Monat: August 2020

Starting your own hosting business is one of those things that seems so simple, you wonder why everyone isn’t doing it. While there is plenty of competition, there is plenty of room to grow. Starting your own hosting business can be cheap, easy, and safe. Since every company, and many individuals, need their own websites, providing hosting services can generate significant returns.

If you are a company that deals with IT infrastructure or web design, adding a hosting service to your existing platform can bring in new revenue and clients to add sustainable growth to your business. A hosting company can bring in new revenue streams and products to offer upcoming clients if you are just getting started.

But why bother starting your own hosting business when your plate is already full and your business is running fine? 

3 Reasons to Start a Hosting Business

Here are some of the best reasons to start offering hosting services to clients:

1. It’s Easy

Really, the web hosting provider is doing most of the legwork. They handle the technical difficulties that scare most people away from the industry, and keep services running smoothly. All you have to do is keep your individual clients happy and provide the right hosting solutions for them and their organization. Once it’s running, most websites tend to keep running without much effort or expertise.

2. Additional Revenue

Starting a hosting business can put extra padding in your pockets without losing your day job or adding unreasonable amounts of work. Aside from the initial setup and registering new clients, you can simply watch your bank account grow. An overhead price that covers your costs and brings in decent cash flow keeps costs and prices straightforward for you and your clients.

3. Great Upsell for Digital Firms

If you already run a digital business, especially web design, then throwing hosting into your package makes your service more “all-inclusive.” This could give you the edge you need over competitors and can make you a bigger and stronger organization. By offering hosting to your clients directly on your own platforms, or without having to manage separate users on separate hosting providers, you simplify things like account management and software solutions that must be installed on client machines.

To top it all off, it’s easier than you think to get started. In fact, you can have your own hosting business up and running after only 5 simple steps.

How to Start Your Hosting Business in Five Easy Steps

1. Find Your Niche

In the web hosting business, competition is fierce. You won’t be able to compete with the giants of the industry (at least not yet), but you can still target a specific niche group and start growing from there.

It’s essential to offer something unique to separate yourself from other companies and make your organization more distinct. That could be an additional service like web design, a competitive or revolutionary pricing plan, or maybe you’ll target a specific community (like webcomics or homemade jewelry stores).

It’s important to separate yourself from the crowd and cater to unfulfilled needs. By finding a great niche, you can offer custom solutions that fulfill their needs and aren’t offered anywhere else.”

Whatever your niche turns out to be, it’s necessary to figure it out first before you get into your hosting business’s nitty-gritty. This will give you the upper hand against competitors and help jump start your business by offering services to a specific industry.

2. Research Competitors

Next, you want to separate yourself even more from other hosting companies within your niche. Ideally, you will want your offering to be so unique that you’ll have no competition… but that’s rare. Even if you’re specializing in your market, you’ll still have more than a few competitors.

Research competitor business models and see what they’re doing that works, and where there’s room for improvement! Analyzing your competitors is the best strategy for discovering ways to outdo them.” 

This will give you an advantage when providing new services, looking for clients, and identifying marketing techniques and product offerings. Because the hosting industry is fiercely competitive, it’s important to gather as much information and data as possible to separate yourself from the crowd.

3. Choose Your Server Type

Assuming you’re reselling server space from a hosting company like Liquid Web, as opposed to building your own server in your garage, you still have a few different options to choose from.

As the name suggests, a dedicated server is a server dedicated to a single client. While the features are extensive, it’s the most expensive type of server. A single machine provides more robust features for larger clients, including the ability to have more security or HIPAA Compliant Hosting.

A dedicated cloud server is a great tool because you don’t have to worry about scaling your server or infrastructure — even with an unexpected spike in traffic, performance remains consistent. While not as expensive as dedicated hosting, dedicated cloud hosting falls somewhere in the mid-range, in terms of pricing.

A Virtual Private Server is a single server (cloud or otherwise) that is partitioned to suit multiple systems. While space is limited, it’s easily the cheapest option, and a good place to start for beginners in the hosting business. This will allow you to host multiple clients on one system to keep costs slow. But features may be more limited than other types of servers.

There is no one “best” server type. Instead, you’ll want to choose the one that fits together with your niche and business model.

It’s best to stay away from shared hosting for your infrastructure, as it won’t provide the performance, security, or scalability you will need to grow.

4. Create a Business Model

Now let’s get into the “business” part of the hosting business. You’ll need to fine-tune the details of your niche marketing as well as invent your brand. 

In this stage, you need to finalize plans for the following:

This includes your company name, logo, and tagline. Be aware of which domain names are available since you’ll inevitably need to build a company website. Your name should be memorable and easy to find.

Pricing Plan

Hammer out the details of your pricing plans to find that sweet spot between how much the hosting infrastructure costs you, and how much your clients are willing to pay for your services. This can also play into your niche marketing if you’re trying to undercut the cost of your competitors.

As with all digital industries, your web hosting company’s website is it’s the main storefront, so spare no expense in making it top notch. The quality of your website can reflect the quality of your services, so make strides to make it the best it can be.

5. Launch Customer Service and Support

Customer service and support is optional in theory, but in reality, it’s so important that it’s practically a necessity. Consider handling customer service and support as part of your hosting business.

In the web hosting business, part of your appeal to potential clients is that they don’t need to worry about the technical concerns. Even for hardware engineers, these tidbits can get frustrating, so you can imagine the anxiety it causes laypeople. Clients rely on you to keep their websites and services up and running without a hitch. 

If you aren’t able to provide this level of customer satisfaction, clients may choose to host their websites somewhere else.

Customer service should be a top priority for your new hosting business. That’s why we here at Liquid Web invest so much into our Support Team so they can be the Most Helpful Humans in Hosting. Our customer support is what endears us to our clients and keeps them loyal. 

Features like our 59 Second Guarantee and 24/7 access not only set us apart from our competitors but also turn what could be a negative customer experience into one of our company’s greatest strengths. 

When you are hosting your infrastructure with us, your clients gain the benefits of our support programs, and it can take some of the load off your back in the process!

You’re Ready to Resell Hosting

Now that you know the 5 steps for forming your own hosting company, you can get started today! You have found your niche and researched competition, selected servers, and defined pricing plans, and understand the need for customer service, so you can start reselling web hosting.

