iWeb Communities: Blog

Today is Earth Day, an opportunity to think globally on climate change, a sustainable future, and to think how our current uses & lifestyles impact the planet.

How important is being green in web hosting? After all, we are just moving electronic bits around, and it doesn’t look like the automobile or the steel industry. Still, a recent study shows that 78 percent of shoppers value green websites, which means that if you are doing business online (or even if you only have a simple blog), it’s important to enquire how your web hosting company view the environment and energy efficiency.

First, we do site-wide recycling in iWeb’s 3 data centers. iWeb also uses RoHS motherboards since 2006, which do not contain harmful substances like lead, cadmium, or mercury, as opposed to normal motherboards.

Of course, a web hosting company’s environmental impact is linked essentially to power consumption required to power the servers and utilities 24/7, all year round. To this effect, all of iWeb’s data centers are powered with renewable, clean energy, from Hydro-Québec, which produces electricity with from hydro-electric dams.

Since iWeb is also located in Quebec, Canada, we also need much less air conditioning to cool the hot air produced by the servers, as opposed to data centers that would be located in cities like Dallas or San Francisco.

Recycling, toxin-free materials, renewable energy, efficient power consumption, those are all the areas where iWeb does make a difference. Next time you consider purchasing a web hosting solution, do think about the green efforts of this company

Since the beginning of this year, you might have seen various announcements by large media companies, and also articles about the sad state of the media. Large media companies are laying off staff, closing local newspapers, or cutting in the number of pages. A few of them, such as the Christian Monitor, have announced they would stop print and switch altogether to the web.

The management team of these companies blame lower advertising rates, and an audience shift to the Internet. More and more people get their news online daily, on a variety of sources, on different blogs, or on more established websites. Other forms of communication, like Twitter, are also known for breaking news, and the source for real-time coverage of news, as seen in the Hudson crash incident, or the Mumbai terrorist killings.

Web TV has also seen quick growth during the past few years. It began by podcasts, but there are now web-only producers, to be found on Youtube (such as Jon Lajoie), or producing their own daily or weekly shows. Diggnation, commandN, university lectures by Stanford or Berkeley, to new independant companies such bombe.tv

If there’s no denying that print, TV, or radio has their unique qualities, everyone in the iPod generation knows that the future is the Internet. If a country was to build in its future, it will have to bet on new technologies, on the Internet, the digital industry, and web entrepreneurs.

In Canada though, the picture is not so clear. There are talks currently about the Internet tax, where Quebecor, Rogers, Shaw and other ISPs would pay something to “support” Canadian-produced media. Quebecor says for instance that it’s against the principles of the Internet to tax ISPs.

We’ll certainly follow on this issue, but there’s already one thing that should be discussed: there is a risk here that growth and work done in the Internet by entrepreneurs and companies would be used to fund “old media”. Local bloggers have highlighted the issue (here’s another take by Michel Dumais) stating that the newly announced Canadian Media Fund (announced Monday) will fund mainly TV productions, or any other canadian content on the web, radio or print, as long as there’s a television version as well.

Regulators needs to address those issues and make sure there are no restrictions or unfair treatment. Here at iWeb, we support independent web publishers, and believe those are why the Internet flourished so much.

We were pleased and happy to learn that we were rated among the top hosting companies in December!  

Findmyhost confirmed that iWeb came out on top for its Co-Location Editor’s Choice Award, this is the seventh time in 2008 that we have had the pleasure of being ranked first.

Two days earlier, Dedicated Server Directory announced that iWeb had been selected as a UNIX Server award winning provider, coming in second.

We would like to think that this might have something to do with the recent network expansions. In fact, in 2008 we have quadrupled the total network capacity to 43 Gbps and added 4 additional telecom  carriers (for a total of 9), which earned us a spot in the November Netcraft ranking.

All the credit goes to our System administrators, Network administrators and our customer service team -congratulations guys!

 When launching a website, one of the first decisions you have to make is choosing the right domain name. Most of the time, many webmasters already have a name suitable to their website and their product, but most of them find that either the domain has already been snatched by a competitor, a domainer or domain parkers.

Now, the point of this article is not to advise you on how to find the right name, but more about choosing the right top level domain (TLD), which is either choosing for a .com or a .net, or finding a TLD such as .us, .ca, .fr.

A .com, .org or .edu domain provides:

• Legitimacy: most companies have their corporate websites under a .com domain; and when a user lands on a different TLD, many think that the owner of the website couldn’t afford to buy the .com domain,
• Better ranking in search engines: when confronted with 2 different websites with the same quality of content, search engines do rank the .com domain higher
• Better “findability” by your prospective customers: Due to the usage of .com domains, many tools such as auto-completions algorithms, web browsers, user interfaces, mail clients automatically assume that a website’s name would finish with a .com. In the same logic, users will try first to add a .com to the domain name if they’ve forgotten the TLD
• International expansion: it’s easier to get visitors and customers from different countries with .com domain name than if you had a .ca, a .de or any other TLD related to a geographic zone.

On the other hand, we’ve also seen many famous web services choosing exotic top level domains such as .fm (Federal States of Micronesia, used by last.fm for instance), .tv (Tuvalu, used by many media broadcasters), .tk etc. This is to be added to the millions of businesses who preferred to get the TLD of their country for their website instead of the .com, as they find it has its unique advantages:

• Recognition and belonging: a website can choose to market only its services to a country, and choosing the country’s TLD will convince prospective visitors that the website is dedicated to them
• Easier to own: it’s much easier and cheaper to find a ccTLD than a .com, as many domainers prefer to bet on .com domains
• An opportunity to play on words or brand their service, as with del.icio.us or last.fm

Of course, exotic TLDs do bring additional headaches. In Canada for instance, CIRA do bring an extra cumbersome layer for any activation or change of the website. In Europe, webmasters have to be nationals or be doing business in the country before operating in the TLD. And since registration and certification is done by a unique governmental agency, it inevitably brings up horror stories. Just two days ago, Ping.fm “disappeared” from the web. The .fm domain is a TLD assigned to the Federated States of Micronesia, which sold marketing rights for the domain to an american firm. Ping.fm’s problem was a problem with the .fm registry servers:

Keep in mind that some elements of this problem were out of their control and we both had to wait for the .FM vendors to turn around and make some headway on this problem. …

The web service is now back, but it does question the choice of an exotic TLD. So next time you want to make up a similar domain name, take into factor the risks and advantages.

