The customer portal can be accessed by clicking the “Account Login” tab at the top of every page on the www.letshost.ie website.  Simply enter your email address and password (or click the “Forgot Password” for a reminder).  This will take you to the new Customer Portal.

Once you are logged in, you can manage every aspect of your account from 1 place.  Here is a list of the key features:

• Review, Manage, and Pay for all services related to your account, eg Domains, Hosting, VPS, PCBackup, etc.  You can now extend the period of renewal for all domains (except  fixed term domains such as .co.uk).
• Upgrade your services.  For example you can upgrade (or downgrade) the amount of memory in a VPS, or change the Plan your on, etc
• Activate an SMS message (we love this one!) from the Account Details section, to send a reminder if you ever forget to pay a bill.
• You can cancel any service or domain from the control panel without contacting our support department.
• Network Monitor.  This section of the website details a historical view of all service related issues, as well as displaying the current service status of all our shared hosting servers.
• We have brought all the LetsHost Announcements in to the Customer Portal.  This section is where will will announce new products and services, or changes to accounts, etc.
• We have integrated our Knowledgebase in to the Customer Portal.  All the most popular questions and answers have been added to this list, and you can now search for solutions and answers from this section of the Portal
• Open, review and close all your support requests.  we have integrated our billing system with the Customer Portal, and you can open a new support request, or review all your previous requests.
  • We will be further improving this service going forward, by asking that all customers log their support requests through the Customer Portal.  We will shortly remove the email support address.  This way we can direct your ticket to the appropriate departments, and ask some very brief questions to help us resolve your question as quickly as possible.  We often get emails that do not contain enough information for us to help, so asking customers to manage their support through the Portal will make our “first time fix” much more achievable.
• You can place new orders or check the status of any other orders on your account, all from the Customer Portal.
• We have a new “Bulk Domain Management” systems.  Some customers have a few hundred domains registered with us.  This new feature allows you to manage all domains (or a subset) at once.  This is a great time saver for anyone with more than a handful of domains.

As if that is not enough, there are literally hundreds of improvements and little extras that will improve your overall web hosting experience with LetsHost.  We hope you like the changes!  We understand there is a lot of new features and functions, and not everyone will use every one, but we have tried to make it all as simple as possible with the sole aim of improving our services to you.

We would love your feedback and comments of the new system. If you have any questions or feedback, why not try out the new support system and let us know – we’ll be delighted to hear from you.

Details below:

- Earn 25% upfront on any Web Hosting or Virtual Private Server (VPS) sale you send to LetsHost

- Referral cookie active on client machine for 90 days

- €25 minimum balance before withdrawal

- Pay outs available after 31 days of service purchase

- Activate via email to sales@letshost.ie or through your client area (Once logged in click ‘Affiliates’)

- Usage Sample:

http://www.letsho.st/shared/aff?aff=XXX (This links to our shared hosting plans)
http://www.letsho.st/vps/aff?aff=XXX (This links to our VPS plans)
http://www.letsho.st/aff?aff=XXX (This links directly to our homepage)

Key: XXX = your affiliate code

Terms and Conditions:

- Referral commissions are only valid on sales made from 31/08/2011 onwards

- Commissions not paid on Domain Registration, Site Builder, SSL certificates, Dedicated IP addresses, Anti Spam Service, Administrative Fees

- Commission is calculated on fee paid to LetsHost. If a coupon code of 30% is used on a purchase, you will receive 25% of 70% of the product value or in other words, 25% of the sale after any discounts are applied

We welcome any queries you have to sales@letshost.ie on our new affiliate program.

SSL stands for “Secure Sockets Layer.” Secure Sockets Layer is a protocol designed to enable applications to transmit information between each other securely. SSL is the most widely deployed security protocol used today. In today’s Internet focused world, we typically see SSL in use when a web browser needs to securely connect to a web server over the insecure Internet. For example, in the case of a browser, users are alerted to the presence of SSL when the browser displays a padlock. This is the key to the success of SSL, as the users know the site is valid and secure and it is an incredibly simple experience for end users.

