Free Hosting and Domain!

 
Hosting Ireland are currently running a free hosting and domain competition!
 
Anyone can enter the competition whether you have a hosting account with us already or not.
 

How do you enter?

 
To enter just simply follow us (@hostingireland) on twitter and tweet the following :
 

Follow @hostingireland or Retweet this by 2/9/11 6pm and enter draw for FREE WordPress setup, domain and hosting for a year!

 
You will instantly be entered in to a draw that will happen on the 2nd of September at 6pm, the prize for the winner will be :
 

Whats the prize!

 
1 Free Domain Registration (1 year),
1 Free Business Hosting Account (1 year),
1 Free Installation of WordPress.

We have recently updated the software that allows you to install popular software to your shared hosting account. This means there are some new and updated scripts for you to use:


1) Form Tools -> 2.0.5
Form Tools is an open source (free!) PHP / MySQL script that provides any existing web form with a backend database and a user-friendly interface to manage the form submission data, plus a wealth of tools for managing and manipulating your form data.


2) Contao -> 2.9.4
Contao is an open source content management system (CMS) for people who want a professional internet presence that is easy to maintain.


3) Plogger -> 1.0
Plogger is a simple yet powerful tool — everything you need to share your images with the world. Plogger is your photos integrated into your website, a fully featured photo sharing package with an attractive and easy to use administrative interface that makes managing your galleries a breeze.


4) Dolibarr -> 2.9.0
Dolibarr ERP/CRM is a modern software to manage your company or foundation activity (contacts, suppliers, invoices, orders, stocks, agenda, …).It’s an opensource software (wrote with PHP language) designed for small and medium companies, foundation and freelances


5) DoceboLMS -> 4.0.4
DoceboLMS is a SCORM compliant Open Source e-Learning platform used in corporate, government and education markets.


6) LetoDMS -> 2.0.2
LetoDMS is an open-source document-management-system based on PHP and MySQL published under the GPL.


7) phpDocumentor -> 1.4.3
phpDocumentor, sometimes referred to as phpdoc or phpdocu, is the current standard auto-documentation tool for the php language.


9) Vtiger -> 5.2.1
vtiger CRM is a free, full-featured, 100% Open Source CRM software ideal for small and medium businesses.


10) BlueERP -> 0.7
BlueERP is a double entry accounting application for small and medium business. Written in PHP, it is delivered through a LAMP environment to provide web access to your accounts.


11) Omeka -> 1.3.2
Create complex narratives and share rich collections, adhering to Dublin Core standards with Omeka on your server, designed for scholars, museums, libraries, archives, and enthusiasts.


12) PHPKode Guestbook -> 1.0
PHPKode™ Guestbook is a simple yet powerful Free PHP guestbook script using Ajax. The Guestbook features for easy to install, easy to integrate into your existing sites and an advanced anti-spam function.


1) Oxwall -> 1.0.3
Oxwall is used for a wide range of projects starting from family sites and custom social networks to collaboration tools and enterprise community solutions.


2) ExtCalendar -> 2.0
ExtCalendar is a powerful multi-user web-based calendar application. Features include Multi-Languages, Themes, Recurrent Events, Categories, Users and Groups management, Environment and General Settings, Template Configuration, Product Updates.


3) Beatz -> 1.1

4) SimpleInvoices -> 2010.2
Simple Invoices is a free, open source, web based invoicing system that you can install on your server/pc or have hosted by one of our services providers.


5) Etano -> 1.22
Open source software for setting up a dating site.


6) SimplePie -> 1.2
SimplePie is a very fast and easy-to-use class, written in PHP, that puts the ‘simple’ back into ‘really simple syndication’.

We often get asked “Why isn’t my website showing up on Google searches?”

For a large majority of internet users, Google is the internet.
Therefore; if your website is not in Google, then your website effectively doesn’t exist!
While not necessarily accurate, this is a viewpoint many people have.

In this post we will cover two important aspects of the relationship between your website and Google.

1. How do I get my site on Google?

You may or may not of heard about search engine “spiders”, these spiders crawl the internet as a spider crawls around it’s web.
These spiders are no more than intricate computer programs that visit every website they find.
Once your site has been visited by one of these spiders your pages will begin to be indexed in Google’s search results.

The question is, how do they know your website exists to visit it?

There are a few ways to ensure Google’s spiders know your website exists.

1. Probably the best way for Google to find your site is through a link on someone’s website. However this can be difficult to accomplish if you are new to this whole area.

2. Submit your site to Google; Google have provided a form that can be completed and submitted online. It can be found here : Submit your site to Google This can take a while however so it requires some patience.

3. Add Google’s Analytic code to your website; signing up to Google’s Analytic software alerts Google to your website’s existence.

All three of the above methods will end up with your site being indexed by Google. Once indexed your site will appear for searches for your domain name : e.g “hostingireland.ie”

2. How do I get more visitors from Google?

Getting top spot for competitive search phrases can bring your website the visitors you need. It’s all well and good coming top spot for people searching for your domain name, but how often do people search for that?

It is far more important to come high in the search results for terms around your business. For instance if you are running a car hire website, people looking for car hire in Dublin will generally type in to Google search phrases like :

Car hire Dublin
Cheap car hire in Dublin
Dublin car hire

This is where website optimisation comes in, optimising a website for performance in Google requires an understanding of the search phrases people are searching for around the services or products your website is selling.

Hosting Ireland offer services to assist you in getting your website to perform to it’s maximum in Google and other search engines. For more information please see our web marketing information or give us a call on 1890 987000 to discuss what we can do for your website.

As the internet becomes increasingly important in our day to day lives, the validity of it as a target for criminals grows exponentially. Viruses, Malware, Phising attacks and so on, all of these things can be confusing for the person who merely wants to access the web, browse a few sites and collect their email. Several sites put the number of new pieces of malicious software being launched on to the web at any where between 20,000 and 60,000 per day.


