Tag Archives: auto

How Hackers Can Use Your Expired Domains to Steal Data

Posted on August 13, 2019 by Hosting

The post How Hackers Can Use Your Expired Domains to Steal Data appeared first on HostGator Blog . When businesses and blogs rename or merge, old domains sometimes get left behind. Security researchers say expired domains can put data at risk. Scammers may set up fake shops on expired domains and use them to steal credit card data from unwary bargain hunters. Or they may target email accounts linked to the domain to scam clients, steal company secrets and break into employees’ shopping and travel accounts. Prevention is as easy as renewing and protecting all your domains—but that’s not always simple, especially if you own a lot of domains. Here’s what you need to know about your risks when a domain expires and how to keep yours current. What Happens When Domains Expire? The first thing you need to know is that when domains expire, they’re available to anyone who wants to pay to register them. They’re also easy to find online, through sites that offer expired domain name searches and lists of recently expired domains to bid on. Some buyers buy expired domains for legitimate projects. Others are not so ethical. Your expired domain could end up as a fake online store Criminal gangs snap up expired domains to turn them into phishing sites. That damages the brands that lose their domains, the brands impersonated by the scammers, and shoppers who fall for the scam.  Security blogger Brian Krebs profiled a photographer whose old portfolio domain was turned into a fake athletic shoe store after her registration lapsed . Thieves used it to steal credit card data for resale on the dark web. For the photographer, the damage went beyond the loss of her website. She had no way to access social media accounts that were linked to her domain email address, because the scammers changed her passwords. Now the domain that used to host her portfolio redirects to the official adidas website, after adidas and Reebok sued the scammers who exploited her expired domain along with hundreds of others.  Your expired domain could let data thieves into your business Last year, security researchers with Australian cybersecurity firm Iron Bastion proved that registering abandoned business and law firm domains could give criminals access to insider data. By setting up a catch-all email forwarding service for domains they re-register, criminals can access confidential client data and emails. They can run scams using this information or sell it on the dark web. They can also take over former employees’ social media, banking, and professional accounts by changing the passwords linked to the old domain’s email addresses.  What should you do with domains you don’t use anymore? Security experts say the best way to safeguard your old domains is to keep renewing them , even if you’re not currently using them. Then you should close the email accounts associated with those domains and unlink those email accounts from alerts sent by banks, airlines, and other services that handle sensitive (and valuable) information. If you must let your old domains go, you’ll need to be thorough about updating any online accounts you and your employees set up using old domain email addresses. Then you’ll need to close those email accounts. In either case, it’s wise to let your customers and vendors know about your change of email address. Give them some advance notice, ask them to whitelist your new email address, and then ask them to delete the old address when you’ve closed that account.  For any email account on any domain, it’s always a good idea to set up two-factor authentication (2FA). By requiring a code from an SMS message or an authenticator app, you reduce the risk of someone maliciously changing your password on your email account and other accounts you set up with your email address.  And speaking of passwords, don’t make it easy for hackers to guess or brute-force yours. Every email address on your domains should have a strong password that’s not used for any other accounts.  How can you keep all your domains current and safe? Follow these recommendations from domain security experts to keep your domains in your possession. Give your domain registrations fewer chances to lapse. Start by registering or renewing for the longest amount of time you can, like three years instead of one. Then set your registrations to auto-renew.  Keep your registration information up to date. Update your domain registration accounts when your email address, phone number, or other contact information changes. Changed credit cards or online payment services? Make sure you change your domain payment information, or your auto-renewals will fail. Keep your registration information private. Domain privacy protection costs a few dollars a year, and it’s worth it. If you add domain privacy when you register your domain , your registrar’s contact information is listed in the WHOIS public database. Without domain privacy, your name, email address, and other personal data are on display. That can put you at risk for spam, scams, and harassment.  Lock your domains. Domains must be unlocked when you’re transferring them to a new host. Otherwise, lock them to keep scammers from transferring them to a different web host without your consent.  In HostGator’s Customer Portal, you can lock your domains for free. Navigate to Domains in the left sidebar. Under Manage Domains , you have the option to lock all your domains at once. You can also click the More button for any of your domains to lock one at a time. Under Domain Overview , click the Change link next to Locking . That takes you to Domain Locking. Then you just move the switch to Locking ON and click Save Domain Locking . Now your domain is protected against theft by unauthorized transfer. And with auto-renew in place and good cybersecurity practices , your domains are safe from expiration and exploitation. Ready for a new domain? HostGator now offers new customers a year of free domain registration with selected hosting packages and top-level domains. Sign up for 12 or more months of hosting, register a .com, .net, or .org top-level domain, and get the first year’s domain registration for free. See complete offer details here .  Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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Domain Name Management

