Monday, July 30, 2007

Custom Error Pages

When your website is hosted by iPowerWeb you can be sure that you are located on a great server in one of the world's best data centers. In some cases you may find that your pages are bringing back errors when they load. If this is the case you can always create custom error pages if you do not feel satisfied with our default error pages. If you have no idea what a customer error page is, a custom error page is the HTML or text pages you can create to provide a more personalized error to your users. When a user enters your site and encounters an error such as 404, you can create your own customized 404-error page for them to see. This way, the user does not see a generic error, and may even be presented with a number to call or an email address to report the error and obtain assistance. If you need more information on custom error pages or if for some reason your entire website is not loading properly, please contact our customer support at your earliest convenience.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Changing Your Username

You are probably aware that all shared web hosting accounts with iPowerWeb include the award winning vDeck control panel. The vDeck control panel allows you to manage your entire site from one easy-to-use location.
After purchasing your web hosting account with iPowerWeb, you will immediately receive an order confirmation via email. This email will provide you with a description of the product(s) you purchased along with a summary of the contact information we have on file for your account. If for some reason you do not receive your order confirmation email immediately following your purchase, please contact our Customer Support Department at 888-511-HOST.
Shortly after receiving your order confirmation email, you should receive an account setup email from iPowerWeb. The account setup email will provide you with the login information to your control panel. Once you receive your account setup email you are ready to have your website published on the Internet. The account setup email informs you that your hosting account has been setup and you are able to login to your control panel in order to start creating your website. So as we just explained, you will receive an email with your login information to your vDeck control panel. In order to login to vDeck you will need both a username and password - this information is included in the account setup email. If you wish to change your username please note that all of our usernames are computer generated. You may change your account passwords; however, your username cannot be changed. If you wish to change your vDeck password you may do so once you have logged into vDeck.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Raw Logs

A common question our customers ask our support department is regarding raw logs and what they are. Raw Logs are the actual log files that store access and error entries. The file that is generates is said to be "raw" because it is not analyzed and is presented in its original state. You can view your raw logs as an iPowerWeb hosting user and it is quite simple to do so via your vDeck control panel.

Friday, July 20, 2007

MySQL Connection String Information

If you are not familiar with the Internet and/or web hosting you may not know what MySQL is or even what a connection string is. A connection string is a string passed in code that specifies connection information directly to the Driver Manager and driver. iPowerWeb hosting accounts come with MySQL support, this means that if your web site needs to run programs and scripts that use MySQL - you are in good shape.
You can use the code found below this line to connect to a MYSQL Database through ASP. Please note: iPowerWeb Technical Support does not provide assistance with web scripting. The code below is provided out of courtesy.

<%

Dim DBName,DBUser,DBPass,objRS,objConn

'----------------------------------------------------
'DO NOT MODIFY ABOVE THIS LINE
'----------------------------------------------------


' Fill in the information below inside the quotation marks
DBName=""
DBUser=""
DBPass=""


'----------------------------------------------------
'DO NOT MODIFY BELOW THIS LINE
'----------------------------------------------------

Set objConn=Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
objConn.ConnectionString="DRIVER={MySQL ODBC 3.51 Driver};Server=localhost;Database="&DBName&";UID="&DBUser&";pwd="&DBPass&";"
objConn.Open
Set objRS=Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")

%>

If you have additional questions or need assistance please contact our customer department at 888-511-HOST.

How To Setup a New Account via our Reseller Program

iPowerWeb has one of the Internet's most popular reseller programs. The iPowerWeb Reseller Program enables virtually anybody in the entire world to become their own web hosting provider. Dependent on the number accounts you have with iPowerWeb, you are able to purchase iPowerWeb hosting plans at a discounted rate. To learn more about the Reseller Program and other iPowerWeb Affiliate Programs - Please visit this page. http://www.ipowerweb.com/affiliates/index.html.
If you already are a member of the iPowerWeb Reseller Program, here is an explanation on how to purchase a new hosting account.

First: Log into your reseller control panel. Click on Hosting Accounts -> Overview ->( there will be a link at the top of the Overview section which reads)To Purchase a New Reseller Hosting account - please click here

Submit the domain ( you can choose a new or transfer). If you choose New we will register the domain for your client.

