Many artists have transitioned and began to find new ways to share their talents in order to stay afloat when in-person events and programs were put on pause.

Finding the right hosting plan for your website is essential when starting an e-commerce business. As more people transition to online shopping, especially during a year like 2020, selling goods and services online has become critically important to stay afloat in the modern economic climate. For the music industry, the last year has been a difficult time to connect and create due to lockdowns and limited public events. Many artists have transitioned and began to find new ways to share their talents in order to stay afloat when in-person events and programs were put on pause.

Jesse Neo, a DJ, and entrepreneur, decided to combine his musical and technological talents to create a platform where artists can connect and collaborate online in a new way. Gemtracks is a music and singing website that provides a range of song instrumentals and articles, as well as an exclusive online store that produces unique backing tracks for bands, singers, and songwriters.

Through Neo’s story, you will learn how a man with musical talent, technological skill, and a powerful dedicated server was able to shift the way musicians collaborate and create music digitally.

A Business that is Changing the Tune of Musical Collaboration

Jesse Neo has been blogging and developing web content since 2006. His vision to create Gemtracks, a music-industry marketplace best known for buying and selling instrumental backing tracks (also known as beats), began when he was in college. He wanted to create an online store so that he could sell the tracks that he was composing. When he first began his store, he was selling his music on a first-come-first-sold model and his customers would have full ownership and copyrights placed in their names.

In 2019 Neo moved to Los Angeles and, through the advice from the local talent there, realized that this e-commerce business model might be very lucrative long term. He transitioned his small business from a private store into a public marketplace for freelance musicians to sell their own songs. He also created the capability for artists to book recording studios and submit their songs to other curators that might be interested in the artist. “I am the sole founder of Gemtracks. I personally programmed, designed, and marketed Gemtracks from scratch,” said Neo. “From time to time, I take on interns and contractors, but the major bulk of the company is done with my own two hands.”

Building a Musical Digital Presence

Finding the right hosting provider for Gemtracks was critical when Neo first began to envision his company. “Everything about Gemtracks depends on the website. Without a website, Gemtracks would not exist. This is why I was very concerned about where my server was hosted.”

When he first began searching for a hosting provider, Neo had a few server requirements that he felt were essential to the eventual success of his site, including ensuring sufficient processor capacity to meet business demands, great support, uptime, and reliability. He originally learned about A2 Hosting off of a recommendation from a friend back in 2006. “I remember a friend operating a small blog telling me she paid only a few dollars a month for hosting. She gave me the name of A2 Hosting – and I have been a loyal customer ever since,” said Neo. “ I have also developed friendships with some staff at A2 Hosting; that has also contributed to my reason for staying.”

When asked about his experiences over the years dealing with A2’s support, Neo commented, “I have worked with support many times, to the point I even remember them, and I’m pretty sure they remember me too. A2’s support has always been fast, and I usually get the first reply within an hour.”

Why Dedicated Hosting Works for Gemtracks

Since Neo was a technical user who was able to anticipate rapid growth and lots of content, a dedicated server was the best solution for his burgeoning company. “Gemtracks has turned into, almost like, a service-as-a-product kind of business, where the choice of hardware and architecture that runs my server is very important,” said Neo. “The #1 requirement was to have enough CPU power. I needed to make sure that there was enough CPU and resources to handle sudden influxes of visitors. This was because, based on experience, as soon as the number of visitors went up, so did the number of searches visitors would make on my website. This strained the database, CPU, and slowed down the website.”

Neo also needed to make sure his business stayed at peak performance as he scaled and matured. “My server needed to be compatible with all the latest networking trends, such as content delivery networks, and long polling to ensure seamless delivery.” He required resources that were dedicated just to his website, so he wouldn’t have to worry about “neighbors” potentially interrupting his website’s speed or reliability. “The worst thing that could happen was the website going down during the most profitable hour.” A2 Hosting offers a 99.9% uptime commitment. This gave Neo the peace of mind he needed to start his company on one of our dedicated plans.

Lessons Learned

When reflecting on his digital and entrepreneurial journey, Neo shared advice for other small businesses starting out. He said one of the biggest lessons he learned is how important support has been since his business is based solely online. “Whenever I have issues, the support team will always investigate for me, which includes seeing which script is taking up all my resources and what I can do about it,” he said. “It’s comforting to know that the support team at A2 Hosting has the knowledge and skills, not only to solve problems but to help investigate them too.”

The post Gemtracks: Striking a Chord with the Online Music Community appeared first on The A2 Posting.

A fast and reliable website is very important for small business owners, so choosing the right plan for your business is essential for long-term success.

