Monthly Archives: January 2008

Named one of top ten fastest growing web host for 2007, company launches “Savings for Life” promotion on all plans

HOUSTON, TX. January 24, 2008 – JaguarPC, a leading provider of end-to-end web hosting solutions for over a decade, today announced new promotions to celebrate two recent awards it had received. HostReview.com selected JaguarPC as a top ten “Fastest Growing Companies in 2007”, while Web Host Directory named JaguarPC as a Reseller Web Hosting award winning provider for January 2008. The new promotion offers a 15% discount for life on Managed/Linux/Windows VPS Hosting and cPanel Reseller Hosting plans, and a 20% discount for life on cPanel Shared Hosting plans.

HostRevew selects winners judged on pricing, up-time, money-back guarantees, plan features and flexibility, technical support, security features and users reviews. Monthly results are prepared and displayed on their pages on the 1st of the following month. HostReview.com will be awarding companies on a yearly basis, and will include the yearly performance of the company in the related category.

“JaguarPC just exploded on the scene in 2007,”said Darren Tabor, chief executive officer of DevStart, the parent company of HostReview. “It was our pleasure to recognize the phenomenal growth of this well-respected Web Hosting Provider.”

Similarly, Web Host Directory gave top honors to JaguarPC as one of the best Reseller Hosts for January 2008. These awards are given to the best web hosts in each of their web host categories by tabulating the votes they receive from their visitors and review board. Each host is given a rating of 1 to 10 (10 being best) in different areas of performance, including Cost, Features, Support, Reliability and Speed.

“We’re honored to be recognized by respected voices of the industry,” said Greg Landis, president of JaguarPC. “It is a culmination of the efforts we’ve put into the last ten years of really listening to our customers’ needs. Our new lifetime promotions will help continue the strong growth as we look to roll out compelling features and plans tailored to the needs of different segments.”

Savings for Life promotion details

Managed VPS Hosting plan includes: – Quad-core nodes with a minimum of 12 GB registered ECC RAM
-Large RAID10 drive arrays
-Full root/adminstrator access
-JagPC Fully Managed Support 24×7x365 – 30 Day Money-Back Guarantee
-Free daily backups via large R1Soft ECDP NAS appliances
-Free moving assistance and data transfer for moves
-Choice of OS: Windows, CentOS, Debian, Fedora Core, Suse
-Extra 50% free disk space for life on every plan
-15% off for life on every plan
-Free Plesk 10 domain control panel on every plan

cPanel Reseller Hosting plan includes:
-Host Unlimited Accounts – Quad-core nodes packed with registered ECC RAM
-Large RAID10 drive arrays
-24×7x365 Support
-30 Day Money Back Guarantee
-Free IP addresses (3)
-Free WHM/Cpanel with Fantastico
-Free daily backups via large R1Soft ECDP NAS appliances
-Free moving assistance and data transfer for moves
-Free Enom.com domain registrar account; sell domains under your own brand
-15% off for life on every plan
-Free Rvskin; see rvskin.com for details
-Free ClientExec client billing and management software

cPanel Shared Hosting plan includes:
-Large premium bandwidth limits – Powerful muli-core multi-CPU servers
-Large RAID10 drive arrays
-24×7x365 Support – 30 Day Money-Back Guarantee
-Free cPanel control panel with Fantastico
-Free daily backups via large R1Soft ECDP NAS appliances
-Free moving assistance and data transfer for moves
-20% off for life on every plan
-50% more disk space and bandwidth

About JaguarPC

JaguarPC, based in Houston Texas, provides high-quality Internet hosting solutions to small and medium-sized businesses, government agencies, prominent individuals and non-profit organizations worldwide. JaguarPC’s core portfolio comprises information technology and business hosting services, as well as programming services. JaguarPC’s complementary subsidiary businesses is Devpond software, a web software company. Learn more at www.JaguarPC.com.

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Media Contact: Edward@FirecrackerPR.com, 949-500-6422, www.FirecrackerPR.com

As I continue my series on changes in Google that smashed some sites or techniques based on this blog article by Brett Borders, today I’m dealing with the 5th technique in regard to Sponsored blog post networks.

Sponsored blog post may have been around for longer than I realize but I think they became used to a large degree in 2007. 2007 was when I first became of them. It appears that Google has taken action against them in 2007.
As I understand “Sponsored Blot Post” , basically you are paying someone to write a review of your site, or perhaps a particular product you sell on their blog.

If I understand “sponsored blog post” correctly from Google’s point of view they are just another paid link.

