Recently, one of our customers sent us an email saying, “Thank you for the impressively swift reply,” which is the kind of feedback we love to get. Replying to emails, after all, is our job, and over the years, we’ve developed a habit to:

1. Reply to emails fast, usually on the same day
2. Keep emails short. We compose it in our minds before start typing
3. Use the best email tools
4. Never lose our emails even when disaster strikes
5. Use keyboard shortcuts
6. Use plain text email with small attachments at all times
7. Send download links instead of huge files over emails
8. Allow conversion view to keep messages in best order
9. Never mark an email as read until an action has been taken
8. Be thorough. First, we make sure that we don’t miss any questions, and second, we offer help and SOLVE the problem

We’d like to thank TG for inspiring and showing us how to develop these nifty email skills! While working with TG in the past, we noticed that he writes short and fast emails. He would shorten names to two characters, usually, and he would ask questions directly in the email when anything’s unclear, unlike many people who just ignore the email or reply much later, because apparently they need more time to think. TG solves problems with quick email exchanges and it’s very productive and effective!

Before I go, let me share with you what I think is an example of an email signature that’s bound to scare your customers away (or at least make them think twice about contacting you):

Too much information to digest in one go!

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

Why machine-generated email sucks?

Ever since we decided that no message should be sent out looking like a machine-generated email, we’ve gotten overwhelming response and found that our customers are more wiling to share their problems with us now.

We are proud that they have us in mind when they come across any questions related to the IT field. Since it’s all about sharing and caring, we’re more than happy to help. In fact, we find it a pleasure to be able to interact with our customers on a personal basis.

Examples of day to day questions that we’ve received include:

Should we respond to emails that claim we have to secure xxxx.cn name etc?

Is safe to press the “proceed” button when the screen says the SSL certificate is not signed properly?

How does one switch to OpenDNS?

What is the best practice in naming a corporate email address?

Thanks for the questions you guys, we hear you and we’re here for you. Keep them coming!

All too often, we hear customers say, “It worked last night. I didn’t change any settings…”

Well, what can I say? It looks like our beloved TM’s Streamyx has been having some issues lately. In most case, the following quick fix will help you out, before you feel to need to get terribly upset with your web hosting provider :)

1. Restart routers, modems, switch or anything tangling with your phone line or Internet connection.

First, restart all devices connecting to your Internet

2. Change to OpenDNS. TM’s DNS is overloaded and down very often. It doesn’t resolve domain names correctly, so if you hit http://www.gutteruncensored.com, you’re pointing to “nowhere.” Yes, chances are you’ll need to change your DNS to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

Switching to OpenDNS

“Despite these initiatives, customers using Internet services nationwide may experience some degree of service degradation, such as slow browsing while accessing international websites” said Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM).

A repair of fault of submarine cable linking Malaysia and International network is expecting to cause Internet downtime to Malaysia Internet users, until 2nd May.

Our technical team are ready with alternatives to help our email and web hosting customers. Talk to us if you need our help.

Cable laid beneath the sea to carry telecommunications between countries.

About submarine communications cable
The Internet’s undersea world

We’re excited to announce a complete re-design of our Webmail interface! Last week, we rolled out the new design to our direct Beta Users, for rigorous testing, before the live launch in late April.

The live launch will feature a cleaner interface with a simpler, unified toolbar, easier controls for background images and company logos (in the admin CP) and lots more!

New webmail interface

View larger screenshot

If you’re looking for an email hosting service, don’t just look at the top-ranked web hosting services and get blinded by offers of CPanel or unlimited bandwidth and storage. There’s always a catch behind those claims. We’re definitely avid users of Rackspace, but of course, there’s nothing wrong with trying something new. True enough, we recently found that BlueHost.com, a top-ranked WordPress hosting provider, was not up to our expectations.

So before you sign up for something, make a point to understand what the package offers, and think about whether or not it suits your needs. We’d have to say that some web hosting companies, especially those who provide customers with CPanel, are nothing but lazy. Not all web hosting customers have extensive technical knowledge, and will therefore find it difficult to tackle technical issues that might crop up. Like, how would a customer know that when an error pops up with PHP, it usually includes a file error?

These problems arise due to the fact that CPanel allows customers to customise features in their hosting account. Too many customisations often lead to confusion and unnecessary packages. Some customers even unknowingly disable their outgoing SMTP server, which makes contact forms and WordPress hosting very unfriendly to users. What happens is, when a user receives comments, they’re not notified accordingly.

Additionally, while some email hosts claim to give you unlimited bandwidth, there are still limitations. After you’ve seen your bandwidth shooting up, you’ll also notice that the loading time for your website has slowed down. So, while their claims of unlimited bandwidth are true, there are hidden bandwidth constraints.

Also, have you ever been enticed by free mailboxes? A friend asked me recently about Google Apps‘ offer of 25 free mailboxes, and if that would affect our business. While his concerns aren’t baseless, he was surprised to learn that we actually suggest the service to our customers and even set it up for them for free. Wait a minute; doesn’t this present a conflict of interest with our own email service (which can cost up to RM99 per mailbox a year)?

Well, as we’re on the frontline, we’re always trying to be different from other service providers. We evaluate new products and services to find the best solutions that’ll work for our customers. We want customers to trust us like we trust Google, in believing that their search engines will give us the most accurate search results. We tested Google Apps, worked and played with it for a couple months, and found that this new application can, in fact, improve our customer’s email communication. But, of course, a single solution can’t solve all problems.

Looking back, we’re glad that we brought Rackspace’s business email solution to Malaysia, although it was one of the most expensive email solutions around. Today, we’re proud to be one of the most reliable email solution companies in Malaysia!

With that in mind, our no-frills web hosting services will only cost RM80 a year. The standard package we have comes with 12GB of bandwidth, 10GB of storage and 1000 compute cycles. Almost 99% of our current website owners use no more than 20% of the usage. For those exceeding their bandwiths, they can rest assured that we don’t badger them into upgrading, which can be costly. We’ll only suggest an upgrade if it is the only solution.

For example we’ve encountered a web owner who accidently uploaded one of Lady Gaga’s songs in MP3, and his bandwidth shot up to few GB a day. Do you think he needed to buy extra bandwidth? By identifiying where goes wrong, we can solve the bandwidth problem without additional upgrade. I don’t think so. Also, we’re the first to limit single-host names per hosting service. Meaning, if you want to have blog.abc.com and abc.com, you’ll need to subscribe to two hosting packages.

Lady Gaga cracks 1 billion views on Youtube