“It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products,” ~ Lamar Smith, Republican Chairman of House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.
Well, Google, Facebook, WordPress, Wikipedia and YOU did it! The controversial anti-piracy bill called SOPA has been defeated via a coordinated effort between playmakers and users on the Internet.
While it is true that illegal file downloads and similar activities are a problem, imposing more regulation on Internet usage is probably not the way to do it.
Just about every major site including Wikipedia and Facebook featured major banners on their site slamming the upcoming vote. Wikipedia even went dark for 24 hours to illustrate their contempt for the proposed bill.
However, Wikipedia also issued this statement: Thank you for protecting Wikipedia. We’re not done yet
And, it went further stating that “SOPA and PIPA are not dead: they are waiting in the shadows. What’s happened in the last 24 hours, though, is extraordinary. The Internet has enabled creativity, knowledge, and innovation to shine, and as Wikipedia went dark, you’ve directed your energy to protecting it.”
There is thus a major battle underway in the United States between those individuals who favor big government to protect us (both online and offline) with more regulation and those who do not.
This sometimes crosses party lines and it’s becoming an interesting battle.
Let us know where you stand by writing your comments below!
Warning: Not everyone will agree with the conclusions drawn here. Some of you may be smarter than the rest of us and found ways to limit the damage. If so, write your comments at end of article so we can all learn from your experiences!
If you are a web designer you know what it feels like when a client starts tinkering with your initial site design with the stated goal of adding his own unique vision of how a page should look and behave.
In this situation your sexy looking proofs (or test landing page) may start to resemble a giraffe rather than a panther.
And, this can happen no matter how hard you try to set expectations or parameters in the scoping and collection phase. In fact, the initial impetus for the site may have been when the owner first called you up to redesign his current site, which you both agree belongs in the 1980s, and needs an urgent facelift.
Figure 1: Source - The Oatmeal
If you are smart you start by outputting a PDF proof from Photoshop or Illustrator that provides a visual flight path for the site for your client. This helps limit your risk before you begin HTML coding or customizing a free WordPress install inside the Midphase Cheap Web hosting platform.
Hopefully he signs off on the PDF so you can meet the agreed upon deadlines. Of course what usually happens next falls within what we call the 10% rule. He likes 90% of the web design but wants to add a few so-called minor modifications.
He of course, wants the design to “POP”. And, this may occur even if your design exceeds initial expectations and is generally considered to be above the presentation offered by competitive websites.
This is the beginning of what we call a design mutation. In the next few days, you experience a sinking realization that these ‘minor’ changes are in fact endless. With each new change your design slowly begins to degrade and provide new entry-points for the owner to make yet more changes. It’s a slippery slope indeed!
He may then put together a committee of critics who proceed to dissect, analyze and break apart the original design flight path. You are now entering into what is known as design hell. It seems everybody, and, we mean everybody, is a web design expert.
You are now faced with a barrage of ‘what-ifs’ and further suggestions that are designed to suck the lifeblood out of your system and push out the launch date. You honestly feel like there is a conspiracy against you and it’s getting worse every day.
You are now no longer a web designer, but a machine part on a factory line. You can actually feel yourself being transported on a conveyor belt as the website owner and his cohorts tear up each new design and argue incessantly amongst themselves.
The final result is what we call a Design Frankenstein. Somehow you have helped create something that you are sure is awful but everyone involved is happy because somewhere on the page it has their unique thumbprint.
At this point, you get paid and seriously consider becoming a bartender or going back to college to become an accountant. Yes, web designer, your job can be unforgiving and we understand and sympathize.
To visually illustrate this crazy process check out this infographic from Oatmeal that is hysterical. Who has not felt part this way at least once in their life?
In: General| Tips and Tutorials
Posted on Jan 19, 2012
So you think your one-person operation or SMB is too small to kick-start an intranet? Think again!
Web designers, web developers and small business owners including architects, accountants, lawyers and medical practices can all benefit from a private internal network that allows both your employees (and customers) to share, post and download files relating to your revenue system.
An intranet is defined as an internal network that is exclusive to only one organization. It bears many similarities to a website, which by the way is technically known as an ‘extranet’.
Some advanced extranets include Facebook and LinkedIn, which feature sophisticated login / registration systems and the ability to post user generated content that can be made public or private.
However, bigger companies like IBM, BMW and Sears all use powerful intranets behind the scenes to help coordinate their staff, projects and planning. These fall within the private domain and allow big companies to scale quickly without relying on millions of phone calls or using email threads to progress new projects.
But, don’t think because your SMALL or because you consume cheap shared hosting to drive your public website that an Intranet will be of no benefit to you. You do not need 1,000 employees to implement an intranet.
When WordPress, the world’s most popular Blogging and Content Management System, takes a political stand you know it must be important. WordPress tends to shy away from the political spectrum since it has its hands full keeping both Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org running smoothly in terms of new updates, features and security enhancements
But on January 10, 2012, it finally threw its hat in the ring and officially protested developments taking place in Washington, D.C., which look set to send shockwaves through the Internet.
