Midphase Blog

Whenever the term cheap or affordable comes up in a conversation relating to web hosting companies there may sometimes be a natural tendency to assume that there is a consequent loss in quality, features and/or benefits.

However, over the last several years a small minority of cheap hosting providers have been carefully fine-tuning their infrastructure to bring down costs and pass these savings onto website owners in the form of lower prices.

They have been able to do this by using the power of open-source software, including Linux, WordPress, MySQL and PHP to offer a range of services and applications required by cost-conscious small businesses across the United States.

Midphase Web Hosting has also gained further economies of scale by migrating shared hosting infrastructure to Tier 3 C7 Data Centers in Utah, which feature some of the highest levels of security (and accompanying bandwidth gains) in the United States.

This means that shared hosting plans are now priced as low as $2.95 per month with these additional benefits pinned to various plans:

• FREE Domain
• 24/7 U.S. Based Support
• 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
• 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
• SSL Secure Website Access
• Midphase cPanel Control Panel

For those reading this blog who are interested in the web hosting features and benefits mentioned above, but are currently stuck with a hosting provider that does not give your website the stability or feature-sets you require, you can consider contacting Midphase for a FREE site move.

There may also come a point in your lifetime, where you shared hosting platform above may not no longer accommodate the growth in website traffic or e-commerce activity that may be occurring in your small business.

When you reach this point, you have various options at your disposal including upgrading to a Virtual Private Server or pursuing a dedicated server.

All plans come with the industry-leading cPanel that controls all your server infrastructural power.

It all starts with a cheap hosting package on a reliable hosting provider that has been consistently putting infrastructural bricks in place to lower cost, complexity and bottlenecks relating to running a healthy website.

Filed under: General, Web Hosting by Clint Reeves
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At a recent conference Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team announced that Google was working on an algorithm update that would level the playing field for sites that don’t participate in “over-optimization” strategies. He later clarified that “over-optimization” wasn’t the best way of putting it because it is really about webspam. According to Cutts, “The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines.”

After the official announcement earlier this week, Google released the new update, which has been officially called the Penguin Update. The Penguin Update will impact “about 3.1% of queries in English to a degree that a regular user might notice,” said, Google. Despite the recent update, many webmasters did notice the changes. Some search results have been turned completely upside down. Unrelated sites and sites without content have even managed to rank at #1 after this update rolled out. Other search results like searches relating to web hosting have seen some pretty good improvements.

Google emphasized that the Penguin Update was targeting sites that participate in certain types of webspam tactics; mentioning keyword stuffing and link schemes as two specific examples. Keyword stuffing is not something new to SEO. Many webmasters have been doing it and finding different ways to hide it from search engines in order to game the algorithm and get higher rankings. Link schemes have been around for a while now and can also be effective for propelling websites to the top of the search results. Earlier this year Google targeted specific link networks as part of their ongoing war on webspam. Many blogs that were part of these link networks were removed from Google’s index. The result was that many websites which had been getting links from these networks saw their rankings drop as those links lost their value.

The Penguin Update is taking the war on these types of link schemes one step further by penalizing sites which have participated in them. Specifically, the update targets sites with “unusual linking patterns” or links from pages with spun content where the content is “spun beyond recognition” and the links may or may not even be relevant to the content. It makes sense that these types of links should not be rewarded because they are clearly for the sole purpose of manipulating search engine rankings. However, by penalizing sites which have unusual linking patterns, Google has opened the door to “negative SEO” tactics.

Can negative SEO really work? While I wouldn’t personally attempt to knock a competitor out of the search results using any form of negative SEO, this strategy could absolutely work with the Penguin Update. What would prevent someone from getting these types of links to a competitor’s website to knock their site from the search results? If you think about it, if I was tired of ranking #2 to a specific competitor, all I would have to do is get some of these webspam links to their website and their site drops from the top position. I hope that in the light of negative SEO being a real possibility now that Google might reconsider penalizing sites for the types of links that they have and look for other ways to devalue those links. Giving links from link schemes no value in the search engine’s algorithm would result in no reward being given to webmasters who participate in those webspam tactics and would also prevent the possibility of using the same link schemes for negative SEO.

