Tag Archives: promotions

Global Blacklisting Results in Undeliverable Email

Posted on August 23, 2013 by Hosting

Yesterday (August 22nd, 2013) a massive number of IP addresses used for email gateways on virtually every webhost in the world became blacklisted on multiple networks.  This resulted in a global inability for email to be received (any time the email originated from one of the blacklisted IPs and was “received” on one of the blacklisting networks). The issue is on-going at the time of this writing, and some customers are still being affected at this moment, however HostGator was one of the first companies to successfully mitigate the situation and we have since been assisting other companies with this issue.  As it stands, we are presently working to now get our IPs removed from the blacklists and restore full worldwide email deliverability from our network. This situation resulted from a combination of multiple factors stretching back a few months.  Before we explain the circumstances, we want to once again stress the importance of keeping all scripts on all hosting accounts updated.  Failure to update scripts, as well as  not exercising basic security practices, is what allows situations like this to continue to occur.  An out-dated script on a hosting account is akin to an unlocked car left in a parking lot… it’s an invitation for maliciousness by unscrupulous individuals. Unlike the situation back in April that affected WordPress , this time the target was Joomla.  Back in May, there was a string of exploits against known vulnerabilities in Joomla.  These vulnerabilities, related to a component called JCE, had been previously addressed via certain mod_sec rules.  However, a workaround was discovered that allowed malware to be installed, and later activated, to allow the uploading and execution of mailing scripts. These mailing scripts were activated en masse yesterday, beginning a massive spamming campaign resulting in the blacklisting of email gateway IPs worldwide.  One of the largest networks with users reporting issues initially was AOL, resulting in us creating this forum post . As with all issues of this nature, there are lessons to be learned.  The most important lesson here is to (again) keep all scripts on your hosting account up-to-date.  Most scripts have a one-click feature to update them anytime a new version is released.  Keeping scripts up-to-date is paramount in ensuring a secure hosting account. HostGator has now added additional monitoring capability to our systems which will alert us to situations like this even faster than yesterday.  Our work in on-going, though we should have the majority of the blocks resolved by tomorrow (spam lists move slow, with good reason).  But remember, there is no better way to keep your car safe than to lock it.  Please take this moment to log into your hosting script back-ends and ensure they are up-to-date.  Don’t give the bad guys an open door to walk through. Continue reading →

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How to Measure Website Success

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Hosting

Every website is different. What might be considered successful results for one website may be lackluster for another. To measure your own site’s success, you must first define what success means to you and develop a clear picture of how your website is performing according to these metrics.   What is the Purpose of Your Website? To start, ask yourself about the purpose of your site. Was it created to sell products? To boost fundraising efforts? To engage consumers in a particular niche? Defining the purpose of your website is essential to defining its success.   Setting Good Goals Next, you need to set some clear goals that coincide with your website’s purpose. When devising goals, consider the following questions: Are your website goals tied in to the overall goals of your organization? Are your goals measurable? Are they challenging, yet realistic? Are they set in a specific time frame? Do your goals depend on specific website visitor actions? (Signing up for a newsletter, buying a product, etc.)   As an example, say you’re a business owner who sells jackets online. Your organizational goal is to generate revenue through jacket sales, so one goal of your website is to get visitors to buy jackets (a specific website visitor action). Your goal might be to sell 500 jackets per month through your website (which is both measurable and constrained by a specific time frame), up from the 400 you sold last month (which is challenging, yet realistic).   Metrics That Matter Website metrics are a way to measure how people are interacting with your website. When you keep track of web metrics, you’ll be able to see what’s working on your site and what needs improvement as far as web traffic and conversions go. Here are some metrics that you should be tracking – no matter the purpose of your website: Conversion Rate: This metric measures how many people are performing your website visitor action. Conversion rate is given as a percentage, and is based on the number of people who convert versus the number who leave your website without taking the desired visitor action. Exit Pages: This statistic lets you know what pages your visitors are exiting your website from. This data, along with the conversion rate metric, can help you to optimize your sales funnel. Know what pages within your sales funnel people are exiting on and improve on those pages in order to maximize conversions (although, keep in mind that some pages – like your “Thank You” page – are natural exits). Unique Visitors: This numbers tells you the number of individual people who visit your website in a given time period, usually daily. This is more significant than just measuring page views. Page views can tell you that you had three visits to your website in a day, but not if it was the same person visiting three separate times. Referrers: This data tells you where your visitors are coming from and can be extremely helpful in measuring and strategizing your marketing efforts. Top Keywords: This important metric tells you what search engine keywords are leading people to your website. Top Internal Search Keywords: Don’t confuse this with top search engine keywords. This data tells you what people are using the search box on your website to search for. This could be helpful in determining what content on your website is most popular, or if there’s something you’re missing on your site that people are expecting to find. Top Search Engines: This metric tells you what search engines people are visiting your website from, which can be useful when it comes to prioritizing SEO activities. Average Time Spent: This number lets you know how much time people are spending on your website and individual pages, and it’s a good way to measure the quality of your website. Bounce Rate: Your bounce rate is a measurement of how many people visit your website and then leave after only viewing the page they landed on. In other words, it tells you if your website is driving traffic away before engagement can occur.   When you measure your website metrics, you gain valuable information that will help you to achieve the goals you’ve set. If, for example, you see that the most visitors to your jacket sales website arrive by searching Google for “winter down jackets,” you can use that information for both marketing and optimization purposes.   Measuring Metrics Given the importance of a website’s metrics, there are plenty of tools to choose from when it comes to measurement. Google Analytics is free and perhaps the most popular tool for measuring website metrics. Google Analytics not only lets you measure the success of your website, but also lets you perform split testing, helping you to turn your analytics data into actionable steps towards improvement. Piwik is another free tool that can be hosted on your own web server. It offers many of the same features as Google Analytics, but since it’s hosted on your server, you’re the only one that sees the stats. If you master Google Analytics and want to get deeper into your website’s analytics, Deep Log Analyzer is a good option. It’s not free, but it’s easy to use and could prove useful in further optimizing your website for conversions. Remember that measuring the success of your website is two-fold. First, you must set your website’s goals, and then you must measure how your website is performing. Consistently revising your goals, measuring your website’s performance, and making improvements are surefire ways to improve the success of your website. Continue reading →

