Is your business involved publishing a website that is rich with media elements like large videos and images? Then you must focus on the limit of monthly transfer and high storage capacity while searching the right web host.

If you are starting up an eCommerce website then it must require management of inventory and shopping cart. Look out for the web hosting service provider that provides easy installation of eCommerce software.

When you are building an online business, then it is better to look out for a host that includes simple documentation and a client’s forum where it is possible to interact with other customers and gather valuable information on the services.

You may come across some hosts that claim unlimited service on certain aspects at very cheap price, be aware of them. These hosts can be doing overselling by putting the patron on a server that cannot cover the entire allowed limits. Overselling is a widespread practice that boosts up earnings in the cheap shared hosting market. Mostly, the customers or patrons make use of just a little of the offered resources and do not recognize that they are on an oversold server.

There are many hosts that provider free domain name registration, but it is definitely advisable to work with a dedicated registrar for managing the domain names. If you find that your web host is not handling the domain names properly, then you can easily change to another host. However, most of the web hosts offer the basic services that one needs for a start-up online business. All you need to do is a little of research to get the best services at best price.

One very good example of a genuine web hosting service provider that you can use for your start-up online business is emerion. This provider hosts the sites not on a single server, but on a network of superior enterprise load a balanced server to make sure that it carries out excellent performance when the spikes of traffic are rising.

Domain name, as we all know is an internet identity of a particular web address. The interaction between the owner of a website and his or her clients takes place that is subjective on the domain name. It is a legal address of anyone’s website and resultantly, it is unique.

The domain hack is a technical aspect of a domain name that requires to be stressed a bit in order to understand the matters related to the dynamics of a domain name. It is, primarily, an unorthodox domain name. It combines various domain levels for the purpose of spelling the full name of the particular domain. In this manner, the domain hack imparts more uniqueness to the domain name. One such example is blo.gs.

The domain hack can be interpreted as a type of a trick, similar to those done in different programming, and by no means an infiltration to some private, or rather secured information. The word ‘hack’ may seem to mislead to many, though. However, at this exclusive context it is not about breaching any security issues.

The domain hack enables the domain names to be formed of simple words that can be comprehended very easily. Every letter as presented with the help of the hack corresponds to the title of the website.

Domain names of very short lengths are smoothly formed with the help of domain hacks. These are short, and do not create any unnecessary hassle in times of some processing through the applications of the site, if any.

In numerous cases the domains of the country codes are to be relied in order to register the short names of the domains that are put in place with the aid of the domain hack. There happens to be a 2 letter identifier that is unique in these cases.

This piece of writing already seems like some hardcore discussion on IT details. But from a personal point of view I feel that there is no harm in knowing two or three things more about this interesting concept of domain hack, as it may help you in the domain name related matters.

In order to market some sort of audiovisual content of through a site, the domain hack does come in handy in restructuring the site’s name to comply with the technical affairs that are required to perform the required tasks.

Many internet users operating several sites are not quite aware of the domain hack and its utility. The domain hack, as I would like to put it, is a sound conceptual element that protects your domain name and makes it more dynamic from a general perspective, to say the least.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2010

Please note the availability of our telephone support during the holidays:

Our telephone support is available again on January 11, 2010.

For support inqueries our FirstLevel support is available during the holidays via email. To contact our email support please create a support ticket here.

The turnaround time for inqueries till January 10, 2010 will be between 1 and 12 hours. Please see also our Support Level Agreement.

Our technical systems are monitored 24 hours/7 days a week and our technical staff ensures that our systems will be reliable available. Learn more about our Service Level Agreement.

Domain Name

Choosing an effective domain name for your online business can be quite an overwhelming task. So in this regard I have outlined certain important aspects that you need to consider to choose the right domain name for your online business.

The first thing that you need to consider that whatever domain name you contemplate to choose for your online business it should be easy to remember. For this you need to select a name that is short enough and is easy to remember. For this I would suggest that you always go for such domain name that is not more than three words. Similarly, the characters of your concerned domain name should not be more than 15 characters. If you go for long domain name then the visitors will find it difficult to remember it and hence domain name will fail to top in the search engine list.