By choosing transfer you are indicating that your client already has a domain name which they own & which they want to use for their account. Choosing transfer does not automatically mean that we transfer the domain to us. You can leave the domain at the current registrar and have that registrar point the domain to our DNS or ask our transfer to transfer the domain to our registrar & we will have the DNS changed.

You contact our transfer department by sending an email to transfer@ipowerweb.com and the reseller generic DNS is;
NS1.SECUREHOSTSERVER.COM
NS2.SECUREHOSTSERVER.COM

Now, on page 2 of the sign up form, you will fill out your client's contact information for everything except for the billing, which is where you use your credit card information. This ensures that we charge you for purchasing it through us, then you are to mark up the rate & charge your client.

Choose a plan (3mo, 6mo, 1yr or 2yrs) & a password and then submit your order.

After the order is processed your client will receive an account setup email which will come from the email address you list in the Settings Area for Sales.

You will also receive a duplicate of the account setup email to that email you list in the settings / sales area.

If you ever have any other questions or wish to learn more about iPowerWeb hosting services and our Reseller Program, please call us at 888-511-HOST.

Monday, July 16, 2007

How To Retrieve Your Host Number

All iPowerWeb shared and dedicated hosting accounts are located on servers which are connected to the Internet and housed in our powerful and secure data centers. A common question that comes into our support center is regarding our hosting servers and how customers can retrieve their host number(s). Please refer to your account setup letter in order to find your host number. Your host number is located in section 2 (II) of your account setup letter. If you no longer have the setup letter, please email support@ipower.com so that we may send you another copy.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Google To Create A New Meta Tag

Google, one of the most popular search engines in the world hqs recently announced that it will add an ¨Unavailable After¨ meta tag. The "unavailable_after" tag will allow you to tell Google when Googlebot should no longer crawl that page. Jill explains that this tag comes in handy when you have a limited time offer promotional page, and on this page, the promotion will expire on a specific date. By using the "unavailable_after" tag, you can tell Google that they should not crawl this page, after the promotion expires. There are several practical scenarios for this tag. If you have a web page that you wish to have visited by the public for a limited time, this new meta tag would be great for your site. Web site owners may not want visitors on certain pages after a certain date. Therefore this tag will most likely make sure that your special page is not accessed via the search engines after the specified date.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Renaming Web Page Addresses

Every iPowerWeb hosting account comes with a free web builder which enables our users to build a professional website in minutes. When using our web builder tool to create your site you also have the ability to create your own url's for each web page. But in many cases, when a person creates a new web page (including a url) they generally may want to alter the content of the page or the url eventually down the line. At iPowerWeb we understand that this may be an issue, therefore we provide our users with the ability to easily rename their web pages and alter their website's content very quickly. Here is a quick list of instructions on how to rename pages on your web site.

Step 1:
Log into vDeck and click on Web Builder.

Step 2:
Click on Edit Pages.

Step 3:
Next to the page you want to rename, click the rename (T) icon.

Step 4:
Enter a new name for that page. Then click OK.

Step 5:
Your page will now be renamed.


For a screenshot walkthrough of these steps, please visit: IPWHelp.com

Swicki

I came across an interesting web tool today that I thought might be a good fit if you have a website with a search engine. The tool is called a Swicki. It's like a Wiki, but used for search.

According to their website: "Swickis are a cross between search engines and Wikipedia - the community can add, delete and improve the results."

From what I read on their website, it looks like the search engine brings up results based on what other visitors of your site have searched for. So the results are then uniquely relevant for your community. Once the results are shown, you can also vote for or against the results.

