For many web surfers, video is an irresistible pull. Instead of clicking and scrolling your way through the web, you can lay off the keyboard, touchpad, or screen, and just watch video like the couch potato you really are.

But for the web site owner, video is a headache. If you treat video like any other content, you risk overloading your bandwidth and frustrating users who want your video to stream, instead of having to wait for it to download. If you instead rely on major video sharing sites, like YouTube and Vimeo, you risk losing your viewers to cat videos. Even worse, a video sharing site can remove your content without warning, sell advertising around it, or crash unexpectedly.

A video hosting site is designed to handle the bandwidth demands and software requirements of video content, so you can start thinking about video without worry. Even if you don’t think of your site as being particularly video-focused, there are surprising—and profitable—advantages to having a video hosting site.

For example, with video hosting capability it’s easy to host webinars, live chats, and premium content, all of which allows you to produce extra revenue for just a little extra work. As the web increasingly moves to video, having video hosting capacity is the key to your continued success. Here are a few tips for getting started.

Choose Your Software

The first, and most important, decision you will make about video is which software to use. The software takes your digital video, whether it’s a DVD, video camera, or file, and translates it into a file that other programs, or web browsers, can read.

The most popular software is FFMPEG, free, open source software that can read almost anything you give it and convert it to a file that browsers can easily handle.

Choose Your Codec

Video software uses one, or several, codecs (coder-decoder) to translate video into something that can be ready by browsers. Most codecs are lossy, meaning that they reduce the quality of the image in order to produce a smaller file. Other codecs are lossless, which retain the high image quality, but are generally only useful if you, or your viewers, have minutes, even hours, to download your moving images.

The most popular codec, H.264, is proprietary, so if you use it you will need to purchase the licenses (http://x264licensing.com/). In 2014, H.265 will be released, which is expected to offer better performance and consume half of the bandwidth of H.264. Google has also developed VP9, an open source and royalty free competitor to H.264. There are also a number of container formats (so-called because they contain several audio and video codecs) that use open source codecs, including Ogg and HTML5.

Start Converting and Uploading

Once you’ve chosen your video software, and codec, you can begin uploading your web-ready video to your new video sharing site. From there, it’s just a matter of including the video on your website and waiting to show off your site’s new capacities to your customers.

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There is currently a brute-force login attack targeted at WordPress websites. Due to the nature of this attack, memory consumption on targeted servers has increased. In some cases this has resulted in degradation of performance, as well as servers that are unresponsive.

The reason for this? A high volume of http requests that can cause some servers to start
swapping memory to disk, and possibly run out of memory. The servers that are affected the most tend to be those with limited memory resources, including VPS instances- especially those with 1GB of RAM or less.

Cirtex support has been hard at work restoring service to managed servers which have been affected by this problem, and we’re taking the necessary actions to reduce the impact of this event.

Thank you for your patience, and email us at Support [at] CirtexHosting [dot][com] for assistance.

Photo by Chris Metcalf

Post by Martin Johnson

While WordPress is wonderfully easy to use, and, with a nice theme, aesthetically pleasing, it’s the plug-ins that give your site the functionality you need for your site. From optimizing e-commerce to ensuring that your visitors will return, plug-ins allow you to turn your site from just another WordPress site into something that is designed to work for you.

There are a number of good free WordPress plug-ins for you to try, but sometimes you need to pay for something that will deliver the efficiency, quality, and service you need. After all, you don’t want to rely on the kindness of strangers to ensure that your e-commerce functions are up and running. Here are five paid—or, as some call them, “premium”—plugins that are essential for almost any WordPress site.

Gravity Forms 

Whether you’re running a day care or a dog walking service, you need forms so your customers can supply their contact information, enter contests, or order goods and services. Gravity Forms makes the process of building forms and gathering their content easy, so you don’t have to worry about a simple mistake costing you thousands of dollars in lost business. Like most paid plug-ins, Gravity Forms has a range of pricing plans, so you can start small and upgrade when your business grows.

SEOPressor 

While a terrible site will have trouble attracting any worthwhile visitors, a very good site can still get lost on the web if you don’t have help. SEOPressor is a fast, easy to use search-engine optimizer that will help you get the most of the work you put into building a quality WordPress site. With strong analytics and a simple pricing structure, SEOPressor is a must-have when you need to be on the first page, or even number one, in a Google search.

Backup Buddy 

There’s nothing worse than suffering a server crash. Losing a WordPress site is especially traumatic, particularly if you rely on your site archive to reach clients. Backup Buddy makes backing up your site simple and automatic, allowing you to depend on your WordPress site even if your website is clunkier than you’d like.

MapPress

Although this plug-in has a free version, the pro version allows you to produce brand-free and mashed-up maps that give your users great directions to your business, whether it’s been there for a hundred years or if it’s a food truck.

Slidedeck

Slidedeck allows you to create image, video, or text dynamic slideshows, or sliders for use in your WordPress site. With custom Lenses (think themes for slideshows), you can personalize your slideshows, allowing to integrate appealing visual content into your website in a few easy steps.

