Dot IE (.ie) is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Ireland, and having one can benefit your Irish online business in a number of ways… but first, a bit of background.

What is a TLD

A TLD, or Top-Level Domain, is basically the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System that assigns human-readable addresses to specific resources on the internet.

Back in the formative years of computer networking individual computers were recognised by a unique number. Computers still use these complex number patterns to uniquely identify specific resources on the internet (they’re called IP addresses). But while computers have no problem with complex numeric addresses, as the internet grew people needed a much easier and more meaningful way to memorise locations on the network. The result is the Domain Name System that we know and love today.

In practice the TLD is the last portion of a fully qualified domain name like www.letshost.ie (where the TLD is .ie). Top level domains typically come in two “flavours” today — the generic or category level TLDs, which consist of three or more letters and include the popular .com, .net and .org domains; and country specific domains that typically (but with a few notable exceptions) consist of the two-letter ISO country code for that country.

Why choose a .ie domain for your business?

If you’re an Irish business, a business selling into Ireland or targeting a largely Irish audience, having a .ie domain makes sense for a number of reasons:

• Trust: it’s a small word, but one that’s invaluable to your online business. In common with many ccTLDs the IEDR, Ireland’s Domain Registry, requires individuals and business entities to meet certain criteria confirming their eligibility before they are allowed to register a .ie domain. Anyone from anywhere can pick up a generic .com, .net or .org, but there’s a widespread perception among Irish internet users that a .ie domain is somehow more intrinsically trustworthy.
• Instant local identity: any Irish internet user seeing a .ie domain immediately recognises that this is a business operating in Ireland, and knows instantly that the products, services or information outlined on the website are likely to be relevant to their particular needs. That can have a very positive impact on things like the number of people clicking through to your site from search engine results pages (SERPs), and helps to ensure that the traffic you do get is more targeted (i.e. interested in Irish products and services).
• Improved local search visibility: a .ie ccTLD will help search engines to determine that your site is Irish, and is likely to be of interest to internet users looking for Irish content. It is one of the factors that search engines use to deliver more relevant local search results to their customers, lending more weight to .ie pages in Irish search results, which again drives more targeted search engine traffic to your website.

As an approved .ie reseller, LetsHost can manage all of your .ie domain needs. Coupled with one of the most comprehensive, feature-rich and reliable hosting solutions in Ireland today, we offer the perfect package for all your Irish domain registration and hosting needs.

Your LetsHost hosting account gives you as many e-mail addresses as you’re ever likely to need, but how do you create a new e-mail address and then configure your desktop e-mail client to collect mail form it? Let’s take a look.

Creating a new e-mail address

Creating a new e-mail address in your LetsHost hosting account is very straightforward:

1. Log in to your letshost control panel (typically accessed through http://cpanel.yourdomain.com, where “yourdomain.com” is the primary domain associated with your LetsHost web hosting account).
2. Under “Mail”, click “E-Mail Accounts”.
3. In the text box before the @ symbol type the name you’d like to use for the new e-mail account
4. In the dropdown selection box after the @ symbol select the domain you’d like the new e-mail address assigned to (if you only have one domain registered it will default to that)
5. Type and confirm a password for your new e-mail account (or click the button to generate a random password)
6. Set a storage quota for your new mailbox… (default is 250MB, or check “unlimited” if you’d rather)
7. Click “Create Account”

That’s it… your new e-mail account will be created and will appear in the list of e-mail addresses immediately below the “create account” form.

Configuring your e-mail software

Your LetsHost hosting account offers the option of auto-configuring the popular Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail software for Microsoft Windows operating systems, and the Mac Mail software that’s bundled with MacOSx.

To access the autoconfigure option simply find your new e-mail address in the e-mail account list and click on the “more” button. You’ll see options for accessing web-mail for the account (allowing you to check and manage your e-mail through your web browser) or to configure your desktop e-mail client. Choose “configure e-mail client”. You’ll be taken to a page explaining the different auto-configure options, with links to launch the relevant software to configure your e-mail client to work with your new account.

If you use different e-mail software, or would prefer to configure your e-mail client manually, you’ll find all of the relevant information listed under the “Manual Settings” heading. Setting up e-mail accounts on different mail clients will vary slightly, but broadly follows a standard process that will look something like this:

1. Launch your e-mail software and select the menu option to create a new account
2. Enter your name, your e-mail user name (in the form youre-mail+yourdomain.com — replacing the @ of your e-mail address with a +)
3. Enter the password you chose when creating your e-mail account
4. Enter the incoming and outgoing mail server settings as outlined under “manual settings” on the “configure e-mail client” page in the LetsHost Control Panel
5. Save your new account settings

Once you’ve saved the account details you’re ready to send and receive e-mail from/to your brand new e-mail address.

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You’ve got your hosting account, you’ve got your blog or website up and running… now what?

Well, if you want people to visit your site, you’re going to have to let them know it’s there. Whether you’re using your LetsHost account to host your personal blog or as the hub of your online retail empire, if you want to attract the right people to it then you’re going to have to promote it. Here are five basic pointers on how you can start to drive more quality, targeted traffic to your website.

