Source: Freebie: hpv24 WordPress 3.0 Cheat Sheet – Teil 1 Templates & Tags.

I know some of you will question why ‘LightBox’ series wasn’t in the list – but since they are already so popular I believe you don’t need me to tell you more about it. So here we go, the list of 24 handy jQuery plugins for gallery- and portfolio-style websites.

1. jSquares for jQuery

Developed by Jordan Boesch, jSquares is a beautiful plugin that pops up an image and a paragraph of text on hover. It’s basically identical to the image grid found on www.ted.com. (Sidenote: Also check out the developer’s another interesting project named ‘Keystrokes‘ – it’s not included in the list because it’s unrelated to our topic today.)

jSquares – Demo & Documentation

2. SpaceGallery

SpaceGallery helps create a web gallery instantly with zero coding work and cost. Check out the developer’s website for complete code downloads and demo.

SpaceGallery – Demo & Documentation

3. LazyLoader

Lazy Loader is a jQuery plugin written in JavaScript. It delays loading of images in (long) web pages. Images outside of viewport (visible part of web page) wont be loaded before user scrolls to them. At first look LazyLoader seems unrelated to our topic today; but mind you, a well-designed web gallery need more than just being beautiful. User experience, too, is a very important factor (and the Lazy Loader simply improve that, a lot).

LazyLoader – Demo & Documentation

4. Ad Gallery

Ad Gallery is a great jQuery plugin that helps organize images into a gallery with nice transition effects. The plugin comes with dozen of great features (ie. auto scaling your images into the container) and is compatible with most latest version of web browsers.

Ad Gallery – Demo & Documentation

5. Nivo Slider

Nivo Slider is not the kind of regular jQuery image slider you see else where. It’s a powerful plugin has nine unique transition effects built in along and works perfectly with most latest version of web browsers.

Nivo Slider – Demo & Documentation

6. GalleryView

GalleryView is a content-gallery plugin capable of displaying any HTML content in an animated gallery view. The plugin requires jQuery Timers to facilitate timing events plus the developer also recommend using jQuery Easing for smoother transition. Check out this demo page to see this plugin in action.

GalleryView – Demo & Documentation

7. SlideViewer Pro

slideViewerPro is a fully customizable jQuery image gallery engine wich allows to create sliding image galleries. Each gallery generates a user-defined number of thumbnails wich can slide automatically; as with slideViewer, everthing is generated by writing just few lines of HTML such as an unordered list of images.

SlideViewer Pro – Demo & Documentation

8. QuickSand

Ever seen how CoreAnimation creates those useful and eye-pleasing animation effects? Well that’s what the developer of this plugin aimed to achieve – QuickSand is a jQuery plugin that helps reorder and filter items with a nice shuffling animation on your website. There’s a nice demo on the developer’s website and I think everyone should go check it out.

QuickSand – Demo & Documentation

9. Captify

Captify is a plugin for jQuery written by Brian Reavis to display simple, pretty image captions that appear on rollover. It has been tested on Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and the wretched Internet Explorer. According to the developer, this plugin was inspired by ImageCaptions, another jQuery plugin for displaying captions like these.

Captify – Demo & Documentation

10. jqFancyTransitions

jqFancyTransitions is easy-to-use jQuery plugin for displaying your photos as slideshow with fancy transition effects, including Wave, Zipper, Curtain, Fountain Top, Random Top, and so on. The plugin is fully tested and is compatible and fully tested with Safari 2+, Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 2+, Google Chrome 3+, Opera 9+. Personally I love the ‘Wave’ effect and think it’s a sin not to visit the website and check out the demo.

jqFancyTransitions – Demo & Documentation

11. jQuery Roundabout

Roundabout is a jQuery plugin that converts a structure of static HTML elements into a highly customizable interactive area. The simplicity and the animation effect of this plugin is simply mind blowing. At this time of writing, the graphic movement comes in 11 different styles – including the classic Turntable-alike, Figure 8, Square, Water Wheel, Conveyor Belt, etc. A demo of all these movement style can be found here.

jQuery Roundabout – Demo & Documentation

12. YoxView

YoxView is a free Lightbox-type media and image viewer jQuery plugin. Okay, I admit YoxView is not ground-breaking but you have to give credit to its user-friendliness (and yet, feature-rich).

YoxView – Demo & Documentation

13. JCrop

jCrop provides an easy way for onpage image-cropping. At first look this feature seems a little… unnecessary. But on a second thought (and after some detail investigation on its demo), I started to appreciate what the plugin does and believe certain webmasters (for example, photography website owners) will appreciate it very, very much.

JCrop – Demo & Documentation

14. JQzoom

jQzoom is a great and a really easy to use script to magnify what you want. The plugin works on most modern web browsers, namely Internet Explorer version 6+, FireFox version 2+, Chrome version 1.0, Opera version 9+ as well as Safari version 2+.

JQzoom – Demo & Documentation

15. Agile Carousel

Agile Carousel is a jQuery plugin that allows you to easily create a custom carousel. Call Jquery UI to enable many different additional transition types and easing methods. Uses PHP to draw images from the folder you specify. Configure many different options including controls, slide timer length, easing type, transition type and more!

Agile Carousel – Demo & Documentation

16. InnerFade with JQuery

InnerFade is a small plugin for the jQuery-JavaScript-Library. It’s designed to fade you any element inside a container in and out. These elements could be anything you want, e.g. images, list-items, divs. You can simply produce your own slideshow for your gallery or even create a newsticker or do an animation.

InnerFade – Demo & Documentation

17. PickAChoose

Pikachoose is a (very popular) lightweight Jquery plugin that allows easy presentation of photos with options for slideshows, navigation buttons, and auto play. Pikachoose is designed to be easily installed, easy to setup, and well… all around easy.

