We are pleased to announce the following software packages have been updated in our Fantastico software installer.

- 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.

In a recent post we looked at how you can use web analytics tools already included in your LetsHost Complete Hosting Plan to analyse your website traffic and gain valuable insight into how your visitors use your site.

While these basic log file analysis tools are fine for giving you a general overview of activity on your site, they offer a very basic user interface and a pretty inflexible window on your logfile data.

Enterprise class analytics software for free

Enterprise class analytics software can (and does) cost many thousands of Euro, but thanks to Google many of the features you’d typically find in high end commercial analytics software are now available for free.

Welcome to Google Analytics.

Setting up Google Analytics on your website is easy. Once you have a Google account (if you don’t already have one you can sign up for a Google account here), just head over to the Google Analytics website.

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According to a report by The UK Online Measurement Company (part of the Nielsen group) UK internet users spent 65% more time online during April 2010 (some 884 million hours) than they did during the same period in 2007.

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When it comes to making the most of your great value LetsHost Irish hosting and domain registration, crafting a quality website comes pretty high on the list.

No matter what your online project, getting your website right is a crucial element in its success. You need too find a great web designer to work on your website project. But where do you start?

Here are a few suggestions.

• Check out their website: the best place to start when assessing any web design company is with their own website. Does it look professional? Is it functional? How well does the site address the needs of its target audience (in this case, that’s you)?
• Check out their web design portfolio: examine the portfolio section of their website, but go beyond the designer’s site and click through to the websites themselves. Think about the client site’s goals, and how well the designer has addressed them.

That should help you whittle things down to a manageable shortlist… now dig a bit deeper.

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Content… it’s what everyone on the web is searching for.

Content is what’s compelling you to read this blog post right now. Content is the fuel that drives the web. Content is what adds value for your site visitors, and ultimately what will determine the success (or otherwise) of your online business.

And yet so many businesses neglect to invest properly in this most important element of their website.

It’s not all about design

Businesses happily pay thousands to designers and developers to create attractive aesthetics for their new site, but leave the content as practically an afterthought.

While design is important, and the look and feel of your site does a lot to make the visitor experience more attractive and compelling, remember it’s your content that does 90% of the work on your website.

• It’s your content that will get your pages ranked with major search engines like Google and Bing
• It’s your content that will attract incoming links that will drive more traffic, boost visibility and enhance your reputation and authority
• It’s your content that will deliver value once your visitors arrive, enticing them to stay for longer and convincing them that you’re a company they want to do business with.

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If you’re shopping around for a new web host you may have noticed that not all web hosting packages are created equal.

Most hosting features are easy to compare and contrast, but there’s one crucial factor that a lot of people overlook. Speed!

Why do you need a fast web host?

Although the overall performance of your website depends on a lot of different factors, your choice of hosting partner has a significant role to play.

Server specification, the number of accounts sharing server resources and the capacity of your hosts network infrastructure will all have an impact on how quick and responsive your web pages feel… and that’s important.

Faster web pages could improve search rankings:

Google has been talking a lot recently about making the web faster. Check out this Google video for some background on how and why the world’s leading search engine believes a faster web is a better web for everyone:

As part of their initiative to promote a faster web experience for their users, prominent Googlers like Matt Cutts have indicated that site speed could become a factor in search rankings in 2010.

Historically, we haven’t had to use it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast. It should be a good experience, and so it’s sort of fair to say that if you’re a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don’t want that as much.

Google’s Matt Cuts talks site speed with WebPro News in December 2009.

Faster web pages improve user experience and conversion

Once people find your site it’s a “no brainer” that more responsive web pages are much easier for them to navigate.

Web users are an impatient bunch. They won’t wait around for your content to load;  instead of twiddling their thumbs they’ll use their index finger to click through to a competitor’s site.

Improving the performance of your web pages (and the speed of your web host is a part of that) will help you to retain more of your site visitors for longer, and ultimately convert a higher proportion of them into subscribers, firm prospects and paying customers.

LetsHost takes hosting performance seriously

Here at Letshost we understand how important hosting performance is to your online business. That’s why we invest in the very latest web server technology and state-of-the-art hosting infrastructure.

We believe we strike the ideal balance between cost and performance for our hosting customers – check out our Irish web hosting options today to see how we can help your online business to thrive.

Search engines, like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Bing, are the way the vast majority of internet users find the products, services and information they’re looking for online.

If you want people to find your little corner of the web, the last thing you want is to make it difficult for search engines to index the content on your website.

“Spider traps” make it harder for search engine spiders to “crawl” your website effectively

Search engines use automated software (known as a spider or a “bot”) to “crawl” the web. These spiders visit websites and follow every link they find, collecting information about each page.

Internet spiders thrive on a diet of text, text and more text. They don’t see the graphics, clever animations and other flashy bells and whistles that web designers routinely use to make sites look pretty.

Using visual elements is, of course, crucial to making your site attractive to human visitors when they arrive, but over-reliance on some of these features can stop some spiders in their tracks, preventing them from indexing your pages at all.

Make sure your site works for both search engines and your human visitors by making sure each page includes relevant text-based content; avoid flash-only websites and frames, which are difficult for spiders to crawl effectively; and make sure that every page on your site can be reached via a simple text-based hyperlink.

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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.

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.

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.