Posted on April 10, 2019 by Hosting

The post Domain Name Management appeared first on HostGator Blog . When you’re in the early stages of creating your first website, you may be surprised by just how much is involved in building and maintaining a website. One of the most important parts of getting your website up on the web, and keeping it running for years to come, is domain name management. What is Domain Name Management? Domain name management is everything involved in finding the right domain name , registering it, and keeping it up to date for as long as you want to use it. Domain management isn’t difficult (or at least it doesn’t have to be), but it’s something important to stay on top of for as long as you have a website. Starting Out with Domain Name Management The bulk of what you need to know about domain name management comes into play when you’re still in the planning stages of creating your new website. What Is a Domain Name? Ever wondered how domain names work ? A domain name is what people type into a browser to find your website. Every website technically has two addresses used to stake out their unique place on the web. Computers identify websites using their IP address, which usually looks something like 111.111.111.1111 (except with more or a mix of numbers than that). But humans aren’t likely to remember a long string of numbers like that, so for us, the main internet address that matters for websites is the domain name. Domain names start with www, and most commonly end with .com—although there are a growing number of top-level domains people and businesses can opt for instead of .com, such as .net, .org, and .biz. Your domain name’s important because it’s directly tied to how people will think about and interact with your website. A simple and straightforward domain name like www.sarahs-website.com will be easier to find and remember than one that’s confusing and overlong like www.examplewebsitehardtoremember1267849.com . But with a huge and growing number of websites already online, a simple and straightforward domain name is getting harder to find every day. Who Needs a Domain Name? In short, everybody that wants a website. Think about it: have you ever been on a website that didn’t have a domain name? It’s a core part of being published online. If you want anyone else to be able to find and access your website, then a domain name isn’t optional. It’s one of the necessary costs of doing business on the web. But the cost is fairly minimal and, in return, you get the possibility of being found by friends, strangers, and potential customers alike. How Do You Find a Domain Name? As mentioned, this part can be challenging. With over a billion websites already published online, most of the obvious combinations of words have already been taken. Or if they’re not yet in use, they’re owned by domain investors who will charge a lot to hand them over. So before you get too attached to one domain name, you need to research first whether that domain name is available. You can quickly determine a domain name’s availability by searching at https://www.hostgator.com/domains If your domain name is available, you can register it right there. If not, the tool will provide recommendations for similar domains to consider. In some cases, it’s worth also putting your desired domain directly into a browser to see if it’s currently owned by someone willing to sell it. But you should expect to the cost to be reasonably high for domain names for sale by investors. There’s a good chance you’ll need to do some brainstorming and a number of searches before you land on a domain name idea you really like that’s also readily available. But it’s worth spending some time to find a domain name that’s a good fit for your website. How to Register a Domain Name Once you’ve found the right domain name for your website, you want to claim it as quickly as possible, before someone else tries to buy it. Registering a domain name is a simple process. If you’re buying a domain name that no one owns yet, you can go through any domain registrant. With HostGator, just add the domain you’ve chosen to your shopping cart and checkout. If the exact domain name you search is available, it will be added to your shopping cart automatically. Pro tip: Register your domain with your web hosting service.   Most companies that sell web hosting also offer domain registration services. While you can always use a previously registered domain name when you sign up with a different web hosting company, that adds unnecessary steps to your process. You can save yourself a little time and energy by keeping it all in one place. What is Domain Name Privacy? As you’re registering your domain, you’ll probably see the option to include domain name privacy as an add-on. It costs a little extra, so you’ll obviously want to know what you’re actually paying for if you choose to get it. Every time someone registers a website, the domain registrant is required to submit contact information to the ICANN WHOIS directory, including a: Mailing address Phone number Email address Having this information published to the wide web makes it easy for spammers and scammers to access, which opens the door to receiving a barrage of emails, texts, and calls you don’t want. And that’s on top of any potential safety concerns that come with your contact information being public for anyone to find. Domain name privacy is a service registrars offer to keep your contact information private while still staying compliant with the law. The domain registrar will provide their own information, so that anyone who has a genuine need to get in touch with the domain owner still has a way to reach you, just with the company serving as your intermediary so you can dodge all the unnecessary contact. How to Set Up Web Hosting Having a domain name is one necessity in getting a new website online, but the other important step you have to take is setting up web hosting for your new website. In most cases, you