JaguarPC, an industry-leading provider of end-to-end web hosting services, today announced that the web site building software tool RVSiteBuilder Pro will be available with all shared and reseller hosting packages.

RVSiteBuilder Pro is a hosted web site building software application that features an intuitive WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) user interface and a large library of ready-made templates that allow users to create a professional looking web site in literally minutes. A wide selection of themes allow users to create a web site for almost any purpose, whether it be a blog, photo gallery or a web presence for a small business.

RVSiteBuilder Pro enables users to build much more than plain vanilla web sites. Several new features can be conveniently integrated into a web site through a point and click interface, including photos albums, hit counters, guest books, blogs and FAQ guides. There is also a supply of free media such as commonly used banners, buttons and icons, along with a library of images.

“JaguarPC is always looking for a way to add value to our hosting offerings,” stated Greg Landis, CEO of JaguarPC. “RVSiteBuilder Pro is an easy-to-use software application that anybody without technical experience can use to build an attractive, professional looking web site. This is the essence of value and we are providing it free to our shared and reseller hosting customers. It is further proof that JaguarPC is committed to enabling customers to realize their full potential on the Internet.”

RVSiteBuilder Pro recently released an updated version of its software (version 3.0), adding an updated navigation system, a new blogging application, database capabilities and improvements to the Ajax-enabled user interface. A total of 16 new templates have been added to the library in this newest release. RVSiteBuilder Pro has a library of 646 templates.

For more advanced users, there is an online Flash editor and users can also download templates, customize them and then re-upload them for future use.

RVSiteBuilder Pro supports all major web browsers and operating systems. It is available in multiple languages, allowing customers around the world to build a web site in the language they are most comfortable with. Languages supported include English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian-Portuguese, Finnish, Norwegian, Turkish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian and Slovak.

One service that numerous registrars offer is “private registration” of your domain. What this means is that they substitute their contact information for yours. Of course, you still maintain ownership of the domain, but they act as a proxy for your domain.

But is it worth it? Many registrars charge for this service, after all.

One concern that many domain owners have is the publication of their home address and private phone number, all of which would be available to anyone who looked up their domain in the WHOIS database. The solution to this is simple: get a post office box, and purchase a voice mail number from a service such as Evoice, who offers voice mail numbers for as little as $4.95 a month.

With the problem of privacy resolved, you can then be assured that you, as the domain owner, get important information about your domain. While it is true that spammers love to harvest information for their evil deeds, you should also make yourself available should any legal issues arise regarding your domain. Simply create a separate e-mail address for the WHOIS database, and you will be sure to immediately know about any potential problems with your domain, allowing you to quickly resolve those problems, and avoiding the possibility of losing your domain because you didn’t respond.

Of course, if you run a website that is of a controversial nature, then you indeed may wish to consider private registration, but for the most part, private registration causes more problems than it solves.

Your website is important to you, and so is the uptime. If your website goes down for any reason, of course you want to know. But if you’re not sitting in front of the computer all the time, how do you know if your site goes down? With monitoring services, such as Alertra.

What this service does is it monitors your website by pinging it from different locations around the world. If a problem is encountered, you are notified by phone, SMS, e-mail, pager, or instant message, depending on your preference. If you have a shared account, by the time you’re alerted, we’re probably already fixing it. But if you have a dedicated server, a service such as Alertra can prove to be quite invaluable.

How much you pay per month depends upon how often you want your website pinged, and how many methods of notification you choose. But regardless of how you go about it, it’s a priceless service, because you can be notified of downtime very quickly, which in turn will allow for a quick resolution to the problem.

Alertra is not the only company to offer such a service; other companies such as SiteUpTime, and Uptrends are two of the many companies to offer this sort of service. When it comes to uptime, knowledge is power, and knowing when your site is down, whether it’s the server itself, DNS, or only e-mail, you probably would want to know right away. Companies such as Alertra give you that knowledge, and that peace of mind.

There are numerous TLDs out there, and now there’s the .tel TLD, which is being billed as “the new way to communicate”.

Basically, this TLD is available from numerous registrars, and it, according to the registrar’s website, “allows individuals and businesses alike to store and manage all their contact information and keywords directly in the DNS without the need to build, host or manage a website.”

