Reading Time: 7 minutes Small Smartphone screens count bigtime too! We could have entitled this article “The need for pleasing your website visitors who are using mobile device”, and perhaps that would be a better title. In any case the message of this article is to persuade you that it is basically critical to your business not only to have a website - but to also have a mobile website. So we urge you to consider the little investment in time and the little bit extra per month to develop a mobile friendly website. Would this mean that your website could require two domains? The answer to that is no. It is actually a better practice to use a single domain and then use an intelligent piece of javascript code on your website to determine if the viewing device is a smartphone or a larger device such as a laptop or a desktop PC or Mac. For example, if you go to Amazon.com on your mobile device, you will see a different layout than the larger pages you would see on a desktop monitor. If people were required to “pinch and zoom” on their small screens ( to read very small font, or to have to scroll left and right and up and down to read the site content ) - then Amazon would be losing out on many of their sales that come through iphones, and androids, windows phones, and other such devices. See for yourself if Google considers your website to be mobile friendly: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ Go ahead and try your website in the google tool above. Did your website pass the test? read_more We understand that the prospect of another website design sounds daunting to you.It is even to us. We didn’t pass this test either: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?url=http%3A%2F%2F4goodhosting.com Text too small to read; Links too close together; Mobile viewport not set ;Content wider than screen... However, despite how busy we are, and how we have often thought people searching for web hosting wouldn’t be doing so from a mobile device - the simple fact is that google is considering it important and is making it a search engine ranking...
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Reading Time: 7 minutes Canadians enjoy heading across the border for some great cross border shopping but, when choosing a web hosting company it is important to know what the differences between US and Canadian web hosting and what it can mean for your business. We are going to be looking at the differences in privacy between the two countries, the benefit of having your data near you, the benefit of being under your own nations law, the reason that you should be choosing local and of course the dangers of utilizing a US web hosting company, especially in regards to the DMCA concerns and lastly some added benefits of hosting within Canada. In the world of web hosting you have hundreds of options, and this article looks to show you why if you are a Canadian based business, having your web host based out of Canada is going to help your business succeed. Privacy We first start in the realm of privacy. Privacy is important, no matter what type of business you are running as proprietary information leaking to your competitors can mean the end to your success. However, how your information, and especially who has access to your information, is controlled is completely different between the two countries. In the United States their is practically no privacy protection for data owned by companies. There has been no comprehensive data protection legislation put through, and rather it relies on self regulation within the industry. The Patriot Act also allows federal authorities to block access to your data, as well as authorizes them to spy on you, through your site, all without a court order. On the other side of the 49th parallel personal data is regulated, and protects information for both individuals as well as businesses. This is from the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act passed through the Canadian government. In regards to your privacy, the only place to store it that is truly secure is right here in the Great White North. Data Location If you are looking for a fast loading time in San Diego, you store your websites information in San Diego, but if you are looking for...
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Reading Time: 2 minutes The Internet is wide open, but sometimes your proprietary content that has value should she sold for a certain amount of money. This is where Paywall systems come into play. This creates a membership or customer or client base for you as well, giving you email addresses where you may be able to sell similar content to the same previous customers. For paying subscribers, they then get access to say your gallery, video, mp3s books, articles, or any other kind of files. Again to keep things under control, you will need a paywall system. Paywalls have received a bad reputation because content people think should be free isn't always free. However, that is the proper nature of things, that your works should have some sort of monetary value. You just need to make sure you publish interesting content that others can easily find for free anywhere else; that is the other half of things. read_more Setting up a paywall system should be integrated smoothly into your website. Some CMS's (Content Management Systems) have plugins that can be used to setup your subscription system. Or maybe you are handy at programming and have developed your own paywall integration. However, the easiest option is to use Paypal's service. See PayPal.com for their easy to use integrations. Search "Paypal Paywall" or can you certainly use another payment provider's services. There are too many to list here. Also, you should also enable your website to use SSL encryption to keep your customer information, such as credit card information, email, phone numbers - private. When your site is run under "https" potential customers feel more confident to use your services. The final item you will need to take care of is how you plan to receive payment and the kinds of payment you will accept (Paypal, bitcoin, etc.) Many of the members online plugins for CMS's support most of the popular payment processors, and supply integrations with them as well. This minimizes the amount of work and headache for you to run your little private ecommerce service. If you don't have a website yet, check out our Canadian Hosting Packages.