Start Reselling Hosting Today

Liquid Web has a Reseller Program that is a perfect fit for those looking to resell hosting. Or download our Hosting Buyer’s Guide to learn more about your hosting options.

The post 5 Steps to Starting Your Own Hosting Business appeared first on Liquid Web.

Liquid Web’s HR Generalist on confidence, positivity, and making her voice heard.

Music has always played a big part in Yvette Gonzalez’s life. As a kid growing up in Corpus Christi, Texas, music was an escape, a refuge, a way to give voice to what she was feeling. As an adult, she still turns to music when she wants to find peace or is in need of a boost in courage or determination. “My favorite lyric comes from a song by my friend’s band, Adelitas Way,” she says. “The words are, ‘If you believe in something, it might as well be you.’ It’s a song that, for me, instills great confidence.”

Now, Yvette Gonzalez brings her sense of peace and confidence to Liquid Web as the company’s HR Generalist. “The way I define HR is customer service for the employee,” says Gonzalez. I am there to be a confidante for our employees. I am there to make sure that employees know that they have a safe space. My first job was in a daycare, where I learned to take care of and meet the needs of children. This has led me to learn compassion and understanding to take care of and meet the needs of adults.”

Liquid Web has been Gonzalez’s entry into technology, a leap she is glad to have taken. “I was at a point in my life where I was ready to make a change and grow with a company,” she says. “I jumped at the opportunity to be a part of a company that was ready to go above and beyond— not only for their customers, but also their employees.”

A love of music isn’t the only thing Yvette Gonzalez has carried into her career from her youth. She has also maintained an appreciation for friendly competition. “I grew up playing all kinds of sports,” she says, “and I still feel that competitive drive in my work environment. I want to be the best HR Generalist I can be!” But alongside competition, Gonzalez loves the camaraderie of Liquid Web, including the relationships at work both with customers and within the company. “I love to work with my team,” she says, “Being able to bounce ideas off one another helps me process problems and come up with a solution. I try to project happiness to our employees. I want them to know that I’m there for them.”

An unexpected bonus of the job, for Gonzalez, is the tech support. “The thing I love most is knowing I can go to anyone in the company for help with my computer,” she laughs. “The world of technology is a new environment for me. I love seeing behind the scenes of what makes a website and company work.”

Gonzalez points to strong female mentors as guides for her career. “My first HR manager, Trish Nichols, taught me the compassion that it takes to be in the human resources field. And after joining Liquid Web, my current manager Misty Combs has helped me become more confident in my chosen profession.”

But her greatest motivation is her nieces. “I want to show them that women are strong. I want them to know that it’s okay to go after what you want.” She wants them— and other girls— to know that it’s okay to fail. “You grow when you try and fail. This is how we learn.” She also says that confidence is key. “Not everyone is going to like you. Keep going. Keep learning.”

It is her hope that following her career path in technology will inspire other young women to consider the field. “More and more women are realizing that tech is not just a man’s industry,” she says. “We are owning our space here. We are finding our voices and making ourselves heard.”

The post Women in Technology: Yvette Gonzalez appeared first on Liquid Web.

Considering Liquid Web vs. Hostinger for VPS?

Are you thinking about Liquid Web vs. Hostinger for your VPS needs? Make sure you know going in about the sacrifices you’ll have to make along the way. Sacrifices like no chat support, no performance optimization, and no management of your server stack without incurring additional fees. Add in a 99.9% uptime SLA, and you’re looking at the potential of almost ten hours of allowable downtime each year.

What happens if your website is offline when you get that big press mention or run that important flash sale? A great host is about more than just cost, it’s also about value, and that means having support and service that help your business reach its goals when it comes to your digital strategy.

We recognize that there is a time and a place for self-described “cheap” hosting. But when it comes to your mission-critical sites and applications, cutting costs is never a good idea. Missing out on important features and sacrificing uptime almost always ends up costing more than what you saved financially on the front end. Don’t be swayed by low prices. Take the time to understand exactly what is included — and what you’ll be left to handle on your own: automatic backups, full stack management, easy-to-access support ready to lend a hand on your infrastructure. That’s exactly what you deserve and exactly what your organization requires.

Nobody Includes More Than Liquid Web

Backed By The Most Helpful Humans in Hosting
and the Best Guarantees in the Industry

You can go anywhere for web infrastructure. But Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs) the world over choose Liquid Web when they want more than just servers and switches. Combining more than two decades of experience and wide ranging expertise, our skilled team of support technicians, engineers, and innovators make Liquid Web the leading hosting provider anywhere. When it’s time to take their digital strategy to the next level, more SMBs trust the Most Helpful Humans in Hosting…they trust Liquid Web.

24/7 Support from The Most Helpful Humans in Hosting 
It’s easy to say you have the best support, but we have the numbers to back it up. Our Support ranks No. 1 in customer satisfaction.

The post Liquid Web Vs. Hostinger appeared first on Liquid Web.

Customers don’t want to dig for information.

Trying to locate the information you need on a poorly structured website can be as frustrating as wandering around a beach looking for treasure with no map.

Your websites might be your future customers’ first impression of your brand. Don’t you want to delight your customers with an enjoyable experience?

Structure your web content in a way that enables users to find the information they need quickly. If it isn’t, it can be detrimental to your bottom line.

Most consumers are unlikely to return to a website after a bad experience.

How do you ensure your web content is easy to comprehend? How do you ensure that you provide a good desktop and mobile experience?

You can start by examining your information architecture.

Information architecture is the “organization, structure, and labeling of content in an effective and sustainable way.”

In this post, we’re going to examine the importance of your website’s information architecture and outline how to optimize it, so your website drives more sales for your business.

Three Components of Information Architecture

The three components that affect a website’s information architecture are:

(Image Source)

Before we outline strategies for improving your site’s information architecture, we must examine how these three factors impact it.

1. Users

When setting up your website, you have to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Think about the people who are browsing your website for the first time.

What should they get from it?

Set up your website in a way that ushers these users to a centralized, focused call-to-action. You need to funnel these users to a specific CTA that will get them to convert.

But how can you know exactly what your consumers want?

You need to get inside their mind or ask them directly. There are two ways to accomplish this: persona building or focus groups.

Personas

Draft personas for the different types of customers you are targeting before you map your site. These can help you mold the site to fit their expectations and habits.

When drafting a persona, ask yourself these questions:

• How do your customers spend their time?
• Where do your customers visit most often?
• What problems are your customers trying to solve?
• How does your customer’s typical day look?