Managed VPS plans, powered by Virtuozzo, can be a great tool to help businesses level up their digital presence as they outgrow the resources available on shared hosting plans. With additional power, security, support, and flexibility, migrating to our Managed VPS plan is easy with the assistance of A2 Hosting’s Guru Crew support. This case study will share the story of Greg Houston, a successful architect with nearly two decades of experience whose website was beginning to experience some lag in speed with the growth of his company, GMH By Design. Read his journey about how choosing the right Managed VPS plan for Greg’s website improved his user experience for his customers.

An Architect on a Mission to Bring His Designs to Life

Greg Houston founded GMH by Design, a residential and commercial architecture practice based out of Denver, Colorado, because of his love of architecture and his passion for working with clients to help bring their visions to life. His company specializes in quality workmanship, simple design, and modern convenience. “We offer the benefits of a large firm at the cost of a small design office,” said Greg. “We work with residential and commercial clients to envision and design their space to suit their needs as we guide them through the process.”

Improving Greg’s Digital Experience

“Our website showcases the work we’ve done, who we work with, and our vision. It’s our salesperson twenty-four hours a day,” Greg shared. “It’s important because it’s the primary way we share our work with potential clients.” His website is one of the main ways his clients find his business, which makes its pictures and content important when optimizing for search engines. As his website has continued to grow over the years he noticed that the speed of his site has been on a steady decline. This led Greg to start looking into changing hosting providers to find a better plan that would improve the performance of his website. Greg shared, “The front end and the backend of our website have been slow which made it hard for our potential clients to navigate and for us to update.”

GMH by Design is currently on WordPress. Greg initially tried to combat the site speed issues with a caching plug-in as well as some other optimization plugins he found. This helped a bit, but it was not enough improvement for his company’s site long term. Because of this, he set out to find a new solution.

When searching for a new provider and plan Greg had some specific requirements he was looking for. “First is reliability, then speed. The website needs to be up for our potential customers to reach and it has to be fast, even with the large images we use on our site to showcase our work. We need to rank well and we want customers to feel the site is professionally hosted,” said Greg.

GMH by Design was looking for a new host that offered stability, speed and was affordable. As a small business owner, Houston wants to prioritize time to devote to his business rather than worrying about the stability of his site or the speed of his page load times.

Greg was initially referred to A2 Hosting by a friend that was already working with us. “I was hesitant to move providers at first because I was worried about the migration process. I eventually decided on A2 because my friend who was a current customer with A2 Hosting recommended your plans. I also read reviews and while searching I saw you had a reputation for fast servers.” He evaluated a few other shared packages with rival hosting companies, but in the end, decided on an A2 Hosting’s Managed VPS plan.

Transferring to a VPS Plan with A2 Hosting

When asked about his experience getting started with A2 Hosting, Greg commented, “It was very easy. The free migration was simple and fairly hands-off and my experiences with the support team so far have been great.”

Greg was interested in A2’s Managed VPS plans (powered by Virtuozzo) because he knew he needed more power overall to improve his website. “I would say investing in a Managed VPS over a Shared Hosting plan had several advantages that I wasn’t aware of, speed being the primary one.” Not only do VPS plans offer more resources over a shared hosting package, but they also can provide GMH by Design with more independence from noisy neighbors on the server who could affect Greg’s site’s performance when they get heavy traffic. “I wasn’t aware of how beneficial dedicated resources can be for a site,” Greg said. “With a VPS the overall function of my website on average is increased because of not sharing resources with other business sites.” VPS servers offer users their own disk space, RAM, and CPU. They come with significantly more space to store website-related files, images, and folders. This is something that will be important for Greg as he continues to work on new projects and post large images to his site.

Lessons Learned

“My best advice would be not to wait to migrate your site to a faster host, even if it seems like it will be a lot of work before you get there,” Greg shared. “I thought migration would be difficult or time-consuming but it wasn’t. If I had known, I would have moved my site much sooner.” Greg’s overall migration took less than a day with no downtime. “Since the move, my website has been faster and much easier to manage.”

The post GMH by Design: Architecting the Perfect Hosting Solution appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Website speed and security are essential in 2021, so finding the right hosting provider and plan is an important task for many small business owners

Katie Davis is an accomplished author, with over a dozen traditionally published books for children, launched two guides for writers at #1 on Amazon, a TEDx and conference speaker, writing coach, and A2 Hosting Customer. She’s the co-founder of the Picture Book Summit, and most recently the founder of The Writers’ Block, a virtual community that helps both experienced and new writers fine-tune their craft through live critiques. She’s known she wanted to be an entrepreneur since the beginning of her career.

“I’ve always wanted to be my own boss,” Katie says. “I didn’t do well working for other people. In my 20s I started my company, Dirty Dishes making hand-painted ceramics. As long as I could pay the bills, I was happy.” She started her career in advertising and marketing, later pivoting to selling hand-painted ceramics, and then moved into writing and illustrating children’s books and novels. She’s sold almost a million copies of her books by this point. Though she has many talents, her secret superpower, and where her passions currently lie, is teaching writers about writing, and coaching them past any procrastinating talents they may have.

