Ink Ignite™

How to get rid of Facebook’s Timeline feature?

Johnny — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:34:29 +0000

According to online sources, Facebook will roll out and update that forces all users to have Timeline on February 1st, 2012. Already this update is being met with aversion and will likely upset the addition of new users in the future. I for one have already been searching for an alternative and the best I’ve ever seen would be www.SocialGroovy.com

True there is no solution to switch back from Timeline once the 1st comes, but the next best thing is finding a social network that promises to never change their layout! The speed and features are quite comparable to Facebook. I love the lightweight chat system, and privacy features myself. Check it out for yourself, and best of luck for anyone who chooses to stay with the soon-to-be-stalker-friendly Facebook.

VPS Hosts Comparison

Johnny — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:38:08 +0000

Here is what I’ve noticed from looking at VPS hosting websites:

ArmorVPS.com – Cheaper VPS hosting, good bandwidth allocation (1TB or 1000GB at the lowest plan), and takes only 2 levels to get to 700+ MB of RAM (recommended for cPanel). Unmanaged but you can contact them if you need full or partial management options. Multiple backup add-ons are also available and you have more choice over the VPS size. Uses a custom control panel for the VPS. The size is limited to 16TB bandwidth at the maximum plan. No complaints.

HostGator.com – More expensive, bandwidth is comparable with the disk space but not outstanding, and it takes 3 levels to get to 700+ MB of RAM (again recommended for cPanel). Fully managed if you get level 3 plan or higher. Only backup option is the built-in HostGator one, it’s off-site so it should be reliable. Uses VIRTUOZZO Power Panel for management (learning curve?). The size is limited to 3TB of bandwidth at the maximum plan. Have heard complaints about the VPS service.

KnownHost.com – Cheaper than HostGator for pricing, bigger bandwidth allocation (500GB at the lowest plan), it takes 2 levels to get to 700+ MB of RAM (for cPanel). Fully managed support according to their site (not managed just good support?). Backups every other night, not much detail about that. Uses Virtuozzo PowerPanel like HostGator. The size is limited to 5TB at the maximum plan. No complaints that I know of… no pun intended.

LiquidWeb.com – Seems like the most expensive out of the 5, generous bandwidth but the price reflects it, and it takes only 1 level to get to 700+ MB of RAM (for cPanel but didn’t see cPanel price listed). Full management available but again no price for that. I don’t see anything about backups. Also don’t see anything about a VPS control panel. The size is limited to 2TB of bandwidth at the maximum plan but it looks like they can create a custom plan. Have heard a complaint from one of my clients about their service.

GigaTux.com – Very good starter pricing, 10x bandwidth allocation, and at the 5th level you get 700+ RAM for smooth cPanel usage. Unmanaged VPS but 24/7 support is available. Extra storage is available for use as a backup if needed (backups could be preformed with the control panel too). No listed VPS control but you receive root access like with most VPS’s. The size is limited to 2.4TB bandwidth at the maximum plan. No complaints.

I didn’t list prices since each host has different prices based on what software you may require. Best of luck with picking one! I may not have personal experience with all of these companies but you can decide for yourself based on these observations. Leave a comment if there’s a host you’d like to see added to the list or if this was helpful to you finding a new VPS host!

Triple Continent Hosting!

Johnny — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:17:34 +0000

ArmorVPS™ is allowing HALF OFF as a special launch promo. Lock in the price now!

Today marks the official launch date of ArmorVPS.com! Their services span 6 datacenters and 3 continents. Everything from a small website to a large store can be run through the awe-inspiring VPS services. Right now is the perfect time to start your next online business.

Google, Yahoo, and other search engines take approximately 2 weeks to visit through all the pages on your website and begin ranking it based on links, keywords, and content. Given the current timeframe, this will make your site ready by New Years! With shared hosting you get exactly what you pay for, shared resources, shared disk space, and shared processing power. For a lot of websites this is completely fine and can handle a good amount of traffic without issues.

VPS hosting on the other hand gives you a Virtual Private Server that allots a set amount of resources to you, and you alone!* Whether you have the next social network up your sleeve or you need to stream music videos right off your site, VPS is the way to go. The plans at ArmorVPS™ are not just limited to one website either, you can use WHM/cPanel (Web Host Manager/cPanel Control Panel) to start your own shared hosting business. What better way to start your site than to build upon the best?

Plans start at just $20 and include a terabyte (1024 gigabytes) of bandwidth PER MONTH! This allows your site to be capable of transferring thousands of megabytes of data each and every day. There are premium backup solutions available and additional storage starts at just $10 for every 25GB storage node. Your site is meant to grow, and your hosting plan with ArmorVPS™ will grow along with you. We have a full-featured VPS control panel and power most of our servers with CentOS**. Join our Cloud family today and see why cloud computing will take your site above and beyond the limits of a computer!

*Most VPS hosting companies, even larger ones, give you shared resources, or what’s called “equal share”. We however give you dedicated CPU power.
**Different configurations or operating systems are available upon request.