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Dear HostGator Clients

Posted on August 3, 2013 by Hosting

Today our Provo, Utah datacenter experienced outages that may have affected access to your website and account services.  At this time, all services have been restored. I would like to extend my sincerest apologies for this occurrence, as well as the negative impact that it may have had on your websites and businesses. The outages began during routine maintenance which traditionally has been completed without any disruption. Unfortunately, hardware failures including our core routers cascaded causing downtime and network instability. Our datacenter technicians reacted immediately, working tirelessly alongside the hardware providers to re-establish connectivity as quickly as possible. Our engineers are conducting a thorough review of the incident and implementing new processes and safeguards in order to prevent similar occurrences in the future. Please know that customer satisfaction is of the utmost importance to us; we are committed to providing you with the high-quality, reliable service that you’ve come to expect and very-well deserve.  We apologize for failing to exceed that expectation during this incident. If you are still experiencing any issues, please contact us via http://support.hostgator.com so that we may properly assist you. In closing, we’d like to thank you for your understanding and patience throughout this situation. We truly value your business. Sincerely, Adam Farrar CEO, HostGator.com Continue reading →

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Video Marketing 101: How to Add Video to Your Website

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Hosting

Want to quickly and dramatically improve the engagement that website visitors have with your brand?  Add video to your website!  According to Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D. (also known as “The Brain Lady”), there are a number of biological reasons that we tend to pay more attention to video content, rather than written text.  Specifically: The Fusiform Facial areas of our brains compel us to pay attention to other faces.  Evolutionarily, this tendency leads us to treat the face as a starting point for information and believability.  As a website owner, faces can be used to call attention to important points and marketing content. Voices convey more rich information than plain text.  When used in the context of web video, webmasters can use vocal inflections and other mannerisms to form a stronger bond with site visitors than they can using text alone. Emotions tend to be contagious.  Want to get your visitors excited about a product or service?  It’s a tall order to accomplish via text alone, but easy when your website displays a video of an enthusiastic person. The human brain is attracted to movement.  Text doesn’t move.  Adding video to your website allows you to capture the same attention that our caveman ancestors would have given to movement in the bushes that would have signaled imminent danger.   The benefit of all these different biological processes is obvious.  When you add video to your website, you tap into a number of key evolutionary mechanisms in order to boost both attention and engagement amongst your website visitors.  But what if you aren’t a professional videographer with Hollywood-level equipment?  Do you need to make a major capital investment in order to bring the power of video to your website?  Absolutely not!  Any of the following tools can help you to create powerful video clips without blowing up your marketing budget:   Animoto  When it comes to video creation, there’s no easier option than Animoto.  With both free and paid versions available, the program allows you to drag and drop images into a pre-designed slideshow and to set your video to a musical background.  The resulting video clips aren’t quite as compelling as a “talking head” style video would be, but they’re a great place to dip your toes into the waters of web video (especially if you’re camera shy!).   Screencast Want to avoid having to face the camera, but still want to capture the benefits that vocal inflection can have on message retention?  Screencast videos are the right option for you. In a screencast video, you use a program like Screencast to record both your voice and the content that’s displayed on your monitor.  In this way, you can create simple tutorials and educational videos that allow you to boost your perceived authority within your industry while capturing the benefits that web video can bring about.   Youtube  Ready to take your web video marketing techniques to the next level?  Record yourself speaking directly into your webcam using Youtube’s built in web video recorder!  This style of video allows you to take advantage of all the different benefits listed above without any expenses beyond the use of your computer’s webcam.  It can be scary to put yourself out there in this way, but the results will be well worth it.  As you’re making your first web video, keep the following guidelines in mind: Web videos should be short.  Limited viewer attention spans make it a good idea to limit videos to no more than 5-10 minutes in length. Think in terms of visitor value.  Don’t make web videos just to make web videos.  Think about the subjects that will bring the most value to your visitors and use these topics as the starting point for your new video marketing campaign. Not every video will go viral.  One common misconception about web video is that every clip you create will go on to be a Youtube success.  Obviously, this isn’t the case, but don’t let this discourage you.  Keep experimenting with different video techniques until you find one that resonates with your audience.   Once your video clip is ready, the easiest way to add it to your website is to upload the file to Youtube and then use the embed command to add it to your website.  As an added bonus, utilizing Youtube in this way will give you access to the company’s internal analytics program that will show you how exactly viewers are engaging with your clips. Don’t be scared when it comes to web video.  Using the tools above represents a quick and easy way to bring the incredible power of video marketing to your company’s website. Continue reading →