Building Katie’s Digital Presence with A2 Hosting

Katie founded her site back in 1999 and she’s been using it to connect with her readers and other writers ever since. When asked, Katie shared, “My website is my home online.” At the beginning of her career, she was in charge of handling the front and back end of her website, but as she progressed she realized that extra help could benefit her business. She hired WPOnline Design to take charge of her site. She had been experiencing a lot of malware and DDoS attacks which were crippling her webpage. Most attacks had been targeted at her previous host so her web developer told her to make a change. Though he also offered hosting through his own company, he recommended A2 Hosting because of its good prices, stability, reliability, and faster load times. We’ve now been working in tandem to ensure Katie the best site. “WP Online Design has had a great experience working with A2’s team on multiple occasions to keep Katie’s site running as smoothly as possible,” they commented.

When selecting her hosting provider, Katie chose A2 Hosting because she said she “wanted to make sure that my site was strong enough to handle growth and able to take the weight of what I put on there.” She’s since stayed with A2 because she “values transparency and honesty in a company” and she continues to see that here. She appreciates her interactions with A2 chat and phone support. Katie said, “I’m techy, but when it comes to hosting issues – forget about it! It can be frustrating so I appreciate A2’s support staff.” She had a situation recently where her SSL certificate had issues due to misconnections with a payment system, and when she called support the issue was resolved in minutes. It’s interactions like these that have kept her with A2 Hosting for the past decade.

The Writers’ Block

Katie’s latest venture is The Writers’ Block, a virtual support community for writers. The Writers’ Block is a place for writers to take their craft to the next level through twice-monthly live critiques (only by her, not the other members) and monthly “Writers Playground” sessions, where she shares tips, give encouragement, and answers questions. Through this community, Katie is able to help fellow writers grow as she reads and annotates their manuscripts. Katie describes it as “a virtual community—a private clubhouse—offering you writing inspiration and support, publishing instruction, experts’ knowledge, marketing skills, and more. It’s a place to get encouragement to keep you going when the going hits a dead stop; it’s a welcoming front porch when you just can’t seem to continue or even get yourself started.” She runs the community through her website, holding bi-monthly workshops, guest expert interviews, and live community sessions. “My business is helping writers develop their skills. My bread and butter is teaching people what they need to know about their work and the business.” To accomplish this every day she relies on optimal performance from her site.

Configuring Her WordPress

Katie chose to migrate to a Turbo Max Shared Hosting plan when moving her WordPress site to A2. For Katie, a faster site is not a “nice to have” portion of her business, it was essential. With faster loading times she gets better SEO rankings, lower bounce rates, and higher visitor satisfaction. Turbo provides her site with up to 20x faster performance. A2’s Turbo Max servers are made faster through a combination of NVMe drives, AMD EPYC Processors, LiteSpeed Servers, and built-in caching with Memcached, turbo caching, and APC/OpCache. All of these in tandem help her site load faster for her writers each day.

As a WordPress user, Katie also has access to the A2 Optimized WordPress plugin that pre-configured her setup to optimize performance and security settings. This includes WordPress login page protection, Easy W3 Total Cache configuration, Minify HTML, CCS, and JS. It also helps with image optimization which is important due to some of the larger images of her books that she houses on her site.

In the last couple of years, Katie has begun to improve her website as she focuses more on her online business, The Writers’ Block. She’s been working on improving site appearance and adding more content. When asked what online tools and plug-ins have been most valuable, she had a few to share with fellow WordPress users. She relies on WooCommerce, Stripe, and LeadPages for her daily use. “Stripe is super easy. It lets me manage and handle all financial transactions, whether just payments or if I need to refund a member. I haven’t had a billing dispute, but everything with Stripe has been easy,” she says. “Simplifying the experience is key for small businesses. I had too many different services and it was too complex and I’ve been working to make it simpler.”

In addition to her efforts, A2 Hosting’s Turbo Shared Plans also help with the backend function of her site. Performance Plus, offering traffic spike protection, applies additional resources so that Katie’s site retains performance even during traffic surges. This is a great service if Katie publishes a popular blog post or offers a new book to her audience. A2’s free SSL certificate provides free HTTPS encryption and contributes to the security of katiedavis.com. Finally, A2’s DropSuite Backups offer offsite backups and are recommended for Katie’s peace of mind that may come from disasters or hardware.

