Ok, I’ve been promising this to you for some time now, and I’m finally able to announce it:

As an IX Web Hosting customer, you’re invited to our first “Online Success” webinar!

The webinar topic is “How to Develop X-Ray Vision in Your Market” and we’ve scheduled it for late January.

Which means I now get to reveal our “secret” presenter, David Bullock, author of the social media study and book titled “Barack 2.0″. David is a well-known expert in the Internet marketing space and I’m really excited to have him share his vast amount of online marketing knowledge with you.

David, together with Howie Jacobson (author of “Google AdWords For Dummies”), will be showing you exactly how they use Google and other tools to discover:

• Whether an online market is worth entering
• How much profit can you expect to make in a market
• What your customers want (and can’t find right now)
• The messages that will attract the right customers to your web site
• What to show visitors on your web site that will predispose them to buy from you

In short, you’ll discover a 45-minute protocol for quick, zero-cost market research that can potentially DOUBLE the effectiveness of your website.

We’re making this webinar available as part of your regular hosting package, so you won’t have to pay a dime to attend. (In fact, you won’t even have to worry about using your phone minutes – you’ll listen in right on your computer.)

Space is limited though, so register now to reserve your seat.

If you can’t make the event, register anyway and we’ll send you a video of the presentation later.

See you on January 20, I hope

Happy New Year!

IX Web Hosting

PS: Remember Howie’s recent video on how to get into Google in <a href="http://blog.IXWebHosting.com/2009/12/important-hosting-account-updates/#google”>my last blog post? Keep an eye out for a post with another video – this time from David Bullock – real soon.

Start the new year off right, by saving $50 on your next web hosting plan purchase at Lunarpages.

Want to save $50 on the Basic hosting plan?

You can do that.

Want to save $50 on the Business hosting plan?

You can do that too.

Want to save $50 on the Windows, Quicksite, VPS and Dedicated hosting plans?

I’m telling you, we got you covered!

We are offering you $50 off any and all web hosting plan orders, except for the Starter plan, E-mail plan and Domain plans.

We hope that helps to extend your holiday cheer when your browsing through Lunarpages, trying to decide which hosting plan is right for you. It would come in handy if your looking to pick up a second or third web hosting account too. When you sign up, be sure to list the Lunartics blog as the place you found out about this fantastic deal too.

From Basic hosting plans, to blog hosting, to even e-commerce solutions – Lunarpages has a plethora of plans for you to choose from.  Also don’t forget about our VPS and dedicated hosting services too!

Remember, this is a limited time offer only – so be sure to act fast if you want to get $50 off your next web hosting plan purchase.  For more information, be sure to check out Lunarpages.com.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting – Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

When your running a small to medium sized business, you might realize you are getting more mail from customers and business associates than you can handle.  Sure, you could filter your e-mail and organize your incoming requests, however I have a better way to get the job done.  Have you ever thought about replacing your e-mail with a help desk?

A help desk, such as TremenDesk, offers both you and users alike a powerful, yet easy to use, customer service environment.  This way, you can handle all your support requests and business deals via the Web, rather than your e-mail client of choice. 

Here are a couple of example uses:

Give your clients and partners another way to access you.  Putting e-mail aside for now, your contacts could simply submit a new help desk ticket to your TremenDesk account to get in contact with you.

You could create a sales@yourdomain.com e-mail address for all your sales request information, then set that up to simply forward into a sales queue inside of your help desk.  This way, both your bases are covered and your giving your user the chance to submit a ticket via the Web or via e-mail.

With TremenDesk, you also get the ability to:

• Assign or unassign tickets
• Search tickets by any string of text (email, full name, etc) or unique ticket ID #
• View all tickets from any user
• Merge tickets
• View ticket response times for any section on the desk.
• Update ticket status as “awaiting user” or “awaiting tech”
• View technician data to ensure quality control
• Add an unlimited amount of private notes to ticket

So, if you are looking for a way to better manage your web site’s or your business’s e-mail, look no further than a help desk like TremenDesk.  It is simply the best tool for the job. 

Bonus: If you are a Lunarpages Business plan customer, you can get your own TremenDesk account for free.  Just contact support@lunarpages.com for details.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting – Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

WordPress is finally providing a blog text editor that they can be proud of.  As of the most recent release, I have switched from using a desktop client to write blog entries to the WordPress web site interface.  That isn’t to say it hasn’t been without problems.

One issue I saw was that the text and picture alignment (left, right, and center) was not working.   However, this is a very simple thing to fix, if you aren’t afraid to get your hands dirty with some stylesheet work.

The problem is that the WordPress post and page editor uses its own CSS code to change how your page or post gets presented.  So if it is not in place already, copy this snipit of code into each of your WordPress themes to fix your alignment problems.

