Category: Domain Related

June 8, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

It’s been a while since we chose to go web development with the theme of our blog, and so that’s what we’re going to do today. While these are not topics that are going to have a wide-reaching appeal in as far as what’s interesting to most readers, it’s always valuable stuff and of course like any other Canadian web hosting provider a good many of our customers here at 4GoodHosting are going to be ones who are the architects and overseers of their websites. One aspect of retaining visitors and increasing the likelihood of their interacting and participating / purchasing within your web presence is to have effective redirects. This is especially true when your site grows more complex. In addition to considering upgrading and looking at different web hosting plans, you will also have more pages, posts, and URLs to deal with. There’s more likelihood of pages and posts that no longer exist, or you may have decided to simplify the URL structure of your content. Then there’s the scenario where you’ve purchased a domain name you want to redirect to your site, or another one where you want to switch domains altogether. All create the need to redirect from one website to another. However, before we get into best practices for setting up website redirects, perhaps we should define what exactly a website redirect is. What’s a Website Redirect? A website redirect is simply when one website URL (or ‘address’ as many people know it) proceeds to point to another. Type in or clicks on the original URL and you’re automatically taken to the new page or website. Provided the website redirect is functional. Now for the most formative developer knowing how to implement a redirect may be something you haven’t come to yet, but it’s probably something you’ll need to do eventually. Knowing how to implement a redirect will a valuable skill moving forward. Implementing redirects on a URL or page-by-page basis is the norm, and there are a few different types of URL redirects you’ll want to be aware of. Here they are: 301 Redirect A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect, and is the...

June 1, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 7 minutes

We’ve talked about ‘bounce’ rates before here on more than a few different occasions, and for those of you who have any type of vested interest in the appeal of you website you won’t need to be convinced how too much ‘bouncing’ is hugely problematic. But for those who may not be familiar with the term, let’s share the definition exactly as it’s provided by Wikipedia. Bounce rate is an Internet marketing term used in web traffic analysis. It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave ("bounce") rather than continuing to view other pages within the same site. Bounce rate is calculated by counting the number of single page visits and dividing that by the total visits. - source; Wikipedia It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to say that an advanced bounce rate is more of a problem for sites that exist for e-commerce purposes, but it’s fair to say they’re going to have more to lose. Here at 4GoodHosting, we’re like any good Canadian web hosting provider in that we know explicitly well how much of a concern this will be for customers who have a good portion of the profitability of their business - whether entirely online, or only partially - relying on a website that retains customers fairly reliably. There’s any number of reasons why a visitor may bounce, but obviously one of the primary ones is going to be choosing to move on when a page loads too slowly. Patience is in short supply all across the board these days, and it’s especially true for those utilizing the web to find what they want or need. You’ve Got 2 Seconds - Or So Here’s the issue; most website visitors expect a website to take no more than two seconds to load. Your site may offer the freshest content, the most creative design, and top-notch service, but if pages load like pouring molasses you are going to struggle to increase your monthly visitors. In the bigger picture, faster page load times equal a better user experience (UX) and with that comes much lower bounce rates. Good Stuff; Google PageSpeed Insights Google PageSpeed Insights...

May 25, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Anyone who won’t agree that technological advances have been arriving in leaps and bounds these days will probably be told they’ve had their head in the sand or something similar. If technological advances weren’t to the greater benefit of all of us they’d never get past the prototype stages, but with many of these advances come certain degrees of risk. We’re all aware of how our increasing reliance on the digital world has made us more at risk of cyber fraud, and when it comes to cards many people have chosen to keep theirs in some sort of RFID sleeve that prevents card information from being scanned unwillingly. There’s all sorts of other examples of this sort of stuff, and we won’t stray too far off topic. Here at 4GoodHosting, we’re like any other reputable Canadian web hosting provider in that we take an interest in any type of technology-related topic that might be of interest to the people who count on us for keeping their websites optimized and at-the-ready for visitors on the World Wide Web. So today’s topic is smartcards, and what you can do to ensure any person who’s looking to steal your information from them is thwarted in their attempts to do so. Completing a transaction, opening security systems, and achieving a whole array of other operations in this smart technology era can now be done with a simple swipe of a smartcard. They have continued to gain popularity over the world, and as you might then expect security attacks have become increasingly common as they target owners and users. Fortunately, the right information on technology-based use and applications is usually made available to keep you one step ahead of any attack, and some of that is what we’ll be sharing with you here today. For any of you who are not familiar with them, this is how smartcards work. They use microchip technology and secure authentication to provide purchasing security and are equal parts convenient, practical, and reliable for data transfer with transactions. Nonetheless, smart hackers have still worked out various ways of observing their operations and then setting their sights on gaining access to...

