New Reseller Hosting Accounts Launched

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New Reseller Hosting Accounts Launched

Hosting Ireland have recently updated thier reseller hosting packages in support of the growing demand from small businesses looking to offer hosting and domain name registration services to their clients.

As the number of businesses set to go online in Ireland increases, there is a growing demand for web developers, programmers, IT providers, marketing and PR agencies to be able to offer a comprehensive one stop shop for their customers.

 

The Hosting Ireland reseller package not only offers a considerable margin opportunity from hosting but also additional margin from all other products from the Hosting Ireland website including .ie domain name registration, international domain name registration, SSL certs, advanced spam filtering, mail backup, antivirus protection and much more.

‘Hosting Ireland is committed to helping businesses get online and many SME’s would rather deal through their preferred local IT provider or web developer…’ says Jonathan Bate, Managing Director – Hosting Ireland.  ‘SME’s generally like buying from local businesses and these businesses can now offer hosting products and services’.

Hosting Ireland recognizes that the number of value added resellers and associated businesses supporting the online space is on the increase and as such these companies need to be able to offer hosting and domain name registration as a matter of course.

 

To meet these needs Hosting Ireland has two packages; Reseller Lite for individuals or businesses who want to start offering hosting for the first time and Reseller Professional for individuals or businesses who are already offering these services but are looking for increased margins.

In addition, Hosting Ireland offers free telephone technical support to all resellers.

For more information and to sign up to be a Hosting Ireland reseller just visit our reseller hosting page or contact our support team to discuss which option would work for your business.

WordPress 3.2 – System Requirements

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WordPress 3.2 – System Requirements

WordPress have issued a newsletter today advising all of their 45 million users to be aware that the version update of WordPress from 3.1.x to 3.2 will have upgraded system requirements.

 

The main changes are :

PHP version 5.2.4 +
MySQL 5.x

 

You can check your PHP version and MySQL version through your cPanel or you can contact our support team for assistance.

 

There is also a plugin available to make sure your server supports the latest version of WordPress, it’s called “health Check” and can be downloaded from the WordPress plugin section of your wp-admin.

 

If you are currently using an outdated browser a yellow box will appear in your admin advising you to update your browser to the latest version, however if you are using Internet Explorer 6 the admin area will highlight this in a red box and the admin area will not function properly.

 

For the official WordPress news release please click here

.ie Domain Name – Special offer from Hosting Ireland

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.ie Domain Name – Special offer from Hosting Ireland

Hosting Ireland are pleased to announce a special offer for the registration of .ie domain names. You can now register .ie domain names with Hosting Ireland for the reduced price of €19.95!


This special offer includes the €10.00 promotion currently running and is valid until 1st October 2011.

 

However, before registering your domain name –

 

Further discounts are available!


.ie domain with an annual Lite hosting account – a further discount of 25%!
This brings the price of your .ie domain down to €14.96!

 

.ie domain with an annual Business hosting account – a further discount of 50%!
This brings the price of your .ie domain down to €9.98!

 

And if you choose our Ultima hosting account with a .ie domain – we will offer you your ie domain registration free of charge!

 

For more information on our domain and hosting offers please view our domain names page or contact our support team on 1890 987000

New Installable Scripts For Your Shared Hosting

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New Installable Scripts For Your Shared Hosting

We have recently updated the software that allows you to install popular software to your shared hosting account. This means there are some new and updated scripts for you to use:

1) Form Tools -> 2.0.5
Form Tools is an open source (free!) PHP / MySQL script that provides any existing web form with a backend database and a user-friendly interface to manage the form submission data, plus a wealth of tools for managing and manipulating your form data.

2) Contao -> 2.9.4
Contao is an open source content management system (CMS) for people who want a professional internet presence that is easy to maintain.

3) Plogger -> 1.0
Plogger is a simple yet powerful tool — everything you need to share your images with the world. Plogger is your photos integrated into your website, a fully featured photo sharing package with an attractive and easy to use administrative interface that makes managing your galleries a breeze.

4) Dolibarr -> 2.9.0
Dolibarr ERP/CRM is a modern software to manage your company or foundation activity (contacts, suppliers, invoices, orders, stocks, agenda, …).It’s an opensource software (wrote with PHP language) designed for small and medium companies, foundation and freelances

5) DoceboLMS -> 4.0.4
DoceboLMS is a SCORM compliant Open Source e-Learning platform used in corporate, government and education markets.

