http://www.names.co.uk/blog/ The latest news and information from Namesco en-gb Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:00:00 BST http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/09/Branded_Websites_Anyone%3F
Right now, if you buy a new Domain you can claim 1 month FREE Professional Hosting to get your online venture up and running. Adding Hosting is that easy – choosing the right Domain can be the trickier part.

Let's imagine you're Bloggs Ltd and you're launching a new ecommerce website to sell your widgets. Do you make the domain name your business name - bloggs.com - or do you go for widgets.com? Or even bloggswidgets.com?

Branded domains...

• A branded domain will create a sense of confidence in customers.
• It puts the brand out there every time it is mentioned, linked, shared etc.
• You can still use the rest of the URL for keywords e.g bloggs.com/widgets/green-widgets.html
• May be easier to get hold of than a keyword rich domain.
• A short, snappy domain name like slashdot.org is more likely to be remembered (and shared) than awesome-internet-tech-news-website.com.

A branded domain is a must if you are planning to be in business for the long term.

Keyword domains...

• Keyword rich domains can catch direct type-in traffic - though this type of traffic should never be relied upon and also this makes the web savvy cautious of these sites.
• Single keyword domains like printers.com, laptops.com or coffee.com are normally expensive - toys.com went for $5.1 million last year.
• Different search engines place different emphasis on keywords in domains - doing some research into the specific search engine that you are interested in can be invaluable in choosing the right keywords and structure.
• Keyword domains (especially hyphenated ones) can be harder to remember.
• An advantage of keyword domains is by their nature they are descriptive so visitors may be more inclined to click a link where they have an idea as to what's coming.
• You risk pigeon-holing your business if your domain is too specific - What if your website was cheap-printer-cartridges-uk.com but you decided to start selling laptops across Europe?

Keyword domains serve a purpose to direct traffic to a core site.

Bear in mind that...

• Although a good domain name is important, creating useful, accessible content is the more important aspect of web development
• You don't even have to register a new domain - websites like Sedo.com offer a domain market place where people can buy or sell registered domain names.
• If you manage to get yourself a decent domain name and you are serious about your business then it's worth investing in the common TLD's (.com, .org, .net and the newest, hottest .co to protect your brand.]]> M Brunt Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:00:00 BST http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/09/Branded_Websites_Anyone%3F http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/09/Google_rank_.CO_alongside_.com_and_.org
Now Google has placed .CO alongside generic top-level domains like .com, .net or .org by allowing geotargeting of .CO within Webmaster tools. This gives you the option to target your .CO content to the specific countries where your customers operate.


Altering Google’s Geographic targeting enables you to deliver content on your .CO domain to specific countries of your choice – so for example, you may choose to only target the UK or top English speaking countries. If you haven’t changed the settings yet, simply log in at www.google.com/webmasters/tools/. To help, we’ve created a step by step Knowledge Base Article - 945-geotargeting_co_domains_in_google_webmaster_tools.

Many .CO extensions have been purchased to complete an existing .com/ .co.uk portfolio or to provide a memorable address for brand new content. Whether you’re building a portfolio or launching a new site, make sure you search for your ideal .CO Domain soon because it’s only going to get harder with time to find the .CO you want.]]> M Brunt Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:00:00 BST http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/09/Google_rank_.CO_alongside_.com_and_.org http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/09/Simply.com_goes_Cluster-tastic
Whether you’re a new website owner looking to advertise your site online or a website owner looking to make money online, by placing targeted ads on your sites pages, Simply.com can meet your campaign objectives.

How does cluster targeting work?
Cluster targeting works by assigning each web user to a carrier, or to users who have performed a similar action. Carriers are then assigned certain characteristics depending on what sites they have visited or clicked on and what searches they have performed.

The next step identifies users similar to the carrier, or users who have performed similar actions in the same period. These groups are updated on a daily basis. Users within a cluster show similar types of website interaction, and by using techniques to measure the statistical significance of the clusters, adverts can be placed directly correlating to the users preferences and user behaviour.

