MD Newsletter: January 2009
Welcome 2009!
We hope everyone has had a safe and enjoyable holiday season. At MD Web Hosting we’re all pumped in 2009 and look forward in providing you with some of the best services and support in the industry. To celebrate we have slashed our prices for all new com.au .net.au domain registrations to $25/2 years. You will also receive a $100 Google Adwords Voucher and a Free Month of Hosting if required. Order a domain now to take up this amazing offer.
With our enterprise infrastructure and network enhancements complete we want to hear what you think! We realise that many users don’t check many aspects of their account but we want to know if you’re having any problems, so email us (
support@mdwebhosting.com.au) or fill out our contact query form at
http://www.mdwebhosting.com.au/contact.html and a representative will contact you as soon as possible.
.au Domain Accreditation
You may not know but it has been over 12 months since MD Web Hosting become auDa Accredited. What this means is that we can now process all Australians Domains directly instead of through our previous domains reseller partner. If you ordered an AU domain before November 2007 your domain is most likely still with our partner, and we would love you to transfer to us! By being your registrar, we can offer:
- Cheaper pricing
- Faster support with a direct connection to the registry
- Better service
- Rapid management of your domain via an integrated MyAccount interface
Transferring is quick, free, and there is no downtime involved! Simply fill out our “Australian Domain Transfer Form” (
http://www.mdwebhosting.com.au/transfers/)
Link to MD and Start Earning Today
If you have a web site you can join the MD affiliate program and earn money by promoting our products on your site. Every time you send us a customer from your site, you earn 20% of each sale.
So, How Does the MD Affiliate Program Work?
1. Sign up (it's free) in less than 2 minutes.
2. Place links on your website or in your emails.
3. Your visitors click on these links and purchases any of our products.
4. You earn 20% of the purchase price on any products they buy.
So, How Does the MD Affiliate Program Work?
After each successful purchase, you will see a tally of products sold to your website visitors in your online control panel after you become an affiliate. Every other week, we will credit your account for the amount that you have earned.
Sign Up Now (http://www.mdwebhosting.com.au/affiliates.html)
SEO 101: Content is King
“How do I get my website higher in Google’s search index?” Is a common question heard. Unfortunately it is not an exact science when trying to achieve a number 1 ranking for a particular keyword as there are so many factors involved.
The best advice I can give is to structure your website for SEO (“Search Engine Optimisation”), based on the keywords relevant to your website.
Here are some tips that you should be aware of as you create your site content:
1. Place yourself in the customer’s position – What keywords would they use when searching for products and services? List your keywords.
2. Devise your site structure and plan based on these keywords if possible.
3. The most important part writing your content based on these keywords. A lot of websites out there are brief on content, not understanding when a user searches on Google it will rank sites with the best and most relevant content more prominently. Your content should contain at least 10 references to the keywords you wish to promote. This should also filter though to your whole website.
4. Your content should be presented in an SEO friendly format. Sites developed completely in Flash do not rank that highly - Google may not index your content at all. Similarly, text contained inside an image is a big no-no.
5. Over the long run the more content your site has the better. It is always a great idea to start a company specific blog or article/publication section which you can continually update.
Always remember patience is a virtue, over time with much effort your site will slowly creep up the rankings and you will reap the rewards of your labour. (MD has a full range of
SEO/Marketing products for those that are interested).
Tech Tip 1: Firewalls
At some stage you may find yourself blocked by the software firewall. When this occurs, you will find your computer/IP address locked out from accessing your site, cpanel, ftp and email. This does not affect the ability of other people to enjoy your site as they normally do, or for your account to receive email.
Why was I blocked?
- You entered your password incorrectly 3 times in a row. Our firewall has a tool called "brute force detection" to protect your account from people that try and guess your password at random (e.g., using common dictionary words or other combinations of words and numbers they think you might be using).
- You are checking your pop3 email too often. Accounts are limited to 60 checks an hour - anymore and you trigger the firewall block response. Note that some email clients have a setting to check each email inbox for new email every minute. If you then press send/receive manually then you can easily run over the 60 limit. The best workaround is to decrease the automatic check to once every 5 minutes, and to limit your send/receive usage.
- You are trying to send multiple files over multiple connections using ftp. Some FTP clients have the option of creating additional connections to the server to speed up file transfers. Our firewall disallows this practice and will block any accounts that engage in this activity.
- You are creating too many simultaneous tcp connections to an MD server. The connections limit is set at a level that still permits normal enjoyment of your service but will temporarily block any activity that looks suspicious.
Is the block permanent?
No - usually the first block lasts only 15 minutes. If you get blocked again then you are locked out for an hour. If you trigger a third block then it becomes permanent, and you will have to contact us via MyAccount to get yourself removed from the block list.
Tech Tip 2: Webmail
Webmail is a function that lets you send and receive emails for your account on any internet enabled computer!
To access webmail, simply visit: http://yourdomain.com/webmail
1. Enter your full email address as the username.
2. Enter the password for the mail account as the password.
3. Choose your preferred webmail client. Horde has more features and looks "prettier" whereas SquirrelMail is very fast and straight forward.
You're now logged in and ready to start sending/receiving emails.
Tech Tip 3: Backups
Creating a Full Backup
This backup will be a full backup of your account and all its details including email settings etc. It is the best copy to keep a local copy (e.g., on your PC) of as it can be used to fully re-create your account in the event this is required.
To create one, do the following:
1. From the main cPanel page, click on "Backups"
2. Under the "Full Backup" heading, click on "Generate/Download a Full Backup"
3. Leave all the option in the next window as they are, with the exception of the email address. Here enter the email address where you want the backup complete notification sent
The backup will then be created and stored in your home directory. To download the file, simply connect via FTP or use the File Manager in cPanel.
To learn more please read our Wiki CPanel Backup Guide
