There are literally hundreds of thousands of web pages online about Google, many of them noting the various specifications and variables that the search behemoth utilises in the process of ranking websites for user searches. That ranking mechanism is known as the Google “algorithm” and it takes into account such a myriad of factors that to view a representation of the algorithm in the form of a mathematical equation is mind-boggling.

The average webmaster knows many of the variables, of course, which include on-page factors like titles, meta descriptions, tags and attributes that are used in HTML coding, etc., as well as off-page factors like incoming links, among others.

What many don’t know, however, are some of the technical variables that Google utilises in the process of ranking websites. Did you know, for example, that Google knows what IP your site is hosted on and either discounts or favours incoming links from sites hosted on other IPs? Or that Google knows the length of your domain registration period and will typically remove sites from its ranking “sandbox” more quickly if the domain is registered for more than one year?

Perhaps even more important is the fact that Google will give added weight to a top level domain’s country-specific extension – like .ie – when a geography-specific search is conducted by a user, or if the user himself is located in that specific geographic area. For example, if you own a services business and are located in Ireland, it is quite likely that most or all of your clients will also be located in Ireland. When those potential customers do a search for “Dublin web design services” (for example), your site, with its .ie extension, will perform better in Google (www.google.ie AND www.google.com) than a site with a more generic domain extension like .com, .net or .org.

Likewise, Google even takes into account WHERE your site is hosted. Remember those IPs? Well, they are distributed in a specific manner so that Google knows where a given IP is actually located – this is indicated by the web hosting company that has access to the IPs. An Ireland-based web hosting company, for example, will use IPs that are known by Google to be “located” in Ireland. As part of the aforementioned algorithm, Google will give more weight to a site that is hosted in a given country when geography-specific searches are indicated and when users in that country are conducting a particular search.

What this means is that if you intend on targeting clientele located in Ireland, the best approach from a domain registration and hosting perspective is to use the .ie extension and to host in Ireland. In the long run, the benefits to your business will be well worth it.

If you’ve registered a domain name, have your hosting account, and are now ready to take the next big step in creating your first website, there are some important questions that you’ll have to answer first. You likely already know what the site will be about, but the important question then focuses on what you’d like to accomplish with the website.  Perhaps the site’s purpose is to provide information to interested visitors, or to sell a produce or service. Other possibilities are that the site is designed to collect information from targeted visitors, or merely serve as an online “business card” for your company. Whatever the case, getting your site online and functioning properly depends on what you’d like to accomplish with the site. Here are some things to consider when putting together a successful website: 

• Design: Design is an important element to the success of any website. There are many programs available that make designing a web page simple, even for those with no coding or HTML experience. Another alternative is to have a professional design the site, but it can come in handy to know how to perform basic design functions on your own, especially when it’s time to make updates to the site. 
• Navigation: Above all else, and regardless of what your site is designed to do, it’s important that visitors can easily navigate from one page to another in your site. Make navigation simple and easy to find. Use large text if you can and repeat links to important pages where people expect to find them, i.e. – in the footer, left or right sidebar and/or in the header (top) of the site’s pages. 
• Forms: If you’ll provide a product or service, or collect information from visitors, you’ll need a web form (or forms) to make submission of information (like a quote request or contact form) as easy as possible. A coding language known as “PHP” is a standard for forms like this, as well as for much more complex online applications, and there are both free tools and tutorials online as well as a great number of experienced PHP coders who will be able to help you put together simple forms. 
• Promotion: No matter how good your website looks, and how well your navigation and forms are coded, it won’t matter if no one actually visits the site. Search Engine Optimisation, often referred to as “SEO,” is the lifeblood of many small businesses, and getting a handle on the basics prior to launching your website can be a big bonus in driving visitors. Pay-per-click (PPC) services like Google Adwords are another option, and allow you to target specific keyword phrases applicable to your product or services.

