Sometimes customers will stop using a particular email address, or their mailbox can fill up, or simply not review it as much as they used to.  For these reasons, sometimes our invoices and reminders go un-noticed, and their service will stop running as a result of non payment.

Now, with our new SMS service, we have opened up a whole new communications channel.  To register for this service, simply log in to the Customer Portal from www.letshost.ie, and go to “My Details”.  At the bottom of the page, you can check the box, activating the SMS service, and enter your elected mobile phone number (Irish numbers only).  Best of all – its Free!

When a bill becomes due for payment, we will send a single SMS message to your phone detailing the amouunt and due date.  We will only ever send a single SMS message for each service on each billing cycle, and never for any marketing or sales messages.  You can unsubscribe at any time by simply unching the register box.

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.

Specifically the IP (Internet Protocol) is responsible for the route this traffic takes from source to destination. An IP address is a unique Identifing number of any device on the internet and consists of 32 bits. This means that in theory there should be in excess of 4 billion address but for various reasons (NAT!!) nearly half a billion of these are unusable on the internet.

In 1991 the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) realised that the current IPv4 was reaching the end of its lifetime. It became clear that there were not enough IP addresses to go around and with the growing popularity of mobile devices the rate exhaustion of these addresses began to grow exponentially.

To counteract this a new version of IP called IPv6 has been in developent for over a decade. The most noticable difference between the two version is the size of the address. IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses which gives us 2^128 unique addresses, 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

IPv4 IP addresses take the for 12.34.56.78 whereas IPv6 addresses are expressed in hexidecimal notation and take the form 3ffe:1900:4545:3:200:f8ff:fe21:67cf

IPv6 is designed to address the shortcomings of IPv4 in terms of addressing and routing, security, network address translation, administrative workload, and support for mobile devices.

LetsHost are actively working with our partners to test all our systems with IPv6 and will continue to update our customers as progress is being made.

With the price of external media drives dropping with each passing month there is no excuse for any business not to have backups in some shape or form on either external harddrives, CD/DVD or tape drives.

A backup strategy is vital for any business that relies heavily on their data to be able to function in an ever increasing digital work place. You will need to identify the data that you can not do without and how often this data is changed. It is a good idea to run a daily backup of spreadsheets, emails etc and to make multiple copies. i.e a backup of your backup.
It is not wise to store all your backups in the one location as hardware failure could wipe them all out. You should strongly consider keeping a copy in a remote location.

LetsHost.ie offer an online backup solution – more information can be found by going to http://www.pcbackup.ie

Please note:

1 – This offer is limited to NEW registrations only and limited to single year purchases only.

2 – This offer does not apply to transfers or renewals

3 – As this is a special offer, renewals will be more expensive in year 2, to a maximum of 19.99 + VAT (LetsHost are still the cheapest for domain registration / renewal). LetsHost will match any domain renewal price lower than this in year 2 when buying a domain transfer and hosting.

1 – Web developer

This is a 6 month contract position with an option to renew after 6 months.

Role:

- Development of back office applications
- Design and implementation of web based, customer facing applications

Skills profile required:

- At least 2 years experience in a similar role
- Have a strong knowledge of PHP / MySQL / Ajax / Javascript / HTML & CSS
- Be experience in coding applications which are primarily API based
- Experience in graphics creation / manipulation an advantage

A CV with cover letter and references should be forwarded to jobs@letshost.ie

2 – Support representative

This is a full time position base in our Dublin office and involves evening/night time shifts.

Role:

- Dealing with front line customer technical queries via email & phone

- Answering support tickets and ensuring customer satisfaction

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

A CV with cover letter and references should be forwarded to jobs@letshost.ie

** At this time we are not seeking any assistance from 3rd parties in filling these roles – thank you **

Because Frontpage has reached the end of its life (8 years ago) it has been increasingly difficult to maintain and support on our servers. Older software will gradually deteriorate when not maintained by Microsoft support and eventually becomes a security risk. As data security and integrity is of the upmost importance at Letshost a decision was made to remove the FrontPage extensions from our shared servers.