PickAChoose – Demo & Documentation

18. Galleriffic

Galleriffic is a jQuery plugin that provides a rich, post-back free experience optimized to handle high volumes of photos while conserving bandwidth. One funny fact: The developer of this plugin actually wanted the name ‘Gallerific’ or ‘Gallerrific’ but it was eventually mis-spelled as ‘Galleriffic’. Moral of the story: You don’t need to be good at spelling to be a good coder

Galleriffic – Demo & Documentation

19. jQuery MB Gallery

If you want a full featured photo gallery with comprehensive navigation functions such as navigation toolbar, thumbnails, autosize frame – jQuery MB Gallery would be it! The plugin is a huge stunner when first released during late 2009 and the latest version MB Gallery even support demostration of Flickr photo sets!

jQuery MB Gallery – Demo & Documentation

20. Trip Tracker

The TripTracker slideshow is a lightweight JavaScript image viewer with an animated slideshow feature.

TripTracker – Demo & Documentation

21. CrossSlide

CrossSlide is a jQuery plugin implementing in 2kB1 of Javascript code some common slide-show animations, traditionally only available via Adobe Flash. Internally CrossSlide does not rely on lookup tables, building instead a “chain” of functions. Each function starts a linear phase of the animation through jQuery, setting the next function in the chain as a complete callback. After all the functions are prepared and the animation is started, no other calculations are made. This setup reduces runtime overhead to the absolute minimum, making CrossSlide the most optimized implementation of these effects.

CrossSlide – Demo & Documentation

22. prettyPhoto

prettyPhoto is a jQuery based lightbox clone. Not only does it support images, it also add support for videos, flash, YouTube, iFrames. It’s a full blown media lightbox. The setup is easy and quick, plus the script is compatible in every major browser.

prettyPhoto – Demo & Documentation

23. Galleria

Galleria is a JavaScript image gallery take a simple list of images and turn it into a foundation of multiple intelligent gallery designs, suitable for any project. The current version of Galleria *(version 1.2) is still in beta and the stable release is set to september 2010.

Galleria – Demo & Documentation

24. jQuery Multimedia Portfolio

jQuery Multimedia Portfolio is a plugin that will automatically detect the extension of each media and apply the adapted player. This piece of plugin was released quite some time ago but it was revised and a newer version was released early this year.

MultiMedia Portfolio – Demo & Documentation

In this article, I am going to share my version of web host shopping tips – hopefully it will help you to become a wiser webmaster.

17 must know web host shopping tips

1. Always go with the web host with live chat support

Afterall, who needs a phone line as live chat is the most efficient way for technical communication.

2. Test customer support (for real!) before you sign up

Don’t ask stupid pre-sale questions, ask technical stuffs like inodes and CPU usage limits to test the support’s knowledge.

3. Register your primary domain with a third party registrar

Just because the web host offers free domain does not mean that you should let the hosting provider controls your domain registration. Get your domain name registered on a third party so you can switch your web host anytime you want.

4. Always pay with a debit card to protect yourself

Trust me, there are crooks that will charge your card even if you have cancelled your subscription. A debit card will save your day when things turn bad, use a PayPal in case you do not have one.

5. Understand that most hosting review sites are affiliated to the web hosts

This doesn’t mean that their reviews are unreliable; you just need to be careful with their advice and have the ability to read between the lines.  

6. Track your web host from time to time

Employ a third party tracking system to check your ebsite uptime, anything below 99.5% for more than two months is unacceptable. In case you are new and not sure what I’m talking about, a free trial account at Pingdom should get things started.

7. Check your web host spam policy

Any host without a tight spam policy is a pass. We do not want to stuck with group of bad IP neighbor and get our sites blacklisted.

8. Does your web host come with black holed IP?

A quick check on Spamhaus Block List is always recommended. There’s a handy search tool provided at SpamHaus.org (see image) – If your IP address is listed on one of our IP blocklists; SBL, XBL or PBL (collectively known as the ‘Zen’ blocklist), the lookup tool will tell you which one and will give you a link to information on what to do.

9. If you plan to grow big, go with an “expandable” web host

Shared hosting plans are powerful nowadays; but for certain reason if you foresee that you need a VPS or dedicated in the future, make sure you stick with hosting providers that can offer you those.

10. Avoid web host with short trial period Any trial period below 30 days is a pass! Reputable web hosts like iPage and BlueHost nowadays are offering ‘Anytime Money Back’ Guarantees, why should you fit yourself into those with short trial period?

11. Be aware of web hosts with outdated software and web apps

No kidding! There are still hosting companies that limit their customers with PHP4 and WordPress 2.8. If you are unsure, don’t assume anything and shoot your questions to the live chat supports, make sure the web host supports the latest version of software and web apps.

12. Recognize unlimited hosting is impossible

Do you expect your web host to give you unlimited hosting resources for $3.50/mo? Come on, be realistic. You should understand that such unlimited hosting is only ‘unlimited’ because the hosting providers are managing their servers usage closely and avoid any significant shortage of hosting capacity. As a smart consumer, you should take time to learn about the issue and avoid over-trusting your web host.

13. Understand your web host’s refund policy clearly

How long is the trial period? Are there any special charges if you refund within the trial period? How much do you need to repay for the free domain when you ask for a refund? Does the web host allow a refund after the trial period? It is very important to understand your web host’s refund policy clearly so that you won’t get panic when things go wrong.

14. What is the backup plan?

Backup policy is another important thing you need to know clearly before jumping in. Yes, you should always do your own backup for safety purpose but you also need to know if your web host has a reliable backup plan. Check if your web host provides sufficient redundancy protection; ask questions like ‘Do you have redundant power supplies?’, ‘How many incoming lines do you have at the data center?’, and ‘How often does the web host backup its server?’

15. You need a checklist for the necessary hosting features

Unfortunately, there’s no one-fit-for-all answer for your hosting needs. Chances are you need a dedicated IP, or a unique CMS, or a special type of cart software, or a private SSL, etc. It’s always recommended to come out with a checklist and see if the shortlisted web host fit everything in the list.