Filed under: News by Dustin Williams
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A recent survey put together by Midphase Web Hosting reveals that nearly 80% of all current clients have transferred their website, blog, e-commerce site or content management system from another hosting provider to Midphase.

Wow! That’s a BIG number and these statistics demonstrate four areas an affordable web-hosting provider must dominate in:

Reputation

Generally, the length of time the web host has been in a business plays a big role.  Midphase for instance has been in business since 2003 – almost 10 years.

Industry recognition from external publications, such as Find My Host and CNET, are also key factors in helping establish the merit and pedigree of a hosting company.  Midphase has one time or another been awarded top billing from these and other rating entities. Finally consider whether the hosting provider is part of a broader group of companies that complement one another in the hosting field. UK2 Group runs and owns an international stable of hosting companies, including Midphase. This means your risk is diversified within a strong, stable parent group, which can push resources and infrastructure when needed, quickly.

Price

If you are paying more than $3 for a shared hosting plan you may be paying too much. Midphase now offers hosting packages as low as $2.95.   Further, affordable plans are available for dedicated servers and virtual private servers (VPS).

Reliability

An unreliable web hosting platform could impact your website performance and even lose you customers. Midphase offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee across all web server packages.  Also consider the benefits of 24/7 round the clock support.

Features

Unlimited web space, unlimited bandwidth, free domains, website builder tools, WordPress support, and $100 worth of search engine credits are just some of the great features of a stable, reliable, powerful and cheap hosting provider.

Conclusion

Those areas above help explain the growing success of Midphase in attracting customers away from bigger, slower-moving hosting providers.  Midphase will move your website files over to your new hosting account AND get your site up and running completely FREE.   Even if you don’t decide to take up Midphase’s offer of a free website move, use the benchmarks of reputation, price, reliability and features to help you make decide which cheap hosting provider is best for you.

Filed under: Web Hosting by Clint Reeves
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The reason this provocative question comes up is because a lot of small businesses are becoming overwhelmed by new social media avenues that are seeking to siphon off your energy from networks you have just gotten familiar with, including Facebook.

Most small businesses are now using Facebook to manage their social updates. That’s there first port of call, followed probably by Twitter. True, there are few early adopters using Foursquare and many of us are using Linkedin Pages. But the reality is that Facebook has become the lynch pin for social media marketing even if customers may be moving elsewhere.

But the problem with Facebook is that just about everyone is regarded as your friend. This includes your boss, your dog, and anybody you may have briefly bumped into at website marketing conference or online web hosting seminar.  Facebook pages and ‘Likes’ of course helped solve some of the business aspects of online marketing, but on a personal level everybody on your Facebook is regarded as a friend.

Thus, the arrival of Google +, which takes care of this sticky issue by introducing Circles as a way to differentiate relationships including friend vs. acquaintance vs. business contact. These groups now allow you to define your relationship to that person rather than simply being lumped into one friend category.

And, people can be in more than one circle just like real life. That means you can have a friend that resides in both your co-worker and friend circle.  Now you can share information or updates with some people or all people. You decide.

This concept extends further into Google + -pages for business which allows you to further distinguish between clients, partners and suppliers.

“Different people are interested in different parts of your business. Whether it’s breaking news, updates, promotions, links, photos – even talking face-to-face with groups via easy-to-use video chat – Google+ lets you easily share the right things with the right customers,” said Google.

This is just a quick insight into how Google Circles may overtake Facebook in the business arena. Of course, it is quite possible that Facebook will probably start introducing new ways to manage and define your relationships, in business and in your personal life, but for the moment Google Circles seems to have the edge.

It’s thus highly suggested you add a Google + button to your existing website which we hope resides on our cheap, affordable hosting plans priced below $3!

One more thing: Check out this fun video that gives you a quick look into the general differences between Google Circles and Facebook.

Filed under: Industry Trends, Tips and Tutorials, Web Hosting by Clint Reeves
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A major stumbling block deterring small businesses from coming online with new websites relates to cost and complexity — either perceived or actual.

Traditionally, SMBs were understandably reluctant to spend their limited budgets on expensive website designers and hidden fees related to hosting, new domains or website applications which supposedly helped them convert visitors into customers.