Katie’s Advice to Other Small Businesses

Katie shared advice from her experience as a small business owner of twenty years in order to shed some light on how others can succeed long term: “When you’re a small business owner, it’s easy to work harder than when working for someone else. If you’re your own boss, you still have to tell that boss––aka YOU––when you need a day off. A silver lining of the lockdown for me was learning to de-stress about work,” Katie said. “I don’t have to work every minute of the day.” When asked about starting out she had some great advice for writers trying to make it in 2021. “Figure out who your audience is and build a mailing list. Even if you’re not yet published, it will enable you to keep in touch with your fans. It keeps your fan base connected. And if you’re thinking, ‘Yeah, but I do that on Facebook/IG/Twitter/Whatever, remember that’s just building your house on someone else’s land. Own the land.”

She also recommends taking the time to choose the right hosting provider for your needs. For Katie, A2 Hosting has been the right choice for the last ten years and counting. Between Katie, her web designer, and A2 Hosting, her small business has continued to thrive through 2021.

The post Katie Davis: For the Love of Writing appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Deciding what hosting plan is right for your business is not always an easy task.

Everyone has a dream, but only a special few make it a reality. Mark and Niamh are passionate cyclists from Scotland and Ireland, but it was always their dream to turn their love of cycling into a business. When the Pyrénées Cycling Lodge, a bed and breakfast situated in the heart of the Pyrénées mountains in France, came available for purchase in 2017, the pair decided it was time to take action. “It was always our dream to go to the mountains in France,” said Niamh. “If we had waited any longer we would have missed our chance…so we just decided to do it.”

The Lodge, which is centrally located along the route of the Tour de France, offers a warm bed, hearty meals, local ales, and a chance for cyclists to join together with others who share their passion for cycling. The accommodation is nestled in the small town of Saint Savin in the Hautes Pyrenees. It’s surrounded by breathtaking mountain backdrops, curving mountain roads, and medieval architecture. “It was a complete change of lifestyle for us, working for ourselves, doing what we love in amazing surroundings,” said Niamh. “Meeting so many like minded, positive people from around the world… it’s a dream come true.”

Creating the Digital Experience

When Mark and Niamh took over the lodge and its digital properties, the business already had a name and established domain. “Having the domain name was really important to us,” said Niamh. “It’s a really important thing to have as it has “cycling” and “Pyrénées” in the url.” This allowed those searching for an adventure in the famous region to zero in on their business quickly. “We depend on our website for a lot of our direct bookings,” said Niamh. However, when they took over the website it needed a lot of work. The website was hosted on a small local provider and Niamh didn’t feel like it had enough power behind it to reach the global audience she was targeting.

Niamh set out on Google to find a new home for her digital presence. Her requirements? Reliable service, speed & performance, and good customer service. “I can work my way around cPanel but I’m not very technical so I depend on customer service.” After reading several reviews, looking at some of the other players in the space, and evaluating pricing and package features, she ended up deciding on A2 Hosting. “A2 was at the top of a lot of the reviews that I had read,” said Niamh. “Packages were comparable between providers, but it was the customer service and package offerings that eventually swayed me.”

Niamh initially chose the Shared Turbo Max plan. It came with cPanel, advanced NVMe storage options, 2X more resources than the standard plans, and a LightSpeed enhanced web server. It also came pre-optimized to get the most speed and performance out of WordPress, the CMS her website was built on. As her business grew though, she would eventually make the move to Managed VPS hosting.

Working with A2 Hosting

As a customer for more than four years now, Niamh has had a number of interactions with the A2 Team. “I’ve worked with support, sales, and billing a few times and I’m always impressed with the speed and efficiency that my ticket is dealt with,” said Niamh. “They have provided me with constant communication and the technical teams are very knowledgeable and always supportive and patient.”

Covid-19 has made this past year especially hard on the business, which saw a reduction in bookings causing added stress and financial strain on Mark and Niamh. “Billing has been especially helpful this year. They are always approachable and have been supportive with our renewals,” said Niamh. “I know they didn’t have to do that.”

“I can’t find fault in any of my experiences with A2 Hosting,” said Niamh. “Our business relies on the speed and customer services offered by A2 and it has exceeded my expectations on both accounts.”

Getting the Most Out of WordPress

While the previous site had been built using WordPress, it was a very basic deployment. “WordPress let’s me build my own site and I depend on the themes available for it to guide the aesthetics of our site,” said Niamh. The Lodge uses the Sucuri plugin to help with malware, Checkfront to manage the online booking system, and Monster Insights to help understand their web performance and usage patterns. Additionally, they leverage Slider Revolution for photo galleries and an Instagram feed plugin to help aggregate their social content. “We are quite active on social media,” said Niamh. “Instagram and Twitter are big drivers, there’s lots of interaction there and we get a fair share of bookings through it.”

