What is a 301 redirect?

301 redirects are a signal to the search engines that a particular website or page has moved permanently to another URL. For example, if you were rebranding your old business (oldbusiness.com) to new business (newbusiness.com) you would want to forward the old domain to the new one.

There are a number of ways that you can setup a 301 redirect, including using an htaccess file, php, javascript, perl, etc. It’s also important to recognize that 301 redirects can be used to redirect individual pages and not just entire websites. In this case, we will be looking at using the htaccess file within Plesk to create 301 redirects.

Remember that whenever you are moving one domain to another, you should put some sort of redirect in place. If it is a permanent move, that should be a 301 redirect.

Feel free to use the following lines (but edit them!) if you are setting up your own .htaccess 301 redirects:

redirect 301 / http://www.yournewsite.com/
redirect 301 /oldpage/ http://www.yoursite.com/newpage/
redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.yoursite.com/newpage/

Let us know if you have any questions!

Did you find this video helpful? Please send us your feedback on twitter or open a support ticket if you have any questions.

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1. Login to Plesk through the client centre and choose “Mail” (Plesk 9: found in the sidebar. Plesk 10: tab across the top)
2. If you are prompted with a list of websites/domains, select the one to which you wish to add the email address
3. Choose the “Create Mail Account” button
4. Fill in the mailname you wish to use and provide a password

It is recommended to leave the remaining options at their defaults, however you may adjust them as you see fit. If you are setting up this address as a redirect/forward or mail group, be sure you uncheck the “Mailbox” option. If the Mailbox is enabled, your mail will be both forwarded elsewhere AND collected on the server and you will eventually reach your storage capacity limit, causing emails to be bounced.

Click Finish and your account will be set up and ready to go.

Redirect, Mail Group or Mailbox?

A normal mail account has a Mailbox enabled, however if you intend to simply redirect messages destined for your new mailname to other addresses, then you will not want the new mailname to collect email in a Mailbox. If you’ve already enabled the mailbox and wish to disable it, simply navigate to the mailname you wish to adjust (you should already be there) and click the “Mailbox” button. Simply uncheck the box beside Mailbox to disable it, then click OK.

Forwarding to one address (Redirect)

To enable a redirect or forward (same thing), choose the Redirect icon, then check the box in the upper left corner. Supply the address you wish to forward to and click OK.

Forwarding to two or more addresses

To redirect email to more than one address, a Mail Group is the solution! Click the Mail Group icon. You won’t be able to enable it until you’ve added members, so click on “Add New Member” and proceed by either supplying an email address with a different domain in the field at the very top, or check off the address(es) you’d like to add to the group in the section shown below.

Once you’ve added all the addresses you would like as members of the group, click the “Switch On” button and your redirect will be in place!

Antivirus Scanning

Click the Antivirus button to enable A/V scanning on your emails. If you are confident you will never contract a virus on your computer, then choose Incoming only. If you would like to be sure that you never send emails with viruses in them, then choose “Incoming and Outgoing mail” then click OK to enable it.

Spamassassin SPAM protection

It is highly recommended to enable Spamassassin SPAM scanning. Choose the “Spam Filter” button to get started. We have found the optimal score to filter at is 5 to start with, but you may wish to adjust that score until it behaves perfectly for your email. If you get too many SPAM emails that are NOT marked as SPAM (which could be like ****SPAM**** or [SPAM]), then lower that number by small intervals until it begins marking your SPAM accurately. If you are finding legitimate emails being marked as SPAM, then you should raise that number by small intervals until this no longer occurs.

You can also improve the accuracy of Spamassassin by training it to know which types of emails you consider SPAM and which are legitimate email. Just click here to learn all about SPAM training!

Spamassassin will mark your SPAM according to the pattern you specify, but it will not automatically move it to your Junk folder. To configure filtering in some mail programs, see KB article 85.

Testing your new account

The best way to test your new account is by logging in with webmail. Your webmail is accessible at webmail.yourdomain.com. If you will be setting up your account on your computer, phone or tablet, please be sure you can login using webmail first as this will eliminate any server-side problems as a potential cause of any trouble. Once you’ve confirmed webmail access works as expected, check out our mail guides to learn how to set up the account on your devices.

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Needless to say, if you are looking for us today we will be roaming around downtown Halifax popping into a variety of local business locations. For a list of what is going on you can check out the I Love Local HFX website.

