You might have seen that we’re running a great deal on hosting for students. You can get our Plus hosting package, a .info domain name and free access to lots of industry-standard Microsoft software for just £1 a month. There’s more information here.

If you know a great deal when you see one but don’t know quite what to do with your student hosting package, here are six ideas:

• Learn about web design and development.
  If you don’t know your HTML from your HTTP, but would like to learn how to create your own websites, why not pick up a For Dummies guide or try some of the tutorials at W3Schools in your spare time. Our student hosting package includes everything you need to put what you learn into practice.
• Build a website for a club or society.
  University clubs and societies thrive on the enthusiasm of the people involved in them. If you’re part of one, could it benefit from a new website? If so, there’s the ideal chance to brush up your design skills and do some good. You might even be able to claim back the cost of the web hosting. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments

Web Design isn’t easy. You’ve got to think about menu structure, page layout, colours, fonts and images.

When setting out each page, you need to sort out where everything goes. Your menu bar, logo, text, products, forms and buttons all need to slot together into a single design. So how can you decide what goes where?

There’s a phrase that’s borrowed from Newspaper publishing that says you must ‘put the gold above the fold’. This means that you need to make sure all the important stuff on your page can be seen without the user having to scroll down.

This includes menu, contact details, headlines, product, but most importantly your ‘call-to-action’ or ‘buy’ button. No matter how long your page, it’s key to include a ‘buy’ button above the fold.

But where exactly is ‘the fold’? People have a whole range of screen sizes and resolutions. Others have installed one, two, and sometimes three different tool bars.  As a consequence, the fold isn’t in the same place for every visitor.

That’s where Google’s new ‘Browser Size Tool’ can help you out. This helps you visualise the areas on the page that most people can see. Marked out as a percentage, it’s possible for you to reposition your ‘call-to-action’ buttons so that as many people as possible can see them.

Here’s what it looks like:

Have a go using the browser size tool and let us know what you find out.

Author: Nick Leech of Euston Digital

Comments

We’d love to be at university. With the combination of cheap beer, late nights, even later mornings and about four hours of lectures a week, we’d … oh hold on, what is this, some cliché-ridden exposé of the student lifestyle?

Sorry, we’ll stop being patronising and get to the point. We’ve got a great hosting deal lined up for students.

It includes decent web hosting, a domain name and access to loads of professional Microsoft software – all for £1 a month.

What’s the offer?

Our special deal gives you a package which includes everything you need to get started on a web project, including:

• 12 months of our Plus hosting package (usually £4.99 a month by itself).
• A .info domain name to use with that hosting package.
• Access to the full versions of industry standard Microsoft software.

See full details now >

All that will cost you just £12, plus the VAT. That’s a total of £14.10 for a year – a total bargain. At full price the hosting would usually be £59.88 alone, and the software would cost thousands to buy outright. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments

There’s a bewildering array of things to consider when trying to optimise your website for search engines like Google. One that gets overlooked – and yet is easy to influence – is the location of your web hosting.

This can be important in determining how your site ranks in country-specific results (like when you click the “pages from the UK” option on Google).

SEO blog Web Toastie has a good post explaining how this works. In short, Google primarily uses your website’s domain name to determine which country your site is most relevant to:

“…if your ccTLD is relevant to your targeted country, then Google will not take the location of the webserver into consideration”

For instance, if your domain name ends in .co.uk, Google will generally assume your site is most relevant to a UK audience. Your site should therefore rank more highly for UK-specific searches.

However, if your site’s domain name isn’t country-specific (maybe you have a .com domain) the physical location of the servers hosting your site comes into play. In this case, having your site hosted within the UK may give you an advantage over sites hosted in other countries. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments

Worldwide, millions of us partake in social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. But which country has made the most significant contribution to the social media phenomenon? Somewhat inadvertently, Montenegro is a real contender for this accolade.

Like a few other lucky countries before them, Montenegro has been blessed with a highly desirable Top Level Domain (TLD) extension. The .me TLD offers immediately obvious benefits to the social media community. And in an online culture obsessed with individual identity, droves of us are clambering to register our .me domains. In fact, over 320,000 .me domains have been registered since 2008.

The .me domain isn’t only useful to social media users. Facebook themselves have secured the fb.me domain; this allows users to locate their Facebook page by simply typing in www.fb.me/yourname, as opposed to a lengthy URL. Another notable site is www.despicable.me, which is being used to promote a forthcoming movie of the same name. Many companies are also using .me to denote a reference to the Middle East region within their URLs.