What are they afraid of? It’s an ugly development called censorship, which WordPress, along with Google, believe will stifle the creativity and spirit of the Internet.
On Tuesday, January 24th, the Senate is due to pass an Internet Censorship bill that could actually “break the Internet”. They call this the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA.
Private corporations want the ability to shutdown unauthorized sites where users can download music, video and photos. This means Government could force ISPs and web hosting providers like midPhase to block access to infringing domain names. They could also sue U.S. based search engines, including blogs and forums, for infringement. Corporations and government could even force advertisers to pull ads from offending web hosts and search engines.
Tech heavyweights like WordPress believe the incoming regulations are a waste of time and will not stop illegal downloads, since users could just type in the IP address instead of the domain name.
Further, it will cripple new startups because any company may sue them if they feel their filtering methods are not robust enough. This means if you are small startup or SMB you could be bankrupt before you have your first customers through the door.
Posted on Jan 5, 2012
While Nostradamus may have cornered the market for apocalyptic predictions, in the IT world many turn to Gartner Inc., for insights into what may be in store for business owners, consumers and SMBs over the next 12 months.
They released their top 10 strategic technologies for 2012 which you may find useful in analyzing your internal business processes and website integration.
While each prediction should be viewed with caution –- how often are experts wrong? –- they can serve our purposes if we associate real world examples with their broad findings.
Let’s focus on their top five which we think will really affect SMBs on our cheap hosting platforms.
Prediction
Perhaps not surprising that media tablets including iPad, Kindle Fire and Samsung Galaxy feature first on their list. But the key takeaway is how to manage your employees, customers or contracted workers who wish to use these devices to interact with your websites, small intranets or website portals. This is vital whether your are b-2-c or b-2-b entity.
Example: For instance, when you decide to a deploy a new content management system or collaboration portal, you perhaps should put tablet compatibility at the top of the list. Platforms such as WordPress, Yammer and LinkedIn, all offer high-grade tablet applications. You can even find FTP applications like FTP on the Go in the Apple ITunes directory.
For those of you who wish to push the envelope and turn your iPad into a web server, take a look at ServerMan HD. But, don’t get any ideas about leaving Midphase cheap hosting plans just yet, since we doubt this could be used for anything but very basic web serving! 
Take a look at every app you currently use and make sure they are tablet-ready. If not, perhaps it’s time for change. Read the rest of this entry »
Since Midphase is in the business of offering cheap web hosting, we follow technology trends in data centers and web servers carefully. This also includes breakthroughs in Supercomputers, which form the spear tip of America’s struggle to remain the leading IT innovator on the planet.
Generally, what’s good for supercomputers is good for you, since this technology drives further innovation in the web server market that drives down cost and offers faster speeds over the long term.
In the middle part of November 2011, our Midphase radar picked up news that Big Blue had bowed out of construction of a $188 million super computer project, called Blue Water.
Bluewater was an audacious attempt to build the world’s fastest computer that would operate at a beyond a petaflop, equaling one thousand trillion computer operations a second.
We say “WAS” because since that goal was announced in 2007, Japan had stolen the limelight away from the IBM and the United States by building the K Computer that is even faster, if you can believe that!
Yet, completing this project is paramount and will indicate how much fight the US of A has left in the battle for computer supremacy.
IBM, a world leader in giant mainframe computing, cited technical and cost concerns that left it vulnerable to failure. It thus reported to the National Science Foundation (NSF), project sponsor, that it was departing the University of Illinois Campus, which had been the technical site for the project.
And, the company that stepped in to take over the reigns is Cray Computers Inc, which will boost the luster of the project by also incorporating graphics processing units (GPUs), which they hope will ‘future-proof’ the Supercomputer in the visual age we live in.
“More than 25 teams, from a dozen research fields, are preparing to achieve breakthroughs by using Blue Waters to model a broad range of phenomena, including: nanotechnology’s minute molecular assemblies, the evolution of the universe since the Big Bang, the damage caused by earthquakes and the formation of tornadoes, the mechanism by which viruses enter cells, and improved climate change predictions,” said a Cray Press Release.
They will be the using the Linux Operating system on 16-core AMD and Opteron 6200 series processors, which “HPCwire cites as one of the top five new technologies in 2011,” according to Cray.
Cray CX1000 Supercomputer: Source: Cray Image Library
A small business website owner or web designer should always be looking for new ways to reduce operating costs, boost performance and “wow” their client base.
Here are five tools that could help in this endeavor and all share the following characteristics:
Yammer: collaboration & communication
We all love Facebook, even businesses. But, unless you wish to move down the Microsoft route with SharePoint, there are few products to consider that match the social networking giant in terms of stickiness, smoothness and a great user experience.
Yammer is a fantastic little tool that offers all three. The free version provides both a web or task bar interface in which to share comments, documents and create voting polls.
It helps replace the massive email threads that have become a staple diet in businesses across America.
Simply invite co-workers into your organization and start collaborating instantly. Also consider setting up private networks for your clients who will love the way they can interact with their staff in a real time. It’s really a great tool that will leave you wondering how you lived without it!
