We’ve advertised on our blog and elsewhere recently for two job openings here at 34SP.com, one advanced support role and one part time customer support role. We’re delighted to report that we have finally found the right people to fill those positions and they’ve now started their jobs with us. As part of our commitment to providing excellent support, whether you have a single business hosting account or an array of dedicated servers, we always strive to ensure that we have enough great staff to respond in good time with good answers no matter what the question or problem. With Jonny and Andy, we’re sure that we’ve added more great staff to our outstanding support team.
Jonny has joined us in the part time customer support role. Some of you may have communicated with him already, but if not there’s every chance he’ll be the one answering your queries over the weekend or at time during the week. Jonny brings a wealth of experience of customer support from all over the world and we all look forward to working with him.
Andy will be dealing with more advanced support queries plus vps web hosting and also dedicated hosting questions. Andy joins us after working at a lot of places, including some of our suppliers and competitors. He’ll be helping Tom and Ian out with the trickier questions you manage to put to our support team, and with his industry experience has been able to get to work right away.
You’ll soon be able to read a little bit about them on our team page and are more than welcome to pop in and say hello in our IRC channel or if you see their name at the bottom of an email next time you’re in touch!
A short and sweet update for anyone with an interest in domain names. As of this week we now support the registration of .co domain names. .co domain names are charged at £30 for a one year registration. To register a new .co domain name point your browser here:
34SP.com is a rapidly growing website hosting, dedicated server and reseller hosting company based in central Manchester. Founded in 2000, the company is a Limited, VAT registered company.
Salary
Hourly rate of £8.00 per hour. Plus sales bonuses, plus optional overtime.
Position
The successful applicant’s role will be to learn and conduct customer support tasks and answer pre-sales questions for prospective clients. This will involve providing 34SP.com clients with account and technical assistance via telephone, live chat and email.
We feel the position perfectly suits a locally based student, seeking real world job experience.
Hours
3 x 8 hour shifts.
An initial training period will require the three shifts on weekdays. Once trained to an acceptable level the position will require availability 9:30am to 5:30pm Saturday and Sunday, with one additional shift during the week 8.00am to 4.00pm.
Required Skills and Experience
Good English coupled with a proficiency in typing.
Excellent telephone manner.
A working knowledge of web hosting basics (FTP, HTML, email etc).
Knowledge of PHP/Perl/MySQL/*nix OS a distinct advantage.
A customer centric point of view.
Please submit your application and CV to stu@34sp.com with subject ‘Part Time Support Position’.
If you are interested in registering domain names as a reseller, you are in great luck. Due to overwhelming demand from our 34SP.com reseller clients, we have added a new feature to our domain name registration system today: the ability to purchase a domain name under ownership details other than those of your own main account.
Ok so we know it isn’t the coolest, sexiest feature in the world, but we do know a lot of customers require this on a regular basis. Web designers, resellers, domain speculators or simply anyone who has ever helped friend setup a web presence benefits from this feature.
Once you have confirmed your domain name is available, select the ‘basket’ button to add the domain to your order. On the following screen you should now see the ‘customise domain registration details’ button directly under your domain name order. By selecting this a further screen will load up that will allow you to specify unique ownership details for the domain name. These details will then appear on the WHOIS lookup for the domain name, and will serve as the legal ownership data. (Note: the customization screen also offers our WHOIS opt-out feature too, for non uk domains).
We have plenty more updates and features that we hope to roll out over the rest of this year, but as ever, please do get in touch if you find there is a feature you require, that we do not presently offer.
Sadly, the boys in the red shirts are out of the World Cup. While there is no doubt that Germany played great, there is one item that still really hurts – that goal that the officials didn’t see.
You know the one. It hit the crossbar and landed – clearly – inside the goal. However, for reasons that escape even the most adroit football fans – the goal was not counted. Now we’re not going to say that England would have won the match if it had been counted, but it surely would have changed the character of the match.
As you probably know by now, 34SP.com has been running a World Cup 2010 web hosting promotion. This special promotion awards an additional 10 percent off your first month of web hosting for each goal that England score in the World Cup. Even though the official goal count is three goals scored, we all saw with our own eyes that England scored that goal and it wasn’t counted. See below.
So therefore, 34SP.com is awarding England a full 4 goals – which makes your discount 40% off web hosting accounts for the first month. So even though England will now wait another four years to again strive for World Cup glory, you can benefit from their efforts – and each real goal scored – through the end of the World Cup final on July 11, 2010.
