Why Is Market Research Important And How Does Market Samurai Help

Advice for Internet Marketers with Ethics

While most internet marketers have turned to social media to sell their products and services, developing a strong email campaign is still an essential component to the entire internet marketing field. In fact, some experts forecast that consumers will contribute about $67.8 billion into the U.S. market simply from making purchases through email marketing this [...]

I’ve been blogging daily for nearly 14 months now. 2 years ago, I hardly would have believed that possible. But with the right software, it hasn’t been all that difficult. However, I’ve just committed to a few major projects with a business partner that are going to consume as much time as I can give them [...]

The other day, Robin over at Profit Blog shared some good tips on how to ensure that your blog comments get approved (rather than getting junked because they look like spam): The reason so many marketers are unsuccessful with blog commenting is because they cannot understand what it means to add value. So below are a [...]

Before we get to internet marketing, let’s talk about the “Stupid Tax”. According to the Urban Dictionary, it’s: The cost associated with engaging in any state sanctioned form of long odds gambling, i.e. playing the lottery. Why “Stupid Tax”? As I wrote back in July: I once calculated that winning the lottery is about like picking the right [...] Limited time offer (the biggest discount I've ever offered): get $616.59 worth of software and services for only $99. Visit http://customers.geckotribe.com/offers.php for details.

We finally got our pumpkins carved last night. The kids sketched out their designs and then drew them on the pumpkins for my wife and I to carve (they’re a little too young yet to do it themselves, but are old enough to enjoy seeing their designs finished.) For mine, I decided to try something a [...] Limited time offer (the biggest discount I've ever offered): get $616.59 worth of software and services for only $99. Visit http://customers.geckotribe.com/offers.php for details.

I saw an interesting tweet the other day from Dr. Mani, but I’m going to give it to you one half at a time. Raise your right hand and repeat after me, “I will not skip ahead and peek at the second half.” Okay, here’s the first half: Success Key: Leverage everything to your advantage… This is an [...] Limited time offer (the biggest discount I've ever offered): get $616.59 worth of software and services for only $99. Visit http://customers.geckotribe.com/offers.php for details.

Question: should you focus on one thing, or diversify? Answer: no. You should do both. But in the right way. Today, Terry Dean posted a collection of 21 habits of successful entrepreneurs. Two that jumped out at me were: 3. Choose one market and focus on it. It’s tough for experienced marketers to manage several different markets at once. A [...] Limited time offer (the biggest discount I've ever offered): get $616.59 worth of software and services for only $99. Visit http://customers.geckotribe.com/offers.php for details.

I was going to say “introductory premium price”, but I think we’re a little muddy on the meaning of “premium”. When I hear “premium”, I think “better”. But in fact, premium means “a sum added to an ordinary price or charge.” It’s what you pay extra to get something better. Normally, we expect introductory prices to be [...] Limited time offer (the biggest discount I've ever offered): get $616.59 worth of software and services for only $99. Visit http://customers.geckotribe.com/offers.php for details.

How do you get prospects to buy your products? Not by convincing them to want it, but by showing them that it’s what they already want. A few days ago, Bryan Eisenberg shared a list of 20 reasons why people buy. Here are a few (click the link to see the rest that he lists…and then [...] Limited time offer (the biggest discount I've ever offered): get $616.59 worth of software and services for only $99. Visit http://customers.geckotribe.com/offers.php for details.

I was browsing the archives of Dr. Mani’s blog today and came across this article about pricing (discussing something he learned from Dan Kennedy): That lesson in pricing remained one of my most profitable in the 15 years I?ve been creating and selling infoproducts online. It distills down to this simple principle: “Price lesser than value — [...] Limited time offer (the biggest discount I've ever offered): get $616.59 worth of software and services for only $99. Visit http://customers.geckotribe.com/offers.php for details.

Internet Marketing Tools

**Sorry guys, the Rank Tracker Beta program has now closed! A huge thank you to everyone who participated in the Beta, we received some excellent feedback and made many changes to the software as a result. For everyone else, be sure to check your inboxes over the next few weeks for more information about the [...]

I’m really glad to be able to share with you some more information about the new Rank Tracker service. This blog post contains a lot of information, but I wanted to answer as many of your questions as possible about our new service. In particular this blog post will cover: A recap on the current status of [...]