can combine the two steps by using the same provider for both and make your life easier. Subscribing to a new web hosting plan is as easy as registering a new domain. Simply determine which type of web hosting is right for you , select your plan, and check out with the web hosting provider you chose. Any good web hosting company will also provide a number of useful resources to help you get started and learn how to use their cpanel and other resources. And you can often register your domain, or any additional ones you choose to purchase, in the web hosting account you use to manage your website. Ongoing Domain Management Domain management isn’t something you do once and you’re done. Domain names and all of the services associated with them work on a subscription basis, meaning you need to pay on a regular basis to keep everything up to date. Handling Renewals The most common option for ongoing domain management is annual renewals, although you can often save some money by committing to multi-year plans where you purchase your domain and other services for several years out. In either case, when renewal time rolls around, you need to confirm that you still want to continue: Using the domain name you purchased Keeping your contact information private (if you opted for domain name privacy) Continuing with the web hosting provider you selected The company you work with will send reminders when your renewal is coming due, so you can decide if you want to keep using your domain, and make sure you make the necessary payments on time to keep your website functioning. The Risks of Not Managing Your Domain Name Setting up everything you need when starting your new website is obviously important, but consistently keeping up with domain management is arguably even more important. The risks of dropping the ball when it comes to domain name management are serious. You could lose your domain name. During the initial search for the right domain name, you saw how hard it is to find a good domain name that’s available. If you fail to renew your domain name at the right time and someone else buys it, you lose access to it. And you’re back to square one in the search for a new one. Finding a good domain name is hard enough the first time, why put yourself through all that again? You lose all your domain authority. Even worse, if you switch to a different domain name, all the work you’ve put into building your website’s authority online will be lost. The new domain owner will get the benefit of the brand recognition you worked so hard to build and the backlinks you earned. And all your regular visitors will be confused to find the website they expected to find gone. Unless you’ve built up an email list and can use it to drive most of your former followers to a new website, you risk losing your following completely. And even then, there will likely be former fans that miss the update and give up on looking for your new address online. Someone can charge you big bucks to get it back. When you realize the high stakes of losing the domain name you’ve used for years, you’ll want to get it back. Sometimes people buy a domain name out from under the former owner the moment they see an opportunity to do so for exactly this reason. These domain name sharks know how valuable it is to you and how big of a loss it would be. That means a big opportunity for profit for them. To get your old website back at the address people know, with all the SEO authority it had before, you’re pretty much at their mercy. They can ask for a significant amount of money—and the better a job you’ve done of building up your website’s reputation, the more they’re likely to demand. You can be punished for the amount of work you’ve done and success you’ve accomplished up to that point. Obviously it’s preferable to stay on top of your domain management and keep current to begin with! How to Make Domain Name Management Easy We have good news! Domain name management doesn’t have to be hard. There are two good ways to make the process easy so you don’t lose your domain name. 1. Keep all your renewals in one place. If you have to keep up with domain registration, web hosting, and domain privacy renewals in different accounts, then remembering to do it all is harder. If you have multiple domains and websites and use different providers for each, then you’re adding a lot of unnecessary work to the process of staying on top of it all. If you use one company for all your website services, then renewing everything will only require one step. When you’re logged in, pay for everything coming due, and you’re done. So take a little time when you’re getting started to find a company you can trust to make your life easier for years to come.   2. Set up auto renewals. That one easy step we mentioned? Even that’s not actually necessary. If your provider offers automatic renewals, you can let your domain name management run on autopilot. For as long as you want to keep your domain name, domain privacy plan, and web hosting, just keep the auto renewal option selected for them all. You can avoid doing any work at all—except for what you do to update and promote your website. And trust us, that’ll be enough work without adding domain name management on top of it. One Place for Domain Name Management HostGator offers domain name registration, domain privacy, web hosting, and an array of other useful services that you can manage all in one account. Getting started with HostGator is easy, and you can even use our website builder to make your initial design and future updates easy as well. HostGator can handle all of your domain needs, whether you need to register or transfer a domain name . We will help you manage your domain name and find the best web hosting plan for you and your needs. Contact our team of experts today for more information! Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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7 Things You Can Do with Gator Website Builder