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Reading Time: 3 minutes April 21st is another 'big SEO day' around the world from a google ranking index perspective. Why a month and two weeks from the date of this article? Well, that is when Google will be changing the technique that they use to rank websites (with a higher high ranking factor given to websites that are also mobile friendly). Google started highlighting 'mobile friendly sites' in results last year. Google states that their April 21st update will have ''significant impact'' on all mobile-based searches from all around the world. Google justifies the change in saying that searchers will see better search results. Details on how ranking will effect desktop searches is yet to be seen; but it is anticipated that websites that are also mobile friendly will be given extra elevation by Google's new algorithm. These changes are good news for mobile webmasters. Also, it should help motivate webmasters and designers that still don’t have a mobile website deployed to create one. Since the middle of this past year - mobile internet users started outnumbering those who surf the web with a desktop computer (or laptop). Today's mobile users certainly expect that websites will display most effectively on their choice of device. Webmasters who want to test their website’s 'mobile compatibility' can use Google’s tools for detailed information. Overall the change means that owners of websites that are not 'mobile-friendly' as of April 21st, 2015 can now expect to see their search rankings and traffic take a significant downward hit. read_more However, 4GoodHosting - your global Canadian based web hosting provider and premium SEO service, already has the solutions for you in place, specifically a mobile siteuilder. Recently Google emailed mobile usability warnings to untold numbers of website owners, with a detailed about the ways their website is offering negative mobile experiences. For example it was said: “ These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users. ”- an obvious warning that they intend to prioritize mobile-friendly websites. After April 21st, 2015 , with a majority of people accessing the Internet with mobile devices, businesses and webmasters should...
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Reading Time: 5 minutes What happens if we simply allow governments to make all the regulations and rules, not us, and let corporations argue about it, not us? That would be the clear merger of state and corporate power, which are the only two ingredients in the recipe for fascism; which has always occurred through all of the past two centuries of history under similar circumstance. Our case in point for this article is: Google Claims Opposition to New (without public consent) Rule that Gives American Federal Judges and their Government Omnipresent-Global Search Warrant Powers. The American “Advisory Committee on the Rules of Criminal Procedure” is quietly and slying consider changing a rule would allow judges to issue “ global warrants” to search computers (ie. your/anyone’s computer) and networks which are outside of the judge’s district. So, they wish to give the already outrageous NSA-spylike powers to all of their federal judges? If so, shouldn’t the American people be having some say on that particular huge issue? But they seem so utterly passive. Do the American people really need a “congress” to echo their concerns and trust that their elected officials vote likewise -> when today people can theoretically all take a vote simultaneously on the internet? The simple point is that individual citizens should claim their right to express their opinion publicly or privately over the internet without government suppression of it, nor interference. And why should we care? Because what happens in America certainly affects us here too; especially when pertaining to the internet. Back to the current scoop... Google has again surprised us all by just suddenly announcing an always-untimely proposed change to a procedural rule; which the google representative says could have “profound implications for the privacy and security of all web users”. read_more Into the nitty-gritty - American Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41 dictates that federal judges cannot issue warrants to search things outside of their district, with specific exceptions. The US Department of Justice asked the Advisory Committee to make changes to allow the government to conduct “remote access” searches of content stored in a location “concealed through technological means,” { they are also saying they don’t...
