Welcome to the Concentric Newsletter. First, we'd like to thank all of our customers who completed our customer survey last month. We received a wealth of information and many comments that will help us to better serve you. One bit of feedback was that you would like to see more 'helpful tips' in the newsletter. So, this month, we are focusing on a variety of tips to help you get more out of your hosting account. Before we dive into the helpful tips, we'd like to highlight the recent changes to the account login authorization process and the new menu navigation structure in the Concentric Center.
  1. New Authorization for Account Login
  2. New Menu Navigation Structure
  3. Technology Corner - Got Mac?
  4. Remote Backup Using Net Drive
  5. Search Engine Optimization - Selecting the Right Keywords
  6. Become an Affiliate or Commissioned Agent - Earn Some Extra Cash for the Holidays!



New Authorization for Account Login is Now Live!
The new authentication page will now accept your user id and password directly on the page itself (whereas before you entered your user id and password into a popup window from your browser). This improves security and performance and will allow us to offer enhanced Concentric Center features in the future.

To ensure security and defeat potential 'phishing' scams (where an email or other solicitation encourages you to enter your password on a webpage that is NOT the Concentric Center), please ensure that your URL is https://register.concentric.com… before you enter your credentials. The https://, and the lock icon in your browser, will ensure that you're connected securely via SSL.

Please note that the option to log into the Concentric Center without using SSL is no longer available and a session, if left idle for more than 2 hours, will automatically time out. Also note that the 'relogin' link in the upper right corner of the Concentric Center no longer exists; the 'logout' link now fills both roles, as it takes you back to the login page, and 'logout' no longer requires dismissing an additional pop-up browser window.

The security changes effect your account behavior in a few ways:
  • You must have Browser Cookies enabled.
  • Login is restricted to SSL only.
  • You will be logged out of your account if it has been inactive for more than 2 hours.
  • Web Mail and Web Builder users PLEASE NOTE, this timeout applies to the compose mail screen and the page editing screen. Please save a draft or you could lose the content after 2 hours.


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New Navigation and Menu Structure
We have rolled out a new tabbed menu and navigation structure in the Concentric Center. The changes make it easier to find information and services. The existing drop down menus have been replaced by a new and easier to use tab menu structure, with all menu options just one click away. Each user can personalize their menus and put frequently used tabs on top. We have only made changes to the menus; no applications or tool layouts have changed.

The new navigation and menu structure includes:
  1. Clicking the 'home' image will always bring you back to the main page
  2. Tabs and sub-tabs make navigation easy. Color changes make it easy to know what tab is currently active. Sub-tabs make it easy to jump from one task to the next.
  3. A Menu Map puts every selection one click away. Simply hover over the Menu Map selector to enlarge the map. The Menu Map has an intuitive search function that will search all Menu's and FAQ's.
  4. Ability to customize the tab structure as often as you like. All tabs will always be available in the Menu Map.
  5. Ability to toggle the arrows to make sub-tabs visible until you close them.


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Technology Corner
Got Mac?

We're frequently asked if our services support Macintosh computers and users. With a few narrow exceptions*, the answer is a resounding yes. Our user base has a majority of Windows users, as is almost universally the case, but we also have significant shares of users on Mac and Linux systems - in fact, our Mac share is just shy of 10%, higher than the general average, due to the popularity of the Mac within the web developer community.

We have a dedicated Quality Engineering department through which all our systems releases pass. In our QE lab can be found stacks of PCs and Mac machines of every vintage to enable us to test against as many variants as possible, and the Macintosh section is the most colorful, ranging from old Blue-and-Whites and clamshell iBooks to this year's newest machines, especially Mac Mini's.

We review browser applications against Internet Explorer (back to version 5.5) on Windows; Netscape 6.2, 7.2, and 8; Firefox (1.0.7 and the brand new 1.5) on Windows, Mac, and Linux; and Safari 1.3 (Panther) and 2+ (Tiger) on Mac. We also test all the popular mail programs on each - Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Thunderbird, Mail.app (Mac), Entourage, Kmail, etc. If we receive support calls on a version we haven't tested, our QE team can usually build out a system with the same software version as the customer to test the problem.

Why do we have a cutoff for browser versions we support? Browsers beyond a certain age, generally a few years, are no longer supported for security releases by the maker, and as such should be replaced with versions that are kept up to date with security patches. Furthermore, older browsers lack features needed for the more complex functionality within our online tools. While we make every effort to make the core features function in any browser, the best experience will be had with current versions. Note that there may be newer major browser releases which we support, but with early minor releases with bugs that can cause problems. For example, we support Netscape 7, but versions lower than 7.2 have problematic bugs and should be upgraded.

We will continue to support as wide a spectrum of operating systems and software clients as possible. We use the same systems that we provide our customers for our own use, both business and personal, and our engineering team uses a mix of Windows, Mac, and Linux, and thus has a personal stake in ensuring broad support. I'm writing this article on my Powerbook, in fact.

So, Mac users, have no fear of a Windows-only world!

Have a technology question for a future newsletter? Send it to technotes@concentric.com.

-David Schairer VP/Engineering & Operations

* A couple things that _are_ Windows-only currently, or require Firefox instead of Safari on the Mac: part of the site editing function inside Site Builder, the online web page wizard, is currently IE/Firefox only, and the NetDrive setup tool is only available for Windows clients - but that's because on MacOSX setting up a NetDrive mount is a simple Finder operation!