The registrar offers the ability to conceal contact information, allowing domain owners to make that information available only to parties they choose, through “friend requests”.

Although this seems like a nice idea, it could be considered by many to be merely a novelty. Given that there are so many TLDs out there already, another yearly cost with little real advantage may not be considered to be wise by most. But regardless, it is a service that’s being offered, and the .tel TLD is available at registrars such as Dynadot, and Network Solutions, just to name a couple.

This new .tel TLD, by the way, is not to be confused with the .mobi TLD, which is intended for websites that are coded specifically for mobile devices.

You may have heard about VPS hosting. What is it, and why should you care?

If you need the power of a dedicated server, but can’t afford the price, there is an option. A “virtual” dedicated server uses software like Virtuozzo. A key advantage to a VPS is that it divides a dedicated server into several dedicated servers, by dividing resources such as disk space and RAM.

Virtualization is a great way to enjoy the power of a dedicated server without the cost. With Jaguar PC, you can have a VPS account for just under $20. And you still get all of the options you normally would. You can still choose your operating system (CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora Core, or Suse), and your control panel software ( cPanel, Interworx, DirectAdmin, or Plesk).

You also get complete root access, which means that you have the exact same administrative access that you would on a dedicated server, so you retain complete control of your domain (or domains).

Just because the price is low, it doesn’t mean that the quality is. We only use the finest components to construct the servers, so you can rest assured that you’re still getting quality service at a fraction of the cost.

Given that you can still host multiple domains with a VPS, this choice is a perfect way to gauge your site’s traffic, and determine whether or not a dedicated server would be in your best interest. The options are endless with a VPS, and with our friendly and eager staff ready and available to help you on your way, choosing a VPS through Jaguar is the right move!

Please tell us a little about yourself.

Im 32, a father of 3, and when I’m not shackled to a desk I enjoy spending time with the family, fishing, and playing guitar. Anyone that knows me will tell you I’m very big on core values in every person we hire, and every project we take on. Core values such as honesty, integrity, and respect are often set aside in the modern world and particularly behind the veil of anonymity of the internet. I believe this is precisely the area where people should adhere to those values the most. If you do, a reference is as easy as saying “google me”.

Can you summarize your educational experience for us?

I graduated high school in 94 and joined the Airforce in 95 where I spent 7yrs learning and growing as a person. I took some college while in the USAF but eventually the demand and excitement of JaguarPC led me to exit the USAF and go at hosting full time.

What do you consider as your accomplishments up to this point?

That I’ve managed to keep a healthy marriage, raise 3 kids, and all while running a very demanding business for 10yrs. Hitting milestones such as 100, 500, 1000 servers has been exciting as well.

Any failures you’d like to tell us about?

Nobody grows as a company or person without some failure. More importantly though is the lessons you take away from the experience. One big failing in the past was letting my excitement get the better of us by not planning properly for our growth. There is no growth worth hurting a reputation built up by a decade of hard work. Now we work our hardest on preserving that ideal.

What is your primary occupation?

Whatever my staff, clients, and partners need from me. I wear the CEO title but the truth is that even with 75 people working for me I still enjoy getting involved in the daily activities where it all got started. Our company is all about reflecting that person touch.

How do you manage your time? Will you describe what you do on a daily and/or weekly basis?

Between my wife and my iPhone I’m able to stay on top of things pretty well most of the time. My week involves a lot of email between my staff, management meetings, networking with other professionals, going over reports from the various areas of our companies, and of course some daily interactions with clients on forums, instant messengers, and the phone.

Do you oversell?

We don’t, except for our shared hosting plans. None of our reseller, VPS, or hybrid plans have any features that are oversold. The shared technology we use and our vast experience lets us manage the shared environments so well that we simply never run into the tiny things some watch all the time like disk space. Simply put, we just can’t run out of disk space. Even as we speak all our clients could increase their usage immediately by 500% and it wouldn’t cause alarm. Like cell phone minutes and bandwidth, the prices of storage are so minute these days its hard to justify placing a limit and letting a 2tb system only collect dust while 80% of the space sits wasted. Overselling as a means of marketing actually is the best way we can tell clients “use more, if you don’t nobody will” . And our system is setup so you have to have 80% of an initial quota actually used before you request more, but you can request more as many times as you want and its automatically added.