Filezilla: FTP
Sure, there are lots of cool FTP clients out there including WS FTP and Cute FTP. But, the name that generally pops up again and again in web development circles is a free tool called Filezilla. It’s completely cross-platform including *BSD and allows remote editing. Check out these screenshots before downloading to get your feet wet. It’s easy to install, configure and use. Plus, it’s superfast! A real gem, in our opinion.
Jing: Screen capture
There is an old expression “show me, don’t tell me.” If you need to quickly get your idea across, take a Jing screenshot of your desktop and send it to your client or co-worker. It’s really easy to install and access. A small SUN icon permanently resides in the top corner of your screen ready for the day when you need to trigger your first screen capture. You can even add highlights, text, or other signatures to the screenshot before either downloading to your drive or storing online as a permanent reference link.
Gliffy: Diagrams / sitemaps
This diagram building tool rocks! A perfect example of cloud software, Gliffy allows web designers, engineers, architects and programmers to draft up professional-quality flowcharts, diagrams, floor plans, and technical drawings using a drag and drop interface.
All the output feels like web 3.0 in terms of sexiness and presentation. You will love the way you can share the diagrams with a quick publishing link or download a jpeg to your computer. A highly recommended tool in the visual age we live in.
Zoho CRM: Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Ok, here’s the deal. Saleforce.com and Act! Contact Management systems are all great examples of Customer Relationship Managers (CRM). But, one way or another they may end up becoming too complicated, too costly or may simply divert you from your core business objectives.
Zoho CRM makes it easy to manage your contacts, create tasks, send emails, track opportunities and generate reports. And, it’s free for up to three users. Our only gripe is that the web lead forms (like most of the other CRMS previously mentioned) do not automatically deduplicate email addresses upon entry from the website. However, this should not prevent you from giving this tool a try. When you are comfortable with Zoho CRM, start reviewing other add-on tools in Zoho family including invoices, projects, docs, and a multitude of others.
We are always on the lookout for new tools, which could be added to the list above. Send us your top five productivity tools and we may publish them.
In: Analytics| CMS| Tips and Tutorials| Web Hosting
Posted on Nov 3, 2011
Microsoft took this advice last year when they admitted defeat and handed over 7 million Live Space blogs to the biggest force in blog Content Management Systems (CMS): WordPress.
WordPress reports that a staggering 64 million-plus websites in the world today are powered by the free software, with almost half of that number belonging to self-hosted FREE blogs.
And, this number looks set to get bigger and bigger. Take a look at this Google Trends graph that pits WordPress against some of the most popular CMS and collaboration portals currently on the market. WordPress, it seems, is leading. No, WINNING.
Even Joomla, which has a number of fanatical followers, cannot keep up. It mounted a brief challenge in 2009 before tapering off and bumping uglies with Blogger.
“We’ve grown to power 14.7% of the top million websites in the world, up from 8.5%, and the latest data show 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US are running WordPress,” said WordPress a few months ago.
As some of you may have heard, a security flaw was found in the script of one of the vendors many of you use for your image resizing, TimThumb. Their developers and author of TimThumb, and WordThumb, have worked to release a new version of these scripts to patch this flaw. It can be downloaded from:
http://www.woothemes.com/2011/08/timthumb-security-flaw-patch/
It is highly recommended you updated this script as soon as possible, so as to protect yourself, your visitors and your hosting account. Please be aware, you will need to have the latest version of WordPress in order to apply this patch.
WooThemes has also created a new forum with regards to this patch, please refer all questions regarding it there, as midPhaseTechnical Support will only be able to provide you these two links, due to the custom nature of these scripts. The forum can be found at:
http://www.woothemes.com/support-forum/?viewforum=120
If you have any questions about how this may affect you or your account, please let us know.
We are excited to announce that we will be migrating all of our shared hosting servers over to the C7 data center facility located here in Utah. A schedule of server migration will be updated on the midPhase Status Blog. All moves will be done from 10:00 p.m. MDT through 2:00 a.m. MDT although individual interruptions of service are expected to be around 5 minutes. If you are using 3rd party name servers (not ours) then you will experience an interruption of service until you update your name server with your new ip address.
C7 is a Tier-3 data center which has been constructed with the most advanced and reliable technologies available in the industry. This Teir-3 data center provides the same level of security that you would expect to find with major banking and financial institutions and is located in a designated disaster-safe zone as outlined by FEMA’s National Emergency Management Information System.
C7 Data Center Features:
This data center is located close to our corporate offices and most of our senior level management. We understand the sensitive nature of these moves and are committed to do everything possible to ensure a smooth transition. We feel that this strategic move is the best long term solution for our shared hosting clients.
Director of IT Matt McBride said, “We are excited to bring all of our shared hosting servers here to the C7 Data Center facility. The proximity of C7 to our corporate headquarters will be one additional advantage to better serve our clients and demonstrate our ongoing commitment to them.”
The migration will improve server performance for all of our existing shared hosting clients. We will be using newer server hardware and have the ability to repair hardware issues more rapidly. We will also be using a newer Linux file system that is proven to provide a more stable kernel leading to higher up-time and lower resource utilization.
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