We also wanted to offer a little something in return in the spirit of supporting the local community. For this weekend, we will be offering 50% off our personal hosting package and domain registration along with our hands on support to help setup a personal blog. If you were thinking of starting a blog or creating your online presence, this weekend is a great time to start.

Just click here to get started with your hosting, domain name, and personal blog setup for only $40 / year for life!

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To upload media for your AutoDJ and to add the media to your playlists, you will need an FTP application. Take a look at our guide on choosing an FTP application. The guide suggests using FileZilla, but you may use one of the other suggestions at the bottom or the FTP application of your choice. The guide will also show you how to upload files, although the folders will be different for shoutcast media. Your FTP connection details (including host, username and password) can be found in your shoutcast panel (CentovaCast) under “QuickLinks” in the left sidebar under the section called “FTP Client Connections”. Make sure you use port 21 (the default FTP port) and not port 80xx – the port on which your shoutcast server streams.

Upload Your Media

Once you’ve connected using those details, you will see a folder called “media” – this is where you should upload all of your music. Use the guide linked above to learn how to transfer files from your computer to your shoutcast server. If you already have playlists configured in CentovaCast, you willnot see them within the media folder. Upload all music files to the media folder and, after you tell Centova to detect your media (as shown below), you will be able to sort your music into playlists within the Centova interface.

Note: If you experience a corrupt audio file after uploading – where your song(s) sound like they’re skipping so much you can’t hear the actual song – try changing your FTP Connection setting for “Transfer Mode” to Binary (not ASCII or Auto) then re-upload your music files. Filezilla may be incorrectly identifying your music as text.

Enable AutoDJ

By default we do not enable AutoDJ on your account, although it is permitted on all but our free testing accounts. To enable AutoDJ, login to CentovaCast and choose “Stop Server” in the lower left corner. Choose “Configure Server” in the sidebar, then select the AutoDJ tab. Change the “AutoDJ Status” option to Enabled and click the Update button.

If you do not have an AutoDJ tab, then we have configured your account based on a template without AutoDJ – please open a support request mentioning the problem with a link to this article and we will re-configure your account to resolve the problem.

Have CentovaCast Detect Your Media

Once your licensed music is uploaded, login to CentovaCast and choose “Media Library” in the sidebar. Select the “Update Media Library” option in the lower left hand corner. This will tell CentovaCast to scan your media folder and detect the music you uploaded via FTP. Create a rotation playlist, then choose “Start Server” in the lower left corner.

If you have any trouble with this guide, please open a support ticket. Be sure to include at which stage of the guide you’re having trouble. Indicate the steps taken that got you to the problem so that we can attempt to reproduce it.

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Now we just have to hope everyone picks Web Savers for their host!

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It’s 2004…

And Adam and I are finishing our first year of Computer Science at Dalhousie University here in Halifax. Adam, having started (and selling) a hosting company with another friend back in High school suggests we create a hosting company. I knew nothing about web servers and hosting, but figured there was nothing to lose. In the first year or so, Adam footed the bill for our servers and we had about 5 clients, if I remember correctly. He came up with the name and got our website all set up.

Over the years we would joke about the name by coming up with ridiculous ad concepts like a server floating in the water wrapped by a life preserver or (even worse) slogans like “Saving the web one site at a time.” You can guess just how grateful I am that we didn’t go with anything like that for any of our ads. They’re about as corny as one can get with this name. Not only are they corny, but I don’t think we even believed that we were ‘saving the web’ like the slogan (let alone the name of the company) describes!

Growth

Yet despite all the corniness, there’s some truth to it, we simply didn’t realize it yet. Fast forward to just a few years ago, not long after graduation. We realized we had a great opportunity in front of us to take the company we had been slowly nurturing throughout our time at Dalhousie a bit more seriously. We sunk our time and money into redesigning our website, training ourselves on WordPress development, upgrading our servers to cloud-based scalable systems, expanding our self-help knowledgebase, and investing in software tech that is simpler to use and considerably more flexible for both us and our clients. It worked; we grew considerably faster in the following two years than we ever had over the first 6 years of the company’s existence! Better yet, after all the investment in our company’s future we started to get a feel for the personality of websavers.

