Put the power of Softaculous to work for you!

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Softaculous is a powerful web application software repository that comes free with your Hosting Ireland website control panel, if you choose the Linux hosting option. It gives you access to hundreds of different software titles you can install on your web server space, and the best part is there are no additional license fees to pay, and you can install as many or as few as you like, provided you have the disk space available for installation.

How to get started
Using the Softaculous repository is easy. Simply log in to your control panel and scroll down the page until you find the link for Softaculous. Then you simply click on it and the installer will open up the same tab.
Once you’re in there, the most popular apps are listed in the main part of the window, while on the left side you will find a tree-menu with all the titles conveniently sorted into categories.
As you can see from the screenshot, Softaculous can also warn you if you have obsolete apps installed or anything else requiring your attention.

While it may be tempting to just go ahead and start installing, it’s much better to spend a bit of time carefully planning which applications you should install, and go about the process methodically.
This is a good idea because without a plan you can find it difficult to remember which apps you have installed, why they’re installed, and where they’re installed. That will be important later if you need to upgrade or replace any of them.
Luckily, your Softaculous system is also very good at remembering your previous installations and provides a simple way to remove items that you want to uninstall. In some cases it can also smooth the process of upgrading, but how well this works varies between the different applications.

CMS packages
There are so many, it wouldn’t be practical to list them all. The most popular downloads are the big CMS systems, including:
WordPress
Joomla
Drupal

There are also many less well-known titles that are nonetheless well worth investigating. Many of these lesser known titles are actually very good for specialist application. For example, real estate companies would possibly benefit from using Open Real Estate to quickly set up a manageable listing site for their company.

Also, it is worth considering that with a little bit of tweaking, some of these titles can be re-purposed and used for other things than what they were designed for. As an example, you could modify Open Real Estate for selling, cars, boats, or really anything that is highly suited to a listing style format with photographs and detailed descriptions.

Some of the other titles that you may want to consider include:
PHP-Fusion – a powerful and light-weight CMS system which is well documented and widely supported.
Moodle – specially designed for creating online education systems. If you want to provide a training course, or even a collection of training courses, Moodle makes it easy. There are plenty of books and tutorials available to help you get started.
ModX – a CMS designed for experts, this CMS is much less restrictive than a typical CMS and therefore gives you a lot of freedom and power to develop sites any way you wish. The tradeoff for all this freedom is that you really need to know what you’re doing in order to use it well.
Composr – one of the most beautiful and highly polished CMS applications you will ever see. A key feature is that it’s geared toward social networking, and also includes plenty of other features that you usually need to go searching for with other CMS packages.

Power an online business with a ready-to-go shopping cart
Selling online has historically been expensive to set up, but now there are so many free shopping cart systems that are available and relatively easy to use, anyone can start an online marketplace.

It’s recommended to choose shopping cart software that is compatible with PayPal, even if you don’t intend to use the PayPal service with your shopping cart. That’s because if a shopping cart works with PayPal, you know it is likely to be secure and stable.

The best for this is Magento, because it’s fully PayPal compatible, and there is a lot of support available to help you (it’s one of the longest standing and most popular e-Commerce systems available). You can also find a lot of books, plus free online tutorials to help you get going with Magento quickly.

Another very popular title in this category is Zen Cart. As the title implies, it’s an efficient system that keeps things simple.

Abante Cart is yet another title you could consider. This is a very modular system with a slightly complicated interface, but it is actually simple to set up and get going. To add PayPal payment processing to the system, for example, is a simple 7 step process that is quite self-explanatory.

Dress up your website with accessories
There are all kinds of tools you can add to your website that will give it some extra functionality. Of course, you should only add these to your site where it’s truly appropriate. A business that sells photocopiers has little use for an online audio player, for example.

