So we got to thinking, why would we choose us? What do we have that they don’t? Why did we bother starting this company way back in the Internet golden years May of ’04? Well, it’s not quite a clear-cut answer… so here we go.

The early days

Back in ’04 there were still quite a number of hosting companies. They had severs, they had hosting packages, they had pretty much the same stuff as all the hosting companies do today. What most of them didn’t have are these seemingly magical ‘unlimited’ hosting packages that we mention on our 8 Reasons page. They were sort-of up and comers at the time and we thought we should join them; offer unlimited everything at a ridiculously low price. And so we did – we launched with this extremely sexy plain mint green website and even sold computers on top of hosting!

It wasn’t long before we realized that we weren’t going to get thousands of customers fast to easily make up for the cheap prices with volume. At the time, though, that didn’t matter. We were all in university, trying to stay on top of a number of courses, working part-time and trying to run Web Savers; it was quite the juggling act. Summer was our refuge, and it was over the first couple summers that we finally were able start pulling even with our server costs. We were learning a lot (at running a web hosting company and maintaining servers, as well as at school) and we were pretty happy that we were getting new customers, even if it wasn’t as fast as we’d have liked.

Present Day

Fast forward a few years, past years of university, graduations, pricing changes, website redesigns, a variety of wonderful new customers (and of course a few less wonderful ones, as in any business) and on to the Web Savers of 2010. What is it that we have done and are doing to make us different? How do we separate ourselves from the pack? Here’s a few things we think we’re especially good at and that few (if any) other hosting companies are doing.

1. Pricing Structures

Nearly every hosting company advertises ridiculously low prices for their hosting plans. Normally this would be a great thing, however, as with everything like that, there’s always a catch! The prices are fake. Unlimited everything for $4.99 / month sounds great, but is only available on a 3 year contract. Want to pay monthly or annually? Nope sorry, you’ve got to pay $8.99 / month now. We think it’s wrong and we refuse to partake in this bate-and-switch advertising.

2. Customer Service

We can’t say every other hosting company has poor customers service, as we’ve heard a mixed bag of horror stories and love stories from people talking about other web hosting providers. We can say that the majority of big-name providers seem to give terrible customer support. From disabling accounts due to being just a few kilobytes over-used to the absolute worst communications ever seen, these guys clearly have yet to embrace the internet for what it is; a nearly perfect customer-to-business communications model. We do know this and we use it. Telephone, email, Twitter, Skype, you name it, we’re there to help. Admittedly our telephone support isn’t perfect, but we are doing everything we can to make our internet-based support system as simple and powerful as possible!

3. Telephone Support

Yeah, I know. I just mentioned that our telephone support isn’t our most effective support medium. Why? Because we refuse to hire a secretary or outsource our phones to India. We know people hate it when they can’t understand the person on the other end of the line. We know people hate it when the person answering their call cannot solve their problem. When you call Web Savers, we’re able to solve whatever issue you need resolved. If you get us by phone, we take care of you. If you leave a message, no problem; we take care of the problem and send an email to confirm. We think it’s a better way of doing business and we think our customers agree.

4. Clean and Simple

Over the past year one of our primary objectives has been to simplify our website. This means removing the junk. We dropped the ‘let’s throw everything we offer on the homepage’ system (GoDaddy, HostGator, DreamHost, among others) and instead we thought, “what are our customers looking for when they visit our site?” We dropped the stuff that requires knowledge of hosting a website and we replaced it with road signs – things to push people in the right direction. More recently we integrated our new client system into the site. In the process we dropped a number of options that our billing software developer thought was important for hosting clients, but truly isn’t. We pushed and pulled at every corner of the system until it was as simple as we could make it and we think we succeeded. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out our brand new Client Centre. Don’t forget to let us know what you think; suggestions and constructive criticism are always welcome.

5. Dual Level Support

What does that even mean? If you’ve looked through the site any time in the last year you have likely noticed our Support packages. To some it may still be unclear what it’s for; if you haven’t used it, you probably simply don’t need it and thus don’t need to know about it. Well, Support is our way of offering two levels of support. Not 10, not 5, but simply two. We provide our basic packages that allow for as much do-it-yourself control as possible. With our ever-growing knowledgebase and choice of Plesk as a hosting control panel, we have designed our site, developed our software, and chosen the software packages that are the simplest available. This is done specifically for the do-it-yourself-ers: our first support level customers. The second level of support is needed by those who don’t have the time or the patience for even the easiest to use software. We don’t blame you; sometimes we want to let someone else take care of the back-end of business while we focus on the front-end. This is exactly what Support is for – to let us take care of your website configuration and updates so you can keep growing your business.

