WordPress Themes
While we have thousands of clients using hundreds of open-source solutions, there are inevitably the blogging and CMS heavy hitters that emerge quickly as the most popular. Today we are going to discuss WordPress, one of the most well known and powerful blogging tools available, for free!
More specifically, we are going to go over some very easy and simple ways to dress up the otherwise boring look and feel of a WordPress run site.
WordPress themes are the most common solution for anyone, from the novice user to the experienced power blogger, who wants a fast, creative, and effective way to dress up their WP site. WordPress is by far the most popular CMS tool available, largely due to its key features. This includes a fantastic plug-in architecture, as well as a formidable template system - which in itself, offers the endless potential for Themes.
You don’t need to be an experienced web designer, a Photoshop guru, or even a slightly creative MS Paint aficionado to have a professional looking WP site. All you need is resourcefulness, and the help of a site like WPHub.com.
Specializing in WordPress Themes, Plugins and Tutorials, WPHub is one of many WordPress resource centers. Think of them as a portal, but for only top quality themes and plugins; a one-stop shop to get your WP site looking as professional as ever. Offering up over 500 themes, WPHub provides everything you need without breaking the bank. They boast some of the industry leading theme providers, including WooThemes, ElegantThemes, ThemeForest, and StudioPress to name a few. On top of all that, they offer a recommended WordPress Hosting provider section!
Don’t get bogged down with worry when piecing together your WP site, as many do. Don’t even worry about hiring an expensive web designer - get resourceful, and explore the countless themes, plugins and tutorials available online, and start with WPHub.com.
Introducing Our Latest Partnership With DesignPax!
Hi all,
After a short break from our Blog (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, we’ve been booming in Q1FY12!), we’re back to announce a new partnership with a formidable New York City based design company.
Introducing DesignPax - a state of the art 1-stop design shop that specializes in web marketing design, and a second-to-none 48 hour turnaround time. Join the likes of Google and AdRoll, to name a couple, who have utilized this incredible fast and simple design solution.
HostUpon fans can now use promo code “DesignpaxCredit50″ for a $50 credit!
Visit DesignPax here
As always, thank you for following our blog. Stay tuned for some exciting news, and the usual special promotions and discounts.
Sincerely,
The HostUpon Team
HostUpon Named “Best Canadian Host”
We are humbled to accept the “Best Canadian Host” award from the well known review site WebHostRanking.com!
From a recent press release via @PRweb:
“The team at Web Host Ranking has had the opportunity to work with and review many of the best web hosting services in the industry. After careful review and consideration, Web Host Ranking has picked HostUpon to receive top honors as the Best Canadian Host. HostUpon has received many awards for providing some of the best web hosting in the industry. Not only do they use some of the best technology and web hosting tools to ensure that their web hosting is dependable but they also guarantee personal, in-house support to all the HostUpon clients.”
Thanks WebHostRanking, we appreciate it!
See the full details here: http://www.webhostranking.com/awards/hostupon-best-canadian-host
AdQuick Web Hosting
AdQuick is a powerful PHP script, which will allow you to easily and quickly setup your own advertising network online.
With AdQuick you can run your own ad network similar to websites such as adbrite.com and buysellads.com
AdQuick allows you to bring together publishers and advertisers all in one marketplace and allows you to monetize your ad network by allowing you to take a cut from every single ad sold through your network.
AdQuick has many great features including, Targeted Ad Campaigns, Set Rates Ads, Multi Language and Currency, Easy template customization and full admin control over your website.
AdQuick supports many ad formats including,
Text Ads
Video Ads
Image Ads
Full Pages Ads
InLine Text Ads
InVideo Ads + Many More
Aswell as allowing you to run your own ad network with ease, AdQuick can also be used for personal use and be run to manage your own ads as your own ad server.
Hostupon is the only official hosting partner for phplemon.com and the AdQuick software, and provides all of the hosting requirements including FFMpeg to allow AdQuick to be installed and maintained without any issues.
Check out the AdQuick Software here: www.phplemon.com/adquick
For AdQuick Hosting check out the following: www.phplemon.com/hosting
Lastly don’t forget to use the coupon code phplemon to get 25% off your entire hosting order at HostUpon!
HostUpon Receives Two New Awards!
HostUpon has received it’s fair share of praise in the past, and the list of accomplishments continues to grow!
WebHostRanking.com has awarded HostUpon.com with the Best Canadian Web Host title (http://www.webhostranking.com/awards/hostupon-best-canadian-host/) , acknowledging our world-wide client base and ability to deliver “some of the fastest and most reliable web hosting available”. We are extremely proud to to receive this award as it signifies another step forward for Canadian start-ups in the tech world, not to mention the rapid evolution of Toronto, Canada as a central Canadian Hub for tech startups.