Once the clusters of users are identified, the best time slot is calculated in which to run a campaign. For example the algorithm can obtain a higher eCPM for some groups in the morning than at other times of the day, so ads can be delivered to this cluster of users during the optimal time period.

How does this maximise your Online Campaigns?
This new way of ad targeting means advertisers no longer need to experiment or guess which sites or which times of day will work best for their campaign. They have a higher chance of running a successful campaign, where the system already knows when and where to place ads for optimal performance.
This is particularly useful for smaller businesses who may not have the budget necessary to continuously experiment until they find the “right” websites to advertise on.
The latest developments are intended to help publishers increase their eCPM and also give advertisers better returns through better targeted online advertising campaigns, without the advertiser having to do anything different.

Advertise with Simply.com

Earn from your website with Simply.com

Interested in meeting the Simply team? Visit us at Ad:tech, London, stand 180.
Not only will we be giving a FREE seminar on the benefits of cluster targeting, we’ll also be running regular sessions on our stand about how to easily advertise online and increase your performance and maximise your profits.]]> M Brunt Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:00:00 BST http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/09/Simply.com_goes_Cluster-tastic http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/09/Namesco_-_Best_Shared_Hosting%3A_2008%2C_2009_AND_2010
Namesco is delighted to announce that for the 3rd year running, we’ve been recognised as the industry’s Best Shared Hosting provider by ISPA (Internet Service Providers Association).

Chosen by a high-profile panel of expert judges, chaired this year by Think Broadband Editor Andrew Ferguson, the ISPA awards are peer recognition of Namesco’s achievement. Winning the award for 3 years in a row speaks volumes about the commitment and hard work that goes into delivering our products and services.

Congratulations to those of you who have chosen the No. 1 in the industry!

As Nicholas Lansman, ISPA Secretary General said, “The Awards are a good measure of industry achievements in the past year”. Namesco was the Best Shared Hosting winner and the judges were impressed with Namesco’s high level of customer satisfaction, good use of security and technical support complemented by a clear pricing structure.
Not satisfied with being the Best on the market for 3 consecutive years, we have now increased the bar even further. In July, we re-launched an even more powerful and feature packed range of Hosting products still built with the same robust and resilient infrastructure.

We’re looking forward to ISPA 2011!

About The ISPA Awards
The ISPAs - the UK Internet industry awards - are unique as they are awarded to people and organisations in the industry following rigorous testing and an independent judging process and reflect the broad nature of the Internet service provider sector. ISPA UK has been organising the UK Internet Industry Awards since 1999 to herald the best of the Internet industry and to celebrate innovation and best practice. ISPA promotes competition, self-regulation and the development of the Internet industry.]]> M Brunt Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:00:00 BST http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/09/Namesco_-_Best_Shared_Hosting%3A_2008%2C_2009_AND_2010 http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/09/Are_you_renewing_Domains_with_a_company_you_trust%3F
Using data publically available in WHOIS services this company “Domain Renewal Group” post out notifications to customers which they call, ‘Domain Name Expiration Notices’. When read carefully these are actually worded as a “suggestion” that you transfer the Domain away from your current Registrar to this new company. Customers always have this option and transferring may be a sensible choice. However, a key part of the process is to obtain an EPP or authorisation code from the existing registrar to be passed on to the new registrar. Note that Domain Renewal Group may not ask you to obtain this and cannot become the new registrar without it!

The correspondence is laid out to replicate an invoice, already completed with your Domain name and stating a renewal amount. One of our customers not aware of the original purchase of the Domain (given renewal periods of a year plus, this is not uncommon), shelled out the amount stated believing they had renewed the domain for another year. Of course, because the transfer process had not been completed, when the domain eventually came up for renewal, the actual Registrar (in this case, us) requested payment to renew and the whole sorry tale surfaced.

