5 Things You Can Do with your PHP Web Hosting

PHP is probably the most popular server side scripting language and is also a free part of any good web hosting company’s services. With Lunarpages, the newest versions of PHP are kept up to date and are always free. This is mostly because PHP is open source and does not require any licensing fees, so Lunarpages can provide it free for every webmaster! This is great news for website owners who would like to add some incredible features to their repertoire.

But though many people have heard of PHP web hosting, what exactly can you do with PHP? Well I’m here to show you 5 awesome things!

Create & Manage Contests & Drawings

PHP scripting does a lot of really amazing things and one of them happens to be contest-related. Using PHP scripts, you can create daily contest drawings, weekly winners, or even random giveaways by installing simple scripts to your site. You can also run a variety of contests this way, such as photo or design contests, quizzes, and more. Add questions, delete unnecessary responses, post results, tally winners, or select a winner at random to display on your website. PHP gives you that added edge and ease of management.

Visitor Tracking

Have you ever wanted an active count of customers (or potential customers) who visit your site, their geographical location, or even how often specific visitors come back and how long they browse your site? This is valuable information for any business owner and something pretty cool for personal website webmasters as well. You can do all this through some great PHP tracking scripts. With these scripts, you can monitor daily clicks, watch and track specific users to find out where they came from and what they were looking for, and you can even find out personal information, such as geographic location, IP address, browser type, operating system, and more! This can mean the difference between gaining a new customer or losing them to the competiton, so as I said, businesses will really benefit from this tool.

Customer Blogs & CMS

Blog Web Hosting and Content Management Systems like Joomla are great ways to manage your sites, and PHP can help! With these PHP scripts, you can edit and offer specific web page subdomains to your customers, utilize a PHP-based CMS like Mambo, create a social network, and much, much more. This could really raise your business in the ranks of Google, especially if the users who run your subdomains are offering unique daily content. This is also a great source of revenue, as almost all of these PHP scripts are free and open source.

Install a Shopping Cart

Lunarpages offers a variety of shopping carts for you to choose from (see my last blog post about shopping carts), many of which are PHP-based. However, if you find a better open source or paid PHP-based shopping cart, you can run it on your Lunarpages Web Hosting account for free and with ease! There are many resources for open source shopping carts and even more opportunities to test demos and find the perfect one for you, so look around before you decide – PHP shopping cart software is available via simple searches or by asking experts in PHP forums.

Run WordPress & Forums

With PHP, hosting a blog or forum is a piece of cake! Here at LP, we really specialize in PHP websites, so we offer a ton of PHP resources as well. From WordPress (whcih we love!) to discussion boards, we’ve got you covered. We’re the only web host in the world to accommodate our users by allowing you to turn on or off our PHP5 capability, so if your software requires this important and secure version of PHP, you’ll want to ask us for more information. Installing WordPress and forums has never been easier as well, since we offer one-click installs for the most popular platforms via Fantastico.

PHP scripts are a great resource, so if your website host doesn’t offer PHP, you should move up to one who does. This added functionality can do some incredible things, and there are an amazing assortment of sites to find these free scripts on

Tips for FreeOnline Advertising

Hit up the Forums and Message Boards

Posting your links in forum or message board signature sections might be another way to keep people coming to your web sites. It doesn’t cost a thing - and if your an active member of several forums it is a good way to grab people’s eyes.

Advertise with Your Message Board Profile Icon

Message board icons or graphics are a good way to go too. Instead of just having a picture of yourself there - put in your picture and your domain really small on the bottom of the graphic. This way you can have a double wammy along with the forum signature link to get more attention without paying a dime.

Get Free Plugs on Your Own Blog (and other projects)

If you have a blog - another free way of gaining some press for your other projects would be advertising yourself. Point people on the sidebar to some of your other projects. If they like one of them, they might like the others - right? Also don’t forget about your RSS feed. If your using WordPress - this RSS Signature plugin will allow you to include a little more information (and linkage!) in your RSS feed. Like my Mama always said, if you can’t plug yourself - who can you plug?

Tell Your Friends to Tell Friend, to Tell Friends…

Word of mouth advertising is always a good way to get a project off the ground. If a lot of your friends share the same love for the thing you are putting out there they might be your best form of advertisements. Also begging your friends to tell other friends can be a little easier than begging to total strangers.

Have a Contest and Give Something Away

Everybody likes the chance to win, right? What Lunarpages is doing right now with the Lunarpages t-shirt design contest is a good example of this tip. Sure you might not have $400 or an XBox 360 to give away - but I am sure you can think of something of value you could give to get people excited about your project.

5 Things to Do After Launching a Web Site

Gaining press and getting people interested in what you are producing are some of the hardest things to do once your Web site is finally up and running. Will they love me or do they hate me? Well first they have to find out who you are. Here are five things I always try to do when it comes to launching a new Web site or project.

1. Get the Web Site Finished - Nobody likes to get all hyped up over an idea to go find out it isn’t even done yet. It might sound like something most people would think of, but you’d be surprised by the number who do not.