Here is the code you’ll want to copy and paste into your theme’s stylesheet:

img.centered, .aligncenter, div.aligncenter {display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; }

img.alignright { padding: 4px; margin: 0 0 4px 5px; display: inline; }

img.alignleft { padding: 4px; margin: 0 5px 4px 0; display: inline; }

.alignright { float: right; }

.alignleft { float: left; }

Feel free to edit that as needed, to fit your own design preferences. Your theme is found at:

/wp-content/themes/nameoftheme/stylesheet.css

That should get you basically to the right spot.  Depending on the theme, stylesheet name might change. Also “nameofthetheme” should reflect the name of the WordPress theme you are using.

If you are having a hard time getting your images and content to align as you have specified in the built-in WordPress editor, this should do the trick.  Just remember to upload the changes, once you have put them in place.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting – Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Want to show off how many followers or members your web site has?  The perfect tool for this job, is the members gadget from the Google Connect service.  It shows a grid of photos for each web site visitor who considers themselves a, “member” of your online service.

So, where do we begin?

If you need help getting started with Google Friend Connect, check out our setup guide.

The first step would be to go to the Google Friend Connect page, and then click on the “Add the members gadget” link.

Setting up your Members Gadget

On the Members page, you can choose how you want your specific gadget to look and feel.  You can setup the size, colors and then grab the HTML code you will need to copy and paste into your web site template or layout.

Remember: Adjust the width and height here so that the gadget fits within your page. Members gadgets can be as narrow as 200 pixels, and have as few as 2 rows of faces.

Once you get it on your web site, your web site visitors can use this new web site tool to count themselves as a follower of your web site.

Make it easy for users to join your site and meet other users.  Add this members gadget to your own Lunarpages web hosting account today, and add a little more interactivity to your own web site.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting – Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Finding a red theme is never fun, because truth be told, there are not that many good looking red themes out there.  There are a lot of phpBB themes out there – however, finding free themes that are red is a difficult task, indeed.  I have searched the Web myself though, and I have returned with four of the greatest looking red phpBB skins in existence today.

Milky Way Red – Preview it – Download it

Sliced – Preview it – Download it

Reds – Preview it – Download it

RedSilver – Preview it – Download it

There you have it, some of the best looking red themes for the phpBB message board script.  Lunarpages comes ready to serve you in hosting a phpBB powered forum on just about every hosting plan we provide too.  Which one is your favorite?  Do you know of another red phpBB skin that is better?  Send in your comments and let us know what you think!

© Lunarpages Web Hosting – Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Where does customer service fit into the grand scheme of things, when it comes to planning a good marketing strategy?  Mention marketing to anybody, and they start thinking about sales, offers and deals.  While, they too are important, having a good customer service relationship also plays a key role.

The customer you have is more valuable than the customer you want.  Once a company gets the business of a person, they often forget that the need to keep this person just as happy as the new guy.  In what ways are an existing customer more valuable than a new customer?

Establish Yourself as a Trusted Brand

They have bought from you before, they might buy from you again.  It is human nature to go with what we know, and what we trust.  Every day we buy the cereal we like the most, we go to the grocery store we went to as a kid, we buy a Wii for Christmas, because Nintendo were always our favorite.  While the initial sale is important, we also need to keep in mind that establishing yourself a trusted brand with any customer is worth even more.

Marketing the Conversations

If they are happy with their service, you get free word of mouth advertising.  What is word of mouth advertising? According to Wikipedia:

Word of mouth is a reference to the passing of information from person to person. Originally the term referred specifically to oral communication (literally words from the mouth), but now includes any type of human communication, such as face to face, telephone, email, and text messaging.

We trust the opinions of people we know the best.  No magazine advertisement or 30 second commercial spot can beat your Grandmother.  Actually, nobody should beat your Grandmother, because that wouldn’t be very nice. Winning over public opinion can be hard to achieve, but once it has been done – it will out perform any other form marketing out there.

Many of us have downtime around the holidays, so now is the best time to come up with new ways to market our online businesses or web sites.  Make sure while you do, you don’t leave out those customers or clients you have already won over.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting – Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Want to make Sever Side Includes (SSI) work on .html web pages?

On a web hosting server, the .shtml has to be used when you use Sever Side Includes (SSI) on a server. You can override this behavior in your .htaccess file though.

To configure the server in a way so that on your hosting account .html files can use Server Side Includes, create a .htaccess file (or edit your current one) and add this to it:

AddType text/html .html
AddHandler server-parsed .html 

This will tell the server that it is, "OK" for .html files to use the Server Side Include code that you usually need .shtml files for.

© Lunarpages Web Hosting – Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

I am finding myself in more of a holiday mood, the closer and closer we get to Christmas.  So what happens, when you mix the Christmas spirit with the likes of the web hosting world?

Here you have, the Lunarpages rendition of a holiday classic, The Twelve Days of Hosting Christmas.  Enjoy!

On the first day of Christmas,
my web host sent to me
A website package in three different flavors!