I do not agree with Google on their present position in regard to paid links. I think I agree with them in regard to paying someone to write a review of your site or product. I know very few people that would give an honest opinion when being paid to write a review. Unfortunately most of the people I know who would participate as a writer for this type of review would say nothing but good.

Those who would provide an honest opinion will not get hired. From the webmasters point of view the only reason I can see to pay some one for a review would be hoping for SE benefit.
Why are people paying for this type of review. It is for a link. Even if the review is an honest review it will not likely result in much traffic.

IMO the concept of the “Sponsored Blog Post” is nothing more than another scheme to build links that probably will not benefit your site anyway. This is one instance of Google’s stance on paid links that I agree with.

If your interested in my previous articles in regard to the changes that Google made in 2007 that did smash some sites here they are:

Links
Supplemental Pages
Directory links
Open link brokers and link networks

I haven’t provided a lot of reference links in this article. You will find them in previous articles. If there is any discussion, I will not only provide them, but I might provide some additional references.

The title attribute is something you can add to any link. When used correctly the title attribute will on mouseover provide a little more information to the user about the link destination. The text displayed on mouse over is referred to as a “tool tip”.

If your using IE you will see something similar for images. What IE is doing is displaying the “alt attribute”. IE is not all that compliant with W3C standards, and the “alt attribute” should not, and is not displayed on mouseover of images with standard compliant browsers like FireFox.

The “alt attribute” should only be displayed if for some reason the image is not displayed.

On the other hand the “title attribute” should be displayed for any link that is using the “title attribute”. On mouseover you should see a too tip for any site I have linked to from this article.

A question that often comes up in SEO related forums like IHY relate to the SE value of the “title attribute”. In fact this just came up. The specific question was Adding Css Tooltips to Hyperlinks.

Personally I have not seen any evidence that using the “title attribute” helps with SE ranking. At this time I do not know of any credible SEO that thinks the “title attribute” is used.

I do think the “title attribute” should be used. Why? Because it will help your visitors. I am slowly adding the attribute to my sites. I try to use it in blog post. In regard to blog articles I could probably provide a better description of the link destination. Even with my quickly written “title attributes” I think they give you a better idea where the link will lead you to.

Regardless of how SEs treat the “title attribute” at this time, they may sart considering it in the future.

If you design web pages to benefit your visitors,  it will always help you one way or another.   If you only think about SEs what you do may or may not help.  Unfortunately some things you do only for SEs could end up hurting your site in the long run.

Use the “title attribute”.  Use the attribute as intended.  Think of your visitors and not the SEs.

It seems there’s been a bit of drama today in the web hosting world that’s being played on blogs. It’s times like these I’m very thankful to work for such a grounded and solid web hosting company.

If you, like me, don’t care for any of the hassle of wondering which web hosting company is going to run you off next, it’s time to come check out JaguarPC (if you haven’t already). We offer personal service from qualified professionals with our customer’s happiness in mind.

Remember those web hosting coupon codes I mentioned in my last post? Here they are!

VPS Coupon Code: New2008VPS

Reseller Coupon Code: Resell2008
Shared Hosting Coupon Code: BestHost2008
Semi Dedicated Coupon Code: SemiDed2008

I don’t know if you have ever heard the Celtic Women, but personally I love their music.

Never thought I would do a blog article about them. Like all things, things change. When I first heard of the Celtic Women it was on Public TV. Today I noticed on TV that their music was being used in an ice skaiting event on a major network in the US.

Basically I am A Country Music, Blue grass type of person. Maybe the music of the Celtic Women fits somewhere in that. I think so.

But!

Maybe I have just been overwhelmed by the physical beauty of the major participants.

The official website for the Celtic Women.

If you want to find out more about the Celtic Women I think this Google search for Celtic Women is a good starting point.

A few weeks ago I started a series of articles based on this Blog Article written by Brett Borders. The title of the article was 7 SEO Techniques That Google Smashed in 2007.

This is my 4th article based on what Brett originally wrote about.

I agree with Brett that Google really started targeting paid links in 2007. However they started giving indiactios about paid links as far back as 2005. At leas according to Matt Cutts. f you don’t know who Matt Cutts is, he is in charge of the Google “Spam Team”, or to say that another way he is in charge of the “Quality Control Team”. In other words the department that Matt Cutts heads is concerned about the quality of the search results that Google returns.

Though I agree with Brett there is evidence that Google is trying to target paid links, I would disagree that they are targeting the brokers that profit by selling paid links. At this time I do not think they are very successful in their attempt to target paid links.