The Future of the Pyrénées Cycling Lodge

Despite having success on the Shared Turbo Max plan, Niamh has been considering a move to Managed VPS Hosting (powered by A2 Partner Virtuozzo) for some time and as the business would be positively impacted by switching to A2’s VPS plans. She has decided to migrate over this year to receive all the added benefits that come from this upgrade.

VPS offers the Lodge the ability to have resources dedicated to just them instead of sharing with the other parties on the server. This means that they can count on the speed and performance of their server to be consistent throughout the year and not risk any performance dings that may be caused by a “neighbor” sharing resources.

VPS also provides the Lodge a greater level of security, more control over their environment, and more peace of mind for the small business owner. Shared is a great, low cost hosting option for personal websites and blogs, but VPS is always the better option for a business who depends on their website for revenue.

What advice would Mark and Niamh give a business owner who is about to walk down the similar path of taking over a business and reinventing it to make it their own? First, they recommend that you take some time to understand what the backend will look like before making your final choice. “I’ve used hosting providers before but didn’t have that much experience,” said Niamh. “Having a user friendly dashboard that is easy to work with… one you can work your way around, is important. A2 has made that easy for me.”

In addition, “You have to understand how important reliable customer service is when looking for a hosting provider. A2’s customer service has been right there or they get right back to you. For my needs, it has all worked out.

The post The Pyrénées Cycling Lodge: Cycling in the Heart of the French Pyrénées appeared first on The A2 Posting.

However, if you know how to incorporate video into your website, you can use it to maximize engagement and drive conversions. With the right approach, video can act as a powerful Call To Action (CTA).

In this article, we’ll talk about some of the latest video content trends, and then go over three tips to incorporate videos into your website. Let’s get to it!

What the Latest Video Content Trends Are

It’s likely that many of your users spend a significant part of their day watching videos on one platform or another. On average, users consume around 100 minutes of video per day. If you can seize even a fraction of that time through your content, it can help increase conversions.

If the primary goal of your videos is to drive sales or conversions, shorter is usually better. Despite the massive amounts of video content that customers consume, it’s safe to say that attention spans are getting shorter. At the end of 2019, up to 66 percent of video ads were approximately 30 seconds long. Although that might sound short, there’s a lot that you can say about a product or service in half a minute.

Thanks to the rise of social media stories and platforms such as TikTok, users are getting increasingly comfortable with shorter video ads as a part of their online experience. Moreover, there’s massive interest in User-Generated Content (UGC). If you can get consumers to share their experiences with your products or services in video format, that’s a huge marketing win.

There’s also a growing interest in educational videos. If your website focuses on online learning, video is a channel that you can tap into to expand your audience.

3 Tips for Incorporating Video into Your Website

If you’re ready to start incorporating videos into your website, there are several factors that can help you maximize their effectiveness. Let’s look at three tips you can use to make the most of your video strategy.

1. Add an Intro that Highlights Your Brand

If you go to your favorite YouTube channel right now and open a random video, we’re willing to bet it has an intro:

The goal of intros isn’t to pad video length, but to take the opportunity to reinforce brand awareness. An intro can accomplish that in several ways, including:

• Reminding you of the brand’s name
• Showcasing the brand’s logo
• Reinforcing the brand’s style and the type of content it focuses on

In this case, your website or business is the brand. Even if your videos are only 30 seconds long, adding a short intro that includes your name and the site’s logo can only benefit you. This is particularly the case when users end up watching those videos outside of your website.

Depending on which video marketing tools you use, adding intros to your content might be easier than you think. A lot of tools provide you with templates that you can use and edit, as well as the ability to upload your logo and incorporate it into the video.

2. Choose a Performance-Oriented Hosting Provider

If you plan on uploading videos directly to your server, you should use a performance-oriented web host. A lot of websites choose the cheapest hosting provider they can find, which often translates to slow loading times and a frustrating User Experience (UX).

If visitors have to spend minutes waiting for a video to load, and then wait for it to buffer every two seconds, they are much less likely to watch it in full. Even worse, that poor user experience can reflect badly on the rest of your website.

To ensure the best video experience, we recommend avoiding shared web hosting. At the very least, you’ll want to use a Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting plan, which in most cases provides better performance as well as dedicated resources for your website.

3. Create Videos that Target Your Website’s Audience

You probably have a pretty good idea of who your website’s target audience is, such as:

• Where your users are visiting from
• The average age of your audience
• What their interests are and what content they want to see or read about

This information is critical for video creation. You can have an amazing idea for a marketing video, but if it doesn’t speak to your website’s audience, it won’t get the results you want. In other words, the video won’t get you conversions.

When you’re working on video content for your website, it’s important to consider whether it’s something your audience will be interested in. If the video provides or promises solutions and answers to questions they might have, it will likely succeed in its goal.

