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...
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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...
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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...
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Reading Time: 9 minutes For many people, their high level of proficiency with whatever they’re good at is the result of their growing up with it. Now to have grown up with web development and operations you’d have to be a fairly young person right now given the Internet isn’t even quite 30 yet. Those youngsters are going to be the most capable of being a webmaster and operating/managing a website, but for those of us who were born decades before the advent of the information superhighway that may not be such an easy thing to do. Here at 4GoodHosting , we’re like any good Canadian web hosting provider in the fact that we get that, and that’s why most of us will provide our recipients with cPanel controls that make the processes a lot easier and doable. The ease of use and far-reaching functionality of cPanel is the reason it has become as ubiquitous as it is for website management through a web host. Others are good, and some would even say equally good but cPanel is the industry standard for anyone enjoying the best Linux shared hosting. We’re inclined to say it’s intuitive, but we realize that some may not take to it as easily or get a handle on it as fast as we might. So for this entry, we’re going to provide a comprehensive guide to efficient website management with cPanel. And for anyone weighing their options for the best Linux web hosting in Canada, it may be that this demonstration is part of what makes going with either shared or VPS hosting here even more convincing. So let’s get into it. Ideal Interface cPanel controls and sets various aspects of your website, and that’s a necessity as ever website needs an interface operating behind it and used to tailor the site preferences so that it runs and displays exactly as you’d like it to. This includes email accounts, database connections, and FTP settings available through cPanel’s easy-to-use interface. It’s a WHCP – web hosting control panel – and as we mentioned every web hosting provider will have one that they make available to customers. The reason being they’d be...
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Reading Time: 6 minutes It’s hard to think of examples where complexity is preferable to simplicity, at least when you look at whatever it is for an end-user perspective. There are times when architectural complexity is needed for any number of different interests, but when it’s you that is doing the building and using of it then you probably want everything to be as simple as possible. That certainly applies to websites, as most people who don’t need anything too fancy with theirs are going to be fine with a simple yet functional and fairly good looking one too. For many that’s a WordPress website, and the ease of use with putting one together and maintaining or upgrading it is why WordPress websites are more numerous that other type of site. Good Canadian web hosting providers like us here at 4GoodHosting are receptive to that popularity and will offer managed WordPress web hosting plans that are optimized for these types of sites. They are also decidedly affordable for people who aren’t leaning on a website to be the most focal point of whatever is they’re promoting for themselves with Toronto web hosting So going the simple route with a WordPress website is a great place to start if you’re claiming a domain name for the first time and you’re ready and eager to make yourself visible on the information superhighway. There are also ways to make your WordPress site function ever better despite it’s barer-bones simplicity, and that’s what we’re going to look at with this blog entry. Speedier is Important Optimizing website speed isn’t a nice-to-have for WordPress website owners, and nowadays it’s really something that you can’t do without at all. There’s been research that’s indicated nearly half (47%) of consumers won’t give a web page any longer than two seconds to load. This is something nearly everyone can relate to, as no one is willing to tolerate or be patient with a page that doesn’t load sufficiently quickly. There are several strategies you can implement to speed up your WordPress website to go along with the speed benefits that come with Toronto web hosting optimized for WordPress sites. So without any...
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Reading Time: 4 minutes All of us breathe most optimally through our noses, and our elbows, knees, or any other joint in the body will have nothing to do with oxygen intake and delivery. But when people talk about elbow space it can have a very direct and figurative connection to another term – breathing room. Any time you say something needs more elbow room or breathing space it means that the current accommodating environment is too small. More space is needed for the area around you or whatever else it may be. There’s a very valid analogy that can be connected between these expressions and web hosting through a virtual private server. The primary and nearly exclusive reason that someone will move their site from a shared hosting arrangement to a VPS one is because there website needs more breathing room, elbow space, or whatever you want to call it. Sites that are larger and / or have more dynamic multimedia content will often eventually need to have VPS hosting. Another common scenario is that a site becomes more popular and has more inbound traffic and there’s not enough to accommodate that with shared hosting. Like any good Canadian web hosting provider we’re keen to make prospective customers aware of what type of web hosting will fit them best, along with explaining what makes one or the other work as well as it does. That’s what we’ll do here with this week’s entry in talking about how hypervisors are an important of what gives VPS hosting the power and potential it does for people who need a more capable environment for their business website. Role of Hypervisors in Virtual Private Servers Smart Splits Understanding what a hypervisor is first requires an understanding what a virtual private server is, and how they work. We have gone over this at length before so we’ll just go over it briefly here. A VPS server is one server that's split up into many different servers. Try thinking of it as an office building. While there is only one building, it's separated into different units and there are different businesses or professional service providers...
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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....
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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,...
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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...
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Reading Time: 6 minutes It seems Bitcoin and all the hubbub about cryptocurrency is ‘back on’ now, and there’s a renewed general interest in mining for digital currency. The one takeaway anyone who’s developing an interest in this should take is that this is not a way to get rich quick, and that bitcoin mining is much more labour-intensive than you think. Blockchain technology is integrally important to managing cryptocurrencies, so f you’re still not dissuaded and you’d like to start amassing cryptocurrency for yourself then you’re encouraged to read on. Here at 4GoodHosting, we join every other Canadian web hosting provider in understanding the way many of our customers have real interest in taking advantage of everything that’s there for discovery in the digital world. It’s likely more than a few are taking more than a passing interest in cryptocurrency mining, so today we’ll share some information these folks are going to find valuable. Smart contracts have the potential to be one of the most useful tools associated with blockchain, and it’s almost certain that they’re going to take off right along the cryptocurrencies they’re designed to manage. So what exactly are smart contracts then? No Administration Required Smart contracts are self-executing, business automation applications that run on a decentralized network, such as blockchain. The appeal of them is specifically in the way they're able to remove administrative overhead. Indeed, smart contracts are one of most attractive features associated with blockchain technology. Blockchain functions as a database, and confirms that transactions have taken place, while smart contracts execute pre-determined conditions at the same time. They’re not unlike a when a computer executes on "if/then," or conditional, in programming. The way all of this works is once certain conditions of a smart contract are met – and related to our discussion here that’ll be two parties agreeing to an exchange in cryptocurrency – they can automate the transfer of bitcoin, fiat money, or the receipt of a shipment of goods that makes it possible for them to continue on their journey. The workings of that will reveal a blockchain ledger that stores the state of the smart contract. Tokens and Smart Contracts The different...
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