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Remote Backup Using Net Drive
Never lose an important file again!

Concentric and Xythos have teamed up to provide an easy-to-use tool that will help you make sure that your critical documents and files remain available to you in the event of a system crash, hard-drive failure, or virus attack. With Xythos Drive for Net Drive, simply select the files, drives and/or folders you want to back up, choose a schedule frequency (daily or weekly), and click "Back up now". Everything will be automatically backed up to the Net Drive server. That's it - no additional hardware or software required. In addition, when you save your files to Net Drive, you can work on them whenever or wherever you want, and if you are offline they will be automatically synchronized when you reconnect. Click here for a free trial copy of Xythos Drive for Net Drive.

http://www.download.com/Xythos-Drive/3000-10743_4-10442206.html?tag=lst-0-1


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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Selecting the Right Keywords


We learned from our recent customer survey that customers would like to find out more information on how to drive more traffic to their web site. One way to address this is with search engine optimization (SEO). As a step towards helping customers drive traffic to their web site, we will break down the search engine optimization process into manageable tasks over a series of newsletters to help you understand this process and to help you implement SEO tactics.

To help drive customers to your web site, you will need to take steps to make sure your web site is search engine friendly. Optimizing your site for search engines ensures that your web site ranks as high as possible when potential customers search for your products or services. The first step in this process is selecting the right "keywords" to optimize for your site. Keywords are the words and phrases on your site that are used to match up users' search engine queries. Therefore, the greater amount of appropriate keywords on your site, the better chance a user will successfully find you through a search engine.

As you select your keywords, you will want to consider what a potential customer would type into the search engine to find your business. For example, if you have a web site that sells key rings, you may want to choose "key rings, key chains, key holders, key accessories, office accessories" as your keywords (among others). Another suggestion is to go to a search engine and type in some of the keywords you've considered. Are the search results similar to your site? Can you think of any keywords that are not obvious to your industry? Maybe "secure office products" is something you want to include in your keywords.

Additionally, consider how your products or services are different than your competitors and how you can capture a portion of the market with unique, well-defined keywords. Your goal is to include the most obvious keywords, but also ones that your competitors may not have considered.

The following steps provide the basics for selecting the right keywords:
  1. Decide which search terms are relevant to your product or service, such as "key chains", create a list of single words and phrases. Get into the head of someone searching for your product or service and consider what is important to them when they are looking for your product or service.
  2. Conduct a competitive analysis to see how your competition is selling their product or service and what words they are using to describe their offer. You can use same or similar keywords, but you also want to consider niche keywords which you can optimize for on your web site.
  3. Sign up online for an affordable keyword analysis tool, such as BidreporterPro or Wordtracker. Using the tool, run analysis on the keywords in your list to see how many times the keywords are searched for on a monthly basis. This will give you an idea of keyword popularity and which words you should target.
  4. Select a list of keywords for your business from the analysis, this is normally between 50-100 keywords.
  5. Select the top 10 pages of your web site (or all pages if less than 10).
  6. Assign the various keywords to the pages of your website based upon content, theme, and subject matter. Group similar keywords and keyword phrases together, such as "key chains", "fun key chains", "metal key chains". 3-6 keywords per web page is optimal.
You've just completed the first step!

The keyword selection process is an important one and can take some time. In the next newsletter, we'll look at how to use the keywords you selected to optimize HTML code. This will include how to write Titles, Meta Descriptions, and Meta Keywords so that the search engines begin to associate these keywords with your web site.

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Become an Affiliate or Commissioned Agent - Earn Some Extra Cash for the Holidays!
For no cost, anyone can sign-up as a Concentric Affiliate or Commissioned Agent and qualify for a generous commission when you refer new hosting accounts to us. Affiliates earn $70 for each new customer that signs up for qualifying hosting account. Commissioned Agents earn recurring monthly commissions of 10 to 35 percent of the monthly booked revenue for accounts signed up.

It's easy to refer customers to us, there is no fee to join, and you can earn huge payouts. When you refer a customer to Concentric, you can be assured that you are promoting a leading hosting and email service that offers unsurpassed security, performance and reliability all at an affordable price.

The Concentric referral program offers four levels of participation for low or no cost:
  • Customer Referral: Existing customers can refer friends, clients or colleagues and earn a $50 payment each time someone they refer signs up for a new account.
  • Affiliate: No fee to join and ideal for people who want to refer friends or Web site traffic to Concentric and earn a generous payment of $70 for each qualifying new account.
  • Commissioned Agent: For web developers, VARs and individuals that would like to earn large ongoing commissions of 10-35 percent of ongoing monthly recurring revenue for referred accounts with no up front costs.
  • Private Label Reseller: A turn-key, branded solution for businesses who would like to resell hosting and email to their customer base and earn ongoing revenue at the best wholesale rates.
You can find out more information or sign up online for the Affiliate and Commissioned Agent programs at http://www.concentric/affiliatereseller.php . Once you've joined a program, you will receive access to marketing materials, Web site banners, support information and can immediately start to sign up referral business online or in partnership with the Concentric hosting telesales team. Either way, the customers you refer have instant account access.

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