http://www.aziom.com.au/ Web design, web hosting, domain names and email marketing en-au dale at aziom dot com dot au Copyright 2012 http://www.aziom.com.au/news/article/2012/02/04/How_to_choose_a_Password http://www.aziom.com.au/news/article/2012/02/04/How_to_choose_a_Password Most people use an easy to remember password for web sites. But this password may not be secure and some may be able to work out your password and steal your money or even your identity. Here are five tips for more secure passwords to protect yourself:

1. Use a different password for each web site.
2. Don’t use personal information in your password like your partner’s or pet’s name, birth date, suburb you live in or other information that someone else can easily find out about you.
3. Don’t use words that appear in the dictionary. Hackers often use software that tries words from the dictionary to try and guess your password.
4. Use a combination of upper and lower case characters, numbers and even punctuation to made your password harder to guess.
5. Remembering all these passwords can be hard. But there are some great software tools to made you life easier. They will store all your passwords and you only need to remember one password to access them. They also add a button to your web browser so it will enter the username and password for the web site you are on. For both Mac and Windows, try RoboForm or 1Password. On the Mac, checkout Wallet.

Here is a video from Mozilla (the people that create the web browser Firefox) on how to create a secure password:

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 20:18:00 +1100 http://www.aziom.com.au/news/article/2012/01/26/New_Australian_Web_Hosting http://www.aziom.com.au/news/article/2012/01/26/New_Australian_Web_Hosting To celebrate Australia Day 2012, we are announcing five new web hosting plans on our new Australian server in Sydney. The new plans have double the storage space of our old plans and increased monthly data transfer while keeping the same prices.

If your customers are mainly in Australia, then our Australian Web Hosting will give your customers faster access to your web site. Testing has shown a 63% improvement in the download time for our company web site which we have already moved to the new Australian server.

Search engines like Google™ and Yahoo™ now use the loading time of a web page as a factor in how they rate a page. This rating effects where your web page appears in the search results.

Are new Australian Web Hosting Plans are:

	Bronze AU	Silver AU	Gold AU	Titanium AU	Platinum AU
Price (per year)	$110	$180	$300	$500	$750
Set-up	Free	Free	Free	Free	Free
Disk Space	200 MB	1 GB	2 GB	4 GB	6 GB
Bandwidth	1 GB	5 GB	10 GB	20 GB	30 GB

You can view the full plan details on the Australian Web Hosting Plans page.

Our US Web Hosting Plans have also been upgraded and are now up to 25% off the old price.

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:52:00 +1100 http://www.aziom.com.au/news/article/2011/07/06/New_Web_Browsers_Improve_Web_Sites http://www.aziom.com.au/news/article/2011/07/06/New_Web_Browsers_Improve_Web_Sites The web is built on standards. The latest standard that is currently being finalised is HTML5. HTML5 is the language used to describe a web page. The new features in HTML5 (and related technologies) include:

• Visual effects like rounded corners, graduated fills, shadows and translucent elements. To deliver these effects before we used images which slowed down the loading of the web page.
• Improved support for video and audio.
• Added support for animation and interactivity. You can now have games in a web page.
• Improved form elements with validation and new form controls.
• Improved support for people with visual disabilities.

Even though the standard is not finalised yet, new web browsers support most of the new features. Internet Explorer 9.0 and the latest version of Firefox, Chrome and Safari support HTML5 features.

Most of the popular web browsers now support these new features. Here are the top 12 most popular web browsers in Australia for June 2011 (click on the graph to visit the StatCounter web site):



The new HTML5 features are not supported in Internet Explorer below version 9. There are still 29.42% of people still using Internet Explorer 8. Most of which can't upgrade to Internet Explorer 9.0 because they still use Windows XP which is not supported by Internet Explorer 9.0. This will change when they upgrade from the 10 year-old operating system.

In the meantime, we are embracing the new features in HTML5 but we also have to make sure that people who use an older web browser can still use the web site. In some cases we can patch older browsers to support new features. But in most cases, we create different version of the web page for older web browsers.

In fact, our web site uses some of the new features like the rounded corners on the calendar. However, if you have an older version of Internet Explorer (IE), the corners remain square and the lines between the dates do not display. Even though there are differences between the web browsers, the web page still remains functional.

We test web sites in Internet Explorer 7 and 8 as well as Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Wed, 06 Jul 2011 11:36:42 +1100 http://www.aziom.com.au/news/article/2011/01/31/Improved_Web_Hosting_Plans http://www.aziom.com.au/news/article/2011/01/31/Improved_Web_Hosting_Plans Introducing our new Web Hosting Plans with at least 50% more space for your web site, emails and photos.

The new plans give you the space to grow your web site to attract new customers. You now have the space to add even more information about your products and services.

Our prices for the web hosting plans remain the same.

	Old Web Space	Old Traffic	New Web Space	New Traffic
Bronze Plan	60 MB	600 MB	90 MB	630 MB
Silver Plan	250 MB	2,500 MB	400 MB	2,800 MB
Gold Plan	600 MB	6,000 MB	1,000 MB	7,000 MB
Titanium Plan	1,200 MB	12,000 MB	2,000 MB	14,000 MB
Platinum Plan	1,900 MB	19,000 MB	3,000 MB	21,000 MB

If you have any questions about the changes or how you can change your web site, please contact us.

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 11:18:00 +1100 http://www.aziom.com.au/news/article/2010/09/16/When_does_your_Domain_Name_Expire http://www.aziom.com.au/news/article/2010/09/16/When_does_your_Domain_Name_Expire Every few months we get a call from a customer who is having trouble accessing their web site and emails. They have purchased their web hosting through us but registered their domain name elsewhere.

When you register a domain name, the email address you enter is used to remind you when the domain name comes up for renewal. If you change your email address then you don't receive the renewal emails and when the time comes, the domain name expires without warning.

When a domain name expires, people can't access your web site and you can't send or receive emails. Suddenly, your business disappears from the internet. Even when you realise what has happened, the process or renewing the domain name can take days to complete - leaving you without any presence on the internet in the interim.

If you have registered your domain name with us, we contact you prior to the expiry of the domain name so you can renew. However, if you use another company to register your domain name, make sure you keep your email address up-to-date and know when your domain name will expire.

If you want to check which email address is used with your domain name or to find out the expiry date, visit our Domain Tools page. Enter your Domain Name, select Whois from the popup menu and enter the Verification Code. Australian domain names (those ending in .au) will not give you an expiry date.

You can also transfer your domain names to us and we will try our best to contact you before a domain name expires. Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:20:55 +1100 http://www.aziom.com.au/news/article/2010/09/16/Getting_Google_to_notice_your_Web_Site http://www.aziom.com.au/news/article/2010/09/16/Getting_Google_to_notice_your_Web_Site Google is the search engine that more people turn to than any other. So to get Google to take more notice of your web site can improve the position of your site in the search results.

Google has these computers than check web sites and index the content and store the results in a database. When someone does a search, the computers at Google uses the information it has gathered to display a list of web pages for that search. With many millions of web pages, Google's computer don't index every web page daily. Google works out if the web page has changed since the last time it was indexed. If it has not changed, Google won't bother re-indexing the web page for a number of weeks or months. However, web pages that change regularly are indexed on a daily or even more than once a day. Web sites from newspapers for example would be indexed by Google more than once a day.

Also, Google ranks web pages and the ones that change more often get a better ranking and are more likely to closer to the top of the search results.

By changing the content on your web site on a regular basis, you will encourage Google to index your site more regularly and help to improve the position of your site in search results. Adding a blog (web log) or news section to your site will also engage your existing web site visitors as well as new visitors. Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:16:09 +1100