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VeriSign COM/NET Registry Price Hike

Dear Reseller/Customer,

With the VeriSign COM/NET Registry Price Hike around the corner, we would like to take this opportunity and extend to you an opportunity to Renew your Domain names before the updated pricing comes into effect.

We have not yet increased the pricing within our system thereby giving you adequate time to renew your Domains.

The new COM/NET Registration, Renewal and Transfer-In rates will be made live on January 14th, 2011.

Regards,

aalpha NET Domains Team

WordPress Security Advisory

We are currently seeing a high number of WordPress installations being hacked due to out of date scripts, plugins, and themes. The folks at WordPress are very good about releasing fixes whenever they hear about a new exploit. Please take some time to check your installations and update everything noted in your WP admin panel under Updates including anything installed such as a theme or plugin that is not currently being used. Consider removing unused items for better security.

WordPress 3.3 was just released as well as updates for their 2 default themes.

Now is also a good time to harden the security of your blogs. There are lots of things you can do to protect your blogs from hacking. http://www.wpsecure.net/ has tips and info on recent exploits. See also http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress . Many more tips are available by using search engines to search for “securing wordpress”. A little time spent now on this can prevent huge headaches and downtime in the future.

There are numerous security plugins you can install such as Login Lockdown, WP Security Scan, and Mute Screamer. I highly recommend them.

Before making any changes, be sure to make a full backup of your account in your control panel under Backups. WordPress users should also be doing routine database backups either with a cron job or a plugin named WordPress Database Backup. The database is the heart and soul of any blog. Scripts can easily be reinstalled but not lost data without current backups.

Launching IPv6

Important Announcement from our DATA CENTER hosting WINDOWS 2008 server :
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Hello, several months back, we started the process of migrating off of our legacy IP space towards our new IP space with the specific objective of not only launching IPv6 but being fully IPv6 compliant from top to bottom.

As of today, we are in the final stages of this process. Our networks are 100% IPv6 ready, and we have developed our own IPv6 module for Hsphere and will be rolling this out shortly. Once we wrap this all up, only those customers using the cPanel control panels will not have IPv6 capabilities yet. Every other customer will have an IPv6 address assigned to them for each IPv4 address they currently have and the 2 protocol (IPv4 and IPv6) will be run side by side until IPv4 is no longer in use. This will ensure that your web services will be viewable by internet users on legacy IPv4 space as well as users on the newer IPv6 space. We expect to be running IPv4 along side IPv6 for at least 10 years, and maybe even longer. We will continue to offer IPv4 addresses until our supply is completely depleted – and we will include a corresponding IPv6 with every IPv4 address we allocate moving forward.
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Domain Names Continue Grow in 2011

Latest Domain Name Industry report shows 8.6 percent year over year growth

Quarter after quarter, the domain name business continues to grow.

Verisign’s second quarter 2011 domain name study reported that there were 5.2 million new domain names added in the second quarter of 2011. On a year-over-year basis, the second quarter growth is an 8.6 percent increase. There are now 215 million domains registered across all domains.

The .com and .net Top Level Domains helped to lead growth with an 8.3 percent gain in the quarter. Verisign reported that at the end of the second quarter there are 110 million .com and .net registered domains.

“The growth in domain name registrations in Q2 2011 was in line with Verisign’s expectations,” Pat Kane, senior vice president and general manager of Naming Services at Verisign told InternetNews.com. “The domain name market continues to be healthy in spite of short-term market and economic fluctuations.”

One market where domain name growth is particularly healthy is China. During the second quarter the .cn country code TLD (ccTLD) grew to become the world’s eighth largest TLD, passing the .eu European ccTLD.

“Dot cn and .eu began Q2/2011 with close to the same number of total domain name registrations,” Kane said. “.cn experienced slightly more growth in registrations than .eu during the quarter, so .cn moved up a spot in the rankings over .eu by the end of Q2.”

Though the .cn ccTLD is growing at a good pace it’s not going to challenge .com for dominance.

“Based on historical growth rates for domain name registrations overall, it is highly unlikely that .cn will overtake .com in total domain name registrations in the near future,” Kane said.

The other potential growth factor for domain names is the new generic TLDs that are set to become available in a few years. ICANN approved the new gTLD process in June, which has the potential to dramatically expand the number of available domains.

“At this time, it’s difficult to predict the impact that new gTLDs will have on domain name registration growth in the future,” Kane said. “ICANN will accept new gTLD applications from January 12, 2012 through April 12, 2012. ICANN plans to publish the initial results of its new gTLD evaluation process in November 2012, which means that the technical introduction of new gTLDs is expected to begin in early 2013.”

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.

Source : http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netsp/domain-names-continue-grow-in-2011.html

5 Warning Signs of a Bad SEO Client – article by Josh Sturgeon

Source : http://www.seomoz.org/blog/5-warning-signs-of-a-bad-seo-client

I just walked away from a lot of money.

After two months of research, proposals, and negotiations I turned down a deal that would have brought my freelance income to a new level. But I would have been miserable.

My prospective client had no shortage of funds. There was nothing shady about their business. I just didn’t want to deal with them.

I used to say “yes” to everything. I took on any client that would sign on the dotted line. In my zealousness to build a business, I neglected to find the “right” clients and settled for anyone who would cut a check. This led to sleepless nights, wasted time, and poor results. In my opinion, a successful business deal isn’t just getting paid. Success is when both parties (client and consultant) can agree on realistic goals; once those goals are met, both are satisfied with the results.

You are the professional. You know what will work and what won’t work. If you give the client whatever they ask for, it’s not going to help their business in the end. Learn how to balance input from the client about their industry and business goals with a reasonable plan of action that you produce.

Value your time…and the client’s. In my recent experience, I made the mistake of conducting keyword research and competitive analysis for free. I did this as an act of good faith, since there was a lot of business on the table. But without any skin in the game, the prospective client was indecisive and nit-picky over just about everything.

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