Many email service providers pride themselves with 99.99999% uptime, but what’s the point in that if they can’t resolve a customer’s email problem? Recently, one of our customers told us that ‘his email was slow.’ Most email providers will just tell the customer that it’s an Internet issue and suggest that they complain to TM. They won’t even bother to check or provide an on-site review.

While it can be written off as an Internet issue, to a customer, it’s frustrating to experience problems in downloading emails. At 1.com.my, we take into consideration the ‘overall email experience’ in our email services. If an Internet interruption affects the so-called ‘email experience’, we’ll fix it. If a faulty or misconfigured Outlook creates issues, we’ll fix it.

We listen, make an on-site visit, suggest solutions and strive to create the ‘best email experience’ for our customers.

All built-in Junk/Spam filtering by your email clients (Outlook, Windows Mail, Mac OS X Mail) are NOT RELIABLE. They cause false alarm, marking legitimate email as Spam and throw them to the Junk folder.

To add, many antivirus softwares intergrate with your email clients such as Outlook to provide additional protection. THIS IS BAD TOO! This unseen layer of protection causes missing email and attachment.

To turn off Junk filters in your email client:

1) Outlook and Windows Mail > Junk Email Options. Choose No automatic filtering.

2) Mac OS X Mail > Preferences > Junk Mail > Disable

To turn off third party virus integration with Outlook

1) Symantec Endpoint Protection > Change Settings > Antivirus… > Disable Outlook Auto-Protection

Thanks to Steve Jobs of Apple Inc., we now have even more i-devices, like the iPad, iPhone and Macbook to fill our already busy lives. Now, we can all have access to emails, even when we’re cycling in the middle of the woods of Fraser’s Hill.

But, have you ever wished that you could send an email from your iPhone and have it shown directly in your Outlook? Or, would you like to mark a message as read in your Mac’s Mail and have it automatically marked as read in your Android as well? How about fine-tuning your email tools to boost your email managing efficiency, like AMG adding HorsePower to the Mercedes-Benz?

We understand your needs and plan to come up with a guide, but since each email user is different, we think it would be better if we could spend some time with you to review each case and propose an improvement. With such advancements in email technology, the old POP3 way to access your email has become obsolete, and it has now been replaced with smarter methods where you can manage all emails in all devices while keeping everything you’ve done in sync.

This exercise may take a couple of weeks, so let’s not waste time and kick start it now!

1. Switching to IMAP
2. Fine-tuning email tools
3. 10 bad email habits

To further strengthen the branding of Khind Mistral Group, we’ve helped them put their logo onto their webmail. Personalised webmail is nothing new, but it’s our dedication and prompt response to make it perfect that counts. What matters is the satisfaction of our customers. When the job was done, Loke of Khind Mistral emailed us to say, “Really a great job! Didn’t u say u need 2 days?”

Khinds' new webmail

Outsource your web changes for just RM80 per hour!

How does it work?
Just send our project manager your request and an estimated cost will be provided before the work begins.

Will it be costly?
The minimum charge is RM20 for 15 minutes. Text changes can usually be done in less than an hour.

How do I pay?
We will send you our invoices at the end of the month.

How do I make a change request?
Please use the “Contact Us” form on our website, it’s located under “Web Maintenance”.

Can you fix pages with scripts such as PHP or ASP?
Yes! We have a network of over 50 web developers with different expertise.

Most web changes can be done within the same day. Since we only focus on web maintenance and not web design, we are able to focus on your needs and get it right.

To kick start, please email adrian@1.com.my and tell us what changes you’d like to your website.

More articles related to Web Maintenance
1) Learn how Project Managers work
2) Project Manager, The Key to Web Design
3) Why outsource web maintenance?
4) Why RM80 per hour?

Sending emails has become second nature to most of us these days, but there are always new things one can learn to make the process even more efficient. Among the things one should learn to do is how to: compose emails faster, manage your spam, get free mail back up, use a faster web browser, access your emails from your mobile phone, and attach signatures to the end of emails. If you don’t already know how to do these things, just check out these PDFs, and do share it with your family and friends!

New Comer Tricks
Auto Insert Signature

Terms of service, privacy statement, AUP and SLA for Cloud Sites. Learn more about our web hosting services.

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Are you one of our existing email hosting customers? We’ve just published our latest uptime and performance report for all our email services, do check it out!

Email services uptime report

Download full report (May 2006 – Jun 2011)
Download full report (May 2006 – Oct 2010)

We know that you have a lot of questions about our services and the way we work, so we’ve put together these downloadable documents that will tell you all you need to know:

1) Switch on guide
Are you swtiched on? Let us explain what that means in this helpful guide which will tell you about the many benefits of outsourcing.