However, over the last several years a number of turnkey services are being provided on shared hosting platforms which reduce both the cost of entry and the traditional complexity associated with running a website.

Additional incentivized services such as Quick Switch programs allow a SMB to quickly transfer a website over from a non-performing web host that is not fulfilling its uptime, performance or security obligations.

Nowadays a small business can purchase a free domain and get a 30-day money back guarantee on shared web hosting packages for as little as $2.95 per month over a three-year contract. Further, free tools including Joomla, WordPress and Drupal allow a small business owner to quickly deploy new websites with little effort.

The advent of turnkey domain hosting, web hosting and site design facilities on a shared server is transforming the agility and marketing ability of SMB seeking to find new ways to lower costs and target customers online. In the past setting up an e-commerce website was perceived as overly complex and time consuming.

However, cheap hosting packages from Midphase are now loaded with plug-and-play e-commerce apps, which allow SMBs to launch an online store in less than five minutes. This is made possible through attractive, friendly control panels (cPanel) that act as your management dashboard.

Shared hosting platforms group multiple SMBs on a single server, allowing the web host to reduce costs and streamline services through automation. This means a new website comes fully loaded with unlimited web space, unlimited bandwidth and 24/7 customer support.

Small businesses can elect to deploy websites quickly in any of the following manners using affordably priced hosting plans:

• Small single sites
• Online resumes
• Brochure sites
• Blogs
• Online portfolios
• Business Email & More!

Filed under: Industry Trends, Tips and Tutorials, Web Hosting by Clint Reeves
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Midphase offers both Windows and Linux web hosting at an affordable cost and both have their advantages when choosing a hosting plan right for you. While it’s true that Windows web hosting has come a long way since the advent of the web, becoming more stable and feature-rich, web servers running on Linux have traditionally been associated with the ingenuity and grace of the Internet.

The reason for this stems not only from philosophical differences relating to how web hosting companies build and structure marketing packages for small businesses, but also because Linux works extremely well with other software applications that form the backbone of great sites on the Internet.

These include Apache Web Server, MySQL database, and the PHP scripting/programming language.

Collectively they are tied together in the acronym known as LAMP that’s considered the magic quadrants for open-source development on the World Wide Web.

The fact that all four quadrants are free and have a large contributor community is further motivating factors its popularity over the years. That enticing word FREE mentioned above of course means web hosting companies like Midphase can pass on these infrastructural savings to you in the form of lower hosting fees.

Prices as low as $2.95 are now possible, largely because Midphase has grown up on the web using Linux and by association LAMP. This means that since the early days of the Internet their engineering team has been able to tap into a powerful open-source developer community that drives innovation inside Linux Web Server software. By combining free open-source Linux software with a powerful global community of developers, Midphase engineers can release new features quickly and kill any remaining software bugs associated with new releases — almost instantly.

Conversely, Windows hosting (via the Windows OS), has a long and storied career as one of the most popular proprietary packages the world has ever seen. For web developers using ASP this is a great option to consider if you are looking to take advantage of our Windows hosting platform.

For most users our traditional Linux hosting plans will be able to provide all the tools you need to develop your perfect website.

Regardless of which option you choose, the end result is great hosting at a great price, which includes free transfers, uptime guarantees and nightly backups. Also consider the other advantages of Midphase Hosting including free MySQL databases and a free domain name.

Filed under: Tips and Tutorials, Web Hosting by Clint Reeves
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If you read the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson you will recall a crucial moment when Apple’s mobile development team convinced Job’s to use the chip technology from ARM, rather than the Intel’s atom-based chip sets.

While Intel arguably offered the fastest chips at the time they were not designed to specifically, for example, preserve battery life.  Job’s would eventually license the ARM architecture and also purchase a 150-person microprocessor design firm to create a system-on-chip, A4, based on the ARM architecture and manufactured by Samsung.

This was part of Job’s visionary strategy of creating custom end-to-end technology (hardware to software) to ensure a consistent, smooth user experience, whether it is for laptops or Smartphones.

Partly in response to Apple’s overall strategy, Microsoft’s mobile team rebuilt its mobile technology from the ground up  winning kudos with their Metro OS design, which has now influenced the upcoming Windows 8 operating system which is in beta or “consumer review” mode.

