Top 4 essential tips for a new VPS
We’re going to walk you through the essential steps to getting your new VPS ready for common hosting services. Our top 4 tips for setting up a new VPS: Hosting mail? Look up your IP reptuation! Firewalls… always firewalls DNS stuff: rDNS/PTR and Name Servers Restrict Access via ACLs (Access Control Lists / Firewall) IP…
Read MoreHow to manage DNS records or domain forwarding at registrar level
This guide will walk you through everything necessary to managing your DNS records at the registrar level. Because we consider registrar level DNS management an advanced function, we’ll be expecting you to have a basic knowledge of how DNS works. This guide will only work for you if your domain is registered with us and…
Read MoreHow to detect and reduce dynamic processing with WordPress
Regardless of all the WordPress caching and speed optimizations you’ve applied, it’s all for nothing when it comes to the cases where your site still needs to launch dynamic PHP processes to serve some types of page requests. These dynamic processes use far more CPU and memory than do the cached requests and sometimes that…
Read MoreHow to add or edit a DNS record in Plesk
Managing DNS definitely sounds like a difficult task, but don’t worry! Once you’re able to get through the highly technical sounding terminology, it’s actually pretty straightforward. I often say that DNS is a bit like an onion: There’s many layers to it, and it’s very likely that you’ll cry if you try to get through them…
Read MoreIntro to Shell (CLI) for Plesk Linux
There’s a lot of Linux shell intro guides out there. There’s also a lot of intro to Plesk guides out there. But a reference guide to help you find the most common paths and command line utilities for managing your Linux VPS or dedicated server running Plesk is harder to come by. Before we get started, if…
Read MoreGreen Web Hosting + Greenwashing
Many web hosting providers take every opportunity they can to tout just how ‘green’ their hosting is, despite frequently not having much of an environmental commitment at all. Some companies talk about how they are 100% carbon neutral, followed by how they bought “green credits” to make this happen. Others make outlandish claims stating that…
Read MoreThe best ways to manage WordPress cron: wp-cron
wp-cron is WordPress’ version of a cron job and a cron job is a task that is run on a schedule, whether just once at a particular date and time or on a recurring basis, like every day at 3pm, or every hour on the 15th minute. Traditional Linux cron jobs run at precisely the…
Read MoreHow to get a free SSL certificate with SSL It! and Let’s Encrypt on Plesk
Historically SSL certificates have been costly. Enter: Let’s Encrypt. A free SSL provider with a massive amount of industry support. Free Let’s Encrypt certificates are the best option for most use-cases as they’re really simple to install and cover end-to-end encryption for website visitors. However in select cases, like an online store, you may wish…
Read MoreSyncing sliders with number or dropdown fields with Formidable Forms
My client wanted a car loan calculator that could look good and be functional on both mobile and desktop devices. Originally the design called for sliders for the various parts of the car loan options (amount, down payment, and term), but how many website sliders have you used on a mobile device without being frustrated?…
Read MoreAdding a “Province” Dropdown to an Address field with Formidable Forms
Working with a client on a site which only targeted the Canadian market, I was asked to add province drop-downs to the address field in a form we were building. Canadian addresses aren’t typically supported in as friendly a fashion as American addresses in form tools. American addresses often have a state drop-down by default,…
Read MoreMake 2020 the year we all take back the web
In the January 2020 issue of Wired Magazine, I read author Jason Parham’s new entitled By Us, For Us: Why we should think about segregating the web and it’s some concise, powerful stuff. It starts with a brief history of black content online, particularly NetNoir Online, which was, in Jason’s words “Afrocentric culture” on the…
Read MoreNew Non-Profit Canadian Web Hosting Pricing
At Websavers we love supporting non-profit organizations and community groups in our backyard, within Canada and around the world. In our effort to be a good community partner to the Non Profit organizations we work with, we’ve long offered a 25% discount on our hosting plans for non-profit organizations. We have not extended that discount…
Read MoreFormidableForms Javascript / JQuery Extensions & Hacks
I’ve been working on a client’s site which has some specialized form needs, and have been using Formidable Forms to achieve the goals required. Formidable Forms is an incredible piece of software, probably the most advanced Forms tool I’ve used with WordPress, but there’s some additional functionality I needed. Fortunately, Javascript is here to help!…
Read MoreEverything you need to create a website
In this article we provide a breakdown of each of the components you need in order to have a custom presence on the Internet, including a website and email services on your own domain. When you register a domain and host it all in the same place, it’s not always obvious that the service being…
Read MoreHow to speed up WordPress
This guide includes 9 tips to show you how to take just about any WordPress site to a maximum 1-2 seconds load time. It receives regular updates and was extended in the first quarter of 2020 to include a couple extra bonus tips. If you’ve selected a hosting partner and resources (theme, plugins, etc) that…
Read More8 Donations of Chanukah (+ a Sale!)
Over the past 15 years since Websavers began, we’ve done different things for the winter holidays. We’ve sent our clients holiday cards, put up Christmas and/or Boxing Day sales, New Years sales, offered digital holiday lights be added to your website, and a few other fun things like that. This year we decided to put…
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