If you can get more specific, you make the persona more useful. Businesses that used personas made their website 2-5 times more effective than those that did not.

Personas are great for companies with no customers or thousands of customers. They can help guide you in your website decisions when creating or evolving your site architecture.

Focus Groups

If you already have customers, simply ask them to test out your site. Focus groups are an excellent way to understand how consumers navigate and interpret your site.

By observing a group of people who have never visited your site try to understand your offering, you can see what content is missing and adjust your information architecture accordingly.

2. Content

It isn’t enough to just think about your users and who they are. You need to focus on crafting the content they are looking for and hosting it on your site.

To evaluate your current content, you need to take inventory.

Take stock of everything you have available about the company, including landing pages, product descriptions, articles, case studies, mission statements, bios, the brand story, and more.

Once you have that compiled, you need to audit your content.

Look at the scope of your content and evaluate:

• How does this content fill the needs of my target audience?
• What content am I missing that my target audience would value?
• What content can I delete? What content should stay on my website?
• Is there any hidden content that I need to surface better?

After you have the content you want to add or keep on your site, you need to map out how it will fit together.

3. Context

Context involves how your content appears on your site, what supplemental content it is beside, and how it is linked or mapped throughout your site’s information architecture.

It also shapes the way users interpret information on your site.

Studies show that “context shapes users attempt to construct meaning as they read,” meaning that as users interpret content, they comprehend and digest it based on the way and environment it is presented.

That’s why how you structure and map your content throughout your site is so important.

Even software platforms understand the significance context plays in website architecture.

Web platforms make it easy to make edits or changes to pages within a particular context. For example, Magento created its own “content hierarchy” between your website, store, and store views. Magento labels these as “scopes,” allowing you to apply settings and changes contextually between each separate hierarchy.

Now that we understand the main influencing factors of information architecture, we can examine the strategies used to improve the content structure of a site.

Improving Your Site’s Information Architecture

There are four key strategies to keep in mind while building and improving your site’s information architecture:

• Use goals at guideposts
• Start with a mobile-first view
• Go from broad to specific content
• Delete poor-performing content

Those strategies will help organize your content in a way that is easy-to-comprehend and straightforward for your customers. Let’s look at each one in-depth.

1. Use Goals as Guideposts

For every piece of content, you need to ask yourself, “Is this accomplishing your site’s goals?”

Clearly articulate your business goals on the site, with each page contributing to achieving those goals.

Some common site goals include:

• Increasing qualified leads
• Increasing conversion
• Generating more awareness
• Increasing organic traffic
• Driving more sales

When weighing your website goals, consider how your visitor’s objectives and conversion goals overlap to help you understand on what you need to focus on.

(Image Source)

Consumers want to be able to click on a page and understand immediately what the business is about. If they can’t figure it out in ten seconds, they will leave and go to another site.

If pages don’t reinforce the company’s overarching goals and messaging, they need to be reworked and rewritten in a way that does.

2. Start with a Mobile-first View

Evaluate your site’s information architecture through the lens of your mobile device. Where do you look first? What content is in focus? What is missing?

While your website might feel comprehensive on the desktop, it’s essential to see how it looks and performs on mobile.

Due to the smaller screen and responsive design, your messaging and content can be shifted or shortened and not capture the true essence of your business or site’s goals.

This is important because over 52.03% of web traffic in 2020 comes from a mobile device, which is the highest amount over the past ten years.

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The small-screen mobile view will also help you simplify your content.

This will be a valuable exercise for your business because 46% of consumers admitted that they were ‘overwhelmed with choice’ when visiting a website.”

By seeing what information is in focus on mobile, you can begin to create a hierarchy and prioritize the critical messaging points you wish to convey.

3. Go from Broad to Specific Content

When adding content to your site, it’s good to start broad and then get more specific, as it will help build content in layers on top of each other, allowing the user to start with a general overview of the business and get more detailed.

The pages can have internal links that go to more specific pages, which facilitates the user’s learning process and allows them to control in-depth they want to go.

Here is an example of how a health insurance site would structure their content:

(Image Source)

As you can see, the topics get more specific as the user gets deeper into the site.

The broad topic of “health” welcomes the users, while a page about “individual health insurance” would have specific content for a singular topic or issue.

Each page can be linked together to allow for greater indexing when search engines crawl the site. Page linking is essential because internal linking can increase site traffic by 40%!

4. Delete Poor-Performing Content

If the content isn’t performing well, it has to go.

Poorly written content, thin content, or duplicate content can all negatively impact your SEO rankings, making it more difficult for users to find your site.

Reporting software like Google Analytics can give you a page by page breakdown of how your content is performing.

If you aren’t getting a lot of traffic or have a high bounce rate, you should consider how you can retool the content to make it better or simply take it down.

One way to audit your content beyond site metrics like unique visitors, time spent on the page, bounce rate, and conversions is to complete a content mapping exercise.

Content mapping evaluates the lifecycle and thought-process of your personas and assigns a specific piece of content to help during each stage of the buying process.

Awareness, consideration, and decision are three common decision-making stages involved in content mapping.

(Image Source)

Awareness

Content consumed by potential customers in the awareness stage is positioned as discovery content in the forms of whitepapers, ebooks, blogs, and videos.

Awareness content highlights a high-level overview of the problem, term, or industry.

It’s appealing to a customer that wants to grow their business and might want to learn how to better retain their customers.

Consideration

Content in the consideration stage introduces the product as a solution to the user’s problem.

Consideration content provides prescriptive how-to examples for leveraging the product in different scenarios and business units.

The pages of websites that are most commonly content that is intended for the consideration phase are the product pages, how-to articles, webinars, and spec sheets.

Decision

Decision web content includes various web resources designed and positioned to help the customer understand how the product can help their business.

It includes demo pages, case studies, consultations, and more.

Websites Need Well Thought-Out Information Architecture

Businesses need to structure information on their website in an easy-to-comprehend way. If not, users will leave the site and go to competing companies.

When establishing or improving a site’s information architecture, businesses need to consider their users, content, and context.

There are many strategies to improve a site’s structure over time in hopes of providing a more enjoyable user experience.

Always frame content and website decisions with their overarching business goals as guideposts.

Consider how mobile devices display content. Use the small screen to your advantage and simplify your messaging.

