August 2006 Newsletter

This issue of the Concentric newsletter has important information about many topics, including new options for receiving communication from us, ASP.NET (and why developers will want to use it), creating more secure passwords, search engine optimization, and services offered by our partner Express Merchant Processing Solutions.

New Options for Receiving Communication from Concentric

Aside from the Concentric newsletter, we’ve introduced more ways you can elect to hear from us. These new options allow you to specify what kind of communication you’d like to get from us. You’ll find the new options and modifiable settings in the Concentric Gateway.

To view and/or change these communication options, go to the Gateway, under Change My Settings, then Edit My Profile. In the User Information section, under Preferences, you’ll see that your options now include:

1. Receive Newsletter – Master Administrators automatically receive the newsletter unless they opt out. For all other users of the account the default setting is No. Now, all users can choose to receive the newsletter simply logging in and selecting Yes in User Preferences. The newsletter (which is emailed about every two months) is intended to provide you with information about our products and services as well as offering you helpful tips to better manage your account.

2. Receive Technical Notes – The default setting for this option is No for all users. Technical Notes is a new option that contains announcements and more detailed information about such things as VDE upgrades, mySQL upgrades, new Gateway functions, or new components being released. We encourage you to sign up to receive these updates so you’ll be sure to get the latest technical information as soon as it becomes available. To receive Technical Notes, you’ll need to login to the Gateway and select Yes in User Preferences under Edit My Profile.

3. Receive Special Offers – Master Administrators who currently receive the newsletter will automatically receive Special Offers. For all other users, the default setting for this option is No. The Special Offers option can be turned on by all users in order to receive special promotions from Concentric and/or our partners. We’ve added this option to more clearly define how and what we communicate to you. While the newsletter focuses on helpful account information, this category allows us to communicate special offers from us or our partners on a more frequent basis than the newsletter. This list will only be used by Concentric. We will never sell or give away names on this list to our partners or any third parties. We only send out offers on behalf of our partners. The purpose of this option is to provide useful and enticing offers that add value to your existing service.

ASP.NET 2.0: Why Windows Web Developers Will Want to Use This Feature

ASP.NET 2.0 helps increase developer productivity and allows you to create Web applications in record time by enabling developers to build pages and applications with far less code than existing development technologies. You can also deploy compiled .NET DLLs within your own account space, making your applications more efficient. ASP.NET 2.0 runs alongside the older ASP 3.0 in our environment, allowing backward compatibility as you develop your Web site in the new .NET environment.

Hosting your account on our new server platform that offers ASP.NET 2.0 enables you to take advantage of the most current Microsoft development tools. The freely-available Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition and the more powerful Visual Studio 2005 can both be used by developers to create your company’s Web presence on our platform. ASP.NET 2.0 offers improved security to protect your Web site and your important company data.

The new environment offers built-in protection from many common forms of hacker attacks, including cross-site scripting. Our ASP.NET 2.0 server platform allows you to connect to external services on other platforms for business-level needs, enabling developers to take advantage of many of the new Web services technologies.

ASP.NET 2.0 is only offered on our newest and most up-to-date server platform running the most secure Windows development environment. The upgrade is free to all existing customers. Customers taking advantage of the new server platform running ASP.NET 2.0 will be offered all the new technologies that are launched on the Concentric Windows platform. And all future technical help will be geared toward the new server platform running ASP.NET 2.0. Future newsletters will contain customer updates on ASP.NET 2.0 and more information on how to develop and utilize the new server platform to advantage.

I’m an existing customer. How can I enable my account to run ASP.NET 2.0 on my Web site?

Just call Customer Care and they will automatically enable your account to run ASP.NET 2.0 within the .NET Framework 2.0. Customer Care can explain all known issues this move may cause with existing scripts and applications and the present and future benefits of this upgrade.

Tips and Tricks

Password Security—Security Starts with You!

We all know passwords are important to keep your personal information and files safe, but that’s only part of the story. And if you believe that protecting your files is the only reason for passwords, you may be leaving yourself vulnerable to many other online problems.