The Dawning

In our eyes, websavers became all about a few key values. Automation, customer service and ease of use — particularly in regards to our do-it-yourself information. The company finally had a definable personality! This didn’t only help us provide a straightforward image for the company to our clients (via marketing and promotion), but it also helped us become more confident in what we stood for. It became the cushions that we fall back on for just about every interaction our clients have with our company. Not just when interacting with us, but also when interacting with our web sites and our Client Centre.

We stuck with those values and built all of our policies around them. Sort of like Google’s “Do no Harm” code of conduct we wound up with an unwritten code of conduct rule of our own that stemmed from our interpretation of the values: “do what’s right”. Sure that’s left up to some pretty open-ended interpretation, but I think that Adam and I have a very similar concept of right and wrong and that because of this we’ve executed on it extremely well. I also think our clients would agree. We stick to our guns and we make our decisions based on what we feel is the right thing to do. And this is how everything comes full circle, some 8 years later, the company becomes the name.

The Company Becomes the Name

In all these years hosting, we’ve transferred our clients from dozens of companies, both global and regional, such as GoDaddy, HostPapa, Dreamhost, Eastlink, BellAliant, Network Solutions and tons more. In all of our interactions with other hosting companies, we discovered problems that we worked to solve in our own hosting solutions. Problems and resolutions such as:

1. Simplifying the user experience by not placing ads for services all over the place, much like GoDaddy (and many others). This makes managing things like your domain name registration about as simple as possible — particularly for such a technical service.
2. Providing our clients with a powerful and the simplest available hosting management system. This is evidenced in our Client Centre design, organized around making it easier to find what you need, as well as our choice of control panel (Plesk) which organizes all of your hosting features in a clean hierarchy rather than throwing everything at you at once (like cPanel and others)
3. Ensuring our clients maintain access to and ownership over their website and domain registration. It’s amazing how often I run into a hosting company that either makes it a two week long process to transfer my client’s domain name (even though the customer clearly owns it!) or even worse, they hold it for ransom and claim that since the owner didn’t pay, they now get to keep the name. Dirty, dirty stuff. These guys certainly don’t know how to ‘do the right thing’.
4. Customer service agents that have no idea what they’re doing. Many companies outsource their support and provide scripts for their tech support agents to follow. This is extremely frustrating when you want something simple fixed and the rep keeps asking the same question over and over again or sending you the same article, rather than actually getting to the root of the problem. We may not have dozens of support agents at the ready, but at least when one of us replies we know what we’re doing and we explain it in clear english.

And then it dawned on me (quite recently, in fact). As corny as it may sound, we really are trying to ‘save the web’… the name makes perfect sense! We created and built up a company around values that transformed into actions that lead right back to the words that came (somewhat randomly) from the very beginning – websavers. Everything we’ve done in the past few years has been in the name of trying to help save our client’s websites from the companies that are doing the wrong thing. And that is something I’m extremely proud of.

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Firstly, what makes a plugin so good that we’ll stick with it for all of our sites? There’s three key factors:

1. Simplicity. I want to be able to install and activate the plugin and have it work exactly as I expect right out of the box. No fumbling with complex code to make it work and I really shouldn’t have to visit the developer’s website to figure out how to use it. It should just work right out of the box.

2. Design. Either the plugin has to make use of common coding practices (such as using list elements for sidebar entries) so that it fits perfectly into the theme of the site, or the developer should be using high quality designs of their own. Any less than that and I’m not pleased.

3. Functionality. I don’t expect every plugin to have every single feature I can imagine, but I do expect some core functionality out of everything. For example, I need to be able to add/edit events and set recurring schedules.

I also need to be able to use a widget with either a list or calendar view or both as well as have a full calendar page with bare-minimum, a month view. A week/agenda view would be great, but not required. The same goes for other plugins, with their own set of attributes.

The All-in-One Event Calendar

I’m not just making that up, it’s actually the name of the plugin too! The All-in-One Event Calendar is not just a fully featured calendaring solution, it’s beautifully designed and works immediately out of the box. I activated, went to the settings and clicked “Save” and I instantly had a Calendar page added to my menu with the calendar showing and ready to roll.

The last events plugin I used required me to edit template files just to fit it properly in with my design! Not this one. Immediately after creating the calendar page (which it did for me – bonus!) it was working and fit in perfectly with my design. Love it.