Hi All, A quick update on our progress in restoring Market Samurai functionality and some answers to common questions. First up, a big thank you to all of you who’ve posted, emailed and tweeted various encouraging words (our users are awesome!). As mentioned in our previous post, we’re genuinely sorry for the outage. The good news is that [...]

If you’ve tried to launch and use Market Samurai in the last few days you’ll have noticed that there are large areas of functionality that are broken. What Happened? As you know, Market Samurai pulls data from dozens of different search data providers so that you have all the data you need in a single place to [...]

So you?ve found a great keyword ? It?s got good traffic levels, high commercial value and it?s extremely relevant to the product or service that you have for sale. Sounds like a winner right? Well ? maybe? You see the biggest mistake that new online business owners make is that they select keywords that are just too difficult [...]

In our last video, Dave Jenyns shared his “George Foreman Method” which is a proven 7 step process for building a team of ‘A Players’ that can help you to take your business to the next level. In the second video of this Outsourcing Series, Pete Williams is going to spill the beans on his incredible [...]

Following on from the great feedback we received from our recent Conversion series, today we want to kick off a new series targeted at another area in which a lot of online business owners have MAJOR problems, which is ‘Outsourcing’. You’ve probably already realized that with keyword research, content creation, article distribution, social media and all [...]

As we end our series on conversion, I want to reinforce that a low conversion rate will cripple everything else you do online. You can?t afford to bid in PPC, your efforts in SEO will yield small results and affiliates won?t promote you. In today?s increasingly competitive online space you need to focus attention on boosting [...]

Most folks know that inbound links to your website (when combined with on-site optimisation) are the key drivers of ranking, especially for high value keywords. Most of us also know that not all links are equal and that links from high authority sites carry a lot more power (or ?juice? as we like to call [...]

Get Your Free Checklist, plus, take our ?30 Minute Site Review Challenge? and win one of three website critiques by a Samurai staffer. Today we ?bring it home? on this whole topic of conversion. By now, I hope you?re totally convinced that testing is the easy path to increased profit, a better lifestyle and a real [...]

Premium WordPress Themes

We are happy to announce the release of the RealPro 1.0 child theme. This WordPress theme works on the Genesis Framework and can be purchased here.

RealPro was developed by Chris Ford of Creativity Included, and is categorized as a Community theme. These are not included in the Pro Plus All-Themes package, but we assure you that the design and coding of them are top-notch.

Theme Features

The RealPro child theme includes the following features: 6 layout options, custom background, custom boxes, custom buttons, custom menus, featured images, fixed width, property listings, theme options.

Take the RealPro theme for a test drive…

We are happy to announce the release of the Adorable 1.0 child theme. This WordPress theme works on the Genesis Framework and can be purchased here.

Adorable was developed by Lindsey Riel of Pretty Darn Cute Design, and is categorized as a Community theme. These are not included in the Pro Plus All-Themes package, but we assure you that the design and coding of them are top-notch.

Click here to see how the Adorable theme looks across mobile devices.

Theme Features

The Adorable child theme includes the following features: 5 color styles (colorful, red & aqua, pink & green, teal & orange and pink & charcoal), 6 layout options, custom background, custom boxes, custom buttons, custom menus, featured images, fixed width, mobile responsive, theme options.

Take the Adorable theme for a test drive…

We are happy to announce the release of the Mindstream 1.0 child theme. This WordPress theme works on the Genesis Framework and can be downloaded by Pro Plus members in the support forum. All others can purchase the package here.

The Mindstream theme is the tenth theme released here which has been developed to be mobile responsive in design. The first nine themes are Agency, Balance, Decor, eleven40, Focus, Generate, Mocha, Prose and Streamline.

Click here to see how the Mindstream theme looks across mobile devices.

Post Formats

When WordPress 3.1 was released, they added the ability to publish various “types” of posts called post formats – similar to the way Tumblr allows you.

Mindstream supports the following post formats: aside, audio, chat, gallery, image, link, quote, status and video.

Theme Features

The Mindstream theme includes the following features: 3 layout options, custom background, custom menus, featured images, fixed width, mobile responsive, post formats, theme options, threaded comments.

Take the new Mindstream theme for a test drive…

We are happy to announce the release of the Decor 1.0 child theme. This WordPress theme works on the Genesis Framework and can be downloaded by Pro Plus members in the support forum. All others can purchase the package here.