So, our advice is the old classic of “Buyer Beware”. If you do wish to transfer your Domains we will happily guide you through the process – what we don’t want is our customers paying for something that they don’t receive.]]> M Brunt Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:00:00 BST http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/09/Are_you_renewing_Domains_with_a_company_you_trust%3F http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/08/The_Art_Of_Backing_Up_-_Is_Your_Company_Data_Safe%3F

Is your data safe? Does your company have a disaster recovery policy? When you look at your business today you can see that the information or data you have is vital to it’s smooth running and yet most businesses are unprepared for the worst and unaware of how at risk their data is.

The main reason for this is that many companies are unaware of the key facts, with a little preparation and minimal expenditure they could protect themselves. You may have a disaster recovery policy but have you covered everything? Here are some areas you have may have forgotten.

• Back up Everything: You may think it will never happen to your business but at some time you will experience a server failure or major hard drive crash. It can be said that there are 2 kinds of company - those who have had a loss of data and those who will have a loss.

• Regular backups: If your company has spent a couple of weeks working on a proposal and a few days before submission you find your server has crashed and taken all the work with it, would you be satisfied with a back up from last week?

• Email: Most people don’t ever consider backing up their emails - it’s one of those things that is always there, you can access it from your computer, phone and even some TV’s. You don’t realise just how much information is in your emails, until you lose them.

• Business Critical Data: Most people will assume that their backup policy will cover all data but this is not always the case. In smaller businesses you may find that all the accounting data, pay rolls, invoices etc are on one machine. This is one machine that you should really make sure gets a full back up.

• Files and Folders: You have your business critical data stored and backed up in a safe location, what about all the Word, PowerPoint or Excel files in your My Documents folder. This is a popular target for virus’s to delete data so it’s important to back these up too.

• Contacts: This really refers to your email, if you use a shared contacts system for all your email address books then it is likely that your local contacts will not be backed up and will be stored locally on the users normal machine. If your machine suffers a hard drive crash you could lose all your contacts.

• Off-site storage of backups: So you back up everything, how do you store it all - external hard drive, backup tapes, DVD’s or a file server? Maybe all of them! Now imagine there is a fire in the building, items not burnt to a crisp by the fire are soaked by the sprinklers or fire brigade. All your data is lost or seriously compromised. The best of disaster recovery policies are wasted if all your data is kept in one location.

Be smart and ensure your website data is fully backed up with an Award Winning Shared Hosting Plan or a Dedicated Business Server from Namesco.]]> awright Fri, 13 Aug 2010 00:00:00 BST http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/08/The_Art_Of_Backing_Up_-_Is_Your_Company_Data_Safe%3F http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/08/Have_you_got_a_1-Click_Install_site%3F_Back_it_up_in_2_clicks%21 1-Click Install tutorials, today we're going to be looking at backing up your 1-Click Install websites.

We all know the feeling, something goes wrong, we think "It's ok, I have a back up, I can just....oh no, I didn't do a back up!"

With 1-Click Install web applications, you can easily back up your website in just a couple of clicks so you don't have to worry:

1. Select the application that you want to backup
2. Click on Backup
3. Done - you can manage the backups by clicking on 'Backups'.

You can create as many backups as you like (providing you have the spare disk space available in your hosting package. If you get stuck, no problem - we have tons of information in our Knowledge base. For help with our 1-Click Installs, see the Namesco Knowledge Base

1-Click Installs web apps for building websites are available FREE with Namesco Linux hosting packages.]]> awright Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:00:00 BST http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/08/Have_you_got_a_1-Click_Install_site%3F_Back_it_up_in_2_clicks%21 http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/07/5_WordPress_plugins_you_should_be_using Web Hosting plans.

Now we all love WordPress, but even straight out of the box, it could with a little more TLC to shine and by TLC - we mean plugins!

You can install plugins from your WordPress dashboard - just click on Plugins > Add new or you can manually install them.