Some of the different kinds of accessories you could add to your site include:
• User surveys – want to get feedback or just know people’s opinions about things? Your website can ask them for you. Applications include LimeSurvey, and LittlePoll.
• Add your own analytics. Most website owners are happy to use Google Analytics for their needs, and to be sure this has some excellent analytic tools to use. The possible disadvantage is that most blocking systems such as uMatrix block Google Analytics by default, and the amount of people using blockers is growing all the time. When you host your own analytics, every result is counted.
• Easily include RSS technology in your site. You can install any of the nine RSS applications available in Softaculous, making it easy to include RSS just the way you want to. The easiest to get started with is SimplePie, while the most popular is FreshRSS.
• Now that HTML5 makes it really easy to include video in your website, and of course you can also embed video players from the major online video sites like YouTube and Vimeo, there’s not a lot of call for dedicated video software. One exception is when you want to make your own online video library. The tools available for this are ClipBucket, VidiScript, and CumulusClips.
• If your business is involved in the music industry, as a content creator, producer, or distributor (or even just a retailer), you might want to show off your products with music playing abilities that go beyond what the built-in HTML5 tools can do. AmpJuke and kPlayList are the big names in this category.
• Picture galleries are one of the most desired features for any website, and are useful for everyone. They’re especially useful for photographers, artists, wedding studios, hotels, restaurants, etc. Softaculous currently has 12 of these applications to choose from. Simple to use and just plug in to your site.

Boost your business productivity with free software
Online software isn’t just for websites. You could actually meet nearly every business software need with free online tools (and others with free offline tools).

In the Softaculous repository, you will find many free tools that are designed for serious business use, even at the enterprise level.

These include full-featured ERP tools, project management software, customer support software, calendar systems, and more. You can even do your book keeping, invoice clients, provide job quotes, and provide your own help desk support service for helping your customers when they have problems with your products or services.

Enterprise Reporting & Planning
For a small business, a great solution is Dolibarr, which is a very powerful system that combines ERP with CRM. It is packed with features and lets you manage most areas of your business reporting and planning, plus customer relationship management. There’s actually a lot more it can do, and you can read the full list of features on Dolibarr’s Wiki page.

For bigger businesses, something like EPESI may be more suitable. It’s designed to help large teams have access to the most important business information, and you can control which teams have access to which information.

If you also need accounting features, FrontAccounting is a good choice. It’s a full featured accounting suite with ERP tools, and it can do everything.

When you need dedicated HRM software, Softaculous has OrangeHRM and IceHRM. You can use these to hire people, fire people, track attendance, track leave and time off, track employee performance, and manage your personnel information.

Customer Support
Provide top notch customer support services with any of the dozens of tools available for the purpose through Softaculous. With so many to choose from, you can just pick the one that seems most suitable for your particular type of business.

Some of the choices available include:
Vision Helpdesk – this a huge system designed for businesses that need serious high volume multi-channel support services. It allows you to support customers in many different ways, including e-mail, web forms, FaceBook, Twitter, live chat, and by phone.
HESK – is a simpler system that’s designed for “ticket based” help desk support service. Customers who have issues they need assistance with can create a support ticket, which your customer service representatives can then process and return a response. It’s best for medium-to-high volume service providers who can’t always be available to handle support requests instantly on a 24/7 basis.
Help Center Live – as the name implies, is the opposite of HESK. It is intended for full time support in an “always live” environment.
HeldDeskZ – when your business could use both traditional person to person support but could also benefit from a knowledge base allowing customers to try and find the answers on their own first, HelpDeskZ could be a very good choice.
phpMyFAQ – this oddly named package is for the lowest tier of customer support, where you primarily allow your website to answer questions for you because you don’t have the resources to provide real-time support. That makes it best for start-up businesses that need to allocate time and personnel to other tasks than customer support. It helps you create genuine FAQ systems that can really help your customers get the information they need.
Question2Answer – you can even let the community of users provide support to one another with this system. It’s going to be useful for websites of free software developers, such as those who produce Linux distros.

Manage Appointments
If you’re running a service based business like a clinic or beauty salon, then having some way to manage your appointments is essential. The aptly named EasyAppointments is a great tool for this. With a bit of adjustment, you can also reconfigure it for other things like managing tee-off times for a golf course, or even managing hotel bookings.