Go from broad to specific content on your site. Build layers of content on each other, so pages become indexed, and there is a natural flow for the consumer.

Delete poor-performing content that isn’t doing anything for your customers and is hurting your SEO.

The post How to Master Your Website’s Information Architecture appeared first on Liquid Web.

Customers across industries love user generated content (UGC) — both consuming it and creating it. The popularity of classic user-generated content platforms like Trustpilot, TripAdvisor, and Rotten Tomatoes tells the story.

But user generated content can also help other businesses. Not only does user content perform well with customers, it can take the pressure off marketing teams to continually create original content.

What is user generated content? And how do you strategically use it in your marketing strategy?

Keep reading to find out.

What Is User Generated Content?

User generated content, or consumer generated content, is any content created by readers, users, or customers rather than a company or marketing team.

What Are the Different Types of User Generated Content?

The phrase “user content” can conjure images of customers creating lengthy videos about your brand or writing long-form blog posts. However, user generated content can also be as simple as a comment on a social media post. Here are the main types of customer generated content.

• Testimonials and reviews left on your website or on a third-party website like Trustpilot
• Social media posts by customers that mention your brand
• Case studies written about a customer’s experience with your brand
• Blog posts written by customers about your brand or products
• Social media engagements, like comments or shares on your posts
• Long-form product reviews on a customer’s website or YouTube channel

Are Reviews User Generated Content?

Yes, customer reviews are one of the simplest forms of user generated content. You can make the most of glowing customer reviews by showcasing them on your site’s homepage or sharing them on your social media channels.

What Is User Generated Content on Instagram?

For many brands, Instagram is the most common place to find user generated content. On Instagram, user generated content includes:

• Images and videos by customers using your products/services.
• Images and videos where customers talk about your products/services.
• Uses of your branded hashtag on customer images and videos.

What are the Benefits of User Generated Content?

The benefits of incorporating consumer generated content into your marketing strategy are powerful.

It Saves You Money on Marketing

If you break up your company content (often time intensive and possibly high budget) with user generated content, you’ll find that you get good results with less money spent. That’s because you won’t incur production costs.

User content is free — because your customers make it for you!”

It Increases Your Reach on Social Media

UGC is very likely to be shared with friends and family by the person who created it. And because it was made by someone they know and trust rather than a brand, they will be more likely to share the content with their friends and family. In this way, user generated content helps expose your brand to more people on social media.

It Increases Your Engagement on Social Media

Requesting or celebrating user generated content like comments and tags, increases your engagement rate on social media which is the key to growing your following. High engagement with your social media posts signals to everyone that your brand has a thriving community behind it, rather than just a flow of one-time site visitors.

It Provides Ready-Made Insights to Your Customers

When your brand’s fans are putting out user generated content — whether they’re commenting on your social media posts, leaving reviews, or writing about your products on their own — you suddenly have access to more specific information than you’d get any other way. You hear directly from people what they think about your products.

Are the reviews complaining about something that you hadn’t considered? Or do your customers love a new product feature?”

Not only is this useful information for potential customers, but it’s also free (and extremely valuable) product feedback for potential future improvements or upgrades.

It Bolsters Your Brand’s Social Proof

Customers trust a brand more when they can see that others love it, too. When your customers are creating content for your brand, they’re sharing how much they appreciate your products with their community.

Consumer generated content is one of the most compelling forms of social proof.

How Do I Get User Generated Content?

A huge advantage of user generated content marketing is that it doesn’t require a complicated strategy, financial investment, or even much time or effort.

Create a Branded Hashtag

Simply creating a branded hashtag, like Forever 21’s #F21xMe on Instagram, is a great start for getting customer generated content. If your customers love your brand, they’ll likely want to share (and already have shared) images about it. Giving customers a hashtag to use means that you’ll be able to find and repost those images quickly.

Have a User Generated Content Competition or Contest

You can level up your branded hashtag strategy by creating a hashtag for an image competition. The person who gets the most likes on their image using your hashtag wins! You could offer freebies as a prize, or get creative with it.

Ask for Reviews or Video Reviews

Sometimes, the best way to get user generated content from your customers is to just ask. Contact your most loyal fans, and ask them to leave a long-form or video review about their experience with your brand.

Make sure to position the offer as an opportunity for them by offering to place their review or video prominently on your website or social media platforms (and tagging or linking to their own).”

4 Examples of Brands Leveraging User Generated Content Marketing

Calvin Klein’s #MyCalvins Campaign

In 2014, Calvin Klein asked followers on Instagram to tag themselves in a photo wearing a Calvin Klein product using the hashtag #MyCalvins. Today, the hashtag is still very active and has so far collected 744,000 pieces of user generated content.

While this campaign got a huge boost because of the prominence of the brand itself, it’s a strategy that can easily be copied by smaller brands. It costs nothing to ask your Instagram followers to tag themselves using your products with a branded hashtag.

Chubbies “Man Model” Competition

Menswear brand Chubbies does an annual “Man Model” contest in which the brand finds their next model from their pool of customers. Chubbies has skillfully used this contest not only as a way to build goodwill within their existing fanbase, but also to encourage tons of user generated content. To enter the contest, customers have to follow Chubbies on Instagram, submit a photo of themselves, and then ask their family and friends to vote for them. The person with the most votes wins.

In 2019, the brand received over 12,000 applicants, and all of those applicants created dozens of posts on social media to get everyone they knew to go to Chubbies and vote for them. Plus, the body-positivity angle of the contest (they specifically sought applicants that did not have a perfect body) and the serious prize (a paid modeling contract with the brand) generated lots of third party press with magazines from Maxim to Cosmopolitan.

Juliette Has a Gun Tag-a-Friend Sweepstakes

Fragrance brand Juliette Has a Gun uses Instagram giveaways to drive user generated content. To enter the sweepstakes, followers on Instagram must comment on the brand’s post and tag a friend. One of their recent tag-a-friend sweepstakes has received 357 comments (compared to just three and six comments on the regular posts before and after).

Tag-a-friend sweepstakes are a common strategy for getting users to create content for you. While this brand just asked for a comment, you could also ask users to share an image on their own feed using your product to enter the sweepstakes.

West Elm’s Sharing of UGC

West Elm routinely asks users on Instagram to tag photos using their products. But West Elm goes further than most brands by reposting many customer images on the brand’s Instagram feed and tagging the original poster.