On the second day of Christmas,
my web host sent to me
Two Starter plans,
And a website package in three different flavors!

On the third day of Christmas,
my web host sent to me
Three awesome affiliate offers,
Two Starter plans,
And a website package in three different flavors!

On the fourth day of Christmas,
my web host sent to me
Four Windows hosting plans,
Three awesome affiliate offers,
Two Starter plans,
And a website package in three different flavors!

On the fifth day of Christmas,
my web host sent to me
Five XEN virtual private servers,
Four Windows hosting plans,
Three awesome affiliate offers,
Two Starter plans,
And a website package in three different flavors!

On the sixth day of Christmas,
my web host sent to me
Six resellers a-selling,
Five XEN virtual private servers,
Four Windows hosting plans,
Three awesome affiliate offers,
Two Starter plans,
And a website package in three different flavors!

On the seventh day of Christmas,
my web host sent to me
Seven dedicated servers a-hosting,
Six resellers a-selling,
Five XEN virtual private servers,
Four Windows hosting plans,
Three awesome affiliate offers,
Two Starter plans,
And a website package in three different flavors!

On the eighth day of Christmas,
my web host sent to me
Eight domain registrations a-redirecting,
Seven dedicated servers a-hosting,
Six resellers a-selling,
Five XEN virtual private servers,
Four Windows hosting plans,
Three awesome affiliate offers,
Two Starter plans,
And a website package in three different flavors!

On the ninth day of Christmas,
my web host sent to me
Nine e-mail plans dancing, sending,
Eight domain registrations a-redirecting,
Seven dedicated servers a-hosting,
Six resellers a-selling,
Five XEN virtual private servers,
Four Windows hosting plans,
Three awesome affiliate offers,
Two Starter plans,
And a website package in three different flavors!

On the tenth day of Christmas,
my web host sent to me
Ten Business plans e-commercing,
Nine e-mail plans sending,
Eight domain registrations a-redirecting,
Seven dedicated servers a-hosting,
Six resellers a-selling,
Five XEN virtual private servers,
Four Windows hosting plans,
Three awesome affiliate offers,
Two Starter plans,
And a website package in three different flavors!

On the eleventh day of Christmas,
my web host sent to me
Eleven Basic plans, basically,
Ten Business plans e-commercing,
Nine e-mail plans sending,
Eight domain registrations a-redirecting,
Seven dedicated servers a-hosting,
Six resellers a-selling,
Five XEN virtual private servers,
Four Windows hosting plans,
Three awesome affiliate offers,
Two Starter plans,
And a website package in three different flavors!

On the twelfth day of Christmas,
my web host sent to me
Twelve Quicksites rocking,
Eleven Basic plans, basically,
Ten Business plans e-commercing,
Nine e-mail plans sending,
Eight domain registrations a-redirecting,
Seven dedicated servers a-hosting,
Six resellers a-selling,
Five XEN virtual private servers,
Four Windows hosting plans,
Three awesome affiliate offers,
Two Starter plans,
And a website package in three different flavors!

From everybody at Lunarpages, I’d like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours!  Be sure to stop by our holiday thread over on the Lunarforums, or drop in  comment to spread your own seasons greetings to everybody!

© Lunarpages Web Hosting – Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!

Google, through the Google Friend Connect service, give you a way to send out a very simple newsletter to your web site visitors.  If you just have a small update to send out – and you don’t need anything too fancy – this is a great alternative, that will also get your web site visitors to interact more with your web site. 

Now, how do you get started?

If you need help getting started with Google Friend Connect, check out our setup guide.

The first step would be to go to the Google Friend Connect page, and then click on the “Send a Newsletter” link.

Setting Up Your Newsletter Gadget

On the Newsletters page, click on the tab labeled, “Newsletter gadget”.  This will allow you to setup the basics of your newsletter and a gadget that people can use to sign up for it using Google Friend Connect.

Step 1 – Options – Here you give your headline for the gadget box, such as, “Sign up for the newsletter!”  You also give some text describing it, such as, “Get the latest updates for free!” and then you decide how large your want the gadget to be, by pixels.

Step 2 – Colors – In the “Choose Colors” section, you pick the colors and font you want to use in your gadget.  Leaving one of the values empty means it will be transparent.

Step 3 – Generate Code – To create the HTML code you will copy and pate into your own web site layout, click the “Generate Code” button.

Composing a Newsletter & Reading Archives

To compose your newsletter, all you need to do is click on the tab at the top labeled, “Compose Newsletter”.  You will then be taken to a WYSIWYG editor where you can write it up. To check out past newsletters, click on the tab labeled “Newsletter history”. 

Now this might not be for professional newsletters and updates, but for smaller scale businesses or groups – this could be perfect to help get the news out about updates or changes. 

© Lunarpages Web Hosting – Also, don’t forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!