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Hosting

The post 7 Things You Can Do with Gator Website Builder appeared first on HostGator Blog . Choosing the right website builder can be a little overwhelming. You’ve got a lot of options and reviewing the different features in each can lead to as much confusion as it does answers, especially if you’re new to building websites and don’t really know what you’re looking for. To help you out, we’ll explain seven useful things you can do with our new Gator Website Builder in clear terms anyone can understand—no confusing jargon for beginners or vague references to features you don’t really understand, just simple explanations of actions you can take once you invest in Gator. 1. Choose from hundreds of mobile-friendly designs. Part of what makes website builders easy to use is that you can start from a template—that’s a design that gets the basic structure and style of your website in place. Then all you have to do is change what’s there to bring it in line with what you want. Gator provides over 200 templates that have been designed by professionals that each: Are responsive , which means that the template can adapt to whatever browser or device size your visitors come from. You don’t have to do anything extra to make sure your website is mobile friendly, since you’ll be starting with a responsive design. Adhere to web design best practices. You don’t have to learn all the tips for what people respond to best in a website, because our designers have already done that and made sure your website design incorporates what works. Are useful for common website purposes . Whether you’re starting a small jewelry eCommerce business, building a website for your auto shop, or launching a photography blog , you can find a template designed with your purpose in mind. Having a good template to start with goes a long way to making the rest of the process of building your website easier. Gator has you covered on that front.   2. Personalize your website’s style and color scheme. With Gator’s intuitive editing software, you can easily change out the colors of your template to bring them in line with the color scheme you have in mind. Changing colors is as simple as clicking on the element you want to change, clicking on the color icon in the menu, and choosing your color. You can change the general layout of the page by clicking on “Change Design” and selecting from the options provided. You can change the background image, add in visual effects, or even bring an animation component in with the Style section. And you can move different parts of the page by clicking on the element you want to move, dragging it to the place you want it to be, and dropping it there. Even though you start from someone else’s design, you can quickly and easily make the website’s look and style your own with these intuitive features.   3. Load unique images, media, and copy. The other easy way to make the website your own is to add your original images and media to the site. Loading your own logo, photographs, or images you designed yourself is easy enough. You can use them to replace images already in the template, or drag them to the spot you want them to be in. You’ll also need to update the placeholder text in the template with words that accurately reflect what your website is all about and why your visitors should care. Simply highlight the text that’s there and type in new words. Or, to add text where there the template doesn’t have any yet, choose text in the Elements section of the menu and select either heading (for larger text that will introduce a section of the page) or paragraph (for smaller, longer blocks of text that provide more detail).   4. Easily find free stock photos. Images are a crucial component of any website. Not only do they make your web pages look better, but they play a big role in how people interact with them—to the degree that 80% are more likely to read your content if you include an image and they’re 64% more likely to remember what they read. But finding good, affordable images to use for your website can be a difficult and time consuming process. And it’s even more challenging if you’re hoping to stick with images you can use for free—unless you use Gator. Gator comes with dozens of stock images included. Each time you want to add an image to a page, you’ll have the option to click on a tab that says Stock Images, and browse photographs that are divided into useful categories. Easy access to a variety of high-quality images can make your life much easier when designing a new website.   5. Create and manage a blog. Blogs are useful for all sorts of websites. If you’re building a personal site, it’s a good way to share your thoughts with the world. For business sites, blogging is a powerful marketing tool. And for anyone who wants their website to be easy for visitors to find, it’s one of the best ways to help your website show up more often in Google . For anyone using Gator, adding and maintaining a blog is simple. You can choose your blog design and add new posts in the same menu you use for the rest of designing your website. Consistently writing really great blog posts that your visitors will love will still take time and work, but the technical side of things is taken care of when you use Gator.   6. Set up a store. Not everyone building a website needs eCommerce capability, but if you want the ability to sell products or services through your website and securely accept payment, then these features are a must. In Gator, a simple upgrade enables you to list your products, include a shopping cart, and set up a secure checkout experience for your customers. If you want your website to start making you money fast, Gator provides all the functionality you need without requiring any special skills.   7. Track your visits and visitor actions. If you want your website to be successful, you should pay attention to how people interact with it. Gator puts useful website analytics right in the same dashboard you use for the rest of your web design and management, including: The number of people who have visited your site How many of them are visiting for the first time (unique visitors) How many different page visits you got (which tells you how many visitors went to more than one page while on your website) And how many visitors clicked away soon after coming to your website (your bounce rate ) That information will help you understand if your website is doing what you want it to . If you’re not getting as many visitors as you want, you can figure out the best online marketing strategy to make it easier for people to find you. And if people aren’t sticking around or taking the actions you want once they’re on the site, you know to change up how your site looks or what your pages say to see if you get better results.   Get Your Website Going with Gator Website Builder Gator provides advanced capabilities accessible with a beginner’s level of knowledge. And it’s not only affordable, with plans starting at $3.95 a month, but it also comes with web hosting included in the price. That saves you time and trouble, while helping you get your awesome new website up ASAP. Build your website with Gator now. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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Do customers still use Auto-Installers?