In 2006, Microsoft released their new HTML Editor/Web Design product called Microsoft Expression Web with version 4 being released in June 2010. This product is much more feature rich and adheres Web standards much more strictly. Expression Web supports PHP, HTML/XHTML, XML/XSLT, CSS, JavaScript, ASP.NET or ASP.NET AJAX, Silverlight, Flash, Windows Media, and Photoshop, as well as integration with Microsoft Visual Studio and Expression Studio.

Some free alternatives to Frontpage/Expression can be found on the links below

http://www.evrsoft.com/

http://www.pagebreeze.com/

http://www.kompozer.net/

There are also many free, web-based Content Management Systems and Blogging systems available online. Popular choices include Joomla (http://www.joomla.org/), Drupal (http://www.drupal.org/) and WordPress (http://www.wordpress.org/).

All Letshost shared hosting servers are currently running Cpanel, which is no surprise being one of the most popular/advanced control panels available.  Cpanel is very versatile with how it can be configured. We at Letshost offer many add-on applications like SpamAssassin and BoxTrapper to help filter spam. Cpanel itself is continually being updated to improve spam filtration. In this Post we will talk about some specific things customers can do to help reduce spam and some general tips for reducing your spam.

Why send SPAM?

The Internet still remains a free for all in many aspects with no one governing body that can regulate the worldwide web and in particular email. With most company’s still finding email the most effective way to communicate with there customers it is inevitable that Spammers will use this to their advantage. Some courts have enacted laws to outlaw the practice of Spamming. However there are a lot countries which do not adhere to these standards and refuse to recognise the problems spam is causing. These countries that do not implement the appropriate laws act as a safe haven for Spammers where they can continue to send masses of junk emails with little to no consequences .

Phishing emails have grown in popularity of late, gaining business collecting data on people all over the world along with using trickery to obtain peoples personal banking information among other things.

Studies have shown that over 85% of all emails being sent today are SPAM.

Below are some popular tips to help cut down on the amount of spam you are receiving:

1) Try to avoid using the common email addresses . For example info@domain.ie, sales@domain.ie, etc. These are almost web standards and as such will be bombarded with spam emails.

2) Lock down any contact forms on your website. Many Spammers will use robots scripts to auto-populate your contact forms as a way of sending you Spam. Captchas are the first line of defense in preventing this.

3) Avoid posting your email addresses on your website. I would recommend using a web form with a captcha enabled as alternative. Doing this will help stop Spammers from obtaining your email address and thus cut down on spam.

4) Keep your anti-virus software up to date with the latest patches. Viruses will attempt to hi-jack your email client and then use this to spam others in your address book or others. This can be very damaging to your domains reputation with mail filters if it continues for an extended period.

5) Update any content management systems that you are using for your website design. With many web designers using CMS systems like Wordpress, Joomla and PHPBB it is extremely important to keep these up to date to prevent hackers exploiting vulnerabilities in the code for the use of Spamming.

6) If you continue to receive large amounts of spam mail and are beginning to see it affect your day to day business it may be time to invest in a dedicated anti-spam service. These advanced filtering systems can greatly reduce the amount of spam reaching your account. For more information on the advanced Spam filter Letshost provide please click here

7) A last tip is to avoid using your catchall email account. The catch all account is designed to pick up any emails that are sent to accounts that do not exist. Naturally this account will get more Spam then if you were to set up an individual account with a unique name.
For Cpanel users if you want to reduce SPAM here are some additional tips.

1) Enable SpamAssassin. This free Spam filter tool is installed on all letshost hosting accounts and can be enabled via your Cpanel. Within SpamAssassin you have the option to add individual email addresses to black list along with being able to parse out all emails from a particular domain using the ‘*domain.com’ line.

2) Configure SPF records – This can be done from your cpanel provided you are using letshost nameservers. SPF records help prevent Spammers from spoofing your email address for the purpose of bypassing their already blacklisted email addresses.

3) If you are looking for a more stringent Spam filter then SpamAssassin , you can also enable BoxTrapper. This tool asks user to confirm that they are legitimate source before allowing the initial email to deliver to the recipient.

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.

**We do not require the services of any recruitment agencies at this time – please do not make contact with regards to this roll **

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.