This is a great way to encourage customers to tag your brand and create content about you. If customers know there’s a good chance your brand will share their photos and tag them (therefore increasing their reach), they’ll be more likely to create content for you.

Plus, if you can incorporate customer images into your social media feeds or marketing, it means fewer images you have to source yourself.

Start Experimenting With User Generated Content Today

Incorporating user generated content into your brand’s marketing strategy is something you can start doing immediately — no matter how big or small your brand.

It’s a smart move, especially for online-only operations that don’t have the benefit of face-to-face interactions with customers. By incorporating UGC into your marketing, you create an immediate way to humanize your brand and help people feel like they are part of a community.

With a low cost and little time required, there’s no reason not to start experimenting with user generated content marketing today.

The post What Is User Generated Content and How Can it Boost Your Marketing? appeared first on Liquid Web.

Are you comparing VPS vs WordPress Hosting?

You are not alone. It is no secret that most of the internet runs on WordPress. WordPress accounts for a 50-60% share of the global CMS market and powers 35% of the internet. With that kind of market share, WordPress has made its way into the product lineups for most hosting providers today.

Not long ago, developers and agencies looking to set up build sites and applications started with VPS Hosting. No matter the kind of website you were building, a VPS got the job done. There was a bit of server administration skills that needed to be learned, but most web developers embraced the change; after all, the alternative was shared hosting, which offered no root access.

At the same time, WordPress grew in popularity, and Managed WordPress became a standard service offering perfect for those developers that wanted to focus on building sites, not server administration.

So, what is the best hosting for your WordPress site?

Let us look at what each one has to offer so that you can make an intelligent decision on what type of hosting is best for you.

What is VPS Hosting?

Virtual Private Server Hosting (VPS) is a dynamic virtualized hosting server that exists within a parent server on cloud infrastructure.

In most cases, there is a cluster of servers that make up the infrastructure behind the VPS. The VPS instances themselves are independent partitions of the parent server with dedicated resources.

Typically, you will have access to Root as well as Secure Shell (SSH) and Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). Most managed providers also supply a software installer, such as Softaculous, to install popular server software and Content Management Systems (CMS). WordPress is one such CMS easily installed on a VPS.

VPS hosting will usually have a set allocation of resources to each server instance. Most VPS offerings are single-tenant, which means RAM, CPU cores, and storage are specific to a single user/owner instead of sharing among many users. Operating system options include multiple flavors of Linux as well as Windows.

Advantages of VPS Hosting

A considerable advantage of VPS Hosting is the low-level access you get to the server. Having root access and being able to interact with the Operating System and server stack allows customization of the server in addition to your sites and applications. Managed web hosting providers give you support for most server-side functions.

Another advantage of VPS Hosting is the ability to upgrade to achieve more resources when needed. How you upgrade the server varies between providers, but most have options to get you the performance you need.

Root access also affords the ability to install and configure most any software you wish on the server. Available control panels (Interworx, cPanel, and Plesk) offer a point-and-click interface for root and other functions. You are usually going to have the operating system, any control panel you select, and the standard server software for the webserver, database, and scripting. Installing other software to enhance the management of your sites and applications is a valuable tool to ensure your projects run the way you want.

Disadvantages of VPS Hosting

VPS Hosting provides many positives, but depending on your needs, there may be some things that don’t work for you. Some people are intimidated by the amount of access you get with a VPS.

You don’t have to be a System Administrator to have a VPS, but some degree of technical aptitude is needed.

A control panel with a point-and-click interface is advantageous for some, but one still needs to know what the functions are they are trying to accomplish. Making the wrong changes is detrimental to your environment and your projects. Not everyone wants (or needs) that type of granular control of their server.

VPS Hosting, as powerful as it is, also does not include optimization by default for running WordPress. You will need to tweak the server software to take advantage of resources appropriately as well as install third party software or drop-in replacements like Nginx for speed.

For those desiring a complete hands-off approach to server administration work, VPS Hosting may not present the optimal choice for hosting.

Liquid Web VPS Hosting

Here is an overview of Liquid Web’s VPS packages:

• RAM: 2GB-16GB
• CPUs: 2-8 vCPUs
• Hard Drive Space: 40GB-200GB
• Operating System: Linux or Windows
• Pricing: Check Current Pricing

Liquid Web’s VPS Hosting offers set configurations for RAM, CPU, and storage as well as upgradeable, packaged bandwidth. These servers do provide root-level access in addition to SSH and SFTP access.

Available control panel options include Interworx, cPanel, and Plesk for Linux, and Plesk only for Windows servers. In addition to using your primary storage for control panel backups, you would also have the option of Cloud Backups.

If you are hosting a few websites and applications that are not resource-intensive, or need a small server for file storage and setting up your file sharing and collaboration away from your home/business, the VPS is a perfect solution. Having complete control of your website and application’s underlying infrastructure is the reward.

What is WordPress Hosting?

WordPress Hosting is a shared or single-tenant hosting environment that is specifically optimized and fine-tuned for WordPress websites.

While a VPS would come pre-configured for general use, WordPress Hosting is designed only for WordPress. There are many ways to configure a server and its software. WordPress Hosting takes the guesswork out of the process.

Because the environment is set up from the ground up for WordPress, there is no need to take into account software and frameworks that run on other sites and applications.

Also, any tools that make it onto the server are directly for WordPress or indirectly to help it run smoothly. The key is to provide maximum performance without the need to manage a server.

Advantages of WordPress Hosting

Performance is an enormous benefit to WordPress Hosting. The environment’s focus on one type of hosting means that the entirety of the infrastructure gets uniquely optimized for the utmost performance. Sure, you can use additional plugins if necessary, but the performance out-of-the-box will be suitable for most WordPress sites.

Another advantage of WordPress Hosting is not having to manage a server. As was mentioned before, most providers design their WordPress offerings to allow web designers and agencies to focus on their sites.

With WordPress already set up, your first order of business is setting up your site and not configuring a server.”

Security is also a huge advantage of WordPress Hosting. Since WordPress is the only framework the infrastructure will have to handle, services that are not needed to run WordPress are disabled. When you combine this with regular updates to the WordPress core and plugins, you have a secure, protected environment.

Disadvantages of WordPress Hosting

Not having root or low-level access to the server environment is, undoubtedly, a disadvantage of WordPress Hosting. A VPS is a better option for those looking for more control of the server and hosting for WordPress.