2. Tell Your Friends and Family First - Word of mouth advertising is always the best, so when launching a new Web site or project this should be the first area you focus on when it comes to spreading the word about what you are trying to do. These people are also the easier to beg and plead with when it comes to asking to share it with friends and people they know that you do not. I’d much rather beg my best friend to do something for me than a total stranger.

3. Use the Social Web Experience - Now I am not going to tell you to go submit yourself to every social news Web site, because that it usually frowned upon. You can use some of these thing to your advantage though. Try to get yourself on places like StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us. They can bring a lot of fresh faces to your Web site, especially if it leans a little towards the geeky side of things.

4. Find the Network for Web Sites Like Yours - Next step should be to find forums, blogs and other social means of communication on the Web and spread your message there about your new project or idea. Make sure you an established personality or member of these forums or groups that you post at before you start plugging yourself as well. Nobody likes to be the guy who makes his introduction while plugging something. It looks a little tacky.

5. Reach Out to the Press - Is there a certain group of professional press you can reach out to in your area of business? If so - you might hit them up for a review or a mention of your new project or Web site. If your Web site is about soccer, and your doing something nobody else has done before, some soccer news outlets across the Web might be interested in your story. It never hurts to at least pitch the idea to them. If they can’t use you now, they might keep you in mind for something in the future.

Set Smaller Goals, Get More Rewards

What is the big secret to becoming a success Online?

Set reasonable goals for yourself. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the Web sites or Web projects that take off over night are few and far between. Unless you are some sort of underground Internet celebrity building a audience that cares about your product, your ideas or what you have to say is hard work.

In the past I have built several different audiences around several different projects of mine. Don’t be disappointed when after a week you don’t have thousands of people coming into your Web site hourly.

Now you want an example? Lets say you have an RSS feed for your blog and you want to have millions of subscribers. If you wait around for a million, chances are you’ll get bored and quit within the next few days. Instead of looking at the big picture, take smaller steps. Set a goal of maybe 10 subscribers to your RSS feed by the end of the month. This is a much more reasonable goal and it gives you something to get excited about when you reach it.

As time passes by you can bump up your goals inch by inch. Truth be told, the only time you should be worried is when you start loosing attention. If you focus yourself on small steady growth (instead of large leaps and bounds) you should be alright.

My Favorite SEO Cheat Sheet - Ranking Factors Version 2

The always amazing Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz fame posted an update to the search engine ranking factors list they keep. This is one of the most useful tools for anyone involved in search engine optimization. You can quickly check to see if something you are worrying about is important or not according to the experts. They rank all the factors in order of importance and have opinions from over 35 SEO experts.

Top 10 Ranking Factors in 2007:

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag (4.9)
2. Global Link Popularity of Site (4.5)
3. Anchor Text of Inbound Link (4.4)
4. Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure (4.1)
5. Age of Site (4)
6. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site (3.9)
7. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community (3.9)
8. Keyword Use in Body Text (3.9)
9. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site (3.7)
10. Topical Relationship of Linking Page (3.6)

Learn more at the Search Ranking Factors Version 2 at SEOmoz. I use these daily as work to improve results in Google. Also be sure to check out this interview with Rand Fishkin Joe did here a while back.

Web design, flash, animation and custom web development at its best.

We have just launched a new site that I wanted to showcase on this here blog. The site is dedicated to exclusive members only and was 100% custom built from the ground up by the MindSmack.com crew. Check it out!

http://www.privatepass.citi.com

Yahoo!

You can also check out some of our latest creations @ http://www.MindSmack.com

For those of you who are into the whole affiliate marketing thing or just love the web and feel you have some interest in meeting other web gurus who are into marketing and the like check out the eComXpo @ http://www.ecomxpo.com/home.htm

Now back to your regularly scheduled website programming…

Lunarpages Announces Increases & Sends a Message

Lunarpages Web Hosting today announced massive increases to the storage space and data transfer on their Business and Basic plans.

The Basic Plan now boasts 35 gigabytes of storage and 800 gigabytes of data transfer, the Business Plan 50 Gigabytes of storage and 1 terabyte of data transfer. Lunarpages Executives also have a clear message to send their competitors.

Amy Armitage with Lunarpages Business Development and Marketing says “Honestly, do our shared customers need all of this extra bandwidth and space? Will they even use it? I doubt it. Lately, checking out hosting review sites and offerings of other hosts I’m incredibly concerned about the credibility of the industry as a whole. The reality is Lunarpages do need to remain competitive but we feel it is more important to concentrate on our service, reputation and our customers. For months I’ve cringed every time another press release lands in my inbox about data transfer increases that can’t always be responsibly delivered in a shared hosting environment. Can we deliver all of this transfer? Yes of course. Will this motivate our customers to suddenly become educated in ways to increase their traffic, probably not.”