If you’ve made the decision to use WordPress hosting here at 34SP.com – then you’ve made a sound choice. So, now you have WordPress and you want to get the most out of it and want lots of visitors to your site? Well you may know there are various ways in which you can improve your website, but did you know that WordPress has literally hundreds of plugins that can help?
Below are my pick of essential plugins for your WordPress web hosting site ranging from security features to SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) improvements. To find these: simply log into your admin area and select ‘add new’ under the ‘Plugins’ option.
Google Analytics
I’m really hoping if your reading this you kind of know a bit about Google. This tool helps you monitor who, what, where and when people actually visit your website. The Google Analytics plugin for WordPress is one of the most popular tools available and allows you to trace every visitor to every page.
Google Sitemaps Generator
Yes, yes, I know your saying “What? Google again!?” but this is yet another brilliant plugin available for WordPress. The sitemaps generator for WordPress creates a sitemap on your site allowing all major search engines to discover each and every post within your blog. This is very handy in regards to Google search listings and helps Google properly crawl the site.
SEO Title Tag
With the SEO title tag plugin you can change the title tags assigned to each of your blog posts. You may be wondering why you need this. Here’s why – WordPress attempts to set the title tags automatically based on the name and content of the post. You can now edit this to make your title tags more relevant improve your search rankings!
CAPTCHA
Spamming for blog owners these days is on the increase. These are usually added as comments on the blog itself. The best way around this is to use some sort of robust verification. This is where Captcha comes into it. You may have notice we also using this on our 34SP.com formail script. When a comment is added to your blog, the user will need to enter a series of letters and numbers in order to validate themselves. A handy tool if you ask me!
Twitter
You may also have noticed that there is something called Twitter which is getting rather a big following on the Internet these days. With all these “tweets” going round, it’s only right you can implement this into your site. There are a fair few Twitter plugins also but the one I personally use is called: “Twitter for WordPress” – This shows all your tweets (or a particular users’ tweets) on your site.
In case you’re not currently following us here at 34SP.com – you may want to. We alert you to special offers and things you may want to know about your website and hosting as well. You can find us and follow us at: http://twitter.com/34SP or simply follow @34SP.
These are just a small selection of the thousands of plugins available. Have a search and above all have fun!
While this blog usually covers topics related to technology and web hosting, we thought to give our own Olly a shot at offering up a few alternatives to watching the World Cup all month. (But don’t forget you can still get great discounts on hosting with our World Cup hosting promo!) Enjoy.
Soooo – World Cup fever has seemingly hit the nation. For those of us who couldn’t give two hoots about the event, however, the last month of TV, radio and newspapers have already become a barrage of sentimentalist flag waving. Here, then, for those of you in the same boat, is my summary of several things I’d rather be doing. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get around to completing more than a handful of them over the coming weeks!
1. Take the dogs for a walk
There are literally hundreds of places to visit with our two loveable mutts, Monty and Sisqi. Here they are enjoying the sunshine on Brean Sands, Somerset on a recent break:
We found this to be a perfect day out for both the dogs and us, as recommended by Dog Friendly Britain – don’t have a dog? No problem, adopt one!
2. Visit Scotland. Or Wales. Or Ireland.
I’m reliably informed that none of these teams qualified for the World Cup, so in a move of solidarity, I think it’d be only polite to join them in ignoring how well or badly England are doing. The only choice is, should it be Scotland, Wales, or Ireland?
3. Build a Lego Printer
It’s silly, but I love it and want one:
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4. Build an Orrery
An Orrery is a mechanical model of our Solar System. Despite hunting high and low on the internet, I’ve not been able to find a set of plans that I can use to build a full model from scratch (plenty abound for smaller sun/earth/moon versions, but I can’t find any trace of plans for building a full version!). Something like this would be AWESOME if anyone knows where I can get the plans!
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5. Dig out an old board game
I was 9 years old when Battlecars was released. The accompanying blurb opens with the description :
A futuristic game of deadly driving. Have you ever pressed the imaginary button on the dashboard of your car to vaporize the idiot driver’s car in front ?
No? Well you didn’t get to in this game either. Battlecars gave players the opportunity to be given an imaginary sum of money and build their own car (on paper, of course) armed with machine guns and rocket launchers, then to pit their creations against their friends. Sadly, as this was pre-digital communication era, I never got past the designing stage. Think I’ll need to “encourage” the wife to give it a try.
