Singapore Web Hosting Blog

the good news is, google has updated visible Page Rank PR that’s displayed in google toolbar. one of my sites got a PR7, which is rather hard to get. take a look at singtel web site, theirs is also a PR7. achieved from years of hard work.

although the visible google PR is not up to date, still looking at the green little bar is enjoying. according to google, PR is calculated and updated constantly and is factored into ranking algorithm constantly, it’s kind of ongoing process. however the PR value shown in google toolbar is only updated once every 2-4 months.

so if you see a google ranking jump, at the same time you find your PR increased, the PR improvement might not be the reason of the ranking jump, because your real PR most likely was updated some time before.

some people conclude that PR is dead, no point to monitor, follow, improve, etc. i do not agree with this. will talk about it later when i have time.

back to latest google update, which is still in process at this very moment.

this google update, named Jagger, is quite unique. the result is bad, at least for me, till today. very bad. many of my sites dropped rankings under major keywords or key phrases, sometimes dropped to nowhere, often from top listings. 60-70% of traffic are gone.

not only my sites, many many webmasters are reporting the same. no, we’re not using blackhat seo tricks, all my sites are clean, whitehat, useful to visitors. it’s not something personal, there’s a pattern, many good sites are buried deep in google at this moment.

some webmasters noticed massive google ranking movements as early as 22th sep, announcement of google update was made by webmasterworld, however goolge then said it’s not an update. but from last weekend, around 15th oct, more and more webmasters see more and more ranking movements in google. that’s the time i saw many of my sites dropped. webmasterworld decided to name it Jagger, and google says, ok, lets name it Jagger.

it’s the most lengthy google update so far, considering it might have started from 22th sep, and it’s still going on. best part is, google said, we’re still on stage 1 of Jagger update, 2 more stages are coming over the next 2 weeks.

good thing is, it’s not settled yet, i/we have good opptunities to recover. i’ve gone through many google updates, with no problem. every time my sites go stronger after updates. the reason is very simple, we do not use spammy dirty tricks.

bad thing is, it might be like this for at least 2 weeks, 70% of total traffic is a lot, and it affects our business seriously. it may become worse: current results may stick. although we’re confident that our sites are clean, but we are not google, they can do anything they want. sometimes good honest web sites may become victims in google’s battle with spammers.

if you too suffer in this update, the best thing to do now is, wait and see.

fingers crossed.

this is a follow up regarding NeoMail removed from latest Cpanel build.

as posted in our Server Updates, on 14th Oct 2005 at midnight, we switched from uw-imap mail server to courier-imap server and updated Cpanel to version 10.8.0-RELEASE_65 because a security hole was discovered in uw-imap mail server. Cpanel changed support for mailbox format from mbox to maildir in latest build.

as a result, NeoMail webmail is no longer supported by Cpanel and has been removed from latest Cpanel build. NeoMail supports mbox format only.

althoough many users are rather used to NeoMail already, however it is in fact a good step to remove NeoMail:

1)NeoMail supports mbox format only. maildir format works in such a way that each email is saved in one file by itself in a folder and whereby mbox format is “all emails are saved in one file”. so in terms of efficient, of course maildir format is better besides chances for corrupted mailbox will be much lower.

2)NeoMail is no longer in development and has not been since 2002. this means that any bugs or security issues are no longer being fixed by the developers. this has become a serious issue.

3)the current version of Perl does not work well with NeoMail. when a user reaches their full disk quota and accesses NeoMail, user’s browser just time outs most of the time.

maybe these are too technical to attract some clients’ attention. nevermind, what i would like clients to know is, removal of features provided to our client base is not a decision we take lightly. we did consider to remove NeoMail before but did not make the move as we noticed many were using it.

this time, Cpanel/we are forced to, because of the newly found security hole.

for those who used NeoMail before and store emails and address book in NeoMail, the emails and folders can be accessed via Horde, the other webmail application you can see once login to webmail.

the NeoMail address book can not be imported to other webmail but can be downloaded in plain text format: FTP into your hosting account, go to .neomail-emailuser/cpaneluser directory, there is a file called addressbook, download it into your computer, and open by any text editor.

so far we have not received any report of lost email or folder. however according to Cpanel, the mbox-maildir conversion process is not error-free, some users may not be able to find email/folders (that were accessed or created in NeoMail before) via Horde. if you encounter the problem, as suggested by Cpanel, please try: login to Horde, go to “Folders” icon > ” Show Unsubscribed” > click on each folder especially sent-mail folder to check whether any mails are there.

if it does not work, please open support ticket.

last, but not least, pls do NOT use webmail as primary method for email access. it’s always advisable to use email client software to access email. webmail is meant for emergency use only, for instance while travelling.

i do not see any reason or benifit to use webmail when you’re back home/office where you can download all emails to your own computer. it can only hurt.

thank you for your kind understanding and support.

all new clients, a warm welcome to Singapore Web Hosting !

by now you should have received order confirmation email which contains important and sensitive information such as account username and password, where to login to control panel, FTP server, helpdesk URL, etc. pls read it carefully.

also, i’d like to address a few more things here that might be useful to all new clients.

1)if you registered the domain name with other provider and host it with us, you need to update domain DNS to our nameservers, click here to see how.

2)click here for instructions on how to set up email accounts.

3)for instructions on FTP/upload web pages, refer to this article on FTP.

4)if you’ve uploaded your web pages but you still see our temporary page at your domain, saying something like “this domain is hosted by Singapore Web Hosting“, refer to this post: why my homepage does not show up?

5)if you can visit your web site but email seems not working properly, most likely it’s something at your end, pls refer to this post: my email is not working!

6)always keep your email address updated in three places:

a)our helpdesk, this is how we send announcement and invoice, and how we identify clients.

b)domain name control panel. no matter where you register domain name, from us or any other provider, always keep domain name registrant/owner contact email updated. this is where domain renewal reminders will be sent to. no, nobody will call you to remind you as this is automatic process.

c)in cpanel, our web hosting control panel. you will receive system warnings when your account is reaching storage or bandwidth quota.

i know it’s troublesome, but…

7)wirte down username and password and keep it in safe place. we cannot retrieve password for you. never mention password to anybody else.

do not keep trying wrong username/password, this includes all users, cpanel, email, FTP, webmail, etc. anything that requires password, do NOT guess password. 5 failed logins due to wrong username/password will get your IP blocked. all people sharing the same IP, for example all people using same LAN network in your office, will be affected. if username/password is wrong, it’s wrong, keeping trying would not make it right.

inform all your email users, if they’re not sure with password, instead of guessing, they should ask administrator to reset password.

9)do NOT use webmail as primary method for email access. webmail is meant for emergency only, for example while travelling. you should always use email client software, usch as Outlook or Outlook Express, to access and download emails to your own computer.

webmail software are all 3rd party software that we have no control over, anything can happen to them, cpanel may stop supporting any of them anytime. again, we have no control over this.

10)download backup from cpanel as often as possible, just in case. this is particularly important if your site is interactive where content is updated by visitors, for instance, a forum. should anything happen, you can simply restore the backup.

we do have backup but it’s used for hardware failure recovery only. we hope we would never use it.

that’s all for now. will add more when necessary.