If you are thinking about using Yahoo! Web Hosting for your business web site, you can now receive 25% off the cost for the first three months. There is no setup fee plus, Yahoo offers a 30 day satisfaction guarantee.

To find out more about this web hosting provider, check out our review of Yahoo! Web Hosting.

Tag: yahoo coupon

GeoTrust is taking Go Daddy head on with its new campaign: "Who's Your Daddy Now?"

GeoTrust is a division of the IT security firm Symantec that specializes in digital certification. In response to the heat of the competition growing for low-cost Secure Sockets Layer certificates, GeoTrust have launched a campaign that slashes its SSL prices in half.

The campaign also specifically targets Go Daddy customers, who can now trade in their SSL certificates for GeoTrust SSL certificates for no charge. GeoTrust will match its SSL certificates in a fair currency exchange.

“We’re alerting Go Daddy customers that they now can take advantage of the reliable protection of globally trusted GeoTrust SSL certificates, with a trade-in process that’s exceptionally easy and unbeatably cost-effective,” GeoTrust senior product marketing manager Jeff Barto said in a statement. “With our new low prices, GeoTrust is making a great thing even better.”
Other customers can take advantage of other deals: QuickSSL Premium domain validated protection for $149 per certificate.

Web Host Industry Review notes some important points of comparison between GeoTrust and Go Daddy: "GeoTrust secured 20.6 percent of unique domains among the 1 million most visited sites. Go Daddy was third, with a 15.6 percent share."

Nevertheless, Go Daddy is still experiencing significant growth in its SSL certificate sales: they've led in overall growth for 22 of the past 24 months, according to Netcraft reports. Although GeoTrust may be pulling in more unique domains right now, Go Daddy could potentially surpass them -- and soon.

To read more, visit Web hosting Industry Review. To check out reviews of Go Daddy web hosting services, visit our review page.

Tag: go daddy geotrust ssl campaigns

Apple has decided to discontinue its Xserve Server, its line of 1U rackmount servers, in January. In its place, the Mac Pro tower and Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server will provide services for customers familiar and loyal to the Apple-based infrastructure for web services. The line will be permanently discontinued after January 31st, 2011.

Apple has released a "Xserve Transition Guide" that details information on how to upgrade and transition to the Mac Pro and Mac mini.

“Mac Pro systems deliver performance and expandability equal to or surpassing Xserve, and offer an excellent server solution for customers looking for the highest levels of performance, storage, and expandability,” wrote the company, noting that a Mac Pro tower, preloaded with Mac OS X Server, “can be deployed in an office environment on or under a desk, or in a data center environment on a shelf in a rack with two units per 12U.”

Apple is confident about the moves to the Mac Pro and Mac mini. Both systems outdo the Xserve Server as well as provide a series of other features and services. The current Mac Pro features 12-core Intel Xeon "Westmere" processing and a 512G drive -- a system that surpasses performance in comparison to Xserve.

The Mac mini has its own advantages as well: Snow Leopard has the capabilities to serve a small business or workgroup of up to 50 people. "A single Mac mini," the company said, "can run the full suite of Mac OS X Server services, and, depending on the workload and number of users, could replace a single Xserve server."

Go Daddy is offering its own solution to the Xserve gap: it officially introduced its virtual Mac hosting solution, "Cloud Serve powered by Mac OS X." Users familiar with Xserve will find common features in the Go Daddy package that was created specifically for Xserve server and Parallels technology software and provides customers with website hosting, email, collaboration, an iChat server, and calendaring.

For more information, see the Xserve Transition Guide that Apple has released, or visit Web Host Industry Review's write up of Go Daddy's Cloud-based Mac OS X Web Hosting service.

Tag: apple go daddy xserve

On Thursday, Windstream announced that it is set to purchase the NC-based web hosting service, Hosted Solutions LLC, for $310 million. Although the transaction is still subject to regulatory approval, both companies are prepared to close the deal in the fourth quarter.

Windstream noted that they would like to use the acquisition to broaden its range of offerings, both in business services and broadband segments. It will finance the purchase with its current cash reserves as well as revolving credit. A representative also noted that they're expecting a tax benefit of approximately $52 million.

