Fatcow Interview – Paul Bukhovko
Paul Bukhovko – Marketing Manager of FatCow
As Marketing Manager, my key role is to make up cow-related puns. It’s a moovelous job J. Seriously though, we believe that the best way to find new customers is through existing customers. So, most of my time is dedicated to understanding and improving the customer experience, being sure our offers are competitive, and helping us fulfill on the Heifercratic Oath, which is our support pledge. I also manage our advertising efforts and our affiliate program.
Hello Paul, thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to answer a couple of questions about FatCow.
FatCow is a very interesting name, please tell us more about the thought process and how your team came up with the name?
More than anything else, the FatCow name is a reflection of the fun, folksy atmosphere we promote among our staff and that we hope extends to our customers’ experience, as well. FatCow was designed from the start to be a little different. We took a look around and saw lots of techno babble, confusing pricing schemes and not much in the way of customer satisfaction or support. We decided that a simpler, more customer friendly approach was needed. We’ve grown our company with a dedicated group of talented believers in the notion that simple, old fashioned service and value still ring true. Plus, there’s no end to the number of cow-related puns we’ve been able to come up with.
If there is one thing that sets FatCow aside from your competitors; what would it be?
We feel that it’s our customer service and support that sets FatCow apart from other web hosting providers – that’s what we’ve always hung our hat on. In fact, speaking of puns, we have a contract with our customers, which we’ve called the “Heifercratic Oath.” It establishes what we feel a proper customer experience ought to be, and if we fail in that regard, we’ll compensate the customer with a free month of hosting. Plain and simple, we feel that when customers have a question or a technical issue, we’re obliged to be there for them with an enthusiastic can-do attitude.
Could you please tell us more about your Site Builder and what features are integrated within it?
In line with our vision of making it as easy as possible for the average Joe (or Jill) to create a website, our “Drag and Drop Site Builder” lets customers simply drag site building blocks from a menu and drop them where they want them to appear on the page. That way, folks don’t have to know HTML to have a professional-looking website. The tool lets you select a variety of different layouts – the number of columns you want, the number of sections you want, what you want the header to look like, etc. You can type and format text just as you would in a program like Microsoft Word, and you can add images and hyperlinks. And if you want to go beyond the basics, you can even use the Drag and Drop Site Builder to embed a YouTube video or integrate Google Maps.
Could you tell us more on your “Simplified SEO Service”, and how users can use it to get better results in the search engines.
We’re trying to take the mystery out of SEO for our customers. It’s not an exact science, and it evolves as search engine algorithms do, but the basics don’t change – you need good content that focuses on relevant search terms, as well as links back to your site from other sites on the web. We have a number of different SEO marketing plans available, depending on what the customer’s goals are, but with all of them we try to stress that it’s an ongoing process. Simply submitting a site to search engines will get it indexed, but to get high rankings, there’s a degree of vigilance involved. Content is king, and it’s got to be kept fresh.
Are there any big plans for FatCow in the year 2011 or in the upcoming years?
We’re very excited about the future of FatCow. We like to do fun giveaways for our customers. In 2010, we had a transportation theme – we gave away a car as the grand prize, and other prizes included a vespa scooter and four bicycles. We have a lot of fun with those kinds of promotions, and customers really seem to get into them, so we’re looking to do more of those in the future. But more importantly, we’re just always looking for ways to improve our services and give our customers more options for online services. Nothing flashy – that’s not our style. We just want to make sure our customers have everything they need to create, manage and promote a great website.
Thanks so much for your time, and is there anything else you would like people to know about FatCow, which people are currently not of?
Thank you! I always enjoy talking about FatCow, and I appreciate your time. I would just say that if someone hasn’t given FatCow a try yet, it’s time to moo-ve on over!
Please take the time to read my full Fatcow Review to see why I believe they are one of the best web hosting services.
DDOS Attacks – What Are They?
( The Best Web Hosting Service )- Attacks that are made to limit the functioning of systems of servers is known as the Distributed Denial of Service or DDOS. It is then the hackers create connections to the servers leaving the original users deprived from having the access to the system resources. In some cases, the attack is distributed from different IP addresses which makes it hard for the original users to find out where the hacker really is (typically these criminals use proxies). Firewall that is software-based and some filtering methods are two of the easiest ways to counter or prevent such attack.