Make beautiful business forms
For both offline and online forms, Softaculous provides useful products such as PHP Form Generator. It literally does just what the name says it does. With no need for any coding at all, you can create great looking forms easily. Simply print the resulting forms to use them as offline paper forms.

For processing your web forms, you can use Form Tools, which provides all the back end services to easily manage submitted form data.

Softaculous has just about everything all in one place
There are just so many free tools included in Softaculous, it’s quite a big task trying to document them all. The best thing to do if you want to know more is dive into your Hosting Ireland website control panel and click the Softaculous link.

You can then browse through the full collection of titles and decide which ones are most suitable for your needs.

You can use all these tools to enhance your site or perform important business functions, and they’re all licensed to you for your business or personal use through your web hosting service with Hosting Ireland, so there’s no additional costs for installing and using them.

‘WordPress-Developer’ Hosting Is Here!

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Introducing ‘WordPress-Developer’ Hosting! Our WordPress hosting packages that we launched back in April’17 have been going down a storm and following requested from our customers we have now launched a ‘Developer’ package offering more resources to meet the needs of WordPress developers.

More and more people are choosing WordPress as their preferred options when it comes to building a site and no wonder as WordPress software now powers over 30% of the Internet and is still growing.

Our ‘WordPress-Developer’ packages boasts the same optimisation features as our Standard and Premium packages but with the ability to host 60 Websites and 60 Databases, plus backed up with 60GB of Disk Space and all for only €59.95 plus vat per month.

Why use optimised ‘WordPress-Developer’ hosting?

1. You get Dedicated Resources and Hardware specifically optimised for WordPress installations.
2. Auto Security Patching – We always recommend that you keep your WordPress installations up to date with latest updates, but sometimes the inevitable happens and it gets overlooked. So we have you covered with both our Standard, Premium and Developer packages, if you forget and a vulnerability is identified we’ll patch it and also send you an email notifying you and reminding you to update your site.
3. LiteSpeed Caching – You always want to get the maximum from your site and the best possible experience for your visitors. Now with both our Standard, Premium and Developer packages we include LiteSpeed caching ensure that you get fast page loading, site speed and in turn a better user experience.

For more information see our WordPress-Developer Hosting package details

Earlier Post – 4th September 2017…‘Enhanced ‘WordPress’ Hosting Packages are Here!’

SME Digital Health Index 2018

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Here’s some headlines from the SME Digital Health Index published by the IEDR….

For the full report visit ‘SME Digital Health Index’

.IE Domain Profile Report

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The .ie domain name continues to go from strength to strength since the liberalisation in March this year. See this latest infographic from the IEDR….

Dedicated Server SALE!

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If you need help or require a custom build contact our sales team: sales@hostingireland.ie

.IE Domain Name Registration – Easier! Faster!

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Now you can get the .ie domain you’ve always wanted….

For Individuals you just need proof of IDsuch as a Driving Licence, Passport, or Bank Statement.

For a Businessjust a VAT Number, Company Number, or Registered Business Name Number.

If you already have a .ie domain name you don’t need to provide further information, your new .ie domain registration will ‘FASTPASS!’ Just select the ‘FastPass’ option when registering.

Now you can get those ‘IE Domain Names’ you’ve always wanted…without the hassle.

IE Domain Profile Report 2018

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The .ie domain name is going from strength to strength and Hosting Ireland is registering more domains than ever! See the latest report from the IEDR, the registry for .ie domains…..

2017 the strongest year on record for new .ie domains with 108 registered every day

– 39,523 .ie domains registered in 2017, a 14 percent increase on 2016, according to new IEDR dot ie Domain Profile Report

– 237,412 .ie domains now in the database, up 7 percent on 2016

– Nearly every county in Ireland posted increases in new .ie registrations, with significant increases in Munster, Connacht and Ulster

– IEDR CEO: “The .ie domain remains the preferred online address and a powerful digital tool for businesses, organisations and individuals…and is recognised as authentic and trustworthy.”