Conclusion

Knowing what the latest video content trends are is a solid starting point for creating your own media. Your website is the perfect channel to deliver those videos because it already has a built-in audience, some of whom may appreciate a different kind of content.

If you’re not sure how to approach video creation, you can start off on the right foot by keeping the following three tips in mind:

1. Add an intro that highlights your brand.
2. Choose a performance-oriented web hosting provider.
3. Create videos that target your website’s audience.

Do you have any questions about how to incorporate video into your website? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!

Image credit: Pixabay.

The post 3 Tips for Embedding & Adding Video into Your Website appeared first on The A2 Posting.

What is an Email Blacklist? 

The email blacklist is an extensive database of public domains and IP addresses marked as suspicious for sending spam emails through the internet. It’s also known as DNSBL (Domain Name System-based Blackhole List) or RBL Real-time Blackhole List. Organizations like Email Service Providers (ESP), Internet Service Providers (ISP), and anti-spam agencies (ASA) use this list to detect, monitor and block any spam emails entering their network. 

Am I Blacklisted? What Are the Signs?

There are many signs to alert you of your IP’s status. When you’re blacklisted, you can’t send emails to the recipient’s mailbox properly. Now, this doesn’t mean you’re going to be blacklisted from every mail server in the world. If you’re blacklisted with one DNSBL service, there are hundreds more that may not have blacklisted you. A few key signs:

1. There are an increased number of emails lost. 
2. You experience deteriorating delivery rates.
3. You find a high number of email bounce rates. 

These don’t confirm you’re blacklisted but are some warning signs. If you check a few of the boxes for delivery issues, you can now check to confirm the blacklisting of the domain or IP address. 

Checking Your IP address and Domain in an Email Blacklist Directory

There are various email blacklist services on the internet. It’s not practical to check every single one of them, but some applications maintain a list of live RBL (real-time blackhole list) directories to save your time. They provide a page dedicated to that RBL service and also offer a service to delist your domain or IP address. 

Here are a couple of popular RBL applications:

• MXToolBox: This checks for domain blacklisting across multiple RBL lists. It provides detailed information and suggestions on your domain’s current status. 
• MultiRBL: This is a free DNSBL lookup site that can scan 100+ DNSBL lists to check for domain blacklisting. It also details the steps to remove your domain from the blacklist. 

Malicious sites can be blacklisted by Google Safe Browsing, which will warn visitors of potentially unsafe pages. Dropmysite includes a feature that sends you alerts if your site is listed on this blacklist monitoring program – so take immediate corrective actions before it gets too late! A2 Hosting offers Dropmysite as an add-on cPanel plugin so that you can back up your data and monitor your websites. These services can help you actively monitor your IP address so that you can ensure swift delivery of all of your emails. 

Blacklists are an important tool for email deliverability. They help protect email users from spam and phishing emails and improve the deliverability of your legitimate email campaigns. If you’re not familiar with blacklists or aren’t sure if your IP address is on one, we encourage you to use a blacklist checking tool. Use this information to clean up your email practices and improve your chances of getting delivered to the inbox. If you have any more questions or concerns feel free to contact our support team 24/7/365!

Related Articles:

• How to stop unwanted e-mail using Spam Filters
• How To Prevent Outgoing Email From Being Marked As Spam
• How to monitor blacklisted sites using Dropmysite

The post What Is An Email Blacklist? appeared first on The A2 Posting.

So, What is URL Masking? 

Masking a URL means disguising its true destination, making it harder for someone to track where you are going. This can be an important tool for privacy and security, but there are also some potential downsides to consider. Developers mask URLs to obscure the true destination of a link. In order to understand URL masking, it’s important to understand what URL redirects are. 

URL redirections send a domain to an alternative URL. The HTTP protocol categorizes the URL redirects. 

There are three major types of URL redirects:

• 301 (permanent) 
• 302 (found/moved temporarily)
• URL frame (masked)

301 redirects are used when the destination URL of any website’s page changes. It’s commonly used when a website needs to be migrated to a new domain. 

302 redirects direct traffic to a new URL for a brief period. This is common for A/B testing. 

When migrating your website to a new domain name, the new domain doesn’t have a search engine optimization (SEO) authority. However, a 301 permanent redirect eventually gives 90% of the old website’s authority to the new domain. 

Google, a search engine, must verify the new website, which can cause a delay as it ranks the new domain. Some developers use 302 redirects for migration to avoid Google’s aging delay, but the 301 redirect is the proper method to use in this instance. 

Both 301 and 302 redirects display the new destination URL in the address bar in URL masking. Masked redirects allow you to use content from another domain while maintaining the address bar’s original name. 

This way, you use your homepage as the URL for every page of your website. Masked redirects are also called URL cloaking or domain masking. 