The Decor theme is the ninth theme released here which has been developed to be mobile responsive in design. The first eight themes are Agency, Balance, eleven40, Focus, Generate, Mocha, Prose and Streamline.

Click here to see how the Decor theme looks across mobile devices.

Theme Features

The Decor child theme includes the following features: 4 color styles (amethyst, copper, gold and silver), 6 layout options, custom background, custom menus, featured images, fixed width, mobile responsive, theme options, threaded comments.

Take the new Decor theme for a test drive…

If you’ve watched the HBO series Game of Thrones (or have read through the Song of Ice and Fire series), you’ll know that one of the major themes throughout the story is the subtle art of politicking.

In order to survive you’d better know what your enemy’s next move will be — and be able to defend or counter it quickly.

It’s no secret that the majority of web browsing is sliding quickly over to mobile devices.

Because of this, designers and developers have been forced to confront their new handheld overlords. We’ve been given quite a few responsive weapons that have beaten back these devices including: media queries, fluid layouts, and all sorts of fun javascript hacks.

But the audience keeps showing up on new mobile devices every day.

New challenges come with each new mobile device on the scene. The good news is that we don’t need to pay attention to every single mobile device that comes out, or give fealty to their demands. But when the king of mobile devices brings a new heir into the realm? We’d do well to pay attention.

With the introduction of the new iPad and including both generations of the iPhone 4, Apple now has millions of devices in the hands of its loyal subjects, burning their retinas with beautiful, high-density displays.

The people of the realm spend hours gazing at the graphics you’ve designed on their new toys. If you haven’t designed those graphics correctly, their blurry appearance might just land your pretty little head on a pike in King’s Landing

We don’t want to lose our heads over an issue that’s so easy to deal with, so squire alongside me and let I’ll show you what you can do to bring graphical peace to the mobile kingdom … for a week or two, at least.

When Apple introduced the iPhone 4 and its Retina Display, they stopped measuring the screen in pixels and started measuring in points.

Each point is actual four pixels. The display blows up each pixel 2 times its size so that the physical dimensional size of the graphic stays the same — whether you are looking at it on an iPhone 4s or an iPhone 3gs.

This is important because if they hadn’t doubled every pixel, everything would have been too small to see properly. You didn’t want to have people squinting, pinching and dragging to see things they had no problem seeing before.

But it also created a new problem, because we know what happens when you start duplicating pixels and enlarging graphics — they get blurry. They get blurry fast.

The graphic above has been exaggerated a bit to illustrate my point.

When you look at graphics that were not specifically enhanced for the Retina Display on a Retina display, you’re not going to see a huge blurry mess. What you’ll see are edges that are not as clean as they should be, and text will be just a little harder to read.

Some would say, what’s the big deal? I can handle my edges being a little flat.

Personally, I want my graphics to look as crisp and clean as a new dollar. Aside from my own preference, ask yourself this: What if, in the next year or two, that pixel density doubles again? What if it triples? We’d have a real problem on our hands.

So what’s the solution?

One option is to use a media query to target these high density devices, creating low resolution and high resolution graphics.

@media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2), screen and (max--moz-device-pixel-ratio: 2) { logo { background: url(images/scribe-logo@2x.png); background-size: 130px 40px; } }

Take a look at the two graphics below.

The first is our normal image, the second is our high resolution image.

Zoom in on either your mobile device or your desktop browser and you’ll be able to see that the first image will get blurry as it’s enlarged, but the second will remain nice and crisp.

This works well, but it’s a lot of extra work to produce multiple versions of all your graphics.

Ultimately it would be nice if we had graphics that could scale up and down seamlessly without losing any quality. Raster or pixel based graphics won’t do this so we would have to use vector based graphics.

One of the newer ways to do this is to use an icon font.

There are a lot of benefits to using icon fonts for graphics:

Infinitely scaleable Resolution independent Supported by all browsers young and old You can design on the fly (easily change colors with css) Small file size

Here’s how it’s done:

Upload your icon font file to your web server. We’re using a free one called Modern Pictograms from Font Squirrel (I’ll provide a list of great ones at the bottom of the post) Reference the font file in your css @font-face { font-family: 'ModernPictogramsNormal'; src: url('http://www.studiopress.com/wp-content/uploads/modernpics-webfont.eot'); src: url('http://www.studiopress.com/wp-content/uploads/modernpics-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'), url('http://www.studiopress.com/wp-content/uploads/modernpics-webfont.woff') format('woff'), url('http://www.studiopress.com/wp-content/uploads/modernpics-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'), url('http://www.studiopress.com/wp-content/uploads/modernpics-webfont.svg#ModernPictogramsNormal') format('svg'); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; } Create your markup <div><span class="icon">i</span>View Basket</div> <div><span class="icon">a</span>Read More</div> <div><span class="icon">(</span>Settings</div> Create the properties for your icons in your css .icon { color: #3090cf; font-family: 'ModernPictogramsNormal'; font-size: 18px; padding: 0 15px; } @font-face { font-family: 'ModernPictogramsNormal'; src: url('http://www.studiopress.com/wp-content/uploads/modernpics-webfont.eot'); src: url('http://www.studiopress.com/wp-content/uploads/modernpics-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'), url('http://www.studiopress.com/wp-content/uploads/modernpics-webfont.woff') format('woff'), url('http://www.studiopress.com/wp-content/uploads/modernpics-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'), url('http://www.studiopress.com/wp-content/uploads/modernpics-webfont.svg#ModernPictogramsNormal') format('svg'); font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; } .icon { font-family: 'ModernPictogramsNormal'; font-size: 18px; padding: 0 15px; color: #3090cf; }

And here is the results…

iView Basket aRead More (Settings Here’s are some great icon fonts lists: http://owltastic.com/2011/08/simple-interface-design-icons/ http://css-tricks.com/flat-icons-icon-fonts/ http://www.delicious.com/stacks/view/SC3hpq

Are you looking to have your site built on the Genesis Framework? Have you had a chance to see all of the amazing sites built with it? If not, take some time to check out the Theme Showcase, and you’ll see just how powerful Genesis can be.

At StudioPress, we believe in giving credit where it’s due. Genesis serves as the foundation of more than 250,000 sites, and we’d like to show you who’s behind some of the best designed sites on the internet. Below you will meet some very talented people – whom we consider friends and are among the Genesis Developers we recommend that are available for hire.

Heather Jones, Viva la Violette

I have been designing and creating websites for twelve years, and I started Viva la Violette in 2008. I?m a video game artist turned web designer, and I design using WordPress + StudioPress for my blog and web design projects. I would define my style as feminine and chic, and I love turning the web into a beautiful place one blog or website at a time.

The best part of this journey is that I get to work from home and watch my son grow up, and for that I am truly grateful. If I?m not designing, I probably have a toddler, video game controller, or mocha frappe in hand (and sometimes all three).

Website: Viva la Violette · Twitter: @vivalaviolette · Portfolio: View Showcase Sites

Jeff Sarris & Dave LaTulippe, Spyr Media

Meet Jeff. He?s the one who makes those designs come to life. Art galleries everywhere fawn over framed prints of his code, but he?ll never sell out to the man. Meet Dave. He?s the creative who dreams up the tasty designs that make your company look and smell good. He?s a pro at adding just the right amount of pop. Together, these guys are Spyr Media.

Website: Spyr Media · Twitter: @SPYRmedia · Portfolio: View Showcase Sites

Courtney Kirkland, Media Mom Creative

I have always been a creative person. I fell in love with Graphic Design at an early age when AOL Profiles and Blogs were “in”. Since then, I’ve taken a handful of classes, constantly expanding my knowledge of CSS, PHP, and Branding. When I moved my own site from the Blogger Platform to WordPress, I knew immediately that StudioPress was the one.

The Genesis Framework has completely transformed that way that I design. As a Military Wife, I am incredibly grateful for the ability to do what I love from home while raising my son. There is no better feeling than giving a client the Blog or Website that they have dreamed of.

Website: Media Mom Creative · Twitter: @CourtneyKirklnd · Portfolio: View Showcase Sites

Ok, Now it’s Time to Say Hello!

If you’ve worked with any of these developers, or want to comment on their work, go ahead and leave them a comment below. I’m sure they’d love to hear from you!

We are happy to announce the release of the Optimal 1.0 child theme. This WordPress theme works on the Genesis Framework and can be purchased here.

Optimal was developed by Wes Straham of Appfinite, and is categorized as a Community theme. These are not included in the Pro Plus All-Themes package, but we assure you that the design and coding of them are top-notch.

Click here to see how the Optimal theme looks across mobile devices.