6. Get to know my chickens
After spending several weeks erecting a chicken coop and installing chicken wire fencing, Mabel, Doris and Betty moved in on Saturday. They’re respectively speckledy, rhode rock and columbine breeds, so are giving us three different colours of egg shells. Welcome to the gang, girls!
For some reason my bay tree is covered in brittle brown leaves and it’s really beginning to worry me! Can’t find much at herbexpert.co.uk so if anyone has any clues, let me know! It’s had plenty of water and feed (though not over-watered) but still refuses to flourish.
9. Buy and listen to the “The Intriguer”
The Intriguer is the new album from my favourite band, Crowded House. Woodface is probably my favourite album of all time, so this one should while away a couple of hours at least!
10. Celebrate my wife’s birthday
She officially becomes another year older on Midsummer’s Day, but as she reads this blog, I can’t tell you what we’ll be up to. Just use your imagination.
The company is a rapidly growing web hosting company based in central Manchester. Founded in 2000, the company now employs thirteen full time staff and is a Limited, VAT registered company.
Salary
Negotiable, based on applicants skill set.
Salary reviews are conducted every 12 months.
Position
The successful applicant’s role will be to offer level 2 support to 34SP.com’s client base. Level 2 support is classified as advanced troubleshooting. Support is offered via email, live chat and telephone. The successful applicant will also be required to assist with systems maintenance from time to time.
Hours
8.30am to 5.30pm weekdays.
Required Skills and Experience
Excellent technical skills, specifically in hosting related areas e.g. DNS, PHP, MySQL, Perl, FTP, POP3/IMAP, SMTP etc.
A thorough working knowledge of the *nix environment
Good communication and interpersonal skills
Experience with the Plesk control panel a definite advantage
Interviews will begin the week starting June 28th. Please submit your application and CV to stu@34sp.com with subject ‘Advanced support position’.
Within our offices here at 34SP.com there are some who casually follow the World Cup and some football crazed maniacs. Being in the latter group, I shall give you my thoughts and hopes for next month’s World Cup, a tournament that rivals the Olympics with the amount of press coverage, television viewership figures and prestige to the host nation as well as the eventual winners.
Being a British host, we are backing England to win the World Cup out of ritualistic unashamed national pride, but we know that there are others that are:-
A – not English
B – not interested in Football.
With this in mind, we will still be offering our usual great customer support as well as competitive rates on pricing for web hosting and domain names.
As part of the celebration of the World Cup, 34SP.com will soon be launching a special promotional offer tied to the results of the matches. It works like this: for every goal that England scores, you save an additional 10% off any of the following 34SP.com hosting products – Professional Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Business Hosting, or VPS Hosting. This special offer is for new orders only, and is cumulative for the duration of the World Cup tournament.
For those that do like a bit of 22 men running about all over a field kicking one ball, then read on for Motti’s World Cup Guide.
JOE MOTT’S GUIDE TO THE WORLD CUP
This tournament only comes around every 4 years, meaning the world’s best players only have a select few chances to shine on the biggest stage of Football.
Only 4 years ago, one of the greatest players in recent times, Zinedine Zidane made his mark on the World Cup Final, but for the wrong reasons, by headbutting Marco Materazzi during the closing part of the final.
From an England point of view, this was meant to be David Beckham’s last hurrah before international retirement, however an unfortunate Achilles injury has prevented him from playing in South Africa, but he shall still be part of the team set up by going as a Coach for Fabio Capello (or as the press have suggested, a team cheerleader and “voice of the dressing room”).
England still have a good chance, with the likes of Rooney, Gerrard, Ferdinand and Heskey, they are sure to at least reach the Quarter Finals.
For other teams that are likely winners, you only need to check out the past winners. They include Brazil, Germany, Italy, Argentina, France. The only other winners of the World Cup are Uruguay but they won the tournament twice in the 1930′s.
Brazil are always favourites due to their attacking style, their excellent technique and team full of European-based superstars that regularly play in the top leagues give them an edge that few overcome. They are no means guaranteed to win, but the bookies love to give them short odds. My player to watch out for is Luis Fabiano who plays up front for Sevilla. I expect Brazil to be in the semi finals as a minimum, as will most neutrals be.