How does SSL work?

SSL works by the sharing of encrypted keys, or passwords. The keys are created in pairs, one a public key and one a private key. When the keys are traded in a particular manner between two parties, this protocol assures the parties in communication they are transmitting with one another and not a hacker or phisher. It also assures the data being transmitted is not intercepted by someone else.

What happens when my web browser connects to a secure website? (SSL)

1. The browser requests that the web server identifies itself.

2. The server sends the browser a copy of its SSL cert.

3. The browser checks whether it trusts the SSL cert, and if it does it sends a message to the server.

4. The server sends back a digitally signed acknowledgement to start an SSL encryption session.

5. Encrypted data is now shared between the server and the browser.

SSL’s importance in E-commerce

When a customer visits a store they can see who they are dealing with. They can see the person and the product and make a decision on payment. When a customer visits your website they have no way of knowing who they are dealing with or who owns the ecommerce website from which they are about to buy. They are exposed to all the risks associated with sending data over the internet.

Using an SSL cert on your website enables a web browser (your customer) to communicate securely with your website and assures the customer of these three key issues:

1. That the website really is who it claims to be.

2. That credit card numbers, etc are encrypted and cannot be intercepted.

3. That the data sent and received cannot be tampered with or forged.

LetsHost.ie offer SSL certs from €89.99 + VAT per year. For more information on these GeoTrust SSL certs, please visit http://letshost.ie/hosting/packages/sslcert

Before we go into how you can use Facebook to promote your business, have a look at the following statistics:
- Facebook has more that 500 millions active users
- The average user has 130 friends
- The average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
- There are more than 250 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices
- People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook

What the above stats tell you is that there are a huge amount of people connected to Facebook, they spend alot of time on Facebook (both using a traditional computer and while on the move using their mobile devices) and they are connected to many businesses and events and share these with their friends.

So how can you get connected to all these potential customers? First step is to create your business page – this is free to do and you can start off with as little or as much content as you wish, adding in extra content whenever you want. You can then suggest this page to friends and other businesses and if they choose to ‘like’ your page, it will appear on their profile becoming automatically visible to all of their friends. They can then suggest your page to their friends and it continues like that.

The important part comes next – be active with your page. This can be with simple updates to your page, adding Facebook-exclusive promotional codes, creating events (such as a sale/promotion, open days, etc) or actively engaging with other Facebook users. Facebook users, and internet users in general, are fed such a huge amount of information constantly, it is important to be on their screen – ‘out of sight, of of mind!’

What if you have a website already – do you still need a Facebook page also? The answer is ‘yes!’ While your website can be a wealth of  information on your business, products and services you offer etc, this is often largely static content. Facebook, on the other hand, will have a certain amount of information on your business but its point is about being active – active and up to date content and information, getting in contact with customers, generating a buzz around your business. Also, there are more and more options to integrate your Facebook into your website so visitors can easily go from one to the other.

The above is only a introduction on what you can do on Facebook and, more importantly, what Facebook can do for your business. The above alone can generate interest in your business, awareness of the products/services you offer and ultimately bodies through the door and real sales at the end of the day. And that is before you consider spending a penny on paid advertising!

For more statistics on Facebook, please visit http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

To create your own page for free on Facebook, please visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?ref_type=sitefooter

However, the effectiveness of an advertising campaign is only as good as the ads.

A powerful ad is one of the most important aspects of your success. And, the secret to a successful ad is your HEADLINE. You only have a split second to grab your targets attention. Your potential customer will most likely scan the ads and only read one if it catches their attention. Write your ads with passion, excitement, and benefits.

When writing your headlines, keep in mind, you only have a few seconds to grab your potential customers’ attention. If your headline doesn’t immediately catch their attention, they’ll simply move on and never return.

