UK Hosts?
- Thread starter davetee
- Start date
Hi Dave,
We'd be happy to help.
We host a number of UKBF members and have been recommended a number of times.
We're LiteSpeed powered, which is up to 9 times faster than standard Apache hosting, and run CloudLinux which brings greater reliability.
We also provide an excellent one click installer so you can get your CMS up in seconds, or even choose it when you order to have it installed for you automatically.
Above all else, we're quite active on UKBF and pride ourselves on our personal level of service.
It'd be great to help another member.
If you've got any questions feel free to get in touch here, or start live chat on our site if you fancy a chat.
I hope that helps
Thanks,
Dan
We'd be happy to help.
We host a number of UKBF members and have been recommended a number of times.
We're LiteSpeed powered, which is up to 9 times faster than standard Apache hosting, and run CloudLinux which brings greater reliability.
We also provide an excellent one click installer so you can get your CMS up in seconds, or even choose it when you order to have it installed for you automatically.
Above all else, we're quite active on UKBF and pride ourselves on our personal level of service.
It'd be great to help another member.
If you've got any questions feel free to get in touch here, or start live chat on our site if you fancy a chat.
I hope that helps
Thanks,
Dan
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Hi if you have tried several times you would of blocked your I,P and they will need to Unblock IP address again.
I did look for a phone number on their site for you but cant find any sorry.
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That might be why you can't reach it then - although seems harsh to have a long IP block for first time block (if that is the cause).
You could try PMing him on here to see if he is around to help?
Other that that - do you have a smartphone you could try browsing to the website via 3G on to make a ticket? There doesn't seem to be a phone number for them on their website..
Steve
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Hi Dave,
My sincerest apologies for this. I'm glad you responded to one of our emails to contact us, as we weren't aware that you were having problems logging in.
Your were indeed blocked by the firewall for too many failed login attempts. As soon as we were aware we unblocked you, so as per my response you should be able to login fine now.
The cPanel login details we provided you were correct, but perhaps you used your client area login details, it can be easy to get those confused.
If you ever need any help, you can simply email [email protected]. This will generate a ticket for you so we can get back to you right away.
I realise it wasn't obvious that you could do that, and if you'd been made aware you wouldn't have been blocked for that time. Apologies for that.
I've amended our welcome email so that it now lets you know that you can reach us at [email protected] if you need any help.
We're also going to review our firewalling process to see if we can place a shorter term block if it's the first time repeated failed login attempts have been made.
If you need any help transferring your site then let me know, we'll be happy to do that for you.
I hope that helps.
Kind regards,
Dan
My sincerest apologies for this. I'm glad you responded to one of our emails to contact us, as we weren't aware that you were having problems logging in.
Your were indeed blocked by the firewall for too many failed login attempts. As soon as we were aware we unblocked you, so as per my response you should be able to login fine now.
The cPanel login details we provided you were correct, but perhaps you used your client area login details, it can be easy to get those confused.
If you ever need any help, you can simply email [email protected]. This will generate a ticket for you so we can get back to you right away.
I realise it wasn't obvious that you could do that, and if you'd been made aware you wouldn't have been blocked for that time. Apologies for that.
I've amended our welcome email so that it now lets you know that you can reach us at [email protected] if you need any help.
We're also going to review our firewalling process to see if we can place a shorter term block if it's the first time repeated failed login attempts have been made.
If you need any help transferring your site then let me know, we'll be happy to do that for you.
I hope that helps.
Kind regards,
Dan
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Not all hosts take security seriously but any decent host will block brute force attempts. Having strong security procedures is very important, especially if like us you host a lot of businesses and ecommerce sites, which by their nature are typical targets for hackers.
Providing direct email support is very useful, it obviously lets you get in touch without having to visit the hosts website. It also lets you update tickets by simply replying to emails, which can be handy if you're out and about. This is something we've always provided.
Some people prefer telephone support but we find our clients much prefer using live chat and email.
Sharing links, and specific details through a text based medium is much more effective than over the phone, and live chat is just as immediate.
If you start live chat through a secure session it's also more secure. Importantly, if you stick to electronic means then the person's IP address details are logged. This helps prevent social engineering problems where someone could ring up and give the correct answer to a security question to access someone's hosting account.
We also provide voice chat through our website. If you use that, then you get to speak to someone in person, but you also benefit from greater security and protection for your account and details. Security is very important, and is something any user and especially online business should take very seriously.
Providing direct email support is very useful, it obviously lets you get in touch without having to visit the hosts website. It also lets you update tickets by simply replying to emails, which can be handy if you're out and about. This is something we've always provided.
Some people prefer telephone support but we find our clients much prefer using live chat and email.
Sharing links, and specific details through a text based medium is much more effective than over the phone, and live chat is just as immediate.
If you start live chat through a secure session it's also more secure. Importantly, if you stick to electronic means then the person's IP address details are logged. This helps prevent social engineering problems where someone could ring up and give the correct answer to a security question to access someone's hosting account.
We also provide voice chat through our website. If you use that, then you get to speak to someone in person, but you also benefit from greater security and protection for your account and details. Security is very important, and is something any user and especially online business should take very seriously.
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Bear in mind sites vary and you won't see that everywhere. In most cases the block is usually anything from a few minutes to a few hours. Most people have dynamic IP's anyway that frequently change so blocking for longer periods is generally pointless. You can generally get round it by turning your router off for a few minutes as your ISP will automatically issue a new IP to you when turned on again.
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I was actually trying out another host recently and found myself blocked, I opened a ticket when going to bed, got up next morning to an explanation that they may have blocked my IP, they had closed the ticket and if I required further support I could reopen the ticket.
