The Bluehost data center is the best in the business. While no system escapes the occasional problem, especially one with as many moving parts as a data center, our professional admin team is always on hand 24/7 to monitor our servers, replace and upgrade equipment, and ensure everything runs as smoothly as possible. But even when running perfectly, data loss still happens. The most common cause? Human error: people accidentally delete or overwrite existing files or emails.

Redundancy, Redundancy, Redundancy

Our internal backups can be super helpful when tragedy strikes, but the timing of these does not always capture the latest changes made to your website. That’s why we recommend you make your own personal backup every time you make significant changes to your site. And even if you aren’t often updating your website, regular monthly backups make it much easier to restore data if needed.

Here’s how to create backups of your files:

1. Login to your cPanel.
2. Scroll down to the ‘Files’ section and click the ‘Site Backup & Restore’ icon.
3. Select ‘Full cPanel Backup’.
4. Select the starting date from when you want to create a backup.
5. Select an archive type (.tar or .zip).
6. Download and Save the file.

It’s just that easy to create a reliable backup of your files right on your home computer for safe keeping. It just takes a few minutes to go through these steps and can help you avoid a lot of frustration and heartache. As always, call us if you have questions or need a hand!

One More Tip

Are you an advanced website builder? Lots of our clients prefer using more sophisticated backup tools. Our Site Backup & Restore Pro tool allows even more control when restoring and backing up files: you can elect to restore only individual files, only the files that have changed, or just databases and tables. Check it out!

Camille B.
Billing Manager

See, a key component to successful blog is to identify and cater to a particular audience. Unfortunately, many novice bloggers begin addressing a broad range of topics. They imagine simply addressing more information will necessarily translate into more readers. In practice this doesn’t work. A blog without focus is like a map without a destination; it’s not very useful.

The formula to securing returning readers is to identify which audience you want to target, understand this audience well, and create specialized content geared toward them. And the best way initiate this is to first identify your “niche.” This simply means to identify the narrow, specific topic which will serve as the main focus of your blog.

Niche Blogging Makes Life Easier

• By defining your niche early, every other decision becomes easier.  A solid understanding of your niche helps guide your choice of domain name, the software you use to build your blog, the visual design or theme you choose for your website, and the plugins you use to increase your blog’s functionality.

• Knowing your niche makes it easier to create regular content for your blog. Instead of struggling with what to write (due to an infinite list of topics), a specific niche makes it much more easy to settle on a post’s content. This frees you to spend more time on creative decisions such as how to write and why.

• Focusing on a niche topic makes running a blog easier with limited resources. Perhaps your blog can’t be the defining one-stop destination for reviews on all iPhone Apps, but you may be able to establish credibility as the one-stop destination for all iPhone apps which control washing machines.

At the end of 2011, there were 181 million blogs. While many of these are spam, it’s clear that a successful blog needs to cut through the noise. Fortunately when you focus on a specific audience you are better able to do this. All you have to do is find your niche and your blog will take off for a long and pleasant flight.

Rob S.
L1 Support Agent

If you haven’t heard of this before, spam is the common term for unsolicited e-mail messages.  Usually these messages also carry a dangerous payload as well – from viruses to fraudulent scams – which makes them even worse.

Bluehost offers three major solutions for defeating these unwanted emails: SpamAssassin, SpamHammer, and Postini.  All are great products, but selecting the best one for you might depend on your level of technical expertise and the amount of time you can commit to making the solution work.

SpamAssassin is an open source product guided by the Apache Foundation.  Bluehost is committed to open source solutions and SpamAssassin is a great product with a number of configuration options to reduce spam. It does so by scoring messages and rejecting those that appear to be undesirable. SpamAssassin is free to all Bluehost customers.

SpamHammer is another anti-spam tool which uses temporary rejection of messages not from pre-approved senders. This is also free for all Bluehost customers.  One challenge introduced by using SpamHammer is that it can interrupt the instant flow of e-mail most of us are used to. Some e-mails might take a while to be delivered.

Postini is my favorite of the three products because of how well it works and how easy it is to use.  I use it on my e-mail accounts, and Bluehost uses it company wide for all company e-mail addresses.  Although it isn’t free, the cost is so low (currently $1.00 per month) it is well worth the investment.  Postini uses algorithms developed by Google to determine which messages are spam and filters them out (but still allows you to find those rare messages which should not have been filtered).  It does not require any kind of setup, although custom settings can be made.  On most of my accounts I have not even needed to view the settings. The reason Postini works so well is simple:

Imagine you decide to come up with a list of descriptions of spam and block all messages with those attributes.  That works great for a while, but spam changes and evolves rapidly. So you will probably need to update this list of attributes every day to keep up with changing trends.  To solve this problem you get some friends, neighbors, and family together to come up with more criteria.  With more good input, you get better results.

Postini works along these same lines except on a much larger scale.  In this case larger means rules based on billions of messages every day. So when you add Postini to any one of your e-mail addresses you are essentially joining with millions of other friends to combat unwanted e-mail.  That is a statistical recipe for success, and a way for you to make the world a better (and safer) place.

Take a stand today.  Fight spam.  If you need some help, contact us at 888-401-4678 or use our help center.  And if you know how to use these tools, help a friend.

