Author Archives: Kenny

About Kenny

Kenny is owner of webhostpark and has been working in hosting industry since 2006. We provide unbiased hosting reviews and release the latest promo news. Follow me on Google plus

Spam Friendly Hosting, Who’s on top?

spam friendly hosting

Are you receiving lots of spam from inbox and website? Have you tried various methods to deal with the spam information every day but still no use? Ok, if you're sure you have tried everything you can then you might have using a spam friendly hosting service.

Recently I have been dealing with lots of spam from both website and email. I'm surprised when I saw the amount of spam comments and emails in both junk and inbox folder. Even after I installed some anti-spam plugins to the site and added those from domains to my blacklist, I still can't avoid over 10 spam per day. Because the case is only from one website but not others. After communication with my partner and other webmasters I finally figured out it's because of the hosting issue — They're spam friendly!

How to deal with spam?

I'm sure many of you are also dealing with tons of spam every day and trying various available methods. After the experience with the spam host, I got following experience and hope it'll be helpful to you as well.

Website spam – If we're dealing with a healthy hosting, we can always introduce into the spam control components or plugins. The website spam is mostly from article comments and contact forms. To reduce potential spam, it's necessary to add authentication field in the comment form as well as contact form. There're many methods to add such function to comment form. Just make a simple search on google.

Email spam – It's headache of the entire internet because over 80% emails are spam! However there're still some tricks to play with. Basically I concluded the following with my experience

  • Don't post our email address publicly anywhere on the website, instead we can use contact form for website contact. Also make sure to add authentication field in the form.
  • Use different email system for different contact purpose. For example we put our company email for business contact on website and use another email system for advertising purpose.
  • Do not use catchall. Never use it if we want to reduce email spam mostly.
  • Use a reputable email system. A reputable email system let us have more control over spam, we always be able to configure our own rules to keep our inbox clean.

How to avoid spam friendly hosting?

It's the first time I understand how important the hosting service is for spam control. If I could ask more before I sign up that company I wouldn't have to deal with the frustrated problems. My suggestion is, always remember to check with hosting support before your sign up and ask about what kind of spam control technologies they introduced to their network and what kind of email system they are using. Do not use a email system that already has popular security hole on internet. Personally, I highly recommend the smartermail system where we have many options to configure spam filters with custom rules.

Email plays an quite important role for our online business. A good spam control service will keep our business in safe hand. Especially when you're sending some sensitive information frequently via email, it's very important to distinguish fake emails and innocent ones or else you're in risk of loosing money!

Top spam friendly hosting introduction

I'm victim of spam friendly hosting, I do not want to tell what their name is since they promised to improve. But after my research on google I found this article for Top 6 spam friendly ISP, surprisely my hosting is using one of the networks! Here's the original article link: http://www.allspammedup.com/2011/08/top-6-spam-friendly-isps/.

So if you would like to reduce spam, make sure to avoid the service from above list. Of course it's not a complete list so make sure to clear your doubts with support before you reserve to any hosting brand.


Westhost Review and Coupon

westhost review and westhost coupon

Westhost Overview

Westhost was initially setup in Utah in 1998, it's one of the oldest hosting providers and has over 1000,000 domain hosted all over the world. In year 2008, it's merged into one of the largest web hosting provider "UK2". Since then, exceptional web experience at affordable rates being offered just like what we see on their website now. Westhost offers low-cost shared hosting, cloud hosting and dedicated servers hosting plans.

What's exactly good of Westhost Hosting?