1. Do your homework: before you do any sort of online promotion (and in most cases before you even build your website) it makes good sense to spend some time researching your potential audience. Who are they, how do they use the internet, what are they looking for online, and does your site deliver?
2. Search engines are your new best friend: despite the burgeoning popularity of social media websites, and their undoubted potential for sending online visitors your way, for the vast majority of businesses the best source of qualified web traffic will be major search engines (especially Google). Make it easy for search engines to find and index your site correctly. Google has a great SEO Starter Guide that outlines the basics of search optimisation best practice.
3. Concentrate on quality content: ultimately the success of any website hinges on content that a) ranks highly for relevant search terms in search engine results pages (SERPs), and b) delivers what the visitor is looking for once they arrive on the page. Think carefully about your content, what search terms you want each individual page to rank for, and what your visitors are going to be looking for when they arrive… then make sure it delivers.
4. Spread the word, online and off: how many e-mails do you send out in a typical week… quite a few, probably. Now, how many of those e-mails have a clickable link to your website prominently displayed at the foot of the message. Set up an e-mail signature to make sure a link to your website goes out with every e-mail you send. Likewise, make sure every piece of business stationary, from your letterhead and business card to your off-line marketing collateral, company vehicles and signage, all feature your web address.
5. Engage with your audience: we mentioned social media sites briefly, and they’re certainly a great way to tap in to what your customers are talking about online. They’re also a fantastic way to build your reputation as a helpful and authoritative source of  information in your field of expertise. Engage productively with the relevant online communities… wherever your customers congregate online… and before long people will start to see you as the “go-to” person when it comes to the products or services you provide.

We’ve barely managed to scratch the surface of the wonderful world of online marketing here… but look out for future articles where we’ll be delving into specific digital marketing topics in a bit more detail.

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Your data is an incredibly valuable commodity. Whether you’re talking about your personal e-mail, photo library and documents stored on your laptop’s hard drive, a business critical database that stores your customer information or the files and associated databases sitting on your LetsHost web server, making sure that your data is safe and secure is crucial.

Modern digital storage media are, by and large, very reliable and robust, but occasionally things can go wrong, so it pays to take regular backups of your most important files.

How do I make a backup

That depends on what you want to back up, and where you want to back up to. Here’s a brief run down of some common backup scenarios.

1. Backing up your PC

Most modern operating systems, including recent flavours of Windows, Mac OSX and popular desktop Linux distributions, come with file backup options built in. There are also plenty of free and paid third party backup solutions… take your pick.

While the interfaces for individual backup products vary, the process is broadly similar:

• Select the files you want to back up and set a backup destination
• Run a manual backup / set an automated scheduled backup
• Keep the resulting backup files in a safe place
• Repeat frequently

If something bad happens, these programs normally let you restore a complete backup set, or choose the specific files that you’d like to recover.

2. Backing up your website(s)

Backing up a web server usually involves several steps:

• Select the files you want to back up
• Package the files into a single archive file (e.g .ZIP) on the remote server
• Download the resulting file to your local machine using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) or your CPanel file manager.
• If you use databases (like MySQL) on your server, you’ll need to remember to back those up separately.

That’s a fair amount of work, and requires some technical know-how, so here at LetsHost we’ve implemented a system that makes things much easier. Every LetsHost Complete Plan hosting customer has the industry leading R1Soft Continuous Data Protection enabled on their hosting account. The system automatically takes four daily snapshots of everything in your account (files and databases) and lets you selectively restore any of your data through a simple web-based interface. Just click on the “R1Soft Backup Restore” option from the “Files” menu in your control panel.

(NB. LetsHost provides the R1Soft service as a reliable and convenient backup / restore solution for its customers, but we still recommend that you keep independent local backups of your most important data)

3. Remote online backup services

Regular local backups are much better than no backups at all, but storing important data in the same physical location as the original files is fraught with risk. That’s where secure, automated online backup services like LetsHost’s brand new PC Backup service come into play.

PC Backup is a secure “set it and forget it” backup solution. For a small monthly fee (starting at just €20 for up to 50GB of storage) we’ll automatically keep your most valuable data secure by seamlessly encrypting it and copying it to your own remote storage account. You can relax, safe in the knowledge that LetsHost is looking after your critical data for you.

Make sure your vital business information is safe… examine your backup solution, and contact us for information on how PC Backup can help keep your data secure.

Recently, some users have contacted us regarding suspicious emails they have received. These emails appear to be a notification of an account change and ask you to click on a link to update your settings. These messages are NOT genuine. As LetsHost do not provide MS outlook online these emails can be ignored. However, clicking the links contained in these messages may you to a webpage that will install malware or virus software onto your computer.

According to posts from MXLab [1] and Symantec [2], this type of phishing email has been doing the rounds for last few months and has tricked thousands of people into installing malicious software onto their computers.

Possible subjects are :
A new settings file for the user@****.ie mailbox
The settings for the user@****.ie mailbox

The body of the email:

Dear user of the ****.ie mailing service!

We are informing you that because of the security upgrade of the mailing service your mailbox (user@b****.ie) settings were changed. In order to apply the new set of settings click on the following link:

hxxp://b****.ie/owa/service_directory/settings.php?email=andre@b****.ie=b****.ie=andre

Best regards, *****.ie Technical Support

Messages such as these are phishing emails sent out at random by a large global network of infected computers and servers called a botnet. The people who control these botnets send out huge volumes of spam and phishing emails in the hope that enough people will respond to make their efforts worthwhile.

Phishing emails will try to trick you into believing that they are from a trustworthy source and can be very convincing. Please be extremely suspicious of any unsolicited email you receive that asks you for sensitive information (such as your username and password) or asks you to download something onto your computer.

If you ever have any doubt whether an email you have received is genuinely from LetsHost, please email support@letshost.ie or call our technical support team at 01 653 5032 for confirmation.

You can prevent spam from being delivered to your account by enabling SpamAssassin in your CPanel. We also offer a dedicated Anti-Spam Service. This provides a comprehensive solution to email threats on the market today, at an extremely cost effective rate.

Resources:

[1] http://blog.mxlab.eu/2009/10/14/zbot-variant-masked-as-settings-file-for-ms-outlook/

[2] http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/personalized-patchupdate-spam-delivering-malware