Besides, your domain name should be such that it can clearly reflect what your online business is all about. This will enable your website to grab the attention of the visitors quite easily.
Though there are many domain extensions available for any domain name, I would suggest you to go for the .com extension for best result. In case your business website is area specific then you can go for area specific domain extension such as the .co.uk or co.aus
Another thing that you must remember while choosing an effective domain name is to avoid using any numbers, abbreviations, underscores, dashes and any other characters in your domain name. This is due to the fact that it has the high possibility of confusing the potential visitors of your business website.

Another important factor that you need to remember is that whatever domain name you go for it should be in no way infringement any Trademark rights or else you may land up in severe copyright problem. The best way avoid this problem is to do through research regarding any other name that is similar to concerned domain name.
The above important aspects that I have outlined will help you in a long way to determine an effective domain for your business. So just follow them religiously to get an appropriate domain name for your business and then see how your business website moves up in higher in a position in the search engine.

From my experience in the field of online business the first thing that you will have to consider is the bandwidths that are offered by the different hosting provider. The amount of time taken by your website page to load mostly depends on the bandwidth of your hosting provider. If you want your web pages to load quickly then I will suggest you to go for the service provider who can offer better bandwidth. This can be quite expensive but its worth paying for. Different hosting providers offer different rates for bandwidth so you need to choose accordingly so that you can get that provider who can satisfy you in terms of bandwidth services.

But it is not only the bandwidth what makes web page loading quickly. It also depends on the server architecture of the web hoster. Emerion operates the hosting systems on a load balanced server cluster. The load balancers take care of the load of each server in the cluster. A load balanced server cluster makes it also possible to operate the system without maintenance downtime, because servers can be separated from the cluster for maintenance without service interruption.

The other factor that you need to consider while selecting an effective web hosting service provider is that which hosting provider offers web templates and designs in their package. If you go for a hosting provider who offers web templates and designs in their package then will not have to hire a website designer for designing your website. Thus you will be saved from incurring an extra expense for your online business. This is quite economical for the online business owners who have limited budget. Emerion offers a special WordPress hosting where WordPress is already pre installed and you can start right away to use wonderful templates for this popular software.

The server up time is another essential factor that you to consider while selecting a reliable web hosting service provider for your business. For a reliable and effective online website hosting, I will suggest you to go for that service provider that offers a higher up time. This is because it will save your website from crashing due to its inability to handle huge traffic volume.
The above important factors that I have discussed in this blog are very essential. If you can follow them properly you will succeed in find the right and effective web hosting service provider for you online business for its successful operation.

Read you emails on holidays

Wherever you go, you can read your emails everywhere. So you don’t miss important messages and you feel comfortable to communicate with home, friends or business partners.

You find Internet Cafes almost everywhere in the world, where you can have a cool drink while checking your emails. If you have your email address at emerion you can use our comfortable webmail, which is included for every email address for free.

Here you find your webmail

After that you see the login fields for your email address and the password. Important: Make always sure, that you have your password with you.

Webmail display

You find WLAN, wireless internet access, almost everywhere in the world. If you traveling with your laptop you can check you emails as usual. To avoid technical complications, we recommend to use the secure connection offered by emerion, to make sure to have safe email traffic.

Please use the following setup on your laptop, you also find this information in the ControlPanel under the “Email” menu:

So as you can see, it’s so easy to use emerion email addresses during your vacation. With emerion you stay in contact with the world. So it is time to wish you a pleasant summer and a awesome vacation!

Traffic control

The decision has been made: The German government passed a law, that requires all major ISPs to block suspicious web sites with a stop sign.

The BKA, the German Federal Criminal Police Office, provides a list with current web sites that have to be blocked.

At the page with the stop sign the user will be informed about the reason of the lock and he will be informed about the serious consequences of child pornography for abused children. At the same time the law outlines, that a bypass of the lock is illegal. The law is supposed to come into effect this legislature period.

All providers agree, that child pornography has to be banned. But is censoring single web sites and making them only partly accessible the right way?

