Guide to a Successful cPanel Migration

 Performing a cPanel server migration may seem intimidating. If you have Linux-based Web hosting, chances are you are using the popular tool to manage your hosting services. Perhaps you are moving to a new server and need to configure cPanel to reflect the new changes.

The following covers the basics on how to perform a cPanel migration, tools you will need as you go along, and some helpful tips and advice. The cPanel’s graphical user interface (GUI) allows users to easily perform most administrative tasks like adding and removing FTP accounts, file/folder and email account management—among others—without using the command line. Fortunately, migrating cPanel accounts is also mostly a point-and-click affair. It is a bit involved, though, so be sure to have technical assistance in case of a need for urgent help.

Web Hosting Preparation

You will need the FTP information for your new cPanel Web hosting account, as well as an FTP client application for uploading and downloading files. Many free options exist such as FileZilla and CyberDuck. It’s also advisable to ensure that your original Web host’s version of cPanel matches that of the new hosting provider. This can be confirmed by logging into cPanel and checking “cPanel version” under “Stats” in the left-hand column. If both versions are the same, you’ll be less likely to encounter problems.

 

Backup and Download of Existing Site

After logging into cPanel, navigate to a section called “Backup.” Under “Partial Backups,” you will see two options: “Download a Home Directory Backup” and “Download a MySQL Database Backup.” Click the “Download” button under “Download a Home Directory Backup” and save the file somewhere on your local computer.

Backup and Download of Existing MySQL Databases

Under “Download a MySQL Database Backup” you will see a list of current MySQL databases installed on the server. Clicking on each link will download the backup file for that particular database instance. As in the previous step, the downloaded files will be used in restoring the website to the new server.

It’s worth noting that both files may be quite large and are compressed for easier manipulation and faster uploading and downloading. These files must remain in their compressed format. Upon downloading, some utilities such as WinZip may prompt you to unzip or decompress the files. Do not select this option, as the destination Web host requires the files to be in their downloaded format. Simply download and save the files as they are.

Uploading Site and MySQL Databases to New Web Host

After logging into cPanel on the old site, navigate to the “Backup” section. You will see options to “Restore a Home Directory Backup” and “Restore a MySQL Database.” Under “Restore a Home Directory Backup,” select “Browse” to navigate to the location of the website backup file. Clicking “Upload” will copy your old site’s file to the new server, keeping intact all folders and file locations.

The last step is to restore any MySQL databases associated with your website. Under “Restore a MySQL Database,” select the “Browse” button and navigate to the location where the website’s MySQL database backup was saved. Clicking “Upload” will restore the database—you will need to do this for each MySQL database that was saved (and needs to be restored on the new server).

In short, cPanel to cPanel migration is mostly painless with the provided migration tools. For cPanel to Plesk migrations, similar tools such as the Parallels Plesk Migration and Transfer Manager tool can also aid in easy, error-free migrations of your website.

Read More

3 pieces of social media marketing advice for Web Hosting sites

The majority of business owners see social media as nothing more than another channel to broadcast advertisements. The power of social however lies in the two-way communication and the ease in connecting with real people, your customers.

In this post we’re gonna dive deeper than your standard “how to post” and discuss three social media marketing tips that web hosting providers need to get a hold off to really use social media to increase exposure and drive up sales.

If content is king, context is god

Every day we are exposed to hundreds of pieces of content through social media, resulting in content becoming a commodity. In order to stay above the noise, you need to ensure you are sharing valuable content with your social media communities — but doing it in a smart way.

The first way is to do a breakdown of your community which you can do via the insights in Facebook and a service like twtrland for your Twitter community.

Once you have some idea of the demographics of your community and who you are attracting it gets much easier to cater to this community and speed up its growth.

When it comes to content always look for an opportunity to connect with your audience on a personal level. Make sure you are communicating in a context that your audience can relate to. Oakley do a great job of this in the example below where they understand that their customers are into action sports like the X Games so they publish timely content around that subject.

The right content in the right context is gold!

Use social reviews to automate word of mouth marketing

It’s no secret that in today’s social world many of us turn to friends and family to get recommendations on what to buy, where to buy it, and how much to spend. In fact a recent report mentioned that 90% of people believe brand recommendations by friends.

With more online content being created than ever before and an ever-increasing amount of noise online, it’s getting harder to get your message heard. Recommendation marketing has never been more important than now.

One service that helps you leverage recommendation marketing is Yotpo Social Reviews. Yotpo is a free plug and plays social reviews solution for eCommerce sites. Yotpo helps store owners generate tons of product reviews and allows them to automatically share this user-generated content with their Facebook and Twitter communities. Yotpo is a totally automated service so after the initial set up you can sit back and the reviews, traffic, and additional sales will come rolling in.