Changing the Appearance of vDeck

All iPowerWeb shared web hosting accounts use a state of the art control panel by vDeck. Each vDeck control panel allows our web hosting users to manage their entire website from one effective and easy to use portal. The vDeck control panel have received many awards for its advanced technology, ease of use, and design. The control panel is easy to use and looks great, although in some cases our users must alter the resolution of their vDeck control panel. Therefore our IPWHelp Center provides you with information on how to properly adjust the resolution of your vDeck control panel and provides you with many other tutorials on how to better utilize your web hosting account. So if you wish to receive more information on how to change the appearance of your vDeck control panel, please visit http://www.ipwhelp.com/view_tutorial.php?w=111

Sales Tax

When visiting the iPowerWeb website you may notice that our prices are very affordable especially when you compare them to those of other web hosting providers. Although is there a catch? Are there any hidden fees?
If you have read this blog, visited the iPowerWeb Help Center, or contacted our Support Department via telephone, email or chat - you are probably aware that all iPowerWeb products and services have no hidden fees, even sales tax. So the price you see is the price you pay. But it is important to note that the product that has never been on sale, the iPowerWeb BusinessPro Plan is currently on sale for a limited time. Please contact us directly or visit our website in order to get more information on this. Remember that for this limited time you could get your own iPowerWeb hosting account for only $4.95 per month. This price does not only apply to two year plans, one year hosting plans are also only $4.95 per month. So we all know that iPowerWeb hosting is cheap and great, but now it has gotten even cheaper.
All of the prices listed on our website are final. We do not charge sales tax for our services. You will not see and hidden fees for your hosting plan as well.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

What is IIS?

A common question that comes into our support center is regarding IIS? Such as what is IIS? Well in simple terms IIS is a web server software developed by Microsoft for the Windows platform. IIS performs virtually the same function as apache does on Unix/Linux based systems.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Only 2 days left of the biggest sale ever!

This is just a reminder that our biggest sale ever for $4.95/month web hosting is expiring in less than 2 days! This time we will not be extending it. If you'd like to take advantage of this awesome offer, make sure you place your order prior to Noon (PDT) on Friday.

If you have any questions, give us a call at 888-511-4678

Poorly Designed Websites

If you own a website you probably understand the importance of having a well designed site. The Internet is filled with websites that have enormous potential but are not able to capitalize on the great amount of opportunities due to the poor design of their site. At iPowerWeb we realize that your webiste is essential to your company's success, therefore all iPowerWeb hosting customers receive hundreds of free easy-to-use templates with each hosting account. iPowerWeb also provides professional design services at very cheap prices. For more information please contact the iPowerWeb Sales Department at 888-511-HOST or via email at Sales@iPowerWeb.com.
Time Magazine recently wrote an article on 5 of the most poorly designed websites on the Internet. Obviously there are websites out there that are much worse but these five sites are quite popular yet are poorly designed.
In no specific order the five websites are:
1. eHarmony.com
2. Evite.com
3. Meez.com
4. Myspace.com
5. SecondLife.com

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

The World's 50 Most Populous Countries

Rank Country Population
1. China 1,321,851,888
2. India 1,129,866,154
3. United States 301,139,947
4. Indonesia 234,693,997
5. Brazil 190,010,647
6. Pakistan 169,270,617
7. Bangladesh 150,448,339
8. Russia 141,377,752
9. Nigeria 135,031,164
10. Japan 127,467,972
11. Mexico 108,700,891
12. Philippines 91,077,287
13. Vietnam 85,262,356
14. Germany 82,400,996
15. Egypt 80,264,543
16. Ethiopia 76,511,887
17. Turkey 71,158,647
18. Iran 65,397,521
19. Thailand 65,068,149
20. Congo, Dem. Rep. 64,606,759
21. France 61,083,916
22. United Kingdom 60,776,238
23. Italy 58,147,733
24. Korea, South 49,044,790
25. Myanmar
(Burma) 47,373,958
26. Ukraine 46,299,862
27. Colombia 44,227,550
28. South Africa 43,997,828
29. Sudan 42,292,929
30. Spain 40,448,191
31. Argentina 40,301,927
32. Poland 38,518,241
33. Tanzania 38,139,640
34. Kenya 36,913,721
35. Morocco 33,757,175
36. Canada 33,390,141
37. Algeria 33,333,216
38. Afghanistan 31,889,923
39. Uganda 30,262,610
40. Nepal 28,901,790
41. Peru 28,674,757
42. Uzbekistan 27,780,059
43. Saudi Arabia 27,601,038
44. Iraq 27,499,638
45. Venezuela 26,084,662
46. Malaysia 24,821,286
47. Korea, North 23,301,725
48. Taiwan 23,174,294
49. Ghana 22,931,299
50. Romania 22,276,056