16. Avoid web host with ridiculously long commitment period

Do not fall for those web hosts with extremely low price tag but extremely long commitment period. Some ‘fly-by-night’ web hosts will lure customers to pay 3 – 5 years upfront for a very low price tag and they will just flee away with the money 1 or 2 years later. The last thing we want to have is to stuck with crooks like these so any subscription period for more than 24 months is not recommended.

17. Stick with web host with reasonable pricing

From my experience, web host that is too expensive or too cheap is a red flag. Web host with a high price tag, chances are they are overpriced; web host with a too-good-to-be-real low price tag, chances are something is wrong with their backend. At this time of writing, prices ranging from $3/mo to $8/mo are reasonable for a shared hosting; I wouldn’t say anything below or above it is bad but I will be extra careful with them.

Bottom line: You just cannot judge a book from its cover

It is impossible to know if a web host is good or bad from outside. Yes, reading TOS and user reviews do help filter out a few obvious bad apples but anything beyond need your own involvement.

The best way to know a web host is to test the web host yourself from the inside. After all, this is the reason why we register our domain name separately and go with web host with long trial period (see tip #3 and #10), right? Just keep track on the service quality for the first 30 days and do not hesitate to ask for a refund if you find anything fishy (that’s how you leverage the trial period!).

Sound familiar to you? Well, This happens all the time when I’m working late from home. Sorry, if you’re a web designer or developer or freelance webmaster, not many will take your work seriously. But still, we enjoy what we’re doing, right? So to hell with what others think about us and have an awesome Monday!

More of this at Web Designer Depot.

Getting Ready to Launch Your e-commerce Website

If you’re planning to put up a website for your products or services, one of the first things you have to consider is finding the best e-commerce hosting provider. Electronic commerce or e-commerce is the term used for businesses or services transactions conducted online. e-commerce web hosting, then, is a form of web hosting service that manages your e-commerce website.

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? However, managing an e-commerce website entails more than just putting up the site and making sure it stays up – and running. First, you have to be familiar with the fundamentals of e-commerce websites.

Essential and Vital Features/Tools for a Successful E-commerce Website

An e-commerce website will not succeed if the product management system is not supported and reliable. Features must be attractive to potential customers. More importantly, an e-commerce website must be user-friendly to enhance the customers’ on-site experience and encourage them to keep coming back for (more) future purchases. Here’s a simplified and quick guide on the basic features and tools for setting up a successful online shop.

Choose and register a domain name. Your domain name is your identity on the net; it identifies you on the web. This is what people type on their browser to go to your site. Be sure your domain is duly and legally registered with a legitimate domain registrar.

Find an excellent e-commerce web host. It is best to gauge your web hosting needs against your own level of expertise.  BigCommerce is a good option, because they are drag and drop.   If you have very little technical knowledge, you may want to opt for an e-commerce web host that can provide all your requirements in a reasonably priced package.  (Check below for the specific section of this article for a more extensive discussion of this aspect.)

Come up with a superb website design. You have various options for designing your e-commerce website. If you decide to use the full service of an e-commerce hosting provider, web design is most likely included in the package. However, you can also opt to hire a website designer or you may decide to design your own site yourself. Hiring a website designer can be costly; likewise, doing it on your own may also end up more expensive. But the upside to this is you can have your e-commerce website according to your specifications, making your site look distinct and unique from among the many sites. You can customize it accordingly, to encompass all the features you want to include on your site.

Make online transactions work. You need two basic things to effectively carry out a successful inline financial transaction. You need a merchant account that allows you to accept and process customer payments through credit cards. You can obtain this account either through your e-commerce host provider or by applying at a local bank. For the latter, you need to provide proof that your business is a duly registered one. The other requirement for your online transactions is the payment gateway; a system that automatically processes, verifies and accepts or declines on your behalf, all payment transactions between you (or your bank) and the customer. This system is performed through secure Internet connections that meet all industry regulations and standards, including Peripheral Component Interconnect or PCI.

Provide a shopping cart. This is primarily a software that serves as the interface on your website and its networks, which enables shoppers to choose the items they want to purchase; review their selections; and make changes (either add or remove items) before they make the final purchase. It would be quite difficult for consumers to purchase anything from your online store if you do not have a shopping cart. Most e-commerce hosting providers offer customizable shopping carts for your website.

Ensure e-commerce website security. The importance of online security to safeguard the consumers’ information can never be over-emphasized. It is absolutely crucial for a safe and secure online transaction of any kind. For several years now, the only authentic and genuine standard for a secure e-commerce transaction is the Secure Sockets Layer or simply SSL, which you as an e-commerce website owner can obtain from a Certificate Authority (CA). An SSL certificate is on a secure server that identifies your website during transactions; it encrypts your customers’ information.

Excellent customer care service is crucial. Problems are inevitable and customer service plays a huge role in satisfying the customers’ need to resolve issues when they transact business over the Internet.

How to Identify (and Choose) a Good e-Commerce Hosting Provider

If you’re a small business owner, finding the right e-commerce host provider may sound like a huge task. Looking for a good provider goes beyond merely comparing storage space and prices. You should start by having a clear assessment of what your website needs, thus have a clear idea of the type of services you require.

In a capsule, a good e-commerce hosting should provide fundamental tools, functional features and expedient services to assist entrepreneurs and businesses to efficiently and effectively run an e-commerce business.  Here are specific factors to consider when looking for a good e-commerce hosting provider.

Shared or Dedicated?

This is the first and all-important decision you have to make before you even begin looking. As the name implies and to put it simply, shared hosting means your website shares resources with several other websites. All the websites in this type of hosting are running or are being hosted by one (and the same) physical server. A dedicated hosting, on the other hand, has a single server that exists exclusively for your e-commerce site. All other things considered, the determining criteria for your choice are: the quality of hosting performance; how much control you have (which includes security issues); and the price.