Westhost has lots of spotlights comparing to other providers in the business. From their own words, half of their employees are multi-lingual and half have more than 5 years' experience in the IT industry. The following are some of the notable advantages with user reviews

  • Plans to grow – Westhost setup multiple web hosting plans to meet your different web development requirements. Either for shared or reseller or dedicated server solutions, there's always one that suits our needs. They also list out clearly how much resource we can get exactly instead using the popular marketing word "unlimited".
  • Up to date Technologies – The westhost hosting servers are mainly SAN and cluster based. Beside all popular server technologies in traditional hosting, cloud hosting is also offered from westhost VPS plans. If you would like to try out the real cloud hosting service via affordable price, westhost is quite worth of a try.
  • Webucation – Short of Website education. How does it work? Free web hosting for students for a year as well as web related education! As long as you're students and need web hosting service for learning purpose you can apply free hosting for one year from westhost! You can not find better choice from any other hosting provider.
  • Lots of hosting features – While westhost is offering pretty standard cpanel hosting services, there're actually more than expected such as cheap dedicated ip and ssh access support. Just check out the westhost features and you'll be surprised about the offer. We also get the advantage of up to 60 days money back guarantee in case we don't like their service.

WestHost offers 99.9% uptime guarantee for all hosting packages. Dedicated server customers will receive credits if you got a network outage. The WestHost Tier-3 data center is located in Salt Lake City, Utah where is part of the westhost colocation program. They utilize all types advantages to keep customers' data secure such as redundant power, on-site staff, cold row cooling and video surveillance etc.

westhost 50 off promo

Westhost is also golden sponsor of lots of popular projects like the Yoast – the leading wordpress seo plugin developer website. Their powerful hosting servers and leading technologies guarantee the best success of your online business with least costs!

More about westhost hosting

Just like every big hosting companies, the westhost get both positive and negative feedbacks from clients. Just think about the number of supported websites on westhost server, it's quite common to see different comments to westhost service. Because We are just started to try out westhost so there's no much experience yet, we'll update this review once we experienced longer with them.

Best Westhost Promo

Congratulations! you get the right place for the best westhost promotion! There're total of two types of promotional offer from westhost.

A. Use a special westhost coupon code and claim 20% discount for all westhost service plans including shared, VPS, Dedicated and reseller hosting.

B. Visit this special westhost promo link and get 25% discount of the "Preferred Hosting" which is the most popular hosting plan from westhost. It's the best deal if you just like to deal with a shared hosting plan from westhost.

Have questions? Feel free to post here or contact us via email and I'll be more than happy to communicate with you!


Useful WordPress Mysql Queries

useful wordpress mysql queries

Wordpress is completely mysql supported software. Unless you have to go to the amdin panel for every change or in case our wordpress site can't be accessed for some reason, we can use various sql queries to get problem fixed. Personally I reguarly use it to deal with spam and article revision. I will post some of the most frequently used queries in case you need it as well.

Where to run mysql query? Definitely from the phpmyadmin. Just login to your cpanel then navigate to database section then click "phpMyadmin". It will be redirected to phpmyadmin page. Now if you have multiple database created make sure to click on the right one from left navigation and it will display a list of functions on the top. We need to click on "SQL" tab and a mysql query window will be displayed. Now type into whatever queries you like and "Run", once it's excecuted succesfully it will show up the results in green words, or else red alarm is expected.

Here're the wordpress mysql queries I used often.

1. Change wordpress user password

UPDATE 'wp_users' SET 'user_pass' = MD5('PASSWORD') WHERE 'user_login' ='admin' LIMIT 1;

We can also use similar sql to change the default user "admin" to something else for security purpose:

UPDATE wp_users SET user_login = ‘newname’ WHERE user_login = ‘admin’;

2. Mass edit article author

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_author=NEW_AUTHOR_ID WHERE post_author=OLD_AUTHOR_ID;

3. Delete the revision and related info of article posting

DELETE a,b,c FROM wp_posts a WHERE a.post_type = 'revision' LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships b ON (a.ID = b.object_id) LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta c ON (a.ID = c.post_id);

4. Remove all unapproved comments

DELETE from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = '0';

5. Delete the specific user's comment via several terms

(1) Check user's home URL and delete all it's comments:

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_author_url LIKE '%www.example.com%';

(2) Check user's nick name and delete all it's comments:

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_author = 'example';

(3) Check user's email and delete all it's comments:

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_author_email = 'example@example.com';

Sometimes we need to filter some sensitive words or terms to avoid legal problems. It can be done via a simple sql query too. For example we need to replace the word "sex" to ** then we can do the following:

UPDATE wp_comments SET comment_content = REPLACE( comment_content, 'fuck', '**' );

6. Some times we might have post wrong stuff in article, if there're many places to check around, we can use the following for mass replacement.