May 18, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

One of the things that many of us have realized - and particularly those without high-speed internet at home - is that for some people available bandwidth is at a real premium these days with so many of us forced to stay at home. Whether you’re being productive or just keeping yourself entertained, you probably find yourself taking advantage of the wonders of the Internet during this pandemic time. Perfectly natural that you do, and for the average person who doesn’t have a stake in their own website there’s not much to think about. However, if you’re not only a website visitor but also a website owner and someone who’s got a vested interested in the reliable Canadian web hosting that we provide here at 4GoodHosting then you’ve got more skin in the game. Especially if your website exists for e-commerce purposes, and that’ true for a good many of them. You won’t be cool with any type of shortcomings where your site isn’t able to handle a large influx of visitors at any one time. Something that - as it so happens - is increasingly likely during these Covid times! So we thought that today we’ll share information on something we know quite well - how to make sure your website is ready to accommodate traffic ‘spikes’, as they’re referred to. Let’s get right into it, because the truth of the matter is no one like website crashes or those darn 404 error messages. So what should you do? Have Your Own Host Shared hosting packages are the cost-effective way to have your website up and open alongside the Information Superhighway. While that’s fine and dandy, you also might like to know that websites hosted in shared hosting arrangements are going to the be the least well equipped to handle traffic spikes. And it has everything to do with not enough bandwidth to go around. It’s safe to assume that if your traffic is increasing, the websites that you’re sharing your hosting with are also experiencing more traffic. The smart move here is to be proactive and move your site to an individual server. Doing so will ensure that...

May 11, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 7 minutes

It’s pretty much several times a day that we hear about how some aspect of life has been turned on its head by the current global pandemic, and while the workings of the digital world won’t be front and centre for a lot of people it most certainly is for us. Here at 4GoodHosting, that ongoing interest and eyes wide open nature is likely a large part of what puts us among the best Canadian web hosting providers. With that said, even if you’re not working in the some wrinkle of the industry it’s still going to be hard not to be aware of the importance of cloud computing. It’s very much a staple of the digital nature of business, and it’s at the very heart of the IoT (Internet of Things). Which brings us today’s topic - what can webmasters or shot callers of other stripes do to keep the current situation from taking cloud computing costs and pretty much running away with them? Managing financial uncertainty is going to be a challenge, even during the best of times. There are two major factors driving the need for continuous cloud cost optimization; first, there’s the evolving global financial conditions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Next, we’ve got the accelerating adoption of cloud usage. A recent report is showing that organizations expect cloud spend to go up by 47% in the coming year. This rapidly growing spend leads to challenges in forecasting, as the majority of respondents contributing to the report indicate they’ve exceeded their cloud budget by an average of 23% and they don’t see much in the way of what can be done to counter that. More Difficult to Optimize Cloud Costs Along with the growth of crowd spending goes businesses finding it difficult to ensure that cloud costs are optimized. The consensus is that nearly a third (30%) of cloud spending is wasted, and 73% of respondent see the need to optimize their existing use of cloud as a primary initiative for this year. As one might expect, the new digital-heavy realities of life that COVID-19 has thrust upon us all has meant that cloud use...

May 5, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 7 minutes

There’s the old expression that goes ‘you can’t stop progress’, and often times the digital world and advances in it are the best examples of how this tends to be true. Cloud computing really has become an unstoppable force, and the way we’re seeing the entire digital world conforming to the new realities its ushering in isn’t something that’s going change. It’s always good to move into some ‘new’ things with caution, but there’s nothing that warrants not embracing the cloud as much as we can. Or at least that seems to be the overarching mindset of the majority of engineers and the influential decision makers that decide where their expertise is directed. Now we’re not developers here at 4GoodHosting, but like any other quality Canadian web hosting provider we do take an interest in the major structural building blocks that make the digital world go around, and continue to make it so that the people we provide with solid and reliable web hosting are able to get more out of their interests - whatever those interests may be. Redefining Serverless Serverless was once a handy platform that saved you from having to size server resources correctly, plus removing resources when no longer needed. Nowadays though it’s a catchall that will have a different meaning depending on its applications and the specifics of who’s providing serverless as a service on the public clouds. Now there’s not a systems engineer alive that’s not familiar with Kubernetes. It has become the nearly default open source container cluster and orchestration platform, and eventually seeing it go serverless was pretty much a given. Features such as networking, service discovery, scaling and cluster & container federation multi cloud support are the benefits we’re likely to see start making real impacts soon—and every one fo them is serverless enabled. Serverless for Statefulness The idea of statefulness may not receive the best reception with newer developers, but serverless does support statefulness. Some may continue to see them a principally incompatible, given that serverless systems execute a serverless function in a stateless manner. However, that’s not going to be accurate. Keep in mind that many applications - including...

