Web Concepts

Your .htaccess file, with any Apache based server or hosting account is a very powerful tool that if you can learn to use for your advantage can help you complete many time consuming or difficult tasks with ease. How do you create one though for your web hosting account? This is a question that we hear often, and below is your solution using either cPanel or LPCP (Lunarpages Control Panel).

cPanel

Login to your cPanel with your user name and password, then once you have made it in, head over to your File Manager. Now the File Manager’s interface is a very familiar Windows-styled look at your files on your hosting account. You will want to click on your folder icon next to your public_html link next, that will take you to the insides of the public_html folder.

Inside you will see all your web site files. You need to scan down the page till you see the bold text, Create a New File. Click that and you should get in the upper-right corner a box with a few more setting to fill in. In the empty text box, put in .htaccess. Keep the drop down box on Text Document and then hit the Create button.

Now you have your .htaccess file inside of your public_html folder all with the help of cPanel and your helpful File Manger.

LPCP

To create a .htaccess file in LPCP, log into the LPCP, and then go to your File Manager. Click on the text link labeled, ” public_html” to navigate yourself inside the public_html folder.

In the empty text box to your upper-right type in .htaccess, make sure the drop down box is set to “File” and then hit the button labeled, “Create”.

Your .htaccess file will be created in your public_html folder on your LPCP powered account.

• Find out how to manually create and upload the .htaccess file to your web hosting account!

For more LPCP help, tips, tutorials and more, be sure to check out the web hosting wiki. Hundreds of guides have been published there to help you get more out of your web hosting account at Lunarpages.

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Original post by Amy

This is from our April newsletter in case you missed it!

We all know that getting your website set up is just the beginning of growing your online presence. For that reason, Lunarpages is dedicated to bringing you the information and resources you need to accelerate your business growth. Check out our website for information about our search engine marketing programs.

Recently we partnered with Google to send every Lunarpages customer a time-sensitive coupon to try Google AdWords. Be sure to check your mail and be sure to redeem the coupon quickly so you don’t forfeit it!

Our partner, LocalDirective, offers some tips to make best use of your coupon:

• The structure of information in Google is: Campaigns > AdGroups > Text Ads & Keywords.
• Before you get started, determine the geography you want to target. If you plan to target two different geographical areas, you will need to create a campaign for each one.
• For each campaign, you will have at least a few AdGroups. Think about AdGroups as thematic, so that for each area of focus, you will want to have one adgroup. If you are a plumber, for instance, you may have AdGroups for Sewer & Drain Cleaning, Emergency Plumbing, Plumbing Fixture Installation, etc.
• For each AdGroup, you will pick a number of keywords that you believe people might search for, using Google’s Keyword Tool to help you choose.
• For each AdGroup, you will want to set up at least two text ads, and choose to have the ads rotate, so you can find out what appeals most to your audience.
• For each text ad, instead of sending visitors to your home page, send them to the destination page that most closely matches the keywords in the AdGroup.
• Finally, don’t forget to redeem your coupon and set a daily budget so you don’t spend more than you want to!
• Then, sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor! Best of luck for SPECTACULAR results!!!

LocalDirective Announces The Online Marketing Program Contest Winner

Last month, our partner, LocalDirective held a contest for a FREE 30-day Basic SEM-SEO program, valued at $389. While dozens of entrants vied for the winning entry, alas, only one single winner was chosen. And the winner is….(drum roll, please)…

Donald, from www.fayekimdesigns.com. LocalDirective will be contacting you within the week to get your program set up. Congratulations!!

For the rest of you…you know you must market your website to achieve the fabulous results possible for your business, so contact LocalDirective at 1.888.613.7174 or CustomLP@LocalDirective.com to find out how they can help you achieve out-of-this-world results!

&copy Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don′t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Amy

We ran this article in our newsletter this week.  In case you missed it

Did you know that you can use Gmail as a POP3 e-mail client? This way you can both send and receive mail as you@yourdomain.com through the Gmail interface.

If you have ever found yourself wanting to use Gmail more, but did not want to abandon your professional looking e-mail address this is the tutorial you have been looking for. We’ll share with you how you can setup Gmail to both send and receive e-mail to your non-Gmail e-mail address.