The back-end adding of events is just as you’d expect; choose Events > Add New. It’s got recurring functionality, Google Maps embedding for the venue and a built in way of showing the price for the event. Awesome!

So, if you’re looking for a great events calendar for your WordPress powered website, check out All-in-One Event Calendar!

If you enjoyed this post, check out our other #wpwednesday posts. We usually have something or other to say about WordPress just about every Wednesday, so common back and check us out regularly!

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As you can see by the following article, transferring your website isn’t for the faint of heart. If any of the following is confusing to you or you’d rather simply save a ton of time, check out the Web Savers SiteMigrator service where we’ll take care of ensuring your website is transferred so you don’t have to. SiteMigrator is even included for free with some of our hosting plans, so check it out before you get started with this guide.

If you’re still keen on proceeding yourself, let’s get started!

You will need:

1. Your FTP and control panel login details for your old host (often Plesk or cPanel)
2. The login details for your domain name registrar
3. Your Web Savers hosting welcome email (it contains FTP, mail and name server info)
4. An S/FTP Application. Check out our guide for help selecting an FTP application.

Gathering your content on your computer

Start by gathering your content from the old server and storing it on your computer. There is usually three types of data you will need to complete the transfer; files, databases, and email.

FILES

To save your website files, login to your current host using FTP or SFTP and download the files to your computer. Often you will find these files within a “public_html” folder or a folder entitled “httpdocs”. This is often different for each web host, so a detailed guide is not possible.

DATABASES

If your website is running on WordPress, Joomla or just about any other web application, most of the actual content of your website will be stored in a database and you will need to be sure to obtain a copy of this database along with the files if you wish to transfer it to Web Savers.

You will need to login to your current host’s control panel in order to obtain access to the database. Look for a utility called phpMyAdmin or DB Web Admin which provides you with access to retrieve a ‘dump’ or ‘dumpfile’ of your database. Once you’re within the web administration interface, look for a Backup or Export option within phpMyAdmin and save it as an SQL file or a compressed file (sql.tgz or sql.tar.gz).

EMAIL

Email stored on the server is the one type of data that cannot be easily transferred to your new account. Instead of transferring the email to the new server, the simplest way to save it is through POP. If you already have your email account(s) configured using POP, then simply retrieve your latest email (using the ‘Get Mail’ or ‘Send/Receive’ button in your mail app) before proceeding with the switchover to the new account. This will download the latest emails to your computer.

If you are currently using IMAP, you will need to identify which folders are stored on the server and which are stored on your computer. Check your sidebar that lists your accounts and folders. You should see something like [account name] followed by some folders and [on my computer] or [local folders] and a list of folders. All folders under [account name] are usually stored on the server and all folders under [on my computer] or [local folders] are stored locally (called local storage). Complete the following steps to save all your email in local storage:

1. Drag and drop your server-side mail folders (all folders under [account name]) to local storage. If your mail program does not allow this, then you will need to repeat step 2 (below) for each of your mail folders.

2. Create a new folder in your local storage called Old Inbox. Go to your actual inbox where all new mail is delivered, select all mail within and drag and drop them to your local storage “Old Inbox” folder that you just created. Repeat this process for Sent and Drafts if you wish to save them as well.

Once you have downloaded all email to your computer, you’re ready to proceed!

Note: the exact instructions for saving your email locally differ for every mail application, so we are unable to provide a precise guide for doing this. Thanks for your understanding!

Uploading Content to your new account

FILES

If your primary domain (the domain you selected during your order) isn’t the one you are transferring, you should Login to Plesk and add the domain. Since your FTP login information is different for each domain (on Basil or Thyme – Plesk 9), be sure to take note of what you enter when you create the domain. If you’re on one of our newer servers running Plesk 10, your FTP account remains the same for each of your domains unless you specify otherwise.

If you are transferring content to your primary domain, then you will find your FTP login details in your hosting welcome email that we sent when you first submit your order. If you cannot find your FTP login details, you can reset your FTP password by following these directions.

Use your FTP client to connect to your new server and upload your files. If you’re not sure how to do this, take a read over our guide to FTP here.

DATABASES

We have a handy knowledgebase article to help you import your database dumpfile right here! Just follow the directions within and your database will be set up on your Web Savers account.