Hosted Solutions specializes its service to cater to small and medium-size businesses. They currently have 125 employees and over 600 customers.

Windstream is a landline phone company that operates in eastern regions of the US, mainly in rural areas. They currently have 3.3 million access lines and 1.27 million Internet customers.

The drive to further develop its Internet services and capabilities influenced the the Hosted Solutions acquisition, which will give Windstream more data centers. Windstream will be able to devote a greater emphasis to these areas by taking advantage of Hosted Solutions' experienced management team, particularly in its Internet business enterprise and cloud computing segment.

"Data center space is increasingly in demand among our existing business customers," Windstream president and CEO Jeff Gardner said. "Hosted Solutions is an excellent complement to our existing enterprise service portfolio. For the past decade, they have been delivering highly complex managed hosting solutions to customers of various sizes. In addition, they have a proven track record of growing revenue and generating significant free cash flow."

The new data centers will also mean that Windstream will be able to provide more customers with faster internet speeds.

For more information, check out the LA Time's write up of the acquisition.

Tag: acquisitions windstream hosted solutions data centers

The HN.com recently wrote an interesting post entitled "Things You Can Do Without in Hosting." In it, the author makes an interesting point: web hosting services often try to load their packages with features in an effort to draw in business -- but it is rare when a customer actually utilizes those features.

The author makes a comparison to a packing list for a camping trip: "He packed away changes of clothing, sunscreen, a TV, food, cooking supplies, free weights, sleeping bags, compressed air, bug spray, and several kitchen sinks" he wrote. "If this packing list sounds somewhat odd to you, you are not alone. Oddly enough this story does draw a parallel with web hosting."

How, then, does one analyze the lists of features offered by web hosting services? Think about the content you're hosting and what will primarily make that content functional, simple, and easy to use.

If you're hosting a blog, for instance, you'll need blogging software, and ideally a host that offers multiple blogs. "You may find that you like something a bit off the beaten path such as PixelPost as opposed to using WordPress," he noted. "Other essentials include a control panel (for administrating your site),  multimedia support (you may not need it now, but being able to add video, podcasts, streaming audio, etc to your blog could be something that you will need in the future), and you will want a company that offers quality support. All other features are pretty much filler."

Your familiarity with web development will also be a factor; some web hosting services are more flexible than others. WordPress, for instance, can easily be transformed into a fully-functioning web-site because of the tools they offer. Their content management software (CMS), however, is not always beginner friendly.

To read more about how to approach one's hosting-list-of-needs, see the original article at TheHN.com. Once you have identified your hosting needs, check out our complete list of web hosting providers.

Tag: web hosting services features beginners blogging

On Thursday, Google announced that it will be launching an acceleration tool for the Apache Web server that will feature capabilities to deploy multiple optimizations to acceleration Web page load times.

Richard Rabbat, the head of Google's "Make the Web Faster" initiative, noted that the module, named "mod_pagespeed", will allow developers to control the settings to speed up (or, one would suppose, slow down), the loading of their Web pages. By using over 15 of Google's available optimizations, the module will allow developers to speed up optimizations up to 50 percent.

"But we thought we could make it even easier -- ideally these optimizations should happen with minimal developer and webmaster effort," said Rabbat. "So today, we're introducing a module for the Apache HTTP Server called mod_pagespeed to perform many speed optimizations automatically."

Google has shown its dedication to faster web speeds. Its recent release of Google Instant was also a part of this initiative. Rabbat reflected this commitment in his comment that the company hopes "to work with the hosting, developer and webmaster community to improve mod_pagespeed and make the Web faster."

Google is attempting to give the mod_pagespeed a thick ubiquity among users: it has plans to pair up with Go Daddy and Contendo, as well as create an open source version for Linus users.

Its partnership with Go Daddy will allow customers with hosting accounts access to the mod_pagespeed optimization. Furthermore, it will also be integrating mod_pagespeed into Contendo's content delivery network service.

To download the mod-pagespeed module, visit the Google page here. You might also want to check out the video Google posted that demonstrates the mod_pagespeed module capabilities here, or the announcement page on Google's Webmaster Central blog.

Tag: google apache acceleration go daddy contendo linux