Server Features vis-à-vis the Services You Require

When choosing an e-commerce web host provider, look for features that offer full-service e-commerce packages. Among the features and services you may want to look for are the following:

• Look for an e-commerce web hosting provider that offers options of operating system (OS) to ensure that any and applications or scripts you run are fully supported.
• A good e-commerce provider should enable you to set up, create and handle email or new accounts in a prompt manner.
• Make sure that the e-commerce hosting provider also furnishes tools for shopping cart services, which of course includes credit card or PayPal payment transactions and other similar services. Check that the web host can provide the required SSL encryption which complies with PCI standards and regulations. Bear in mind that you have the option to remove the payment and ordering process from the package and assign it to a third party provider to handle the data capture and data storage.

Bandwidth and Disk/Storage Space Options

• Adequate storage space and fully customizable products and categories should be provided. Go ahead and have a lot of foresight; be farsighted and optimistic. Your business is likely to expand in the long run. It is essential that you are able to store a wide range of pages and products on your website to; this will save you the inconvenience of purchasing additional space – or worse, moving your site to another server.
• Check the restrictions and bandwidth limits. Most providers set a limit for the maximum amount of traffic your e-commerce website can handle. Traffic and visitors to your site are expected to spike as your business expands; bandwidth may become an issue if you don’t get your facts right at the onset. Look for a provider that will not just turn off access to your site; but will assist to upgrade you to the next level plan if you go over the prearranged band.
• Find out the geographical location of the web server. It is crucial to know where the web servers are located to make sure there is no slow down in loading time and accessing your site.

Beyond the Basics: Other Features and Perks

• Another factor that you should identify is the downloadable products. Although, not really important to some retail websites; this can be essential and practical if you are planning to distribute promotional items and giveaways along with your products for sale.
• During peak seasons, it also a must that your web host is equipped to provide you with coupon codes. This is needed because it gives you the ability to be competitive during peak holiday events.

Choosing the right e-commerce web hosting provider can be a bit tricky; but if you have enough information and adequate working knowledge, you can eventually make a well-informed decision. Remember, you want to invest and get professional plans and services for your e-commerce website. Don’t settle for a company that only has experience in personal website hosting.

I would highly recommend you read my BigCommerce Review if you are interested starting an e-commerce business.

About the author

This article was written by Garen Arnold, who is a graphic designer out of Kansas City, Missouri. Garen provides people with the Best Web Hosting Service by using his expertise to help people choose the best web hosting service for their business.

*Side note: Join Garen Arnold and write a guest post for us! Learn more.

We have roughly another two months to go for FatCow Host Smart Drive Smart Giveaway. In case you are considering FatCow hosting, here are some recent user feedback for references. Some of these reviews are quoted else where from the Internet; some were e-mailed to my directly.

FatCow Hosting User Feedback

“Great Service!!” I’m using fatcow for more than 6 months, and did not had any problems so far. They servers are reliable and didn’t noticed any downtime for my websites. Some times the live chat support is slow, but the email and phone support is professional. Fatcow is my first hosting provider, and they has helped me a lot to put my business online. Great service! I would recommend to any business owner! – Reviewed by Jorg @ July 8, 2010.

“Jaw-droppingly easy to use!” Fat Cow’s automated installations are jaw- droppingly easy to use. I create and sell CMS/Joomla! websites using Fat Cow’s unlimited hosting plan and it has been a very profitable experience with Fat Cow. I do have to note that the overall speed of Fat Cow’s hosting plan leaves something to be desired when it comes to load time for scripts – mainly in Joomla! / MySQL installations. Otherwise – Fat Cow is the only hosting choice that makes sense to my business. – Reviewed by Matherarts.com @ July 01, 2010

“Average” I’ve hosted many different websites using a variety of web hosts over the years. The only time I’ve ever been “hacked” into was with FatCow – not once, but twice in less than a six-month period. My account was suspended with virtually no notice, and it’s a hassle to get it reinstated. While they gave me general guidance on removing bad files and preventing it from happening again, it was beyond difficult to get anything that specifically addressed my situation such as the type of files that are vulnerable, etc. When I asked customer support for details, I was told that someone will send an e-mail to me “very soon” but the email is never in my mailbox until today (it’s been months!). I’ve been a FatCow customer for less than a year, so I’m not sure how much of a “fluke” this is. Having said that, online support has been fairly prompt and responsive when I’ve had other sorts of issues and questions. Aside from the “phishing” concerns, I’ve been content. – Reviewed by Anonymous @ June 8, 2010.

“FatCow – Not Impressed! “ I have been trying to get a FatCow reseller account now for about 3 weeks.. my paypal payment had an error, so i tried it again.. then realized in my paypal account the first one had gone through.. although was sat “unclaimed” so now I had two “unclaimed” payments in my paypal account. I have been talking to support staff throughout the last two weeks trying to resolve the issue and NOTHING has been done.. they have “escalated” the issue to a senior specialist or something of the sort. I mean a two year old could accept a paypal payment in a few minutes!!!! After reading some of these reviews I am having second thoughts about using them.. they obviously have the look and the pricing but apart from that they seem to be pretty rubbish. – Reviewed by Luke @ June 26, 2010.

“Nothing but pleasures!” Hi Jerry I just wanna drop by and say thanks for sharing your comments about fatcow. I signed up with them in late march and I am 100% satisfy with the kind of service I am getting. fatcow servers are fast (as you said) and I never experience any site down time so far…. The overall setup process was amazingly fast and easy so I’d recommend FatCow to any newbies out there who wish to get things started immediately. In short, fatcow is nothing but pleasures!! – Reviewed by Teressa @ May 17, 2010.

“Debra Lamb Psychic Loves FatCow!” I found FatCow on the Consumer Report site as one of the top recommended web hosting sites for price and customer service. Their web building tools made building my website fairly easy, considering I had absolutely no experience, and every time I called tech support (which was a lot) I was helped by a friendly and knowledgeable associate. I also received encouragement along the way! – Reviewed by DebraLambPsychic @ April 5, 2010.

If these are not enough, check out my personal reviews on FatCow hosting here.

Are web hosting user reviews reliable? Here’s what I think.

As a smart shopper, you should understand that a user/customer review is always written based on one’s preference. How well a web host scores in one’s record is always biased towards his/her expectation.