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace( post_content, 'string_to_find', 'string_to_replace' ) ;

7. Get a list of all posters' email addresses:

SELECT DISTINCT comment_author_email FROM wp_comments;

8. Disable all wordpress plugins at one time:

UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = '' WHERE option_name = 'active_plugins';

9. Delete all wordpress tags:

DELETE a,b,cFROM database.prefix_terms AS a LEFT JOIN database.prefix_term_taxonomy AS c ON a.term_id = c.term_id LEFT JOIN
database.prefix_term_relationships AS b ON b.term_taxonomy_id = c.term_taxonomy_idWHERE ( c.taxonomy = 'post_tag' AND c.count = 0 );

10. Disable comment for old posts:

UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status = 'closed' WHERE post_date < '2009-01-01' AND post_status = 'publish';

11. Replace the comment poster's address:

UPDATE wp_comments SET comment_author_url = REPLACE( comment_author_url, 'http://oldurl.com', 'http://newurl.com' );

12. Replace the comment poster's contact Email:

UPDATE wp_comments SET comment_author_email = REPLACE( comment_author_email, 'old-email@address.com', 'new-email@address.com' );

13. Delete comments if there's specific term in author's URL:

DELETE from wp_comments WHERE comment_author_url LIKE "%wpbeginner%" ;

14. Change the article author:

First we need to run following to get the IDs of all authors:

SELECT ID, display_name FROM wp_users;

For example we need to change the article auther ID to NEW_AUTHOR_ID from OLD_AUTHOR_ID:

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_author=NEW_AUTHOR_ID WHERE post_author=OLD_AUTHOR_ID;

15. Change wordpress website URL:

UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, 'http://www.oldurl.com', 'http://www.newurl.com') WHERE option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl';

Once done, we need to run the following to edit all posts' GUID:

UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, 'http://www.oldurl.com','http://www.newurl.com');

Tips to Improve Website User Experience

improve website user experience

What's user experience? It's the concept of website design. The purpose is to offer visitor with the info what they expected and guide them to read further on your website. For ecommerce website, it means increasing of potential orders. Also, from the google latest website optimization guidelines, user experience will be considered the most important factor.

How to improve website user experience?

A good website always comes with nice user experience. For example the news report websites and ebay, we always spend lots of time once we opened up them. How they managed to do so? It's easy to exam the successful sites and get the basic ideas on how to do with our own site. Generally, the website user experience is composed by the following

  • Branding
  • Usability
  • Functionality
  • Content

What does that mean? Means regardless what kind of information we can provide on website, we must make sure the site is functional properly and usable first! For example if our website always gives out server errors or timed out for any reason, it'll never be considered as successful site. So make sure to get a quality web hosting service for your website and consult to a professional web designer to optimize the website structure properly.

Also, keep in mind user experience on website is continuing work. We need to adjust based on stats analysis and find out what to improve. The google webmaster tool is great for such purpose, so make sure to sign up with and add your website for examination.

Another important rule is user interaction. We might have tried out best to make the website user friendly but don't know how visitors think about. setup a poll and get suggestions from website visitor is always good idea. Today I went to ipage and fatcow website for the Feb promotions, when I tried to switch to another site they prompt up a survey window and ask me why to leave and how they can assist me better. Screenshot as below

fatcow survey

How do you think about? Personally I think their team is pretty smart to keep visitors for potential purchase. It's quite important for ecommerce website. When you're not sure where to start, asking for suggestions from your website visitor will help with the improvement directly. Because the end user's opinion is what we actually needed.

