Writing More Effective Landing Pages

Chosing the right action words does make the difference in getting more people to do what you want them to do in your website.

Learn more by reading this article https://www.marketingsherpa.com/barrier.html?ident=30124
and http://www.copyblogger.com/click-here/

They found that the right two or three click link words can lift clickthrough rates by more than 8%.

Here are the results:

“Click to continue”: 8.53%
“Continue to article”: 3.3%
“Read more”: (-)1.8%

Web and E-Commerce Hands-On Workshop

BNS Hosting attended the recently concluded Web and E-commerce Hands-On Workshop which was conducted by DigitalFilipino.com owner Janette Toral on November 12 and 13, 2007 at the Laboratory 1 of NCC / Commission of Information and Communications Technology, UP Diliman, Quezon City.

The 2-day workshop discussed topics on Improving Website Performance and Navigation, 14 Rules for fast website performance, web navigation problems and improving web navigation design and Web 2.0 Applications. Part of the workshop included a hands-on where participants were given exercises using Open Web Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in Facebook.com and creating a community forum at Ning.com

Guest resource speakers for the event were Jay Frank de Jesus, of Titikpilipino.com (Website Growing Pains) and Jan Pabellon, of IT Group (Internet Enabled Collaboration and Coopetition in a Flat World).

Open Source Email System Training held

ASTI (Advanced Science and Technology Institute) held an Open Source Email System Training last November 7, 2007 at the ASTI Bldg. inside the UP Campus, Diliman, Quezon City.

BNS Hosting sent Ms. Lyzias Morato to attend the said event. Lessons that were tackled were very useful in setting up an email server. Open Source applications were used like Postfix Mail Server, Dovecot IMAP server, Spamassasin and Amavis, which is not just an antivirus for the system but also works as a spam filter. The training focused on configuring the DNS server as this issue is very essential for an email server to run.

When we say open source applications, it can be freely downloaded from different repository sites. Some of the advantages of using this kind of system is that you can find online notes that can be very useful in your researches and it’s cost-efficient.

Many thanks to the instructors, Ms. Katrina Murga and Mr.Rene Mendoza of ASTI for sharing their knowledge. Also, few of the attendees were the guys from DFA-MIS department, Mr. Allen Fernandez and Mr. John Gasta and Sir Vergel of DOST.

You can find the following links useful in building your own opensource mail system.

http://www.postfix.org
http://www.amavis.org
http://www.dovecot.org
http://www.spamassasin.apache.org

Maycozapper.org

The Bio-Energizing Zapper is a tool used by some Oriental doctors to kill parasites and was invented by the Division of Inter-Faith Church Ministries Inc., State of Washington, Affiliated with The Assemblies of God International, with Missions in the Philippines,

Doctors use it in the Philippines as Alternative treatment curing Prostate Cancer, Fibromyalgia Cancers, Shingles, Hepatitis C, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Colon Cancer, Breast Cancer, Syphilis, Tuberculosis, Ovarian Cancer, Chronic-Fatigue, Miscarriages, Influenza, Lyme Disease, Migraine Headaches, Melanoma Cancer, Heart Worms, Coronary Heart Disease, Strokes for the Filipinos.

Check out their website for further reading of their product and testimonials.

Job Posting

A Manila-based company is looking for a full-time web developer.

Applicant must be proficient in PHP, mySQL, PostgreSQL, Javascript, CSS.

Knowledge of AJAX, Ruby on Rails or Designing skills is a plus.

Starting salary Php12000 (up to 6 months probation) and increases to Php15000 upon satisfactory performance.

Interested applicants may send their resumes to jobs[at]hotoccasions.com.

Webstore.ph DNS fortified using UltraDNS

BNS is providing subdomain hosting for the webstore.ph domain. This domain has improved DNS by employing worldwide DNS servers managed by ULTRADNS.

By using the ULTRADNS solution, the domains hosted under the webstore.ph can avoid common DNS problems that affect webservice.

A little more background on the ULTRADNS service:

Global Network
The NeuStar Ultra Services Global Network comprises of fourteen public node locations in five continents providing unparalleled security, reliability and redundancy.

DNS Shield
A revolutionary extension of the NeuStar global network providing new levels of security against DDoS and Pharming attacks and minimizing latency to support advanced communication services.

More info about the ULTRADNS service

How DNS problems affect Webservice

We have explained the DNS registration process and how a browser will use the DNS entries to load a webpage.

Some issues are common to the DNS resolution that affects the web browsing process:

1. What happens if both DNS servers are down?
Typically, DNS servers will be located in one common area. A power outage or a network outage will cause both DNS servers to go down. When this happens. No one can get to your website, because the browsers can not resolve your domain to an IP address! They would NOT know how to get to your webserver! So when both DNS servers go down, your website is also affected.

2. What happens if DNS servers are ‘slow’?
A DNS server can be deemed slow if the query it returns takes a longer time than usual. This happens if the DNS is being attacked by hackers. They typically send large amounts of ‘query’ packets and overload the system. Or they do a denial-of-service attack against the server or the network housing the DNS service.

When this happens, your site’s visitors could feel that your website is slow also. And since web visitors typically do not wait for more than 18 seconds for a website to be fully loaded, you may lose clients.

3. What happens when DNS cache is polluted?
An improperly configured DNS server may be ‘polluted’ with false data. When this happens, a hacker will cause a wrong IP address to be inserted in a dns server. So when a user wants to visit a site called www.mydomain.ph, the dns server will forward another ip address instead of the TRUE ip address.

When this happens, the client browser is tricked into visiting another site. This false website can cause unsuspecting visitors to reveal their authentication details to the hackers!