Running a media layer called DoS-Deflate is also another way to eliminate such attack. You have to learn that DDOS can freeze online services, paralyze a network and even destroy a company’s status. It is known to be a growing and expanding expensive cybercrime. Many companies do suffer from such attacks and so it is important to create preventive measures.
DDOS : Unsafe Web
The web or the Internet is perhaps one of the most unsafe places. Everybody can use it especially hackers. Attacks can be everywhere and at any time. Attackers are becoming more and more advanced and equipped with powerful tools that will surely tear any web company down. It will be best for all web companies to exert time and effort to create a preventive action plan in order to be assured that no attacks will be made that will risk the company’s status. It is time to look for ways to counter such DDOS or else everything will be trashed.
Prevent DDOS?
Firewall is perhaps the best way to prevent such attacks. Though good firewalls are costly but it will be more costly if you lose your business right? You can choose to use the BFD and APF firewalls which are good in detecting brute force. You should also use private IP addresses for communication between and among machines if such machines are connected in the same LAN. Better have two machines so that if one of them runs down, you still have the other one. Try to do a little research because there already security patches that are available to prevent DDOS attacks.
How Google Analytics Can Help Your Site
( The Best Web Hosting Service )- If you previously missed my how to install Google Analytics post; I invite you to check it out. Do you always find it hard to know how good or how bad your website performs? Do you have difficulty in finding out how many visitors you have in a day, in a week or in a month? Are you eager to know if you create traffic to your site or if you’re site is a bad site? Well, Google has made it it all easier for through its tracking service known as Google Analytics. Such service will help you be informed of the number of visitors your site invites, the keywords that are being searched that could lead to your site, will give you the best links, and many more.
Google Analytics is simply the best tool to know how you are doing in terms of SEO and Internet Marketing. It acts as your statistical report and even your personal troubleshooter. Along with the Analytics comes the Google Adwords that also helps you find out the appropriate keywords for your website.
Going back to its history, Google Analytics was once called the Urchin visitor tracker by Google. It was just in November 16 of 2005 that it has been renamed as the Google Analytics. It is offered for free and all who signed up for an account, including those who signed up under the former name, can get all the information that they need when it comes to their websites. Google Analytics usually generates codes that do the tracking.
The following are the reasons why Google Analytics is important and why you need to have it for your website:
1. In terms of functionality, it works just like those other expensive tracking services .
2. The Google Analytics will help you create a sign up process in your site that is user-friendly and easy to do.
3. You can track the pages and links in your site where your visitors usually spend more time on giving you the reason to keep that page properly positioned.
4. You could also get to know where what sites your visitors visited before even landing on your site .
5. The service also helps you improve your SEO performance by providing you the keywords that users usually type in the search engines related to your website.
6. You can also keep track of new and returning users that could help you if you plan to have another online business.
7. Google Analytics together with the help of Google Adwords, you will be assured and guaranteed that you get visibility in search results.
8. The service also allows you to track marketing media of other non-search engines.
9. To sum it up, Google Analytics simply helps you in your SEO and website performance in the cheapest way.
Take a look at the advantages of Google Analytics
The set up is user-friendly which saves your time and effort.
It provides you will the necessary information that you need that will help your website perform at its best.
You can track multiple sites by just logging in once.
You no longer have to get yourself confused with the A/B ad testing.
It provides you with in-depth reports in terms of site navigation of users.
It also offers you e-commerce tracking features.
The only two things that Google Analytics cannot do is to track down activities of the users and tracing it back to the user level. As well as to track down deceptive online activities to keep your site safe.
POP on the Red Corner; IMAP on the Blue Corner
( The Best Web Hosting Service )- There are two different protocols in handling email messages and that could be the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) or the Post Office Protocol (POP). The former shows you messages on the server while the latter downloads your messages to your local machine from the server.
Let us take a look of the difference between the two protocols.
