EPhost Web Design and Hosting Blog

Oppose SOPA and PIPA

noc@ephost.com (Administrator) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:06:41 +0000

Oppose SOPA and PIPA

It's time to put your PROXY socks on. As I mentioned before this is going to get ugly. Two new pieces of legislation, Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate, and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House have been introduced to stop online piracy. Unfortunately, this type of legislation will introduce harmful regulations to online businesses, and amounts to overall government sponsored censorship.

While good intentions may apply to this type of legislation, the implementation will be disastrous to the Internet and to small business. I highly encourage you to oppose this legislation by writing your representative in Congress. Keep the internet free and clear of additional government regulations.

As you may have noticed today many popular Internet sites staged a "virtual strike" today offering limited or no web service in opposition to SOPA and PIPA. This included Wikipedia, MoveOn, Reddit, Mozilla and Google.

The Measure of a Website

noc@ephost.com (Joe Rebis) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The Measure of a Website

The measure of a website is not in the number of pages but rather in the quality of the content- and that you even have one of course. You can have a relatively small website (5 pages or less) be extremely effective both from a branding standpoint, but also a conversion standpoint. We’ve seen this in landing pages for years, but when we are talking about a website, I am often asked how big should it be?

Localized Searches

noc@ephost.com (Joe Rebis) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Localized Searches

You probably noticed that some of your searches in Google have started to magically show results in your city even if you didn’t specify a city. This is due to a somewhat new feature in Google whereby they are detecting your location automatically. Someone in San Diego doing a search on “web hosting” is going to find EPhost in one of the top positions. However, the same search originated in Indianapolis, Indiana would likely yield different results.

Net Neutrality

noc@ephost.com (Joe Rebis) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Net Neutrality

This is getting real…. real ugly.

I wanted to take a moment and bring to your attention the issue of Net Neutrality and the importance of this topic for all website owners. In its simplest form Net Neutrality means that NO form of content is preferred over another. This means a free and open Internet for all. The issues are complex and cloudy. For instance, some people care that medical records are delivered with priority over a Britney Spears video- thus against net neutrality. Others care that their company message is delivered with equal priority- thus for net neutrality. Both points are very valid.

URL Rewriting using ISAPI_rewrite 2 and 3 with WordPress and Joomla

noc@ephost.com (Joe Rebis) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

URL Rewriting using ISAPI_rewrite 2 and 3 with WordPress and Joomla

There have been many requests lately to update WordPress and Joomla installations to use URL rewriting techniques to create SEF links. We use the robust and flexible IIS Web Server from Microsoft as our primary platform for over 10 years. IIS 6 does not support MOD_Rewrite which many Linux converts are used to seeing. Instead we use a tool called ISAPI_Rewrite for our shared hosting customers (also available for dedicated/virtual server customers). Currently we are running ISAPI_rewrite 2 on the shared server and will soon upgrade to version 3.

Should I have two websites or one for SEO reasons?

noc@ephost.com (Joe Rebis) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Should I have two websites or one for SEO reasons?

I met a criminal defense attorney while camping at San Elijo State Beach who asked me whether or not it is better to have a few smaller websites rather than one for search engine optimization reasons. I am often asked this question so I thought I would blog about it.

Why you should upgrade your computer.

noc@ephost.com (Joe Rebis) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Why you should upgrade your computer.

If you are one of the masses that still running Windows XP on an older machine you should really think about upgrading because it’s a huge source of computer stress and hidden expense. I know you probably feel comfortable wrapped in a warm XP blanket on your trusty old machine. So what if your computer takes a few minutes to load a web page. I am sure you also recall the horrors of digging up printer drivers- so you say why bother- you only use it to surf the web and check your emails. Right?

5 Cool Things About Virtual Servers

noc@ephost.com (Joe Rebis) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

5 Cool Things About Virtual Servers

In an earlier blog post I discussed some key concepts regarding how virtual servers work. Now that they are currently available you are probably wondering what all the fuss is about. Obviously they are less expensive and achieve the same goals as a dedicated server, but what cool things does virtualization offer?

Google Caffeine

noc@ephost.com (Joe Rebis) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Google Caffeine

As many of you know Google Caffeine is already rolling its way across data centers and will culminate to full deployment sometime after the holidays. Google Caffeine is a new indexing structure for Google and aims to improve the user’s searching experience by serving up new and more relevant search results. New “weight” will be placed upon certain key website elements to better rank websites and take emphasis off of other elements. Ideally, this will produce better, more accurate, search results. It’s speculated that improvements to Yahoo and especially Bing, which may be taking away some of the search traffic, is the reason behind the change.

Holiday Ecommerce Business Tips

noc@ephost.com (Joe Rebis) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Holiday Ecommerce Business Tips

While Black Friday and Cyber Monday has come and gone, the holiday season has just started. Here are some tips to make sure your E-commerce website makes the most of the holiday season.

Tip 1: Check for Errors

The last thing you want to do is discover in January that something was broken on your website and it prevented people from completing online orders! Don’t laugh, I’ve seen it before. It’s important to review your website for errors at all times, but especially during high traffic periods. You might be surprised at what you find. Make sure the customers can get through the ordering process and that emailed receipts are being delivered.