The official statement is to stop all users accessing such sites by accident.

Have you ever seen a child pornography site by accident?

It’s also very interesting, that a bypass of the lock is now penalized in Germany. Basically the locks are working with the domain name system (DNS), which resolves domain names. The list of pages that have to be blocked are applied on the name servers of the access provider. But technically it’s not required to use the providers name servers. Each user can easily configure his own name servers. Therefore the user has the possibility to chose which name servers he would like to use. A custom configuration can be made for different reasons; not only to avoid locked pages. Such a configuration should be a crime?

Proponents of such locks argue, that the Internet is legal free space. This argument lacks, since the Internet itself is not its own space, it is a medium used in our society. In society there are rules and laws that apply, whether virtual or real.

The Internet does not cause child abuse. The Internet is used as medium to show child pornography, and also other crimes and perversities. There is no doubt that children must be protected from sexual abuse and we have get rid of documentation and publication of it. However, the most important thing is to find the perpetrators to stop child pornography and to protect children.

The difficulty to access such sites neither stops child pornography nor prevents the web site operators to run their dirty business. An other wide spread argument is, that a lock would cut the producer’s business base. However, if a real “customer base” exists, it is not necessary for these people to use the Internet to share their dirty content. That means child abuse does not stop if these web sites are blocked, it will merely move back to the underground. Is that the goal to protect children? How honest is the desire to protect children?

The Internet is just a medium. Censoring a medium does not prevent the causes nor does it eliminate a social evil.

If users should be protected by law from such content, what is the next harmful content, where the user should be protected?

emerion’s position on the censorship question is quite clear:
The internet should not be censored in any way, the perpetrators must be found and be held accountable.

Why emerion think that locking pages does not make any sense:

1. Who is the target of the network lock against child pornography?
Actually “real” child pornography can be found on the internet only, if you know exactly where to look for it. A click by accident, even on legal porn sites almost never happens, because the legal porn industry dissociates strictly from the child porn scene due of its own legal interests. Blocking sites is only against people who are consciously searching for child pornography. However, even if “curious” people were prevented from looking at such material, it would be irrelevant for the prevention of child abuse, since those people would not pay for that material.

2. Are network locks effective?
Network locks could be bypassed easily in any form, for example through the use of other name servers, open proxy server or through freely available anonymizing services. Instructions are available on the Internet and easy to find. The installation or configuration of such a bypass strategy only takes a few minutes. Most likely are consumer of child pornography capable of such modifications, even despicte the fact that this is now made punishable.

3. What are the side effects of network locks?
Because of the mandatory introduction of network locks through the provider, he is forced to separate the internet in “good” and “bad” sites. Due to the necessary infrastructure it is virtually inevitable that the data provider sees, who tried to access “evil” sites. Although if this data is initially neither stored nor released, it would be easy to force the providers by law to disclose user data (for example, prosecute child-consumer). It does not need much imagination to guess what democratic political consequences almost inevitably arise, because this type of infrastructure is also able to record and evaluate other type of user behavior.

4. Why should there be a connection to the music industry?
The music industry has a keen interest in the prosecution of child consumers. Once the infrastructure works for the providers, it is foreseeable that they will start massive lobbying to block file-sharing sites. The German University Professor, Dr. Thomas Hoeren from the Institute for Information, Telecommunications and Media at the University of Munster said in an interview: “I have the impression that the Family Minister does not know whose interests she represents. For the music industry, which tries to criminalize users for private copying, what happens now in the minors, is the the best thing that could happen for and the Minister is instrumentalized by the industry.”

This relationship is also supported by the music industry by itself: Dieter Gorny, Chairman of the Federal Association Music Industry, followed the Minister: “The thrust of the Family Minister for the prohibition of child pornography on the Internet is a correct signal. It is about regulation in the social internet, including the protection of intellectual property.”

