If you’re looking for a reliable new website hosting provider, few are better known and respected than Goggle. However, ease of management and expense can be a problem for novice web site owners. Enter: SiteGround Hosting. Good value, easy to use, and built on the rock-solid and capable Google Hosting infrastructure. Check them out!
Easier website = more success
If you manage your own website or sites for others — you know all too well how many moving parts keep them working and the endless pressure for new content. Automation and toolsets that work in the background are critical to making web site management easier. These allow you to focus on your business, your clients, and meaningful content… these make you while tedium sinks you.
Jetpack for WordPress rolls together impressive templates, form creation and spam reduction, social network syndication, analytics, and more. With free plans for small sites scaling to full-featured plans with unlimited image hosting and video streaming — all these Jetpack tools work simply, reliably, always…
Until the end of May — take an additional 20% off any new Jetpack plan. Use code DISCOUNT20 at check out to save money, time and frustration. Easy!
Here’s the Jetpack link and remember the code above.
Struggle less with email
We’ve all been there… pressed for time, in the office later than we’d like, a client wanting your email “yesterday” — and you simply can’t get your email to send or work properly. While IT infrastructure has come a long way — there are always goons looking to infiltrate your mail, trojans/viruses adept at corrupting it, and authentication or capacity issues that simply frustrate.
Most web hosts are best effort for their add-on (often referred to as “free with your website hosting” email in order to reduce expectations). With many being provided on a single server providing directory services, website hosting, content management, AND email — its no wonder why they struggle with volume — especially when dozens or hundreds of customers are on that same server.
Enter Google with a mission statement: “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” As you’d know — they’ve revolutionised search and finding information you need. Wether it be websites, images, or even places on Maps and Earth — they pretty well have you covered.
Google’s free Gmail email service has long been used by consumers for ease of use, robustness and peace of mind. They offer free domain based email for non-profits, service many educational institutions and government clients — and now offer the same rock-solid service for smaller business too.
Check out Google’s G-Suite offering — if you choose to sign-up you get a free 14-day trial AND we’re able to offer you a 20% discount for your first 12-months (you pay Google directly). Contact us for a PROMO code.
Focus on Content for Your WordPress site
If keeping your WordPress site operating is taking more time than creating compelling content and growing your audience — we have a solution.
JetPack (from the friendly people at WordPress.com) is the Swiss-Army-Knife of website tool kits. It makes your site safer (with auto security scans), writing easier (with creation and proofing tools like blog spam filtering), and generally all-round easier (with countless design & social tools, automatic backups, image and video optimisation, etc).
With a range of packages from FREE services for your personal site and several options for businesses — we’re sure there is a package that will suit YOU! (We use JetPack and find it invaluable to focus on what matters most).
Spending less allows you so much more…
A new book by author Cait Flanders shares experience and insights on how she turned her out-of-control consumerism into saving nearly half her income. It’s a common tale of woe — people are motivated more than ever with marketing messages that a certain product, service, or luxury will make life better. Does it?
Check out her consumer decision tree — its a great definitive way to make purchase decisions in a nonemotional, unbiased fashion.
Read her article or better yet, buy Cait’s book:
New year — new server(ices)
After many years and near faultless services from MOSSO (which was bought by Rackspace and then passed along to LiquidWeb)… we have continuously been supportive. Having helped build their secure services (over a dozen years ago) — we were charged a premium to use them by the latest owner. As a grand-fathered account, we’ve now been pummelled with outrageous charges for email (which had always been “part of the offering” and provided to our customers free of charge — sadly, no more…).
All said, we’re moving on up… IMAGEOZ has provisioned several new servers in the US, Singapore and here in Australia. These will all offer CPanel for a good user experience and feature-rich capability. All of these are managed by our new WHMCS hosting management layer which (we hope) gives all our customers more granular control, management, and the ability to instantly contact us for accounts, support or sales queries.
We’re excited and eager to take our offering to a new level of localised, friendly, yet responsive customer service and support.
You may access our new “front end” at: imageoz.net
As always, we are grateful to our many loyal customers (partners) — you empower and inspire us to do great things!
Backblaze – affordable, simple and effective automatic backups
While we love Dropbox for its ease of sharing, storing, and having access to files across nearly any device – its more a temporary file system than permanent off-site archive suitable for recovering important files, restoring your computer if it dies or goes missing. For true peace of mind for your precious photos and critical files – you need a backup tool that simply works…
Start protecting all your photos, music, movies and documents today!
We’ve tried a great number of backup solutions over the years and luckily have seldom had to use them for recovery. However, the high on-going cost always made us think twice before renewing. Several would only protect internal hard drives of the subscribed computer and not the external drives attached. Backblaze makes it simple and affordable to protect your whole system – and at only $5/month!
Secure. Offsite. And the only online backup service that doesn’t need you to pick folders and filetypes.
- Unlimited Data
- External Drive Support
- Military-Grade Encryption
- Continuous Backup
- Automatically Finds Files
- Automatic Throttle
- Locate Computer
- iPhone Mobile App
- Free Web Restore
- Restore to USB Hard Drive
- Restore to Flash Drive
- File versioning
- 11 Languages
- Just $5/month
Learning and using photo apps
With SO many applications and features in photo applications – how does one learn them to maximise their features and benefits? Well, if Adobe is your favoured toolset – there are few resources better than Adobe KnowHow. They offer a range of course about Adobe products (especially Creative Cloud), general design, and many other graphic, artistic, and business tools or disciplines.
We’ve long been a fan of Stack Social / MacAppWare for special offers on products, services and software. For a limited time only, they are offering a huge 86% savings off the primary photo tool learning modules that Adobe KnowHow offers.
Click to learn more: Adobe KnowHow: Learn Photography From The Best’ by Adobe KnowHow via @stacksocial
How safe is wi-fi?
Wi-fi can be a powerful tool and invaluable resource (especially while on the road). While many are familiar with email threats and scams – just how aware of threats and methods to reduce risk while still taking advantage of wireless internet access while roaming are YOU?
Here is a great comprehensive infographic from Secure Data Recovery Services:
How Safe is that Wifi? An infographic by the team at Secure Data Recovery Services
Digital Rights Management – Keeping it Under Control
Artistic rights or copyrights have always been a concern and with everything going digital – its easier than ever to run aground =or= to comply with this important issue. Don’t put yourself or your business at risk by “borrowing” imagery or creative content from other sites or vendors without proper licensing and/or permissions.
Marketing Profs has always been a great source of insight, content and community for marketing and web creatives. Their latest article explains Digital Rights Management – what it is, why it matters, and how to safely use and leverage content. Check it out here.