web designer

Communal Living: 4 Reasons Businesses Should Stay Away from Shared Hosting

Posted on by Mario

web hosting tips

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the cheapest option is rarely, if ever, the best option. I would even go as far as saying that the cheapest option is unlikely to even pass the threshold of being merely good. For example, carbonated beverages and junk foods are typically one of the more economical options when it comes to a full meal and while I don’t deny that they can be fulfilling when you’re in a pinch, they’re not exactly what I would call nutritious. I do indulge in junk food from time to time, usually when I’m strapped for cash, but I make it a point to avoid them whenever possible.

You can apply this axiom to life in general and nine times out of then, it’s still going to hold up. I’m not exactly saying that the money you’re spending is always proportional to what you’re going to get but there’s definitely a correlation there and this can also be seen in the world of web development. When trying to determine which web hosting services you should pick for your business’ website, the term shared hosting is definitely going to pop up often. As the most economical option available for web hosting, you’re going to have to properly take shared hosting under consideration but as I’ve pointed out, there are also plenty of reasons why you shouldn’t.

Digital co-living with shared hosting

Those inside the industry tend to think of shared hosting as living in an apartment but that’s too generous of an assessment as in an apartment building, you at least have some personal space reserved for your use only, however limited. No, the more accurate description of shared hosting would be like living in a 4-bed room commonly seen in backpacker hostels. Sure, technically, your bed is your own but pretty much everything else is fair game so if one of your roommates decided to take up the annoying art of manspreading (apologies to men beforehand) and snoring within the vicinity then I’m sorry to say but you’re just going to have to deal with it.

In shared hosting, multiple websites are hosted in a single server and the resource of that server is divided among the websites hosted on that server. The server’s bandwidth, space, computing resource, the maintenance costs, etc are all shared among the tenants. Unlike in VPS (virtual private server) hosting however, where the server is at least digitally partitioned to ensure that each website is isolated from the others, there are no such divisions in a shared hosting plan. This lack of technological complexity is what makes shared hosting cheap but would also lead to several complications you might want to be aware of before committing to a shared hosting plan.

Lack of customization

The very first thing that’s going to come to mind with shared hosting plan is that you have very limited control over the actual server your website is hosted on. In a VPS hosting plan, even if you’re technically sharing server space with other websites/customers, you have complete free rein over the space you’ve been allocated. You’re free to choose your own operating system among other customization options for example, which can be quite useful if you consider yourself to be the more technological-minded. In a shared hosting plan, you’re merely allowed to use the resource provided by the server in lieu of the server itself and that can be quite limiting.

Lack of security

The biggest and most primary concern of course is the lack of security. If your apartment building is the site of a break in, chances are only one of the tenants has to suffer from the fallout but if a 4-bed dorm room gets broken into, every tenant staying in that room suffers equally. In a shared hosting plan, if just one website gets infected by a malware or is the victim of a data breach, there’s a high probability that every website hosted on that server is going to have to suffer from the consequences. In essence, a chain is quite literally only as strong as its weakest link.

It would invariably be inconvenient if you’ve worked hard to make sure your website is as secure as possible only for your lousy neighbor to ruin it with their lack of an SSL certificate. Also keep in mind that since the physical server is still mostly controlled and maintained by the web host, you’re going to be extremely reliant on them to keep your website safe and that’s not a good thing as businesses have to be as self-sufficient as possible. Given how ubiquitous ransomware, malware and data breaches are these days, shared hosting plan’s lack of security is pretty much a dealbreaker.

Lack of compartmentalization

Other than ransomware, malware and data breaches, one other threat modern websites have to watch out for is a denial of service (DoS) attack. Essentially, a DoS attack is a situation in which a website is excessively flooded with superfluous requests in order to overload the system and prevent genuine user requests from being fulfilled. DoS attacks can be quite simple to execute and is capable of taking even the biggest of websites with even Wikipedia playing the victim once. In a shared hosting plan, since you’re sharing a common space with other websites, a DoS attack to even one website would be capable of bringing the entire service down.