Seth J.
Developer

One of the most crucial ingredients to a successful website is good performance. A truly well-designed website is optimized so it demands as few resources as possible of it’s host server. This helps your website load quickly for visitors even when receiving sudden increases in traffic and can even help with SEO!

WordPress is very amenable to optimization. There’s a lot you can do, but here are several tips to help you get started:

1. Limit the number of posts presented per page and the number of feeds shown. Around 5 posts is usually a good rule of thumb, but this can vary depending on your typical post length.
2. Limit the total number of images and other media on your page. Of those you do use, make sure they are as small a file size as possible. If you use a lot of images, keep a few of the most important directly visible on your posts and keep the rest as click-able thumbnails.
3. Adjust your Permalinks. Steer clear of settings that are “not recommended for performance reasons.” Check possible options here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks
4. Don’t keep old, extra plugins or themes around. Hoarding plugins slows things down. Throw out anything you can possibly get rid of.
5. Most WordPress backup plugins are overpowered and resource-intensive. Limit using them as much as possible or avoid them altogether. Try using a weekly cron to backup your database. Read this article for help on how to do this.
6. Review and optimize your database(s). This article is great…yes, all four pages!
7. Test your site with various services to identify inefficiencies. Try http://www.webpagetest.org/, http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/, and http://gtmetrix.com/
8. Use optimization plugins for image compression, caching, and javascript management. This article offers many suggestions (e.g. #16). Use as many applicable options as possible.
9. Enable FastCGI. Depending on your website, this can help a great deal. Test your site before and after to notice the difference. You can enable FastCGI in the PHP Config icon in the cPanel. (Also try the ‘Optimize Website’ link in cPanel and enable mod_deflate.)

At the end of the day, there are infinite ways to optimize a website. But even following just these tips will make a world of difference. Try not to skip any! In our experience with customers, following all these steps eliminates almost all site performance issues while simultaneously increasing SEO rankings. Good luck and happy optimizing!

Micah B.
L2 Support Agent

But how do you create a website? What if you don’t know anything about HTML, CSS or any other web-related technology? Well, that’s where web builders come in. Website builders are tools designed for non-technical users who want to create a website. They’re designed so you don’t have to know anything about HTML or CSS to use them!

There are many different types of site builders. Some are designed specifically to create blogs; some can be used for websites; others can do both and even support eCommerce with shopping carts and more. Some site builders are open source, some use a freemium model (i.e., the basic edition is free while advanced features are unlocked with an annual or monthly fee), and some are only available as a fee-based commercial product. The better site builders include a wide variety of themes to give your website a unique look and feel. These themes can be specific to your industry or match the look and feel of your company’s logo and branding.

Two examples of great site builders that we love here at Bluehost are WordPress and Weebly.

WordPress is a popular open source platform that can create everything from simple blog sites to full-featured, multi-page websites. One of the biggest advantages to WordPress is that it is very customizable: there are countless templates and themes and is very extensible through many third party plug-ins. Most templates and plug-ins are free, while some of the more advanced templates require a one-time fee through template providers (like Template Monster or Theme Forest).

Another example is the Weebly Site Builder. This website creation tool is super easy-to-use thanks to a powerful drag and drop editor that lets you easily create websites on any of your Bluehost domains. The free version is available standard to all Bluehost customers and includes all the core feature most users need to create a fully-functional website. A premium version adds unlimited pages and some more advanced features (e.g., an in-website music player, password protection for the website). A shopping cart and eCommerce tools can be optionally added to either version as well.

If you want to get a website up and running quickly, and be able to update it easily, website builders are the way to go. With WordPress, the Weebly Site Builder, and countless other tools that can be installed in one click with SimpleScripts, Bluehost has you covered.

Mark
VP Development

Did you know there are things you can do, related to your password, that can help ensure your information remains secure? Here are a handful of important tips:

TIP 1 – Make sure your password is secure.

• Use a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters
• Use a combination of capital and lower case letters
• Use many characters (at least 8 )
• Avoid full-length words from the dictionary
• When using words, use “made up” words or combine many into one
• Avoid familiar items (names, phone numbers, birthdays)
• Avoid common passwords and generic sequences (“password”, “admin”, “12345”)

TIP 2 – Protect your password.

• Memorize your password and do not write it down
• Do not share your password
• Do not use the same password as with other services (Gmail, Yahoo, Apple)
• Avoid using one password for all your logins
• Avoid logging in from public computers
• Change your password frequently
• Be wary of permitting browsers or applications of automatically remembering passwords

TIP 3 – Keep your email address up to date.

Our “Forgot Password” link is always available on your cPanel login page. It issues a link to the email address listed on your account that allows you to create a new password. Therefore, it’s imperative your email address be up-do-date so this link can reach you if needed. And we can manually send you this email: just open a live chat, create a ticket through helpdesk, or give us a call (888-401-4678).

TIP 4 - Memorize the last four characters of your password.

Make the last four characters of your password easy to memorize but not easily guessed. We often ask for these last four characters over the phone to verify account authorization. I’ve included the names of symbols to make speaking and choosing them easier.

At Bluehost, we take security seriously. We do everything possible to keep your information secure, but a lot still depends on you. Thankfully, following these simple tips can help keep the bad guys at bay!

Camille B.
Billing Manager