If you are a CSS integrator or a seasoned web developer, then you already know about web accessibility; and there is probably no need to convince you about the need to improve your website’s accessibility.

Web Accessibility in itself is the practice of making your website and its contents usable by everyone, especially users with disabilities.  This goes from users with visual deficiencies, mobility, hearing, and many other major disabilities such as motor deficiencies. Making a website accessible requires it to be readable by text-to-speech applications, choosing the appropriate font and colors, as well as using standard usable technologies etc.

You probably wonder why it’s so important and why you should invest resources into making your website accessible. Here are the main reasons:

• There are more disabled people visiting your website than you think. Only in North America, it’s estimated that 7 to 10% of males are color blind. Add to that very young kids or very old people, people who have had accidents, and you’d discover that people with “normal” abilities are in fact a minority
• Making your website accessible, such as using semantic and validated HTML, also makes it friendly to search engines such as Google, which rely heavily on the site’s text. Accessibility is then tied to your website’s rank in search engines. Who knows, maybe it’s the extra-effort that will get you in the first page of search results!
• Using standard technologies and a standardized user interface, as used by other common websites, will make your website easier to use and understand for first-time visitors and customers, meaning higher conversions, more repeat visitors, and more sales. Indeed, an exotic user interface, using proprietary technologies like Adobe’s Flash, might get you congratulations from friends & co-workers, but it will alienate everyone else since they will have to learn their way throught the UI.
• Making your website accessible might also be a legal requirement, depending in the country you are operating. In Canada, in the U.K., and many other european countries, there are for instance compulsory accessibility standards when developing government websites.

Paul Boag from the Boagworld podcast has a great tip for instance that will highlight accessibility problems in your website:

I do a lot of design for the elderly and they often suffer from a mixture of visual problems and motor issues (like arthritis). In order to better understand their experience I have bought a pair to ski gloves and some reading glasses (I don’t need reading glasses). Every now and again, I surf the site I am designing wearing both the glasses and gloves. The glasses make the screen hard to read while the gloves hamper my use of the mouse and the keyboard. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to select something from a drop down menu wearing ski gloves!

Another easy way is to change your monitor’s settings to black and white, showing then your website in grayscale, and change at the same time the contrast settings. As an alternative, you can also use your website with the CSS disabled (possible with a a Firefox extension); the website should still stay usable.

Please note that today june 24th we are operating with reduced staff because of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Quebec’s National Holiday. We will be also operating with reduced staff next Tuesday July 1 because of Canada day, Canada’s National Holiday. Normal tickets could take a little more time to be answered while emergency tickets and emergency situations will be answered quickly as usual.

We want to wish a nice holiday to our customers from Quebec and Canada.

iWeb was named “Top Web Hosting Provider” for the month of January 2008 by TopHosts.com. TopHosts had also named iWeb as best host for october 2007. The rankings are based on the quality of customer service, the variety of offers, and innovative approaches in marketing.

According to iWeb’s CEO Éric Chouinard, “It is always an honour to receive such an award. We will continue to work on improving our services in order to continually surpass ourselves. We had a great year and are planning to continue on this path for 2008, so stay tuned.”

More details are available on TopHosts’ website.

Starting this week, Google offers the possibility of choosing the geographical localization of your website through its webmasters tools service. This means that the search engine won’t be counting solely on the domain name extension (.com, .ca, .fr, .us), and on the IP address, to classify the website in its index. As Sébastien Billard explains, “a site with a “.fr” domain name was considered as French. Same thing for a site with a .com domain name but with an IP located in France.”

It was a problem for sites such as 2803, which is hosted at iWeb in Canada, but with a .com extension while its author is French. As he explains, “Google globalizies the web hosting market and simplifies the host’s tasks which had before to rent IP addresses located in all the country of their customers“. This is a great news for all the hosting companies of this world which will now be able to demonstrate even more efficiently that internet’s frontiers are so relatives.
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iWeb is proud to announce its association with the Halloween Fest, an event that will occur on October 27, 2007. Its purpose is to collect funds for the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation of Canada. More than 2,5 million people around the world are victims of this disease, and the Foundation’s goal is to help between 55,000 and 75,000 Canadians.

We invite you to join us in great number to this event in order to contribute to this important cause. The concept is simple : come disguised or just wearing a hat. A band and a DJ will be waiting for you, prizes will be given. More details are available on the event’s website.

You can always try to bribe us to get some free tickets by sending us an email.

The famous TopHosts.com site has named iWeb as October’s best Canadian web host. Top Hosts’ ranking purpose is to identify the most efficient hosts regarding customer service, product offerings, marketing and technology adoption.

iWeb has already receive this prize many times, and is looking forward to repeating this exploit in the future. As Éric Chouinard explained : “The staff at iWeb is honored to receive this prestigious award. The whole team has worked very hard to achieve this, and we will continue to provide the best service possible. In fact, we have just kicked off our new fiscal year by announcing the opening of a new data center, it will be ready to open in a few months, this will help us maintain our high standard of service.”

More details are available on Top Hosts.