LetsHost is currently seeking applications for a technical support position.

Role

- Dealing with front line customer technical queries via email & phone
- Answering support tickets and ensuring customer satisfaction
- Some out of hours / weekend work may be required (rota)
- Position is based out of our Galway office

Skills required:

- Excellent phone manner / writing skills
- Knowledge of desktop email systems – Outlook, Outlook Express, etc
- Knowledge of Linux, DNS, Email systems
- Understanding of network technologies – TCP/IP, DNS, etc
- Excellent troubleshooting and diagnostic skills
- Must be flexible and dependable
- Have a qualification in I.T, Computer science or another IT related course

Salary / Terms negotiable dependant on experience / knowledge

A cover letter and detailed CV with list of references should be emailed to jobs@letshost.ie

LetsHost is an equal opportunities employer

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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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

Data backup is a standard for most web hosting environments, but what about the important files, and data located on your home and business computers? Desktop data backup is so frequently overlooked that data loss from personal and business computers is becoming more common each day. Desktop data loss does not, however, have to be a problem.

LetsHost will soon be rolling out a new service for customers in the form of full-fledged, secure desktop data backup. Rather than using traditional media like tape drives, compact discs, DVD-Rs and at-home external hard drives, the new service from LetsHost stores data automatically, securely and on a 24 hour per day basis. A simple Internet connection is all that is necessary to upload and access stored backups and data are compressed and encrypted prior to leaving your local computer.

The data backup system uses a standard client/server relationship that allows remote access via a password-protected account. Even better, there is no need to upload ALL of your data each time you wish to make a backup. Upload all of your data one time and each time you upload in the future only the files that have changed will be uploaded. Decreased upload times result in a more efficient transfer process and free up bandwidth for other online applications.

To make sure that data are properly secured and protected, LetsHost uses only Dell servers, Dell routers and engages a backup network that is built around the utmost level of performance and reliability. Multiple data center locations ensure redundancy and secure against natural disaster in a manner that a single location cannot. The result is a desktop data back service that is second to none, fully secure, easy to use and that offers the peace of mind that individuals and businesses have come to expect from LetsHost.

A profile of LetsHost appeared in the Irish Times on Friday 16th January.

You can read the article by clicking here or read below:

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UNDER THE RADAR: Peter Cluskey interviews Daragh MacLoughlin, Letshost.ie

WHEN YOU’RE a newcomer entering an established market you need to make an immediate impact. That’s what Daragh MacLoughlin did with Letshost.ie in 2005 – charging just half the price of his competitors for an .ie domain name.

“We were firmly convinced that prices were too high,” recalls MacLoughlin (25). “The day we started the business, the average price for an .ie domain name was €85 plus VAT, so we entered the market at €42.99.

“Since then, prices have continued to fall and we’ve maintained that strategy of keeping our margin low with the aim of generating more business. The average price today is between €25 and €30 – and we’re at €19.99.”

It’s not hard to see why MacLoughlin, an IT graduate of NUI Galway, takes his business inspiration from Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary.

“There was a small number of companies controlling the shared hosting market when we entered it. We took the view that their prices were unnecessarily high and their products unnecessarily technical – and that’s where we saw our opportunity.

“I realise that when people see low prices they tend to believe that the quality will be lower as well, but that’s not necessarily the case at all. We set out to prove that we could be highly competitive and offer an excellent service as well.”

That strategy has worked. From a handful of customers in 2005, they now have a client base of 13,000 and manage 17,500 internet domains, roughly evenly divided between home-users and businesses.

Turnover has grown as a result, from just €250,000 in their first year to €700,000 in 2007 and €1.2 million in 2008.

Letshost.ie won the recognition of the industry and its peers last year when it was presented with the IE Domain Registry (IEDR) Achievement Award by Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan, for its work to promote the .ie brand.

And to combat the effects of the economic downturn, MacLoughlin and his business partner, Graeme Conkie, have decided to expand beyond the shared hosting market into dedicated server hosting – a move they believe will boost turnover to over €2 million for 2009.

Essentially, whereas shared hosting means there is one web server used by many different clients, with dedicated server hosting – the higher end of the market – each website has its own dedicated server.