– dot ie Domain Profile Report critical of recent Eurostat report that claims Ireland is number one in EU for business web sales.

See full press release below…

2017 was the strongest year on record for new .ie domain registrations, according to the latest dot ie Domain Profile Report published today by IE Domain Registry (IEDR), the company that manages and maintains Ireland’s official country domain name, .ie.

39,523 new .ie domains were registered in 2017—an average of 108 a day. The figure is a 14 percent increase on 2016 and the best single year for new registrations.

There are now 237,412 .ie domains in the database, a 7 percent increase on the previous year end and an almost 30 percent increase on five years ago.

The increase was driven by nationwide demand, with new registrations up in all but four counties on the island of Ireland. Corporate bodies and sole traders made up the majority of new .ie registrations (67 percent) in 2017.

Leinster accounted for two-thirds of new registrations in 2017 (24,776), followed by Munster (20 percent, 7,347), Connacht (9 percent, 3,318) and Ulster (5 percent, 1,920).

In Ulster, new registrations increased by 23 percent on the previous year; in Connacht by 21 percent; in Munster by 19 percent; and in Leinster by 14 percent.

On a county level, Dublin registered the most new .ie domains with 43 percent of the total (16,065 domains), a 13 percent increase on 2016. The capital was followed by Cork (9 percent, 3,280 domains) and Galway (5 percent, 1,807 domains), recording 16 percent and 19.5 percent year-on-year increases respectively.

Fermanagh registered the smallest number of .ie domains on the island of Ireland (39). Leitrim registered the smallest number in the Republic of Ireland (171), although both were increases on the previous year.

Despite the national increase in registrations, Ireland still lags behind its European neighbours for the number of country domains per 1,000 people. With 50 .ie domains, Ireland is 18th out of 22, ahead of France and Spain, but behind countries with smaller or similar populations like
Lithuania (64 .lt domains per 1,000 people), Norway (141 .no domains) and Denmark (234 .dk domains).

Commenting on the 2017 report, David Curtin, Chief Executive of IEDR, said: “The .ie domain remains the preferred online address and a powerful digital tool for businesses, organisations and individuals in Ireland. A .ie domain is immediately identifiably Irish, and is recognised as authentic and trustworthy.

“More than two-thirds of new .ie domains in 2017 were registered by businesses, a 6 percent increase on the previous year. This signals a strong, growing economy with enterprises that have the confidence and willingness to invest in their online presence and digital processes. Online address registrations are often recognised as a forward indicator of economic growth and entrepreneurship.

“Encouragingly, .ie domain registrations are spread out across the country. While urban centres dominate the database, we have seen significant year-on-year increases in registrations in Munster, Connacht and Ulster.”
In the new dot ie Domain Profile Report, IEDR says that new Eurostat figures claiming Ireland ranks number one in the EU for web sales are potentially “highly misleading”. *

Mr Curtin said: “Eurostat’s recent survey into EU businesses’ web sales ability puts Ireland in the top spot. While this seems like a very positive result, the reality is that the survey excludes the micro-businesses with fewer than ten employees that make up 92 percent of the Irish economy. The survey is therefore not an accurate reflection of Ireland’s e-commerce capability.

“According to IEDR’s most recent dot ie Digital Health Index, a survey of predominantly Irish micro-businesses’ use of digital assets, two-thirds of Irish SMEs with websites cannot process online payments, while 1 in 5 have no online presence whatsoever. We have a lot of work to do at home before we can truly proclaim ourselves European leaders.

“To improve Ireland’s digital capabilities, we are calling on the Government to collaborate with industry and roll out a national campaign focused on teaching micro-businesses essential digital skills. Robust broadband for rural communities must also be prioritised. In Connacht and Ulster, a quarter of SMEs report a ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ internet connection.”

IEDR anticipates continued growth nationwide in 2018 as registration of .ie online addresses becomes easier and faster. After March 2018, any individual or business with a provable connection to Ireland will be able to register any available .ie online address on a first-come, first-served basis. Businesses, townlands, parishes and clubs are expected to be interested in the changes. Citizens will be able to register nicknames and short names for the first time.

