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Archive for the ‘Hosting’ Category

Web Hosting Optimized for PDG Commerce

Filed under: E-Commerce,Hosting — Art Zemon on April 23, 2009

I am very pleased that, in cooperation with PDG Software, we are now offering hosting plans with PDG Commerce pre-installed. These plans are optimized for PDG Commerce with everything set up at the same time that the account is provisioned. If you purchase one of these accounts, you will be running PDG Commerce 60 seconds after you receive the email message with your store-specific access information.

The accounts range from the Signature Enhanced at just $19 per month through the Virtual Private Servers and Managed Private Servers. The VPS and MPS plans can be configured to be PCI compliant.

PDG Commerce is an e-commerce solution with features that are second to none. It runs dramatically faster on even the Signature Enhanced account than on shared hosting accounts at other “name brand” hosting providers.

If you already run PDG Commerce and need more speed or better technical suppport, these PDG Commerce hosting plans are designed for you.

If you are looking for an e-commerce platform which is PA-DSS certified and PCI compliant, these hosting plans with PDG Commerce pre-installed are just the ticket.

New Hosting Family Now Available

Filed under: Hosting — Art Zemon on April 1, 2009

It is not often that I have the pleasure of introducing a completely new family of hosting accounts but today is one of those special days. See Verio CP/M for full details. While priced for today’s economy, these new plans remain surprisingly feature-rich.

Postini VS Spam

Filed under: Hosting,How To,This & That — Bert Dinkins on March 25, 2009

If you have an email address, you have been spammed.

Since I am usually the one that handle trouble tickets, I get several each month about spam. Customers wonder why they are getting spam from their own email address.

Basically spammers grabbed your email address and spam you with your own email address. You can look at the source code of an email see that it’s coming from a domain outside of the US.

Imagine someone mailing you a bunch of letters through the post office, but the return address is not really theirs. They put your return address on the letters.

Of course mailing through the post office costs money and email doesn’t.

Postini does a good job at blocking spam. The default settings for Postini will allow some spam to get through. You can always login into your account and adjust the settings.

Click “Manage Junk Filters”.

You will have a drop down for Overall Junk Filter:, the default setting is Strict. You can change it to be more aggressive.

Let me caution you about this. You may find more legitimate emails getting caught. Take a close look at your Quarantine reports.

Bert Dinkins
bert_dinkins

Cloud Computing and Virtualization: Buzzwords du Jour

Filed under: Hosting,This & That — Art Zemon on March 23, 2009

These days, everybody is talking about cloud computing and virtualization. I guess we should, too. This will be short, though, since I want to de-mystify the concepts.

Virtualization: We have been using virtualization for our hosting platforms for almost seven years. It’s old hat. When you get a Virtual Private Server from us, it is a virtual machine, living inside a larger physical machine.
Cloud Computing: We use cloud computing for our Nest Egg Backup for Web Servers and Cross Browser Testing products. These run “in the cloud” only when you need them and the computers to run them do not even exist when no one is using them.

Why don’t we hype the buzzwords all over our web site? Because we think that the actual solution provided by our products is more interesting that the underlying technology.

Pumped Up by the viaVerio Partner Summit

Filed under: E-Commerce,Hosting,This & That — Art Zemon on March 18, 2009

Candy and I just got back from the viaVerio Partner Summit in Reston, VA. My brain is full to overflowing with information about PCI compliance (good info for anybody who sells anything online), social networking (good info for anybody who has a web site and wants to communicate with prospects and customers), web hosting improvements at Verio (good info for anybody who has a web site), technical details about Verio’s hosting platforms (good info for geeks like me) and more. Better yet, when my brain fills up with stuff like this, I begin to bubble with ideas about sharing it all. Look for more on that in the next few days.

I am overawed by the openness and helpfulness of the people who attended. Kiyoshi Maeda, president and CEO of Verio, brought an impressive array of his senior staff. All were thoroughly approachable, open with new developments at Verio, and receptive to feedback. By crafting an exceptional conference, Verio brought together dozens of resellers like Hen’s Teeth Network and (it seemed like) almost as many movers and shakers from Verio itself. The result was three days of free-flowing information and exciting ideas.

Art Zemon, viaVerio Advocacy Award

I was gratified by Verio’s willingness to accept harsh feedback about our needs regarding PCI compliant hosting platforms and assistance in creating PCI compliant e-commerce sites. As Verio has so often done in the past, it returned my trust with solid information about positive steps it is taking to enable e-commerce merchants to be truly PCI complaint… and that means much more than simply passing an external vulnerability scan.

I also have to admit to being completely flabbergasted when I was awarded the viaVerio Advocacy Award. I do believe in the products we resell and this probably shoots any last vestiges of impartiality which I might have been harboring.

Today’s economic climate can well be described as “challenging.” The Verio products and services which we resell, and the tools and networking connections which I gathered in Reston will go a long way towards making you more successful in your business. Stay tuned.

P.S. For quick useful tidbits, follow me on Twitter.

Reliable Web Hosting

Filed under: Hosting — Art Zemon on February 18, 2009

If you have a web site, reliability is one of your primary concerns. Your customers should always have a great experience when visiting your site. You should always be able to check your email when you want to. We share that priority and do everything possible to assure that your web site and email are up, if not always, at least all of the time when you and your customers are awake. We seem to be doing pretty well with this and I want to share a few stories with you:

Last week, a client whose web site is currently with a competing hosting company (hint: they advertise on TV during the Superbowl) tried one of our Signature Hosting accounts and, within just a few hours, wrote to me:

Holy cow!
Check out www.AtTheOtherHostingCompany.com vs. www.EvaluationSignatureAccount.com
Amazing difference.

I have had a similar reaction from everybody who has tried our hosting accounts after being elsewhere. This guy was simply more succinct. (more…)