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WordPress’ Last Upgrade Till 2018: An Early Holiday Gift!

WordPress
WordPress has just made it easier to plan out your website strategy for 2018! Upgrade 4.9, known as Tipton, multitasks media, coordinates coding and more!

Media Moves

Creating with the text box widget meant relying on words alone. Now, Add Media at the click of a button! Images, audio and even video will complement the text and elevate your design ideas. Plus
  • Add a gallery to any widget areas like sidebars and footers

Theme Therapy

Changing the theme your website used to be stressful. Who knows what would happen when you clicked Activate!  The new Live Preview button allows you to take a test drive.  Plus
  • Send the preview to a friend or colleague to get a second opinion
  • Schedule a time in the future for the theme change to take place automatically

Coding Comfort

Working with code in WordPress was hard on the eyes and nerves, as it was all in a plain text box.  Syntax highlighting helps you scan and organize code just like a proper code editor! Plus
  • Find errors easily with syntax error messages 
  • Create code faster with code suggestion and auto completion
  • Remind inexperienced user against code manipulation with a kind but firm warning message

WordPress Upgrade Q & A

If you are using WordPress hosting with Web Hosting Canada, these tips may help.

What version of WordPress am I using?

  1. Sign in to your site 
  2. Go to dashboard
  3. Scroll to the very bottom, the version will be in the lower right corner

How do I upgrade to 4.9?

  1. Sign in to your WordPress dashboard
  2. Click on the Update tab (below Dashboard tab)
  3. Press the Update button 

Domain Privacy

Uncategorized

Domain Privacy

Lock away your private information

  • Protect from Identity Theft
  • Shield you from SPAM
  • 24/7 Expert Support
Get Started
Included
with all domains*

Find a new domain name with added privacy

What is Domain Privacy?

You control the flow of information

A feature included with all WHC eligible domain registrations, Domain Privacy protects your identity from spammers, hackers and identity thieves by hiding your personal information from public databases like WHOIS/RDAP.

With Domain Privacy, your contact information shown in public directories will be replaced with details from our privacy partner. Keeping your identity hidden from all the bad apples out there!

Domain Privacy FAQ

Domain Privacy is a feature that protects your personal data—such as your name, email, phone number, and address—when you purchase a domain name. This information is recorded in public databases like WHOIS and RDAP, making it accessible to anyone. With Domain Privacy, your details are hidden from these databases, safeguarding you from spammers, hackers, and identity thieves.
WHOIS and RDAP are public databases that store information about domain registrations, including the registrant's personal details. These databases were created to promote online transparency, but they are increasingly exploited by spammers, hackers, and identity thieves to harvest personal information.
.CA domains registered by individuals automatically include privacy protection at no extra cost. However, this protection is only available to Canadian individuals and cannot be applied if the domain is registered by a corporation or organization.
ID protection and private registration are simply different terms for Domain Privacy. At WHC, and in the domain industry, these terms are used interchangeably.
Extremely important! Without Domain Privacy, you’re likely to experience a sudden increase in spam emails and/or calls from various sources—ranging from phishing attempts to scam offers. These emails or calls could contain viruses or malware designed to steal your personal information or scam you. We strongly recommend keeping Domain Privacy enabled to minimize your risk.
Yes. Certain domain extensions are managed by registries that do not allow or support privacy protection or have specific requirements. In that case, WHC has to comply. We play by the rules. Some of these extensions include: .BE, .DE, .ES, .EU, .FR, .NYC, .PRO, and .US.

Web Hosting Now Includes Premium Backups!

Security
Running a business is tough enough without having to worry about accidentally deleting an important file or email, or overwriting an article you’ve spent days writing. While we can’t prevent mistakes, Web Hosting Canada has now made it easier for you to quickly recover from them. Introducing Premium Backups, a powerful new backup solution, powered by JetBackup, that’s now included with all web hosting plans. It automatically backs up your websites, databases and emails and allows you to quickly restore the version of your choice – as far as 14 days back – directly from your control panel, with just a couple of clicks. Premium backups are already included with your web hosting plan at no extra cost (in most cases) and are safeguarding your online investment at this very moment! To ensure the quality and availability of your backups, premium backups have been capped as follows:
  • Starter Web Hosting: 10GB of total backup space
  • Pro Web Hosting: 25GB of total backup space
  • Enterprise Web Hosting: 50GB of total backup space
Beyond 50GB, additional premium backup storage is available at a monthly cost of 9.99$ per 50GB of storage.

How Premium Backups Work

The previous backup system was good but Premium Backups are better. Here’s why:
  • Control – No need to contact support, perform restores easily from your cPanel.
  • Autobackup –  Your data is automatically saved each day for 14 days, so you can easily revert to the version you need.
  • Flexibility - Need to restore just your emails, database or a single file? No problem!
  • Safer – Your backups are stored in a separate physical server, ensuring better resiliency in case of catastrophic data loss (think: your server blows up!).
  • Downloadable- If you ever want a copy of the backup for yourself, you can download it easily.
  • User-friendly- Restores are extremely simple: Go to the file, pick the day, click restore and confirm.