Posted on April 29, 2018 by Hosting

Hi, Do customers still use Auto-Installers such as Softaculous? Most of our customers use our Auto-WordPress installer but almost none… | Read the rest of http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1708740&goto=newpost Continue reading →

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4 Tasks That Will Save Your Email Marketing Campaigns

Posted on August 18, 2015 by Hosting

The post 4 Tasks That Will Save Your Email Marketing Campaigns appeared first on HostGator Blog | Gator Crossing . On the internet, email is like having a mobile phone, with the difference that on the internet — you can almost always get anyone’s phone number, at any given time. Sometimes, you create something and ask users to enter their phone number (email) in for you, so that they can be notified when you share and publish more of the amazing stuff that got the interested in the first place. We now it by the name of email marketing. The reasons for creating an email list have long been known and understood by expert marketers, and we recently published a post ourselves, about the reasons why a small business should invest in an email marketing strategy , and how rewarding it can be. It’s without question the leading way of staying in touch with your customers and peers of interest. If you’r new to email marketing, or have done it a few times before, you will be familiar with email marketing campaigns — in simpler words, it simply means to send out a carefully crafted message and/or announcement to everyone who has signed up to be on your email list. And more often than not, we want these emails to be of highest quality so as to retain the subscribers, but also to convert leads where possible.   1. Talk to Your Customers Marketing always was and always will be about the customer, there is no denying that. These days there are countless ways of connecting with your customers, social media and content marketing being a few of them, but email is usually the one that plays on the more personal level. And there is nothing more dissatisfying than a corporate email that only wants to sell you something. When sending a new campaign: Always greet your customers by their first name, which means you have to find a way to collect their name as well. It’s a nice and personal touch. Don’t drag the email for too long only to try and sell something at the end. Bring value to the table. Give them a good initiative to continue reading the email at the top, rather than the bottom.   2. Optimize the Email Experience The mobile experience can now provide just as many features and possibilities as a full-blown desktop computer, and with that in mind, the usage of mobile devices for business and personal needs has increased dramatically over the last few years, even months some would say. And with that in mind, we need to make sure we’re catering to our mobile users the same way we are to desktop users. A mobile device is usually going to require a responsive email design that can naturally adapt to the needs of the mobile device. The impact of responsive emails in terms of open rates, and conversion rates, is too huge to miss out on.   3. Test What Works In development, programmers test their applications against common errors and performance optimization, in email — we can use testing to test what works best for us and our subscribers, including the email design, the titles we choose to have, and the overall email experience we provide. It’s easy to get started . Testing allows you to compare and contrast different elements of your email campaigns to see how they impact your subscribers’ reactions to them. You can form a hypothesis about what you think will occur, and then formulate a test and find out what really happens .   4. Email Campaign Frequency The last task on our list is actually less a task, but more of a reminder to those who are eager to build their email list quickly. It’s easy to get carried away with having access to so many people at any given time, and sometimes we may feel that sending out a few emails a week is going to increase our conversion rates significantly, that simply is not true. Even before you begin sending out your first emails, you should get clear about the email marketing strategy that you’re going to be using, and whether sending out multiple emails on weekly basis is going to yield you the best result. It’s possible to ask your new subscribers to select the frequency of emails they’d like to receive, but then you’ve to be completely clear about the message you’re trying to convey over your email campaigns. Sometimes as frequently as twice a month is enough to capture the attention of your customers, and customers-soon-to-be. MailChimp fully agrees that more is not always better .   ***** Alex Ivanovs is an online entrepreneur who has been writing about technology, business and developer topics for over a decade. He currently manages CodeCondo — an aspiring community for designers and developers. web hosting Continue reading →

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