Argentina, Brazil’s bothersome arch rivals also possess similar style and roster of world class players, look no further than Barcelona’s Leo Messi. They also have a World Cup winner as their coach as well, the infamous Diego Maradona. A man who has won the World Cup, beaten England with what it considered one of the finest solo efforts ever witnessed, and the goal that he shall ever be known for in the same match, “The Hand Of God”. Will this team of precocious talent be able to shine beyond their most famous footballing export, we shall soon see.
Next up are Germany, a nation and team ethic that seems to bleed match winners. Many times in the past, they have been written off for not containing enough individually brilliant players but on their day, the competitive team seems to gel together and defy their critics time and again. A late injury to their captain, Chelsea’s Michael Ballack, has been a blow, but nothing that won’t stop the German team marching through the Group Stages with Bastian Schweinsteiger being the one to watch out for.
2006′s winners Italy will have the focus set on them from their first game. Winning the tournament in Germany projected them into the glory, but can the same team play as well as they did 4 years ago? The same core of the team, expertly linked up with Andrea Pirlo and the crew-cut of Fabio Cannavaro captaining his team from the back will know what it takes to win it, but I feel that they will be found wanting in the knockout stages.
Finally we have France, having lost the Final 4 years ago will want to strike back with vengeance. Only a controversial Thierry Henry winner with use of his hand against Ireland booked them a place to South Africa, so the pressure will be on them to top their group. They face the host nation South Africa, backed by the home crowd, I suspect it will be a battle between France, Mexico and Uruguay all the way to win their group. With an ageing group of superstars that last won back in 1998, I don’t believe they can attain the heady heights of the final of 2006 once more. We’ll just have to see what happens come kick off time.
From all of us here at 34SP.com – no matter who you support during the matches – enjoy the World Cup 2010!
Many of today’s scripts have become incredibly feature rich and the limitations of PHP ”safemode” can cause issues with functionality in some areas. It is for this reason that we released our PHP CGI installer – to get around the various issues our customers have experienced in this regard. PHP running under CGI is a much more secure environment as it runs the scripts as your user instead of under the webserver’s user. This means that files created or uploaded via your scripts are owned by yourself and therefore do not cause issues.
While we have had this installer available for several years and have seen a great deal of usage, we have decided to make a new style of script installer available. This installer is a point and click system and we hope you will find it much easier to use.
Once you have logged into this screen you will be presented with a drop down box which will list all of your active hosting with 34SP.com on which you can use the installers. This will cover any personal, business hosting, professional hosting and reseller web hosting accounts as can be seen in the image below:
Should your hosting package have any subdomains attached to it they will automatically be listed once you proceed to the next step, where you can choose the main domain (first entry) or one of the subdomains of the account. Unlike the previous installer you no longer need to use unique ftp accounts on subdomains to be able to use the php installer.
Once you have chosen your domain/subdomain to install on you will be taken to a screen to choose the version of PHP and type of CGI that you wish to use. The differences are explained on this page, for the majority of installations we recommend that you use PHP 5.2.x and phpfastcgi. On the vast majority of servers if you choose php5.2.x then ZendOptimizer and IonCube will be activated for you automatically where as previously you would have needed to contact us to have these features manually enabled.
The next page offers what we called “Advanced Options” in the old installer. You will see that a few more have been added in response to customer requests, and one additional item at the top which will automatically activate the PHP installation on your domain without the need for manual intervention, as was previously required.
Once you have selected any options, you are taken to a simple agreement page. On this page a test of the connection is made to the server. If you see a message displayed as shown in the next screen shot, please open up a login to your account page on 34SP.com and enable the FTP service for the day (temporary) before proceeding.
Once the terms have been agreed too, you will see a quick summary of the options you have chosen. Please carefully check these over and if you are happy with them click the install icon, or click the link at the bottom to go back to the start of the installation script.
At this stage the installation will start adding the support files to your hosting account.
Once completed there will be a link to test the installation with. On clicking this if you do not get the message shown in the next screenshot please contact us with full details so we can look into why the installation has not been successful. If you chose not to activate the PHP installation it will also output the lines of code that you need to add to your .htaccess file to enable this.
We hope you find this new style script installation much easier to use and in time we will be replacing other scripts in a similar fashion. Please do let us know any comments that you have on this system or if there are any other areas where you feel there is room for even greater improvement with our website hosting services. As always, contact us through our 34SP.com support channels with any questions or comments.