IMHO if Google was really serious about paid link brokers they would stop Adwords advertising for this industry. Look at this search for “paid link brokers“. The 3 coveted positions at the top of the page for Adwords are all text link brokers.

Google knows who the text link brokers are. Simply stop taking advertising money from them, and take their sites out of the index.

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out who is selling links for the search engines and who if offering links for sale for advertising purposes IMHO.

It appears to me on the paid link issue that Google is trying to snip of bad branches rather than dealing with the root of the problem.

If your interested in seeing my previous comments on this issue:

2007 Changes in Google Regarding Links

2007 Changes in Google Regarding Supplemental Pages

2007 Changes in Google Regarding Directory Links

Every once in awhile it’s good to break the pattern. I’ll get back to the serious stuff like the series about 7 SEO Techniques That Google Smashed in 2007 in the next few days.

Personally I find the following humorous. We all need a little humor in our lives. I haven’t researched the facts, but there may be some truth in this.

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used?

Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did “they” use that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

And bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horses ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

Now the twist to the story…

There’s an interesting extension to the story about railroad gauges and horses’ behinds.

When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses’ behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the worlds most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horses behind. ...and you thought being a HORSES BEHIND wasn’t important!

This morning there was a network/power problem at the Atlanta data center which affected all the JPC servers. The is resolved now. However; we’re still investigating an issue with a few servers. To get an update on this please visit http://backup.jaguarpc.com

We want to offer our sincere apologies for any inconvenience or frustration experienced as a result of this. We fully understand as we are just as concerned and at this point baffled as to how this could have happened. As of now, we do not yet have a full explanation of the nature of the issue. As soon as we get one will be sure to relay this to our customers. We will also be looking into ensuring this does not happen again.

Happy New Year! Wait.. that was so last week. Well, I hope the New Year is finding you happy and healthy so far!

Before I go any futher, I should apologize for introduce myself: My name is Tracie, one of the latest newcomers to JaguarPC Web Hosting and I’ll be taking over helping out with the JaguarPC blog. (Don’t worry… we’ve still got Connie chained to the desk around to post those awesomely interesting articles about Google, Spam, internet security, etc.)

I thought I’d start off by telling you all about my visit to the eye doctor today. (It was the kind of visit where they put a bunch of drops in your eyes that make you see double and scream, “bright light! bright light!” as soon as you step outside.)

You might be thinking, “What the heck does that got to do with web hosting?” You might also be thinking “who’s this crazy lady?” Don’t worry. You’ll get used to me.

I was called up to the counter before my appointment so they could update my records with my insurance, address, etc. and they asked me to pay my co-pay amount. I have a flex spending account through my husband’s employer that covers this. Since it’s so early in the new year I have not yet received the new account number and debit card. I asked that they bill me. She stares at me a second then says they can’t do that. I explain the situation and she doesn’t argue one bit and simply agrees to bill me. I had to explain this two more times (when I picked out my new glasses, and during checkout). At first they all told me they could not bill me. When I explained the situation, I got what I asked for.

I chuckled to myself as I walked out (that is, until the sun shone down on my extremely dilated eyeballs like the death star blasting Princess Leia’s homeworld, then I stifled a scream). All I had to do was ask, and I received what I wanted. It didn’t hurt anyone to ask and the worst case scenario is they say no.

Here at Jaguar PC, we welcome you to ask questions. We pride ourselves on offering the best possible customer support. You never know unless you ask. Need a coupon code? Ask! Need a deal? Ask! Will you always get the answer you want? Not always. But we’ll do our best and it never hurts to ask.

Today I was asked, “Are you running any specials?” Are we ever! We are almost always offering a special or a little something extra with our plans. You can find our latest deals on our web hosting forums (if you didn’t know, we have an outstanding forum community at Jaguar PC) under the thread: Web Hosting Sales, Pre-Sales, Specials and Coupons. Check it out!

That’s it for today’s installment. Check back often for tips and tricks and hopefully some minor entertainment! You can also subscribe to the JaguarPC Web Hosting Blog Feed. Now that your system administrators have blocked MySpace and Facebook at the firewall you need something to keep yourself entertained, right??

For the most part I think the Can Spam Act has been a failure.

When a email spammer inserts outright fraud into the mix, the Feds are going to take another look and possibly go the extra mile to prosecute.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal grand jury in Detroit has indicted a Michigan man dubbed the “spam king,” and 10 others, in an international illegal bulk e-mailing and stock fraud scheme, the U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday.
Under the scheme, the group sent spam touting thinly traded Chinese penny stocks, drove up their stock price, and reaped profits by selling the stock at artificially inflated prices, the statement said.