Tell us about your control panel, is it based on cPanel and what makes it special?

In our shared environment we use cPanel exclusively, but for VPS, hybrid, and dedicated servers we offer and support a wide range of control panels and software. We have developed a proprietary platform that ties into our servers, billing, software, ips, staff, and pretty much our entire operation. I wouldn’t want to imagine running a company this size and complex without it.

As part of your managed services you propose monitoring, does that include proactive responses?

Yes. And we have some really exciting improvements coming to our operation in the next 30days that will improve that response greatly by adding new methods of alerts and new tools for clients and our staff to respond to those alerts.

You propose VPS solutions on JaguarPC and yet you operate wowvps.com too, why?

Wowvps.com was started off for two reasons; we didn’t want to mix our managed Virtuozzo offering in jaguarpc.com with the unmanaged xen VPS offering. And we wanted a fresh place to kickoff our VSControl software that took years to develop and perfect. We will begin offering the software to the public this year. Finally there is a xen based vps hosting control panel that hosts can rely on.

You have offices in multiple cities and you have also remote technicians all over the world, how do you manage them?

With our software, and my great management team. If I had to manage a staff this size on my own it would consume my day. I empower the managers of the various departments to give them a chance to really make a difference in peoples lives and in the companies growth.

Do you own your data centers?

Not yet. We run colo cages, racks, and other specialized agreements with facilities in Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, the UK, and Singapore. We are expanding to other cities as well as currently planning our own facility.

You have a very active community, how did your business benefit from it?

It hasn’t stopped benefiting from it yet . Our clients are equally as awesome as our staff. Often clients are eager to learn things for themselves or just might be curious about something. When they take those issues to our community not only does it reduce our own support load, it builds a sense of community, adds content, and perpetuates itself.

What can we expect from JaguarPC in the future?

We love taking the lead and pushing boundaries of what defines a product. We were right out front pushing vps long before most even knew what it was. In fact I had to request from the owners of WHT to get vps categories and forums added many years ago. We plan to do more of the same and push the envelope of whats possible. This year is no exception, we have some great deals coming very soon made possible by a few unique partnerships we just finalized.

What does the future hold for Greg Landis?

Only God knows for certain but I’ll keep doing what I do best. Because its working for me. I do plan to continue pursuing our larger plans, building data centers, and diversifying Landis holdings in many other non-hosting related opportunities as well. So far I’ve been very fortunate and enjoy spreading it around. Ask me again in another 10yrs

Howdy loyal customers,

We have some great new updates to report and too many to include in a single release or even a few. We have been experiencing some great growth the past few years and in these tough economic times we have decided its time to give a little back. We will be turning more of our marketing funds inwards to increase referrals for a period.

One of the most common mistakes among hosts these days is uncontrolled growth. Which brings us to why you have chosen JaguarPC.com as your provider with over 10 years experience in this industry. October 2008 marks our 10th complete year in business, past the dot com bombs, past the fly-by-night hosts, past the competition. From our families to yours, thank you all for the success and please let us know how we are doing.

So without further delay the hosting story of JaguarPC: I started JaguarPC in Alaska as dial-up ISP while working in the active duty Air Force. It was 1998 and I went to a technology expo one cold boring day where I met some people and read a few things that peaked my interests.  I bought my first server, a coblat raq, that I still have today and it actually works flawlessly if you can believe that. Of course it just collects dust now as a reminder of where things started.

Uncle Sam sent me off to Arizona after 5 years of Alaska where I spent another 2 years building up JaguarPC. It spent a good many years as a one man show with some occasional hired help before Masood (our current CTO) joined in to help, quickly followed by Les (our COO) .  As my time with the Air Force ran out I moved to Texas and with the help of my friends, and we took JaguarPC to the next level. Since then it has grown 1200% and we continue to set the pace for hosting companies everywhere.

I can’t honestly say just how often and how many times either directly from vendors and friends or indirectly through clients and articles, we see other hosts trying to catch up with our innovations. Many of our innovations eventually become an industry standard. If I have one regret (and I don’t) it would only be we didn’t take enough credit for all the positive changes we, JaguarPC, have brought to this industry. Which brings me back to my point, another first, another innovation.

