirmed the development as well. Instead of showing ads on the right-hand side of the desktop view - Google’s search results pages will now show “4” ads on the top, and some on the bottom of the results page. Google AdWords, the company’s advertising service, will be displaying 4 ads above organic search results; 0 ads on the right of search results, and 3 more ads below search results. Google had tested displaying 4 ads atop search results; as we observed in December. The removal of these ads from the right sidebar of results makes Google’s desktop search results pages look a lot more like mobile search results pages; which are displayed in a device-wide column. It also means advertisers will have to pay a premium for the smaller number of available ad-slots on search results pages; especially the 4 spots atop search results. Google’s “Product Listing Ads” (P.L.A.s) is the only possible tenant of that page space and still appears in the right column of more commercial search results. The Knowledge panel, which shows business information, will also appear in the right sidebar of desktop search results. read_more “We’ve been testing this layout for a long time, so some people might see it on a very small number of commercial queries,” a Google spokesperson said. “We’ll continue to make tweaks, but this is designed for highly commercial queries where the layout is able to provide more relevant results for people searching and better performance for advertisers.” According to a statement that Google put out, the change is global and will affect all regions in all languages. This news has shocked many that the company was limiting the number of adverts to only the top and bottom of search results pages shows. Although some adverts are being removed - an additional advertisement will be shown at the top of the page for advertising; and...

February 29, 2016

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Already starting to look beyond 4G, 5G promises significantly more in various ways. We are expecting to see it becoming popular in 2018. The “Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance” has been tasked with defining the following requirements for the 5G wireless protocol: GB per second to be offered simultaneously to connected users Data rates of several megabits per second should be supported for potentially tens of thousands of users. Several hundreds of thousands of simultaneous connections to be supported for local deployments in cities/suburbs. Coverage should be improved; spectral and signaling efficiency should be significantly enhanced compared to 4G. Network latency should be reduced significantly compared to 4G. Improvements like this should even enable mobile “virtual reality” internet experiences; likewise our servers will be upgraded, when available, to serve even more and more data upon demand. People involved in the wireless industry are talking about 5G nowadays. It is not quite yet just around the corner, but we at 4GoodHosting like to keep in mind such views into the future. "New experiences like virtual reality, self-driving cars, robotics, smart cities and more are about to test networks like never before. 5G will help make them a reality. ", AT&T said in a recent press release. 5G is the current attempt at wireless network speeds approximately “100 times faster” than current [average] wireless technology. The speed goals will perhaps even exceed speeds “Google Fiber” is offering as is currently being made available in selected areas of the US. 5G’s promises of incredible speed and responsiveness has technology professionals and the consumer market buzzing with this topic more and more each week/month. Qualcomm, a long-time leader in wireless networking chips, announced "5G will take it to the next level - bringing ubiquitous connectivity to and from all sorts of devices." 2 hours of HD video would zip to your mobile receiver in approximately 20 seconds,instead of about 6 minutes it takes via optimized 4G networks today. Let’s get into some of the other experiences you will have and things you'll be able to do from your ISPs that begin to offer it. read_more More realistic video conferencing: The way we communicate will...

February 22, 2016

Domain Related

Reading Time: 8 minutes

The new look of the WP REST BASED ADMIN UI: WP Version 4.4 creates a new WP foundation that is being hailed as the next big thing in the world of wordpress. The WordPress REST API is being hailed as the next big chapter for the WP platform. You are probably already wondering what that means for you. Well, right now it is optional, so you won’t be forced to learn or adapt for a while longer, at least, or perhaps forever? For those inclined at developing for WordPress, we will explore WP REST API, its features, and what it brings to the workbench for those who work with WordPress professionally. Dissecting WP REST API (JSON) Before we dive deeper into the capabilities of the WP [JSON] REST API we first should make sure the basics are covered. What is an API - Application Programming Interface? It is much like a software driver that, if its protocol is followed, bridges between two different software applications. You might have been using them for a while, but not even have technically realized it. For example, using a 3rd party website service or an application that to posts to Facebook or Twitter, is using the Facebook API and the Twitter API protocols/ports/etc connecting their platforms to your software. Therefore, as you might presume, there is a vast use of such API’s on the Internet. read_more The skinny on JSON ( JavaScript Object Notation ) JSON describes a text definition language format for data exchange suited perfectly for human and machine readability. It is built into the native JavaScript programming language. JSON APIs have become common on the internet due to the fact that all major programming languages can easily convert data back and forth to the JSON structure. That way, a bridge or connection/port interface that uses the JSON format can be sandwiched between applications that are running in different programming languages in different environments, effectively connecting them with all the data they independently need from each other. What Is REST? REST is short for Representational State Transfer. It describes an HTTP-based style of building APIs that is suitable for high data volume,...