Changed IP myself and was able to access my site, started getting certificate errors using IE so gave up and terminated account. However if I had a decent explanation in the first place I would very likely have kept account open. Live chat always offline and telephone not answered, very frustrating (not a UK host).
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That's one thing i really hate is when you call or email someone and they cant be bothered to answer. makes me wonder how they ever get customers.
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Some companies look bigger than they really are ( Not saying that 'HI' is, But referring to other hosts )
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Thanks David, glad you're getting on well.
I did some quick checks and your site now has a Google page speed score of 89/100 and Pingdom score of 95/100 just from switching to us.
Your page load speed's also notably improved.
The biggest gains can now probably be made by optimising your images.
If you need any help, just let us know.
Cheers,
Dan
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Hi Dave,
According to google page speed a further 90Kb can be saved by losslessly optimising the images. That normally means removing meta data and performing lossless compression.
We're happy to do that for you.
I just had a look at one of your images and it's got copyright meta data stored with it, so that would explain it.
That is sensible given the nature of your work and website, so I can understand if you want to keep that.
All the best,
Dan
According to google page speed a further 90Kb can be saved by losslessly optimising the images. That normally means removing meta data and performing lossless compression.
We're happy to do that for you.
I just had a look at one of your images and it's got copyright meta data stored with it, so that would explain it.
That is sensible given the nature of your work and website, so I can understand if you want to keep that.
All the best,
Dan
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My pleasure Dave,
What we normally do is run Google Page Speed, which you can add to Chrome and Firefox:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights_extensions
Then go to your website, load Google Page Speed, click the Page Speed drop down arrow and select "Choose a Custom Path" and set that to something easier to navigate to.
Then have it analyse the page.
Optimised versions of the files will then be automatically saved to your chosen directory.
You can compare these to your originals, and trim off the added characters in the file name.
What I did for your yours was then view the file's properties > details and add back in the copyright information and author, copying that from the original file.
That still saves about 14% for an image I tested, as there's a lot of camera meta data that you don't need.
You can of course simply save the image for the web in Photoshop, and on the right hand side of the save dialogue ensure that no meta data is selected.
That's generally a good idea moving forward for new images.
However, we've found that google page speed can still optimise those images further even with there being no meta data to remove.
In fact, if you're feeling particularly keen you can do multiple page speed passes, as the compression algorithms are sometimes able to reduce the images further still on a second pass (that would involve uploading your newly optimised images, and then running page speed again).
These are just a few of things we do for an optimisation package we'll be formally introducing soon.
Yes, TIFF is a lossless file format. But what I mean here is losslessly optimising JPEG, which is of course a lossy file format. Basically JPEG and other images can often be further reduced without losing any image quality. Think of it a bit like the compression our web server uses to deliver your files in a smaller size.
I hope that helps
If you need any help just let us know.
Good luck!
Dan
What we normally do is run Google Page Speed, which you can add to Chrome and Firefox:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights_extensions
Then go to your website, load Google Page Speed, click the Page Speed drop down arrow and select "Choose a Custom Path" and set that to something easier to navigate to.
Then have it analyse the page.
Optimised versions of the files will then be automatically saved to your chosen directory.
You can compare these to your originals, and trim off the added characters in the file name.
What I did for your yours was then view the file's properties > details and add back in the copyright information and author, copying that from the original file.
That still saves about 14% for an image I tested, as there's a lot of camera meta data that you don't need.
You can of course simply save the image for the web in Photoshop, and on the right hand side of the save dialogue ensure that no meta data is selected.
That's generally a good idea moving forward for new images.
However, we've found that google page speed can still optimise those images further even with there being no meta data to remove.
In fact, if you're feeling particularly keen you can do multiple page speed passes, as the compression algorithms are sometimes able to reduce the images further still on a second pass (that would involve uploading your newly optimised images, and then running page speed again).
These are just a few of things we do for an optimisation package we'll be formally introducing soon.
Yes, TIFF is a lossless file format. But what I mean here is losslessly optimising JPEG, which is of course a lossy file format. Basically JPEG and other images can often be further reduced without losing any image quality. Think of it a bit like the compression our web server uses to deliver your files in a smaller size.
I hope that helps
If you need any help just let us know.
Good luck!
Dan
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Yes, as for using sprites, I haven't found an easy solution out there.
Essentially you combine lots of often small images into one larger image, generally with plenty of white space, and then assign it as a background image to HTML element such as a link, div, or so forth, and shift the background so only your contained image is displayed.
This means instead of having a separate http request for each small image, you just have one for your sprite image, which can significantly improve page load times.
However as far as I see you have to get properly into the knots and bolts of your theme to do this. The majority of Wordpress sites I've seen don't use sprites at all.
Hopefully this'll be addressed in the future. Or maybe someone on here's found a good solution.
WP Minify is certainly a quick win though.
Good luck
Essentially you combine lots of often small images into one larger image, generally with plenty of white space, and then assign it as a background image to HTML element such as a link, div, or so forth, and shift the background so only your contained image is displayed.
This means instead of having a separate http request for each small image, you just have one for your sprite image, which can significantly improve page load times.
However as far as I see you have to get properly into the knots and bolts of your theme to do this. The majority of Wordpress sites I've seen don't use sprites at all.
Hopefully this'll be addressed in the future. Or maybe someone on here's found a good solution.
WP Minify is certainly a quick win though.
Good luck
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I'm getting 94/100 so far on my front page for the new website...I'm happy with that
Yeah, good job on the image optimisation!
The other gains would be pretty minimal now.
Always nice to see a client take optimisation seriously, as you can tell we're quite passionate about performance
.
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