Sometimes people just can’t get away from their laptops or smartphones for their business and personal uses and with constant technological advances, things are getting faster and even more convenient. This has been taken one step further (or higher!) with the partnership between British satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat and global aviation supplier, Honeywell. Inmarsat have plans to launch 3 satellites into orbit over the next couple of years, with the first being launched in 2013 which will be the beginning of their plans to provide global coverage.
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There’s a new kid on the block when it comes to web analytics and it’s just been given a massive boost by being included in cPanel’s latest update. This has of course sparked an interest among users and admins alike and many are wondering “What exactly is Logaholic and why should I use it?”. Hopefully I’ll be able to give you an overview and some reasons behind using the new piece of software over its rivals such as Webalizer and Awstats.
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If you are looking to move your site to a new hosting company, perhaps to change the URL of your website or setup a copy of the site for testing and development purposes this guide will give a general overview of how to go about this. The steps tend to be fairly similar for any content management system so this will point you in the right direction, though for specific tips we’d recommend checking out the documentation and community sites for the CMS you are using.

 Step 1 – Backup!

The importance of creating a backup of your site before making changes to it can never be overstated, using cPanel this can be done with just a couple of clicks and could save you hours if not days of work down the line. This process shouldn’t affect your existing site however mistakes can happen so it’s always best to be on the safe side. (more…)

We’ve had a look at some of the best WordPress themes updated/released in 2012 so far, here is a selection of some of the best, all free to download and use on your blog! Some of these use HTML5 and CSS3 so your blog will be using the latest web languages and looking very pretty at the same time!

Blogolife

BlogoLife is a simple and attractive theme built in HTML5 & CSS3 for personal blogging , it’s fully customisable and clean so can be styled if you want to change it, otherwise it can be used straight away. (more…)

Many affiliate sites are run using the WordPress platform which is a great idea due to it’s flexibility and ease of use, not to mention the huge community and range of plugins available. There are a few plugins that can make your life easier straight away when starting a new site, here’s a list of some of the best for an affiliate site:

SEO:

1. FV All in One SEO Pack – This is the traditional SEO plugin used for WordPress with a twist, it cuts out many unnecessary options and helps you to get your site up and running and optimised quicker.
2. WP Keyword Link – This lets you link keywords in your posts to specified pages, you can also import/export this to csv for ease of use. (more…)

Magento is right now the most complete and fully featured e-commerce system in our opinion, but unfortunately this does come at a price in performance. Whereas osCommerce, Zencart, CRE Loaded and Virtuemart all perform quite well out of the box, Magento seems slow in comparison. You could say this is a price worth paying for the additional features, but with some steps which we will go into here you will be able to make your Magento store much faster.

We’ll fully explain each tweak and the steps you need to go through to implement these on our hosting, these are all tweaks that you can do yourself without having to contact your hosting company, at least on the NetHosted Platform!

N.B. Click images for full sized versions

1. Setup Magento Caching

This is the first step you can take to speed up your Magento after a fresh install, simply login to Magento as the admin user and go to the System menu and choose Cache Management. Select the following 4 options: (more…)

Sociable is a useful program that enables you to add links and icons of your favorite social networking sites to your WordPress blog and RSS feed.  This enables your readers to share any of your WordPress articles with any of the social networking sites you choose.  Normally, whenever you add icons to your site, they appear tiny like below:
 

 
With icons so small, it is sometimes difficult to click on the right one, causing your readers to give up easily.  Those who have a difficult time reading small sized print may also give up.   This does not necessarily need to happen, changing the size of the icon is simple and easy! (more…)

There are literally thousands of WordPress themes currently available online, spanning over dozens of genres, so it is generally easy to find a theme that will fit your site’s needs. However, there are times when a custom theme may be absolutely necessary. For someone with very little web experience building a WordPress theme from scratch can be quite a daunting task. However there are ways to do this without any special knowledge or experience whatsoever. The following three methods are the easiest ways to get a custom theme for your site.

Hire a Freelance Designer

OK, this isn’t creating it yourself but it is perhaps the easiest way to get a custom theme made. Hiring a WordPress designer from one of the many freelancing forums online can actually be very reasonably priced. (more…)

Joomla is one of the most commonly used content managements systems (CMS). One of the main reasons why this script is so widely used is because of its ability to create web sites and online applications with greatly varied functionality. Virtually any type of site with any purpose can be developed with Joomla. We offer an automated application installer called Installatron which allows for automated installs requiring just a few clicks, this downloads all the files, creates the database and admin user all for you which can get your site up and running in just a few minutes. There are many extensions that can be added that make the possibilities with this software unlimited.

Whatever your site’s needs may be, it is likely that the time will come when you are ready to monetise your Joomla site. This may seem daunting to you, but not to worry. There are many helpful extensions that will help you accomplish your goals. (more…)

The speed of a website isn’t something that should be left out of the web development process, but if it is, there are still many ways to improve it. Even if you aren’t the most web-savvy person in the world, some simple fixes can speed up your website significantly.

“Why does a website have to be fast?” I hear you ask – well there are a number of reasons. To start with, a planned update for Google named Caffeine is due anytime soon, with an emphasis on website speed and performance. This means that faster loading websites may start to rank higher in search engines. Another reason is that some Internet users may not necessarily have a fast connection (or even broadband), so it’s important to ensure you are catering for all of your users – not just a majority.

Here we explore some top tips to speed up a website running a WordPress CMS. (more…)