I once received an email complaining about Hostgator. The reason why this guy is unhappy with Hostgator is because (ready for this?) the company does not provide real time web stats reporting tool for his shared hosting account. That’s right, he is looking for a real time web analytic tool – can you believe that? Seriously, if you are expecting such a tool from a $10/mo hosting service, there is no way in this world you can be pleased.

Another example: Look at this recently published JustHost user reviews, check out the review in that post and the comment that follows, I can’t help but wonder why we can have such different feedback on the same web host (Katja was unhappy with JustHost while reader Voyager was shock to see a negative JustHost user review and think it’s a fake review).

So hey, just because you found a negative review on a web host means that it’s a bad choice; vise versa, a web host with some positive reviews might not work rightly for you. Web hosting user reviews (this one included) are solely for your references. Sure some basic research and reviews will help filter out some bad apples but to be safe you should always protect yourself from being screwed by a lousy web host.

I came across A2Hosting recently during my casual Internet surfing. I have never use A2’s hosting service before but I’m very impressed with what I am seeing from the outside and I thought you guys’d like to know. Note that this post is NOT a paid post or advertisement in any sort – the web host is seriously something (you’ll see why).

Why I like A2Hosting Hosting Services?

Super-Reliable Server + Transparent Operations

Throughout my years working on Internet, A2Hosting is the only web host I knew that is willing to track and reveal their server uptime publicly. The website uptime is tracked by a third party system named WebsitePulse from four different locations, Washington and Los Angeles (US), Brisbane (Australia), as well as Desseldorf (Germany),  every 5 minutes; and the results are opened for anyone on the Internet.

A2Hosting Uptime Record: Screen Cap from WebsitePulse

Take time to check out the uptime report. Note that the web host is tracked since June 2006 and the overall uptime in the four year time span is 99.97%; with the longest 100% uptime of 212 days and 8 hours! Trust me, I have been tracking web host uptimes for some years now and these numbers mean a lot. What A2Hosting achieved here is simply outstanding.

The Best Incentive Gifts

Beside server reliability, I am also equally impressed with the free gifts A2Hosting is giving away. For a hosting plan that cost less than $80 per year, A2Hosting customers are getting back practical, free marketing credits that worth more than $250.
For reference, I have listed down some of the key incentives you are getting upon subscription.

July Football Discount – 40% price cut

Perhaps the best reason why you should try A2Hosting at this time of writing is the company’s special promotion. A2Hosting is giving a special one-time discount for all July orders. Enter ‘GOAL40’ upon signup and you will receive a one-time 40% price discount.

Listed below are the A2Hosting’s price differences before and after discount.

No one would deny that A2Hosting’s price tag is a little expensive previously but thing looks much better after the 40% discount – the $4.77/mo price tag is, without doubt, a stunner. However, be aware that this promotion ends on July 31 (sorry, I should have write this post earlier) so remember to order A2 before it’s too late.

Wrapping Things Up: I need your A2Hosting Review!

I don’t normally write such a ‘biased’ post on a web host that I have never tried before. In fact the title of this article is only decided after I reread my writing and noticed how biased I sounded.

As you can read from above, the facts I found about A2Hosting are just too good to be ignored. In case are looking for some hosts out of my list, A2Hosting is for sure a must-see alternative. Every signs and customer feedbacks I got online indicate that A2Hosting cares a lot about its customers and is ready to serve long term.

To see for more yourself, visit A2hoting online at http://www.a2hosting.com

On the other hand, since I am not an A2Hosting user, I’d appreciate existing A2Hosting users chip in and tell us more about the web host.

The Rationale Behind Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates – The Value Added Business

Trust is a perennial issue on the Internet – it has always been and (probably) will always be. But the reality is that today’s technology has made online business transactions more the norm rather than the exception.

From the end-user’s point of view, convenience against security presents a dilemma. How do I know I’m looking at a legitimate website? Is that really my bank’s website I’m looking at on my browser? Is there real business behind the site that offers such insanely cheap price? Those questions and other similar ones are common enough – and certainly valid. From the perspective of the E-business website owners on the other hand, such mistrust and ambivalence is bad for business. Understandably, everyone seeks guarantee and assurance when they do business online.

The Basics of SSL Certificate

Secure Sockets Layer or SSL was developed by Netscape in 1994. It’s a worldwide standard security technology which creates encrypted link to ensure all data that passes between the web server and the web browser remains confidential and secure. Millions of consumers recognize and associate the “padlock” displayed on the browser as the icon of trust on the website.
E-business providers protect their customers and guarantee that online transactions are kept safe and private through SSL protocol, which they can only use upon issuance of the required SSL certificate. This certificate, which is issued by the Certification Authorities or CA, provides the opportunity for e-Business website owners to demonstrate their trustworthiness; thus, leverage an increased level of trust among visitors and turn them into paying customers.

What the Customers See

URLs with an SSL connection use https instead of just http. The “s” at the end obviously stands for “secure”. When the customer clicks on the Padlock your SSL Certificate and company details are displayed.

Company details. SSL Certificates typically contain your domain name and company name; your address, inclusive of city, state and country; details of the Certification Authority responsible for the issuance of the Certificate; and the expiry date of the Certificate. Take note that only certificates issued by High Assurance Certification Authorities actually display company details; which is another assurance that customers may be looking for when making an online purchase.

Expiry date. When a browser connects to a secure site, it does three things: It retrieves the SSL Certificate and check that it has been issued by a Certification Authority that the browser trusts, that it is being used by the website for which it has been issued, and that it has not expired. Failing on any one of these checks causes a warning to be displayed to the end user. Some customers also get concerned when they see that the certificate is soon to expire. It is important therefore, to renew your certificate with ample time to spare before the actual expiration date. A smart alternative is to purchase a multi-year certificate to minimize set up costs; plus, your customer will find it reassuring that you will still be around in the years to come.