Akismet
Akismet is a spam filtering plugin developed by Automattic (the people behind WordPress) that will prevent link spam. The Akismet plugin is actually 'plugged in' by default as part of WordPress, however it still needs to be manually configured in order for it to start filtering comment spam. All you need to do is click on 'Plugins' in your WordPress dashboard, and then follow the steps on the page.

WP Super Cache
WP Super cache is a caching plugin that will speed up your site alot. Rather than invoking PHP and accessing the MySQL database to retrieve your posts every time someone visits, this plugin will create flat HTML files of the pages that make up the site and serve these up instead.

Amendment: WP Super cache doesn't play ball with Zeus, try this one instead!

Hyper Cache

Hyper Cache is a caching plugin for WordPress that caches commonly served content to speed up your WordPress site. It doesn't rely on mod_rewrite and according to the developers site - should play nicely with IIS too.

All In One SEO Pack
If you want your blog to be noticed, then Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is something that you should be thinking about (if you aren't already). Thankfully, you don't need to start sifting through log files and fiddling with server configurations, - you just need to install All In One SEO Pack and run through a few basic options (page titles, keywords etc.)

Fast and Secure Contact Form
Fast and Secure Contact Form is a plugin that will let you add a contact page to your WordPress site. Once you've activated the plugin, you simply need to run through a few options and then add a page for the contact form to go on. It also comes with a CAPTCHA straight out of the box to prevent spam comments.

NextGEN Gallery
NextGEN Gallery will let you add an image gallery to your site in just a few clicks. Once you have activated the plugin, you will see a new option on the left called 'Gallery' - this is where you can create new galleries and upload images.

If you haven't already started Blogging, visit www.names.co.uk/hosting and bag yourself a powerful yet affordable Web Hosting package, which comes with over 100 easy to install web applications, including WordPress. Get your own Blog online in minutes!]]> awright Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 BST http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/07/5_WordPress_plugins_you_should_be_using http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/07/Create_A_Professional_Website_In_Minutes%21 Do you love creating content but lack web design skils?

We have recentlly launched our brand new, Softaculous section of the control panel. this powerful feature facility gives you the ability to install blogging applications like WordPress, forums such as phpBB or even feature rich ecommerce applications such as Magento - in just a couple of clicks and without going near any code or databases!
You can even turbo-charge your existing website by adding additional features to it such as blogs, wikis, forums or even an online customer helpdesk!

Getting started is very easy. Once you are logged into your Namesco Online Control Panel

1. Click on Scripts and Ecommerce and pick out an application / web script
2. Click on Install and you are done!

You can begin using your new application straight away and without any web design skills - have fun!

We have tons of information in our Knowledge base. For help with Softaculous, see our 100+ 1-Cick Installs section]]> awright Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:00:00 BST http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/07/Create_A_Professional_Website_In_Minutes%21 http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/07/Namesco_Launch_NEW_Powerful_Web_Hosting_Packages NEW Hosting Will Knock You Out

With reduced prices and powerful features packed into our NEW Shared Hosting products, you’ll have a hard time finding reasons NOT to move all your Domains to be Hosted by Namesco. Plus we’ve just been voted the ‘Best Shared Hosting’ provider for the third year running, so we have a lot to shout about!

1 Click-Install Scripts

Our NEW Linux Hosting includes 100+ FREE tools to take your website in a whole new direction by simply adding dynamic database features at the Click of a button; you can build Blogs, create forums, photo galleries, add videos and much more! This impressive feature is available across our Hosting range.

Hosting With Back-Up

As well as a new facility allowing you to back-up 1-Click Applications, our UK based Customer Support team is on hand to back you up with support and advice via your Online Control Panel and the telephone. Transferring to Namesco is easy and you can manage the configuration in your existing Namesco Online Control Panel. Simple!

Just 1 Click could change the future of your website today.

Try our brand NEW feature-packed Hosting for yourself

Namesco win the ‘Best Shared Hosting’ Award for the third year in a row!]]> awright Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:00:00 BST http://www.simplynames.com/blog/2010/07/Namesco_Launch_NEW_Powerful_Web_Hosting_Packages