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Virtual dedicated servers from Hosting Direct 24 offer many of the capabilities and features of dedicated servers, including admin (root) access and dedicated IP addresses, but at a much lower price. However, as a virtual dedicated server is, indeed, virtually dedicated, the customer in fact shares the server space with a small number of other customers. But because each virtual dedicated server is effectively isolated from other accounts on the server, the user has full control over the server space. As well, our virtual dedicated server plans feature very high performance and available disk space and bandwidth.

Virtual private servers, which enable hosting providers to offer virtual dedicated servers, are based on the concept of partitions on mainframes that allow each division to function as a virtual standalone server dedicated to a single customer. To ensure high and reliable performance for all accounts, Hosting Direct 24 server boxes are partitioned in such a way that each virtual dedicated server operates almost entirely independently of the other accounts that share the server space. This means that with a virtual dedicated server, you will enjoy consistent, high performance, even when usage peaks on the main server.

Virtual dedicated servers are particularly useful for companies and individuals that run higher-traffic Web sites or complex applications and thus need the bandwidth, consistent performance, and flexibility of a virtual dedicated server.

Good news for all our e-commerce clients and those willing to open their own virtual storefront. Now it will even be easier to increase your sales and customer base by helping new shoppers find your store!

With the latest update to our Quick Shopping Cart Hosting Direct 24 adds exciting new features designed to help you improve your results on top search engines like Google®, Yahoo!® and even Bing™, the new search engine from Microsoft.

With this latest version of Quick Shopping Cart, you can optimize your product pages for search engines by adding meta tags to every product page. Plus, two new storefront preferences help you instantly convert your URLs so search engines can index your site more effectively. You can even add a search-friendly static sitemap for increased exposure of your store.

Play Quick Shopping Cart Video

New Tool to Optimize Your Internet Presence and to Get Your Web Site Noticed

According to analyst firm Netcraft, there are more than 238 million Web sites online. Getting a Web site noticed online can be daunting, which is why we decided to offer Search Engine Visibility.

Search Engine Visibility walks users through a step-by-step process to make their Web site search engine friendly. This not only makes a search engine more likely to index the entire site, but to help get the Web site higher in search engine rankings.

Search Engine Visibility lets users optimize their site by defining keywords, analyzing content and tracking keyword performance. Search Engine Visibility also provides a “Top 10 SEO Checklist,” which helps identify commonly made mistakes and techniques on how to make a Web site stronger.

Search Engine Visibility also provides a video tutorial and other educational materials which help users understand the search engine optimization process. Once a Web site is optimized, users can submit their Web site to the most commonly used search engines on the Internet.

Users can call our 24/7 customer care representatives if they have any questions during the optimization process.

WordPress 2.8.1 has recently been released as stable version. This release fixes some errors in version 2.8 released just over a month ago. The changes and improvements are detailed in the Wordpress development blog.

Here are some of the changes made in WordPress 2.8.1. The focus was on fixing a number of bugs and correcting some security issues with the plugin administration:

• Certain themes were calling get_categories() in such a way that it would fail in 2.8. 2.8.1 works around this so these themes won’t have to change.
• Dashboard memory usage is reduced.  Some people were running out of memory when loading the dashboard, resulting in an incomplete page.
• The automatic upgrade no longer accidentally deletes files when cleaning up from a failed upgrade.
• A problem where the rich text editor wasn’t being loaded due to compression issues has been worked around.
• Extra security has been put in place to better protect you from plugins that do not do explicit permission checks.
• Translation of role names fixed.
• wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title.
• Upload error messages are now correctly reported.
• Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed.
• Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed.
• SSH2 filesystem requirements updated.
• Switched back to curl as the default transport.
• Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload.
• Stricter inline style sanitization.
• Stricter menu security.
• Disabled code highlighting due to browser incompatibilities.
• RTL layout fixes.

For the full list of changes made since version 2.8. click here.

Do you think you have a good Domain name in mind for your site?

WAIT!
Before you rush out register it there are a several things you need to consider.

• How many people are searching for your main keywords?
• What other words describe your site?
• How competitive is your market?
• Does the domain name describe your sites contents?
• How easy is the url to remember?

Existing Businesses

If you have an existing business you already have brand name recognition so its important to include your business name.

i.e. www.shopname.com

If that domain is taken then consider how people will search for your site. Most people will google something like (shop name) + (city) so  why not name it www.shopnamecity.com or www.shopname-city.com these domain names will almost certainly be available.

Online Businesses

Very Important – Do people want what you’re selling?

Before you rush ahead & spend hours developing a site with no value think of 6 or more words that best describe your idea.

Go to Wordtracker (it’s free) & see how many people are searching those exact words. List the words according to the # of searches.

Now you now know 2 things:

1. Is this an idea worth pursuing?
2. What words generated the most searches.

Obviously, if  very few people are searching for your main keywords then this idea is not worth pursuing as an e-commerce business. Save your money & register for a free blog at www.blogger.com if you are really dedicated to the idea.

If your keywords have significant Google search volume you can move on. Don’t worry about competition at this stage, it is more important that there are a lot of searches.

Armed with your keywords you are now ready to find the perfect domain name for your new business.

Write down some options using the most popular keyword or a mixture of your keywords. It helps if your domain name is descriptive of the site’s content.

A person searching the internet for  E-Commerce will click www.E-CommerceNewbie.com before  www.mywebsite.com.

TIP – Hyphens as in E-Commerce are not generally a good idea however using Wordtracker you will find that more people search for E-Commerce than eCommerce.