In a very similar fashion, HostScoreCard.com awarded HostUpon with the title of Top Canadian Host (http://www.hostscorecard.com/awards/hostupon-top-canadian-host/) further cementing HostUpon’s footprint in the emerging Canadian tech landscape.
Last but definitely not least, WebHostingSearch.com has mentioned HostUpon as one of their Web Hosts Top Picks for 2011. We are thrilled to receive this award by such a respectable site.
We here at HostUpon are proud of all of our accomplishments and awards, and would like to sincerely thank everyone that has recognized us. THANK YOU!
Starting An Online Business
Christmas Shopping Season is here and this festive period is set to be a busy time as online shopping is booming. Shopping online is becoming a trend and a multi-billion dollar industry. Each year more and more people shop online avoiding the hassles of retail stores and shopping malls.
Thinking of opening an Online Business? If so, you’re definitely onto something. In order to be successful you will need to take a look at a few things before launch.
Domain Name: Domain names can be of any length up to 67 characters. Any word that’s hard to spell should be avoided. A good domain name is short, memorable and easily typed. Picking the correct domain name for a website is a good first step and can help a lot in how near the top of the search engine rankings your site shows up when someone searches for your key words. You can find out which domain names are available by going to this site: https://www.hostupon.com/hosting/domainchecker.php . Enter possible names for your website. If the domain name is taken, it will tell you.
Web Design Firm: It is very significant for you to find a web development firm that produces not only qualitative designs but really knows search engine optimization issues and techniques as well. Apart from professional design and affordable pricing the web design company you will choose must provide good customer service. It means that you must receive timely responses to your questions and get the necessary support in solving problems that may arise during the process of work. With selecting the right web design firm you will get a professional website which will be very profitable. At HostUpon we do offer over 250 free one-click script installers ranging from e-commerce shopping carts to blogs and everything in between. You can practically start your own online store in a single day!
Your Web Hosting Service is the technical backbone of your website. Its service and support options will play a big role in your businesses online operation. At HostUpon we offer an all-in-one e-commenrce hosting solution. We host thousands of online stores around the world. Our hosting is designed to ensure your website is online 24/7 with 5 data centers and in-house support. If you’ve even wanted to start an online business or simply generate some pocket change, now is the time. Check out our web hosting plans at HostUpon.com and feel free to contact us anytime.
Happy Holidays!
How does a dedicated IP address benefit you?
Why do I need a dedicated IP for my website?
One such example is having a SSL certificate installed on your account which is needed to handle any sort of online transactions whether you’re looking to host an online store or any site that receives online payments.
SSL certificates are installed on their own dedicated IPs to add extra security by encrypting all data transferred over sites. If your website accepts credit cards directly you will require a dedicated IP.
All newly created shared accounts are placed on the server’s shared IP which means every active client on the server uses the server’s shared IP.
What are the advantages of having a dedicated IP?
One major advantage of hosting your website on a dedicated IP is to avoid any sort of blacklisting related issues which will interrupt the server’s mail flow resulting in the server’s shared IP being blocked/Blacklisted by the RBL.
What is a RBL?
Short for Realtime Blackhole List, a list of IP addresses whose owners refuse to stop the proliferation of spam. The RBL usually lists server IP addresses from ISPs whose customers are responsible for the spam and from ISPs whose servers are hijacked for spam relay.
The majority of blacklistings are caused by spam actively from an individual account which can be hosted on the same server (and IP) as you!
Needless to say we take these sort of issues very seriously as we have a zero tolerate for any sort of spam activity on our network.
The procedure to lift the ban is to take immediate action in stopping the spam activity and then requesting the removal the server’s shared IP from the RBL. The amount of time it takes to lift the ban of an IP varies and can take anyware from 12 to 72 hours after the request has been sent.
Does using a dedicated IP improve your site’s SEO?
This has been an on going topic of interest for quite some time and the truth of the matter is that it has not been proven. However one thing to take into account is that Google handles virtually hosted domains and their links just the same as domains on unique IP addresses.
At Hostupon.com we provide a free dedicated IP on some of our plans which is mainly used for SSL installations only.
It is important to know that we only assign dedicated IPs to accounts upon request and there must be a justified reason for using one (Such as having a SSL certificate installed).
We provide dedicated IPs and SSL cettificates along with many other addon services which can be added to any account at anytime!
You can find a full list of our addon services below:
http://hostupon.com/order-addons.html
HostUpon Rolls Out Clustered DNS
Some of our customers may have noticed something interesting about the way we had our servers set up. Until recently, all of our hosting servers had a unique set of nameservers, just for that hosting server. Normally, this is not a problem but we noticed how this was problematic for customers whenever we found that a server-to-server transfer of an account was needed because then the domain would need to be updated with new nameservers. This was especially aggravating for certain customers that take advantage of the parked-domain and addon-domain features of our servers since then they all had to be updated.