Important Notice – Final Call to Register Your .IE Domain Name Before Someone Else Does!

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Changes to .IE Domain Name Registration Policies Effective 21st March 2018…

The rules for registering .ie domain names are changing, following an extensive consultation process over many months. From 21st March 2018, the need to explain why you want a particular domain name (also called ‘claim to the name’) when registering a .ie domain name will be removed.
In the past, along with identification or proof of business, you would have to provide a ‘Claim Letter’ explaining what you planned to use the domain for and why to chose that particular name. The removal of this requirement for .ie registrations is a big change with many benefits…

The removal of the ‘claim to the name’ will make it simpler, easier and faster for businesses to get a .ie registered. It means that anybody with a connection to Ireland will be able to register any available .ie domain name they want. In addition, if you already have a .ie domain name you won’t have to provide paperwork all over again to complete the registration as was previously the case.

However, this could mean that individuals or businesses could register a .ie domain similar to your own brand name. Some customers when registering a domain will register similar versions such as hyphenated for example, in order to provide a level of brand protection and stop other parties ‘passing off’ as their business. So Hosting Ireland for example has registered the following:-
hostingireland.ie
hosting-ireland.ie

Registering variants like this ensures that no one can use your brand name.

Now is an ideal time to secure additional ‘IE Domain Names’ before anyone else can!

What’s not changing…

.IE – Digital Health Index Q4 2017

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The IE Domain Registry conduct research based upon the Irish online market, aptly called the Digital Health Index. This research is one view of how the market is developing. See below key findings along with infograph…..

Key Findings
Nearly 20 percent of Ireland’s non-digital SMEs kept offline by poor broadband,
but appetite for digital skills is strong: almost a third of all Irish SMEs want digital and e-commerce training; IE Domain Registry recommends rollout of national digital skills programme.

IEDR’s biannual dot ie Digital Health Index records highest ever score, but e-commerce problems persist;

– Only 40 percent of Irish SMEs with a website can process sales orders through it;
– Lack of online presence and e-commerce capability is frustrating consumers and impacting business trustworthiness;
– Two-thirds of Irish SMEs have a website, while more are using social media and data analytics;
– IEDR CEO: “We live in an age of convenience. Consumers expect to be able to research and buy from businesses, online 24/7.”

IE Infograph

Full Published Report

Nearly 20 percent of Ireland’s offline SMEs are stopped from building a website or engaging in e-commerce because of a poor internet connection, according to the latest edition of the dot ie Digital Health Index published today by the IE Domain Registry (IEDR), the company that manages and maintains Ireland’s country domain, .ie.
14 percent of Irish SMEs rate their internet connection as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’, a figure that rises to 25 percent in Connacht and Ulster.
Despite these issues, almost a third (32 percent) of Irish SMEs want more digital skills and e-commerce training.
To remedy this, IEDR is recommending the rollout of a cross-industry digital skills programme for micro-businesses that have begun their digital journey, but need help to access Ireland’s growing e-commerce market; as well as a Local Enterprise Office-run ‘buddy system’ that pairs up businesses with digital experts in their local area.
E-commerce, is becoming an increasingly important part of Ireland’s economy. Ireland’s share of the European e-commerce market is €9 billion and is expected to grow to €14 billion by 2021. However, most of this spend is going abroad to foreign retailers that offer more comprehensive online services.*
While only 40% of Irish SMEs with websites can take sales orders, it is a noteworthy improvement on just 30% in the last wave of research only six months ago, indicating that SMEs are realising the benefits of selling online.

