Friday 25th June 2010
JaguarPC
P.O. Box 1108
Fulshear, TX 77441
http://www.jaguarpc.com
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Hello,
Howdy loyal clients! It’s been a long time since I’ve sent a newsletter out. A trend I’m breaking right now with this first in a long series of ongoing updates. First let me say thank you to everyone who has helped us make our 11th year in business an exciting one. Summer is here and its time to turn up the heat. Ok enough silliness, lets get on with the updates.

Many of you may have noticed already there’s been some major pushed in our software, training, and personnel aimed at providing an improved customer experience in service and support. We are pleased to announce Jim Sowell, long time JaguarPC manager and former CSM has been promoted to Director of Support. His role is to manage the support services, quality, and senior level management over other support manager roles. In short if you ever have a problem don’t be afraid to contact him: jim@jaguarpc.com and in our forums JPC-Jim .

We have also made a great deal of advances to our client dashboard and while you won’t notice them all, there are several hundred, here are some of the more notable:

– Clients can view the health status of servers including history – Client now have access to an elaborate Support Center containing Tutorials, Guides, Knowledge base, FAQs, useful Downloads, and access to other useful information and areas including Community Forums. Visit the Dashboard https://secure.jaguarpc.com/clients/

• - Clients can reply to ticket updates and notification via emails


• - New ticket escalation processes


• - Clients can create multiple users (up to 5) with access controls.


• - New ticket rating and feedback system


• - New ticket search features


• - Integrated rewards points and ordering


• - Many order form improvements including order tracking


• - Clients can download invoices in PDF format


• - Pay invoices using other sources than card on file


• - Rewards points and affiliate stats improvements


• - New private messaging system


• - Important emails saved in Alerts


• - Ability to add notes to accounts, logins, directions, etc


• - Monitoring improvements include uptime reports and logs


• - Ability for dedicated and VPS clients to add monitoring with instructions, Free to all


• - New Site of the month service open


• - Manage private name servers


• - Third tier brand-able end user support system integrated. End user support not available yet.


• - Automating all orders, API improvements


• - Many others including some bug fixes

Ok there’s a lot more to go over but I don’t want this to turn into a book. Half of the readers have probably already stopped reading, yea I’m looking at you . J/K

Two important notes before I go. We have updated our TOS in a major way, the AUP and SLA have been combined into the TOS. http://www.jaguarpc.com/about/policy-tos.php

Over the years ICANN and Verisign have increased the costs of domain names several times. We have absorbed these costs for the last 10years and not passed the costs on to our clients. Unfortunately the latest increase announced all over the web will need to be passed on. This price increase affects TLD’s such as .com, .net, .org, .us, .info, .biz and .name . The prices for these domain names will change from $9.95/year to $12.95/year effective immediately.

Please join us in our community forums!
http://www.jaguarpc.com/forums/

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Did you know?
JaguarPC pays out thousands of dollars worth of referral credits each month and tens of thousands of extra rewards points. Start referring friends, family, co-workers, and your own site visitors by starting your own referral campaign right inside the client dashboard.
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Login to the client dashboard for account updates, pay invoices, contact support, manage your account, or to contact us :

https://secure.jaguarpc.com/clients/
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Regards,
Greg L. – CEO
JaguarPC
http://www.jaguarpc.com

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.

These days every business is trying to be as green as possible, but what about going green in web hosting companies? It seems almost oxymoronic that a data processing business would be able to go green. After all, it takes a lot of power to keep all those servers, PC’s and associated equipment humming along at max capacity. It would almost seem impossible. Unlike other businesses that use less energy, web hosting businesses can’t really use solar or wind power yet. Or, if they do it only accounts for a small portion of energy use.

So, how does a company go about going green in web hosting? Well, the truth is there are many creative ways for a data processing company to be green and they are all quite simple, inexpensive and can save lots of money and the environment when put in place. First of all bigger is not always better. Keeping your facility as simple as possible does a lot to keep costs down and protect the environment around you. Ask yourself, does my web hosting business really have to have an ornate entryway or waiting area? Most likely the answer is no.

Many Data Centers use additional gas or electricity to heat and cool the non-data portions of their facilities. However we’re implementing heat pumps that utilize the heat from the data center to heat the offices and generator quarters in the winter and utilize the data centers highly resourceful cooling towers to provide cooling to the offices in the summer. This not only saves us money on burning gas or electricity to heat the space, but is more environmentally friendly. Our use of well water for the cooling towers also provides geothermal heat removal since all the water being input to the towers is from the earth at a constant 55 degrees Fahrenheit which removes BTU’s from the water and the building naturally. This gives us natural BTU removal through geothermal cooling but it also gives us a big savings in water replacement and reduces the amount of electricity needed to allocate city water over long distances and the harmful chemicals used in its treatment for drinking purification, as well conserves potable water in the city’s watershed.

Going green in web hosting businesses is as easy as using some common sense. For instance it is well known that newer machines are more efficient. So, take some of that money you would have used for dressing up your facility and replace your servers and PC’s. Then make sure you have a good solid replacement program put in place so you can keep your facility efficient by replacing machines when newer models come out. What about those old machines? Why, recycle them of course. We recycle all of our cardboard, metals and our old computers. Nothing goes to landfills except non recyclable garbage. We’re serious about our commitment to the environment. As a customer, you can be sure that we’re doing our best to be the least wasteful, most energy efficient Web Hosting Company.

One other thing to consider when going green in web hosting businesses is the manner in which you cool down equipment. Take a good look at your cooling systems and make sure you are using the most efficient equipment in the best possible manner. You can save a lot of energy and a lot of money by just making some minor adjustments. Packaging materials are a real bane to the environment so come up with a program for reducing your use of packing materials. You will find it is easier than you may think. Can a web hosting business go green? You bet it can! It’s been proven.

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.

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!