On the red corner: POP:
Messages in the POP protocol are being downloaded and stored from the SMTP server down to the local machine. Which means that the end user can have the capacity to play around such local database. Aside from the fact that the user can actually move the messages from one machine to another, through POP the user can also choose to create a back up for the emails in cases of data losses and technical problems.
Performance wise, POP is better since the user will not have a problem in searching for emails in terms of the recipient, sender, subject, date and even a part of the body of the message. This could be done since messages are locally stored and doesn’t have to go across a wire to do the searching.
Whether connected to the internet or not, whether offline or online, users can still be able to read their existing messages since, again, messages are locally stored. So even if the SMTP server is down, your email can still be accessible.
Mailboxes under the POP protocol has no limit in terms of space and size. It can go from 10GB to 20GB which is really a good thing. Though it is still advisable not to store too many messages because it could also cause some problems. As we know, too much of something is not that good as well.
In terms of configuration, POP is easy to work with as long as you have the server information. You can also choose to get a secure or non-secure connections.
Being supported by Unix/Linux, FetchMail and Outlook Express, POP protocol is a good choice. Using the POP3 protocol you can write a script through Python that will help you retrieve messages easily. You just have to learn POP3 commands such as USER PASS STAT LIST RETR DELE RSET TOP QUIT
IMAP, on the other hand:
All the messages under the IMAP Protocol are stored on its server by default where users can still get to read the messages even if the user’s machine crashes down. It simply does the back-up thing for the users.
Server command and functions like marking your messages as read or un-read are supported by the IMAP protocol. With this, if you choose to change your machine, the status of messages will remain the same as it was before you changed your machine.
Special Messages like Junk Email, Sent Messages, Drafts and Deleted Messages are all supported by the IMAP Protocol. It will be up to the user if he wants to delete such stored messages.
Whether the user is offline or online, he/she can still have access to his messages since IMAP keeps all the messages in the server thus in the machine as well.
Just like POP, IMAP is also easy to configure and can also allow users to get a secure or non-secure connections.
IMAP also makes things flexible for its users by enabling the user to use multiple email clients and machines under one SMTP server. Users can actually use their laptop, mobile device and desktop all at the same time without having to worry that it might cause technical trouble.
Users can have the option of synchronizing whole messages or syncing just headers under the IMAP Protocol
IMAP Protocol is supported by many email clients and has implemented IMAP4 in almost all SMTP servers
Through the server implementation of IMAP, users can sort their messages into whatever folder they want. It’s like controlling the incoming messages as to where they should automatically be placed. This will keep the hassle away from the user.
The following are the IMAP commands: LIST STATUS CREATE SELECT FETCH
So it’s your choice. POP or IMAP? It’s really up to you. Pick your choice.
Protect Your Domain – Easy As Pie
( The Best Web Hosting Service )- Some of the causes of losing web businesses is because of failure of renewal of the domain name or worst, it has been hacked or hijacked. There are hundreds of cases where someone loses his/her domain name due to drop catching where some internet users are just waiting for the expiration of web addresses to snatch them. They will either use such addresses for them to have an instant established site or they actually sell it to the highest bidder.
Just like any business, you have the responsibility to keep your site protected and safe. You wouldn’t want to see your business fall apart in the first place, right? So here’s what you have to do.
Know your domain registrar. You need to do some background checking if you really want to get the most reliable domain registrar. Ask some friends, colleagues, family members who can give you the relevant tips when it comes to the best domain provider. You also have to learn more about your provider like if it will you the assistance that you need when it comes to setting up and protecting your domain name.
Give your website some privacy. You can choose to block the users from seeing your address and your complete name. You must be informed that any user can do some research about your contact details through some tools like WhoIs.com. So better get a domain provider that will help you in keeping some information private. However, you have to keep your contact details updated so that the provider will not have a problem communicaing with you.
Keep your personal email account. You have to make sure that you get notifications from your provider especially when it comes to your domain expiration. It would be best if you get your domain name registered for five to ten years so you won’t have the hassle of renewing it.
Domain lock feature is a must. Your provider must provide such feature in order to avoid unauthorized users to change any of the information found in your website and in order to shew away hijackers. It is usually standard that they lock your domain from the start, but you might want to just check to be safe.
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