2) Security services
Learn all about our security features and measures, and set your mind at ease.

3) All-day support
Our dedicated team is here for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Find out how and why we do it and learn all about our five elements of all day support.

4) Honouring the promise
If you’re unhappy with our services for some reason, we’d like for you to bring it up with us, find out how.

5) Acceptable use policy (AUP)
Your security and the prevention of internet abuse is important to us, find out what’s not allowed on the 1.com.my network.

6) General terms
We understand your concern about legal matters, so allow us to address matters concerning hosting agreements, obligations , terms of services, intellectual property and much more.

7) Mail terms
Here are additional terms and conditions on our mail services.

Download all documents

iPhone 4 for business

Well, firstly, the built-in mail program allows you to work on your emails a lot quicker, because it’s one of the easiest email clients for mobile phones. But, you’ll have to learn the art of writing emails that are only three lines long, otherwise, you’ll start cursing that tiny little keypad!

Also, with the iPhone 4, taking a picture and sharing it on Facebook, cannot get any easier. The Facebook App is free, and it’s real easy to use. This means you can manage your Page and keep it alive, with just your iPhone.

The Safari web browser on the iPhone 4 rivals the functionality of a full web browser, except it can’t show Flash content. It’ll display most websites without alignment problems though, and you can manage all your favaurite web applications while you’re on the move.

iPhone 4 Sign Up Tips

In case you’re wondering, it’s perfectly safe to go with the 1GB a month package. Don’t worry, you won’t run out, especially since you can tab on WIFI most of the time, instead of 3G. Plus, you only need 16GB of space, and if you need a lot more, just get a pen drive!

Sign up Cloud Email and sync your contact with your iPhone
Join iPhone 4 Malaysia Fan Page

1.com.my’s Cloud is an advanced, enterprise-level platform but it is also very simple! It is an easy way to run your applications. Code it and load it. We take care of the rest – monitoring, patching, configuration, security, scaling…etc letting you focus on what you’re good at – developing! All the headache of server administration is our responsibility.

Easy two step process

Load it up: Your cloud site can be created in a matter of minutes – load balancing, clustering and redundant storage are all inherited by your application automatically.

Watch it scale: From the first byte, your site is hosted on advanced clustered technology, designed for high traffic, high performance websites. When your site grows bigger than your initial solution, you pay inexpensive scale pricing for exactly what you use – nothing more.

Benefits

1) Zero Server Configuration. Your application automatically inherits load-balancing, redundant storage and security.

2) Built-In Scalability. It’s difficult to know when your application will take off. Thankfully, with our solution you’re always ready.

3) Managed with Easy-To-Use Software. Add unlimited sites, databases and email accounts. Be up and running in minutes.

4) Supported by Real People. Pin and his support team is available 24×7, with you.

5) Pay-As-You-Grow Pricing. Great value for applications small and large.

Supported Technologies

PHP, MySQL, Perl, .NET 2.0+, ASP, MS SQL 2005, IIS7, Ruby on Rails, SSL, Crontab, CGI Full Specification

Where To Buy

Order Cloud Hosting Today

Cloud computing conceptual diagram

Cloud Computing is Internet based development and use of computer technology (The Cloud being the metaphor for the Internet). It is a form of computing where resources are provided as a service over the internet to users who need not have knowledge, expertise or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them.

It enables the on demand allocation or de-allocation of CPU, Storage and network bandwidth and has the ability to meet the scalability requirements to suit user demands quickly without users having to engineer for peak loads.

Cloud computing is the convergence of three major trends:

1) Virtualisation – where applications are separated from infrastructure

2) Utility computing – where server capacity is accessed across a grid as a variably priced shared service

3) Software as a service – Where applications are available on demand on a subscription basis.

What is Cloud Hosting?

Cloud Hosting (often also referred to as clustered hosting) is a step up from the shared hosting infrastructure that is commonly used today. By handling security, load balancing and server resources virtually you are no longer restricted to the limits of one physical piece of hardware. In basic terms, online operations are not limited to a single server, they have access to the processing power of a number of servers that are distributed in real time.

In a physical environment e.g. a web site is limited to the resource constraints that is housed within the physical unit/server (RAM, processing power, bandwidth etc). The concept of a cloud infrastructure no longer has this limitation – you can purchase as much computing power as you need from a virtually inexhaustible resource. The nature of the infrastructure means that scaling up and down is seemless and thus spikes in traffic aren’t problematic.