Focusing only on protecting files can lead many users to wrongly believe “This account isn’t important since I don’t store anything of value here. I’ll just pick my name, or ‘123abc’ as my password.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Along with storing files, your hosting account has email access, even if you don’t use it. And while many ISPs are cracking down on spammers by requiring users to be authenticated with their systems before allowing email to go out, spammers now use automated programs to find accounts with weak or easy-to-guess passwords. Spammers don’t want your files–they want to send spam out using your name.

Responsible ISPs take steps to suspend spammer accounts as soon as they detect a rapid increase in outgoing email volume. However, if a spammer does get to your account due to a weak password, access to both incoming and outgoing email is usually suspended and you will have the added inconvenience of contacting customer service to get your account re-enabled; you are responsible for your account even if you are not the one abusing it.

What can you do to Help Stop Spammers and Identity Thieves?

First, pick good passwords! Here are some tips:

  • Don’t pick a dictionary word or person’s name
  • Don’t pick part of your domain name
  • Don’t pick repeated letters or numbers like “aaaaa” or “88888″
  • Don’t pick the above with obvious substitutions like “i” for one, and “o” for 0
  • Don’t pick the above with just a digit or two at the front or end
  • Do use mixed case letters
  • Do use punctuation
  • Do use numbers and letters
  • Do use the full 8 characters

Obviously, you don’t have to do all of these things, but the more you can use something you can remember, the better. One suggestion for creating really strong, easy to remember passwords is to use the first few letters of a phrase you can easily remember and make creative substitutions to it.

Something like: (Note, these are examples only, you should not use them.)

  • “Concentric is the best to work for” becomes Citb2w4
  • “I hate password crackers!” becomes Ih@epwc!
  • “Mom’s apple pie” becomes M’sa3.14
  • “My wife Alice, love of my life” becomes MwA,L0ml
  • “It was a dark and stormy night.” becomes Iwad&sn.

Okay, so maybe these aren’t exactly the easiest passwords to remember, but you get the idea. It’s almost impossible for an automated program to guess complicated strings like the above examples. But since they are derived from a phrase that has meaning to you, they are much easier to remember.

Check and Update your Account Information Often

It’s a good idea to periodically check your account contact information, mailing address, and phone number to make sure we have your current, up-to-date information on file. A valid mailing address is especially critical for customers, agents, or affiliates who are providing referrals.

Valid and current email addresses are also critical because all of our automated notices (quota warning, credit card charge failure, domain renewal) are usually sent to the master administrator’s address. An incorrect email address can result in account problems that could be avoided if you check and update your account information every few months.

Search Engine Optimization: Link Building Strategies

If you run your company’s search engine optimization, you probably already know how important it is to build a respectable back-link program. And for those who are unfamiliar with this term, back links are external Web site links which are pointing to your own Web site. Search engine algorithms are a fuzzy mystery, but one thing for certain is that back links are right up there at the top of what gets you good rankings on Google and Yahoo. Failure to track and build appropriate back links can bring even the most talented SEO expert to his or her knees with frustration.

In a nutshell, Google’s philosophy is that nothing showcases a Web site’s importance better than other people linking to it. If only it were all that simple. It’s not enough to have people linking to your site, if you want those links to really mean something, as much as possible they should come from authoritative sources. For example, if you sell widgets, you’d want widget-expert.com to link to your site, assuming that widget-expert.com is, in fact, an authority on widgets. Try contacting widget-expert.com to see if they would be willing to link to you in one form or another. Maybe you have a widget they’d like to write about; maybe you wrote an article on widgets; maybe you were the keynote speaker at WidgetCom 2006.

But don’t stop there. Here are some other ways to get your site linked:

Directories and Search Engines: There are literally hundreds of small directories and search engines on the Internet. These smaller sites don’t carry as much weight as a link in Google or Yahoo, but when you’re just starting out with link building try to get as much exposure as you can. You can go one-by-one to list your site yourself or there are a number of companies and software packages that, for a fee, will list you in bulk.

Blogs: Blogs are often the easiest way to gain links to your site. You may not always get the most value out of a blog post since blogs are often about a variety of topics and therefore, won’t necessarily carry with it a high authority rating, but if you can get your link in a legitimate widget posting, it’s certainly worth the effort, especially if other people decide to pick up the posting as well.