Some customers like the features that third party software provides. Being able to install additional software that will run with your site, outside of WordPress, gives additional benefit. For the majority of WordPress-specific environments, third-party software is not allowed.

You or your agency might be at a disadvantage with WordPress Hosting if you do more than just WordPress sites. Yes, we are talking about a specific, focused hosting platform. Some designers, however, don’t have the budget for more than one plan.

If you are looking to host other sites (HTML, CSS, Magento), and you are looking for a one plan that fits all, you are going to want VPS or Dedicated Hosting.

Managed WordPress Hosting Powered by Nexcess

Nexcess, a premier eCommerce Cloud provider, joined the Liquid Web family in 2019. Known for their expertise in Magento, WordPress, and WooCommerce; Nexcess has delivered innovation and an exceptional experience to small businesses and the designers, developers, and agencies who create for them for over 20 years.

Here is an overview of Managed WordPress plans powered by Nexcess:

• Number of Sites: 1-250
• Storage: 15-800 GB
• Added Features: Unlimited Email Accounts, Beaver Builder Lite, iThemes Security Pro and iThemes Sync
• Pricing: Check Current Pricing

Nexcess offers not only WordPress Hosting, but also management for the entire infrastructure. Your sites are your responsibility, but we provide automatic updates to the WordPress Core, plugins, and automated backups. And with unlimited email accounts, Beaver Builder Lite, and iThemes Security Pro and Sync built-in, Managed WordPress gives you the WordPress Hosting you need for success.

Developers need the right tools to get the job done. That’s why the platform also includes SSH, Git, and WP-CLI. And for each site on the plan, a staging site is also included for testing before going live.

We use PHP7, SSL, and Nginx to increase speed. All of this is built on the Nexcess Cloud for optimized performance.

Final Verdict Between VPS vs WordPress Hosting

Choosing VPS vs WordPress Hosting will depend on your specific project and what you need. Developers and web designers will need to determine what is most important to them as well as the project at hand. Knowing what the website or application calls for will make the decision-making process easy.

The post Comparing VPS Hosting vs WordPress Hosting appeared first on Liquid Web.

When it comes to hosting, most business owners like to have a set-it-and-forget-it attitude. They don’t think through all the possible worst-case scenarios that might affect their online presence and thus don’t actively prepare for them. Unfortunately, cybercriminals do.

So if your business stores sensitive information (e.g., for payments) or provides a valuable service online (that could be negatively affected by a short downtime), it’s critical to have a robust plan B in place for when worst-case scenarios occur.

One of the most widespread worst-case scenarios that has been affecting businesses worldwide for decades is DDoS attacks.

How DDoS Attacks Happen

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are networks of computers (effectively bots) trying to access your server all at once from different locations. These requests (often measured in tens of thousands) quickly overwhelm your allocated server bandwidth and shut down your website, email server, or even cPanel. 

Over the years, DDoS attacks have become more and more aggressive. While an average one in the 2000s could use just a few hundred megabytes of bandwidth per second, attacks today take up terabytes and are responsible for nearly a third of all downtime online.

Extensive downtime resulting from a powerful DDoS attack could lead to permanent loss of customers and revenue, as well as lower your brand’s trust. Cybercriminals know this and often organize DDoS attacks on behalf of competition or ask for a ransom directly. Any website lacking sufficient DDoS protection could become a victim.

What Makes Your Business Vulnerable to DDoS Attacks

Businesses that prepare ahead of time fare better against DDoS attacks than those that don’t. What is the difference?

Cybercriminals are always looking for vulnerabilities in server architecture, HTTP requests, authentication methods, and more. It’s essential to keep your codebase (both frontend and backend) updated, which includes using the latest frameworks, plugins, APIs, and other security patches.

Besides, frequent and comprehensive backups will give your business more options to navigate the attack than if you let cyber criminals hold your only source of data hostage.

Finally, the most critical mitigation tool for DDoS attacks is the protection from a high-quality hosting provider, regardless of its severity.

What Is A DDoS Protected VPS?

A DDoS Protected VPS is a Virtual Private Server built on a network equipped to handle large DDoS attack and that employs robust DDoS mitigation tools.

• A network needs to be able to handle large incoming requests in order to parse legitimate traffic from DDoS traffic.
• Hardware and software mitigation tools allow for granular control of traffic influx, especially during sophisticated attacks

Why Choose VPS for DDoS Attack Protection

As mentioned above, protecting your business against DDoS attacks could require gigabytes, if not terabytes, of scalable, on-demand bandwidth from your hosting provider.

Resources for DDoS attacks are something to keep in mind when you’re thinking of hosting solely based on cost — most of the time, cheaper shared hosting companies are not ready to provide you with adequate resources to overcome DDoS attacks. What’s more, they are even more likely to shut down your website as the attack overloads the server that other tenants share with you.

By default, a virtual private server (VPS) offers better DDoS protection than any shared hosting option, but you should consult your hosting company for specifics. At Liquid Web, for example, we make sure to protect your account against all known types of volumetric DDoS attacks.

When you sign up for a Liquid Web VPS plan, our set of proprietary tools starts to monitor all incoming network traffic (not just web traffic) for any discrepancies. During a DDoS attack, our DDoS mitigation system automatically separates and blocks malicious agents while letting your legitimate customers through.

Best of all, all Liquid Web VPS plans include standard protection for free. Still, if your business is a frequent victim of DDoS attacks, you can also easily upgrade to advanced and premium protection at any time.

What is Anti-DDoS Protection?

Anti-DDoS protection is a mix of hardware and software that actively protects clients from DDoS attacks.

Liquid Web employs three types of protection:

1. The first is always on and is outside our network entry point. It addresses less sophisticated attacks that happen regularly, and every VPS customer gets 2 Gbps of protection by default.
2. The second form sits inside our network, which scrubs traffic more in-depth and gives us the ability to scrub sophisticated and changing attack vectors.
3. The third is off-network and routes traffic to a scrubbing platform that handles very large amounts of junk traffic. The unsophisticated, bad traffic is removed off-network and then passed through both tiers of protection once more.