How to Receive Your Lunarpages E-mail in Gmail

Here is how you can add your e-mail account to Gmail.

From within Gmail, click on the Settings link, at the top of the page. Next, click on the Accounts and Import link.

Now, you will want to click the button labeled, “Add POP3 email account”. That should pop up a new window where you can input the information about the e-mail account.

1. Provide your e-mail address (you@yourdomain.com). Click the button labeled, “Next”.
2. Next, give your user name, password, POP server (yourdomain.com or mail.yourdomain.com). There are other settings to choose from, but lets ignore them for now. Click the button labeled, “Add Account”.

Now, when you go to Settings > Accounts and Import you should see your e-mail account listed under Check mail using POP3. If you click the edit info link beside your account, you can then edit the other details we skipped before, such as:

• Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server
• Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail
• Label incoming messages
• Archive incoming messages (Skip the Inbox)

So now Gmail is acting as the e-mail client looking for e-mail from yourgooglename@gmail.com and your hosted e-mail account. That covers receiving incoming mail from both accounts. What if you need to send mail as you@yourdomain.com?

How to Send E-mail in Gmail from Your Lunarpages Address

Here is how you can send mail using your personal e-mail account, rather than your Gmail e-mail address. From within Gmail, go to Settings, and then Accounts and Import. Under the Send mail as: section, click the button that reads, “Send mail from another address”.

This will pop up another window, where you can input your information.

1. Give your name, as you want it to be seen as the sender when somebody gets an e-mail from you.
2. Give your e-mail address you wish to send from, such as the one you setup using the previous steps above (you@yourdomain.com). Now, click the button labeled, “Next Step”.
3. You then have the option to send mail one of two ways:
   + Send through Gmail (easier to set up)
   + Send through yourdomain.com SMTP servers (recommended for professional domains)
4. You will then be e-mailed a message at this address to verify you are able to use it. To perform the verification click “Send Verification”. They will then send an e-mail to you@yourdomain.com with instructions on how to verify your address.

Once you complete the verification process, you should then be able to send mail as you@yourdomain.com too.

Now you have yet another option when it comes to picking which e-mail client you wish to use, out of the many choices there are out there today. Using Gmail with your Lunarpages POP3 hosted e-mail account gives you the ability to use the flexibility of Gmail with the reliable e-mail service you know and love here at Lunarpages.

Tip: Once you have set your e-mail up this way, you can enable a button on Gmail’s main interface that will let you manually check for new PỌ mail from your domain. Just go to the Google Labs section of Gmail, and enable the “Refresh POP Accounts” Gmail Google Labs feature.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Amy

When you have a web site of any size or shape, you come to realize that statistics, in various forms, are important to watch.  They let you know how well you are doing, and what type of content seems to be the most popular.  With all the different types of statistics to watch, I thought I would go through the top five that you should keep you eye on the most.

Here are the top five web site statistics to keep your eye on:

1. Visitors – This might be the most important ‘bit of information you get on your web site.  You always want to know how many visitors your web site is getting, plain and simple.
2. Most Popular Pages and Posts – Which web pages on your web site are getting the most hits, and which are not doing so well?  Look at popular pages and their traffic sources to figure out what your doing right and how to best repeat your success.
3. Who Links to You? – Which web sites out there on the Web are sending you the most traffic?  Is it Google? Digg? Delicious? If you notice it is another like-minded web site, you might even try to partner up with them for more link exchanges in the future.
4. Keyword Based Traffic – Looking over your search engine traffic, what keywords seem to be coming up most often?  Are they the keywords you are targeting or something different?  This will give you a good idea of the type of keywords you should be targeting too.
5. Bounce Rate – The bounce rate of a web site tells you the percentage of initial visitors who move on to a new web site, leaving yours.  In a perfect world, you want that number to be as low as possible.  The reason for this is that the lower your bounce rate is, the longer people are staying on your web site and not going elsewhere.