These enhancements have not affected the affordability of web hosting with Lunarpages; in fact their prices have remained unchanged for several years. As always, when Lunarpages increases their offerings the benefits are passed on to their loyal webmasters by awarding the upgrades to all hosted accounts. In August the addition of $700 of CoffeeCup Webmaster Software was given to their entire community, along with the option to purchase extra domains at $2.99 each. Yet another reason Lunarpages continues to lead as an innovator and reputable example of quality web hosting.

Ron Riddle CEO of Lunarpages Web Hosting says “The upgrades are simply cosmetic. We all know it and our customers know it. If our webmasters can make use of the extra space and transfer allowance and increase their traffic significantly, fantastic! We will back up our offerings as always. However, hopefully this will serve as a message to our peers to stop devaluing shared hosting and focus on what matters - Hosting websites, keeping them online, and providing responsive and quality support for your community.”

Lunarpages would like to see a united stand made by the handful of quality and reputable hosts remaining in the industry. Amy Armitage says “If compliance and realistic limits and price points can be agreed upon, the winners will not only be our customers, they will be our businesses, because we will continue to be profitable, reputable, to grow, and best of all be eternal.”

Findmyhost.com Interview

What is your name and position with Lunarpages.com?

Amy Armitage. I head up our Business Development and Sales & Marketing Team. I have been working with Lunarpages for over 6 years.

Please tell us the year established and brief history of Lunarpages.com?

Lunarpages was established in the summer of 2000. We started out giving away free web hosting and as business started to boom, we created additional paid plans and services. Today we have over 1500 servers housed in two data centers (Las Angeles & Vegas) with over 100 employees.

What do you offer your customers that are unique to your company?

Customer service and retention is a huge focus for us. We believe that if a customer is set up and educated/supported correctly, they will remain with us for as long as they need web hosting services. We also have multiple options to allow for the growth of a Website so that we can accommodate all hosting requirements.

Recently we teamed up with CoffeeCup Software to provide their entire library of webmaster and web design programs free with any 12 or 24 month plan.

We also offer a free domain name with our plans and for those customers who need additional domains we make these available for only $2.99 each. The unique aspect of this is that when it’s time to renew those domains, we honor the purchase price and will do this for as long as the customer is hosted with Lunarpages.

Lunarpages opened community forums back in 2000 and today we have a thriving and friendly community of customers and staff who provide additional support to each other. We believe that honesty and openness is the best way to communicate and assist potential and existing customers. We don’t censor our boards and if a customer has an issue and they verbalize negative feedback we work candidly and publicly with them to find a resolution. The strength of this is that the real issues encountered with any hosting company are highlighted. The difference is we actively work with our customers to provide a mutually beneficial outcome and the process and the reality of hosting issues & challenges are not hidden from people.

Due to our amazing success and our community conscience we wanted to give back to our community in a charitable way. As most of us are parents of children who attend public schools our CEO initiated an Education Program at Lunarpages where we provide free web hosting to ALL USA PUBLIC SCHOOLS K-12! We are very proud of this project and the interest and appreciation from schools, parents, students and teachers has been overwhelming.

Lastly I think it’s important to note that our employees are passionate about our company. Our core team has been with Lunarpages since the beginning. When you contribute to building and growing a company a sense of pride and protectiveness prevails. As a result we work tirelessly to make sure our customers are nurtured and happy, our servers are online and reliable and the rest of our team and partners are ensured a bright future as a result of our successes.

What is the most challenging aspect to offering Budget Hosting?

For me it’s watching other web hosts virtually destroy the value of the services we all offer by over promising space and bandwidth they are unable to deliver and at prices that are certainly not profitable. Many new companies come into our line of business and run at a loss by reducing our industry standards, selling under priced and under supported plans, and then they are gone. Where does that leave the customers or the rest of us?

What is it that makes Lunarpages.com a competitive company in the Budget Hosting market?

We support and also educate our clientele. We listen and implement their feedback and requests and we always look after our existing customers first when increasing our offerings. Our prices have never increased, we are profitable and stable and we don’t have an exit strategy. We’re not going anywhere ;)

What new features have Lunarpages.com added for its customers in the past year?

We increased our space and bandwidth, $2.99 domains, $700 of CoffeeCup Webmaster and Design Software free with all 12 and 24 month plans, live chat, Windows & Dedicated Hosting, an additional datacenter and around 50 more staff to optimize our support services.

What would you say is Lunarpages.com #1 asset to its customer base?

We answer our phones! Real people..

Where do you see Lunarpages.com and the web hosting industry in three years?

I don’t necessarily believe we will be the largest leading web host out there, but then our goal is to maintain our high level of support and retention. I think we will see consistent growth, additional data centers, the introduction of VPS, most likely additional offices in other parts of the world and hopefully a company jet for those shopping sprees in Paris ;)

I think over the next couple of years due to the reckless decisions of many of the current web hosts, a huge percentage of our competitors will go broke and the stable and solid companies who have been servicing webmasters for years will rise again.

How many customers do you currently have?

Around 100,000

Do you own your own datacenter?

Not at this time. We operate 2 data centers and we have plans to purchase our own shortly.