Theme Features

The Optimal child theme includes the following features: 10 color styles (black, brown, dark blue, dark gray, default blue, green, orange, purple, red and silver), 6 layout options, custom background, custom boxes, custom buttons, custom menus, featured images, fixed width, mobile responsive, theme options.

Take the Optimal theme for a test drive…

We are happy to announce the release of the Mocha 2.0 child theme. This WordPress theme works on the Genesis Framework and can be downloaded by Pro Plus members in the support forum. All others can purchase the package here.

For those who already have the Mocha 1.0 theme, the updated version will be sent out to the email address you used to purchase.

The Mocha theme is the eighth theme released here which has been developed to be mobile responsive in design. The first seven themes built with mobile responsive design are Agency, Balance, eleven40, Focus, Generate, Prose and Streamline.

Updating to Mocha v2.0

This version underwent a major design change and code update which means there’s not an easy update path. If you’re happy with your site built on a previous version of the theme, there’s no need to update.

Click here to see how the Mocha theme looks across mobile devices.

Theme Features

The Mocha child theme includes the following features: 5 color styles (blue, green, orange, pink, red), 2 layout options, custom background, custom menus, featured images, fixed width, mobile responsive, theme options, threaded comments.

Take the new Mocha theme for a test drive…

It’s no secret that infographics and Pinterest are a hot topic and that we enjoy providing free web graphics here at StudioPress. So now we’re giving you the chance to publish a customized graphic on your own site.

Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

The Innovation quote graphic comes as a customizable PSD file and packaged with the Google Fonts that are used in it.

Feel free to modify the graphic and be sure to add a Pinterest “Pin It” button to your website after you publish it.

Designed by Rafal Tomal.

We are happy to announce the release of the Prose 1.5 child theme. This WordPress theme works on the Genesis Framework and can be downloaded by Pro Plus members in the support forum. All others can purchase the package here.

What’s New With Prose 1.5

One of the biggest changes you’ll see is the updated Design Settings UI, which is now formatted in one column and uses the new Genesis Admin class to build its settings pages. We’ve added a few more options for design control, and made some changes to the default Prose style. (More spacing, better typography, etc.)

Click here to view the new Prose demo site.

In addition to the updated Design Settings page, we also created a Custom Code page, which is where custom CSS and custom functions can be placed. These files will now be saved in the /wp-content/ directory of your WordPress install, rather than in the Prose child theme folder.

This means that you should not be modifying the style.css or functions.php files inside the Prose theme folder, as those will get overwritten in a Prose update.

Automatic Updates

You might wonder why we moved the custom files outside the child theme – the answer is quite simple, and something we know you’ll enjoy.

After you manually update this one time (see below), Prose will now have automatic updates.

That’s right Prose now gives you the ability to auto update with one simple click. In order to avoid CSS and functions from being overwritten in an update, we had to place them outside the child theme.

Mobile Responsive in Design

Another major update to the Prose theme is that it is now built for responsiveness on devices such as iPads, iPhones and other smart phones. How cool is that?

Click here to see how the Prose theme looks across mobile devices.

Updating to Prose 1.5 from 1.0

Because a lot of the core code in Prose was rewritten, there’s a few steps you need to take. Fortunately, the ladies over at Site Setup Kit have helped us out by writing instructions on how to upgrade.

Learn how to manually update to Prose 1.5.

The official HostGator Company blog

We are fortunate enough to have some very loyal followers who like to show their appreciation in unusual and creative ways.  This goes all the way back to the early days of HostGator, when none other than crunk rapper Lil Jon offered to introduce Brent to some ladies at his show in Florida, in appreciation for Brent having personally assisted him with some technical issues.  Another random caller once offered to send Brent some weed, via the US Postal Service for the same reason.  For the record, both of these offers were respectfully declined.  These days, it’s not terribly unusual to receive the occasional gift basket at the office, but please no more offers of groupies or drugs. Here’s a couple examples of the art we’ve received:     This Snappy was done by a child of one of our Customers. Back when we sponsored the Joe Nemecheck NASCAR, we received a few racing-themed comic strips starring Snappy. Please click on the image to see the whole series.                                 More recently, a Customer named Richard called us up for some assistance on his account and ended up singing us a song he wrote by the name of “GatorBill Me.”  The recording of the call is posted below along with the lyrics. ...