Armored VPS Hosting

Johnny — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 10:17:18 +0000

By now you may (or may not) know that Ink Ignite is run by none other than HostArmor™. They proudly employ our services for web design and we proudly look to them for hosting. We’ve learned that they have plans underway right now for VPS hosting. This will include dedicated VPS plans!

All of us here are very excited for the new launch of their site, www.ArmorVPS.com. When the site launches many of their current customers, and many of our future customers will be given discounts, upgrades, and transfers to take full advantage of the powerful system. In addition to it being faster and quicker to deploy, the new systems are also rumored to have outstanding uptimes.

We’ve been asked by HostArmor™ to pass along that if you would like to pre-order VPS hosting, just contact them via www.HostArmor.com. They are even going to give free shared hosting on their standard servers until the VPS is ready to launch!

IPv6 and You!

Johnny — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 01:32:53 +0000

Just like the change from WEP wifi encryption to WPA and now WPA2 (or so I hope you’re using); Internet Protocol (IP) addresses must also be updated. Almost every cell phone is now capable of being connected to the Internet, adding a whole new wave of new devices. Along with mobile connectivity comes expansion. Economic trouble or not, the Internet is growing every second of every day. Just last week I registered 5 new domain names and plan to register another this week.

So what is IPv6 and why should you care? IPv4 is a simple string of numbers that is the driving force behind a domain name, instead of typing 192.168.1.1, you simply type InkIgnite.com (this is an example, that IP address is used for LANs and routers, not the actual Internet). IPv6 looks more like FE80:0000:0000:0000:0202:B3FF:FE1E:8329. Looks like something out of Star Trek right? Well take a good look because that is the future. Right there is what is going to be the new driving force behind WWW.

Fortunately for most of us our ISP, web hosting company, or datacenter will deal with the messy updates. For the end users this will mean a lot more opportunities. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) relies in part on individual IP addresses. Hopefully this new protocol will also help keep your website from becoming blacklisted just because you share the same IP as a spammer.

Continuing to keep the Internet a dynamic place is how modern society is progressing. Sadly, many things go overlooked and we still have major flaws. Let’s show IPv6 as a proud moment in history and make the most of it!

(Note: www.HostArmor.com – our hosting company – is working with our datacenter to ensure IPv6 is properly setup and ready-to-go when the time comes!)

StartUpLift

Johnny — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:02:35 +0000

StartUpLift allows organizations, companies, and startups to gather valuable feedback from would-be visitors. During the launch process of any website, it is important to find what your visitors love and what they could do without on your site. Being a professional web designer, I’ve seen many businesses launch a site without second thought to the color scheme, hard-to-read fonts, or even blurry graphics. A website is a product, and any product must go through many stages of testing. Once the initial code testing is finished, many business owners should turn to StartUpLift to view aesthetic flaws from a third-person point of view.

Not only can StartUpLift collect user reviews for your website, they can also provide them for your mobile app as well. In this day and age it is important to keep up with the technology through new trends; like mobile apps. The feedback of a dozen or even one user can be valued many thousands of times over. StartUpLift gives businesses all the tools they need in a simple, clean-cut, and success-bound format!

Official Website: www.StartUpLift.com

Facebook vs. Google+ and Your Business

Johnny — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 06:10:16 +0000

Facebook is most certainly strapping down and preparing for their biggest challenger to the social network market since Myspace (RIP)… GOOGLE+. I’ve tried out the beta and I must say that the streaming news concept seems oddly familiar (I’m sure Zuckerberg wishes he trademarked it). I found it to load in a nice amount of time and seeing that Google reigns over the Internet in speed and reliability, I might say that Facebook is going to look like a dinosaur pretty soon.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually love Facebook but the new set of changes seems like a step in the *wrong* direction considering Google+ is about to launch any day. The social network war will break out, and it will be a test of time to see who wins!

Now how does this all relate to your business? Well taking into account that Google is the primary path of people finding any and all information online, it will only be a matter of time before their social network incorporates this fully and leaves businesses who don’t conform to fend for themselves. The ever-growing Google Analytics is a great way of tracking users and will show your support of Google when used for sites. In turn this will most likely affect your ranking amongst their listings.

Right now the iron is hot and it’s the time to strike if you want your business succeeding! Potential customers will always follow the company who keeps up with the latest trends. So what do you do to ensure you can integrate Google quickly and efficiently? Find a host who can support it. Sounds like a lot of work? It is! We’ve taken the hard part out and added Google Analytics Integration directly into our hosting control panel with a simple one-click installation. We know you want to be successful online and this is going to be one of the ways you can do that. HostArmor™ is ready to help you do that and we can provide assistance if needed.

You can quickly request more information from us at: www.HostArmor.com
Your business needs to be hand-in-hand with Google; let us help you do that! We are giving away a special promo code to save you 30% when you sign up for any of our plans on a monthly cycle: GOOGLEPLUS

Ink Ignite Hosting

Johnny — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 09:29:54 +0000

We officially launched our web hosting site yesterday. Not only does it run on some of the fastest servers on the planet; the rates are also amazing. $6.99 for a Linux-powered, 99.9% uptime guaranteed, website with access to 4500 web templates? I think the templates in themselves are worth at least $50/month, but that’s just me. We offer have custom plans if you need additional support like transferring your site from an old host.