Monday, July 9, 2007

PlayStation3 Price Drop

Sony the maker of many popular video gaming consoles recently announced that its PlayStation3 (PS3) system has dropped in price. The PS3 with a 60GB hard drive now only costs $499, which has caused a 2800% increase in sales of the product. The PS3 is now the #1 selling product in Amazon.com's video game section and is one of the hottest products on the site. The price cut of $100 is significant although the PS3 is still one of the most expensive video game consoles in the world. It is interesting to find such a significant jump in sales due to a 17% increase in price. Also if you have not heard, iPowerWeb has decided to continue its very popular 4th of July sale for a few more days. If you are yet to take advantage of the dramatic drop in price for iPowerWeb web hosting, please note that you only have until noon PDT of July 13th until the sale ends. If you wish to receive more information about this sale or iPowerWeb, please contact us at 888-511-HOST.

Lose Weight Playing Nintendo Wii

As many people are probably aware, Nintendo's Wii is extremely popular and is changing the way people play video games forever. Your Wii could now be a part of your weight loss regime. For example a man is claiming that by playing his Wii for 30-45 minutes everyday, he has lost 10 pounds. At first it may seem like a great thing but playing Nintendo in order to lose weight may not be the wisest move. Rather you may want to consider eating the right foods and exercising properly in order to treat your body well. The Wii has become very well-known and it is played across the world, but when thinking of the Wii not too many people think of the gaming console as a tool for exercise, rather it is regarded as a fun way to entertain a person. So if you have a Wii or are considering one, please enjoy it as entertainment and not as exercise. It is far better to go running or head to your local gym in order to have properly exercise your body.

How To Unfreeze an iPod

The iPod by Apple has grown to become one of the most popular music/video players in history. Almost every person has one or at least knows of a person with an iPod. If you own an iPod you may notice that the device occasionally freezes and stops working. If this ever happens to you, don't worry - it is quite common. We will provide you with one method on how to properly unfreeze your frozen iPod. One of the most popular and effective ways to unfreeze your iPod is to hold down the middle and top button for about 10 seconds. This should help unfreeze the device. In some cases you may notice that the common steps to unfreeze the iPod are not working and in this case you may want to visit your local electronics store, the store you purchased the iPod from, your local Apple retailer or contact Apple support directly. Hopefully you never have to go through this but if you do - you are now partially prepared.


Unfreeze iPod

SOLUTION - HOLD THE CENTER BUTTON AND THE TOP BUTTON (MENU) DOWN FOR ABOUT TEN SECONDS.

Saturday, July 7, 2007

Lucky Day 7.7.07

Today is considered a very lucky day by some. It's the almost numerically perfect 7-7-07! As the day falls on a Saturday, many couples have chosen to get married today to add some extra luck. According to Vegas.com, hotel reservations have spiked in Las Vegas six times greater than those for the previous weekend.

Due to release on this lucky day today, is what I think looks like a pretty cool gadget. It's called a wildcharger. It is a wireless charging device for all your gadgets including cell phones and iPods. You simply plug in an adapter on your devices and lay them on the pad to juice up. It looks fairly simple and clutter free, and the best part is the price is rumored to be under $50!

Most Searched keywords

If you go to Google.com/trends you will see a list of the most searched terms for the present day. Here's the list that is showing for today, July 7, 2007:

1. hank kuehne
2. kenna
3. god tv
4. swimfan
5. karen duffy
6. iron carbonate
7. the carpetbaggers
8. kt tunstall
9. the call nashville
10. hank juehne venus williams

I have to admit, I know very little about any of the above topics. Maybe I'll do some searching to find out more about them!

Friday, July 6, 2007

$4.95 Sale Extended!

Due to the overwhelming response from our Fourth of July sale, we have decided to extend our biggest sale ever for one more week! This sale offers our normally-priced $7.95/month Business Pro hosting package for the extremely low price of $4.95/month. This discount is available only on our 12-month and 24-month plans. Hosting accounts will renew at regular rates.

We extended it for only one week, expiring July 13th at Noon (PDT).