We no longer simply stand on the sidelines watching what the other hosting companies are doing and imitate. We’re here to do what those other companies don’t; make your life easier.

After speaking with a number of the company’s victims we have discovered that the charges are typically $29.98, although in some rare cases this amount has varied. We are not responsible for these charges. We do not have any packages that cost the above amount, nor do we ever debit bank accounts as a method of payment.

This page exists to help those experiencing this problem and to allow for an open discussion to help get to the bottom of it.

Some of the victims were able to confirm they found the correct company and relayed this information back to us:

Websavers LTD
72 High St.
Haslemere, Surrey
United Kingdom
GU27 2LA
www.websaversclub.com

We ask that if you are experiencing these charges that you please check the bottom of the direct debit slip from your bank (or call your bank if necessary) to verify the above company and website is correct. Comments are enabled on this page so as to invite discussion and feedback. Please help us get to the bottom of this problem!

Update [June 17, 2010]: A consumer reports site (consumeraffairs.com) shows dozens of complaints about this “Web Savers Club” company, which helps to confirm that the above information is correct.

Update [July 16, 2010]: We have heard from a few people who mentioned that all they had to do was call the phone number on the website, www.websaversclub.com, give them their phone number, and they were happy to refund the charges.

Thank you.

Web Savers Staff.

The issue started early Monday morning and was caused by substantial denial of service type attack by an extremely large volume of mail being sent to a specific mailbox.

To make sure this does not occur we have implemented new emergency response processes with our upstream providers, meaning they will have the authority to act immediately without our contact in similar situations. This will ensure that outages like this do not occur in the future.

In addition to the new processes, we are also hiring and training a new in-house technician to make sure you get the quickest responses and communication in the future.

Many of our attempts to respond to incoming tickets failed due to email addresses being hosted on the server where the problems were occurring. Please ensure that you are using an email address that is not hosted with us when creating tickets during outages – particularly those involving mail problems. It is also important to note that telephone support is only included in our Support enabled packages. For those without Support, we are more than happy to respond to a telephone request via email as long as you leave an accessible email address in your voicemail.

We understand the importance of email and we apologize for any inconveniences this has caused. We believe these changes will not only prevent a similar situation, but will allow us to continue to offer you with the best service in the industry.

For best updates and information you can follow us on twitter.

When you upload content via FTP you use your personally selected username and password combination. The username you selected also becomes the owner of the files you upload. Similarly, when you attempt to delete files uploaded through an application like WordPress, since they are not owned by your account, you are unable to delete them. The apache user has control over the files.

Although you could get the root user to change the ownership or permissions of the files to allow your account access, this requires creating a support ticket every time you run into the problem. Rather than fixing the problem reactively, we suggest fixing it proactively; ensure that files uploaded through WordPress are already owned by your personal user account rather than apache.

How do you do this? FastCGI!

Within Plesk under Web Hosting Settings, there is an option to run PHP through FastCGI. By changing this setting from Apache Module to FastCGI, you are changing the user that PHP files are accessed with.

Since all of your PHP files will be executed by your own personal username, all files uploaded through your PHP application will also be owned by your user account. No more apache account in the mix and no more non-deletable files!

One additional benefit is that your files are not owned by the apache user any longer. You might remember that it was beneficial, for security reasons, to have your files not writable by users other than apache, but that only applies when you are forced to upload them under that user account. Since the apache user would be the same for all files uploaded across all websites hosted on the same server, if that account were hacked, then the hacker would have access to all files created by it (if they knew where to look). Now that your files are being uploaded under your personal user account, no other website can affect the security of your own files (assuming permissions are also set appropriately – ie: no ’777′).

If you have any questions about this process or believe some of information provided here could be clearer, please contact us with your suggestions – we would love to hear from you!

How and why do websites get defaced, hacked, or corrupted?

Most sites are compromised by known vulnerabilities in outdated web-based scripts and applications. Simply put, this means if you run outdated versions of popular software such as message boards, blogging software, or content management systems, your website could be at risk. Other ways a website is commonly compromised is due to insecure or stolen passwords and incorrect file permissions.

Why would anyone want to hack my website? I don’t store any personal or financial information on my site so I shouldn’t worry about this right? Many people feel that because they think no one wants to compromise their website they don’t need to worry about its security. Stop it.

Although they may not want any of the information on your site, most of the time your site will be used to spread viruses, spyware, or deceive your visitors into going to sites with them. Most compromised sites we see have malicious code injected into the files in order to do just this.

Here are a few things you can do today to make sure your website is better protected.

Start locally

Make sure your personal computer is secure. If you use an FTP program to upload content to your website, chances are that you have the username and password saved within it. Depending on how that program stores this data it is possible to have that info stolen if your computer has spyware or a virus.

