A2 Hosting Newsletter

Happy 2012! Save 12% on new SSL Certificate purchases during January with coupon SSL2012.

IPv6 Compatible Hosting!

CloudFlare. CloudFlare. CloudFlare. Does it seem like every month you read about CloudFlare in our newsletter? I can promise you there’s a good reason why. If increased site performance and security weren’t good enough reasons for you to opt into this free service, maybe IPv6 enabled hosting will be.

So what’s the big deal? Roughly 1% of Internet users are unable to reach your site because they are on an IPv6 network. The other 99% are on an IPv4 network. This may not sound like a big deal, but the slots on the IPv4 network are quickly filling up and will soon be unavailable. The 99% of users who are on an IPv6 network will soon be 98%, then 97% etc.

Sound kind of scary? It doesn’t have to be thanks to CloudFlare’s new automatic IPv6 feature. By opting into CloudFlare and IPv6, your site will be available to BOTH IPv4 and IPv6 network site visitors.

Getting set up is a breeze:

1. If you haven’t already opted into CloudFlare, just click the icon in your cPanel control panel. Type your email address into the email field, agree to CloudFlare’s Terms of Service and press “Signup Now!”.
2. Click the gray cloud on the next page to turn on CloudFlare. The orange cloud means you have successfully opted into CloudFlare.
3. Click statistics and settings. Scroll to the bottom of the page. Select “Full” under Automatic IPv6.

Boom! You’ve enabled IPv6 hosting on your account for FREE.

New VPS Templates Offers Pre-Installed Kloxo

Last month we mentioned our launch of the ISPConfig control panel available for auto-install with the A2 QuickInstaller. We’re excited to announce another popular control panel available on our VPS Hosting service.

We have a nice base of Kloxo control panel users. In fact, the developers of Kloxo recently named us a recommended hosting provider. Those Kloxo users, and other VPS users looking for a control panel to use, will be happy to learn that we have created a VPS template specifically designed for Kloxo. Our brand new CentOS 5 w/ Kloxo template comes pre-installed with Kloxo. No install headaches! Now you can use this speedy, lightweight control panel right out of the box when you select this VPS template.

Developer Depot - When to Redesign and When to Reskin?

So your site has been around for a few years and it’s starting to feel long in the tooth. Maybe there are complaints about the way certain functionality works, or maybe there’s a brand new version of the underlying software which is a drastic rewrite. However it comes about, in the course of any site’s lifetime, you begin to itch for a change.

Certainly keeping a site’s design attractive and fresh is important, as is regular maintenance and constant improvement. But when it comes to a full rewrite of the site, internet history is rampant with examples of sites completely redoing their interface and as a result frustrating and alienating large chunks of their user base.

Digg is a famous example of this. For years Digg had gotten regular maintenance and styling updates, but Digg v4 marked a complete rewrite of the site and drastic change to not only the look but the entire functionality of the site. Users left by the millions. Google has recently been redesigning many of their popular sites, not only updating the look, but in many cases altering the functionality and they have been hearing complaints from users, but so far there hasn’t been any evidence of mass exodus from Gmail or Youtube. Twittter also redesigned not only the site but their apps on every platform; again sparking a round of complaints from users due to not so much the look but the functionality. Not only do users prefer the old functionality to the new one, but even in cases of users who are ambivalent about the changes, they are often put off at having to learn how to use the site again with no apparent benefit.

What’s the common theme among these sites? They are sites that users visit regularly. They are tools for users to accomplish a certain task. They are destinations for certain activities. Knowing that fact, it becomes easy to understand why a drastic redesign is frustrating for users. If you went into your kitchen one morning and your coffee machine was replaced with a completely different one that was no better than your old one, and just worked differently, you would probably be looking for someone to throw your mug at.

So the question you should ask when deciding how far to take your redesign is, what kind of role does my site fulfill? Is it a tool or a destination like Twitter, Digg or Youtube? Or is it more of a sales or brochure-ware site, where users come to buy something and then rarely come back to it? A site where users do not make frequent visits and don’t need to be intimately familiar with how it works. A site which is dead simple to use to begin with, where the only functionality is users placing orders for your products. In that case a major redesign is not disruptive to your users.

Marketing Mojo – Don’t Clutter Your Site With Ads!

Google has been making a concerted effort to present the best sites to match their users’ search queries. This could be taken another step further as Google considers marking ad-filled sites, especially those that make it difficult for visitors to find the page’s content, as spam.

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team, recently was quoted on the subject:
“What are the things that really matter, how much content is above the fold. If you have ads obscuring your content, you might want to think about it. Do [readers] see content or something else that’s distracting or annoying?”

What’s interesting is Cutts specifically points out ads above the fold. This might be a particular point of confusion for AdSense publishers. This Google’s AdSense Help page responds to a question of where are the best areas on a page to place AdSense ads are. It says, “All other things being equal, ads located above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold.”

Google has not officially begun to penalize sites with too many ads, but I think it’s safe to assume it’s coming soon. Hopefully Google will be a little more specific about what they consider too many ads. It might be a good time to ask some of your friends if they have a hard time finding the content on your site. If they do, you might want to re-consider your site’s layout. If you have a lot of ads compared to content, visitors aren’t likely to stick around anyway so what’s the point? It’s OK to have ads, but they should complement your content, not vice versa.

A2 Hosting’s 2012 New Year’s Resolution Is….

Offering you some website maintenance tips. Here are 8 tasks even the most well intentioned website owners sometimes neglect.

• Content review – Take a look at your static content. Could it use an update or refresh?
• Broken link check – It’s not as tedious as it might sound. Let a free solution like Xenu Link Sleuth do the work for you.
• Check for content theft – It takes a lot of time to create quality content. Don’t let someone steal if from you. Use CopyScape to search the web for sites that might have stolen your hard work.
• Backup your files - Yes, most of our accounts offer free backups, but you should be maintaining your own backups as well.
• How’s your site looking on Google? – Use another awesome free resource, Google Webmaster Tools, to find any problems Google has found crawling your site.
• Software update – Make sure any software you’re using is up to date for security and site performance purposes. It’s very easy to update your software with Softaculous.
• Check server load – This is particularly important for Dedicated and VPS users to make sure none of your scripts are running amuck.
• Learn another programming language – Hey, it’s not necessarily a website maintenance tip, but you never know when it could come in handy.