“More than 5 million U.S. consumers lost money to Phishing attacks in the 12 months ending in September 2008, a 39.8% increase from a year earlier (Gartner)”. That having been said, it does not mean that you cannot protect yourself from almost all of these forms of attack. Common sense is no small factor in removing the vast majority of threats. We all know the advice not to click on links and open unknown programs and emails from people we don’t know or that appear suspicious. Also a basic understanding of how the internet works and how your computer works, can go a long way toward protecting you from most threats. But even with this knowledge, your pc can still become infected. How? well malicious software makers don’t only target you and your pc they also look to find access to websites and install code on their pages. Then when visited, these pages will generally redirect you to a new site and before you realize it and often without knowing, your pc has downloaded and installed a malicious piece of software.

Our top 5 tips for protecting your pc & website

1. Use an antivirus such as Eset Nod32
2. Don’t store password in plain text use a password safe such as KeePass
3. When sharing personal information on a site, make sure it is protected via https
4. Air on the side of caution when downloading software from the web.
5. Avoid opening emails and clicking links sent to you by people who you don’t know or trust

To be as safe as possible, you really need to consider using a well known antivirus software. Hostingireland recommends and also uses Nod32 antivirus. If you would like to try it out before purchasing then you can avail of a free trial .


Another important factor in protecting your websites and online accounts, is to use a password safe. This is a tool which encrypts the passwords that you enter into it, making it impossible for malware, should it become installed on your pc, to seek out these passwords and use them to gain access to your account. At hostingireland we use the free KeePass password safe

The latest version of cPanel offers Horde Groupware Webmail Edition. Horde Groupware Webmail Edition is a free, enterprise ready, browser based communication suite. Users can read, send and organize email messages with three different webmail interfaces and manage and share calendars, contacts, tasks and notes with the standards compliant components from the Horde Project. cPanel’s switch to Horde Groupware Webmail will provide you with the most up-to-date Horde modules.


This means you can have many of the features offered by products such as microsoft exchange, but at no extra charge as all of these features along with many others come free to you with our linux hosting accounts.


If you want to try out this new features, you can access webmail for your linux account by using the following url replacing example with your own domain name http://www.example.com/webmail. You will then
be asked for your username and password. The username will be you own email address and the password will be the password that you set through your control panel for that email address.

We have recently upgraded our Tomcat Java hosting packages to have Tomcat 6 available to them. We have also increased the amount of diskspace given to the Java hosting accounts in General. The j2000 range of java hosting accounts now have 2GB of diskspace and the J4000 hosting accounts have 4GB of space available.

Tomcat 6 implements the following Java specifications: servlet 2.5 and JSP 2.1 specifications and uses J2SE 1.5 & JEE 5.


If you’re interested in ordering a java tomcat 6 hosting account please follow the link.

If you are looking for a new domain name or to set up a new website, now is a great time to get started. With hostingireland you can now get a .ie domain name for half price. But not only a .ie you can also get a .com , .net, .info, .biz, .org or .name domain for half price over the next thirty days. To get a half price domain all you need to do is order your chosen domain.
So if you’ve got an idea for a site or have been toying with the idea of bringing your business on-line. Then get started right now and check if your domain is available add some hosting and off you go.


You can check a domain’s availability by following the link.

If you are looking to set up a website and have little or no knowledge of code then using either Joomla or Drupal could be a good choice for you. Both of these open source software projects provide a full framework for creating a fully featured web site.


We provide an easy set up option for these software bundles within your hosting accounts control panel. Under Software and Services you will see an icon for scriptilous. When clicked this will launch the installer. From here you can then choose the software package that you wish to install within your hosting account. If you choose to install Joomla or Drupal, it will install the required databases and also the files that Joomla or Drupal require in order to run.


If you wish, you can choose to install these software bundles in a separate folder. Once installed you can simply browse to the folder where the software is installed. Once there you can login to the admin area with a user name and password that you would have been prompted to create when starting the installation. Then you are done and ready to begin creating your website.
Get a hosting account that supports Joomla and Drupal
Pro Ultima Hosting | Pro Business Hosting


Though it may be a little daunting at first, with some persistence and the help of some good, free tutorials on the web Drupal Tutorials and also Joomla Tutorials , you will soon have a dynamic, managable website up and running.

We’ve teamed up with Attracta to give our customers some great new SEO tools available directly from your CPanel control panel.
Below are the links as they appear in your Cpanel.




Included are tools to get your site listed in Google, and if you are already in Google, it may get even more of your site’s pages listed, and improve your page rank with the back link builder. Other tools include a broken link checker, search engine visit tracker, helpful meta tag tool and more…


We are able to offer the Attracta™ Basic-level SEO tools at no extra cost to you (Normally over €40/year).

Simply login to your Hosting Ireland website control panel, look for the new SEO Tools category, and click on “Get In Google.” to get started.

We are proud to announce the launch of three new Linux hosting accounts. The new hosting accounts reflect our understanding as a web hosting company of what the requirements are for the swiftly evolving web.
Here is a quick overview of each of the new packages:


Pro Lite
10GB Disk Space
10GB Data Transfer
3 Web Sites
30 Email Accounts

To find out more about the Pro Lite Hosting package visit the Pro Lite Hosting Information


Pro Business Hosting
20GB Disk Space
100GB Data Transfer
15 Web Sites
150 Email Accounts

To find out more about the Pro Business Hosting package visit the Pro Business Hosting Information

Pro Ultima Hosting
50GB Disk Space
500GB Data Transfer
50 Web Sites
300 Email Accounts

To find out more about the Pro Ultima Hosting package visit the Pro Ultima Hosting Information