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Reading Time: 5 minutes This is a primer for most of you who are interested in but maybe still unfamiliar of what is meant by the the three letter acronym, SEO, which is short for "Search Engine Optimization"; its history and current day evolution. Over the past 25 years, the way we live and work has been utterly transformed by the creation and evolution of the world wide web or "internet". As the volume of online content has soared, search engines have become central and essential and critical to an infinite number of our online "web surfing" searches & experiences. SEO is an Internet marketing strategy, and takes into account how search engines are programmed (and updated) to function, what people are most likely to search for, the actual search phrases or keywords entered into search engines - and specific for each target audience. So let's quickly travel back a quarter-of-a-century to a time before tags, keywords, “backlinks”. clickthrus, and content optimization - to explore how SEO has changed and developed over time -> and what those changes now appear to tell us about the future! read_more 1991 : The first “website “goes live in a European research lab. The first webmaster goes down in history as “Tim Berners Lee”. With an immediate explosion in the number of websites, there's an increasingly pressing need to organize and index them. The earliest services to do this were “Archie” and “Gopher” — they were most primitive in how they worked, but both of those services are widely regarded as the first search engines. The “evolution” of Search Engines became: Altavista, LYCOS, Infoseek, , Excite, Ask Jeeves, Google, Yahoo Search, MSN, and Bing... There were various others such as search.com, but much less visible than the main group. As getting top or “1st page” listings has proven to be vitally important for any company marketing its products and services on the internet, SEO companies began to take root. A group at Search Engine Watch launched the Search Engine Strategies Conference (SES in 1996-1997). SES is still going strong today, with events all over the world frequently attended by thought leaders and industry experts. Now onto Google: Google...
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Reading Time: 3 minutes Forward: Pretty much all of us have heard or know that privacy rights no longer exist in the United States. Gone, finished, beyond recourse (except through using end-to-end encryption techniques ; however the NSA can probably still secretly grab your screenshot or logged keystrokes or live microphone through a backdoor partnership with Microsoft and Apple). Any per-existing privacy laws have been overwritten by new creepier laws that have paved the way for absolute intrusion into the American people’s personal world by their out-of-control government. Even if there are a few scraps of privacy protection in the states, it has become clear that any such laws are completely ignored by large and sophisticated spy organizations such as a the NSA. Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing reports are a case in point. But did you know our home country of Canada has some of the most protective laws regarding internet privacy in the world, at least on paper? Our nation even has appointed a “Privacy Commissioner”: The Commissioner is currently Daniel Therrien. He was appointed on June 5, 2014. [ There have been eight Privacy Commissioners since the office was established in 1977. ] You even have the right to contact him or his office with your own related personal privacy concerns, anytime. More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_Commissioner_of_Canada Here is his youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/PrivacyComm The first incarnation of a privacy law came in 1977 when the Canadian government introduced data protection provisions into the Canadian Human Rights Act. read_more Then in 1982 The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms stated that Canadians have "the right to life, liberty and security of the person" and "the right to be free from unreasonable search or seizure"; but strangely avoided using the word ‘privacy’. The following year, in 1983, the Federal Privacy Act regulated how federal government collects, passes around and utilizes people’s personal information. In the 90’s and 2000’s, other privacy legislation placed restrictions on the archival, the use and disclosure of citizen’s personal information by territorial and provincial governments, and likewise also by companies and institutions within the private sector. The latest ruling to emerge out of this fray is the recent June 2014 Canadian Supreme Court...
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Reading Time: 4 minutes Solid State Devices further compress into the acronym SSDs. This applies for ssd-based shared and vps hosting. The best advantage of a SSD comes by its random access reading/writing latency, which is 0.01 milliseconds or less; virtually zero delay. Much larger delays are caused by a conventional hard drive’s mechanical read/write head “seek” time, which can take many milliseconds per operation. So when in use with intensive database applications, a SDD offers a new dimension in speed. However, all other kinds of storage memory access are sped up too: access time of webpages, e-commerce applications, and especially databases... are all sped up significantly. To speed up your web enterprise, it is already time to upgrade to a SSD sharedrather than the traditional shared hosting or hard-disk based shared Hosting. SSDs are also much less likely to ever breakdown or otherwise malfunction. Typical SSD memory is expected to last 4 million hours before a hardware failure - enabling both a speed & reliability perfection in web hosting. The Top 10 SSD-Web-hosting and SSD-VPS hosting benefits: 1) Super ultra-fast random access read/writes Comparing a SSD to a HDD (hard drive), is like comparing the difference in speed between a laser printer compared to a dotmatrix printer. The major benefit is that SSDs are lightning-fast compared to a hard drives since there is no physical read/write head movement required. Again, there is virtually no (zero) latency in SSD data reads or writes. Until something now unknown, such as holographic memory or something such as that, is invented, SSDs are the fastest mass storage devices in this part of the universe and will be for many more years. 2) Super fast transfer speeds Moving parts in HDD slow down drive performance while SSD has no moving parts within it, which makes data transfer extremely faster. With more disk space, a high traffic site can host multiple images, videos and handle incoming traffic. 3) No disk fragmentation issues - ever! As there are no moving or mechanical parts on a SSD, slowing because of fragmentation which is always happening on traditional hard disk drives is not an issue with Solid State Drives. Therefore, SSD’s offer...