 If you’re in the process of putting together your first website, it’s important to consider all aspects of the design and function first, prior to designing and launching the site. When getting started, first consider the key elements, noted above, to ensure your success.

There are a variety of free methods of placing one’s business online, including free hosting accounts that feature “semi-custom” domains, social networking websites, and advertising options that will provide potential customers with your business’s location and contact information (but little else). Though these options are noted as “free,” they come with costs. They can detract from the professionalism of your business and possibly create a negative impression in the minds of potential clients who may view your operation as unprofessional. And this might ultimately cost your business in the long run.

With inexpensive domain registration and hosting options that are now available to the small business owner, there is no reason to continue utilising these so-called free tools as the sole means of promoting your business online. Rather, the savvy business owner who doesn’t already have a domain and website can take advantage of the simple yet powerful and inexpensive combination of a custom domain and shared virtual hosting account.

Here are some of the distinct advantages that this approach offers:

• True ownership and control of your domain – your site will be located at an easy-to-remember domain like www.yourcompany.ie or www.yourcompany.com rather than www.generic-site.com/yourcompany.
• Portability – You can take your domain with you to any hosting account, but when you use a free hosting provider without a custom domain, you’re stuck with keeping your site on their servers.
• Brand Building – customers will remember your domain and likely bookmark it or just type it into their browser to visit your site once they’ve been there once.
• Professionalism – having a site hosted by a free service provider, without a custom domain, appears amateurish by any standard and will impart a negative impression to your site’s visitors.
• Value – Companies have sold for much more than their financials would indicate, based solely on the value of their online company’s associated domain.
• Search Engine Optimisation – Search engines are the lifeblood of many online businesses, and engines like Google, Yahoo!, etc. give more credence to top level domains (TLDs) than to sub-directories and sub-domains (sites hosted on free accounts are typically provided as sub-directories or sub-domains).

With prices of only €19.99 + VAT for .ie domains, €5.95 for “.com” and other top level domains, and web hosting for as low as €3.95 per month, Lets Host is a low-priced, reliable provider of business services for those wishing to promote their businesses online. Visit LetsHost to register your domain today.

DNS or the “Domain Name System” is the largest distributed database in the world today. It is a directory service for the internet that converts memorable hostnames such as http://www.letshost.ie/ into IP addresses which networking equipment use for directing/routing requests for information. Without DNS, the Internet as we know it would not function. Example of DNS in practise:A home user’s PC will query its ISP’s (Eircom broadband, Smart telecom etc) cache of a DNS record when trying to access an online resource such as a website. If the ISP has a cached record of a domain name it will provide the result to the requesting PC (through an internet browser for example) and from there the online resource will be located and presented. If you have changed DNS on a domain recently (typically when transferring hosts) this cache may be outdated and can take up to 24 hours to update. This scenario is when most people will encounter DNS for the first time (unfortunately in an often negative light!)DNS records are made up of various components but the most widely known elements are:

A record: This maps a hostname to a 32bit IPv4 address

AAA record: This maps a hostname to a 128bit IPv6 address (this is becoming more popular as we run out of IPv4 addresses and move towards IPv6)MX record: A mail exchange record – this maps mail servers for a domain nameTXT record: A record reserved for human readable text which is used mostly for the Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
At LetsHost, we can take care of all DNS matters for you such that you should never have to worry about their configuration, but we do provide free facilities to manage your name servers and the DNS zone file if required. If you have any queries on your DNS records or DNS setup please open a ticket with our support department and we can assist further.

All Letshost hosting customers have access to fantastico deluxe through their CPanel. Fantastico is an application for installing 3^rd party scripts such as blogs, forums and content management systems. There are several reasons why we advise clients wishing to install a package that is listed in Fantastico to do it through Fantastico rather than by uploading the files directly.These are:

Speed – Fantastico will install your application with the minimum of effort by creating all databases and removing any installation directories.

Security – Fantastico will assign all the correct permissions to your new application such that no security holes are left open.