You can imagine how it could be slightly annoying to update the nameservers for fifty domains…
Well, not anymore anyway. Earlier last week, we rolled out our domain nameserver cluster. We went from having 28 different nameservers (2 for each server) to just two:
ns1.hostupon.com
ns2.hostupon.com
What does that mean for our existing customers? Well, it means that now if an account needs to be moved, you don’t need to update your domain nameservers. When the account transfer is finished, the new server ‘takes over’ the domain zone on the cluster and updates it to point to the right system. You no longer need to change nameservers whenever the account is moved.
There’s one other thing I will bring up though, which is the best part. Remember those 28 nameservers we had before? You can continue to use them. There is no need to change the nameservers to the ones I listed above! We updated all the old nameservers to point to the same domain cluster. The cluster has been in operation for the last week without a problem. Ultimately this is a purely ‘under-the-hood’ upgrade and is there simply to make account migrations that little-bit-more smooth. It will actually help quite a bit in this case as the downtime for domain nameserver changes is as much as 24 hours, but domain ‘a’ records update within four hours in most cases.
It also simplifies things when you need to figure out what your domain nameservers are since everyone on our shared servers now uses the same ones.
If you have any concerns or questions about this, feel free to contact us.
Black Friday Web Hosting Deals
Happy Thanksgiving to our friends south of the border!
This is the weekend EVERYONE has been waiting for, the biggest shopping day of the year, BLACKFRIDAY is here.
HostUpon is no exception, and we are gearing up to outdo ourselves yet again. In 2010 we set a milestone by offering 50% off of all plans, which resulted in such an unbelievable demand that this year we are going one step further…have a look:
60% OFF of any new order of our Private Hosting plans (FRIDAY ONLY!)
60% OFF of any new order of our Starter Unlimited or Business Unlimited plans (ALL WEEKEND!)
60% off of any new order of our Premium Backup Service (ALL WEEKEND!)
That means our clients will get our award winning solutions for as little as:
Private Hosting from $49.95/month $19.98/month!
Shared Hosting from $3.95/month $1.58/month!
Premium Backup service from $49.95/year $19.98/year!
This deal will apply to ALL new orders for the above offers, ALL term lengths, and will be available for 3 days from Friday November 25th through to Sunday November 27th @ 11:59pm (-5GMT). We know what you’re thinking, but this offer does not apply to renewals or upgrades, only new orders 
How do you take advantage of this sale?
1) Click here and visit our Black Friday page and choose the plan or service you want
2) Enter the coupon code blackfriday11 on the last page of the order form
3) Your discount and savings will show instantly!
4) Simply hit “checkout” and that’s it
We’d love for you to share this coupon code and email with friends and family, here are some easy ways to spread the word:
- Post about the promotion on your blog
- Post on Twitter and Facebook
- Post about it on forums (follow all forum rules and don’t spam)
- Tell your E-Mail lists (Again, don’t spam!)
- Refer Friends and Family
This offer is only effective for the next 3 days so take advantage of it! Share it with everyone and help us make this the best BEST Black Friday ever. In exchange, we’ll keep pumping up the promotions, events and offers to ensure you’re getting the most value for your hard earned dollar.
Thank you for your continued support!
The HostUpon Team
Web Hosting Affiliate Program - How It Works
HostUpon’s Affiliate Program
Let’s talk about our Affiliate Network, which is probably one of the best aspects of working with HostUpon.
Whether you are a like-minded site, a script vendor, or even a host review site like HostReviewSite.com, joining our affiliate program can help you generate that extra revenue stream we all look for.
How dos it work? Simple:
For each referral you send us, we pay you. It’s that easy. We have a very simple strategy in place at HostUpon: we reward you for qualified referrals that sign up for any of our plans. I’m not talking about 20$ or 50$ here, I’m talking about up to $180 per referral. You read that right, this can turn a simple revenue stream into a full fledged revenue river if you can help us gain acquisitions. HostUpon is proud to boast one of the highest payouts in the hosting industry, which start at $90 per, and climbs upwards of $180 if you can generate a high volume.
Looking for an added bonus? We’ll even help you out with some custom banners - just sign up, show us that you’re serious about making some additional revenue, and we’ll take care of the rest.
We don’t only look for hosting related websites for our Affiliate network though, we welcome any site that can show a propensity to generate conversions for us…and that’s just the beginning.
HostUpon has devised a referral program, kind of an added-bonus if you will, to entice our clients and users to further help you benefit from, well, helping us. We are willing to give you a full month free of your current hosting plan whenever you refer a friend. All they need to do is quote your domain name at the registration stage, once we’ve confirmed it, you’re good to go.
What does this all boil down to?
We have invested a lot into this project, and cut no corners to maximize its potential. Show us that you can help us destroy our conversion goals, and we will pay you…handsomely at that. Looking forward to hearing from you soon
HostUpon’s Affiliate Network: http://www.hostupon.com/affiliates.html