Changes to incorporate SSL

With GDPR coming along shortly, I am working my way around the hosting accounts and where it is possible, I am enabling a security certificate for each domain.

Unlike the previous hosting we were in, this one offers free security certificates, they normally cost around £75 per year. They are free to me, so they are free to you.

What does this mean?

It means that when a visitor comes to your website they do not go to http:// they go to https:// the “s” is important because it means the data going to and from the website is generally* encrypted. I will explain why I have said “generally” in a moment”. SSL means Secure Socket Layer.

What is particularly important is anything entered into a form is encrypted between the user and the website, and therefore nobody can intercept it on the wire. When your site was first built we were not able to use SSL certificates, and all requests and data entered between a client and the server were in plain text. If they could be intercepted then they could be read. Continue reading Changes to incorporate SSL

Hosting Costs Change

Since I started providing hosting and email for everyone I have been providing it for £48 per year, with a few exceptions where there was high usage or multiple accounts. I have not increased those charges for six years. With GDPR coming in, there are some additional measures that can be made to help protect the integrity of your website.

With effect from April 1st 2018 , all hosting renewals will increase to £5 per month, £60 per year. Currently within the hosting arrangement all sites are backed up each week and several copies week’s worth of copies are stored in the hosting, generally between 3 and 6. I also visit each site and check it four times a year, so my service is a little more than just providing space on a server. Continue reading Hosting Costs Change

Webmail…..

… is not JUST webmail

I thought I would make some comments here following some conversations I have had recently with people. There may be some misunderstandings.

Multiple 10GB mail boxes

If you are using the mail accounts provided with the hosting, the mail boxes are each 10GB in size. While you can access them through this address: https://stackmail.com you can also access them through ANY device with a mail client (aka mail program).

I personally access my mail account on the following devices:

iPhone, iPad (using the native email application), Macbook using Mac mail, iMac using Mac mail, Windows 7 desktop running Outlook & Thunderbird, Windows 10 laptop running Outlook and on any of those devices I can also use a browser to get to webmail. I also run my accounts as IMAP. This means on each device, I get the same view of my mail including any special folders I have set up. This is because I am viewing mail on the server, and not locally. If I was set up as POP3 on my clients, then the server is only used as temporary storage for mail. Continue reading Webmail…..

Account Pending Cancellation FINAL NOTICE

Or is it?

I received the following email entitled Final Reminder houseofprayerforallnations.org Expiration SEO. Within the email when you open it is this message which all looks official.

Continue reading Account Pending Cancellation FINAL NOTICE

Problems with Webmail?

Over the last 4-6 weeks a few people have reported seeing an error reported by webmail. The hosting company has reviewed this some weeks back now and made changes, and now it happens less frequently. If you see any error messages while accessing website (or anywhere else) please take a screenshot (press the print screen button) and paste the screenshot into a word document, or an image file. Send it to me with the following information:

The time it occurred. (very important)
What you were doing
What the IP address of your computer is. You can find this out by googling “what is my IP”

Continue reading Problems with Webmail?

Group Calendar

I have been asked on a number of occasions is it possible to have a group or office shared calendar. The problem is generally those people who are used to using Outlook in a business context have used an Exchange Server which managed all of the calendaring functions for you. In a charity situation, particularly a small regional one, it is not very likely that your charity uses a Microsoft Exchange server. The calendar management needs to be handled at a central point such as a server.

I received a request about a group calendar a few days ago and did some digging and have come up with a solution. So if you are interested in having an office calendaring system that is online, that your volunteers and office staff can log into then this may be for you. Continue reading Group Calendar

Some checks to make

One of the things I try to provide is a one stop shop for email and for the website. While moving people over the past 6 weeks, it has become apparent that some people are still using 3rd party email systems. That is absolutely the right thing to do if you consciously set it up to work in that way. Particularly those of you that have moved to Outlook 365 which uses cloud based email.

Who sources your email?

However in a few cases I have found email is being used through a 3rd party provider, but nobody knows why. The issue here is you may be paying twice for hosting.

There is another case where people are using hotmail, yahoo or gmail accounts. Possibly because they did not realise they could use an email account with their domain name. Continue reading Some checks to make

Hosting Move News (May 2017)

While preparing the newsletter for May, I thought I would place a quick summary here for those that are interested.

At the beginning of May 2017, I am around 75% of the way through moving everyone from their former hosting to the new hosting. For most people the move required little more than a change to where they were picking up email from. For those using 3rd party email services, or not using mail associated with their domain name, they did not need to do anything.

Some Goodies for you

For many people that find the idea of editing a website to be a daunting prospect they are not generally interested in looking any deeper into the systems that are available through the hosting. Things such as email set up, out of office messaging, forwarders etc. For this reason I have set up Control Panel users for the new system on the basis of whether they were accessing their control panels before the move or not. If you were not using it, I have not bothered to ask. If you are a “power user” then I have set you up on the new system. Anyone wishing to have access to their hosting control panels can contact me and request to be added. I will need from you your contact details including address and telephone number. These are used in the form to set up the control panel user. Continue reading Hosting Move News (May 2017)

New Cpanel for migrated websites

The following is available to all of my clients. Each hosting account has a control panel where you can access various things in the hosting. For example set up forwarders, set up email accounts, change the password on email accounts, set up an out of office message. Backup the entire hosting including email. Block countries from accessing the hosting. Continue reading New Cpanel for migrated websites

March 18th – April 30th Migration in progress

If you have read the previous items on my support pages you will know that we had some failures in March with websites being unavailable for short periods of time. I was in constant communication with technical support, whatever the problem was (it amounted to a little over 6hrs downtime for websites over a period of 2 weeks) there were three separate emergency attempts to resolve the problem. I considered that the performance, and some other factors relating to support requests I deal with on a day to day basis suggested that I should seek an alternative hosting account. Not a step that is taken easily, because there is a lot of work and co-ordination to do this. Continue reading March 18th – April 30th Migration in progress