Get 25 % off your first month on any new plan! 
Just use the coupon code “TWEETFACE” when purchasing and you’re all set.
Take a look at our plans. 

Designing for a small screen is one of the most difficult challenges for web designers. Readymade website builders are clumsy and often render your site all but useless. The mobile device market is so competitive and fast-paced that it’s difficult to keep up with the latest changes in screen size and resolution, and there’s nothing worse than a website that looks sub-par on the latest and brightest screen.

While we can’t stop the pace of change so you can catch up with the design needs for the latest iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy, here are some tips that will help you design mobile websites that are robust enough to survive changes in screen sizes, interfaces, and user expectations.

Know Your Audience

People are already accessing your site from mobile devices, whether or not you have a site ready for them. Use analytics software to find out who your customers are, and design a website with them in mind. Once your know what devices your customers are using to get to your site, you can prioritize your design and functionality testing with them in mind

Design for the Browser

When you watch people use mobile websites on tv, it’s all about getting things done that very second. You open a website, and, voila, a rental car shows up and your order of flowers is delivered. But, as we all know, most people don’t use mobile websites because they’re in a rush. Instead, they’re bored, and are visiting your website because they have oodles of time to look at your site while they’re waiting at the airport or the doctor’s office. Give them the content, and the navigation tools they need to access that content, and you’ll find your on-site numbers exploding.

Make it Work

For any designer, functionality is at the top of the list. But for mobile websites, functionality is almost all that matters. If your website is hard to navigate, or, worse, breaks often, a mobile user is going to move on the next site, even if he or she would have been more forgiving on their laptop. Functionality is particularly important for e-commerce, as the mobile shopper is often primed to buy—until, that is, the cart function crashes and he moves on to another round of Angry Birds.

Consider an App

If your analytics show that people are accessing your site directly, you might consider making an app that allows them to access your content from an environment that you can design and control. But, if you find most of your traffic is coming from links to specific pages, you should instead focus on making your site function as smoothly as possible.

Think Vertical, Collapsible, and Interactive

Mobile screens are tall, not wide, so design with that in mind. A website that uses vertical menus will be easier to access than one that forces users to turn to screen to access horizontal menus. Likewise, collapsible menus will allow you to keep your site stuffed with content, but still easy to navigate. And, finally, design with interaction in mind. Make everything tap-able, not clickable, as users will expect your site to operate like everything else on their phone, not like another web site.

Get 25% off your first month on ANY plan with Cirtex! Just use the coupon code TWEETFACE when making your purchase. Take a look at our plans here.

The infographic is below, and click here to read the full article on SEOmoz. Click on the infographic to see it in full.

Even before getting a hosting plan you may simply be interested in getting a domain. If you already have a domain name you may be considering of registering it with some of the other host. You can even try registering with one of the host by paying $10 for around a years time although some may even be much more cheap. When speaking of SEO we all know that URL and domains are very much important because when these spiders simply come crawling they would in fact index your pages.

So if you are in fact having one of the most unique domain name that matches your URL which is simply designed best, then you start being visible in the eyes of most of these SEOs. Some of the features of the web hosting also does benefit the SEOs efforts to a much greater extent. Optimization for some of the most targeted search is certainly very much effective as most of the host present today simply offer a number of tools that may in fact help with the research in choosing some of the best key words for your site.

Most of these also provide with a handy web application features. These keywords also give you with the graphical statistic about the type of traffic your website may be getting. It in fact provides the complete details like when visitors come and also from where these visitors come. It also shows the spider that visited your site. A number of companies do offer a free service for SEO along with free marketing and tools. Most of the web packages are simply loaded with most unique tools.

Web hosting simply plays a very major role in SEO as most of the results simply depend upon the hosting company. It certainly plays a crucial part as it emphasizes more on the quality work than quantity work. Here cost of the service certainly does not make any difference. You may even find a number of hosting services that are in fact cheap and better. So before looking for any services you need to keep in mind that it is actually the fate of your rankings what you are talk about.  You fate simply lies in the hands of some other company that is watching you.

This is the relation where only trust counts. So perform your research and rush to the services which may not harm your page rankings and make your visibility much better is what you need.

As a customer, how can you protect yourself against fake, shill or sock puppet reviews? How can you research potential hosts without being influenced by falsified information? Below, we’ve put together a checklist for spotting fake reviews as well as some top tips for helping you to search and find genuine reviews.

Fake Reviews Checklist

-       Look for detail – fake reviews will lack detail because whoever’s writing them will likely have very little real experience of using the host. A proper review will include details such as uptime and customer service anecdotes.

-       Too Good To Be True? – no host is the perfect match for everyone all the time, so if a host comes across as too good to be true, you’re probably dealing with a shill reviewer. This is particularly obvious if there’s a whole list of 5-star reviews all saying identically positive things.

-       Verified reviews – the higher quality review sites will grade reviews according to whether they are ‘verified’. There are different ways to do this, but the most common is when the reviewer has to use an email address that comes from a domain hosted by the host they are reviewing.