We recommend installing a virus scanner and regularly scanning for spyware along with being more cautious of where you are surfing online.

Update and patch your third-party applications

Most website security issues can be avoided by being proactive with updates and security fixes issued by the authors of your applications.

Many popular applications now have a one-click update that takes less than 30 seconds to perform. It is recommend that you backup your data before upgrading which can usually be done through your Control Panel.

If you stop using an application make sure you remove it. If you’ve switched from WordPress to Joomla for your content management, make sure you remove the WordPress installation as it can be forgotten about and left outdated. Even though you may not be using it, it can still be accessed.

Remember that updates, patches, and new releases are released for a reason. Staying on top of these updates may seem like an inconvenience at the time, but it will save you from a lot of headaches and issues in the long run.

Checking file permissions

Allowing everyone to read, write, and execute files on your website is a huge security issue. In a web-based environment you typically will want a “755″ permission setting, or full access to the file owner, and only read/execute access for everyone else.

Some applications will ask you to set a permission to “777″ or full access to everyone. Make sure you are running the most up-to-date version of this application before installing. Also, you may want to try it with a 755 as some hosting environments will for this.

Secure your login areas

It is best to access the administration area of any application over SSL (https://). This can be done by making sure it is placed in a ssl-based directory.

In addition to this, it is possible to limit the admin directory to only specific IP addresses. This can be done by placing the following information into a .htaccess file:

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName AdminAreaAuth
AuthType Basic
order deny,allow
deny from all
# allow home IP address
allow from 99.x.x.x
# allow work IP address
allow from 142.x.x.x
# allow vacation home IP address
allow from 24.x.x.x

For example, if you wanted to secure the admin area of your WordPress installation, you would place this .htaccess file in your /wp-admin/ directory. It will deny all connections that are not made from one of those predefined IP addresses.

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Hope this helps. Interested in hearing more on a specific topic? Let us know!

The datacentre and hosting industries have seen a huge green push over the last several years and it is interesting to see a client with the purchasing power of the Canadian Government make an announcement like this.

With space being such an issue in data centers, it is easy to sacrifice energy efficiency with space efficiency. Although much attention has been put on making data center infrastructure and design more energy efficient, it’s nice to see a push to get the servers in those data centers more efficient as well.

Lydia Aouani of Natural Resources Canada said “Soon, any server purchased by our government will be Energy Star (certified).” She also noted that “If all data centers were using state of the art energy efficiency technologies, by 2011 we would go back to our electricity consumption levels of the year 2000,”

1. Open Mozilla Thunderbird

If you do not already have Thunderbird installed, please visit http://www.mozillamessaging.com to download it. Once downloaded and installed, Thunderbird can be found as an icon on the desktop entitled “Mozilla Thunderbird” or from the Start Menu under ‘All Programs/Mozilla Thunderbird/Mozilla Thunderbird.’

2. Add a New Account

When you launch Thunderbird for the first time you will be prompted to create a new account from a variety of types. Please choose Email account and click Next. If you have already launched Thunderbird and are not presented with the Account Wizard, please choose Tools > Account Settings > Add Account.

3. Configure Your Identity

Enter your name and email address in the requested fields.

4. Configure Your Server Settings

Choose IMAP as the account type if you need to access your email from multiple locations or POP as your account type if you are only planning to access your email from the one computer.

The Incoming and Outgoing Server fields should both be set to mail.yourdomain.ca

5. Provide your Username and an Account Name

Enter your full email address under the Incoming User Name field and choose Next. You can make the Account Name whatever you like. Choose Next, then Finish.

Thunderbird will now attempt to retrieve your email. Enter your password when requested, and check the box to remember your password if you wish to have it automatically check for email on a regular basis.

1. Getting Winamp and the SHOUTcast Plug-in

Download and install the latest version of Winamp 5.x. This can be downloaded from winamp.com.

Download and install the SHOUTcast DSP Plug-in for Winamp 5.x. This can be downloaded from shoutcast.com.

2. Finding the SHOUTcast Plugin Configuration

After you’ve installed both Winamp and the DSP plugin, open winamp and click on the top left corner, and select Options and then Preferences.

Scroll down to the bottom and click on “DSP/Effect”. This should populate two plugins in the list to the right. Click on the one that reads “Nullsoft SHOUTcast Source DSP v1.9.0 [dsp_sc.dll]“, and then click “configure active plugin”.

3. Connecting Winamp to the Web Savers Server

You should now have the “SHOUTcast Source” window open. Click on the “Output” tab. About half way down you should see fields labeled “Address”, “Port”, and “password”. Change these values to what you’ve received from Web Savers’ staff.