Lack of customer support

I’ve been on the other side so trust me when I say that while you’re guaranteed some measure of customer support for your website, you’re just going to be treated as another number compared to if you’re on a VPS or dedicated hosting plan. Because the number of customers on a shared hosting plan is considerably higher than other plans, it’s quite likely that you’re going to have to open a support ticket first and be greeted with generic questions and responses even if your problem is actually pretty unique. Depending on your luck, you might have to wait for several days before getting a respond which can get pretty annoying if your website was rendered suddenly and completely inaccessible.

Think On Your Feet: The Issue of Agility in Marketing

Posted on by Mario

SEO tips

When I landed my first job right after college, I remember being told by my then-manager that to have a successful career with the company, I have to be able to quickly come up with a solution on my own. The professional world generously rewards quick, independent thinking and I’d have no hope of progressing if I’m incapable of thinking on my feet. Or at least, that’s how the thinking goes. From my observation though, I think that philosophy applies more to certain field than others.

In the field of finance for example, independent thinking isn’t always necessary since you’re typically operating within a rulebook where diligence is of utmost importance. In other fields, such as technology where progress is made on a day-to-day basis and in marketing where trends evolve as fast as the public’s attention span, the rulebook gets rewritten at a pace so rapid that you’re going to have to be able to reorient yourself every now and then. This is why for marketers and SEO services, the word agility is of the utmost importance.

Agility in SEO

SEO stands at the crossroad of technology and marketing. As SEO deals heavily with search engines and their algorithms, any progress made in search technologies would no doubt have an impact on the practice of SEO and since it’s not like the likes of Google will ever stop tinkering with their search algorithms, SEO services will never be able to rest on their laurels. At the same time, as SEO falls under the general umbrella of digital marketing, SEO still have to abide by the whims of the public and current trends, making it impossible for you to succeed if you’re content just staying in place.

Agility then comes into play as businesses doesn’t just require the foresight to predict where society is heading next but also be able to react quickly to something that’s unexpected. Avengers: Endgame being the total hit that it is now can be easily predicted, which is why it shouldn’t be hard for your business to come up with marketing materials that subtly references the film. But what about something awesomely unexpected like the bottle cap challenge started by taekwondo instructor Farabi Davletchin where he kicked a bottle cap off a bottle in slow motion over Instagram?

That viral craze began somewhat predictably, with Davletchin challenging several notable figures such as Jason Statham into performing their own version of the bottle cap challenge. As with any viral craze, the challenge soon began to delve into absurdity when the diva we definitely do not deserve Mariah Carey, jumped in by removing the cap not with her feet, but with her impressive vocal range. These viral crazes are pretty much the norm now and it would take clever thinking and swiftness of mind to turn it into something uniquely yours the way Mariah Carey did.

Start with a flexible and immediately actionable plan

The thing with trends is that they leave as fast as they come and as our attention span grows shorter and shorter, making a long-term marketing plan is pretty much pointless. For example let’s say that you were there firsthand when the bottle cap challenge craze started to go viral. Instead of responding however, you went to the drawing board and sit on it for weeks trying to figure out the best way you can capitalize on this trend. By the time your preparation’s ready and that you’ve earn the needed approval to execute the plan, the world has moved on to a new trend, like the 30-50 feral hogs thing from a couple weeks ago.

The moral of this story is that you shouldn’t rely on a rigid, long-term plan for marketing. Setting a long-term goal is acceptable but you should always be flexible in how that goal is reached. Marketing can sometimes be more about being reactionary than it is about foresight and you’re going to be relying on your responsiveness more often than not. Marketing can also takes an iterative form as you might find when your current strategy isn’t working, it might best to tweak them rather than starting from scratch all over again.

Focus on your team

Flexibility and an open mind isn’t a trait that’s possessed by everyone which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as sometimes, being rigid and uncompromising can be useful. The world of marketing however, the latter is a cardinal sin as you’re going to have to be able to see everything not from your point of view but from potential customers. What the public find interesting might not always line up with your preferences and businesses need to find someone who can easily reconcile with this contradiction to handle their marketing efforts.