Updates – As soon as stable releases of updated applications are released, Fantastico will issue an email to notify you of this. It will also allow you to upgrade using the Fantastico interface and without getting stuck into editing complex files which may be outside your field of expertise. Keeping your applications up to date means better performance, ongoing support from the application provider and increased security.

More information on Fantastico and the applications it can install can be found by logging into your Cpanel and accessing it directly from this location.

Every LetsHost “Complete” plan allows up to 5 additional domains to be hosted in addition to the primary domain.

An addon domain is a domain name that that points to a subdirectory within your account. For example, you may set up “mynewdomain.com” to point to “myfirstdomain.com/mynewdomain.com/”.

The add-on domain will look completely independent to the outside world with no means for anyone to know that this is running on your main account under another site.

Addon domains must be pre-registered domain names that you own and must be configured to point to the LetsHsot name servers in order to work. If you purchase your domain names via ourselves, we take care of this for you.

You can access this function by selecting the “Add-On Domains” option from your control panel.

Quite often we come across individuals wanting to register an IE domain name but are of the belief they must have a registered business to achieve this. This is not the case. The bottom line for IE domain registration is:

You must provide information to connect yourself with the domain you require. The information required and what format this is to be provided in depends on the domain holder, for example a registered company, individual, group or sole trader.

In the case of you being an individual and wanting to register a domain for personal use only you will need to provide a fax or a signed scan with the following information (running from the example of a domain “soccer-results.ie”

- Who you are

Outline who you are and why you would have a connection to this domain name. In this case explain you are a football fan with an active interest in the sport.

- What the domain is and what the site will be used for

Outline the general concept of the site keeping in mind it cannot be seen to be a business venture.

- Why you choose this name over another

Explain the relevancy of this domain to your idea and why you didn’t choose a different name over this.

- Show evidence that you have invested significant time and effort into the domain

Provide a mock-up of a logo, screen shot of the website or anything which shows you have actively worked to use this name for your website.

The overall submission does not have to be too long in length with 10-15 lines usually sufficing. Once you have this complete, contact a member of Letshost’s sales team for more information on submitting this information with your IE domain application.

At various times of the year we have our clients contact us regarding a bogus letter they receive in the post relating to some / all of their domain names. The letter hints at the need to renew a domain name with an organisation other than Letshost. This organisation is known as the domain registry of America or DROA for short.

The process actually involves transferring the domain away from Letshost for an increased fee and loosing use of the services we provide.

Please note Letshost does not issue renewal notices via post and only issues such renewal notices via email. All emails from Letshost relating to renewals will contain your unique client number.

All customer of Letshost are encouraged to ignore such postal items but if in doubt to contact us through support and confirm your suspicions on any mailings you receive.

LetsHost have launched a new website which is designed to give customers details of any service affecting issues or planned maintnenance.

The new website can be found at www.letshoststatus.com and will be updated in the event of any issues or problems arising with any of the LetsHost services.

www.letshoststatus.com is hosted in a different location to the rest of our servers and uses different name servers, etc to separate it from all other LetsHost services. In the event of any major systems outage or problem, this will be our primary communications method.

Please contact our support department by email or live chat for any questions in relation to this.

Moving your web hosting company can be an intimidating process. You may have decided to move from an existing hosted solution (eg. blogger, wordpress.com, etc…) to the freedom that self-hosting brings, or you may have outgrown your current hosting provider in terms of capacity, or if the levels of support and service are not what you expect. Whatever your reason, the thought of moving might seem quite overwhelming. Thankfully, at LetsHost, transferring your website is not as hard as it may seem. We thought it might be helpful to provide a guide. Although this can’t possibly cover all options, we will at least give you a general idea of what is involved in migrating to LetsHost.