Thursday, July 5, 2007

vDeck

All of our hosting accounts, from shared to dedicated, come complete with a state of the art control panel. We take steps to ensure that the control panel you use is powerful yet easy to use. We are confident that you will be completely satisfied with the control panels we have to offer. For New Shared Hosting: vDeck For Older Shared Hosting: cPanel (this option no longer available) For Dedicated Servers [linux/freebsd]: Plesk 7 For Dedicated Servers [windows]: Internal Windows Control Panel For Virtual Servers: Webmin If you are on an older cPanel server and wish to switch to vDeck, please contact support and let us know. The change will require you to start a new account on vDeck from scratch (you upload all files, etc..). The old cPanel account will be removed and you can no longer switch back to cPanel. To access your control panel, please refer to your account setup letter. It will provide instructions on logging into it. If by any chance you no longer have that account setup letter, we will be happy to send it to you. Just email support@ipower.com or billing@ipower.com and request your account setup letter. We will send it to the email address we have on file.

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

4th of July Fun Facts

30 places have "Liberty" in their name. Example: Liberty, Missouri (Population: 26,232)
5 places have "America" in their name. Example: American Fork, Utah (Population: 24,941)
1 place with "Patriot" in their name: Patriot, Indiana (Population: 202)

More than 66 million Americans will participate in a Barbecue at least once during the year. No matter where you are:
  • There's a 1 in 6 chance the beef for your burgers came from Texas
  • There's a 1 in 4 chance your hot dogs and ribs came from Iowa
  • The chicken most likely came from Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, North Carolina or Mississippi.
  • Lettuce was most likely from California.
  • Tomatoes are probably from Florida or California.
  • There's a 1 in 3 chance your baked beans are probably from North Dakota.
$128.8 million is the value of fireworks that are imported from China (based on 2002 Census info).

$4.95/month is the price of hosting from iPowerWeb to celebrate the 4th of July!

Have a great fourth of July tomorrow! We're open 24hours a day, 365 days a year to make sure we're available for any of your hosting needs.

Monday, July 2, 2007

How to fix a stuck pixel on LCD Monitor

WikiHow has a how-to guide to just about everything. This guide I found particularly interesting. I don't currently have a stuck pixel, but if I ever get one I'll know exactly where to go to find out what to do. The first method they list to fix a stuck pixel is called the Pressure Method. My luck using this method is that I'd break more pixels trying to fix the first one:
  1. Turn off your computer's monitor.
  2. Get yourself a damp washcloth, so that you don't scratch your screen.
  3. Take a household pen, pencil, screwdriver, or some other sort of instrument with a focused, but relatively dull, point. A very good tool would be a stylus.
  4. Fold the washcloth to make sure you don't accidentally puncture it and scratch the screen.
  5. Apply pressure through the folded washcloth with the instrument to exactly where the stuck pixel is. Try not to put pressure anywhere else, as this may make more stuck pixels.
  6. While applying pressure, turn on your computer and screen.
  7. Remove pressure and the stuck pixel should be gone. This works as the liquid in the liquid crystal has not spread into each little pixel. This liquid is used with the backlight on your monitor, allowing different amounts of light through, which creates the different colors.
The second method is the Tapping Method. This seems a bit safer than Pressure method, but still is risky in that you could cause more pixels to break.
  1. Turn on the computer and LCD screen.
  2. Display a black image, which will show the stuck pixel very clearly against the background. (It is very important that you are showing a black image and not just a blank signal, as you need the backlighting of the LCD to be illuminating the back of the panel).
  3. Find a pen with a rounded end. A Sharpie marker should be fine for this.
  4. Use the rounded end of the pen to gently tap where the stuck pixel is - not too hard to start with, just enough to see a quick white glow under the point of contact. If you didn't see a white glow, then you didn't tap hard enough, so use just slightly more pressure this time.
  5. Start tapping gently. Increase the pressure on the taps gradually for 5-10 taps until the pixel rights itself.
  6. Display a white image (an empty text document is good for this) to verify that you haven't accidentally caused more damage than you fixed.
And finally there's the software method which should probably be your first choice and if that fails try the other 2 methods.

1. Try running pixel fixing software (see external links). Stuck pixels can often be re-energised by rapidly turning them on and off.

A note of caution: These instructions will fix "stuck" pixels, not "dead" ones. Dead pixels appear black while stuck pixels can be one constant color like red, blue or green.