6) LetoDMS -> 2.0.2
LetoDMS is an open-source document-management-system based on PHP and MySQL published under the GPL.

7) phpDocumentor -> 1.4.3
phpDocumentor, sometimes referred to as phpdoc or phpdocu, is the current standard auto-documentation tool for the php language.

9) Vtiger -> 5.2.1
vtiger CRM is a free, full-featured, 100% Open Source CRM software ideal for small and medium businesses.

10) BlueERP -> 0.7
BlueERP is a double entry accounting application for small and medium business. Written in PHP, it is delivered through a LAMP environment to provide web access to your accounts.

11) Omeka -> 1.3.2
Create complex narratives and share rich collections, adhering to Dublin Core standards with Omeka on your server, designed for scholars, museums, libraries, archives, and enthusiasts.

12) PHPKode Guestbook -> 1.0
PHPKode™ Guestbook is a simple yet powerful Free PHP guestbook script using Ajax. The Guestbook features for easy to install, easy to integrate into your existing sites and an advanced anti-spam function.

1) Oxwall -> 1.0.3
Oxwall is used for a wide range of projects starting from family sites and custom social networks to collaboration tools and enterprise community solutions.

2) ExtCalendar -> 2.0
ExtCalendar is a powerful multi-user web-based calendar application. Features include Multi-Languages, Themes, Recurrent Events, Categories, Users and Groups management, Environment and General Settings, Template Configuration, Product Updates.

3) Beatz -> 1.1
4) SimpleInvoices -> 2010.2
Simple Invoices is a free, open source, web based invoicing system that you can install on your server/pc or have hosted by one of our services providers.

5) Etano -> 1.22
Open source software for setting up a dating site.

6) SimplePie -> 1.2
SimplePie is a very fast and easy-to-use class, written in PHP, that puts the ‘simple’ back into ‘really simple syndication’.

PHP 5.3 Closures and their uses

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PHP 5.3 Closures and their uses

As of PHP 5.3 you can now use something known as a closure in your php code. In PHP a closure is simply an anonymous function.
Here is an example of a closure

$upperCaseName = function($name){
return ucfirst($name);
};

which means that later on you can use this variable in the following way:

$name = "rachel";
$newName = $upperCaseName($name);
echo $newName;

This will output “Rachel”

None of the above is particularly useful. However there are some benefits to this as shown below.

If we have an array of Objects, from time to time we may want to perform a method on each of these objects and perhaps gather the result into a new array a closure can make this
into essentially a one liner. In the code below, I will first define a small class, then make some instances of the class and add them to an array. Then I will use a closure to perform a method on each object returning the result to a new array.


//first the basic class we want to make objects from and perform methods on
class person{
private $name;
public function __construct($name){
$this->name = $name;
}

public function cappedName(){
return ucfirst($this->name);
}
}

//an array of people
$person1 = new Person("peter");
$person2 = new Person("james");
$people = array($person1, $person2)

$resultArray = array();
//now the closure
array_map(function($row)use(&$resultArray){$resultArray[] = $row->cappedName();},$people);

print_r($resultArray);

//the output will be array([0]=>"Peter",[1]=>"James")

So to explain the above code: array_map is a normal php function which takes a callback function and an array. It then applies the call back to each element of the array. Normally we would have to define an external function and use that as the call back parameter, but with a closure there is no need as the function can be defined anonymously as the argument.
So in our closure we have an argument $row and then the “use” keyword. The “use” keyword allows our closure access to the external array $resultArray, we also use the & operator to pass it by reference. The body of our function is then simply assigning the return value of the call to $row->cappedName() into the $resultArray which can then be used for whatever purpose you may see fit.

A final interesting point about Closures is that they can be used as a Type. In other words when defining a function or method you can specify that the argument passed needs to be a Closure.
In the code below we ask for a Closure to use to format a name.

function formatName($name, Closure $closure = null){
if(! $closure){
$closure = function($val){ return ucfirst($val);}
}

return $closure($name);

}

So this code would allow the following:


$formatter = function($val){ return strtolower($val);}

$newName = formatName("JOHN",$formatter);

//this would return "john"

I hope that you have found this helpful. Happy coding in the future.

Regards Craig

Developer Hostingireland

Why isn’t my site on Google?