April 28, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Traditional data centres had a good and long near 20-some year run as the primary and exclusive means of being the large-scale repositories where the ever-increasing volumes of digital data that was so key to modern life were kept. It’s only in the past 5 years of so that there’s been this change to cloud-based data storage, but what a monumental and impactful shift it’s been. Now there’s no debating the fact that cloud-based storage does come with certain drawbacks, and the security of data stored ‘up there’ is first and foremost among them. Fortunately there’s been major advances made in cyber security technology to meet the need this has created. But all in all, the good far outweighs the bad when it comes to cloud computing and cloud storage. That said, it’s not like traditional data centres and the now more-conventional data storage means are going to become entirely obsolete anytime soon. Here at 4GoodHosting, the nature of what we do as a Canadian web hosting provider puts us in as good a position as anyone to be informed regarding this and of course we know that being both receptive of these trends and judicious about the extent to which we incorporate them is important. Web hosting means data storage and data centres, and that’s not going to change. But cloud computing and storage trends are changing the role they play and how they’re likely to be built and configured in the future. Let’s dig into that today. Extensive Demises Expected The first thing we can say about traditional data centres is that a good many of them won’t be around for much longer, or so it seems. Many are predicting that 80% of enterprises will have shut down their traditional data center by 2025, and that’s in comparison to the 10% we see today. This adoption is going along with an adopted mindset that the hybrid cloud is the foundation of digital business. Which may well be true, considering that there are estimates that the hybrid cloud market will reach $317 billion by 2022. Looking at the Data Center Footprint We can start by understanding that annual global...

April 21, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Here we are just over a month into the emergency response measures dictated by the current Coronavirus crisis and unfortunately the end is not in sight yet. While absolutely no one is pleased about all of this, the majority understand that’s what’s being done is necessary. The worst part of it is the economic slowdown that’s coming with this, and for many people it’s really affecting the way in which gainful employment supports life. Almost everyone has a connection to the digital world these days, whether you’re working in it directly or not. And it’s not almost everyone who makes use of email for a large majority of communications, it’s everyone. Unfortunately, every time there’s a large-scale calamity of the sort that we’re experience with COVID-19 there’s going to be some who see it as opportunity to fraudulently take advantage of others. That’s why we’re seeing so many coronavirus email scams going on these days. We’d like to think that one of the ways 4GoodHosting has established ourselves as a reputable Canadian web hosting provider is the way we’re always keen to share what’s most valuable from what we gather by keeping on to of current events in the digital world. The fact that so many scam emails related to the Coronavirus are out and about now definitely meets the criteria for this stuff, so that’s what we’re going to look. Google Blocking 18 Million of Them - A Day! To gauge the full extent of the problem, look no further than the fact that Google has revealed that on each day over the past week, its Gmail-linked computer systems detected and then blocked 18 million malware and phishing emails related to the coronavirus. That’s a mammoth number, and really speaks to magnitude of the issue and the way it’s a far-reaching threat. Interesting to note that Google has also blocked more than than 240 million daily spam messages linked to the virus. And well they should be able to given the resources they have at their disposal; Google’s machine-learning systems have become so effective at detecting the online threats that it manages to block 99.9% of spam, phishing, and...

April 14, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Anyone who’d unfamiliar with Siri or Alexa these days will have had to very consciously done something to stay so totally out of touch with how voice searches are entirely commonplace nowadays. Even if you’re not among the hundreds of thousands who make use of virtual assistants this way every day, you really can’t not know of them. It’s true that advances in digital and Internet technologies are coming fast and furious these days, however, so for some who aren’t keeners these sorts of things may arrive on their radar much later.Well, as you might imagine given that we’re a Canadian web hosting provider, the lot of us at 4GoodHosting are totally keeners for this sort of stuff as it factors into the way we make decisions on what we do with our product and services. That’s going to be true for a whole lot of people who rely on the Information Superhighway to make them visible for ‘searcher’s on the lookout for whatever it is they have to offer. And so here we are with a number of figures that bear out what we’re getting at here; the fact that mobile web browsing is outdistancing desktop variations is well established, and now we’re also seeing that more and more often those mobile web browsers are utilizing voice search on their devices. Voice Search Becoming Commonplace It’s being reported that more than 50 percent of all smartphone users will utilize voice technology on their devices over the course of the rest of this year. There’s no debating that voice and visual search tools have completely transformed the way we use the internet, and that half figure there indicates that the transformation is definitely being well received. We’re at a point now where using our mouths and eyes to guide searches has transformed how we find desired information, items, and whatever else it is we have access to on that Superhighway. We may be just a quarter of the way through, but 2020 is already proving to be a big year for internet development. Whether it’s huge gains in major data storage expansion capacities or the way cloud computing has been...