We’ve been having a lot of fun with our blog lately, and we promise to continue to do so.  However, we need to address some serious business once again.  Back in December, we posted about SOPA.  That beast has changed forms, returned and is now attacking more forcefully.  CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, aka H.R. 3523) was passed by the United Stated House of Representatives on April 26th, by a vote of 248 to 168. Ostensibly, CISPA exists to “help the U.S Government investigate cyber threats and ensure the security of networks against cyber attack.”  However, this wolf in sheep’s clothing also allows complete, unfettered access to your online activities without regard to existing privacy laws, provided the government suspects you of having committed some type of cyber crime.  Criminals should absolutely be investigated, prosecuted and punished if found guilty.  However, the scope of this bill is far too broad to be an effective piece of legislation and lacks any clear parameters as to what would constitute a justifiable suspicion, or when and how the government can monitor your internet browsing information; basically making all of us potential suspects, guilty until proven innocent. Representative Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat and ...

Recently, HostGator began our transition into a new building in Houston.  Presently, we occupy two floors while the remaining floors continue to be built out.  Our Houston buildings are only a short distance apart, in fact you can see each from the other.  The geography makes it convenient to dispatch teams from one building to the other, as needed.  Though we’ve been executing practice drills of this nature for many years, some of us veterans had grown complacent, thinking there would never be any true need to exercise our finely-honed emergency-response skills. As explained in the recent Internet Speak post, one of the primary means of inter-office communication is via instant message and conference rooms.  The story told here will be best conveyed via excerpts from these conference rooms, for historical accuracy. Saturday April 21st, 2012 was a day not unlike any other. Until the late afternoon brought with it a distress call received from HTX2: (04:59:18 PM) Sundeep: we have a situation at the new building. The years of training immediately roused the team from their aforementioned complacency and they began gathering the necessary data in order to spring into action, like a… spring… that goes… into action!  The situation was explained further: (05:00:18 ...

Toilet paper is serious business. It’s genuinely a severely overlooked and under-appreciated medium of information distribution; believe that! Fortunately, http://www.getshitter.com can assist in elevating toilet paper to a more appropriate level of respect, by taking your twitter feed and turning it into toilet paper. What you subsequently do with said toilet paper would then be completely up to you. As we all learned from the classic Pauly Shore cinematic masterpiece Bio-Dome, the most effective means of instituting change, or raising awareness, is to think globally and act locally. The month of April contains both Earth Day (April 22nd) and Arbor Day (April 27th).  As you may already know, back in 2008 HostGator took the initiative of becoming a Green webhost, which you can read even more about here.  With environmentalism in the air this month, we thought it would be appropriate to discuss toilet paper and the trees that make toilet paper possible. Because like toilet paper, trees are also serious business. I’m going to stop beating around the bush, not because a bush could potentially make for decent TP, but because toilet paper conservation is something that deserves significantly more attention than it presently receives.  At least once per day, you ...

The lack of Newsletters for the past several months has been palpable; we do apologize.  Ideally, this circumstance will not occur again.  It is true that things have been very busy in the Gator’hood, but maintaining  a proper level of direct contact with you fine folks is a priority to us and we genuinely care about presenting information directly to you and interacting with you via this medium. Historically speaking, our monthly Newsletters have occasionally displayed a tendency to place the proverbial cart before the horse, by announcing some things a tad bit pre-maturely, *cough*LaunchPad*cough*!  The fact is that we love what we do and we get excited about new technologies or services and we naturally want to share them with you.  Being more conscious of the potentiality for unexpected delays to occur, from this point forward we intend to not bait you with any “Coming Soon!” things.  Rather, we’re going to utilize this time to inform you about what is already available to you and try our best to keep you up on any new happenings around the Company each month.   GatorDesk Mobile: A New Way to Get Support! GatorDesk Mobile is now live, in beta!  You can fully manage your HostGator support ...

Once upon a time, people communicated with each other in complete sentences.  Or at least, I assume people used to communicate with each other in complete sentences.  Then along came the technology that spawned the phenomenon of communicating via text.  This effectively butchered the English language.  At least we thought so, at the time.  Then along came IRC and Instant Messaging which thus took language into depths of fail that were never before imaginable.  OMG, LOL! Instant Messaging is one of the primary means of communication within, and between, HostGator offices.  This leads to much butchering of the English language internally, whilst (hopefully) maintaining proper grammar within the LiveChats with Customers; this occurs simultaneously, behind the scenes.  I’m not going to reveal too much of the inter-office shenanigans, but there are various conference rooms utilized by various departments to effectively communicate as a group with one another.  This is a snippet of a conversation that took place in one of these conference rooms: (05:38:01 AM) Preston: bacon are desireable (05:38:06 AM) Preston: i want some bacon (05:38:43 AM) Adam: proper spelling is desirable. (05:38:49 AM) Adam: i want some proper spelling. (05:38:53 AM) Adam: wrapped in bacon. (05:38:56 AM) Preston: then read a book (05:38:58 AM) Preston: this ...