Take advantage of data

You have to understand the difference between what’s popular and what’s trending. At any given moment, holiday-related hashtags will always have traction even if there are months in which they’re used more. On the other hand, trending hashtags are marked by a meteoric rise over a short period of time and that’s what you want to capitalize on as there’s only a limited window where the public’s interest is at an all-time high. One way you could differentiate between these two points is by the use of analytics.

Numbers, to the dismay of those who hated math in school, help make sense of the world and the can be hugely invaluable in the world of marketing as long as you know what to look for. Looking at a bunch of data isn’t particularly useful all by itself but when interpreted by someone who can translate those numbers into a model of human society, they’re practically golden. Just as you need people that can react to whatever society is up to these days, you’re going to need someone who can actually tell what society is up to.

Connected Ideas: This is How (and Why) Collaboration Will Make You Be More Creative and Successful

Posted on by Mario

business tips

We all want to excel at almost everything in this world to make life easier for us. I mean, if we were good at everything, we could get the job we want easily, get salary raise fast and basically do anything we wanted because we just could. However, what we often forget is the fact that we are not perfect. There is always something lacking in us, but the best way to put it is; we can’t do everything… alone. For that reason, there comes the saying “everything will be fine when we are together.” Yes, humans are born social beings, which means we can’t do or live alone. I may work as a content writer, but to be honest, I do my work best when I collaborate with the web design team. When I think about this, I can’t help thinking about you as well. This time, I’m going to share my experience working together with the web design team in my office despite being in different teams to build high quality website together. Keep reading this article to learn more!

If you are a business owner looking to improve your business website, there are several aspects that you need to understand in order to achieve the high quality website that you desire, especially in the design and content area. These are what you need to do first:

  • Gather your employees from different teams together
  • Create a new project that connects your employees together
  • Make sure everyone has their own part but there is a part where everyone works together
  • Help them discuss and share ideas with each other
  • When everyone has done their part, start to collaborate
  • Don’t forget to celebrate your achievement and well-built friendship

Well, that’s when we are talking about collaborating with people within our company. We know that collaborating doesn’t always have to be with people inside the company, right? Yes, I’m also talking about collaborating with other companies. A while ago, I saw a skincare-focused company collaborating with a makeup-only company in an event. Let’s say the skincare company is called Ellie and the makeup company is called Lily (both are not real names, though). Both companies agreed to collaborate with each other and create a project together for an upcoming event called Beauty and the Feast where beauty products open their booths in that event alongside with food booths. They also named their project “Ellie x Lily in Beauty and the Feast”. The project went really smooth and it gained so much attention from Ellie and Lily royal customers. How did they achieve this? Almost using the same method as the points I have mentioned above, this is how you collaborate with other companies:

  • Gather your employees and ask for their opinions and suggestions for this kind of collaboration
  • Collect names of the companies and what industry they are from
  • Select one up to three companies that you think will be beneficial for the project
  • Learn more about the companies’ values and how they work
  • After reviewing thoroughly, choose only one of them that suits your company’s values
  • Contact them and meet them personally
  • Communicate ideas with them and see if they agree to collaborate with you
  • If they decline your invitation for collaboration, try the second or the third company you have chosen before, but always come with plan B
  • If they accept your invitation to collaborate, make sure to gather your employees and they also gather theirs
  • Interact, discuss, have meetings arranged and socialise if you want to
  • Make sure you and your employees use polite and friendly language and manners when communicating with the other company

So, why is collaboration advisable for us? These are why:

  • You and your company will get the opportunities to grow
  • You will learn more new stuff
  • You will value friendship more
  • You will strengthen your relationship with other companies without unhealthy competition
  • It will boost and improve your brand awareness
  • It will boost customers’ interest in your products

…and guess what? You don’t have to be a designer to make this happen. You can do this anytime as long as you have plans for the future. When you can incorporate insights from a wide range of individuals, including non-design team members and prospective customers, you will be better positioned to create a usable, innovative interface that helps your company stand out.