-       The ‘look’ – fortunately, most sockpuppet reviews are pretty obvious – they just won’t look genuine and you’ll be able to spot them a mile off.

-       Marketing Speak – a genuine reviewer probably won’t use ‘marketing’ speak (for example, words and phrases like ‘guaranteed’ or ‘100% satisfaction’) when they describe a host, so look out for anything that looks as if it’s been written by the sale department.

-       Discount code or link – make sure to check where the reviewer links to in their write-up. If a link is broken or looks suspiciously like an affiliate link, you can probably disregard the review.

-       Timing – if a host has a long list of reviews on a certain site, check the timestamp; you might well find that all the reviews were posted within minutes of each other. Highly suspicious!

-       Single review reviewers – generally, the more reviews a reviewer has left on a site, the more trustworthy they become, particularly if these reviews have been given over a long period of time. However, bear in mind that many people will stick with a single host for years, so it might be difficult to get that kind of corroboration on a purely host review site.

-       Duplicate reviews – a neat little trick to check the validity of a host review is to copy and paste a section of it into google; if lots of direct matches come up, chances are this is either an automated review, or someone is being paid not very much to litter the web with positive feedback.

-       Extreme Stars – reviews of either 1 or 5 stars deserve more suspicion than anything in between. By no means disregard them completely, just be a bit more rigorous in checking their validity!

NB. Remember to look out for fake negative reviews as well. Some hosts and their affiliates aren’t above trying to make their competitors look bad to boost themselves up the rankings.

How To Search For and Find Genuine Reviews

Running through the above checklist every time you read a review can be a time-consuming business; the best way to avoid shills is to find a source of reviews that are trustworthy in the first place. But that’s easier said than done!

Generally speaking, the more detailed the better (but beware of unnecessary repetitions of product names); once you find a good source of well thought and detailed reviews, consider trying to add your own and see how many hoops you have to jump through to do so – the more the better!

This is a guest post from Lucy at Who Is Hosting This. They’re currently accepting Cirtex reviews.

The VPS advantage is the versatility in terms of performance and also the reduction of costs. This is a great way to get very strong hosting without having to spend a great deal of money in the process so it is a very sensible choice for people who want the kind of package that gives them plenty of freedom without a huge monthly bill.

When it comes to the benefits of Virtuozzo VPS hosting solutions, one thing is very clear: this is some of the most powerful software that has been made to date for those who want to be able to have high caliber hosting at an affordable price point. The reason is that no matter what kind of software a customer wants to use, they are going to be able to do it using Virtuozzo since it can handle a variety of different operating systems. With the powerful Parallels Plesk Control Panel, it is very easy to administrate a huge range of tasks and keep everything flowing on the server without having to know a great deal about all things related to server maintenance.

This means it makes a very good choice for those who are serious about getting things done the right way and finding a lot of solid solutions to their hosting needs in the process. Whether it’s Linux, Windows or even Mac based server software that a person wants to run they are going to be able to do it using Virtuozzo which is the heart of its core advantage to the average user. This is powerful stuff for the right kind of customer and those who can use the ability to do so much on one server can save themselves a whole lot of money by choosing the Virtuozzo VPS hosting packages that they can get for great prices these days.

Making a killing on the web with Virtuozzo is not hard to do and this is a lot of what attracts people to it. Some even sell hosting to others and rack up tidy profits if they have the ability to help people administer their own server and the knowledge to be able to sell those skills.

The web has expanded and traffic levels continue to grow. The tech side of things has brought cheaper software and hardware plus easier ways to get more bandwidth. This has created something of a perfect storm for those who are looking to be able to profit from the web and it means that virtual servers are becoming the next big wave of the future for the vast majority of those looking to have either a popular or profitable site on the web.

These days, people want more power, more flexibility and more bandwidth because they never know just how large their site could grow in a very short amount of time. They want to be able to see it earn and they want it to earn quickly. There are companies performing a huge variety of tasks to help web sites grow even faster than ever before and this, too, is helping them to be able to turn a profit a whole lot faster than ever before. Due to the way that people are interacting with the web it is essential to have a virtual server if you plan to run a great number of sites – a very common practice for the online entrepreneur of today.

In fact, many people have started out with shared hosting only to find that they needed to upgrade quickly in order not to cause problems for the slower sites that they were on shared hosting with. This has given a lot of freedom to those who are serious about making money these days through online methods.

It really does make sense to do what one can to bring in the most money and this is why so many people are turning to virtual servers. They need the flexibility, the power and the control over the way that their websites are handled. They also want to save the costs that would otherwise be blown on a full scale server of their own which is most likely far more than they need. Virtual servers are the perfect solution for most of those seeking quality web hosting today and many experts insist that it is likely to be this way for another decade, if not longer. The best solutions are the ones that fit your own needs, so look into virtual servers (also called VPS hosting) and see if it is what you need to get the work done that you are trying to do.