There’s plenty of scope for anyone to conjure up a catchy spin on the .me domain. After all, it’s often the case that an innovative online branding opportunity will determine which products and services businesses bring to the market. An imaginative and unique domain name can generate a colossal number of hits. And with the right business plan in situ, the revenue could come rolling in.

So why not make a brew and see what interesting .me domains you can come up? Then use our domain checker to see if your creative inspirations have beaten the rush. Normally we’d ask you to share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment below, but this is one time we recommend you keep your ideas to yourself. Just make sure you get your best .me domains registered before someone else pips you to the post. And there’s never been a better time to register yours; we’re offering .me domains for just £3.88 in our January sale, that’s 70% of the normal price.

Even if you don’t have a business, if you can think up a winning .me domain there’s every chance someone will want to buy it off of you. You’ll be in good company; enterprising individuals are always on the ready to take full advantage of any adaptable linguistic quirks in domain extensions. For example, those with business acumen recognised the marketability of Tonga’s .to TLD, which provided futile ground for domain names such as: where.to, go.to and how.to, while the Pacific island of Tuvalu gained great popularity in the world of media with their .tv TLD.

There something quite odd about seeing TLDs (originally conceived to indentify a nation) being re-orientated in the name of online marketing. That’s the web for you; the old rules don’t always apply, and the new ones are there for the making.  As we’ve already said, keep your .me domain ideas to yourself. However, it will be great to hear any views you have on the way that TLDs are manipulated for marketing purposes.

Comments

When carrying out a search on Google, do you always get the best results first time? If you’re anything like me, you probably have to try a slightly different search query – sometimes two or three times – before hitting the right information.

If you’re getting tired of repeatedly rephrasing your query, you’ll be interested to hear there are some other ways to refine the Google search results. They can make it a lot easier to find what you’re looking for. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments

Just in case you haven’t noticed, Christmas is on the way. Yes, really. There’s lots of cool and crazy stuff out there in our streets and shops. And the internet hasn’t missed out either.

Here’s our top six Christmas websites. Not all of them are well-designed. Not many of them are useful. But most of them are a bit bonkers – and should at least put a smile on your face at this festive time of year.

1. Alek’s controllable Christmas lights
   This site’s worth visiting for the unbelievable design alone. Get over the shock and you’ll see you can actually control Alek’s Christmas lights on the internet – and watch on the webcams. Or can you? Back in 2004, this site was exposed as a hoax, but the guy behind it now claims it’s for real. Whatever, we think being able to control 20,000 lights online is a great idea, so we’re going to assume this is legitimate.
   Go and control Alek’s lights >
   
2. Track Santa’s journey on Christmas Eve
   The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) obviously don’t have enough to keep them occupied (guarding US airspace must leave them with plenty of free time), because every Christmas they set up a website that lets you track Santa’s progress on his journey round the world. This year they’re even planning to take some snaps of his sleigh en-route, so you can finally prove his existence.
   Track Santa online > Read the rest of this entry »

Comments

Web hosting can be at bit overwhelming at times, so we’ve compiled a short glossary of the terms which regularly confuse our customers.

If there are any words you feel we’ve missed, please leave them in the comment field and we’ll add them to the glossary.

A Record – An A record is part of the zone file. It is used to point Internet traffic to an IP address. For example, you can use an “A record” to designate abc.yourdomain.com to send traffic to your web site at IP address 209.15.32.135. You can also designate xyz.yourdomain.com to go to a separate IP address.

ASP (Active Server Pages) – ASP is Microsoft’s server-side scripting technology.  An Active Server Page has an .asp extension. ASP mixes HTML and scripting code that can be written in VBScript or Jscript

Bandwidth – Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred over your server network in a fixed amount of time. With hosting, it is usually expressed over a monthly period

Browser – Computer program that allows users to view the World Wide Web and displays the content of the webpages. Examples are Firefox, Netscape, and Internet Explorer.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) – A CSS file contains a set of design styles to be used on multiple website pages. Using an external CSS file allows for easy formatting changes without the need to make changes on every page.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) – CGI is a standard for interfacing web servers with an executable application.  A CGI program can be written in Perl or C/C++ and it is often stored in a special directory like /cgi-bin.  CGI is often used to process data from HTML forms.

CNAME (Canonical Name) – CNAME is a record in a DNS database that indicates the true host name of any computer that its aliases are associated with. A computer hosting a Web site must have an IP address in order to be connected to the World Wide Web. The DNS resolves the computer’s domain name to its IP address, but sometimes more than one domain name resolves to the same IP address. This is where the CNAME is useful. A machine can have an unlimited number of CNAME aliases, but a separate CNAME record must be in the database for each alias.

DNS (Domain Name System) – Internet service that directs domains names (see below) into corresponding IP addresses. The DNS database is distributed and replicated among many DNS servers, so when you change your domain’s IP address, the changes take a while to change on all DNS servers.