Although it mentions this in the KB article already, it bears worth mentioning again. If your database name, username or password have changed during the transfer, you will need to update your application that makes use of this database. Wherever the application stores the database connection information, you will need to update it to the new details. For example, WordPress stores this information in the wp-config.php file and Joomla stores it in the configuration.php file. Most applications will use a similarly named file with the word config in the filename.

EMAIL

Login to Plesk and choose “Mail”. From here you can add new mail accounts. You will want to set up a new mailname for each account you had on the old server. You can also set up as many aliases as you like. For example, you can have a mailname like john@websavers.ca as well as aliases like johnny@websavers.ca, jon@websavers.ca, etc. so that they are all delivered to the same box.

Note: once the name servers for your domain are updated (as shown in the next step), your email applications will need to be updated to connect to the new server by applying the email configuration for your Web Savers hosting to your mail account.

Complete the Transfer: update the Name Servers

Currently all requests for your domain name are being pointed to the old host’s server. We now need to tell your registrar to point all those requests to your new Web Savers account instead. Changing the name servers is the simplest way to accomplish this. Here’s how:

1. Login to your registrar’s control panel
2. Look for an option called “Name Servers” that will have a minimum of 2 fields all the way up to 10 in some cases
3. Remove all entries you see in name server fields and fill in the Web Savers name servers as shown in your Client Centre account. (Login and View Details for your hosting plan that you added the domain to). For example, those hosted on the server Basil will use ns1.websaversdns.com and ns2.websaversdns.com

The name server changes can take as long as 24 hours to complete in all locations, however most of the time the changes only take about an hour. Once the name server changes have updated everywhere, visiting your website should result in the exact same site as on the old server, but being hosted from your new Web Savers account.

If you want to test to be sure you’re seeing the site on the new server, upload a test.txt file to your httpdocs folder with something in it like “We’re live on the new account!” and visit yourdomain.com/test.txt in your browser. If you see the welcome message, then you’re now reaching the website on your Web Savers account!

Having trouble with a particular portion of the transfer?

No problem! Open up a support request through the Client Centre with the details of your difficulties and we’ll be sure to answer as best we can. Make sure you include the link to this article, the step you’re having trouble with, any errors you are receiving and a description of what you were expecting to happen that did not occur. We won’t complete the transfer for you unless you’ve purchased our SiteMigrator service, but we can certainly give you some tips if you’re having trouble.

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There were three main points that we liked about this plugin:

Extremely user-friendly. The plugin was easy to install and easy to understand. We could create products and lists in no time and while the documentation is fantastic, we never had to look at it when setting things up.

Variety of built-in color schemes and easy to theme. We were lucky enough to have used a couple of the default color themes, but their markup makes it very easy to customize a look and feel with CSS.

Drag and Drop Interface. We love our drag and drop. No need to number your products, as you can easily drag and drop their placement in the comparison, along with any of the list items within the list.

The price. We picked this up on code canyon for only $15. We looked at a variety of other pricing page solutions for a lot more than this.

With all this functionality at a price point of $15 it’s hard not to at least buy it to give it a shot if you need a pricing comparison page. Check out their code canyon page here.

Have you used uPricing before at all? We’d love to hear your experiences whether good or bad and whether or not you agree with us.

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By default, the best you can do with a standard WordPress installation is add a text widget to your sidebar and throw in the code to insert the image. This means using the media library to upload your image, copying the URL, adding a new text widget, and pasting the URL in for the src attribute like this:

<img src="[URL to image]" alt="My Image" />

That’s a bit of a hassle! Then if you want to add a title or caption, you’ve got to insert more code to make that happen. Why can’t this be easier? Turns out, it is! Just install the image widget plugin, upload you’re image and enter in your settings of choice. Problem solved. Here’s how:

1. Login to your WordPress admin panel and head over to Plugins > Add New
2. Search for “Image Widget” and choose Install Now under the Image Widget plugin (normally the first result)
3. When it’s done installing, choose “Activate Plugin”
4. Now that the plugin is installed and activated, it will show up in the available widgets section. Head over to Appearance > Widgets.
5. Drag the Image Widget from the left side to your Sidebar of choice on the right.
6. Give it a title, add your image, write a caption, specify alignment, choose Save and you’re all set!

Even if you’re a web developer coding a site for a client, this is the best way to add an image to your sidebar. This way your client has the ability to log in and change up the image easily at any time. You an still adjust the CSS around that one widget by targeting its widget specific class.

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