Where are your servers located?

One Wilshire in Los Angeles and marquisnet.com in Las Vegas.

What kind of back up power do they provide?

Both of our datacenters provide battery backup and gas generators.

Do they have multiple backbone connections?

Yes, One Wilshire is the third most connected building in the world, mzima and Marquis have multiple backbones.

What connections do they have?

Redundant OC3 fiber links

Do you offer 24/7 support?

Absolutely!

Do you have technicians present 24/7 or 9-5 M-F?

Yes. We certainly do.

What is your average turn-around time on a support ticket?

It depends on how busy the day is. For example if we are seeing routing issues with a specific ISP it might be 2 hours. Generally, around 30 minutes to 1 hour on email support tickets. If an issue requires escalation or specific installations or server side changes, it can take longer.

Do you charge your clients for support? If so, please explain.

NO WAY! Our support is included with their hosting plan.

Do you offer a money back guarantee?

Yes we offer a 30 day money back guarantee and for our customers using our transfer offer (http://www.lunarpages.com/special_offer.php) we increase that to a 90 day money back term.

Thank you!
FindMyHost.com

Lunarpages Web Hosting Stands Tough On Low Prices

The response and feedback from customers at Lunarpages.com has the industry wondering how they can register domain names at these prices? Can the smaller Web hosts compete with this new level of rivalry or even survive it?

Lunarpages.com a multi award winning Californian based Web hosting company already provides a free domain for life to their customers. This week the company announced a special on additional domain names cutting the price from $14.95 to $2.99 each for a limited time to new and existing customers.

“We have been in business for almost 6 years, and the industry has become insanely competitive recently. Every day we see other hosts dropping prices to the point that we know they are running at a loss. Offers of massive disc space that will rarely be utilized and data transfer on shared servers comparable to dedicated hosting means the big O – Overselling” Amy Armitage of Lunarpages Web Hosting said in a company press reslease.

“We won’t compromise our business model, server stability or uptime by overselling which will leave our customers feeling cheated and forced to upgrade to a dedicated server. To remain competitive we have found another way to enhance our offerings, without compromising the level of service and support that has earned us the reputation as leaders and veterans in the Web hosting industry. Low priced domain names and partnerships with leading companies enable us to give back to our customers without resulting in a price increase to them.”

Other registrars and hosts lure a customer in with a cheap domain name, and come renewal time domain name registration costs increase up to 500% and this not only stings the customer, but tarnishes the industry’s reputation in general. Lunarpages’ offer is superior because domains purchased during this special period will be renewed at the original price ($2.99 for 1 year or $5.95 for 2 years) for as long as the customer is hosted with them.

Rumor has it that Lunarpages will be announcing their partnership with an Internet 500 Company in the next few weeks enhancing their offerings and increasing their sales three fold.

Lunarpages Goes to HostingCon 2007!

Chicago here we goooo! Myself and Amy are heading out to HostingCon2007 in Chicago from the 22nd to the 25th of July to enjoy a conference on the Navy Pier. Should be a pretty incredible trip, and we’re stoked!

If you’re interested in attending and meeting us, check out the HostingCon website and the registration prices. There’s certainly still space available, so check it out and let us know if you’re going!

There’s still space at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers at the group rate as well, but please note that the W Chicago Lakeshore is sold out at the group rates, so you’ll have to purchase at the normal price. Please check the HostingCon website for further details.

Domain Propigation Time Killers

One problem you have to deal with at every web host out there is the whole issue of domain name propagation. While you wait for your domain to start working for everybody around the globe - here are a few suggestions for things to do to pass the time.

Write your favorite member of the Lunarpages support team a fan letter. Can never love your web host too much - right?

You could always go introduce yourself to your fellow clients and Lunar-peeps over at the Lunarforums! There are many helpful (and mighty friendly) people there that have made those forums their home. Of course we might have a few odd cousins in there too - but what family doesn’t have its black sheep?

Go let your old web host know where you made your new home at. Just make sure you don’t need your old hosting account there anymore. Then again, there was a reason why you left - and chances are they will not get back to you before you get yourself nice and cozy here at Lunarpages.

Learn a little more about your web hosting account. That plan page you went through has lots of information on the new hosting plan you call home. Go review it and the knowledge base to make sure you will be ready and set when you are able to go.

Multiple domain management with Lunarpages

How easy is multiple domain management with Lunarpages? If you have the Basic, Business or Windows plan it couldn’t get any easier. The Basic plan comes with 10 free add-on domains. The Business plan comes with 10 free add-on domains.

The Windows plan comes with 1 free add-on domain. After your first free add-on domain on the Windows plan, additional add-on domains can be purchased for $2.50 per month. If you have a valid credit card on file, you can purchase additional addon domains online via our Customer Account Page.

Login with your cPanel or Plesk username (depending on the hosting account type) and password, then choose the Upgrades / Addons Menu. Or Email sales@lunarpages.com to enable more.