Load-balancing occurs at the software level and is dynamically load-balanced across a number of servers. Servers can be added or removed from the cluster with no impact or downtime on hosted applications meaning less disruption for customers. The cloud architecture has the ability to provide small and medium enterprises the stability and resilience of a web hosting architecture that a few years ago only huge corporate organizations could obtain through huge IT expenditure.

What technologies does the Cloud use?

It is quite a general concept that incorporates software as a service (SaaS) and Web 2.0 among other recent technology trends, where the common theme is reliance on the Internet for satisfying the computing needs of users.

What infrastructure is the Cloud based on?

The majority of cloud computing infrastructure is built on servers with different levels of virtualization technologies delivering reliable services through data centres. The services are accessible anywhere in the world, with The Cloud appearing as a single point of access for all the computing needs of consumers.

How long have Cloud Technologies been around?

The underlying concept dates back to 1960 when John McCarthy opined that “computation may someday be organized as a public utility”; indeed it shares characteristics with service bureaus which date back to the 1960s. The term cloud had already come into commercial use in the early 1990s to refer to large ATM networks.By the turn of the 21st century, the term “cloud computing” had started to appear, although most of the focus at this time was on Software as a service.

What are compute cycles?

Compute cycles measure how much processing time your applications require on the cloud. Using 10,000 compute cycles in a month is roughly equivalent to running a server with a 2.8 GHz modern processor for the same period of time.

How many compute cycles will my applications use?

Since web applications vary so greatly, it is hard to make a perfect guess. However, there are some guidelines that can help. First, you can think of 10,000 compute cycles as being about the same processing power as you’d get from a decent dedicated server or Amazon EC2 instance. For example 10,000 compute cycles would power:

* about 11 million page views of mosso.com
* about 25 million requests for a static 15KB image
* about 2.1 million page views using a database-driven content management system

How far can I really scale?

In truth, there are no limits with Cloud Infrastructure. You can push hundreds of millions of requests on single domains. However your site will need to be compatible with the Cloud. Please refer to our technology section to ensure you can run your applications successfully on the Cloud.

Let’s get started with a simple question – What is Malware? ‘Malware’ is a ‘malicious software’ that’s been designed to infiltrate a computer system without the owner’s informed consent. Once the owner’s computer system has been infected, it might spread and harm other machines either within the same network or others.

Malware warning sign by Google

One of the most common tell-tale signs that a website is under attack is the message below, or, it might just return you to a blank white page. Fortunately, there are a few things that you can do to get things to run smoothly again:

Checking for malware infection symptoms

1. Do a fresh WordPress upgrade. Don’t just overwrite.
2. Remove malicious codes (themes, plugins, .htaccess)
3. Remove cache and sitemaps
4. Check database for malicious codes (use phpmyadmin > Search)
5. Change database and FTP password
6. Perform housekeeping on WordPress and change password
7. Upgrade all plugins to the latest version
8. Submit malware review via Google Webmaster Tools

Other symptoms of a website being attacked by Malware:

1. Returning to a blank page
2. The alignment of the content on your page is off
3. Certain dynamic-pages of your website don’t work
4. Some of your plug-ins used in WordPress don’t work
5. Files shown on FTP client ends with the extension “.INFECTED”
6. A malware warning sign appears on the web browser
7. Unknown .htaccess files in directories

Malware removal tips

To manually deactivate all Plugins without WP admin access, clear the values in wp_options > active plugins

Your site will not be reviewed by Google immediately, and the warning sign may remain for a few hours despite having all malware removed

The warning sign will state the name of the malware. Use it as the keyword in your search for malicious codes.

Posted by Adrian

Other related articles:
Recovering from site compromise
Malware injection attack

Notes: For those who need the help to investigate your website, please use the Contact us form to inform us.

One of our customers recently reported that a vital email was lost. The email was sent from a third party sender to a mailbox hosted by us. Thankfully, the customer was able to provide all the necessary details.

We conducted a post study based on the records and suspected that the email was not sent out by a third party sender, and therefore, our customer did not receive it. After further investigation, we notice that this may not be the case. Then, we turned to our server log file. We process hundreds of millions of emails daily, so it’s not easy to retrieve a log file.

We were finally able to trace the email and confirm that had been delivered to our customer. But then, where has the email gone? Other service providers may just stop here and blame the user for losing the email in the first place. Case closed, but not us. We traced the email once again and finally found that the customer had enabled a setting to remove any email detected as Spam.

So, basically, we discovered that the email from the sender arrived in our customer’s Spam box and that it had been removed and therefore not found by the user. Email retrieved. Case solved. A happy ending.

The 'Delete message from folder' setting in the email control panel