Being able to advertise with Google is not at all complicated as new users should find the AdWords pay-per-click platform fairly easy to use.

Those who want to advertise with Google but are new to the world of internet marketing are often afraid of starting because they don’t exactly know what to do or what to expect.

The truth is, the Google AdWords pay-per-click advertising platform is fairly easy to use and can play a very crucial role to the success of any online business or internet marketing campaign

Placing ads on the social networking website Facebook is one of the best opportunities on the Internet for targeted advertising. Because Facebook users provide information about their age, gender, location and interests, you can target your ads directly to the demographic you want to reach.

Affiliate marketing is a form of online advertising where advertisers place campaigns with a potentially large number of small (and large) publishers, whom are only paid media fees when traffic to the advertiser is garnered, and usually upon a specific measurable campaign result (a form, a sale, a sign-up, etc.). Today, this is usually accomplished through contracting with an affiliate network.

There are 3 main types of Advertising Plan
– CPV (Cost Per Visitor) is where advertisers pay for the delivery of a Targeted Visitor to the advertisers website.
– CPV (Cost Per View) is when an advertiser pays for each unique user view of an advertisement or website (usually used with pop-ups, pop-unders and interstitial ads).
– CPC (Cost Per Click) is also known as Pay per click (PPC). Advertisers pay each time a user clicks on their listing and is redirected to their website. They do not actually pay for the listing, but only when the listing is clicked on. This system allows advertising specialists to refine searches and gain information about their market. Under the Pay per click pricing system, advertisers pay for the right to be listed under a series of target rich words that direct relevant traffic to their website, and pay only when someone clicks on their listing which links directly to their website. CPC differs from CPV in that each click is paid for regardless of whether the user makes it to the target site.

Error:
ns1.examplehost.com is not authoritative for zone example.ie. Your DNS change has been unsuccessful.
Please verify your DNS entry and try again. If you still get this error, please contact your hosting provider and ask them to set up DNS for your domain, and then try the change again.

What the above error is telling me is that a zone (or DNS record) does not exist for example.ie on the target nameservers. It is a requirement of all .ie domains that a zone exists on the target nameservers prior to actually making the change.

My next step is to contact the owners of the examplehost.com nameservers and request that
a zone be created for example.ie

How do I find out who owns the nameservers? If the nameserver itself is not a give away (dnsireland.com for Lethost nameservers) my first stop would be to go to do an Internet search for it. I could also do a WHOIS lookup on the domain by going to http://whois.domaintools.com and entering dnsireland.com. From the output I can see that this domain is registed by Letshost.

When contacting the owners of the nameservers I tell them the IP address of the server where my website and email are hosted.

e.g.: I have my website hosted with hostingprovider1.ie – IP: 1.2.3.4 <-- A record
I have my emails hosted with hostingprovider2.com - IP 2.4.6.8 <-- MX record

The information I forward on to the owners of examplehost.com is:

Hello,

Regards,
Johnny Customer

Once this zone is created for my domain I can then go back in to my client area and change the nameservers. The response I get this time is “Your DNS has been updated successfully !”

I wait about an hour for these changes to DNS to propagate and then check my site.
To my horror the site still displays a holding page or nothing at all! The reason for this is that changes to the nameservers of a .ie domain will only take effect after one of the IEDR reloads. These reloads occur at 10:00, 12:00, 17:00 & 22:00 7 days a week. For example if I changed my domains nameservers at 14:00 I would have to wait until the next IEDR reload at 17:00 before these changes would take effect.

With .ie domains you have virtually no cybersquatting, less cybercrime and minimal poaching of domains.  You get Higher Search Engine Rating with .ie domains and greater Security.

Registration is Simple. If the domain is for Business use, all you need to provide is an RBN/CRO or Registered VAT Number. If you dont have any of these, dont worry, you can provide a letter from your Bank Manager Solicitor or Accountant confirming you are a Sole Trader along with a document from yourself outlining your connection to the domain.