How to Successfully Handle Any DDoS Attack

As an online business, being prepared is your most effective tool against any potential DDoS attack:

1. Start by checking how much DDoS protection you get from your hosting provider right now. What’s the protection volume in Gbps? Are there protections against Layer 3-4 (volumetric) attacks and Layer 7 (application layer or SYN flood) attacks? How quickly can you reach customer service when the attack happens?
2. Make sure your server codebase is up to date and your data is getting backed up frequently. Test the way you can access your backup. 
3. Confirm that your hosting provider has an appropriate firewall in place and a load balancer installed.
4. Consider using CloudFlare. As one of the world’s most popular content delivery networks, CloudFlare can quickly detect where your DDoS attack is coming from and block those IP addresses throughout its global network. Ask your hosting provider whether integration with CloudFlare is available. 

At Liquid Web, we take DDoS attacks seriously. That’s why all our VPS plans come with 2 Gbps of standard DDoS protection. We also offer advanced and premium DDoS protection plans that strike just the right balance between cost and security. Our firewall and load balancer are always active. Automatic backups and CloudFlare integration are available to you in only one click.

Contact us today for a detailed overview of your DDoS protection with our VPS hosting plans.

Download the Complete SMB Infrastructure Security Checklist

The post Is Your VPS Protected from DDoS Attacks? appeared first on Liquid Web.

Real testimonials from real clients, especially when accompanied by a photo or communicated in a video, can deliver game-changing results when it comes to website conversions. 

Testimonials from happy clients and customers communicate how amazing you are to prospects without you needing to do a thing. They provide unbiased, third-party feedback about what a prospect can expect when they make a purchase.

Many business owners understand the power of using testimonials as part of their overall marketing strategy and include a single page on their website with their testimonials titled Testimonials, Praise, Reviews, Feedback, or even What People Say. 

While this approach works, it relies on your prospective clients and customers to click on that specific page. There’s a better way.

There are 11 other places where you can list testimonials for more conversions.

A Better Approach To Using Testimonials

Instead of interrupting the buyer journey and sending prospects to a testimonials page, consider strategically placing testimonials throughout your website in key areas that affect conversion.

Let’s look at alternate places to display testimonials to increase their impact:

1. Client Portfolio Entries

If you have a portfolio on your website, display a client’s testimonial alongside the portfolio entry for their project. Pairing the work completed and the feedback from the client tells a more powerful story.

2. Sales Pages

Break up a long sales page with testimonials about the product, service, course, or program you are selling.

3. Homepage for Authors

If you are an author, highlight testimonials about your book on the homepage of the book website, or on the book page of your personal brand site.

4. Services Pages

Include a testimonial about your services on the services page of your website to give the testimonial more context.

5. Online Course Pages

Selling an online course? Use testimonials to reassure potential students that they can achieve the results they want. Also, ask existing or past students to provide a tip for new students that you can use in your sales materials and during the course for encouragement.

6. Speaker Pages

If you are a speaker, display testimonials about your speaking on the speaking page of your website and include a testimonial from someone who booked you to speak next to your booking form.

7. Renewal Email Communications or Login Pages

For a membership site, consider including testimonials in your renewal email communications to remind current members of the value. You can also include testimonials on the login page non-members are shown.

8. Next to Calls to Action

Display testimonials next to major calls to action to help put prospects at ease and make them feel more confident in their decision to take action.

9. Newsletter Opt-in Pages

If you are hosting a free webinar to build your email list, showcase testimonials that communicate the value you deliver on the opt-in page.

10. eCommerce Product Pages

For an eCommerce site, include testimonials on product pages so buyers can see what other people thought about the product.

11. About Pages

Use a testimonial to make your about page more compelling and less braggadocious—just be sure it sums up what you want people to know about you.

Placing Testimonials is Key

As you can see, there are numerous places to display testimonials on your website other than a dedicated testimonials page. Context plays a huge role in the effectiveness of testimonials in the sales process, which means that the more strategic you are about the placement of your testimonials, the better your results will be.

The post 11 Places To Display Website Testimonials appeared first on Liquid Web.

Covid-19 has shown both the best and worst sides of humanity. On the one hand, you have those tirelessly working to defeat the disease and stop its spread. On the other hand, you have the profiteers, charging outrageous prices and cashing in.

Unfortunately, ransomware attackers are falling very firmly into the latter category. Despite assurances by some hackers that medical targets were off-limits, there have been several attacks against hospitals.

While some hackers are being true to their word (if there is such a thing as hacking with integrity), many bad actors have seen the dollar signs and are looking to cash in.

In this post, we’ll look at how ransomware is affecting Healthcare, and also look at ways you can watch and be prepared for these attacks.

Ransomware Attacks

Despite the disputes within the community, some hackers are upscaling their attacks on hospitals to extort even more money. The current format is simple. 

Bad actors hack the hospital’s servers and then steal confidential patient information. From there, they encrypt the files so that the hospital can’t access them. 

If that was the worst of it, it would be bad enough. However, in an effort to get even more money, bad actors now threaten to publish the information on the dark web.

If the ransom isn’t paid, they’ll typically post some of the information and then send links to the affected parties.

Hospitals face a dual-threat – loss of access to information, and the leak of breaches that expose them to lawsuits and penalties in terms of privacy laws.

The plan is actually deviously clever on the part of the bad actors. By only publishing some of the details at a time, they can prove that they have the information. If they published everything all at once, there wouldn’t be much incentive for hospitals to pay the ransom because the damage had been done.

But all hope is not lost. If you can understand the ways they access your information, you will know how to best defend against intrusion.

How Are They Gaining Access?

Here again, the bad actors are using the crisis to their advantage. While there are several ways to infect a computer, the most common methods used here are phishing and social engineering.

Phishing Attacks to Watch Out For

By now you’ve probably been warned to watch out for random emails coming from the World Health Organization, or health or government officials in your country. These emails will typically ask you to register to receive more information.

This information might be about the disease, finding out where community testing will take place, or more information about financial aid programs. When you click through to the link, everything will look legitimate.

What you don’t realize is that one of two things will happen. 

Either you’ll be asked to download a file containing the “application form” or malware on the site will infect your computer.”

Now, granted, a healthcare worker is unlikely to fall for some of those ploys. That’s no problem for the phishers, they just shift their focus.

The next approach requires some research, but the potential rewards are worth the effort. Bad actors will impersonate someone senior at the hospital. Perhaps they’ll send through a duty schedule or application for a PPE protection.