User experience vs SEO

I mentioned Google optimization from the first paragraph. So what's the relationship between SEO and website user experience? Are they conflict each other? Absolutely not. The website user experience is actually considered the most important factor from latest google policy. Means a website with good user experience will rank higher comparing to those pure traditional seo based websites. It's clear to see user experience will perform more in SEO industry and will change the working mode for SEO workers. The traditional factors like link building, article submiting etc are not so important anymore. It's good news for those webmasters who are trying to offer us useful information.


Top Asp.net Razor Hosting

Asp.net razor hosting

For asp.net website development, creating functions with the least codes is always expected. With the fast developing web technologies, many solutions are provided from MS team. Today let's check out one of the most popular technologies — Razor. If you're currently using it from your project, let's also find out which razor hosting plan is right to deal with.

Asp.net Razor Introduction

Razor is an ASP.NET programming syntax used to create dynamic web pages with the C# or VB programming languages. It's an ASP.NET view engine and known as "Razor Engine" or "Razor Syntax". The Razor engine can be added directly from IIS manager "Add > View" dialog. From there you can check & select all available view engines on your machine. Razor is based on ASP.NET and designed for creating web applications. It has the power of traditional ASP.NET markup, but it is easier to use and easier to learn.

What's amazing in Asp.net Razor?

The idea of Razor is to create an optimized syntax for HTML. For example the traditional ASP.NET .aspx markup syntax using <%= %> blocks to indicate code blocks. From Razor, we can use @ character directly for such job and no need explicit closing of the code-block. That means the work on code writing is greatly reduced and the overall code structure is more clear.

From the Razor official release, it has the following features included

  • Compact, Expressive, and Fluid: Razor minimizes the number of characters and keystrokes required in a file.
  • Easy to Learn: You use all your existing language and HTML skills.
  • Works with any Text Editor: Razor doesn’t require a specific tool.
  • Has great Intellisense: Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer 2010 have full editor intellisense for it.
  • Unit Testable: Without requiring a controller or web-server, and can be hosted in any unit test project.

Asp.net Razor tech resource:

TOP Asp.net razor web hosting

You might have experienced with the Razor superiority in web development. But who will provide us quality razor web hosting service and serv our razor web projects properly? Because Razor is Asp.net MVC 3.0 related technology, it's already 2 years since from the MVC 3.0 official release. So logically any quality ASP.NET hosting provider would be able to support Razor. However, because of the complex industry, it's hard to determine who's offering honest service and who's not. Based my personal experience with various windows hosting companies, I highly recommend the following

  • Arvixe — Primary recommendation for windows & Asp.net hosting solution. Client will get get Remote IIS manager access to customize your website directly on hosting server.
  • Hostgator — One of the best asp.net hosting providers who give out all up to date tech support and leading hosting features. They even give visitors an official coupon to save 20% from ordering.
  • Winhost — Winhost is one of the most affordable asp.net hosting providers with rich features hosting plans. With winhost is we'll get full version sql server database support with remote connection for any hosting plan.

Arvixe Asp.net razor hosting

Asp.net Razor Hosting FAQs

What's asp.net razor hosting?

Asp.net razor hosting means a type of hosting service with asp.net razor support. It's commonly supported by decent asp.net hosting plans.

What's asp.net razor hosting server requirement?

Asp.net razor works with asp.net MVC3. Means as long as hosting server has .net 4.0 pre-installed then there'll be no problem to host razor applications.

What factors to check for good asp.net razor hosting?

You're simply looking for a good asp.net hosting. The hosting service must be configurd with the latest server platform with up to date asp.net frameworks installation. The server uptime must be guaranteed for 99% at least with lots of leading hosting features to support your .net website. The most important part – their support staff must be knowlegeable to deal with common issues so you don't have to beg for better solution every time!

Who's best asp.net razor hosting?

The best asp.net hosting in our top list is arvixe. Either for hosting plan features or server uptime or tech support, Arvixe is simply unbeatable by most their competitors. The arvixe asp.net hosting service is setup on windows server 2012 with full trust support. You can fully customize configurations via remote iis manager. You also get dedicated application pools with dedicated memory resource.