Using Premium Backups

  • Look for JetBackup in your cPanel or type ‘backup’ into search bar.
  • Select the files, databases or emails you want to recover, select the date to recover from, then click Restore! The process is queued and generally completes within minutes.
  • ‘Snapshot’ allows you to perform an instant backup which will be saved for three days. Ideal for when you make big changes in between daily backups.
Please Remember – When making changes you only have 14 days to perform a restore. As such, it’s still important for you to occasionally download full account backups, just to be safe. The team at Web Hosting Canada would like to thank all our clients for choosing WHC.  We hope that this upgrade allows you to focus more on running your business and less on the security of your online ventures. Happy hosting, Web Hosting Canada

Weebly Apps: Get the Most Out of Your Weebly Website!

Small Business Success

The Weebly Site Builder, a user-friendly website builder allowing the average Canadian to easily make a slick and clean looking website, now includes Apps!

Apps can extend Weebly's standard functionality with great new features like multilingual websites, shipping calculators, and live chat widgets (to name a few!). There are currently over 275 apps that can be used to improve the look, functionality and user experience of your website, with more being added each month. Many of the apps are free so there's no reason not to check them out!

Weebly Apps are available immediately in the App Center on all Weebly Starter, Pro, and Business plans.

Useful Apps for Your Website

The Weebly App Center includes all sort of apps. Here are some you may find interesting:

  • Multilanguage

    Canada has two official languages. Does your website reflect that? Don’t let the French-Canadian or English-Canadian markets slip through your fingers.

    This app allows visitors to change the language of the site at the click of a button, so you don’t have to add different languages to the same page!

    Additional benefits:
    • Customize placement of language buttons
    • Choose between flags, words or both to signify different languages
    • Declutter navigation bar
    • Try for free (two weeks) and inexpensive ($2 USD a month)

  • FAQ

    Canadians have questions, polite questions, but questions none-the-less. Answer them ahead of time with a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) section.

    A FAQ is a repository of knowledge which can free up your staff, but that is only part of it. With advancements in smartphones, mobile users are asking questions directly into devices to search the internet for information. If you have a similar question, and an answer, on your site, then search engines will rank you higher.

    Additional benefits:
    • Free
    • Customizable colour
    • Accordion function takes up less space
    • Drag and drop

  • Mobile Web Boost

    Considering almost 70% of Canadians have smartphones, making the best mobile experience for them is important. Weebly is excellent at creating responsive websites (sites that automatically change to fit desktop, tablets, smartphones, etc.) but perhaps you want some other features to really make the mobile experience stand out.

    This app will help you create a fixed ‘add-to-cart’ button to your eCommerce venture to improve conversion.

    Additional benefits:
    • Free
    • Customize colour, look and placement
    • Translate into any language
    • Integrates easily with complementary apps

  • Shippo

    Shipping your products, both within Canada and internationally, is made easier and more affordable with this free program. Create shipping labels from your printer with an app that connects seamlessly with your Weebly shopping cart. Works directly with your Canada Post account!

    Additional benefits:
    • Free
    • Track shipments
    • Emails clients
    • Perform bulk label printing
    • Creates international custom forms

  • Pure Chat

    Even in the age of technology it is important to not lose the human touch. If you are running a service or eCommerce website, then it is important to be able to quickly help visitors so that they turn into customers. With the pure chat app, you can talk to visitors in real-time, allowing you to assist and even pitch sales!

    Additional benefits:
    • Free
    • Reply to clients from your Android or iPhone
    • Manage support staff
    • Create canned responses
    • Integrates into google analytics and more
    • Track clients and have real-time visitor analytics (paid upgrade)
Interested in Weebly? Why not try Weebly for free for 30 days?

May these tools help you on the road to success!

The Web Hosting Canada team.

HTTP/2: The Future of the Web Is Here!

Performance
Web Hosting Canada is proud to announce the immediate availability of the HTTP/2 technology on all its servers! HTTP/2 builds on the HTTP/1.1 protocol (which is now over 15 years old) and can make your website load substantially faster, especially if it uses multiple elements such as images and videos. How much faster? See for yourself It does this thanks to:
  • Multiplexing – Allows multiple requests to be handled at the same time, instead of one at a time.
  • Binary – Uses native computer language when sending information, rather than translating it into a browser language which takes more time.
  • Less Overhead with Headers- Utilizes HPACK compressions, a much more efficient way to represent header files, load times are faster.
  • Priority - Prioritization occurs, allowing files that are assigned greater importance to be delivered faster.
The result: a faster website, and happier website visitors and clients! Web Hosting Canada has already rolled out the HTTP/2 technology on all web hosting and reseller hosting accounts. Clients using Cloud or Dedicated Servers can also benefit from this upgrade by contacting our support team. Do note: most browsers will only enable HTTP/2 acceleration if you use SSL security on your websites (that’s the “https” at the start of your web address). If you haven’t already, this would be an appropriate time to install an SSL certificate on your website to get it secured and accelerated! Want to check if your website is currently running on HTTP/2? This handy tool will let you know! Happy hosting! The WHC team