Our team explained the risks of continuing with such a setup and convinced him that we are technically competent to take over all these services and provide a one-stop solution that’s more cost efective. Fortunately for us, Shin is a dream to work with. He is always willing to listen and ask questions.

During the migration of his many domain names, Shin shared with us how his previous web hosting providers had managed to disapppoint him. The technical support he requested for, for example, was often not professionally handled. To save him trouble and frustration, we suggested that we dealt with his existing hosting provider directly, so that he doesn’t have to be the person caught in between.

We like representing our customers and helping to solve their problems. This is someting we do regularly, actually. By doing so, customers are less stressed during the migration, and to us, customer satrisfaction is priceless!

Parallels Plesk Panel - Complicated, even for a tech people

During the migration, we also discovered that Shin’s previous web hosting company had been using Parallels Plesk Panel. Not only is the name a tongue twister, but when we took a closer look, we were incredibly surprised because the system’s far too complicated, even for tech people like us! It’s not an intuitive system and it’s loaded with features that are hardly used. It’s not that different from a Cpanel actually. In comparison, take a look at our hosting control panel, which is much, much easier to use and understand! Less is more!

Subscribe to our Cloud Web Hosting today, it comes with our user-friendly control panel!

Email migration for a F&B company in Kota Kinabalu

While searching Google for a solution to her problem, she came across the Push Mail review that Pin had posted. She posted a question and Pin quickly replied, and soon, they became friends!

She briefed Pin about her email woes with TM Net’s Netmyne. Her firm needs a new e mail service provider that caters to around 50 to 60 user accounts with increased storage capacity, since TM Net only offers a limited storage capacity. Her main concern, however, was whether an email migration may cause any interruptions to their daily business, and they also need to maintain their original email address.

Pin explained the migration process to her in detail, but in layman terms. Within a few email exchanges, Pin managed to convince the client that they can trust 1.com.my to manage their email completely. Plus, the total email migration and set up will cost less than RM100 a month for about 45 users! We felt really priveleged, however, that the client placed a great amount of trust in us, although we can’t meet face to face. After all, she’s in Sabah and we’re in Petaling Jaya!

Our migration team did call the client before making the migration so that we could walk her through the instruction sheet, to ensure that the client knows how to change to new settings after the migration. In less than 3 days, our team laid out the plans and got all the groundwork ready, with full support from the client, of course. The migration was done over the weekend, and by Sunday evening, the migration was completed and we ran checks to ensure that everything worked. The next morning, the client was able to use the new email system without any problems. Yet another successful email migration!

After the migration was completed, our team called the client up again to make sure everything was in order.

In response to the email migration, the client wrote, “Thank you for your concern. I am really grateful for all your good efforts as everything is running very smooth. It is such a relief for there is no interuption or interference to our business emails. Please convey our appreciation and gratitude to all your colleagues for their hard work and attentiveness.”

Incidentally, this company also has a .com.my domain name. To further enhance their online indentity, we suggested and helped them to secure a .my domain name as well. We explained to them that .my will be a growing future trend, so it’s important to get it now! We found that the domain .com was taken, but we’ve initiated an email discussion with the .com owner to buy over the domain name on behalf of our client as well.

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.

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!

Well, Adline, basically you have two options:

1) Get your own domain name and hosting – It costs you less than RM200 a year. The hosting is installed with WordPress. You can design your own theme, whereas Blogspot is a hosted solution, so you can’t change the layout much. WordPress also has many plugins, widgets and it is powerful. It is more user friendly as it is faster to post and has a smarter comment system. 1.com.my has been using WordPress since 2006, and we’re happy with it.

2) Keep the Blog with Blogspot – Just mask your existing Blogspot URL with your own domain name. Masking the domain name gives you an advantage in terms of the branding of your website. Visitors remember your site more easily. For example instead of using yourdomain.blogspot.com, you can now use yourdomain.com!

I hope this answers your querie Adline!

Adline is a happy mom cum freelance writers. Check out her Blog at adlinewrites.blogspot.com

Adline, writing by moonlight

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.

Ning is the leading online platform for the world’s organizers, activists and influencers to create their own social network

One of our customers had created a social project on Ning.com, which allows its members to interact with one another and share pictures and songs. Things were going well, until she discovered that their yearly subscription fee for a premium package containing the features that she currently uses, now costs USD400 a year! Describing this as ‘horrible,’ she came to us seeking for a more feasible alternative.

We reviewed her current website and looked up similar cases. Some have suggested that users migrate from Ning.com to WordPress MU. But, we’ve tried WordPress MU in the past, and found the multi blog to be far too complicated.

Then, we explored the possibility of migrating from Ning.com to WordPress, but we found that WordPress may not be such a good idea either since the two platforms are so different.

Finally, we discovered that a Facebook Page would be the best alternative. We did the checks, informed our customer of our findings and the customer checked back with us to find out if an FB Page could support Video and MP3 sharing. We told her that all this can be done with Youtube’s embedded code and a Facebook application called MP3

Her response? “Thanks again for all your help! I really am very happy with the service I’ve received from 1.com.my”

You’re most welcome!

To understand us better, please refer to this book, it will give you a glimpse into the sort of technology that we use.

What is 1.my?

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