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Reading Time: 8 minutes If you’ve been on the hunt for a web hosting company, you’ve probably heard the term “virtual private server.” A VPS is similar to a dedicated server in look and feel as a web host customer, but essentially they are a different service. Canadian web hosts offer fast broadband speeds, good technical support, and friendly service. Canada’s infrastructure and Internet backbone are among the world’s top 10 services. You won’t find better service in North America, but what type of service should you get? Why Move On from Shared Hosting? If you currently use shared hosting, these plans are great for simple blogs or websites that don’t get much traffic, but there are some disadvantages with shared hosting. First, you share the same servers with hundreds (sometimes thousands) of other customers and their sites. Shared hosting is inherently slower, because you have hundreds of other sites using the server’s resources. If one site gets hacked, your site could be vulnerable if the site left a security hole on the server as a whole. Basically, you are at the mercy of several other site owners, and you have no options. Next, you can’t customize your server’s settings. Maybe you have a custom API, maybe you have specific site settings, or maybe you just want to set up multiple sites on one account. All of these aren’t possible with shared hosting. VPS gives you these options. read_more If you find that your site is suffering from slowness issues or you need some more flexibility, Canadian web hosting offers VPS service that’s fast and affordable. Of course, suffering from slow server performance isn’t the only issue. Shared hosting also limits the technology you use to connect to your server, storage space is usually much smaller than VPS, and you must use the host’s interface to manage your site instead of the server’s Apache or IIS interface. What is the Difference between VPS and Dedicated Servers? Although it feels like the same interface, VPS and dedicated servers are distinctly different platforms. First, a virtual private server is exactly what it says – a virtual server. You have a sandboxed environment from other site owners,...
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Reading Time: 3 minutes Subject: Responsive Webpage Design According to statistics gathered by the HTTP Archive the results shown in the below graph show the average web page grew in size 14.6%; about 2 megabytes in the past year. In previous years, 2013, and 2012, the rate at which the ‘average’ webpage grew annually, were at rates of 30%, and 32% respectively. What were the factors associated with the increases in average size? CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), a typical portion of web page source code, grew 23% in size compared to 2013’s average webpage. Also the amount of and size of images used on the average webpage also expanded by 20%. Javascript was more prevalent too with a 7% increase, but the use of Adobe Flash in web pages decreased around 4%. Although at home internet surfers are experiencing a richer page viewing experience, this is also a drawback for those surfing on portable devices that rely on slow cell phone network data connections. A solution would be to design mobile-friendly-pages perhaps utilizing a mobile sitebuilder ; and using a javascript function to decide if a regular sized webpage or a more compact mobile version should be sent/downloaded to your website visitor. read_more Currently only a small percentage of web pages download fast and are not annoying to load/view on mobile devices. Responsive design will probably be a more pressing issue in 2015 as the average webpage size continues to grow while more website browsing is done on smartphones and tablets. If you need tips on responsive design for your website, just write us at support@. You or your webpage developer should design for increased page loading speed, but we would be glad to help you with suggestions too. The average web page PageSpeed score was reported at 78 for 2014, which is surprising given the extra bloat each year. Slower page loading has remained most obvious on mobile device connections. So why create and publish a badly-optimized websites? There are solutions to page bloat or weight. We believe our clients have an incentive to make their presentation effectively with small, fast-loading web pages. This is because people are using cell phones and tablets...
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