Each domain will resolve to it’s own name and content like a separate web site. They do share the resources of the account with the primary domain. With the disk space and bandwidth limits Lunarpages gives you though, you should have some to spare. A couple of additional features worth mentioning would be that addon domains can have their own email addresses and can use any database on the account.

When it comes to multiple domain name management, we have you covered from http all the way to your .com.

Help Setting Up Sub Domains

Getting going with a sub domain inside of cPanel isn’t that difficult of a task to do - if you know the right steps to take to make it happen. The sub domain option allows you to add sub domains to your account. This feature is very useful as people can access subdirectories in your site through a simpler domain name than using your domain name and directory names.

This URL:

http://www.lunarpages.com/bob/

is harder to remember and access than:

http://bob.lunarpages.com

Here are the steps in setting up a sub domain from your Lunarpages cPanel:

1. To access the sub domain maintenance menu, click on the icon above the word sub domains on the main screen of your cPanel interface.

2. Enter the prefix for the sub domain in the first blank field. This will be what comes before your domain name (such as “bob” in our earlier example). Click the “add” button. If the sub domain was added successfully, the following will appear (except sub.domain.com will be the prefix you are using, and your domain): The subdomain, sub.domain.com has been added.

3. Now go back by clicking on “Go Back” on the current web page.

4. To make the sub domain work, select it from the drop box next to setup redirection and click on setup redirection.

5. Enter the URL which you wish the sub domain to display in the blank field, and click on save.

Now you should be all set with your sub domain. Of course, if you ever have any problems you can always come talk with support@lunarpages.com for grade A quality support.

Lunarpages Coupon

NEW CHRISTMAS COUPON! $30 OFF - Code: XMAS30

NEW LUNARPAGES COUPON CODE!

For our Lunartics community, because we reward your daily visits and loyalty, for a discount on web hosting with Lunarpages, use the web hosting discount code blog25 to receive $25 off any 12 or 24 month Lunarpages Web Hosting account. This discount coupon works on 1 and 2 year Basic, Business, Windows, VPS and Dedicated Hosting Plans with Lunarpages!

Contact Lunarpages

Needing a real person to help? Here are several ways for you to get assistance with your hosting account from our support crew. We realize not every question is created equal so here are some helpful notes to make sure you make the best use of your time and ours when contacting us.

Telephone support is open Monday through Friday, 6:00am to 8:00pm PST/PDT

714-521-8150

E-mail support is open 24/7/365.

• For technical support: support@lunarpages.com
• For sales: sales@lunarpages.com
• For billing: billing@lunarpages.com
• For dedicated server: dedicated@lunarpages.com
• For reseller information: reseller@lunarpages.com
• For affiliate sales: affiliate@lunarpages.com

You can also access the Lunarpages Help Desk to get your questions answered. You can put in a new ticket here:

https://support.lunarpages.com/tickets/new

If you haven’t already, you can also create a help desk login here:

https://support.lunarpages.com/signup.html

Your help desk login information and account login information are not connected. The easiest way to get a message to support would be the e-mail addresses listed above. By dropping us an e-mail there you will automatically get a help desk ticket created for you.

Support Response Times - How Can You Help?

Now how long will it take before support gets back to you? Well the standard time frame would be within four hours or less. All questions are answered in the order that they are received. With some situations it might take longer and with some it might take a shorter amount of time. While we do have support around 24/7 - some issues can be dealt with quickly while others might take some time to investigate.

For example resending your account information e-mail might just take a few seconds.

Now trying to figure out why one of your MySQL databases was renamed “pickles_rock” might take a little longer.

Now with that in mind, please consider giving us as much information as you can the first time so that we do not have to spend more time gaining information rather than fixing the problem you might be having.

Always try to include your primary domain name and let us know:

• A full description of the problem you are having.
• What you have done to troubleshoot the issue before contacting us.
• When did you first notice the problem in question.
• Also give us any details on any recent changes you have made to your account before the problem happened.

This will help prevent us from having to ask any un-necessary questions and get your problem taken care of faster.

Verification in the Tickets for Support, Sales and Billing Issues

With billing issues, you might want to include:

• Primary Domain Name:
• User Name:
• Last 4 Digits of Your Credit Card:

For support issues, where no charge is needed - please include:

• Primary Domain Name:
• User Name:
• First and Last Digits of Password:

We will not make any changes to your account unless we get your verification first. However, we can suggest helpful fixes to you without the need of verification. For general questions (or questions where you are not asking for something to be changed) no verification should be needed. If needed or not needed, the support team will always be happy to let you know.

Now if you do not have a credit card on record, you could provide us with these details instead:

• Primary Domain Name:
• User Name:
• First/Last Name:
• Postal Address:
• Phone Number:

Now more information and verification might be needed on a case by case basis, but this should be more than enough to help you get started on the right foot. This also might save you from having to do an reply and wait exchange with the support team.

Do You Have Support Forums for Clients?