Press Releases: Press releases are a great way to get your site linked from external sources. However, don’t expect to gain a lot of authoritative ranking out of it or increased traffic to your site because of it. With the advent of Internet press release companies, there are literally tens of thousands of press releases put out every week, with a good percentage of these sent out merely to get picked up by an online newswire. Consider press releases as a complement to an otherwise complete linking strategy, but don’t make this your primary way to get back links. In the linking game, the easiest links to get are most often the ones that offer the least rankings gain.

Reciprocal Linking: Reciprocal linking is an agreement with another Web site to link to yours if you link to theirs. This is a good way to supplement an already strong link program, or one that’s just starting out. But keep these types of links to a minimum. Search engines weigh reciprocal links much less than one-way links and they also want to see that you have many more one-way links. And do make sure you know who you’re linking with. Is this a Web site whose business strategy is solely to find other people willing to link to them? Are they in an industry that you find offensive? Your best bet is to find companies whose business is similar or complementary to your own business. That way, you’ll not only increase your authority ranking, you might just get some good customer leads as well.

Paid Links: Paid links are, just as the name implies, links you pay for to get someone to link to your site. There are more pitfalls than advantages in the paid links world, so if you don’t know what you’re doing, consult an expert. Paid links can be a good opportunity, but they can also get your site into a lot of trouble or, at the very least, cost you a lot of money for no value at all since search engines are getting much better at figuring out if something is a paid link or not. So you could be spending good money for no search engine boost. Paid links should be your last choice, not your first.

Concentric and Express Merchant Processing Solutions Help You with Your Online and Off-Line Business

Concentric’s partnership with Express Merchant Processing Solutions (EMPS) gives you more options to help your business be more profitable. Express Merchant Processing Solutions (EMPS), powered by First Data, is one of the world’s largest merchant payment processing companies with a comprehensive line of payment processing solutions for your business such as credit card, debit card, and check acceptance for all types of brick and mortar as well as online businesses. Doing business with the strongest partner worldwide provides you with advantages such as:

  • Ability to accept all major credit cards (including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diner’s Club, JCB and ATM/Debit cards
  • Electronic Check Acceptance
  • Purchase Card Acceptance
  • Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT)
  • Ecommerce and Internet transaction processing
  • Complete line of credit card terminal equipment, including wireless solutions
  • Industry-leading, toll-free customer service available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
  • Terminal and PC support Help Desk
  • Fast deposit of your funds
  • Comprehensive, automated reporting

PIN-secured debit becoming payment instrument of choice

The handwriting is on the wall – not the sales receipt – when it comes to the payment instrument of choice among consumers.

Forty-seven percent prefer to enter their Personal Identification Number (PIN) when making a purchase with their debit card, according to the 2004 STAR® Consumer Payments Usage Study. That compares with 30 percent who prefer to sign a receipt.

What’s more, 85 percent of consumers indicated they had used their debit card with their PIN at a point of sale within the previous 30 days. This was true across all age groups.

As these numbers suggest, PIN-secured debit is no longer just for purchases at supermarkets and convenience stores, specialty stores and mass merchandisers. It has become a common payment option at pharmacies and medical offices, movie theaters, coffee shops and hair salons.

Consumers – holding more than 290 million debit cards in the United States, including more than 130 million STAR® cards – cite these features among their reasons for favoring PIN-secured debit:

  • More convenient than cash or checks
  • Greater security and fraud protection
  • Faster, easier checkout
  • Reduced risk of identity theft
  • Cash-back option

What’s in it for Merchants?

What’s good for customers is often good for merchants. For instance, by offering PIN-secured debit, you’re satisfying a customer preference. And a satisfied customer is a happy, loyal customer.

Other benefits for merchants can include:

  • Virtually assured funds
  • Reduced potential for fraud
  • Higher average tickets (consumers report spending 32 percent more than when using cash, 24 percent more than when writing a check)
  • Reduced check-processing expense and loss
  • Potential for reduced processing fees compared with credit and signature debit

If you already accept PIN-secured debit, you’re probably ahead of your competition. If not, now’s a great time to get started. You’re a prime candidate if you already accept credit cards.

To discuss your merchant processing requirements for both online and offline transactions, contact the Concentric Hosting telesales team at 1.877.932.2629.