We have been hard at work behind the scenes at HostNine, and we want to announce the implementation of a number of new measures here designed to make your hosting much more stable and secure!
CloudLinux
The operating system on nearly all servers has been changed to utilize the first Linux Operating System specifically designed for shared hosting environments. CloudLinux OS is a revolutionary OS that takes each shared cPanel account and drops it into an almost VPS-like container called a Lightweight Virtual Environment™ (or LVE). The LVE will help manage resources on each cPanel account and, by extension, optimizing resource use and population balancing for the entire server. You can now see your site’s resource usage within your cPanel
by clicking the “Resource Usage” icon.
Please note that while bandwidth and space are “unlimited”, CPU and Memory resources on the server are not. Currently, all accounts are allowed to fully utilize a portion of the CPU and up to 1 Gigabyte of memory at any given time. If your site is using more than that consistently, or if you max out your resources, your site will begin to slow down and, eventually, will stop serving altogether until the resource usage comes down to a normalized level while the server continues to serve your neighbors. In other words, your site may appear “down” though the server is up if you max out your resource container.
Should this happen, please take a look at your history in your cPanel and take steps to optimize your site with caching, optimization, and so on. If you are unable to do so, or your resource usage is consistently higher, submit a ticket to support and we will work with your site to find where it’s resource needs are and work with you on a price for that higher container or, if necessary, help transition you to a VPS if your site has outgrown a shared server environment.
Microsoft FrontPage Extensions Disabled
HostNine has made the decision to disable Microsoft FrontPage Extensions across all servers. The last release of Microsoft FrontPage was in 2003, and the software and extensions for the servers were actually “End of Lifed” in 2006.
What an End of Life Date means is that the company that releases the software is stating to anyone that uses that software that they should stop using it on that date. FrontPage extensions were utilized quite a bit beyond it’s EoL cycle because they were in widespread use and changes made to other server technology wasn’t particularly incompatible.
The landscape has significantly changed with regard to extensions – they have never been tested with the operating systems being used today or with current versions of the web server software. Furthermore, they are not being monitored for security issues. Since this is a closed-source product, these issues are not being addressed and security patches are not begin published. As there are higher security risks and far more attacks being perpetrated on web sites than ever before, and these extensions represent a serious liability.
While we urge our customers to cease using Microsoft FrontPage, please note you may still publish a FrontPage designed site, though some advanced aspects will cease to work. The lack of server extensions only limits some of the advanced features of the product. We suggest using the Find feature within FrontPage and search the source code of all you pages for “webbot” without the quotation marks. This will highlight each instance where the code relies on the server extensions. Publishing can be done with the built in FTP application
within FrontPage.
Previewing with /~userid Removed
The ability to see a site at /~userid is intended to be a temporary feature to allow people to preview their site before changing DNS. One of the drawbacks of this is that the traffic is assigned to the server name, and not the cPanel account, we have become aware that some on HostNine’s servers have been using this to “steal bandwidth”. As it also works with any domain name on the server it also allows people to steal bandwidth from their fellow hosting shared server neighbors.
While HostNine allows unlimited bandwidth, many of our Reseller customers do not and do implement a bandwidth limit on accounts, and unfortunately, many people have chosen to utilize this preview feature to permanently load content on another site from the HostNine servers without having this bandwidth counted against their usage. In addition, malware infected sites can potentially show up in your domain name structure and get your site banned and flagged on Google even though your site is innocent if this feature is enabled.
We have disabled this preview feature to both ensure that customer sites are not inadvertently tagged as hosting malware if their neighbor is infected, as well as to ensure all bandwidth use is registered to the correct account.
If you need to preview the site to work on editing it, you can change your hosts file so that you can “move” the domain for *you* before you move it for everyone else. If you are unsure how to do this, please let us know and we’ll be happy to send you directions for your operating system. Just let us know which one you use.
If you are attempting to serve content from a cPanel account without a domain name, you will need to install a domain name or subdomain into the cPanel site for that to take place. If you don’t wish to change the original installed domain name, you can do this by parking a domain name and creating an A Record where your current DNS is hosted to point to the IP of your site, and it will function with the parked name after propagation.
Backup Changes
We have changed backups from Daily to Weekly due to a number of our customers finding issues for which they needed a backup and not noticing they need one until the problem they are attempting to correct has already been backed up, rendering the backup unhelpful for their purposes.
If you need daily backups because your site frequently changes, we can recommend a number of services that will do so for you, and please remember we do require all HostNine customers to maintain their own backup as well. You can take one quickly and easily from within your cPanel.
Three Tools for Monitoring Website Conversations – A Guest Post by Danielle Russell
The Internet is not a soap box. Many businesses make the mistake of only giving information without seeking any response. A truly effective brand encourages audience participation, and while starting online conversations can be difficult, the benefits of having direct access to your customers are well worth the effort. Here are some of the best strategies and tools to start and manage conversation.
Social Media
Social media provides a channel of communication between you and your audience. The conversations you create on social media platforms can funnel traffic back to your website. Use social media as your buzz-generator, the solid first impression of your brand. Social media can also be used to hunt conversation. It is often difficult to start a discussion unless a customer is navigating through your website or on your page.
With social media you can look for potential customers and engage them directly: follow them, message them, mention them, etc. Keep your interactions short, positive and consistent with your brand. A simple, “It’s great to meet you! Feel free to explore www.website.com and let us know if you need anything!” could work wonders for how a customer feels about your company.
A lot of companies will use incentives or give awards through social media. This is a great way to engage customers who really have their eye on the brand — usually more loyal buyers. It’s a great idea for companies to send their followers coupon codes or other deals as a reward. A message like, “Thanks for re-tweeting us! Please use coupon code ‘RTcompany456′ for a 15% discount on your next purchase. Have a great day!” will make customers feel appreciated for their loyalty.
Comments
Having a comment section on your website encourages your customer’s voice. Testimonials do this as well; they tell potential customers that you care about how your products affect them, even after the purchase. However, just receiving comments is not a conversation. If a website wants to yield page space to make comments possible then it has to be committed to the conversation. Comment back, answer customer concerns and questions directly and in the open. If you respond to a customer query then they’ll be instantly impressed by your commitment to the conversation and your interest in them.
Fresh Content
Never stop the conversation; it could be impossible to get it started again. When visitors come to your site they should be greeted with fresh content. Give them more things to see, read and comment on as frequently as possible. Your site can easily feature event information, a calendar or a “What’s New” section that can be constantly fresh. You want users to look to your site as a trusted source of up-to-date information on the topic.
It’s important to make sure users can get to your freshest and most popular content first. Use a tool like crazyegg or Clickheat to see where your guests are clicking. These tools show a heat map of were your guests click the most. This will tell you if your buttons and navigation are clear.
Get To Know Your Audience
Remember, these suggestions are only the first steps in starting a conversation with your customers. Take the time to explore who your audience is. How do they communicate? What inspires them to buy your products or services? What keeps them coming back? Always make listening a priority. Social media, comments and fresh content are useless without a strong, active voice behind them.
What tools do you use for customer engagement?
Danielle Russell has a passion for web design and finding new ways to incorporate a wide array of technologies, like social media, text marketing and the latest advances in HTML and CSS to create an integrated, user-friendly experience.