The point is, they’ll send through a request that won’t raise suspicions. They’ll even go so far as sending their request on what looks like official stationery and what looks like the right address.

Look closely, and you’ll notice that one or two characters are different. If you’re a nurse coming off a long shift, how closely would you look, though?

If the wrong employee downloads the document or clicks on the wrong link while at a work computer, the hacker gains access.

Social Engineering Attacks to Watch Out For

Logically, most of us understand that social media is not the best place to access information, but it is still a viable option for hackers to try.

Be on guard on social media and watch for the following signals: 

1. Strangers might try and friend you on the site. They’ll then strike up a conversation and try to get information from you. 
2. Alternatively, they might lurk in social media groups looking for the right victim.

The goal is invariably the same. They might use you to collect the information that they need. They look for private details about your life to “get to know you better.” What you don’t realize is that this is often an exercise to find the answers to security questions or clues to what your password might be.

Alternatively, they’ll ask an employee to do something that breaks the rules. Another route that they might take is to find compromising photos and threaten to publish them.

With social media, it’s best to use the top privacy settings and not accept friend requests from anyone that you don’t know.

Take Security Precautions

Healthcare providers must take extra measures to secure their databases and systems. They’ll also need their staff to be more alert to the potential dangers out there.

But with the right training, knowledge, and awareness, healthcare professionals can keep protected from the threats of phishing and social engineering attacks.

Liquid Web Can Help

Liquid Web’s Protection and Remediation Service can help protect your sensitive information from malware and ransomware.

The post How Ransomware is Attacking Healthcare appeared first on Liquid Web.

In the web hosting industry, there is a lot of jargon and acronyms that can be confusing to navigate, let alone understand. Most web hosting terminology is downright complicated.

To make matters worse, many web hosts use the same web hosting terminology to talk about different things. If you’ve ever wondered:

1. What kinds of backup types can I use?
2. What is high availability?
3. What is bare metal hardware?

This blog is for you.

Below you can find definitions for our most common hosting acronyms to help you make a more informed decision regarding your hosting needs.

Top 20 Most Used Web Hosting Terminology

1. A+B Power

Server reliability is further enhanced by plugging each power supply into a different circuit breaker.

2. Bare Metal Backups

These are disk-based backups that greatly increase the speed of complete system recovery from a catastrophic failure. Unlike traditional backups, there is no need to partition the drive and install an operating system.

3. Cloud Dedicated Servers

Our Cloud Dedicated Servers allow you to take advantage of the scalability and flexibility of the cloud but still provide you with the power of dedicated hardware, and include transparent technical specifications.

4. Cloud Scaling

The ability to easily create or destroy server images using the Liquid Web Cloud VPS Platform in order to add additional space or computing power.

5. Content Delivery Network

A large distributed system of servers deployed in strategically located nodes, all over the world, to facilitate faster delivery of content to end users.

6. Continuous Backups

Backup completed by Liquid Web Acronis Cyber Backup, these files are kept in a journal of disk changes. These incremental backups know what sectors on the disk have changed before the backup operation even starts. Continuous or incremental backups are one of several options for backing up data.

7. Dedicated Servers

Our Dedicated Servers offer customers their own private hardware, as well as their own network and storage space. They are completely customizable and give the customer full control of their environment. Because the equipment is only used by your own applications, they are completely isolated and won’t suffer from slow speeds because of any “noisy neighbors.”

8. Disaster Recovery

A plan that prepares for recovery or continuation of technology infrastructure is vital to an organization after a disaster, be it natural or man-made.

9. Enterprise Hosting

Our Enterprise Hosting packages allow customers to provision our powerful Managed Dedicated Servers together with load balancing and other redundancy technologies, providing a highly available environment. They provide paramount durability, easy scaling, and the ability to pay for only what you use. Enterprise Hosting environments often include dedicated servers hosting databases along with virtualized servers hosting websites or other front-end applications.

10. Failover

The capability to switch over automatically to a redundant, or standby, computer server in the instance of the original server’s failure.

11. Fault Tolerant

Fault tolerance refers to a system that can continue its main operation, possibly at a reduced level, instead of failing completely, when some part of the system fails.

12. Full Management

Fully managed plans at Liquid Web include 24/7 phone, email and chat support, full hardware and software management, a 100% uptime service level agreement, full control panel support, and Beyond Scope Support for 3rd party applications.

13. Hot Swappable

A server that is “hot-swappable” allows Liquid Web to replace hardware components without significant interruption to the system.

14. Load Balancing

Load balancing distributes data across a network of servers in order to ensure that a single Web server does not get overloaded with work, ensuring maximum uptime.

15. Off-Server Backups

Off-server backups are stored at a location away from the main location of your hosting services as part of a disaster recovery plan. This creates geographical redundancy, ensuring that a back up will be available no matter what happens to your original data. Liquid Web utilizes Acronis Cyber Backup to achieve this for Dedicated and VMware customers.

16. PCI Compliance

A fully-managed scanning service at Liquid Web that verifies your compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) Council. The PCI DSS Council requires that your organization takes all the necessary steps to protect sensitive customer data and provides a set of standards for your infrastructure and server setup.

17. Private Cloud

The Private Cloud is similar to the public cloud, with all of the same benefits (scalability and reliable uptime) but with increased security and control over data. Liquid Web offers the Private Cloud powered by VMware and NetApp.

18. Server Clusters

Server clustering groups together servers, either loosely or tightly, so they work together and can be viewed as a single system.

19. Server Hardening

The process of securing a server by reducing its surface vulnerability. There are a number of methods by which this can be done, but overall, the more your server does, the larger a vulnerability surface it has.

20. VPS Hosting

Our Virtual Private Servers (VPS) provide the control and customizability of a dedicated server along with the affordability, flexibility, and scalability of the cloud. For VPS servers, we create multiple virtual private servers on one Cloud Dedicated Server.

Liquid Web is Here to Help

It is our hope that this list of 20 brief definitions for the most frequently asked about the most common hosting acronyms that we use at Liquid Web provides some insight past all the industry jargon. Breaking through the fog of technical vernacular can be difficult for those unfamiliar with the industry, so we are always here to help.

We believe in complete transparency when it comes to working with our customers and would be happy to explain any of the industry “jargon” we use. The Most Helpful Humans in Hosting are here to help!

The post The Top 20 Most Used Web Hosting Acronyms and Definitions appeared first on Liquid Web.