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Why isn’t my site on Google?

We often get asked “Why isn’t my website showing up on Google searches?”

For a large majority of internet users, Google is the internet.
Therefore; if your website is not in Google, then your website effectively doesn’t exist!
While not necessarily accurate, this is a viewpoint many people have.

In this post we will cover two important aspects of the relationship between your website and Google.

1. How do I get my site on Google?

You may or may not of heard about search engine “spiders”, these spiders crawl the internet as a spider crawls around it’s web.
These spiders are no more than intricate computer programs that visit every website they find.
Once your site has been visited by one of these spiders your pages will begin to be indexed in Google’s search results.

The question is, how do they know your website exists to visit it?

There are a few ways to ensure Google’s spiders know your website exists.

1. Probably the best way for Google to find your site is through a link on someone’s website. However this can be difficult to accomplish if you are new to this whole area.

2. Submit your site to Google; Google have provided a form that can be completed and submitted online. It can be found here : Submit your site to Google This can take a while however so it requires some patience.

3. Add Google’s Analytic code to your website; signing up to Google’s Analytic software alerts Google to your website’s existence.

All three of the above methods will end up with your site being indexed by Google. Once indexed your site will appear for searches for your domain name : e.g “hostingireland.ie”

2. How do I get more visitors from Google?

Getting top spot for competitive search phrases can bring your website the visitors you need. It’s all well and good coming top spot for people searching for your domain name, but how often do people search for that?

It is far more important to come high in the search results for terms around your business. For instance if you are running a car hire website, people looking for car hire in Dublin will generally type in to Google search phrases like :

Car hire Dublin
Cheap car hire in Dublin
Dublin car hire

This is where website optimisation comes in, optimising a website for performance in Google requires an understanding of the search phrases people are searching for around the services or products your website is selling.

Hosting Ireland offer services to assist you in getting your website to perform to it’s maximum in Google and other search engines. For more information please see our web marketing information or give us a call on 1890 987000 to discuss what we can do for your website.

Great Domain Discounts With Hosting

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Great Domain Discounts With Hosting

As you might have noticed, we have had various promotions running over the last few months. Unfortunately those promotions are over… For now. However we still have some great deals on Hosting and Domains.
From now on if you buy annual hosting and register a domain for a year at the same time, you will receive a discount on the cost of your domain registration. This isn’t a once off discount either, your renewal price will include the discount for as long as you keep the hosting account with us.

Discount Details

  • Pro Lite & Win Eco 25% Domain Discount
  • Pro Business, Win Pro & Win MYSQL 50% Domain Discount
  • Pro Ultima, Win MSSQL FREE Domain

The Discounts apply to annual domain registrations and hosting subscriptions.

If you buy a Pro Lite Hosting account or a Win Eco account, and choose a domain at the same time, you will receive a 25% discount on the annual cost of your domain.

If you buy a Pro Business Hosting account, a Win Pro or a Win MYSQL hosting account for the period of a year and choose a domain at the same time, you will receive a 50% discount on the annual cost of your domain name.

Free Domain

If you buy a Pro Ultima Hosting account or a Win MSSQL Hosting account for the period of a year & choose a domain at the same time, you will get that domain name for FREE for as long as you have that hosting account with us.

Protecting your website & pc from malicious software

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Protecting your website & pc from malicious software

As the internet becomes increasingly important in our day to day lives, the validity of it as a target for criminals grows exponentially. Viruses, Malware, Phising attacks and so on, all of these things can be confusing for the person who merely wants to access the web, browse a few sites and collect their email. Several sites put the number of new pieces of malicious software being launched on to the web at any where between 20,000 and 60,000 per day.

“More than 5 million U.S. consumers lost money to Phishing attacks in the 12 months ending in September 2008, a 39.8% increase from a year earlier (Gartner)”. That having been said, it does not mean that you cannot protect yourself from almost all of these forms of attack. Common sense is no small factor in removing the vast majority of threats. We all know the advice not to click on links and open unknown programs and emails from people we don’t know or that appear suspicious. Also a basic understanding of how the internet works and how your computer works, can go a long way toward protecting you from most threats. But even with this knowledge, your pc can still become infected. How? well malicious software makers don’t only target you and your pc they also look to find access to websites and install code on their pages. Then when visited, these pages will generally redirect you to a new site and before you realize it and often without knowing, your pc has downloaded and installed a malicious piece of software.

