Category: Domain Related

October 14, 2019

Domain Related

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Internet privacy is one of the hottest of the hot button issues in the digital world these days, and it has been for quite some time. There’s so many different ones that are still discusses at length, and for good reason. News over recent years has indicated the surprising extent to which people’s private and other information has been exposed. There are ongoing efforts to counter this trend, but as is the case with many things it takes time to put effective measures in place. Browser fingerprinting is one of them, and when one digs deeper into this particular issue it’s fairly common to have greater concerns about it. Here at 4GoodHosting, we are one of the many reputable Canadian web hosting providers who see the ‘insecurity’ of the World Wide Web to be as big a problem as it really is. As such we choose to make people informed of what they can do to protect themselves against the prying eyes that they likely have no idea are watching their moves online. So what’s at issue here, how concerned should you be, and what can people do to be proactive in defending themselves against browser fingerprinting. Let’s look at all of this today. Pervasive Peeping A good number of people who use VPN services to hide their IP address and location may believe that by doing so they don’t have to worry about their browsing privacy being violated. This is the best place for us to start here, because that’s simply not true. With browser fingerprinting you can be identified and tracked. One thing there’s no getting around is that every time you go online, your browsing device then provides highly specific information about your operating system, settings, and even hardware, to the site you’re visiting. This in itself is perfectly normal, and ideally shouldn’t be any cause for concern. However, when this information is used to identify and track you online then you’ve experienced browser fingerprinting, and unfortunately many unique details and preferences can be exposed through your browser. Once a sufficient amount of information has been collected, you are now regarded as having a ‘fingerprint’ for tracking...

October 8, 2019

Domain Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

It may be the name of a particularly scenic island off the Southern California coast, but Catalina is now also the name of the newest Mac OS that has recently arrived. Like any successful company they’re not ones to rest on their laurels at Apple, and as such these new and improved operating systems keep on coming. For most Mac owners that’s a good thing, and there’s a LOT of R&D efforts and budget directed towards determining what new wrinkles users will find most appealing. Here at 4GoodHosting, we imagine that nearly every other quality Canadian web hosting provider is also going to be taking note of the new features seen with Mac OS Catalina. Considering that Macs are the computers of choice for people who employ their devices for creative purposes, we can go ahead and assume these development will appeal to enough of our customers that they’re definitely worthy of a blog post. So let’s do that here today – have a look at the Top 5 New Features with Mac OS Catalina. With its release, the new MacOS brings with it a laundry list of changes, including a host of new features, a few updated apps, and the demise of a beloved app. But among these features, five really stand out from the rest. Here are the five best features in MacOS Catalina. Apple Music, Podcasts, and TV – Replacing iTunes To be certain, there are a LOT of people who are none to pleased to have heard of iTunes’ coming demise. Whether or not that’s going to be problematic for you, the general consensus is that over time these users will also come to appreciate the appeal of what’s being introduced here with Catalina as it regards entertainment via the devices. Beginning with Catalina, iTunes is will be replaced with Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Podcasts apps. And, in our opinion, if you’re open to new things you’ll quickly come to see how this is all a good thing. The general consensus is that the Apple Music app is lightning fast and will provide users with a library of some 50 million songs, playlists, and...

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 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...

July 19, 2019

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

There’s a whole lot in the news these days about the perils of too much time spent on social media, and particularly so for young people. As is the case with everything, moderation is the key and it’s only when you overdo it that the situation becomes harmful. Like it or not, social media has become an all-pervasive aspect of our lives for many of us, and we’re not hesitant about indulging in it in the slightest. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat may have a new kid on the block soon, and he’s the protégé of one of the biggest players in the Internet world – Google. Here at 4GoodHosting, we’re like any other leading Canadian web hosting provider in that we can’t help but see and hear firsthand about just how omnipresent social media is in the lives of people. This news regarding Google’s entry in the world of SM is noteworthy because it’s very much a situation where the company’s deep pockets will ensure that if it’s not a success off the hop, it will be eventually after however many tries are necessary. So what’s there to know about this new Shoelace, and what can those interested in it expect if they decide to give it a whirl. Let’s have a look at that here today. The Skinny on Shoelace Admittedly, Google has never had any success developing a social network, but they’ve definitely persevered with the effort. Following the shutdown of platforms like Orkut, Google Buzz, and Google+ Google has decided the time is right to test out yet another social network, an as mentioned this one’s called Shoelace. Google’s experimental Area 120 product development workshop has been behind the building of it, and Shoelace is a hyper-local social networking app (for Android and iOS) that takes a different approach - it aims to connect people based on shared interests in specific events and in-person activities. Advocates of it have suggested that Shoelace promises to be a social network that encourages people to spend less time on their phones, and more of it engaging in real-life activities with like-minded people NEAR you. All About the ‘Loops’ This...