Consumer sentiment and e-commerce ability
While many offline SMEs struggle with the technical aspects of setting up and maintaining a website or social media page, or are kept offline by a poor internet connection, the majority (53 percent) of ‘offliners’ say there is simply ‘no need’ to have an online presence in their industry. However, the dot ie Digital Health Index reveals that SMEs with a website earn, on average, an additional €26,825 per annum.
Consumers expect businesses to be online: almost 70 percent said it is ‘frustrating’ if a business does not have a website, two-thirds say a business looks ‘outdated’ if it does not have one, and nearly 30 percent do not even trust a business that does not have a website. Furthermore, 59 percent of consumers said that if a business has no online presence, they would be less likely to use their services or do business with them offline.
Clearly, there is a gulf between consumer sentiment and SME action. Micro-businesses make up more than 92 percent of all businesses in the Irish economy, but only 14 percent of SMEs have any web sales ability at all.
Brexit has done little to persuade offline SMEs to go digital. Only 8 percent said the UK’s vote to leave the EU had encouraged them to reassess their plans to develop an e-commerce-enabled website.
The .ie Digital Health Index improves
IEDR’s dot ie Digital Health Index is a biannual report that assesses the number and quality of digital assets owned by Irish SMEs, such as websites, social media pages and e-commerce tools.
Despite ongoing issues with internet infrastructure and a persistent low uptake of e-commerce, this edition of the dot ie Digital Health Index recorded the best score for Ireland’s overall digital health since research began in 2014.
Exactly two-thirds of Irish SMEs have websites. An increasing number are using social media, particularly Facebook (62 percent, up from 50 percent), while more businesses are using data analytics to interact with and learn about their customers (17 percent, up from 7 percent). SMEs are also more confident in the quality of their digital assets and their contribution to business.
Other key findings:
– 78% of SMEs said their website was important in generating new business and sales;
– 41 percent of SMEs say that social media is less important than their website;
– Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of Irish SMEs do not promote their services online. Among those that do, the average monthly spend is €144;
– Paradoxically, almost half of SMEs (47 percent) without a website acknowledge the importance of a website in generating increased business awareness.
Comment
David Curtin, Chief Executive of IEDR, said the increase in the overall score of the dot ie Digital Health Index is good news, but big changes are needed before Ireland can become a major e-commerce player.
“It is encouraging to see the dot ie Digital Health Index hit its highest ever score. Generally speaking, SMEs are actively embracing the benefits of an online presence and its power to grow revenues, improve customer relations, and analyse market behaviour.
“However, nearly 1 in 5 SMEs remain completely offline despite almost half of them acknowledging the importance of a website in some way. Our research has shown time and time again that while many businesses do not see a need to have a website of their own, the majority of consumers strongly disagree. In fact, a business with no online presence, or even a poorly designed one, is likely to be damaging its offline reputation.
“We live in an age of convenience. Consumers are tech-savvy but can be time-poor. They expect to be able to research and buy from businesses online 24/7. Offline SMEs will lose out to their competitors.
“Going online, building a website and engaging in e-commerce, even using third-party platforms or products, is not as complicated as it was ten years ago. There are many inexpensive, often free, easy-to-use tools that can have you marketing and selling your product to customers online in as little as a few hours.
“Beyond educating SMEs in the benefits of e-commerce and digital business, there are ongoing infrastructural issues that must be addressed as a matter of urgency. Access to Ireland’s broadband network, while vastly improved on a decade ago, is still limited in many rural parts of the country. For a quarter of all SMEs in Ulster and Connacht in 2017 to describe their connection as ‘poor’ illustrates the extent of the digital divide.
“Ireland will not become a major e-commerce player overnight. Industry and Government must continue to work shoulder-to-shoulder to ensure that SMEs in all regions of the country have access to a modern, high-speed internet connection that allows reliable access to the global digital marketplace. The research indicates that e-commerce awareness is no longer a major issue. Going forward, resources must be targeted at improving the digital sales skills of online businesses, who already understand the benefits of an online presence, through digital skills and mentorship programmes.”

ENDS

Hosting Ireland

Hosting Ireland is committed to helping businesses get online and this often starts with a domain name. As an Accredited Registrar we can help you search and find your perfect domain name, plus you’ll have peace of mind that your domain is managed securely, not just when you register your domain, but also ongoing annual renews too. So if you’re not online Now is an ideal time to secure your prefect ‘IE Domain Name’ why wait?