In other words, the mask refers to how the URL displays in the address bar. So your user thinks they’re on one domain when, in fact, they’re on another. 

When to Mask URLs

There are specific instances when website owners might want to mask links, including: 

• Masking affiliate links: Some users prefer to link cloaking to hide their affiliate links so that users won’t see they’re making money off of a purchase.
• Link shortening: long links aren’t visually appealing. Some users choose to shorten their links instead of changing their domain names.
• Hiding free web hosting URLs: Some users use free subdomains provided by their host, like store.a2hosting.com. So, you can use domain masking to make it appear as though the website has its domain. 
• Tracking: Some link tracking software use URL masking to hide tracking tags in the original URL. 

If you are looking for a way to improve your website’s security, or if you are trying to keep your website visitors from seeing where your website is hosted, domain masking may be the solution for you. Our support team would be happy to help set up domain masking for your website. Contact us today and let us know how to help make sure your website is as secure as possible.

Related Articles:

• How to set up URL frame forwarding
• How to rewrite URLs in Apache with the mod_rewrite module
• How to configure redirects in cPanel
• What Is A Parked Domain (And How to Use It)

The post What Is URL Masking? appeared first on The A2 Posting.

1: Promote Weeks Before the Holidays

Be sure to run your holiday email marketing campaign at least a week before holiday festivities begin. The holiday season formally begins during Cyber Week, which includes Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

These events see a huge number of online transactions annually and it only increases every year. Experts still expect holiday sales to rise despite the global pandemic, making this season a great opportunity to promote your products and services.

2: Offer Last-Minute Deals

The days closest to the big dates require the most intensive holiday email marketing efforts. You want your prospects to rest assured that they have options that ship their orders on time. On-time or even overnight shipping deals are some campaigns you can adopt to convert prospects.

Meanwhile, setting deadlines for orders brings out the urgency in potential customers who may end up taking the deal.

To set a deadline, consider sending emails stating that customers can get their order shipped on time if they order before a certain date.

3: Offer Real Reasons to Buy

While you offer last-minute deals, be sure to avoid giving customers false urgency. Give a real reason that wouldn’t devalue your brand and turn off customers. Perhaps you only offer two discount deals a year, making this holiday season a great opportunity.

4: Analyze Previous Strategies That Worked for You

Although the pandemic brings lucrative opportunities for online shopping during the holidays, auditing your marketing campaigns in the past can still help improve your performance. Review the strategies you adopted and then identify which areas need finetuning.

Consider auditing customer statistics as well. Identify which items they value most and tailor your messages to target them.

5: Understand Your Customer

The previous strategy can help you understand who your buyers are. Be sure to create a marketing campaign that speaks directly to your customers. Consumers who feel that a brand can solve their pain points are more likely to support their products and services.

Once you know who you are selling to, you can adjust your strategy to grab their attention. You would also set yourself apart from your competition by having a loyal consumer base.

6: Segment Your Email List

Segmenting your customers helps you sell different products to existing customers and even upsell to them. It is also related to identifying your audience. Dividing your customer demographics helps you target variations of your messages that match their voice. In other words, you would speak one way to VIP customers and another with newer customers who have yet to close a purchase.

7: Remind Loyal Customers Why They Subscribe

If your brand has a mission that’s months in the making, the holiday season may be a great time to remind your customers of their goals outside of the products you offer. This mission may be the reason why your customers stuck around in the first place.

8: Limit Your Emails

Avoid sending out too many emails to the point that customers get turned off from buying. Too many promotional emails may even make customers unsubscribe.

Conclusion

The best holiday email marketing campaign involves understanding your audience, prompt preparation, and careful limitation. Once you know you know your target audience, you can tailor your messages to reach specific members of your audience.

Your emails should lead your subscribers to your website and convert sales. You’ll want to optimize your site to keep up with your customers this holiday season. Get in touch with our experts at A2 Hosting and ask about our hosting plans. We can help speed up your site so all traffic from your holiday email marketing campaign converts.

Related Resources:

• A2 Hosting’s Ultimate Guide to Getting Your eCommerce Website Holiday Ready
• A Developer’s Checklist for Getting Your Site Ready for the Holidays
• How Your eCommerce Business Can Nail Holiday Customer Service
• How to Handle Heavy Traffic to Your eCommerce Site During the Holiday Season

The post How to Create the Best Holiday Email Strategy appeared first on The A2 Posting.

ANN ARBOR, MICH–NOV 22, 2021–Black Friday sales in 2021 are forecasted to break $900 billion in online shopping globally, according to the Adobe Digital Economy Index. To prepare, eCommerce companies have begun to buckle down and enhance their websites for the recording-breaking traffic coming their way. A2 Hosting, a leading player in the web hosting industry, just released an accompanying ebook to aid online entrepreneurs in their preparations. “With the impacts of Covid 19 in 2020 and 2021, we know that now more than ever it’s imperative for our customers to experience a win during the holiday sales. We’re trying to give them as many resources as possible to help them succeed,” says Bryan Muthig, A2 Hosting’s CEO. 