Below is an example of the highly optimized mail after purchase emails that Yotpo sends to each customer after a specific number of days after making a purchase. These emails convert between 6-8% of customers to reviewers.

You need to be getting on Instagram and Pinterest

We are visual creatures. Almost 50% of our brains are dedicated to processing what we see so it’s not surprising that images play a huge part in increasing sales. With most online retailers selling tangible products, it is a no brainer that imagery to play a bigger part in our social media marketing.

Most web hosts are already on Facebook and Twitter but many haven’t caught onto Pinterest and Instagram. Pinterest has already grown into the top traffic source for many retailers and both networks are growing at rapid rates which means lots of new customers! If you have a female audience you’ll find Pinterest could be huge while Instagram is strong for teens and young adults.

Get ahead of the curve and start exploring other social networks to find new customers!

Conclusion

Social media is changing at a rapid rate but that doesn’t mean ecommerce businesses can’t adapt and take advantage of the changing landscape. Remember to always remember that engaging in real relationships with customers is the key to social media marketing and being proactive with trying new tactics can bear lots of fruit. Go forth and conquer!

Read More

Benefits and tactics to using the .ART domain to build a memorable website

As the world becomes more digital, so too does the art world pursuing artistic projects have allowed it to be smoother for artists, designers, and people to create online identities for themselves. This then introduces the challenge of ensuring your art will stand out among the amount of registered domains on the web.

A secret to standing out from the rest, stems in giving attention to the small details. One of these details, often overlooked, but offers unique branding potential, is the .ART domain.

Benefits and strategy of a .ART domain name

Establish your niche with a domain that already mentions what you do. A unique and relevant, artistic domain name can easily show to users what you are all about as an artist.

For example, it then makes it easy for visitors to guess what your website may be about when someone sees a domain such as www.firstname.art or www.firstname.com. Because many .com domain names are already registered, it may be hard to find one that is suitable and available. .ART still has a lot of availability, this means you can likely find yourname.art is available and not need to enter extra characters to the domain name, such as younameart.com.

Shorter is also better 

.ART is also 3 characters long, just like a .COM. There are benefits to keeping it short. Think about how many times you will need to enter your email address, as a username to login to websites when filling out online forms, and so forth. By entering fewer characters each time, you will take yourself valuable milliseconds that can soon add up to minutes, hours, and even days added to your life.

An example here would be the domain dis.art, which would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars as .com. With greater availability on the .ART extension, you can find shorter domains at a much more reasonable price.

Allow people to recall your name

By using a  .ART domain with your artist name, you can better improve your name ranking and help people better identify your website and name.

For example, one of the leading banks, Bank of America uses www.bankofamerica.com as its commercial website and www.bankofamerica.art for its artistic initiatives website.

Create domains for individual products

Perhaps you have a new arty product or service that you are looking to sell online. You can use a domain name to give the art its own unique web identity and minimize the probability of it getting left behind in the endless sea of domain names.

Let’s assume that you are a graphic t-shirt company that goes by the name of FastTees. You are now venturing into artist submissions bearing your most popular graphic prints. To promote the new range of artists, you can use a domain name such as www.fasttees.art

Make .ART targeted marketing campaigns

Any campaign with its own .ART domain name often comes across as more legitimate, it also makes it easier for you to redirect people to it from other websites. An example here would be to include your name or first name in your domain name such as www.iphone.art

Protect your trademark

Some brands are simply registering .ART to redirect to an existing website. Here are some .ART domains that currently redirect to well-known internet brands.

• facebook.art
• bankofamerica.art
• hugoboss.art
• swatch.art
• iphone.art
• amazon.art
• tate.art
• pixar.art
• instagram.art

Improve branding on social media

Facebook and Reddit contain plenty of links that come across as anonymous and can also pose a threat. These are usually strange links with random combos of letters, numbers, and characters such as t.co/my723e3.

Now let’s say that you are a cat clothing brand called Peerfect and you’re coming out with a new line of cat t-shirts. You are promoting this line on your social media sites and forwarding people to the page on your website that showcases the cat tees.

Consider these two links:

⦁ bit.ly/a23fgh
⦁ peerfect.art/tees

Which of the links have a higher likelihood to be clicked on?

Using the new .ART domain extensions to create memorable links can truly boost your brand and help you make the most of your artistic activities. Dynadot currently has a special promo for .ART domain at just $3. Our affiliate link will take you to page and include your domain discount.

Read More

SSH Telnet

SSH, or Secure Shell, is a network protocol which is used to connect to a server and perform different tasks via a command line. The protocol is preferred by many knowledgeable users, due to the fact that the information transmitted over it is encrypted, so it cannot be intercepted on the way by a 3rd party. SSH access may be employed for lots of things with regards to the type of web hosting account. With a shared hosting account, for example, SSH is one of several ways to import/export a database or to upload a file in case the hosting server allows it. In case you have a virtual or a dedicated server, SSH can be used for pretty much everything – you may install software or restart particular services including the web server or the database server that run on the machine. SSH is used primarily with UNIX-like Platforms, but there are clients that permit you to use the protocol if your computer system is working with a different OS as well. The connection is created on TCP port 22 by default and the remote web server always listens for incoming connections on that port even though lots of providers change it for security reasons.