In addition we don’t even make you register a domain name with us (although we have some great suggestions if you need a good domain registrar). You can buy or use your domain name wherever you want and then just point it to our servers.

Everything is nicely powered by cPanel and right now we have two themes to choose from when managing your site. The default one being dark and clean, and the light one being crisp and clear.

(Default cPanel Theme)

Our billing system is securely managed by PayPal. However we are planning to add the option to pay through AlertPay (for our international customers). Live chat support is provided through the hosting site just like on this site. Feel free to hop on over to www.InkIgniteHosting.com and check our our extraordinary deals. We’re always stretching the limits every day to provide the best service to you!

Niche-Specific Web Design?

Johnny — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 18:41:16 +0000

I recently read an article (honestly can’t remember the source) that advised new web designers to find a niche and stick with it. My only question was, “why?”

Why would any web designer in their right mind only stick to one niche? There are hundreds of clients, thousands of possibilities, and millions of ideas. Web designers should be ready to take them all on in a heartbeat. I’m not saying it’s bad to have specialities (one of mine is WordPress) but sticking to only one type of site design is foolish and will only lose you business.

It’s true that most of my clients are small businesses. But if a church or photographer wants to come along and hire me; I’m going to instantly adapt to fit their needs. Limiting oneself to a specific niche is like trying to do surgery while wearing a full-body cast. It simply won’t work and you’ll hurt more people than you help in the end. When it comes to web design it’s all or nothing. You either can do A to Z design, or you can’t. Now we all have our limits, but creativity should fill in most of the gaps. After all, web design is an art form, nothing less.

When you consider the idea of a designer sticking to a specific niche; it seems like he/she almost wants to limit himself/herself. Specialising in certain areas always brings a uniqueness to your skillset but you should always have all the bases covered, even if that means hand-coding an entire site or working overtime on a project because you need to learn a new skill. Any web designer who takes a bold step and says “I am a Real Estate web designer.” is going to trip the next step when a client requests a blog, and again with the next client who requests a forum. Before you know it, you’ll be drowning in requests that you have no likelihood of fulfilling.

I’m going to end this by saying: if you have limits or something you don’t like doing (like PHP coding) then acknowledge them, but by no means quit learning. Every second of the day new ways of designing are discovered or invented. Try keeping up with just a small portion of them and you will certainly find success at every turn!

Aplus vs. GoDaddy vs. HostMonster vs. HostGator

Johnny — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 20:13:24 +0000

APLUS
Although I didn’t use their hosting services for very long I was quite disappointed. Limited storage, rude support, and overall the hosting just wasn’t very good. Sure they have a $5/month special but my guess would be that they are doing that before they go out of business. I would never recommend them.
Rating: ★

GODADDY
I’ve personally never had an account with them but I have helped several clients with accounts so I’ve seen their backend. I’ve gotten lost more than once trying to figure out their ridiculous maze of options. Yes, they have something unique and not like cPanel but I personally like cPanel and it’s a solid system. Don’t fix it if it’s not broken. Also, I’ve seen a guy with an e-commerce site built on WordPress and hosted by GoDaddy, the site crawled. Another host I wouldn’t recommend.
Rating: ★

HOSTMONSTER
I’ve been using HostMonster for about 3 years and their service is pretty acceptable. It was only until recently that I’ve noticed extended downtime and slower load times. Their support team is U.S.-based so there was no issues with that, I just started to feel trapped. Also, Ink Ignite’s initiative to become more “green” wasn’t well supported by their hosting service. I suppose it was nelect or just the fact there was no need to question HostMonster (until now) but they are a sister company of Bluehost. Bluehost is known for having huge issues with their clients and trimming down resources just to save money. I would imagine it is only a matter of time before HostMonster follows in her sister’s footsteps. There has also been some talk of them not allowing SEO plugins. I would recommend them as a second choice for hosting if you just need a site but nothing amazing.
Rating: ★ ★ ★

HOSTGATOR
Ink Ignite (and all the sites we host) have been successfully moved over to HostGator as of a few days ago. HostGator is not only giving back to the environment, they also offer features that are above and beyond what is needed. They transferred, for FREE, all our files from HostMonster. The option also exists to change cPanel themes once you log into the backend (something I didn’t know existed when using HostMonster). Wind and Linux -powered servers is what they offer for most of the hosting plans. Pricing for their packages is about average and they don’t lock you into a contract. There’s hosting, and then there’s hosting right!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

INK IGNITE HOSTING
We have taken it to the next level and now provide our own hosting. Obviously this review isn’t very fair since it’s our own hosting company but we really have used our own signup systems and billing systems. They are easy, all in one place, and you get emailed everything. Plus our integrated billing/support system ensures your trouble ticket is always #1! You can always view the live status of our servers as well as checking network issues. We securely process payments through AlertPay and you can use your debit or credit card to pay. With over 4,000 FREE web templates included in all of our plans and 99.9% uptime, we really do offer some of the best web hosting you’ll ever see! www.InkIgniteHosting.com
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★