You also get Gmail’s storage, spam filtering, labels, and all the other goodies, and as far as your recipients know, you’re using a commercial email host, and no one will know it’s Gmail. Gmail out performs the typical web-based email that comes with most hosting packages such as SquirrelMail. With IMAP and POP access, you can use it with your desktop email client of choice, from Thunderbird to Outlook and easily check your email on any smartphone.

There are two main advantages to using Google Apps (for your domain).

1.) You can create other users at your domain, up to 50! If my email is lisa@chocolatesandflowers.com, and I’m the domain administrator, I can set up addresses for my co-workers or employees members. Then everyone at my domain can collaborate on documents and share a calendar as well.

2.) If you decide you don’t like Gmail anymore? Just point your MX record to another host and you’re done. Your email address never changes, it can move with you.

Setting up your email to be hosting on Google is a service we offer for. If you haven’t already signed up for this, contact us today. We’d love to get you started!

by cogdogblog

FTP simply stands for “File Transfer Protocol.”

Here’s a simple definition:
Think of your home computer as a juke box that only you have access to, and your hosting company’s web server as a juke box that EVERYONE has access to. FTP is the safe and secure way that you play music between those areas.

WHY DO I HAVE TO FTP?

You could host your website at home but it’s usually not secure or fast enough to provide a stabile environment. That’s why it’s best to sign up with web hosting companies like Blue Deer Forest. We and other companies have dedicated web servers that are powerful and can handle lots of traffic.

FTP is how you access your web files from your computer at home to our web server. Every time someone types in your domain name, they are accessing your web files.

HOW DO I FTP?

One of the easiest ways you’ll probably use FTP is with a Graphical Interface FTP application.

It’s set up so you type in your FTP address, username and password (given to you when you sign up for an account) and connect.
The FTP application then pops up a screen that shows you a split-screen window.

Usually, the Left-Hand screen is a window to YOUR computer. The Right-Hand screen is a window to OUR server.
Then, access the files on your local computer, and then drag and drop them into the Web Server. The FTP application then uploads the files while you check your email, Facebook updates or other tasks on your computer.

WHAT SHOULD I USE TO FTP?

Here are some free FTP programs that make using FTP pretty easy:
* Filezilla for PC or Mac (get the Client version) – http://filezilla-project.org/
* CoreFTP for PC – http://coreftp.com

WHAT ARE MY FTP SETTINGS?

For Blue Deer Forest users,

****Blue Deer Forest Web Hosting – your FTP address will be: yourdomain.com . Your username and password are sent to you when you sign up with us.
Happy uploading!

Open Source Software

This is software that has put written by developers (sometimes worldwide) and is usually free or available for an affordable fee. It’s supported by the developers who constantly are updating and maintaining the software.  It’s usually freely distributed and meant to be accessible to anyone.  Other developers are free to help improve the software because they have access to the code.  It’s a very great way to access some amazing software.

Which open source software do I have access to:

Through our web hosting, I would recommend these software solutions:

WordPress: Originally only for blogs, wordpress is now being used as a content management system for websites. It has an amazing number of plugins and themes to choose from.

PHPBB: Ever dreamed of setting up your own forum for your website? Now with just a few clicks, it’s super easy.

Mambo: A more powerful content management system, Mambo can be used for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. It is used all over the world to power government portals, corporate intranets and extranets, ecommerce sites, nonprofit outreach, schools, church, and community sites.

PhpWiki: Need a Wiki to help organize and keep track of documents? PHPWiki is a site where anyone can edit the pages through an HTML form. Super useful when working on a project with many people!

Next Step: you can access these software solutions through your C-panel. Inside of Cpanel, find the section “Software/Services” (the 8th section down) and click on the happy face “Fantastico De Luxe”.

****Blue Deer Forest Web Hosting customers who want help setting this up should contact us here – we’d love to get you started!!

Bandwidth is measured in bytes, kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes.  The measurement is created by the number of requests and size of the files requested.

Each of your websites are made up of digital files. This includes html pages, videos, images, mp3s, etc. Each character weighs around 1byte. So if you had a file that contained 10 letters, that file would probably be about 10bytes.  The more complex the file, the more it weighs.  Images, mp3 and video files weigh the most because their encryption or translation to be viewed requires thousands of pixels/characters.

When that request comes in that someone wants to view your site, the weight of all of the files and everything attached to it (videos, images, etc) are passed between your web server and their computer so that they can view it in their web browsers. This is basically bandwidth.

If you are in the process of building a new website and are unsure of your web traffic. It’s safe to assume that you should be fine with 1 to 3 GB of bandwidth as a start-up. Most web hosting companies can move you up to the next plan very quickly if it looks like you’ll exceed your bandwidth allotment.  If you have any press/advertising that might be happening with your launch,  choose a plan that has some flexibility so you’ll have enough bandwidth for flexibility.  If you’re planning more than one burst of press/advertising, plan for that as well.

Some web hosting company have overage charges if you exceed your bandwidth. Blue Deer Forest Hosting is great about contacting you as soon as you go over your bandwidth and doesn’t charge any fees. We want to talk to you if it was a one time occurrence due to press or advertising.

1) Check out your customers:

Watch your visitors (clients, readers, customers). That data can help you gauge what’s working and what isn’t with your website. Google analytics offers a variety of insightful views of visitor behavior for your site.  You can even create goals to create a sense of where people are dropping off or where you expected them to follow.

2) Tracking a campaign:

Want to make sure that your email marketing campaign is doing what it should? You can track any campaign with link tagging. Tracking not only the click-throughs on your email campaigns, but to see if those people actually bought or did an action is super important! This helps you make more decisions on your investment of future marketing decisions.

3)  Adwords!

Have you ever tried out paid advertisement on google? It might be worth doing for your business and google analytics can help track the progress.

Next Step: www.google.com/analytics – setup instructions to get you started, use a google account or your own email.

****Blue Deer Forest Web Hosting customers who want help setting this up should contact us here – we can help you set this up for free!!