As far as I know, and I have tried to find others but just can’t, we are the only host in history to ever automatically upgrade our clients like we did when we made our last plan changes. We literally locked all the pricing of clients as they were that day, upgraded all the plans, and kept on rolling. Most places require clients to cancel or just give up and go away when new plans come out. In many cases plans and new sales are just meant to attract new clients because in business if you’re not growing you’re dying. I understand that part but what I don’t get is how companies can forget without that client base that continues to stick around and renew services, you would be constantly turning your wheels to replace your losses.  As everyone starts to tighten down their spending we’re leading the industry with innovation again as we have done before.

Here’s a glimpse of what’s been done and what’s to come:

- Many new faces in the staff, sales, support, management.

- Several new under and above the hood features designed with one goal, focus on quality assurance.

- New support ticket system, rating and tracking features, and extended coverage with more sys admins

- Entire new ordering system for both our site and existing clients using the client dashboard

- Deployed major new capacity for our DatalockBox service, added to every shared, SDX, reseller, and VPS system we run.

- Expanded backup capacity again to reduce compression levels and increase restore times

- Rewards system launched, earn cash and points for freebies and services

- Improved affilites tracking and reporting

- New user system that allows you to create dashboard users with specific permissions; billing, support, etc

- All new Hybrid server plans, fully managed, packed with resources and features such as free cPanel for under $100.

- All new dedicated server plans now all including free managed services

And the list goes on but I’ll save the details for our newsletters, watch the press!

We’re very grateful for all the loyal clients that have taken me and the 75 souls that work for our company to these heights. We look forward to a banner year in 2009!

One of the biggest gripes I had about my iPhone was that I couldn’t sync my Google Calendar with the calendar function included with my iPhone. I ended up using the Google Calendar on the web, and setting up text message reminders. This only worked when I was setting appointments / important dates when I was near a computer. While on-the-go, I had no easy way to add a new event or appointment. Google created a barely functional iPhone-friendly calendar page you could view via Safari, but it was pretty much a “view only” page. Google claimed you could add dates, but when doing so, I had some interesting results. You could not delete or modify any events.

All that changed yesterday when Google announced Google Sync (beta) for the iPhone and Windows Mobile phones along with a contacts-only version for many other devices. Now you can sync your contacts AND your calendar and it works both ways. I was all over it yesterday and promptly followed the detailed instructions to set this up and I am impressed with the results so far. Since it’s beta, there will be a few glitches such as auto-complete not working quite as well, but so far I’m not seeing any deal-breakers and am quite happy to finally be able to have my calendars synced!

A word of warning: Be SURE to back up your contacts before setting up Google Sync. Google provides this warning as well:

When setting up Google Sync on your iPhone or iPod touch device for Contacts, the iPhone will delete all Contacts. Please safely backup all your iPhone Contacts to Google before setting up Sync.

Google has made several changes and/or added new features to their already existing features. For example, you can now Spice up your inbox with colors and themes. This change I embraced as I am always on the lookout for a new, colorful, appealing, and/or easier-to-navigate theme for the products I use.

Then Google changed the Google Reader interface. This change annoyed me quite a bit at first as they actually made some things harder to find, such as how to “show all” or “show updated” items. It took me a week to figure out that I needed to click the tiny little down arrow to the right of “Subscriptions” to get to those menu options. When they announced the change all they said about that particular change was:

• The “Show all – updated” controls are now in the Subscriptions options menu.

I kept looking for the word “Options” and didn’t realize it was a tiny down facing arrow. Once I figured that out and got used to all the changes I like it well enough. But I think the prior interface was actually easier to navigate. Maybe it’s just me?

Yesterday Google announced “A new Google Sitemap Generator for your website“. I haven’t played much with this yet and I liked the old one well enough for my personal web site. Have you had a chance to mess with it and see if the changes are for the better?

Google even changed their favicon. While the new one is more colorful, it’s going to have to grow on me a bit for me to like this change.

Today Google announced even more changes such as Changes to engineering and Changes to recruiting.

Google is changing all over the place. None of them too dramatic in the grand scheme of things, and most are improvements in my opinion. What has been your experience?