Even more importantly, it looks like Microsoft will unveil specs allowing manufacturers to start developing mobile devices and tablets using ARM processors and running Windows 8.

“There was concern that Windows 8 would first be released for devices using Intel and AMD x86 chip architecture, with ‘Windows-on-arm’ devices lagging behind,” said a February 2012 issue of Barron’s Weekly.

Thus, it looks extremely likely that a new wave of future tablets may come armed with ARM, slip streaming the success forged by Apple.

“Expanding the view of the PC to cover a much wider range of form factors and designs than some think of today is an important part of these efforts. Windows on ARM enables creativity in PC design that, in combination with newly architected features of the Windows OS, will bring to customers new, no-compromise PCs,” said a Microsoft blog post.

“We’ve designed WOA to look and feel just like you would expect. WOA enables creativity in PC design that, in combination with newly architected features of the OS, will bring to customers new no-compromise experiences,” said Microsoft.

Of course this development may cause some issues for legacy software on new tablets featuring ARM.

“If you need to run existing x86/64 (Intel-based) software, then you will be best served with Windows 8 on x86/64,” said CNET.

In any event, Windows looks like it may be a force to be reckoned with as it adopts a mobile-centric view of the hardware and software market.

Filed under: Industry Trends, News by Clint Reeves
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Still on the fence as to whether your business brand or merchant service should set up a new Foursquare business page?

Then consider these facts and figures compiled by Inc Magazine that may help you make a decision:

• 91% of all U.S. businesses do nothing to retain customers
• 68% of long-term customers stop buying because they no longer feel appreciated
• The average American business loses 50% of its customer base every 5 years
• An existing customer spends an average of 67% more than new customers
• Only 12% of revenue is spent on customer retention

Foursquare, a free location-based service, allows you to tackle these weaknesses and improve customer retention.

According to Inc Magazine, Foursquare had 381,576,300 individual user check-ins, 6 million users and a 3400% growth in 2010.

In recent months, it has emulated Facebook with the launch of a business page that can be tweaked towards either a brand or a merchant. In fact, you do not even need to have a physical location in order to use Foursquare.

The basic premise behind Foursquare is the concept of a customer check-in via his Smartphone  at a certain location.  This is shared with followers or friends who usually have qualms about highlighting their movements or location-based activity.  Merchants and brands are then able to stream in location-specific specials as well as producing niche contest apps or other incentives to generate additional followers.

If your business operates from a specific location (or several) you can claim your place in Foursquare via their business section. It’s then fairly easy to create a special or other incentive-based item.

If you are simply a brand not directly linked to a location, then a new business page will suffice which allows you to generate a ‘save to Foursquare’ button for your website.

“When one of your visitors clicks the ‘Save to foursquare’ button on your pages, it adds the contents to their To-Do List in foursquare. Then, when they’re out and about, foursquare Radar will buzz on their phone when they’re close to it,” said Foursquare.

Besides the follow me button, which is now standard on most social networks, Foursquare also offers digital partner badges, that reflect real-world achievements worth shouting out to the world.  These, however, do come at a price determined by their quality control team.

“Foursquare Partner Badges are achievements or rewards that a person receives after they follow a foursquare Brand Page and check in to a number of locations.

Here is a random example of a Coffee Shop in Cape Town, South Africa that offers a free regular sized coffee after you have checked in 10 times. It’s known as loyalty special and is an example of the power of Foursquare.  At the time of writing it appears that roughly 100 people had checked in 10 times.  In addition to customer retention it also demonstrates how statistics collected through Foursquare can help you tweak your business offerings.

Foursquare also some case studies available, including this one relating to Radio Shack, which confirmed that Foursquare users spent 350% more than the average Radio Shack customer.

Filed under: Industry Trends, News, Tips and Tutorials by Clint Reeves
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The new emerging standard for coding websites essentially moves your browser closer in nature to an operating system and allows designers and developers to explore native, interactive features without resorting to plug-ins to achieve the same affect.

In tandem with CSS3 and JavaScript, creative designers can explore new graphics libraries like WebGL which offers some innovative 3D features.

HTML 5 also means we are moving away from the terms static (and even dynamic) towards something else more powerful: Applications.