Why You Need SSL Certificates

Face it; people never buy from salesmen they don’t trust. Majority of consumers these days expect security to be an integral part of any online service they use; they require that details they provide on the Internet are kept private and confidential. For most customers, the only time they will ever consider purchasing products or services online is when they are assured to full satisfaction that their detailed information is safe and secure. Thus, you need to allay consumer apprehensions by providing trust indicators. Just like the real world, it is natural need for people to feel confident before going down an unknown path. The SSL Certificate guarantees your customers that you take their security seriously and this gives them the confidence that you have eliminated the risk usually associated with online transactions.

The EV Certificate – Do you really need one?

Extended Validation or EV Certificate, which was introduced in 2007, is a significant update of the SSL Certificate validation process that introduced substantial changes to verification methods used in authenticating the identity of online businesses. It provides consumers with a higher trust level while online by identifying which websites are legitimate businesses with verifiable credentials. These new certificates are indicated when the address bar on a visitor’s browser turn green.

SSL Certificate Authorities are already performing thorough and meticulous checks to validate the legitimacy of businesses. However, various CAs currently using non EV certificates employ varied types and levels of authentication; sometimes creating online security vulnerabilities that are frequently exploited for fraud, identity theft and other Internet crimes.

In contrast, the validation process for EV Certificates requires all CAs to rigorously scrutinize each business, using a prescribed set of sources and methods, before certificates are issued. The new certificates oblige businesses to complete a comprehensive and methodical documentation and verification process of current business licenses and incorporation paperwork. The CAs has to verify the accuracy of the data through additional sources; which may include on-site visits to the business, in some cases. This is aimed at resolving the variations in validation process; thus enhance Internet security features.

To the end users, this means that e-Businesses that have EV SSL certificates are much more likely to be legitimate entities, compared to those that only have the standard SSL certificates, which can be obtained by anyone even without verification.

The bottom line: Extended Validation SSL certificates are the latest secure certificates that offer the highest level of outward security to end users on the market today. So if you ask if it is worth it to have an EV SSL Certificate, the answer is: Absolutely, YES!

About the author

This article was written by Garen Arnold, who is a graphic designer out of Kansas City, Missouri. Garen provides people with the Best Web Hosting Service by using his expertise to help people choose the best web hosting service for their business.

I had the opportunity to get in touch with Meredith Livesay of VPSNext recently and I’m honored to have her as our interview guest today. As there are little forum discussion or user reviews on VPSNext, this interview is a must read for those who are interested with the hosting company. Meredith has done an excellent job answering the questions and her insights on the hosting industry are as precious as gold.

Q&A with Meredith Livesay of VPSNext

Hi Meredith, thank you for being with us today. To get things started, let’s go with some basic introduction. What can we know more about you and your company, VPSNext?

You’re welcome! Thank you for giving me the change to have this interview. Currently, I am the Marketing Manager for VPSNext. Through the time that I have been with them I have seen this company grow tremendously even in a short amount of time.

VPSNext began about five years ago as a web hosting company that focuses solely on the virtual private server market. One of the aspects I love most about this company is that it is locally owned and operated; this allows us to really focus on our customers and what they want. Feedback is crucial to our business. VPSNext as a company is very focused on offering quality products, while still keeping our prices competitive.

Who should use VPSNext? Please briefly describe VPSNext ‘s target market.

Our typical customer is one who has outgrown their shared environment but is not ready to move to a dedicated server. A VPS is also the perfect fit for large scale communities such as, developer forums, design boards, and many other types of resource consuming activities.

Additionally, e-commerce users prefer to be on a virtual private server because it is like having their own box.

Let’s talk about VPSNext’s hosting packages – cPanel, Plesk, and No Control Panel VPS Hosting Packages (see table below). Which is the most popular package; and what are the major differences among these three?

Currently, the most popular hosting package is the VPS-Fusion because of cPanel/WHM that comes with the account. It is a highly customizable account that is ready out of the box.

In terms of the different packages, it appears that the cPanel/WHM combination tends to be more popular in the N. America market, while the Plesk control panel tends to be more popular in the Asian and European market segments.
In terms of the NoCP VPS, this is more appealing for avid Linux users that have more experience and know their way around the virtual server environment.

From the website, I learned that VPSNext does not run on its own data centers. Should your customers be concerned by it? What can we know more about the hardware behind your hosting services?

That’s a great question. We are currently running our data center out of Equinix; one of the largest and most secure data centers on the east coast.

However, we are currently in the process of migrations over to our own facility, which is about to come online within the next 30 – 45 days (in middle or late August this year). Our customers will see a vast improvement in speed and reliability. We are very excited about this!

Moving from a web host to another could be very tiring. What can VPSNext do for its customers in the process?

We realize that moving to another host provider is a hassle. A large percentage of our customers have transferred to us from another host, so our support technicians are very familiar with this process. Our technicians make this process as smooth as possible and will work with the customer for as long as needed.

How about day-to-day customer support – what kind of after-sales service we can get from VPSNext?

One aspect that we offer for all of our customers is 24×7 support. Offering this kind of support is imperative. Our customers are able to get in contact with us at their convenience, this is why we have engineers available 24x7x365 and ready to answer the phone in 20 seconds or less.

We offer many ways for our customers to get in contact with us: phone, live chat, email, and ticket support. The most popular support method is our ticket support. While we always strive to answer tickets in the fastest possible time, some cases require escalation. However, on average our response time is less than 15 minutes!

In your opinion, what makes a good VPS host? It would be great if you can tell us some key points when it comes to picking up the right VPS hosting.

Since we belong to a niche market of avid users, one of the hardest parts for a good host is to ensure that customers are constantly satisfied with the level of service and the resources that they are receiving for their money. The other obvious one is; marketing to a niche market since it’s a smaller market segment.

The global economy seems bouncing back a little recently. Does that affect sales and growth rate a lot at VPSNext?

Yes, we have felt some of the effects of the global economy, but overall our growth rate has continued to increase. We have found that many people that have been effected by the economy have turned to the online sector to build a virtual presence.