This ebook is changing the game for eCommerce owners in 2021. It covers backend technical website improvements, front-end website optimization, and digital marketing do’s and don’t. eCommerce owners will find a thorough guide with step-by-step instructions on how to upgrade their websites as well as insight from A2 Hosting’s top-end development team, marketing team, and support gurus. Along with this ebook and a number of preparatory guides on their blog, A2 Hosting is also offering a Black Friday and Cyber Monday sitewide discount with their lowest prices of the year from 11/22-12/5. 

“We want to give our customers the right resources to succeed,” says Muthig. “Not only does that include the right hosting, but it also encapsulates the hosting experience in general. Our guru support crew will be available 24/7 for our customers throughout the holiday season so we’re here for you when it counts. Whether it’s a website crashing on Christmas Day or client questions on Black Friday morning, we’re a team that values supporting our customers in any way we can all season long.”    

About A2 Hosting

Recently awarded Leader in Web Hosting for Summer 2021 by G2 and Best Cheap Dedicated Web Hosting by Digital.com, A2 Hosting, Inc. is a high-performance hosting services provider located in Ann Arbor, MI. The company delivers ultra-reliable solutions and 24/7/365 US-based support from its Guru Crew team. Since 2003, A2 Hosting has offered innovative, affordable, and developer-friendly hosting for small- and medium-sized businesses as well as web development agencies worldwide. Customers seeking the fastest hosting options in the industry can host websites of any size on A2’s Turbo Performance server platform featuring page load speeds up to 20X faster compared to competing solutions. To learn more, visit https://www.a2hosting.com.

The post Win 2021 Black Friday Website Preparations with A2 Hosting’s Free eCommerce eBook appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Why is Google Tag Manager Right for You?

Google Tag Manager is a great tool for any website owner. Google Tag Manager (GTM) allows you to manage code script, track conversion, and efficiently use a single dashboard. It comes with templates for Google Analytics, Adwords, and works well with some tracking platforms. Any edits to scripts can be done via GTM and then applied to the whole site.

Installing and Setting Up Google Tag Manager for WordPress

To begin, you must have a google analytics account before you proceed with the Google Tag Manager installation. If you don’t, go to the Google Tag Manager website and sign up using the same Google account you used with Google Analytics.

Follow these steps to install and setup Google Tag Manager:

1. Sign up for the Google Tag Manager using the same account used for the Google Analytics account.

2. On the create new account page, give a name for your account and click on the continue button.

3. Give an account name, container name, choose the target platform, and click on the create button to create a container. You can have multiple containers in one account:4. Next you will be redirected to the container dashboard:

5. Once you have created a container, the next step is to create a tag.

Creating Page View Tag on Google Tag Manager 

Now we will show you how to create a new Page View Tag. Follow these steps:

1. On the dashboard, click on New Tag:

2. Give a name for the tag, and then click on the Tag Configuration section, to choose the tag type:

3. Choose the tag type. For this blog, we will use the Google Analytics: Universal Analytics

4. Next step is to configure the tag. On the Tag Configuration screen, check the “Enable overriding settings in this tag” option. Get the Tracking ID code from your Google Analytics account and paste it into the Tracking ID.

5. A tracking ID is a special code that allows Google to identify your site. Login into your Google Analytics account, under the admin tab, copy the tracking ID from the tracking info.

6. Next on the Trigger section, choose the trigger type. Here we will choose the Page View trigger for All Pages:

7. Click on Save after you enter your tracking ID. You should see the tag on your dashboard:

Adding Tag Manager Code in WordPress

1. To begin, click on the GTM ID on the top navigation bar to retrieve the GTM code. Edit the header.php template and paste the code right after <body> tag.

2. Alternatively, you can use Insert Headers and Footers plugin and use it to paste the GTM code.

3. The final step to complete this Google Tag Manager setup is to use the Google Tag Manager dashboard to publish the container.

Conclusion

There are many different ways to install and configure the Google Tag Manager for WordPress. This blog showed you how to set up the Google Tag Manager and create a page view tag. Google Tag Manager has many useful integrations. Visit the Google Tag Manager page to get more information. 

Looking for great hosting for your WordPress site? Look no further! With A2 Hosting’s Managed WordPress plans you can get 24/7/365 support, 99.9% uptime, and all the tools you need to better manage your WordPress website. Contact our sales team today with any questions!

Related Resources:

How to use Google Analytics with WordPress

Using Google Analytics & WordPress

How to Integrate Google Analytics With WordPress (In 3 Steps)

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