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Domains & Hosting, Metaphorically Speaking

Posted on July 12, 2013 by Hosting

A topic that seems to generate a fair amount of confusion among those new to building websites is that of domain registration, web hosting, and the difference between the two. One of the best ways to effectively explain the difference is by using analogies.  This is especially true because in today’s society, there seem to be two groups — “techies” and everyone else. If you are a techie, you probably wouldn’t be reading this. My goal is that after reading this page, you’ll feel competent and comfortable enough to discuss these topics with a techie and feel like you’re on the same page.   Domains are Television Shows? A domain is like the name of a television show. Every show on TV has a different (unique) name. Imagine the confusion that would result if this were not the case [Related Article: Tips for Choosing Your Domain Name ]. A website is like the show itself. All the files, text, code, graphics, etc. that make up a website are like the props, sets, actors, lighting, sound, etc. that comprise a TV show. Before a show goes into production, it is just a name, or concept. You can register a domain and choose not to create a website, although you may have grand ideas or a general concept of the kind of website you’d like for your domain to have someday. A hosting provider is like a network that provides studio space (disk space on a server) for the show (website) and also broadcasts it into people’s homes (like when visitors view your site in a browser).   Web Hosting is an Art Store? Another way to look at web hosting is that it is similar to an art store. An art store provides you paint, brushes, canvases, and other tools you need to paint a masterpiece, however the art store does not create the actual painting for you. You purchase the tools you want to use from the art store, and then use those tools to build your website. Or hire a painter to paint a picture for you. Similarly, a web hosting company like HostGator, provides you with a variety of tools that you can use to build your website, such as a server and web space where you can upload your files, control panels that make it easy to configure your hosting account, and even provides the ability to install scripts like WordPress, or use one of our many site building solutions. However, the web host does not actually create your website. You can choose to build it yourself using the complimentary tools provided, or hire a web designer to develop your site for you. We specialize in providing the tools you need to build your website. But just like an art store, HostGator does not actually build the site for you. This is your creative space, allowing you to build the site of your dreams, any way you choose with the tools provided (and of course, you can always provide your own).   A Word on Domain Registration Let’s get a little more in-depth now. First we’ll take a closer look at domain registration. You can register a domain name at any domain registrar and then host it with HostGator. This is because domain registration and web hosting are two totally different things (just like a TV show’s name and its network are two entirely different things, although they do work together).  To host a domain that is registered elsewhere with HostGator, all that needs to occur is the updating of what are called nameservers.  Nameservers tell your browser not only which hosting company (TV network) a domain (TV show) is with, but also which server (think of a big broadcasting antenna) it is located on. When you sign up for web hosting with HostGator, we send you our Welcome Email. This email contains, among other items, the nameservers for your hosting package. You’ll need to log into your account with your domain registrar and update the generic or predefined nameservers already there with the ones that we sent you in the Welcome Email. HostGator has produced video tutorials to assist you with updating nameservers at many of the major registrars. If your particular registrar isn’t listed, I recommend watching two or three of these videos anyway to get the general idea of how the procedure works: HostGator Video Tutorials – Managing Your Domain With Another Registrar Now let’s move on to hosting. Assuming you already have a registered domain, you now either 1) wish to build a website (or have one built for you by a designer) or 2) have a functioning website.  You will need hosting 1) for the disk space that the website files will reside on and 2) so that the website can be transmitted to visitor’s browsers or phones.   Hosting Packages are Swimming Pools?  Why Not?! We have various types of hosting packages available.  In sticking with our analogy theme, here they are explained via a swimming pool metaphor: How Do I Choose Which Hosting Plan Is Right for Me? No matter which pool is right for you, happy swimming!  Um, happy art-making?  Happy television show production?  Happy hosting! Continue reading →

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