Our top 5 tips for protecting your pc & website

  1. Use an antivirus such as Eset Nod32
  2. Don’t store password in plain text use a password safe such as KeePass
  3. When sharing personal information on a site, make sure it is protected via https
  4. Air on the side of caution when downloading software from the web.
  5. Avoid opening emails and clicking links sent to you by people who you don’t know or trust

To be as safe as possible, you really need to consider using a well known antivirus software. Hostingireland recommends and also uses Nod32 antivirus. If you would like to try it out before purchasing then you can avail of a free trial .

Another important factor in protecting your websites and online accounts, is to use a password safe. This is a tool which encrypts the passwords that you enter into it, making it impossible for malware, should it become installed on your pc, to seek out these passwords and use them to gain access to your account. At hostingireland we use the free KeePass password safe

Benefits and Drawbacks of Dedicated Servers

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Benefits and Drawbacks of Dedicated Servers

As web services become more integral in people’s lives and the day to the day running of businesses, it is increasingly important that those services don’t fail. With the web being accessed not only from the home pc now, but also from mobile phones, music players, digital readers plus many more devices. The demand on the web services being accessed is also increasing, causing these services to require more and more resources in order to effectively deliver the service they offer.

When is a dedicated server needed?
The are many reasons why you may decide that you need a dedicated server. Security is a big reason. If you are planning on taking credit card payments and storing customers’ credit card details, so that they can reuse the same card for a later purchase for example, then you are required to have a dedicated server. As you can imagine, if you were doing this on a shared server, then there may be individuals also on that server which may try to access that information.
Another reason is that your web site or service may need to have more resources than a regular shared hosting account can offer. VPS hosting would be another option to look at in this case.
Perhaps you want a particular application stack set up on the server and configured exactly as you want it. This may not be possible on a shared hosting account and so once again you would need to look into either a VPS hosting account or a dedicated server.

So if you have a busy website or web service that is experiencing difficulties, what is the best solution for you? This is where dedicated servers come in. Dedicated Servers are seen as the best type of web hosting for people who are running large, popular resource intensive websites and web services, as well as businesses who need to be guaranteed a stable service that is more reliable than other types of web hosting, such as shared hosting and VPS Hosting; this is because a dedicated server is yours and only yours, meaning that you are not sharing it with anyone else and so are not sharing the resources on the server.

However there are drawbacks to dedicated servers. One of the main drawbacks of Dedicated Servers is there cost. The main reason for their high cost, is that a dedicated server is actually a physical machine. Other types of hosting accounts are one of multiples of that type of hosting on a single server or grid. However there is an increasing demand for dedicated servers as the web becomes more and more accepted as a place to do business and so, as a general rule the cost of dedicated servers is falling as they become cheaper to produce and the competition for providing them increases.

Another disadvantage of an unmanaged dedicated server, is that in order to look after and run it successfully, you would need someone with a reasonable amount of knowledge in either linux or windows system administration to manage your dedicated server. However you can opt for a managed server, which would mean one of the server engineers would be alerted if there were any problems and would then work to resolve them. Also on a managed server, any services that you wanted installed on your server would be done by one of the server engineers.

So what are the advantages? As stated previously, one of the main advantages with a dedicated server is that your service is the only one making use of the servers’ resources meaning that your applications would have priority and so be served faster than those based on shared hosting. Also because it is your server and yours alone, you can configure your application stack to run exactly the way that you want it to. If you want to run Java on your server, you can, if you want to run python on your server you can and so on.

There is also the added security that comes naturally when you are the only person running services on the server and accessing the server via ftp etc.. As the owner of the service, you would be able to spot possible flaws in your security. You would also have the added benefit of knowing that no one else is running code or services on the server that may potentially harm or reduce the security of your own service.

There is a lot to take into consideration before deciding to purchase a dedicated server. You need to know the level of resources that your are going to need. As a general rule, it is the processor and RAM that are the most intensely used resources. It is almost always possible to upgrade the RAM, but upgrading a processor may mean changing the physical server that you are on.

If you are thinking of investing in a dedicated server, then why not give us a call on 1890 7000 or drop us an email and one of our server engineers would be happy to talk through your requirements with you and discuss the options that available to suit your needs.

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