Step 1: Plan
Give yourself at least a week, preferably two, for everything to happen. If you are switching hosting providers and nearing the end of your current contract, the sooner you get started the better. You do not want to start two or three days before your contract expires and face billing issues or a suspended account. Take your time and give the whole process at least two weeks. Do not inform your current host you are moving at this stage.
Review this overview and base your plan on how long it will realistically take you, factoring in worst-case scenarios.

Step 2: Backup
You should always have a full backup copy of your site on a local computer. If you don’t, please get a copy of your site now. You probably used an FTP client to upload the original website files to your current providers webserver. If not Filezilla or SmartFTP are excellent free FTP clients. Using the FTP client software, download a copy of your entire site so you have it available.

If you use databases like MySQL, you will also need to backup your database. This can usually be done through your old webhost’s control panel. There are usually a variety of ways to do this, depending on what control panel your current provider uses or on the website scripts you have installed. Wordpress, for example, has a plug-in that will look after the database backup for you

If you use phpMyAdmin, you should log in to that on the web server. Once logged in:

1. Select “Databases”
2. Click the name of your database
3. Click the “Export” tab
4. Choose “Select All” from the left column
5. Make sure the “SQL” button is selected; also check: Structure, ‘Add DROP TABLE’, ‘Add AUTO_INCREMENT’ and ‘Enclose table and field names with backquotes’
6. Make sure the “Data” box is checked, but leave the checkboxes inside unchecked.
7. Check “Save file as” and leave the default choice
8. Check “None” for compression
9. Click “Go” and save the file to your computer. Then check “zipped” (or gzipped/bzipped if you prefer) and click “Go”again.
10. You should now have two backups.

Step 3: Upload to LetsHost
Once you have received your Welcome email from LetsHost, you will find a link to allow you to access your control panel using the IP address. Connect to this IP address using your favourite FTP software, and upload your backup copy of your files to the LetsHost web servers. If you are using a new domain name, make sure all of the internal links in your scripts are changed to point to the new domain. If you are keeping your domain, your internal links should be fine.
Next, if you have a database, you can recreate the database using the mySQL option in your control panel. Restore your database by logging on to your control panel using the IP address link provided in your welcome email. Make sure your links to the database are changed to match the ones in any configuration files. You may need to check the documentation for the CMS you use, or you can ask us to assist you.

To restore using phpMyAdmin:

1. Logon to your new server (link provided in your welcome email)
2. Click the “Import” tab
3. In the following “Location of Text File” screen, choose “Browse” and choose your backup
4. Double-check that the “SQL” box is checked
5. Click “Go”. Go get some fresh air, or have a cigarette
6. After a bit of time, you will see a success screen. You are done.

Be sure to double check your .htaccess file to make sure it is up to date and correct. Again LetsHost staff will be more than happy to help you here. Once you feel confident that everything is working as it should, move on to the next step.

Step 4: Recreate your Email Accounts at your new host
Set up all existing email accounts at the new host. This is done through your control panel. Any forwarders, aliases or auto-responders you had set up on the old host need to be set up on the LetsHost control panel. Set up your “catch-all” account if needed to capture all non routed emails. Once your DNS change has gone through your account will immediately receive mail to the correct email addresses.

Step 5: Update your DNS Records
If your domain name is new or you are keeping the same name, this step is the same. Go to your current registrars site, log into the control panel. Look for “Nameserver” or “DNS” and plug in the Primary and Secondary nameserver information you received in your welcome email. In theory it should take about 48 hours for your DNS records to propagate, in reality it takes much less time than this.
Check the email at both the old server and new server while this change is happening. It is possible some mail is going to both, separately.

Step 6: Cancel your Old Account
Once you feel confident the change has taken place, you can go ahead and cancel your old account. Your site has been available to the non-updated DNS servers, now that they are updated you no longer need two versions of your site out there.

Step 7: Enjoy your new hosting service at LetsHost
You are done. Hopefully everything went smoothly. If you have any problems, concerns or issues, please contact any of our support staff by email, live chat or by phone – we are always here to help and assist in any way we can.