I hope this help to both explain these statistics a little better, and helps you know what type of analytical data you need to monitor on a daily or weekly basis. Know of any other data that it is important to keep an eye on?  Leave your thoughts on the comments.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch

When and how do you perform maintenance on your own web site?  Some people do it every once in a while, and many do not do it at all. Today, I am going to share with you my own web site maintenance routine, and hopefully a few of my ways of doing things might rub off on you.

What Repair Work Should You Do?

First thing you have to ask yourself, is what should you be looking at when it comes to doing maintenance on your web site?

• Update Your Scripts
• Check for Dead or Wrong Links
• Check for Typo, Grammar, and Spelling Errors
• Make Sure You Are Showing Up in the Search Engines
• Check for Security Holes and Flaws

How Do You Organize Your Web Site Maintenance Routine?

Now that we know what you should be doing, now how do you do it?  Your lucky that organizing is one of my favorite things to do.  When it comes to setting a schedule for this, you might try:

• Calendar Based System
• To Do List Based System

The calendar solution works best when you have many sites to watch over, while the to do list method is better for just one or two web sites.  This way you have something to check every day to see if you have anything to do. 

Try to stick with the maintenance routine you have set.  If you find it too hard to do everything in one day, do not despair.  Just spread the tasks out a ‘bit more into something you can more easily schedule into your day, week or month of work.  Everybody’s system is going to be a little different. Find something that works best for your needs.

I hope these tips and suggestions come in handy when it comes to setting your own maintenance routine.  If you have any additional tips to share, be sure to leave them in the comments.

&copy Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don′t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch

How can you change or upgrade your hosting plan from one type to the next? Lunarpages provides many different web hosting plans, of many different shapes and sizes.  We also provide service oriented plans like the e-mail hosting plans or domain hosting plans, that centralize around one basic service.  Thankfully, Lunarpages has made the process of changing your web hosting plan as easy as it can get. 

Smooth Web Hosting Upgrades

Our Billing Support Team would be more than happy to assist you with changing your web hosting plan.  All you need to do is submit a new ticket to the help desk, and make sure you include the following details.

• First/Last Name
• Primary Domain Name
• User Name
• Verification Information

Also make sure you include the type of hosting plan and the billing period you wish to be moved to.  For example, if you are on a Starter hosting plan, and you want to move to a Basic hosting plan – let them know:

I would like to be upgraded to the 12 month Basic hosting plan.

This way they will know to bill you every 12 months, after the upgrade has been completed.  You will also be prorated for any time you have left on your existing contract.  That means, if you paid $100 for your hosting plan on day one, and you are only half way through your term, your extra $50 would go towards your new hosting plan – it is never lost.  We give you full credit for any time still on the existing hosting plan.

You can find more details about upgrading or switching web hosting plans or services on our Upgrading and Downgrading Guide featured on wiki.lunarpages.com.

&copy Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch

There are tons of things you can do from the .htaccess file inside of your web hosting account.  From redirecting the users to controlling who can get in and who can get out, it is a very useful file to have on your hosting account.  To help out the new web hosting clients and to act as a reminder to the old pros around here, I thought I would go through five of the most popular .htaccess tips I know.

Redirect to a Maintenance Page

This is a great one to use if you need to make some quick web page edits, and you don’t want the public to see you edit your web site, while it is still live.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/offline.html$
RewriteRule .* /offline.html [R=307,L]

This will redirect anybody who checks out any web page on your web site to the "offline.html" file.

Force the Use of “www” in Front of a Domain Name

If you want to keep the www in front of your domain name, no matter how somebody types it in, here is the ‘bit of .htaccess magic you will need:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^mydomain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Once you have done so, both mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com will both send you to www.mydomain.com

Remove the “www” From in Front of a Domain Name

You can also force your domain to drop the www from the address when typed in, if you would rather have it the other way around. In that situation, you would need to add this to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mydomain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This will make both mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com send you to just mydomain.com.

Manually Create Custom Error Pages

Ever check out some of those customized error pages and wonder how it could be done? Just use these snippets of .htaccess code to tell people where to look for your error pages.