Yes we do! For specific support issues such as your account not working or other server related issues you should still contact support. For web development questions or general webmaster conversations, LunarForums.com is a good place to bookmark and visit daily. We have tons of helpful people (both fellow clients and support members) monitoring it as well so there is always helpfulness to be had and you don’t have to worry about it getting too “raunchy” in there for younger eyes.

Before registering for the forums, please make sure you read over the rules here:

LunarForum Rules

As long as your nice, nice to others and keep things respectful you should not have any issues and you will find the forums another great place to get additional help for issues not covered by regular support. Go register and introduce yourself to the rest of your fellow clients!

Are There Any Other Lunarpages Resources to Check Out?

Sure, there are a lot of Lunarpages resources that you might want to familiarize yourself with. They include:

• Glossary of Web Hosting Terms - Familiarize Yourself With Your Surroundings
  
• Online Tutorials - Video Tutorials for Many of Our Hosting Features
  
• Control Panel Manual - The handbook for our cPanel Control Panel
  
• Knowledge Base - Tons of Helpful Tips, How-to’s and Informative Articles

You might also be interested in checking out our blog and newsletter:

• Lunartics - Our Web Hosting and Web Development Blog!
• Lunarpages Newsletter - Our Monthly Newsletter on Filled with Tips, Tools, Interviews and News!

About Lunarpages

It all started back in the late 90’s when Ron Riddle ventured online and wanted a website created. He discovered many people who offered to design and host his site; however there wasn’t much activity going on, and being a “get it done” kinda guy he decided to do it himself.

The name Lunarpages was discovered late one night when our night owl Ron was watching an episode of Star Trek. He saw a moon and some planets and lunar stuff and added the word pages to it. Amazing huh!!! Oh… and the domain was available too.

The Lunarforums.com community was created and he began offering free web hosting, but the Lunar Lovers (our loyal webmasters) wanted help and support and more features on their accounts. Ron and his beautiful wife Helen had very been busy over the years running various successful businesses and they literally had a tribe of children. It occurred to them they could be on to something with this hosting gig and it was about time to exploit their offspring.

Ron asked his son Chad Riddle to help out, so he quit his job at Drug Emporium quick as a flash to work from the recreation room above the house. The Lunar servers lived in a closet next to Helen’s 1974 platform shoes and paid hosting became available that day. Helen still has the shoes but we now have two datacenters, over 1500 servers and a super classy corporate office in California. Chad now handles all of our operations and only stops by Drug Emporium to buy shoe polish and gum.

Lee Coleman had been a longtime friend of the Riddle family and innocently stopped by one day for a coffee and somehow left with a job answering support tickets. We often wonder if she regrets her choice of beverage when she frantically drives down to the LA Datacenter at 2am. Six years later our Lee heads up our Technical & Development Departments and still drinks coffee (just a lot more). She has a crew of over 40 people working with her now lovingly (sometimes obsessively) nurturing our servers.

Around the same time Ron met Amy Armitage from Australia on the Lunar Forums and those who know our Amy are aware of her passion for answers and taking threads off topic. She basically harassed Ron on her quest to become a geek until he finally offered her a job running the forums and shortly after working support so she could bug Lee and Chad instead. She now lives in California heading up Sales & Marketing and Ron still sneaks past her office in the hopes to dodge her incessant questions.

Clay, Elainna and Chase Riddle tried to avoid the Nerdy Factor for a while thinking hosting was dull until endless family BBQs resulted in them feeling like the guy at the prom nobody notices. They united and purchased a copy of HTML for Dummies and today they are major contributors to the continued success of Lunarpages. Ron’s vision to create personal, reliable web hosting and a legacy and a future for his children was on track, but he still hadn’t achieved all that he wanted.

Education is huge for us at Lunarpages. Back in the early days we knew nothing about hosting, email and servers and as a result we are mostly self taught (thanks to Google and hours of slamming our heads against our desks). We had a high level super important meeting in our vault (yes our boardroom is an old bank vault with the thick steel doors) and Ron announced it was time to give back to our real life community. All of us had children attending public schools and it made sense to choose education because, as Whitney would say “Children are our future”. Our Education program was born and apart from Ron’s family, this project is his passion and when he speaks about it we often see a little tear well up in his eye (awwww). All USA Public Schools K-12 now receive as many free hosting accounts as they need, courtesy of Lunarpages!

Recently (handsome) George Natzic crossed over to the dark side not knowing too many of our Lunar and hosting terms and after 12 months he walks the hosting walk and talks the coder talk. He brings a high level of organization and efficiency with him and we are so thrilled to have him as our CFO and incredibly proud of his journey to nerdiness!

Our family now boasts a community of over 100,000 and more than 100 staff worldwide and we really do love what we do. Although Lunarpages is a driving force and we are responsible for some major influences and changes in the hosting industry above all we will never lose our close knit feel and attitude because our connections with each other and our community are the reason for our success.

Lunarpages isn’t simply a hosting company. We are a family.

