Spiral Hosting

We’re delighted to introduce the national domain for Belize. The extension .bz is now the 30th domain extension we sell. Belize (formerly British Honduras) is a small country just south of Mexico. The .bz extension is used worldwide as an extension for Business and registration is open to anyone, anywhere.

About .bz:

• It was launched in 1991 and is managed by the University of Belize.
• It has been marketed worldwide as a domain for Businesses.
• The .bz domain is also used by residents of Bolzano de Bozen in Italy.
• It represents an excellent opportunity for your business to sell to an English-speaking audience in Central America, and protect its brand name
• How much? It costs only €20/year. You can check availability here

We frequently review all our domain prices to ensure that our clients are getting the very best deal. If you find a better deal elsewhere, talk to us and we’ll likely match it!

Subject to our usual Terms & Conditions.

.IN is the domain extension for India and can be registered at the promotional price of only €4.95 through our website this week only. (normal price €14.95)

Why choose .in?

• International brand protection for businesses is more important than ever, and India represents the second largest nation on Earth.
• Protect your brand and open your business to a market of 1.2 billion people by registering a dot-IN domain.
• Don’t forget, there are more English-speaking people in India than the USA!

To take advantage of this price reduction, simply check for your domain’s availability. Subject to our usual T&C’s. Offer ends Friday 30th October 2009 at midnight.

WordPress 2.8.5 was released this morning. It includes new code to harden your WordPress installation and prevent exploits and denial-of-service vulnerabilities. We are asking all shared hosting customers and resellers to ensure all the software on their accounts is up to date.

You can find out more information on the update on the official WordPress blog.

If you installed WordPress through Installatron Script Installer in your control panel, the update isn’t available there just yet, but it should be within a few days. login to cPanel, then select Installatron, find your installation in the list and click ‘upgrade to 2.8.5′.

If you installed WordPress normally (and not through Installatron) please follow these instructions to update:

1) Login to your WordPress admin area.
2) You’ll see a notice at the top saying that an update is available. Click on it.
3) On the next screen, click Upgrade Automatically.
4) Type in the Connection Information if it’s required.
5) Wait a moment for the moment to run, then that’s it done!

If you have any questions about upgrading your software, please do get in touch.

A survey in the UK has found that 75% of 16 to 24 year olds feel that they “couldn’t live” without the Internet. It was funded by the Nominet Trust and carried out by YouthNet.

It found that four out of five young people look to the Internet for advice, and one third felt that there was no need to talk to a person face to face about their problems because of the resources that are available online.

The survey’s author, Professor Michael Hulme of Lancaster University said “For young people the Internet is part of the fabric of their world and does not exist in isolation from the physical world”.

Open University psychologist Graham Jones believes that “probably the middle-aged are the most vulnerable”.

“I think children, teenagers and people under their mid-20s have grown up with technology and they understand it deeply.

“So-called silver surfers have got time to learn about it and understand it as well. One of the biggest problems for children is not that they are vulnerable but that their parents don’t know what they’re doing.”

More information:

• BBC News > Technology > Youth ‘cannot live’ without web

Fancy snapping up some of the $15,000 prize money that Afilias, the .INFO Registry, is putting up for the best .INFO sites on the web?

Here’s the details, courtesy Afilias:

• The .INFO Awards reward the best professionally created .INFO Web sites from around the world. .INFO Site owners are able to submit their .INFO site for consideration until 11:59 p.m. on October 23, 2009.
• Sites will be judged in two parts. First a panel of judges will create a shortlist of final contenders based on select criteria. These criteria include: presentation of content, functionality of the website, design, usability, and originality.
• The shortlist of the top ten best sites will then be published at www.info-award.info on November 2, 2009, at which point members of the public will be allowed to cast their vote for their favourite site. Public votes will be combined with judges scores to determine the final top three winners.

Prizes for the awards include: US$7,500 for the first place winner, US$5,000 for second place, and US$3,000 for third place. All winners will be announced in November and will be notified directly via e-mail.

For more details or to submit your .INFO site for the 2009 .INFO Awards, please see www.info-award.info.

P.S. Don’t forget! All .Info Registrations are €1.95 until midnight on 31st December 2009!

Gmail’s junk filter is currently mistaking emails from Spiral Hosting as spam, which is causing havoc with some customers not receiving emails, renewal reminders, invoices, and support ticket responses!

We have sent text messages to all customers with Google Mail addresses to ask them to read this post. Please take 2 minutes to check that your email account is not affected.

To check if emails from Spiral Hosting are getting sent to your Spam folder, first login to Gmail then type into the search box at the top:

This should immediately list all emails from Spiral Hosting in your Spam folder. Hopefully there will be none!

If you find that emails are being sent to your Spam folder, please create a filter so it doesn’t happen again.

You can create a filter by following these simple steps:

1) While reading any email that has been mistakenly filtered, click on the down-arrow next to the Reply link, and select ‘Filter messages like this’ from the menu.

2) On the next screen, type *@spiralhosting.com into the From: box. This will allow emails to come from all our billing, sales, support and staff email addresses.

3) Click ‘Next Step’ at the bottom.

4) On the next screen, select the checkbox next to ‘Never send it to Spam.’

5) Apply the filter to any other emails affected (if any):

6) Click ‘Create Filter’.

All existing emails from Spiral Hosting should now be moved to your Inbox, and future emails too!

If you still have problems receiving emails from us please don’t hesitate to contact our Support Department.

Spiral Hosting have today warned customers of the increasing number of fake ‘phishing’ emails pretending to be from local Irish banks.

Company director Peter Armstrong warned: “Internet users are coming across an ever increasing number of phishing attacks – emails that lure unsuspecting users to fake websites where they reveal bank account information or other  personal details.

Fake 'Bank of Ireland' Email

“We are asking our customers to be aware that these fake emails are being sent in large numbers, and they aren’t always obvious. We are currently seeing a considerable number of phishing emails claiming to be from Bank of Ireland (365 Online) and Allied Irish Banks. These emails request that users validate their email address and other details by visiting a fake website which looks very similar to the bank’s own website.

“Our advice is to be extra cautious, don’t open suspicious emails or attachments, keep your anti-virus up-to-date and definitely never enter your bank account details into a website unless you are expecting the email and you are sure the website is authentic.”

More information:

• BBC News > Scam hits more email accounts
• Bank of Ireland > Protecting yourself against Phishing

Just a reminder that since June 2009 we are now using an off-site status blog to keep clients updated with any maintenance notices, technical work, network/DNS issues or connectivity problems.

http://status.spiralhosting.net/

The blog is located off our network, so if there are any problems on our own network, the blog will remain available.