   ErrorDocument 400 /errors/400.html
   ErrorDocument 401 /errors/401.html
   ErrorDocument 403 /errors/403.html
   ErrorDocument 404 /errors/404.html
   ErrorDocument 500 /errors/500.html

This tells the server to look inside the “errors” folder and that specific page for each of the different error types. That is not all of the error codes, but they are the ones that will be ‘hit by your users 99 percent of the time.

Block Visitor By IP Address

Need to keep somebody from checking out your web site?  This next tip will give you the ability to deny somebody based on what their IP address is:

order allow,deny
deny from 123.45.6.7
deny from 012.34.5.
allow from all

The above blocks access to the site from 123.45.6.7, and from any sub-domain under the IP block 012.34.5. (012.34.5.1, 012.34.5.2, 012.34.5.3, etc).

That is it for this round up of tips.  For more help with the .htaccess file, and many more things you can do with your web hosting account, be sure to check out the Lunarpages Web Hosting Wiki.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch

Who doesn’t love a cupcake or two? 

In celebration of National Cupcake Day, I give you some web site tips that will be sure to leave your web development sweet tooth wanting more.

Socialize Yourself

There are many easy ways you can plug your social profiles or micro-blogging services out there.  Here we have a source that will give you cute icons for the following social networks:  Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, MySpace, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and Twitter.

How to Embed a YouTube Playlist

Thanks to relist.tv, you can now deliver a nice flash playlist player for your YouTube videos.  How does it work?  Well, after visiting relist.tv, you just fill out the options and then grab the code to copy and paste into your site’s design.

Tons of WordPress Fun

For our WordPress using clients, these tasty links will be the icing on the cake.

• 25 Most Popular Twitter Plugins for WordPress
• Add Fixed Social Buttons to WordPress
• 4 Great Wooden WordPress Themes

Is that not enough?  Ok, let us top it off with 55 of my favorite WordPress plugins and the best blog hosting guide out there.

May you all have a very fun and fattening cupcake day!

© Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch

While there are many guestbook scripts active out there these days, I think it is about time the guestbookers of the world join the rest of us in the year 2010.  The idea of hosting a guest book has come and gone, and has been replaced by much more efficient ways of communication.

So what could you replace your guestbook with? I have a few suggestions that might meet your needs.

Shout Box – Shout boxes are usually little boxes that life in the sidebar of a web site, and allow people to comment live on the web page with other users.  One of the more popular shout box-like services I would recommend looking into would be Google Friend Connect’s comments gadget. 

Blog – Getting a blog setup and running on your web hosting account is another great way to get commenting added to your web site fairly easily.  Almost every blog script out there will let you comment on an article you post.  Our Blog Hosting Guide is a great first step to check out, if you want to get a blog powered by WordPress up and running in less than an hour.

Forums – My last suggestion is a script and service that just screams for user participation.  Forum scripts will give your web site visitors a place to post their own topics, have discussions and interact with each other on your web hosting account.  Out of all the forum scripts out there, I think SMF might be the very best.

So there you have three more modern ways to have comments left on a web page, that will finally help put the final nail in the coffin for the online guestbook.  If you have any other suggestions, be sure to leave them in the comments.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch

The important key thing to remember about any password is to keep it easy to remember, but hard to guess.  It might be overlooked by some, but having a good password can mean a lot when it comes to web site security.  Hackers can often guess your password if it is a person, place or thing in the dictionary – even with trailing numbers or letters.

The best password advice I can give to you would be:

• Use Several Capital Letters
• Use Some Symbols (if allowed)
• Toss a Few Numbers in There
• Also Use Some Lower-case Letters Too

Let’s do a little test.  Which one of these password do you think would be more guessable by a hacker.

password1234 or 6Pa55W0r|>9

The second one of course, silly. 

Now how you store your password is just as important as the password itself.  Never write down the password and keep it in plain sight.  Jotting it down on a sticky note and then putting your password on your monitor is about as logical as using the 12345 as a password.

So there you have my general password advice I think everybody should use and follow.  Picking a good password is not hard to do.  When you stop and think about it, common sense goes a long way when security comes to mind.

&copy Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don′t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Original post by Mitch