Posted by: David Banes in support on
Mar 26, 2008
Support is our driving force at Cleartext, if customers are happy they spend more and give you a bit of leeway when things go off the rails. It’s for this reason I’m recommending JoomlaPlates as a Joomla template provider.
During a recent ‘free’ web site project we needed a good template and selected one of JoomlaPlates, their php is good and the CSS is well documented. To my dismay there was a
Posted by: David Banes in managed services on
Mar 25, 2008
I used to wonder why companies would want to archive their email externally, given they'd almost certainly be charged a premium. That is until I got a call from a client needing help 'fixing' a tape archive that wasn't restoring.
Of course, it's all about media rotation, or not having to do it. Hosted archiving not only removes the tedium of having to backup and restore email archives, it removes
Posted by: David Banes in hosting on
Mar 24, 2008
We've been a NetRegistry reseller for many years and recently started using Media Temple in the USA for customers asking for virtual servers. Recently customers have been asking about offshore hosting.
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When should I use Australian hosting?
Australian hosting is fine for most companies hosting requirements, if you're a typical Australian small to medium business then any of the myriad of hosting companies can provide enough storage and data at a reasonable cost. We recommend NetRegistry because they are reliable and provide excellent customer support even if their plans aren't the cheapest.Â
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Why use offshore hosting?Â
If you've been watching the news you may have realised that Australia is 'broadband challenged', the cost of internet connections and the amount of data (stuff you can download) is far more (and far less respectively) than you can get from US based hosting companies.
This becomes an issue when you want to deliver rich media content like audio and video via your web site or web based application. Most Australian based hosting plans just don't offer enough disk space and data transfer at reasonable price points. This is when you should consider US based hosting.
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What is hybrid hosting?
We've coined a new phrase, "Hybrid Hosting", this is a hosting setup where your main web hosting is based in Australia, probably because your primary audience is in Australia, but rich media hosting is offshore, typically in the USA.
This setup has several advantages;
- It keeps your web site 'local' and always available in the event that Australia suffers a 'disconnect' from the rest of the world. This is rare, but has happened.
- It keeps costs down by allowing you to select a hosting plan from an Australian provider for your web pages and then store your rich media content on a comparatively cheaper host with lots of space and data in the USA.
- Any outage in international connectivity only effects your rich media (audio and video) not the main web site pages.
This approach produces some interesting options for organisations moving into Web 2.0 with all the things that entails, RSS, Podcasts, streaming video and audio.Â
If you'd like to discuss hosting then please give us a call with your web site requirements and we'll work out a reasonably priced, reliable hosting solution for you.Â
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Posted by: Louise Birch in communication on
Mar 21, 2008
We soft launched a new service this week,
ClearEmail EDM 'Outbound Email Campaign Management'. This service complements our inbound email filtering and content control (which also has outbound mail control). Our one paragraph description goes like this;"ClearEmail EDM is an outbound email direct marketing service that is designed to move marketing departments outbound email onto our platform.
Posted by: David Banes in Joomla on
Mar 21, 2008
Whilst building a new site using Joomla 1.5 I needed to display an RSS image without test, unfortunately the standard mod_syndicate module doesn't let me save the 'Text' Module Parameter empty, it defaults to 'Feed Entries'.My fix was to edit the default.php file in /modules/mod_syndicate/tmpl/ and remove the code that display this text. this gives the following result.<img
Following on from my
earlier post about reviewing technologies I've been having another look at the Jabber/XMPP community and there are some interesting things going on.
OpenFire from
Jive Software now includes public IM gateways in the open source version, this used to be in their Enterprise version, so everyone can run a sensible company IM platform now. OpenFire runs under Java so it's OS
Clearspace is an excellent example of a product that makes something more by combining some parts. I bet many of us have thought about how best to use technolgies like blogs, wiki's and forums.Well think no more and just
install Clearspace and you're all set, then start
creating plugins to get that extra 10% you need.
Jive's enterprise collaboration software
"...there is no viable alternative in the marketplace to Clearspace from Jive Software"
Chuck Hollis, VP of Technology Alliances at EMC
Find out more
Posted by: David Banes in technology, companies on
Mar 01, 2008
I remember when Netscape started up in 1994, I'd just moved to the USA to help setup Dr Solomon's the anti-virus company. I remember Mosaic that preceded it and I now use Firefox and Safari. It seems a shame that after AOL's attempt to keep it going it's finally been killed off.