If the domain is for Personal use, all you need to do is send in a document outlining what the domain name means and what it will be used for along with a copy of your Passport or Driving Licence.

Following the IEDRs announcement of registering the 150,000^th .ie domain, they have launched why.ie, a site detailing further why to go .ie. Please visit https://www.why.ie/ for more information.

For detailed information/examples of the IEDR registration policy, please visit http://www.letshost.ie/domains/domain_irish_domain_names.php

E-mail from LetsHost is straightforward to set up, easy to use, and with a few simple maintenance steps management is a breeze.

Keeping your e-mail accounts healthy

• Keep an eye on space: check your e-mail accounts, regularly. If you have quotas set up for particular accounts, ensure that none of your mailboxes are full or approaching capacity. If they are download or delete mail to free up space.
• Clear up your “catch-all”: if you use a default address for undelivered mail on your domains (often dubbed a catch-all address) check it regularly for legitimate undelivered mail (miss-spelled e-mail addresses and the like) and delete any spam.

• Monitor spam tools: BoxTrapper and SpamAssassin, both of which come as standard on your LetsHost Complete Irish Hosting Plan, are  very powerful tools for managing the incessant flow of junk mail into your accounts. It’s important to monitor your spam management tool of choice regularly to make sure all of your legitimate e-mail is being white-listed and delivered correctly.
• Remove unused / unnecessary accounts: we’ve all done it… left “dormant” e-mail accounts sitting on our servers when they’re well past their sell-by date. They not only take up space on your server, they also add to clutter in your e-mail control panel, making maintenance of your active accounts less efficient.
• Check your forwarders and filters: your hosting account offers comprehensive filtering and mail forwarding features to help you manage the delivery of your incoming mail. In some respects these are “set them and forget them” rules… but it pays to check them regularly to make sure they’re still up to date, and that all of your mail is being delivered to the right place.

Your LetsHost e-mail is a powerful, versatile and cost effective communications tool. With just a little bit of e-mail account maintenance you can keep it efficient and effective.

There’s storage to think about, monthly bandwidth, domain registration, e-mail, databases, online applications and scripts, website builders and much more.

Here at LetsHost we pride ourselves on having some of the best web hosting support in the business… but what about supporting people who aren’t yet LetsHost customers?

We decided it was time to take the pain out of choosing the perfect Irish web hosting plan.

Just click on the banner, answer a few simple questions about what you want from your Irish web hosting plan, fill in your contact details and one of our friendly team of web hosting experts will get in touch via your preferred contact method (phone or e-mail) for a chat.

They’ll talk you through everything, and once they have a clear idea of exactly what you need, they’ll advise you on the ideal hosting solution for your needs.

LetsHost offers a wide range of hosting and domain management solutions specifically tailored to deliver outstanding value and performance to Irish website owners. From shared hosting for home users and hobbyists to high-performance dedicated servers for large business clients and high-volume e-commerce systems, we have all your Irish hosting needs covered.

So click on the banner, and let us help you pick the ideal Irish hosting solution today!

- Coppermine Photo Gallery: 1.4.26 -> 1.5.6
- Joomla 1.5: 1.5.17 -> 1.5.20
- Moodle: 1.9.8 -> 1.9.9
- Soholaunch Pro Edition: 4.9.3 r17 -> 4.9.3 r41
- TikiWiki: 4.1 -> 4.3
- WordPress: 2.9.2 -> 3.0
- Zen Cart: 1.3.9b -> 1.3.9d

These updated scripts are available immediately on all shared server accounts. You can install or update your current software installation from your control panel.

Fantastico, for those who have not used it, is a great tool that allows you to automatically install or update many of the most popular open source scripts.  For example, if you want a shopping cart on your website, you have the choice of many scripts, including osCommerce or Zen-Cart.  For blogs, we have Word Press, Drupal and many more.  Simply log in to your control panel, and select Fantastico.  You are then presented with the range of scripts available, and with a few click your software is fully installed and working.