Microsoft Outlook earned its place as the world’s most popular email software by making it easier for users to stay connected, manage their schedules, increase their productivity and more. Powered by Microsoft’s Hosted Exchange service, here are the top 10 ways Outlook can work for you.
1. Instantly search all your information.
Having problems finding the information you need? Use Office Outlook 2007 to search for keywords, dates or other flexible criteria to locate items in your e-mail, calendar, contacts, or tasks.
2. Easily manage your daily priorities and information.
Check your priorities for the day by looking at the To-Do Bar where your flagged mails and tasks are clearly laid out.
3. Get better results faster with the redesigned Microsoft Office Fluent™ user interface.
Office Outlook 2007 has redesigned the look and feel so you now have all of the rich features and capabilities of Outlook in an accessible and streamlined location.
4. Connect with people easily and effectively.
New Office Outlook 2007 calendaring functionalities provide easy ways to share your calendar with anyone within or outside of your organization, giving your important contacts immediate access to your information.
5. Enjoy increased collaboration and functionality with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.
Office Outlook 2007, used in conjunction with Exchange Server 2007, offers a rich and complete Outlook experience. Users benefit from a new scheduling assistant that automates time-consuming calendaring tasks, the ability to schedule and customize out-of-office communications, and managed folders that facilitate compliance needs.
6. Manage your shared information and content in one interface.
Office Outlook 2007 provides rich interaction with information stored in Windows SharePoint Services technology at any time. You can connect Windows SharePoint Services documents, calendars, contacts, tasks, and other information to Office Outlook 2007, giving you a central place to manage your information.
7. Enjoy new measures that help keep you safe from junk e-mail and malicious sites.
Office Outlook 2007 has taken new measures to help keep you safe from junk mail and phishing Web sites. To help protect you from divulging personal information to a threatening Web site, Office Outlook 2007 has an improved junk e-mail filter and has added new features that disable links and warn you about threatening content within an e-mail message.
8. Send text messages from Outlook with one easy click.
Outlook Mobile Service is a feature of Outlook that enables you to send and receive text and picture messages between Office Outlook 2007 and any mobile phone.
9. Organize your information in new, rich ways.
Using Color Categories in Office Outlook 2007, you can easily personalize and add categories to any type of information—e-mail, calendar items, contacts, or tasks.
10. Manage all your communication in one interface.
With Office Outlook 2007, you can now read and manage your Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds and blogs right from within Office Outlook 2007, so you no longer have to leave Outlook to read the latest world news, catch up on your favorite sports team, or remain up to date on interesting blogs.

WordPress, one of the most popular of our free Value Applications that come with each of our hosting plans has released the second beta of version 2.8. This was announced on the WordPress blog just one week after the initial beta release. Being still in beta it is not recommended to use it in a production blog and it will only be available for upgrading at Hosting Direct 24 after thorough testing.

The most significant changes in the new version are in widget management and in the installation of themes. From now on it will be possible to browse and install new themes like a plugin without leaving the backend of your blog.

For a full list of new features click here.

Ever since we included support for Ruby on Rails in our Linux hosting plans we’ve been asked by non-techies what it’s all about. Even if you may not be aware of it you’ve probably already come across it while using an application built with it, maybe most notably Twitter.

Ruby as such is a programming language combining syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features and was initially developed and designed by Yukihiro Matsumoto from Japan. Ruby on Rails again is a web application framework based on the Ruby language. It is intended to speed up web development by re-using existing code structures and to allow some sort of “out-of-the-box” programming.

Ruby on Rails has now become popular among developers because it uses the latest web development technology and is said to be suitable to create applications of any scope. At the same time it is still simple and easy to use. Ruby on Rails was created by David Heinemeier Hansson while working on a web-based project management tool called Basecamp. For more information on the Rails project you can visit its homepage here.

Linux or Windows? This question rages often like a religious battle between dedicated followers of each operating system. At Hosting Direct 24 our primary concern is offering our customers the security, stability and performance you expect from a first-class web hosting operation. As our customers enjoy the same uptime guarantee, backup routines and advanced maintenance at exactly the same great price no matter what system they choose we will have a closer look of what really suits your needs. Personal preferences apart, the choice for Linux hosting or Windows hosting largely depends on what you want to do with your site.

Programming Languages and Databases

If you limit yourself to  static web pages in pure HTML you are fine with both systems. However, if you are planning for a dynamic site with interactive pages you’ll have to employ some kind of programming language as well as one or more databases. Such programming languages for the web include Perl, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, Python, Java, ColdFusion, Ruby etc. Common databases are MySQL, MS Access and MS SQL. PHP and ASP are considered the most popular languages and here comes the first differentiation: PHP is open source and thus more associated with Linux, while ASP is a Microsoft product. The same is true for MySQL and MS Access, respectively. When you’re all out for ASP pages or MS databases your obvious choice is Windows.

Applications

If you are not so much into programming and want to use one or the other (or all, for that matter) of our vast offering of free value applications there are also some choices to make beforehand. While popular applications like Wordpress, Joomla or zenCart are included in both our Linux and Windows packages, others like Elgg or dasBlog require one or the other.

Summary

In conclusion the most obvious choices between the two operating systems are as follows:

Linux

Your website uses

• Open source databases like MySQL
• Pages coded in CGI, Perl, PHP, Ruby
• Pages with XML

Windows

Your website uses

• Microsoft Access or SQL databases
• Pages coded in ASP or ASP.NET
• VB/C# tools for development