“When we set up, we used servers located in the US to save costs,” he says. “Now we have that infrastructure in Ireland and in the next six months we’ll launch an additional new dedicated server-hosting service that we believe has the potential to generate a multiple of the income we make from shared hosting – though, of course, there are additional costs too.”

Letshost.ie is essentially an .ie domain reseller. It buys its domain names from the IE Domain Registry, a not-for-profit company which acts as a trustee for .ie domain names on behalf of the Irish internet community and manages the .ie country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) name space.

Since last year IEDR has been overseen by the communications regulator, ComReg.

“The job of the IE Domain Registry is to ensure that the quality of the .ie brand is not compromised,” MacLoughlin says. “It has done that very successfully and that makes .ie addresses attractive to buy and very trouble-free to use – which makes our job easier.

“I like to think of .ie domain names as the friendly face of Ireland on the internet. It’s like flying with Aer Lingus years ago, when you always got a friendly smile as you got on to the plane.

“There are less hijacking attempts and you hardly get spam from an .ie address. In fact, a review of different internet country codes last year by the online security company, McAfee, showed that .ie was the second- safest address in the world after Finland.”

We would like to wish all our customers a very Happy New Year, and to thank you for your continued business.

We are delighted to have launched our new web site to coincide with the New Year. There may be once or 2 small issues with the new site and will resolve these as quickly as possible. We would welcome any feedback on our new site.

LetsHost will be launching some exciting new features and services over the coming weeks, and we alway welcome your feedback and suggestions on how we can improve our services to you.

As a webmaster it is vital your new website gets the exposure it deserves. This is where Google’s set of webmaster tools can help. You can access these tools at the following link: www.google.com/webmasters/ Google have also put together a video on these tools – see below:

There was a time, not too long ago, when those choosing Unix- or Linux-based web servers had to understand kernels, secure shell and command line in order to manage their websites, or pay someone to manage the sites for them. At the time, Microsoft offered an easier and more…well “Windows-like” experience with their IIS web server. Those familiar with Windows computing could generally learn IIS by tooling around the software for a bit and the familiar Windows operating system made learning fairly easy. Unix/Linux, by comparison, was the purview of techies, hackers and code-slingers who tapped away furiously on their keyboards and eschewed their mice as “tools of the ignorant.” For the small business owner on a budget, the expense of Windows and the knowledge requirements of Unix/Linux offered a dilemma.

In Steps the Control Panel, aka “Hosting Automation”

Luckily for the owners of about 80 million websites (and their web hosting companies) interacting with websites hosted in a Linux/Apache environment got a whole lot easier with the advent of the “control panel,” a software package meant to be installed along with the web server software and used by users to more easily manage their sites. cPanel, now the de facto standard in this arena,

So, what exactly is cPanel?

“ According to the company itself, cPanel is a fully featured web-based control panel that allows you to manage your domain through a web interface. The idea is to transfer as much of the control and responsibility of managing your web site to you. You have the ability to manage all aspects of e-mail, files, backup, FTP, CGI scripts, and web site statistics. ”

So, while old-school programmers and the technophiles of the world will likely continue tapping away at their keyboards, the rest of the website-owning world can take a very different approach to website management. For all intents and purposes, the cPanel management console looks like the online account one would have with an online merchant, their bank or a domain registrar, though with significantly more options:

E-Mail

Users can manage their e-mail accounts in a variety of ways, including setting up new mail accounts, setting up spam filters, managing mailing lists and creating forwarders and auto responders.

Files (Web Pages, et al)

Users can use the “Files” section of cPanel to create backups manually, create backup schedules that run automatically, monitor disk usage and create and manage FTP accounts.

Logs

Users of cPanel can view raw log files or utilise one of the several log analyser files that are bundled with the control panel software.

Security

Security options include password protection of directories and files, managing IP denials, protecting against hotlinks to images and managing SSL and SSH access.

In addition to those noted options noted above, cPanel also has a “Software/Services” option that allows users to interact with third party software, including bulletin boards, blogs, shopping carts, search marketing programs and WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) HTML editors. Finally, an “Advanced” section helps more advanced users with Apache handlers, error pages, cron jobs, and a variety of other useful tools for website management. In short, the difficulty of managing a website is a thing of the seemingly distant past, and website management has been brought successfully into the hands of site owners.