Lunarpages Coupon Code - Save 25.00 instantly

Lunar pages gives one of the best hosting services. They are very cheep for professional and business sites. They also gives money back guarantee for the one month if you are not satisfied with their service. That means you can experience their hosting free for the first month. That means you can take free hosting given by the lunarpages.

Also with the help of some coupon available on here, you can reduce your product's cost in large amount. With the code, you can save $25.00 for your purchase.

Coupon Code:HC25

LunarPages Holiday Promotion! Save $28 Instantly

LunarPages has authorized a special holiday offer for all visitors of this website!

Lunar28 is valid on the following plans:

12 month Lunarpages Basic Plan
24 month Lunarpages Basic Plan
12 month Lunarpages Business Plan
24 month Lunarpages Business Plan
12 month Lunarpages Windows Plan
24 month Lunarpages Windows Plan

Related Links for this coupon:
Lunar Basic Plan - Lunar Business Plan - Lunar [...]

LunarPages US Only Traffic Speed Tests Report - November 2007

 Below you will find our speed test reports for traffic coming from our US based servers to this LunarPages website.

The page loading times greatly improved when we switched to our 10K testing page with 1 minute ping resolution. Take a closer look at our daily results spreadsheeet.

LunarPages always impresses us with the US based traffic [...]

LunarPages Uptime Report - October, 2007

LunarPages appears to have had some server outages in the month of October.

There appears to be 13 days where we experienced outage problems with LunarPages. Below, you will find the daily report from our LunarPages testing.

LunarPages appears to have had issues in the month of October. In total, we had 13 days where we found [...]

LunarPages Server Uptime Report for November 2007

With LunarPages in the month of November, we only had one major outage that effected the uptime percentage.

As you can see, LunarPages was pretty stable for the month of November. We only had one major outage on the 26th. Lets take a closer look, shall we?

As you can see, we highlighted the outage on November [...]

LunarPages Speed Tests from US Servers - October, 2007

Let us take a look at how LunarPages did for October from US based server traffic to this website which is hosted on LunarPages.

The traffic that comes from United States appears to get much better response times compared to that of non-US traffic. Let’s take a look at the daily stats:

This is very good for [...]

LunarPages Combined Average Speed Tests Report - November 2007

Below is our combined US and Non-US based results for the month of November.

Here is the daily spreadsheet:

With the combined average results of all worldwide traffic coming to this LunarPages Hosting Reviews website, the average was 951 ms.
Please Reference: About LunarPages Speed Tests
This reference has important information on how our LunarPages tests are performed. These [...]

LunarPages Speed Testing Changes Made

I decided around the 24th of November that the way I was testing speed on each blog was inaccurate.
Therefore as of November 24th, we changed the way we are testing each host.
Fixed Page Size Testing
Now we are testing using a fixed size HTML file with 10k worth of text, or exactly 10,251 bytes. This same [...]

LunarPages Non-US Traffic Speed Tests Report - November 2007

Please be sure to reference our changes to our testing results post we made earlier. It has important information about this months results and future results as well.
We were lucky enough to have some free time at the beginning of this month to report our LunarPages results early!
Here are our testing results for traffic coming [...]

LunarPages Speed Tests from All Servers Combined - October, 2007

Here we will take a look at the combines server response times for LunarPages from all worldwide servers as an average.

Hmm, not bad! Let’s see how LunarPages did daily from all worldwide servers:

As an average, LunarPages had a 1,007 ms ping time worldwide. This includes full page loads of our index page here at LunarPages [...]

Final LunarPages Testing Results - Top Ranked Hosts for October

LunarPages had a good US traffic month for October ranking 3rd overall. Below you will find our complete results from all eight web hosts we tested.
Top Web Hosts for US Traffic in October 2007
For the month of October, HostGator came out on top with an amazing 512 ms average main page load time from tests [...]

Designers - Win a Xbox 360 or $400!

By Amy Armitage
Lunarpages is holding a contest for our new t-shirt design, and you are all invited to submit your designs via our community forums.
Currently we have black t-shirts with a white design on the back and we would like something a bit snazzier
Please post your entries on this forum thread as images or a [...]

Setup an FTP Account the Easy Way

Author: Mitch Keeler

What is FTP all about? It stands for File Transfer Protocol. FTP is the TCP/IP standard way of transferring files across the Internet and between computers.
An FTP account is the quickest and easiest way for you to get content up to your hosting account and down from your hosting account. If [...]

Design Inspiration at Best Web Gallery

by Mitch “Ain’t No Picasso“ Keeler
When working on your web site and trying to see what you could do to make it better, there is nothing at all wrong with looking at others styles and techniques to see if it inspires you to create a better look and feel for your own project.
Once of [...]

Setting up Password Protected Folders

Author: Mitch Keeler

There are a few confusing issues with cPanel and how to get things going, and one of the most asked about cPanel features that some people have problems with is password protected folders.
You can protect directories within your site from browsers by using a password to protect them. This allows you to restrict [...]

