Jun. 2006
June is National Safety Month! And as it's better to be safe than sorry we're offering THREE FREE MONTHS of our SSLPack if you email billing@midphase.com and pay for one year. With it you'll get a static IP address and starter SSL certificate to make sure your transactions are safe and secure.
That's a savings of almost $25!
All you have to do is contact billing@midphase.com and request the upgrade!
Updates and Clarifications
Honk Honk -- Beep Beep
We'd like to congratulate Ms. Linda Howard on being the winner of the midPhase Car Giveaway Sweepstakes! Linda hails from the far-away land of Portland, Oregon and we couldn't be happier for her. She has taken into her possession a 2006 Mitsubishi Eclipse, Cherry Red with all the trimmings. Congratulations Linda! Give us a ride home!
OK, so maybe we're dreaming a bit. Linda did win. But she took the cash option, so we didn't even get to meet her. Oh well, we're all happy for you anyway, Linda.
Minor Adjustments
We've gotten our fair share of skepticism over our Unmetered Bandwidth offering. As everyone knows, there's nothing false about our offering but it was still raising enough eyebrows to cause concern. So with that in mind we've restructured our megaPhase and proPhase accounts - reshaped them into sleeker, more potent animals. The megaPhase now gives you 15,000MB (read a buttload) of disk space, 500GB (read another buttload) of bandwidth and as usual, a Free Domain For Life. The proPhase now gives you 17,000MB (read a metric buttload) of disk space and retains the Unmetered Bandwidth and Free Domain For Life. We feel by putting a face to the bandwidth for the megaPhase we'll reduce the number skeptics and naysayers over how much bandwidth we're giving and for the proPhase customers we'll hopefully attract customers who are looking for a powerful, powerful account that gives them unlimited hosting capabilities.
Current customers under either plan can retain their quotas if they wish or move to the newer plans. Email support@midphase.com if you wish your plan be upgraded. If not, enjoy the same phenomenal service you've come to expect from midPhase - The Best Web Host in the Universe* and Galaxy**!
* Universe spans floors 5-7 at 223 W. Jackson, Chicago IL 60606.
** Please note: Galaxy is defined as everything, everywhere for all time. Period. ***
Ya Can't Spell Web Host Without OS
Here at midPhase HQ we get a lot of questions but the #1 presales question we receive is which hosting plan is right for a particular site - Linux or Windows. Here's the skinny on a very frequent inquiry. If your site requires ASP or ASP.NET support, meaning you've created your dynamic site in a program that specifically indicates ASP or ASPX then you require Windows Hosting. If your site uses HTML, PHP or is a Flash-based website then our Linux Hosting is perfect for you.
Employee For A Day - Thrill Of A Lifetime!
Our new contest is open to all current customers. The grand prize is a trip here to Chicago to be a midPhase employee for a day! We'll put you up in a swank hotel, give you a whirlwind tour of our grand city and show you what it's like to work at midPhase! Just send an email to employeeforaday@midphase.com with your answers to the following 3 questions:
- How many fingers am I hold up?
- What's one service you'd like to see midPhase start offering?
- If midPhase ceased existing this very moment, what would you miss most?
The deadline for entries is December 15th, 2006. Good luck!
Q & Long A
In this section, we will have various midPhase employees answer customer questions in each addition. As the newsletter grows, we'll do our best in also answering more questions. Send your technical, business, marketing, design/programing questions to qna@midphase.com.
This month the question is: "How can I get my site ranked better in search engines?" The answer is from our customer support manager and resident search engine expert, Mark Lee.
Today's sessions, I'll go over some basic rules you need to have in order to get your site indexed and eventually ranked. Today's SEO is a lot different then what it was even 6 months ago. Google as you know is king when it comes to search engines and everybody thought that they had the answer to getting ranked on Google.
¬ÝThat's all changed now and it's become a little more difficult to get ranked on Google. But the basics remain the same. Here are some key pointers on you need to make sure you have on your site to get indexed and ranked.
- Make sure your title and meta tags are unique, not just on the homepage but every page.
- Make sure you do not have ANY copied materials on your site.
- Make sure you have good unique articles related to your keyword. ( I would say at least 10 articles that are unique )
- Make sure you have Google's sitemap on your site ( More info can be found at http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login )
- Do not make any link farming pages on your site.
- Do not have more then 10 to 15 partner links on your site
- Do not purchase links from brokers
These are just guidelines to follow for your site, it's not the formula for you to be ranked #1 but you'll head in the right direction. You also want to make sure your materials are not being copied, you can check out sites like copyscape.com to see if your content is being stolen.
A good resource for SEO is http://www.webmasterworld.com or http://seochat.com. I'll have some more tips on how to get quality inbound links and how to create meta tags in my next article.
Client: Gretchen Cawthon
Url: http://www.girlscantwhat.com
Hosting Plan: midPhase MEGA-PHASE Package
So the questions...
1. What brought you to midPhase to begin with?
I wanted to setup a dynamic website that would have plenty of room to grow. At the time, my host provider did not have adequate support for the versions of PHP I wanted to use. Emails to them went unanswered and phone calls to them resulted in lame answers and at one point I was told they would not be upgrading ANYTHING in the near future!¬Ý I started researching new hosts and midPhase kept popping up in my search results with to glowing reviews. I was impressed with the active message board and server status reports on their web site. I called midPhase to ask a few questions and the responses were polite and detailed. I switched immediately to midPhase and everyone is living happily ever after. The end.
2. What 2 adjectives would you use to describe your main website?
Inspiring and Energetic.
3. What would you say your best trait is, physical or otherwise?
My best trait is probably faithfulness. If I say I will do something, I write it down and I follow up. Sometimes I have to renegotiate those commitments, but that is usually met with a positive response because I am at least working on the commitment and not forgetting it existed. Keeping promises, whether it's to a customer, a friend, family member or even to myself is very important to me.
4. Favorite kind of grape?
Seedless.
5. Sum up your existence in 5 words and two punctuation marks.
Help others. Never give up!
6. You have exactly 10 minutes to pack a bag to take with you to an island for the rest of time. What goes in it?
My laptop, my palm, extra clothes and my dog (a pug, so he will fit in the bag just fine). However, if there is no Internet connection...just the clothes and as many books as I can stuff in there and still have room for my dog. Oh, and maybe my husband and kids...
7. What would be your ideal shameless plug?
Girls Can't WHAT? is an inspirational site that motivates and encourages girls to follow their dreams. Sign up as a community member to access the forums, archives and more. Girls Can't WHAT? T-shirts are popping up all over the world. You don't have any Girls Can't WHAT? gear yet...no problem. Girls Can't WHAT? T-shirts and gifts are available in a wide variety of designs that reflect music, sports, hobbies, careers and more. Get yours today! ’Ä®
Girls Can't WHAT? is quickly becoming the hottest new web site on the Net. Check it out!
June is traditionally the start of what's known in the web hosting business as the slow season. New signups start slowing to a crawl, calls and emails abate to a practical standstill and for a little bit we start wondering if anyone out there knows we exist at all. At least that's how it was before this year! We're growing and the slow season we typically see has yet to rear its ugly head. That's thanks to all of you, our loyal and quite frankly handsome (and/or beautiful) customers. In this our fourth year of existence we're coming out with some very innovative products and relaunching of some of our classic offerings. Stick around, the fun's just beginning.
(mid)Phase Out!