Read More

Start accepting custom online payments through PayPal with WPForms

As the world moves closer towards an online world, the need to get setup and accepting payments online is becoming increasingly more important.

With so many businesses offering many different products and services, with variations and types there is usually not a one size fits all solution when it comes to accepting payments online.

The payment form on your website is the most important part of a website for a business. What Annie Leonard referred to as the “golden arrow” on the now famous “Story of Stuff” video.

This needs to be as easy as possible for people to complete payment. They have already found your website, decided to purchase and now are about to complete payment. The last thing you want now as website owner, is to have the user have a problem filling out the form or decide that is too time consuming to complete. Resulting in lost revenue.

PayPal is great choice for many reasons, one being that most people and businesses already have a PayPal account. The other is that is easy to use, people like it because they don’t need to fill out their payment information each time they complete a purchase. It is also trusted by millions of merchants and buyers around the world.

More recently, PayPal has made improvements to its API that allow for seamless integrations into existing applications like WPForms. Getting WPForms for your WordPress site is great way to quickly to start accepting payments online with all the customization’s required for any business.

Conditional logic is your key to customizing payments

By enabling conditional logic to your form entries, you can build custom features such as giving users the option if they would like to pay with PayPal or credit card. You could also offer them the option to subscribe with PayPal or make a one time payment.

Passing users over to PayPal to complete the transaction also means that PayPal will take care of the security side of an online payment. This minimizes the risk for the website owner and helps the buyer rest assured that the online payment is secure.

Read More

Start accepting credit card payments with Stripe and WPForms

For many businesses that have a website, the contact form could be the single most important element as that is where the leads come in. Maybe you are already using the advanced drag and drop form builder by WPForms.  

If the time has come to start accepting payments online, it can be overwhelming to sort through the various eCommerce platforms and perhaps it may not be needed. If you have setup with Stripe, the easiest and most popular payment processer and use WPForms on your WordPress website, then perhaps the WPForms Stripe integration will be enough for you. 

Many small businesses have a website for the simple purpose of having a web presence. Once that presence becomes more established, spammers often exploit any exposed email addresses, making an upgrade to something like WPForms an increasingly important requirement. 

Now that a website is running with a great contact form and site, comes the question about accepting payments online. Many small businesses may be put off by things like setup costs, fraud, complicated systems, etc.  

The solution is simple. Stripe. It saves a ton of time on paperwork for setting up with a payment processor. Customers are often amazed when they get set up processing credit cards the same day. 

Having a premium website form like WPforms and Stripe is very valuable for a business, they allow a business to collect money for a fraction of the cost/hassle than anything else. Before services like Stripe existed, a merchant would have to spend weeks scanning, signing and sending documents back and forth. Some processor applications also include questions that you might not expect to be on a payment processor application. Questions like how far are all the people that have server access sleeping from the datacenter? 

Stripe does make it smooth and after filling out a short application form with some basic financial information, you will be up and running with Stripe on your forms. 

Accept various payment types

With the easy integration with WPForms it allows you to collect various kinds of payments, such as:

• Payment for a product
• A subscription 
• Donation amount
• Conditional amount based on form selections
• Buyer enters an amount

No monthly fees and flat-rate pricing

Another advantage of getting set up with Stripe for payments is that they do not charge a monthly fee. You are only charged 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. This makes it easy for a business to predict the pricing. 

Using Stripe and WPForms together is an easy and fast way to get set up accepting payments on a website exactly how it may be required. It can be configured to suit and can have a new user signed up and processing payments the same day. There is nothing else available that would allow such an efficient setup process for processing payments online. 

Read More

CentOS

CentOS is short for Community Enterprise Operating System. This is one of the best Linux distributions for servers and it is well known as one of the most dependable and risk-free Operating Systems on the market. CentOS is open-source software, so you’ll be able to personalize it in whatever way you see fit, adding and removing packages or changing the program code of any of them. It’s also free to distribute and use, so you won’t need to pay any kind of license fees, meaning that the total price that you will have to pay for a server making use of CentOS will be more affordable as compared to the price for a server working with an alternative OS. What makes CentOS unique among various other Linux distributions is its huge developer community, that will help you discover the reply to any question or problem you may have. In addition, each version that’s released officially is supported for ten years, which is a lot longer than with any other operating system. What this means is regular safety and stability updates that provides a dependable software environment for all your web applications in the long run.

Read More