Visit Arvixe for asp.net hosting plan features http://www.Arvixe.com


WPEngine Review, is it worth the pay?

WP engine review

So our topic turns to wordpress again in this article. We have introduced multiple popular wordpress hosting providers from older posts and received positive feedback from visitors. However, what will happen when you go over shared hosting environment and not ready to use a dedicated server yet? In this article let's check out another popular name – WPengine, a hosting service that's dedicated for wordpress support.

Unlike every other hosting company who offers various hosting solutions, the wpengine is only prepared for wordpress hosting with a professional team behind. What does that mean? Means as long as you like to use wordpress to setup your website, you can have almost every wp related problem fixed with their leading support. Common issue like wordpress plugin, theme or further wp development are all included with their support TOS.

Wp Engine Overview

WP engine was founded in July 2010 by a group of wordpress smart technicians. WP Engine is solely focused on providing WordPress hosting. You get fully and side by side support for any wordpress related issue. WP engine support center is located in Texas, USA

WP Engine Hosting Plans

WP Engine offers total of four wordPress hosting plans. They limit each hosting plans via different storage and number of monthly visits. Details can be found below

  • A single wordPress installation with up to 25,000 visits per month for personal plan.
  • 10 wordpress installations and up to 100,000 visits per month for professional plan.
  • 25 installations with up to 400,000 visits per month for business plan.

What's exactly good of WP Engine hosting?

Just like their website domain says, the engine of wordpress. Based on the rule "you get what you pay", the spotlights of wpengine are available in following terms

  • Powerful server — Because they're providing dedicated wordpress hosting support and wordpress is pretty server resource consuming, the wpengine support team configured hosting server with the fastest bare-metal hardware with leading network backbones. Once your wordpress is setup with their service, it's actually running on a cluster of servers for best performance.
  • Quality support — It would be great news for wp developers who require instant and professional wordpress technical support. The wpengine support is all of experts, either from live communication or ticket system, we will get what we expected in good manner.
  • Honest service — They don't offer us everything unlimited like most hosting companies. They just offer what we actually need, for example personal, business and premium plans all come with different features for different level service requirements. Not sure if they will satisify you? No worry, just sign up and try 15 days for FREE! They won't charge you during the 15 days period, they only charge until you'r satisified!

Check out wpengine full features from http://www.wpengine.com

wpengine advantages

What Would be WP Engine Weakness?

Price is definitely the weakness with wpengine services. The personal wordpress hosting plan comes with $29/mo and the business plan is configured for $249/mo which is almost dedicated server price. Unless people really have to go with wordpress and need that kind reliability, their service is not affordable for a regular personal website. But what to say, there're thousands of heavy traffic wordpress sites and if you have such website on more expensive dedicated server hosting, the wpengine is absolutely good to go for money saving.

So basically, who should use WP engin hosting service? If you're looking for budget and affordable wordpress hosting service, WP engine is never recommended based their price. However, if you're operating a large wordpress site that receives very heavy traffic and expect super security on the wordpress site, WP Engine is probably the best choice. If you don't mind the budget and wish the best site performance, you won't find a better solution other than WP Engine.

How do we think about WP Engine?

WPengine is pretty new comparing to many hosting services (started in 2010), but they definitely have a good start and easy to to get business success based on their honesty and profession. Only after 12 months growing up, the WP Engine is already a million dollar group with fast growth rate. Their professionality and reliability have been supporting hundreds of large wordpress platforms. If you have a heavy traffic wordpress site and don't want to deal with lots of technical stuff, wp engine is highly recommended service if you can afford the service fee.

Good & Affordable wordpress hosting choice?

Yes, if you're not ready to pay such amount yet for wordpress hosting and looking for high reliable service plan, Inmotion would be the best alternative solution. With only $5.95/mo you enjoy up to 90 days money back guarantee and quality wordpress tech support! Based on the inmotion advantages, you simply placed your wordpress site in safe place.

Check out Inmotion hosting wordpress plans http://www.inmotionhosting.com