Click “Connect” near the top, and check the box that says “Connect at Startup”. You are now connected and streaming to the SHOUTcast server. If you check the url http://yourip:port it will show the server as online.

4. Specify the Encoding Bitrate

Click on the Encoder Tab, under the Encoder Settings, pick the kbps that you signed up for during the order process, 24, 48, 64, or 128 kbps. If you have not ordered yet and are unsure what these options mean, generaly speaking the higher the bitrate (in kbps) the better the quality of audio. If you are planning on playing music we suggest a bitrate of at least 64kbps, though 128kbps certainly sounds the best.

5. Configuring the Music Source

Click on the Input Tab, and make sure it reads Winamp under Input Device. This will broadcast whatever is playing in winamp onto the SHOUTcast server. If you have a microphone or another sound device hooked up, you can select it from this drop down list and it will switch from the song playing to whatever device you choose. So if your song is coming to an end and you want to start talking, or if you’ve had enough talking and would like to start some music again, you would be switching this between “Winamp” and your microphone input.

6. Test it out!

Since you have just configured Winamp to take anything playing and feed it to your SHOUTcast server, to test it out you simply need to start playing an audio file. To do this you will need to double click on an existing song in your media library. If you have no songs in your Winamp media library, drag and drop an MP3 or other audio file on to the Library. The link to follow to listen to your station is http://yourip:port/listen.pls. If you have registered a domain name and visiting http://www.yourdomain.com shows your Web Site or a Plesk splash page, then you can also use http://www.yourdomain.com:port/listen.pls.

1. Open Outlook Express

Outlook Express can be opened by clicking on the start menu, choosing “All Programs” then choosing Outlook Express. It can often be found right in the Start menu second from the top, as well as beside your Start button in the taskbar or directly on the desktop. If a dialog box pops up asking you to enter a display name please skip to step 3.

2. Add a New Account

Now that Outlook Express is open, you will need to add your mail account to it. To start this process, click on the Tools menu and then choose Accounts. This will open a window labelled “Internet Accounts”, from here click on Add and Mail.

3. Completing The Internet Connection Wizard

You should now have the Internet Connection Wizard open asking to enter a display name. This is the name that will appear in the “From” field when you send emails. Entering your full name will do the trick.

The next screen will ask you for your email address. Enter your full email address in here.

Next, it will ask you for your incoming and outgoing mail servers. Keep the mail server type as POP3 and enter mail.yourdomain.com for the incoming and outgoing mail server.

The last information that needs to be entered is your username and password. The username needs to be your full email address, not just the prefix. ie. adam@websavers.ca not just adam. Your password will show up as black dots so be sure you entered it correctly.

On the last window, just click Finish, but don’t close the internet accounts window. If you already did, see step 2 for details on how to get it back open.

4. Configuring The Outgoing Server

Although you have already provided Outlook Express with the outgoing server address, it will also need to be configured to allow your account access. To do so highlight the account in the internet accounts window and select properties. This will open a new window, on which you will click on the “Servers” tab. You will notice the info that you provided during the wizard is shown here. Looking at the bottom of the pane, check the box that says “My server requires authentication” underneath the Outgoing Mail Server title. Now choose the Advanced tab. At the top of the window you will see “Outgoing mail (SMTP)” with the number 25 beside it. Change the number 25 to 587.

Note: If you later discover that you are not able to send any mail, then your ISP is blocking all outgoing servers except their own. In that case you will need to follow the directions for this step once again, and change the 587 back to 25 and under the Servers tab, change the Outgoing mail server setting to their server address. You will need to call your ISP in order to obtain this address. You will also need to ask them if their server requires authentication or not: if it does, check the box near the bottom of the Servers tab, click Settings and fill in your account information for your ISP. If it does not require authentication, uncheck the box.

5. Leave Messages on Server for Webmail

When Outlook Express downloads a message from the server using POP3 it will then remove the message from the server. If you wish to keep a copy of your messages on the server – so that you can view them in webmail – we will need to configure it specifically to do so. Please remember that the storage of your mail also counts towards the total storage of your web hosting account.

To ensure mail is left on the server for access via webmail, you will see an option to “Leave a copy of messages on server” at the bottom of the currently open “Advanced” tab. Check this box as well as “Remove from Server after [ ] day(s)”. Enter the number of days you wish to have the mail remain on the server for. We recommend up to 30 days. Now click okay and close the internet accounts window.

6. Send and Receive

Your mail account is now added to Outlook Express. To download your messages, click the “Send / Recv” button on the top tool bar. If you encounter any errors please double check your username and password for the incoming and the outgoing server as well as the spelling of the mail servers before contacting support. If you find you are unable to send email, but can receive it fine, please read the second part of step 4 – it outlines how to solve this problem.