All hard drives will crash; there is no such thing as a crash-proof hard drive.  When (not if) this happens, how much data will be lost is a flip of the coin.  It could be 0%, or it could be 100%.  World Backup Day is March 31st. and encourages you to maintain current backups of your data: financial information or other important documents, digital media collection (music/movies/ebooks), and perhaps most importantly your memories (pictures/home movies). One in ten laptops will be stolen in their lifetime; one is stolen every 53 seconds.  Fifty percent of all hard drives will crash within five years.  Couple those statistics with the fact that 89.1% of PC users do not perform regular backups.  This is essentially a recipe for massive data loss.  A recent study found that 90 percent of companies that experience data loss go out of business within two years, with 70% of companies going out of business following a major data loss.  These are significant numbers. Are you able to place a dollar amount on your data?  Exactly how much value does it have?  For many people, their data is priceless.  If the only pictures of your children that you have are on a ...

The simple truth is that the web hosting industry is the target of, and host (pun intended?) to, a large percentage of individuals who attempt to perpetrate identity theft. This is an unfortunate situation, but sadly people often attempt to purchase web-hosting with fraudulent credit cards and other stolen credentials. Generally the motivating factor in using a stolen identity to purchase hosting involve things like warez or other copyrighted materials such as music and movies, or for spamming or phishing purposes; none of which HostGator tolerates on our network. The efforts of our Pending Department prevent upwards of 6,000 fraudulent sign-ups each month. One of the means used to prevent such sign-ups is a request to provide us with a copy of a government-issued identification card. In that we are a global company with Customers in virtually every non-embargoed nation in the world, we are dealing with countless types of identification cards. Sometimes, they are genuine. Other times, not so much. Below are a few of the more interesting responses we’ve received to our request for the aforementioned identification cards. These images are exactly as we received then, save for the black boxes covering the personal information of those who did ...

Imagine if you were able to genetically combine Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Darth Vader and Barbara Streisand into one horrifically terrifying being. Now imagine that being is actually a piece of proposed legislature — the terrifying creation in your midst would then be the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) which is currently being considered by the House.   SOPA, aka H.R. 3261 is a bill right now in the House sponsored by R-TX Lamar Smith. It’s not just any bill though, it’s a bill that would allow the USDOJ, RIAA, MPAA and anyone else who lobbies for the entertainment industry to effectively censor the internet to suit their needs.   James Allworth recently wrote “Is this really what we want to do to the internet? Shut it down every time it doesn’t fit someone’s business model?” and I couldn’t agree more. Censorship is a slippery slope. Not only that but it also creates an absurd amount of bureaucratic busy work. Here at HostGator we already spend a HUGE amount of time answering DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) requests. If we allow our representatives to begin deciding what is and what isn’t ok for you to view on the internet then where will it ...

Snappy here with an important announcement! HostGator.com has sent me a company memo this morning confirming that they are once again participating in National Breast Cancer Awareness Month this October and I wanted to pass the good news along to you. Memo: “In 1985, the search for a cure for Breast Cancer was gaining headway and AstraZeneca founded National Breast Cancer Awareness Month to raise awareness of this growing cause. Thanks to the establishment of NBCAM, in October of each year, organizations across the nation focus on the fight, helping to promote mammography as the most effective weapon in the race against breast cancer. HostGator.com is proud to join these organizations in their support for a cure. This year, in honor of NBCAM, HostGator.com has turned Snappy the Gator pink on the website. We have also set up a special coupon code ?PINK? which will allow 20% off the first month of any hosting account we offer. We will be donating the proceeds from the first month of every sign-up that uses this code to breast cancer research. We have also created a few banners for our clients who wish to let the world know that their web host cares ...

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It's a fact: Most businesses bite it. Bob shows you what the successful ones do to make it big. One of these secrets was used by John D. Rockefeller to become the richest man ever! Leeann is as crazy as always.

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