The Online Shop Designer Blog

Over the last few months 2 of my clients have had the security of their hosting accounts breached by spammers inserting scripts to activate illegal mass mailing campaigns. The result was that the server administrators had to immediately put the hosting accounts into suspension until the offending scripts were removed. In other words the websites were temporarily, but completely, out of action.

On this occasion it was fortunate for those involved that their web facilities were not actually destroyed, which meant that I was as able to remove the scripts and re-enable their websites. The outcomes could have been very different however, as I don’t think either client had a current backup.

To manage this situation I suggest that clients do one (or both) of the following:

1. Ask TOSD to change your hosting account’s password to something more complex and secure. It’s FREE – just submit a Support ticket.
2. Take out a Support Agreement with TOSD for just $5.00/month (payable annually). As well as ongoing help and advice with your website applications, a Support Agreement includes automatic, scheduled, monthly offsite backups so that in the event of a catastrophic failure of your web facilities a recent backup will be at hand. And restoration can take as little as 15minutes. Compare that to having to re-create you website and all its content from scratch

Recently I have had a couple of clients who received bogus letters ‘inviting’ them renew their domain name . . . for up to 10 times the normal renewal rate! Well, I suppose if you are going to try it on you may as well set your sites high

Seriously though, these bogus domain renewals look quite professional and are often delivered by regular mail.

If your domain names are managed by TOSD, check these basic things before you pay anything:

• Was the renewal notice sent by TOSD from domains@tosd.com.au?  (TOSD do not send renewals, or anything else, by normal mail)
• Was the renewal fee either $60.00/2 yrs for a ‘.com.au’ domain, or $19.95/1 yr for a ‘.com’ domain?

Still not sure?

Submit a support ticket and ask. It could save you a lot of money.

I often get asked for useful utilities to help site administrators to perform various functions. So that everyone may benefit I have decided to start assembling a collection:

• Meta tag generator
• Color Picker: hex
• Popup Window Code Generator
• International Currency Converter
• Fotosizer: a simple batch image resizer

More will be added over time, however in the mean time if you would like to suggest a utility feel free to leave a comment and I will add it to the list.

Often, when I talk with business owners and managers about their website, it is apparent they have a very limited knowledge of how to use the Internet to promote their business or the new website I’ll be building for them.

With the Internet now such a mainstay of business communications it’s a concern that too many business people are not doing what they can to learn more about Internet Marketing.

Thankfully, two very smart Internet Marketers are now running a series of Internet Marketing seminars to share their knowledge and empower you to better manage your online promotion of your business and website.

Jeff Richardson and Lucio Ribeiro really know their stuff. I’ve worked with them on a number of occasions to enhance the value of websites I have built for clients. And I can tell you they are well worth a listen if you get the opportunity.

Now, through www.internetmarketingacademy.com.au you can come up to speed with topics such as:

• Search engine optimisation
• Online advertising; Google AdWords and other PPC campaigns
• Social Media for business; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more
• Underutilised strategies such as email marketing, online PR, and
• $200 free advertising you can use to advertise online.

Jeff and Lucio are working closely with Google and Yahoo and both these companies are providing $100 credits for their PPC (Pay per click) advertising for all Internet Marketing Academy attendees. And I’m thinking, if you ask nicely, Jeff and Lucio would even set the campaigns up for you free of charge.

I’ve organised a special deal.

I would really like for you to go along. I know you will learn some valuable tips.

So, I spoke with Jeff and have organised a special deal for my ‘family’. If you decide to attend simply click on the ‘Enter Discount Code’ link on the first registration page and enter the code ‘tosd’.

This will save you $100 off the $250 ticket. At $150, after you add back in the $200 from Google and Yahoo you come out in front even before the information you’ll garner.

Do yourself a favour – find a time and location that suits and invest in your businesses future with www.internetmarketingacademy.com.au

And after you’ve been and seen make sure you come back to the blog to thank share your comment with others.

It is a fair question, but unfortunately one that is often surrounded by misplaced assumptions.

Is it the web host? Surely they do backups and can restore a site if there is any problem.

Is it the the web designer? Surely they can simply re-instate it from a copy of the original.

Is it the owner? Surely they would realise the value of their online investment.

Unfortunately, so often the bare truth is that it is none of the above. Quite simply, no one is taking the necessary steps to ensure that a website is protected from either accidental or intentional harm. Let’s look at these situations one at a time:

• Web Hosts are responsible for providing the servers (computers) that host a web site. In most common situations a server is configured to host multiple accounts, or websites, that each belong to different owners. To use an analogy, a server can be thought of as a building full of rooms that are rented out to different tenants. The web host’s responsibility is to maintain the server as a viable platform for all the users who share it. To guard against system failure (for example a hard disk crash or faulty power supply) web hosts back up the entire server and all its contents. In the event of such a failure, the server can then be repaired and all user accounts restored to full operation. The important thing to realise is that the web host’s backups are of the whole system, not individual user accounts. If they do a restore, then they must restore all user accounts. They will not do that for a problem that has occurred to just one account, because it would affect all users on the same server.
• A web designer will usually have a copy of the application files that are associated with a web site, however that only addresses a small part of the problem. The most valuable (and difficult to replace) part of a web site is the data that has been added since it was initially created. And in most cases that is stored in a database – not the file structure. The normal situation is that web designers have nothing to do with a web site’s data (content) after the site is handed over to the owner. So they do not have a copy of any content that has been added since that time.
• Which brings us to the owner. Clearly they have the responsibility for their web site’s content, and they would certainly like to think that it was secure, but unfortunately, from an owner’s perspective,  the steps to be taken to set up a reliable backup regime are often either too confusing, or just forgotten.

In the end small business owners must accept that it is their responsibility to secure their online data. In many cases the most efficient and effective way to do this is to establish a professional support agreement that looks after the entire process on a scheduled basis.

The Online Shop Designer (TOSD) can provide just such an arrangement. In fact it is all part of the service

If you have any further queries regarding Support Agreements or online backups please leave a comment or contact us.