Web Hosting Benefits for Businesses

By Tiara Rea
Customers, clients, and a faithful audience of readers and supporters have become the foundation of successful businesses in the online world. If the people who truly understand your product recommend it and your services to those around them, they will stand by your decisions and even help you grow by offering their own [...]

WordPress Design Contest - Vote on Round 1!

By Amy Armitage
So the results are in, and the first week of voting in Lunarpages Web Hosting’s WordPress Theme Design Competition is open! There have been an incredibly array of submissions, and it was our task to try and pick our top 5 favorites, which was extremely hard by the way. Everyone who’s submitted so [...]

Blog Web Hosting with Lunarpages

by Tiara Rea
Here at Lunarpages, we’re really keen on blog hosting, and we really try to tailor our website hosting plans to that medium, offering a variety of free tools to cover all your blogging needs. And indeed, blogging is a very important task that many businesses and webmasters use to increase SEO exposure and [...]

Easy E-mail Account Setup (via cPanel)

Author: Mitch Keeler

Getting going with your very own e-mail account is the first thing that many people do when they finally get that welcome e-mail in their inbox. From cPanel you have the ability to add extra e-mail accounts to your main account. You can setup as many as you have room and bandwidth [...]

WordPress Design Contest - Vote on Round 2!

By Amy Armitage
The entries for our WordPress theme design contest have been flooding in and we have another 5 gorgeous themes for you all to vote on this week.
To check out what prizes are up for grabs, check out our contest/submission page.
Below are this week’s top 5!
Cuddly by Videlin Nikolov

Damai by eches

Christmas Spirit by [...]

Website Hosting for Web Designers

by Tiara Rea
Web Designers have a lot to consider when setting their clients up. They need to first promise a great design, then agree on how fast they can deliver that design, and finally choose a price that’s suitable for their customers but also profitable for thier business. Sometimes, customers come fully-equipped with their own [...]

Lunarpages Christmas Party Pics!

By Amy Armitage
It’s Christmas time (yay) and on the weekend we celebrated with about 90 people from our 3 Californian offices. Below are some happy snaps taken by Jeff Hensley (thank you Jeff!)
© Lunarpages Web Hosting - $25 [...]

Choosing the Best Ecommerce Shopping Cart

by Tiara Rea
A lot of customers at Lunarpages use ecommerce features to enhance their sites. Since we offer four different shopping cart software alternatives, many people wonder which one works best and what the major differences are between each. So, I’m here to help you choose the perfect shopping cart! :)

The Agora Shopping Cart features [...]

Win 5 years Web Hosting AND $1000! - Design Contest

By Amy Armitage
Lunarpages is having a WordPress Theme Contest!! All you need to do is design a unique WordPress Theme and upload it to our site for the chance to win!Just about anybody (with a few exceptions) can participate in the contest and the prizes are amazing!
First Prize is $1,000 cash and 5 years free [...]

Poor Boy’s Tips to Online Advertising

Author: Mitch Keeler
I don’t like paying for a lot. Why pay for advertising and marketing when you don’t have to? Here are a few was you too can become a cheapskate thrifty Online marketing mind.
Hit up the Forums and Message Boards
Posting your links in forum or message board signature sections might be [...]

Round One WordPress Theme Contest - Entry Chosen for Final 12!

By Amy Armitage
That’s right we narrowed it down to 5 entries last week and opened the polls last week to choose our first finalist. It was neck and neck between Christmas is Near by Nicki Faulk and Revival by Mike Nocek
And the finalist is…
[insert dramatic music and drum roll]
Revival by Mike Nocek with 281 votes!!!!

We [...]

Spring Cleaning Your Layout (Winter Edition)

By Mitch Keeler
Tis’ the time of the year to be doing all those things you’ve been putting off for so long. Nobody really rolls out updates in December because we are all too filled up with eggnog to work on our web sites. With that said, it does make for a perfect time [...]

The Best in Email Hosting

by Tiara Rea
You’ve always wanted yourname@yourdomain.com. You manage a business that requires around 100 email accounts, and you need those yesterday. Or maybe you just need a reliable place to host your email. After all this, you’re ready to find the best email web host on the planet! So you do a Google search for [...]

Game Reviews from TheGameReviews.com

by Tiara Rea
These days, I’d say it’s nearly impossible to find people who aren’t interested in gaming. Even here at Lunarpages, nearly everybody is a closet-WOW nerd, Guitar Hero rock star, or a Mario fanatic, and though most people might be put off by our heated debates over PS3 Vs Wii or the constant pressure [...]

PHP Web Hosting: 5 Things You Can Do with PHP

by Tiara Rea
PHP is probably the most popular server side scripting language and is also a free part of any good web hosting company’s services. With Lunarpages, the newest versions of PHP are kept up to date and are always free. This is mostly because PHP is open source and does not require any licensing [...]

Lunar Roundup - Design Tips and Tools

Author: Mitch Keeler
Here are some out of this world design related links that have been passed my way. I could horde them all to myself, but since I am in the holiday spirit I figured I could share them with all of you.
Free Treasures for Designers - The best icons, brushes and shapes, [...]