Where do you see the company in 3 years time?

We see ourselves continuing to grow and further ourselves within the VPS market and offering other flavours of the VPS series such as; OSX (Apple OS), and Windows.

Well that’s all for my questions. Is there anything you wish to add?

I think that covers it! Thank you again for giving me the chance to share a little more about our company!

Sound Bites

VPSNext has been in business for about 5 years. The company offers VPS hosting services in various control panel and provide 24/7/365 customer services. VPSNext is in the mid of migrating their facilities to its own data centers and the staffs are expecting a vast improvement in hosting speed and reliability.

In case you wish to learn more about VPSNext, visit: http://www.vpsnext.com

JustHost Review by Katja

Just as you, I have been spending hours searching for a reliable host and reading reviews. To be honest, I do this about once a month, every time our hosting with JustHost majorly tanks and causes problems.

Frequent server outages

We have been with them since January 2010 and so far had at least once a month server outages, promises of being moved to a newer “faster” server, suggestions of add on fees for priority support (which completely ignored us during one episode of issues), daily backups and faster server guarantee for additional fee… all of which we purchased to make our forum site running more smoothly.

Every time we started encountering issues and escalated it to priority support they started off with the old “the problem is on your end, have you tried turning it off and on again” bit and endless email trails to finally get to the bottom that a server had failed and they were working on it.

Now things like this can happen, a bit of a downtime is unfortunate but I guess to be expected, however to go through this once a month, lies of them moving the site to a faster server, them migrating the sites and doing it incorrectly (TWICE IN A ROW) by forgetting to point the nameservers to the new servers so the forum was active in two “universes”… them telling us the site cannot be restored to the daily backup but only the last weekly one (losing a weeks worth of data despite having paid extra for daily backups), their customer service not even properly reading mails and properly addressing the people who sent it and after all of this not ONCE being refunded the monthly hosting fee when we had major troubles and downtimes.

10 hours down time!

Last issue was a 10+ hours outage and continued problems when the site was restored, mainly data loss and again wrongly pointed nameservers, despite them being warned about that when they finally agreed to move the site to a new server after being out for 10h already. What is frustrating is that there are no warnings or info mails when a server tanks or is undergoing some sort of maintenance. They don’t apply any type of load balancing that servers can be maintained without customers losing uptimes. When the customer contacts them about an issue they have a long list of lies to reply with before they honestly admit what is going on, they don’t apply services you pay for (priority service taking 24h to reply when they promise 30 minutes, daily back ups, faster servers) and every small issue turns into a few days worth of email trails and headaches.

JustHost -cheap and good for low traffic website

So all in all, JustHost may be cheap and good for websites with low traffic (as you mentioned in your JustHost reviews, that’s how you test them) but their technical support is incompetent and reliability is significantly less than 97% stated in most online reviews.

Cheers and happy reviewing!

Katja

P/S: Katja if you are reading this please contact me – I wish to give a link to your site (as credit) but couldn’t reach you thru the email address you were using.

Send me your web hosting reviews!

Have something to say about your web host? Why not get it published here at WebHostingSecretRevealed.com – send your hosting review to userfeedback@webhostingsecretrevealed.com.

In case you are not aware, FatCow is running an awesome (they called it ‘moovelous’) sweepstake and the hosting company is giving some great, great prizes away! A few lucky winners will drive away a Smart ForTwo Coupe, a Vespa scooter, and one of four Shwinn bikes to its customers.

Free car for a $3.67/mo hosting?!

No joke! Buy a $3.67/mo hosting and you stand a chance to win a brand new Smart ForTwo.

Look at the picture below (ladies please, the car not the cute guy!). Deep breath. Close your eyes for 10 seconds. Imagine yourself sitting in the car and driving it around your neighborhood. Don’t you just feel G-R-E-A-T?

To enter FatCow Host Smart Drive Smart Giveaway

Okay I know you want this so here’s how you can get yourself in.

You will automatically receive one entry into the Sweepstakes for doing any one of these: signup for a new hosting account at FatCow now, refer a friend via its affiliate program, add a client to your FatCow reseller account, or be an active FatCow customer with a hosting account with no outstanding account (yes, this means if you are an existing customer you are in automatically).

UNFORTUNATELY, the sweepstake is only open to legal residents of the 50 United States (and D.C.) 18 years or older (rules, here). This means if you are living out of United States (like me ) then you are not included in this promotion. The sweepstake started on May 17, 2010 and ends at 11:59 pm ET on September 30, 2010.

Other things you might want to know

About the car

The Smart ForTwo is a funky urban ultra-compact car. The car is based on a platform developed jointly my Smart and Mitsubishi for space efficient cars. The small size and low weight make this trendy car also one of the most fuel efficient cars barring the hybrid duo from Honda and Toyota. It is also the least expensive one in this list. The prices of ForTwo start at $12,635 and it return 36 miles to a gallon of fuel… More at Smart Homepage.

Further action

In case you want to know more about FatCow and its giveaway.

Read my FatCow Review.
Signup FatCow now – Enter to win a brand new car.

Introduction

The competitive advantage presented by cloud hosting and platform as a service vendors to large scale national and international businesses has been well documented over recent months, with the opportunity for a highly scalable service alongside excellent reliability and near 100% uptime proving to be key factors in such companies uptake of these services. Larger businesses have been able to roll out PaaS and SaaS to their sales forces and other arms of their operations – safe in the knowledge that they are receiving strong reliability, performance guarantees and 24 hour technical support.

However, as knowledge of such services gradually becomes more widespread, it is not only blue chip organizations that can benefit from the advantages that cloud hosting, PaaS and SaaS can bring to a business environment. Indeed, small to medium sized businesses are gradually beginning to take the plunge and begin to embrace these emerging technologies; seeing an opportunity for cost effective and secure solutions for their IT, software, hosting, system backup and electronic communication needs under 1 fully managed roof. Some of the potential advantages of such services for SMB’s are discussed below.