For instance check out this awesome Virtual Tour or 360-degree effect offered up by Apple for an iPod Touch.

In combination with JavaScript and CSS3, the native web app allows you to rotate the image simply by clicking upon it. This was created entirely with web standard technologies and delivers a rich-media experience.  Visit the Safari Developer Library to grab some of the code examples, including the CSS Effects Photo Gallery.

Of course, Apple slants its demos towards the Safari web browser, but MOST of their examples should work on other browsers, too, including Firefox.

Here is another great example of visual photo transitions pulled off using HTML 5 web standards.

Dissolves, Toss, Slide-ins, Iris, Fade Throughs – all highly recognizable animations from famous Video Editing suites such as Final Cut Pro are now available natively within the HTML 5 Standard.

“CSS3 animations can also leverage hardware acceleration, so your effects will be smooth and fluid on iPad and iPhone — especially when compared to animations created with older, conventional JavaScript animation techniques,” said Apple.

Since the iPad has become the most iconic visual pieces of hardware on the market, transforming the way users interact with physical features and software apps, its important to keep this product in mind when designing new websites.

In fact, there are even some studies from Adobe that suggest that iPad users are the most likely out of all Smart Device owners to make a purchase online.  This makes them a valuable target market, too.

For this reason check out this How-To guide from Apple outlining out how to prepare your content for an iPad.

Even if you don’t own an iPad for testing purposes, you can use the iPhone Simulator from Apple. iPad is available in the iPhone Simulator in iPhone OS 3.2 SDK beta 2 and later, which is available to iPhone Developer Program members.

And, remember, plug-ins are not supported in Safari on iPad, nor are they supported in Safari on iPhone. Have Fun!

Filed under: Industry Trends by Clint Reeves
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The formula above may well be saving the life of your computer every day, by quietly filtering and eliminating something we all loathe: SPAM.

It’s an example of the famed Bayes Theorem or Rule, which underpins the programming logic of modern day anti-spam software such as SpamAssassin offered by Midphase.

By the way, you can even request a more advanced configuration of Spam Assassin known as Spamalizer, which usesadvanced heuristics? to identify and block email spam.

According to the Economist, the Bayes Theorem was developed by the Reverend Thomas Bayes in the 18^th Century and now influences scientific fields ranging from archeology to computing (and of course, spam filtering).? Just like Einstein used his thought experiments to formulate his Theory of Relativity, Bayes had to use his imagination (and not technology) to formulate how new evidence can change our beliefs about the world around us.

To understand how he did this consider this example quoted from the Economist:

Imagine that a precocious newborn observes his first sunset, and wonders whether the sun will rise again or not. He assigns equal prior probabilities to both possible outcomes, and represents this by placing one white and one black marble into a bag. The following day, when the sun rises, the child places another white marble in the bag. The probability that a marble plucked randomly from the bag will be white (i.e., the child’s degree of belief in future sunrises) has thus gone from a half to two-thirds. After sunrise the next day, the child adds another white marble, and the probability (and thus the degree of belief) goes from two-thirds to three-quarters. And so on. Gradually, the initial belief that the sun is just as likely as not to rise each morning is modified to become a near-certainty that the sun will always rise.

Thus, new evidence reshapes your opinion and consequently your actions.

SpamAssassin successfully employed the theorem above to distinguish features that characterize spam from those that characterize non-spam in messages that you receive. This software thus has the capability to learn your email environment and adapt its detection behavior to elevate accuracy on your behalf.

Microsoft even used a similar approach when developing the Microsoft Assistant, designed to be a virtual help assistant in office products.

?When a user calls up the assistant, Bayesian methods are used to analyze recent actions in order to try to work out what the user is attempting to do, with this calculation constantly being modified in the light of new actions,? said the Economist.

The article stated that future products would try to determine users’ intentions more broadly to speed things up.

?Having worked out which link on a web article a user is most likely to click on, for example, the computer could fetch the corresponding article in advance, so that it appears more quickly.?

So the next time you check your Junk folder, remember what mathematical wonders are being used to help keep your inbox clean and your computer (and Smartphone) safe!

Filed under: Tips and Tutorials, Web Hosting by Clint Reeves
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