Domain name – A Domain name is an easy to remember address that can be translated by DNS (see above) into server’s IP address. Domain’s suffix indicates which TLD (Top Level Domain) it belongs to, for example .com, .gov, .org, .net, etc.

DPA (Data Protection Act) – The Data Protection Act gives you the right to know what information is held about you. It sets out rules to make sure that this information is handled properly. Read more information about the DPA here

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) – An interface used to download and upload files between your computer and your web hosting area.

Host – Refers to a company who provides web hosting services.

IP Address (Internet Protocol Address) - A unique number used to identify all of the individual devices connected to the Internet. This number is usually shown in groups of numbers from 0 to 255, separated by periods, for example 150.32.244.117.

LOL – Laughing Out Loud

MySQL - One of the most popular database systems.

MX Records – An MX (mail exchange) record is an entry in your DNS file which selects a mail server to handle your domain email. This means that when someone sends an email to you@yourdomain.com the email will be delivered to the mail server specified in the MX record for yourdomain.com.

Perl - Open source CGI scripting programming language. Perl is one of the most popular web programming languages, due to its powerful text-manipulation facilities.

PHP – PHP is a free, open-source server-side scripting language. PHP code can be embedded in HTML.  PHP files usually have extensions like .php.

Propagation - The process of updating the DNS to DNS servers. This process usually concerns those who have just updated/bought/transferred a domain and can take up to 72 hours.

Pending Delete – This is the final stage before the domain is released back on to the domain market, this only occurs after quarantine.

Quarantine -This is the period after the redemption period of a domain name (see below). During this period, the domain is no longer available to the original owner to re-register, but is not yet available to the general public to purchase yet.

Redemption – The redemption period is a domain registry period that occurs when a domain name is deleted after having expired. Rather than deleting your domain, the existing registry keeps a hold on the domain name. During this redemption period, the original owner of the domain can retrieve the domain from deletion by contacting their registrar (in your case, this is likely to be 123-reg).

Registrar - this is who you have bought, or technically registered, your domain with. And hopefully this is 123-reg!

Spam – Spam emails are sent to a big list unsolicited, usually selling something you have no interest in!

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) - SSL encrypts data that should be protected while transferring over the internet, such as credit card numbers, by using https protocol.

TLD (Top Level Domain) - This is the domain name extension, such as .com, .org or .gov.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator) – URL is the web address you type in your web browser to reach a website. The domain name you choose makes up your URL along with your TLD.

Whois – An internet service that allows obtainment of information about domain name owners.

Comments

Part of the challenge of buying a domain name is juggling alternative spellings and domain extensions to find a decent one.

But imagine if none were taken and you could pick any domain name you like. What would you have? And why?

CreativeMorning is a regular event which happens in New York. We’ve not been (it’s too far from London and we’d never get it through on expenses), but we noticed they used this simple concept as an icebreaker, asking people to scribble down the domain they’d most like to own.

You can see what people chose on Flickr. For such a simple idea, it offers a surprising insight into people’s personalities, priorities and motivations. Or we can pretend it does – the scientific basis of such judgements is probably flaky, to say the least.

Still, it’s a good game to play. You can take a guess at who doesn’t like early mornings, who’s got a cold, but definitely not swine flu – and who’s into buying and selling domain names for money.

So, over to you. If you could choose any domain you like, what would it be? And why would you pick it? Leave a comment and let us know.

Comments

Jason Slater set up his website eight years ago, in an attempt to meet other people in his line of work. Now his technology blog receives 25,000 visitors a month and he’s been shortlisted for awards alongside Stephen Fry. We ask him how he’s got it so right.

Hi Jason. What’s your blog all about?
I started it because I work in IT. I’m normally one of the backroom boys and I’ve often been the sole person in the IT department, with no immediate network of colleagues to discuss issues with.

I wanted to use the site to reach out and talk to other people in the same industry, to try and be part of a community. For me, it’s a hobby – I have to fit it in around my work.

What do you write about?
The things I write about – because I work with IT all day long – are the things I touch and feel, most of the time. I tend to write about stuff I know, based on my own experiences.

A lot of blogs and sites cover things up to the point of purchase. They sell you on features, all the glitz and glamour. I try to cover what happens after that. There’s nothing like asking someone who’s used a piece of equipment what they think of it.

You get a lot of visitors now. How long did it take to get off the ground?
It’s only been in the last four years or so that blogs have had the attention they get now – and my traffic has taken off in the last four years too. I  get around 25,000 visitors a month now and there are lots of loyal readers who take part in the blog. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments