iWeb Communities: Blog

Are you in the dark about how the current surge in influenza activity can impact your business? Think beyond the hand washing instructions posted in public washrooms and look past the hand sanitizer dispensers in every building lobby. Consider more than habit-changing memos from HR about covering your mouth while coughing and sneezing. While those are effective in slowing down the spreading of such a contagious virus, IT directors really need to think outside the tissue box. There are two major factors (besides your own health) to take into consideration with regards to the flu’s impact.
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The last few weeks have seen reports suggesting that China is currently the origin of around a third of global DDoS attacks, Rupert Murdoch tweeting that his Wall Street Journal is being targeted by Chinese hackers, and an announcement by the New York Times that it has been the subject of months of cyber attacks, also emanating from China.

Read on for a summary of these events and a look at international organizations’ attitudes to the threat of espionage from competitors, employees and governments.

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The internet is about people and hardware as well as the information sharing they facilitate. Among the infrastructure impacted by hurricane Sandy last week, the web felt the disruptive force of nature. It also helped people to tell the unusual story of what happens when a hurricane strays north.

Its easy to forget about the work that goes on behind the scenes of the internet. The people and the hardware that host, power and facilitate the medium. We tend to think about the words, images, videos and data, and even the people who create them, and less about the infrastructure they rely on.

This is more true than ever in the age of the cloud. To the end user, cloud hosting is not about paravirtualized drivers and hypervisors but data accessibility and simple interfaces. For cloud-based services, the model is an opportunity for brands and services that make access to data and media simple, reliable and a little bit fluffy.

Clouds collide

The clouds making the headlines last week were more tangible. Indeed, they could be seen from space in satellite images published on weather and news websites charting the course of hurricane Sandy across the ocean to New York and New Jersey.

Sandy was bigger global news than many other hurricanes because it reached the north east of the United States. And the unprecedented demand for information this produced was met head-on, even fuelled by, an enormous variety of web reporting and footage. (more…)

You may have heard through the grapevine that iWeb will soon launch a new product: the Cloud Server.

A beta version was launched a few weeks ago that made a limited number VMs available to Smart Server customers right in their Control Center. (more…)

Here is a new article written by our guest blogger, Charles Lacroix. This time he shares with us his test results on load-balancing with Smart Servers.

I recently had the occasion do a lot of tests on my Smart Servers. I installed several webmail software, I tested  email relaying via the private network. I also experimented with reverse proxy and load balancing (more…)

When it comes to choosing an adequate solution for hosting your project, many options are available. Dedicated servers and VPS are two of the most common hosting solutions.

Depending on your project however, there are several reasons why you should consider a dedicated Smart Server instead of a VPS. (more…)

The Spamhaus organization has granted iWeb a star. It’s a little bit like getting a Triple A rating but for fighting spam :)

Most importantly, it means that we currently have no SBL listings for our IP space! We were recognized by the Spamhaus Team as a proactive no-spam-tolerance network.

This is quite rare as Spamhaus listing process is very strict and thorough. That is something we are very proud of.

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Debian is the OS of choice for many of our customers. As of February 2011, Debian’s latest stable release is version 6.0, code name squeeze. When a new version is released, the prior stable version becomes oldstable. As of 2011, this is version 5.0, code named lenny.

iWeb currently only offers Debian lenny as an install option on Smart Servers. Many of you requested that we supported the latest Debian distro named squeeze. (more…)

SOPA and PIPA are respectively two bills in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate.

SOPA is the acronym of “Stop Online Piracy Act” and PIPA stands for “Protect Intellectual Property Act”.

The goals of these two bills are to stop copyright infringement on the Web in the United States, originating especially from foreign countries, according to American legislators. (more…)

At iWeb we strongly believe in freedom of speech. In the vast majority of cases we do not interfere with the contents that are hosted on our customers’ (and their customers’) servers.

But there is Zero Tolerance when it comes to illegal activities and especially anything related to children exploitation. Spread the word! (more…)

A couple of years ago we published this nice roundup. It is always amazing to see how fast technology evolves and how obsolete computer equipment can become.

Now that 2011 is down the drain and a full 30 years have passed since the IBM VM Machine, we thought you’d appreciate us to update and republish it.

Check out the updated ending, enjoy and comment! (more…)

Great news to kickstart the new year 2012! Netcraft, a firm which measures reliability, availability and performance of networks, has once again ranked iWeb as one of the web hosting companies operating the most reliable network. Placing fourth in December, iWeb regularly made Netcraft’s Top 10 in 2011. (more…)

It cannot be repeated too often, it’s important to pay attention to our habits when it comes to security on the internet.

At any time, whether at work or at home, whenever you use a password protected connection, you must be very cautious about protecting personal information.

This is especially important if you offer server management services to many clients. (more…)

Beyond the human tragedy unfolding in Thailand following the floods that occured recently, a major economic disaster could be on the horizon for this country.

The Prime Minister of Thailand recently announced that the large quantities of water that flooded the country could take up to six weeks before retiring. (more…)

The home page of the Smart Server’s Control Center has been modified to better display your server configuration as well as the products and services available on the Smart Servers. Indeed, iWeb just added a new tab in the Control Center: Overview.

This new tab summarizes the key information and simplifies the activation of the different services on your server Smart, such as SuperSmart, in addition to offering shortcuts to navigate in one click to other sections within the Control Center. (more…)

We are really proud to announce the recent activation of the 3000th Smart Server and by the same token we wish to celebrate the first birthday of our flagship server.

One year ago, iWeb introduced its biggest innovation to date. The launch of the Smart Server, the first product based on iWeb’s SmartLayer technology, marked the first step in transforming the company into an innovative provider of automated Web hosting services. (more…)

Our guest blogger, Charles Lacroix, had the opportunity to test the SuperSmart option on his Smart Server and he shared his impressions through his blog. Charles was kind enough to allow us to republish his article, so that you too can read about his experience:

For several months, I’ve been using a Smart Server from iWeb and I can say that I am pleasantly surprised. The price is right, they are reliable and the interface to manage your server or servers, the Control Center, is quite nice. Notably, it provides access to a virtual console allowing you to turn off the server if it stops responding.

Recently, iWeb launched a series of additional features for the Smart Servers, known as, the SuperSmart Option. Check out what it offers… (more…)

We are very proud to announce that iWeb has taken the important decision to separate its shared hosting services and domain management to a new company called Funio.

This new company will aim to consolidate all shared hosting and domain name reservation activities, which will no longer be offered by iWeb. This service supports over 15,000 clients, 23,000 websites and 32,000 domain names in over 100 countries around the world.

Funio’s new website, is now accessible at www.funio.com. (more…)

Netcraft, a firm which measures reliability, uptime and network performance, has ranked iWeb.com as one of the most reliable web hosting company sites in August 2011. Second this month, on list, iWeb has regularly appeared in the top ten over the last year. (more…)

iWeb is proud to launch a new feature included in the SuperSmart package for Smart Servers: Smart Group. Smart Group is a private virtual LAN service for all your Smart Servers in your account and is completely dedicated to your account. Servers within a group can communicate while remaining invisible to other clients’ servers connected to the same local network, like a private rack. (more…)

In modern age of online media, we are surrounded by written words. This article is for any amateur or advanced Web designers out there that ever asked themselves the question: “Does the font choice really matter?” The answer is YES! The proper font choice does matter. Actually, it is one of the most important aspects of design, especially in Web design. (more…)

Adding and improving functionality on iWeb’s new line of Smart Severs is a top priority at iWeb. With regular additions of new functions and tools comes a new need: an easy way to view and manage these tools. Enter: Smart Services. (more…)

Meet Wendy Mahew from idea2delivery, one of the winners of iWeb’s Startup Festival contest.

The main goal of idea2delivery.ca is to connect entrepreneurs as well as to provide educational and informational resources. Tools for entrepreneurs such as white papers and a section dedicated to showcase startups and small businesses are also available. (more…)

As many of you already know, the new IP addressing protocol called IPv6 is becoming a reality. Today is the first milestone for many website owners and service providers.

World IPv6 Day has been initiated by the Internet Society, to promote a progressive transition to the IPv6 protocol, since addresses in the current IPv4 protocol, are in short supply.

It was very important for us to participate and to convey the message that we are getting ready. Today iWeb’s main domain (iweb.com and www.iweb.com) is available in dual stack mode. (more…)

Are you a starving startup? We were once, and we know that our road to becoming the largest hosting provider in Canada would have been a lot harder if we didn’t have some help along the way.

So at iWeb, we are looking to do our part to support the startup and developer communities. We see a great oportunity to do so by sponsoring the International Startup Festival in our hometown, Montreal. We are putting our money where our mouth is by offering to pay for tickets to the International Startup Festival where you will have access to industry giants, thought leaders and your peers in the various stages of the startup lifecycle. (more…)