Cost Effective, Manageable and Scalable

By selecting a cloud hosting, PaaS or SaaS package that is tailored to the individual needs of their business, SMB’s can create uniquely bespoke, cost effective solutions that save money on “lump sum” direct costs (such as software licensing, servers etc), and instead replace them with more manageable monthly payments on fixed budgets. Bespoke software packages that are accessed remotely allow also small businesses to pay only for what they need and are easily scalable as a business grows.

Convenient, Secure and Reliable

With near 100% uptime and 24/7/365 expert support, cloud hosting services can allow SME’s to focus on the core aspects of their own operations with a minimum fuss, downtime, maintenance and hassle. With this greater reliability and continuity, there is also no need to call in an IT consultant every time there are any issues with your server – thus allowing for further time and cost saving opportunities and greater productivity.

Space Saving

Many small businesses simply do not have sufficient office space to house a large, bulky, in house server unit. The remote access available through cloud hosting services therefore gives SMB’s a much needed opportunity to save on precious office space and therefore maximise the potential of the small amount of room they have available for other more pertinent purposes relevant to the core aspects of their business.

Eco Friendly

By eliminating the amount of power consumption that may be used by in an house server and other electronic equipment and instead remotely accessing their hosting, data storage and backup facilities via the cloud platform, SMB’s can in essence become much more eco friendly and green in their day to day business operations – diminishing their carbon footprint while simultaneously saving money by reducing associated costs and electricity bills.

About the Author

Chris Shelbourn is a freelance writer who has written on behalf of Commensus PLC – a UK supplier of cloud hosting and platform as a service, with bespoke packages tailored to the needs of both small and medium sized businesses and large scale international organizations.

Some say yes.

And, some say no.

This is the question I have been asking myself for the entire evening. Opinions?

By the way, check out some of the tutorials and lessons I read recently on the subject: 10 Must Read HTML5 Lessons.

HTML5 is currently being developed as the next major revision of HTML and it is still far away from W3C recommended release date (year 2022 or later). However with the release of Apple iPad, the topic is got extremely heated and almost every web designer are talking/reading/writing/blogging/twitting about it.

Moreover, many early adapters (web developers and geeks) started creating some cool stuffs wtih the cleaner HTML5/CSS3 codes. In case you wanted to be one of them but don’t know where to start, here are list of useful HTML5 tutorials to get you started. It’s been a long week searching and reading on these tutorials (hey, I’m new to this too!) – I hope you make good use of them. Also, if you are one of the authors of these tutorials – I couldn’t thank you guys enough! It’s been a great learning journey reading each of these; thank you very, very much.

1. HTML5 Getting Started Guide

Concise beginner guide in HTML5 – newbies should start reading from here.

Read HTML5 Getting Started

2. Preview of HTML5

This was an ‘overview’ on HTML5 published back in late 2007. Nevertheless, it is still a good learning source for those who are unfamiliar with the codes. Personally I like the ‘big picture’ this article offers.

Read HTML5 Preview

3. What Does It All Mean (Dive into HTML5)

‘Dive Into HTML5’ is a HTML guide book to be published by O’Reilly. The chapter ‘What Does It All Mean’ offers a clear explanation on the basics of HTML5 semantics/elements.

Read What Does It (HTML5 elemenets) All Mean

4. HTML5 Demos and Examples

It’s always easier to learn something new via examples. This site provides up to 20 examples of HTML5 experimentations and demos (with source code!).

HTML5 Demos

5. HTML5 Differences From HTML4

Detail comparison guide of HTML4 and HTML5 by the W3C (there is no better source than this!).

Read HTML5 differences from HTML4

6. HTML5 and CSS3: The Techniques You’ll Soon Be Using

This is a great tutorial that combines the application of HTML5 and CSS3 – must read for beginner/advance level of web developer and designer.

Read HTML5 & CSS3: The Techniques You’ll Soon Be Using

7. HTML5 localStorage()

One of the best things you can do with HTML5 is to establish a client side database (on user browser) with localStorage. To start using this awesome HTML5 function, the HTML5 localStorage() tutorial series (4 detail articles) published at PaperKilledRock.com comes very handy.

Read HTML5 localStorage()

8. HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet

The information provided is pretty much just a condensed copy of WHATWG specifications. However the .pdf file is definitely a must have on your notice board (especially when you are dealing with a HTML5 project that involves loads of canvas elements).

Get HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet

9. Designing A Blog With HTML5

This is a tutorial that every blog theme developer will need to read. (You should also read the author’s blog Bruce Lawson for more related updates.)

Read Designing a blog with HTML5

10. HTML5 Cheat Sheet

What can I say? Everyone loves a cheat sheet or two.

Get HTML5 Cheat Sheet

In case you missed the announcement last year, this is the final reminder that in less than a month time, registration cost for .com and .net domains will increase for 10% at VeriSign.

VeriSign announced that as of July 1, 2010, the registry fee for .com domain names will increase from $6.86 to $7.34 and that the registry fee for .net domain names will increase, from $4.23 to $4.65.

Ref: https://investor.verisign.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=431292

What does this mean to you?

Basically the price-change doesn’t affect much on most webmasters unless you are holding over 1,000 domain names. If so the first thing you should do is, apparently, to renew your expiring domains before July.

The increase is approved by ICANN and in other words this will affect all domain registrars who offer .com and .net registration services. As profit margin is already ultra thin in this field, registrars like GoDaddy will most likely pass on the inflated cost to its end users (aka, you and me!).

Inflation happens all the time, get used to it!

I read quite some rants across several webmaster forums and honestly, I don’t understand why these guys cannot accept the fact that prices of everything will increase.

In fact I would be surprised if the .com and .net price stays stagnant in year 2009-10. After all the business is monopoly by VeriSign and moreover, according to a settlement in for lawsuit between Verisign and ICANN in 2006, the company is allowed to increase their prices on an annual basis with increases of up to 7% per year for .COM.

(Ask yourself, would you do the same if you are allowed, legally, to ask for more money? )