5. What other democratic political consequences are predictable?

Soon after the introduction of the network lock it will turn out, that it is largely useless. Thus the next logical step is to prohibit the bypass of the lock by law as described above. The consequence is that every Internet user who wants to be anonymous in the Internet – completely legitimate – due to any reasons, will be criminalized. Ultimately this will lead to a massive restriction of fundamental rights to information and freedom of expression, as well as the protection of privacy. In other words: The usage of the Internet will only be possible if the user accepts, that access providers and the government know, or are at least able to determine, which web sites the user visited.

6. What can we really do against child pornography?
As with any crime the most sensible option is to prosecute the criminals, as it has already been done successfully on the basis of international cooperation between authorities, Internet service providers and child protection organizations (for example see eg https://www.inhope.org/).

Additionally the effect of blocking the sites can be achieved with less effort, by asking the provider hosting the material, to remove it.
A German child rights organization, invested 1 day and wrote emails to 20 providers which hosted sites, found on the Danish lock list. 16 providers shut down the affected sites immediately. This is another way, not the only one, but more successful than Internet blocking.

7. Conclusion:
Network locks are largely ineffective against spread or production of child pornography. In further consequence the music industry benefits from the locks, however the democracy and socio-political consequences, are unpredictable.

Special thanks to Michael Eisenriegler.

Letter of the Domain Renewal Group

The Domain Renewal Group is a company that uses similar tricks like the well known Domain Registry of America/Europe (DROA). The company sends out letters that look like invoices to the registrant of a domain which is due to renewal in a couple of months. The letter explains that the registrant has to renew his domain name if he wants to keep it. But taking a closer look, one can see it is just a bad offer to change the provider.

The message can be ignored if it was not actually sent by the provider that registered the domain. If the domain was not transferred in the meantime, it is only renewed by the current provider who registered the domain name.

If your domain was registered with emerion, or you transferred your domain to emerion, a renewal request may only be sent by emerion. You receive a renewal request if you use the domain parking feature and your domain name is not set on auto-renewal. If you use web hosting services from emerion, the domain name is renewed automatically.

The Domain Renewal Group acts like the Domain Registry of America (DROA). By paying the overpriced domain fee, you agree to transfer the domain to this provider. But without additional steps it does not work to transfer the domain name to another registrar. emerion as well as many other providers lock domains to avoid unwanted transfers.

Original letter of the Domain Renewal Group

Thus you need to be careful with these letters. If you pay the supposed domain fee, your money weill be gone and there is no way to get it back. At least the domain name cannot be lost that easily.

So if you receive letters like the one shown here you can safely throw it away.

Redirect messages

Email forwarding has pitfalls

Email forwarded to external email accounts outside the emerion system, can cause some problems. There is no guarantee that the target mail server accepts the email, even if the emerion mail server forwards the email reliable. The most common reason, why email is not accepted by the target mail server, is spam.

If messages are redirected to another email provider spam is also forwarded. Due to fight against spam, some providers try to block such server, where to much spam is coming from. And in case of a forward the server which one redirects the messages, looks like the server which one is spamming. emerion has strong anti-spam-policies and tries to avoid outgoing spam, but in case of redirect, our mail systems just forward these messages.

We had long discussions with email providers like GMX, which one blocks a mail server, if there are to much emails to not existing email addresses. They recommend that we have to keep our recipient lists clean. A nice try, but we are running thousands of email addresses and we cannot control where our users send email to.

Sometimes there are also problems with hotmail, yahoo and chello. They decline to accept mail from the emerion forwarding mail server system, due to the reasons mentioned above. But emerion has no possibility to talk to a responsible person at these providers about the problem. So our customers which one are also customers at the other provider, has to call them, to unlock the emerion mail server system. The customer has to talk to the support at the external mail provider, but the nice guy on the telephone may send the customer back to emerion. “This domain name is not hosted with us”, could be the short answer. To avoid the hassle of an unwanted telephone loop, the emerion support prepares his customers to say the right things to resolve the issue as fast as possible.

Solution for pitfalls of forwarded email

Reverse the redirect and let GMX, hotmail, yahoo etc. forward the email to your email account at emerion. Customers can easily retrieve all their emails via our ad-free and comfortable webmail, as well as with every email program. We at emerion we don’t decline mail and we have better methods to filter out spam.