We have updated some of the CGI scripts you can install from eXtend 2.0, these include:

 - Drupal to 6.2
 - WordPress to 2.5.1
 - Joomla to 1.0.15 and 1.5.3 
 - SugarCRM to 5.0
 - Typo to 4.2
 - Squirrelmail to 1.4.13

If you would like to install any of these onto your website please login to your eXtend Control Panel.

We are often asked about what domain extensions are available, and there’s actually a lot more of them than you might imagine. Although some have some specific uses, such as .travel for tourism related websites and .biz domains for businesses, the vast majority of domain extensions are country related, such as .uk for the United Kingdom and .ie for Ireland.

In the same way that the countries of the world change over time, so do domain extensions, with Yugoslav (.yu) domains being largely replaced with domain extensions for the newly created countries which were formed from the break-up of Yugoslavia such as .si for Slovenia and the upcoming .me extension for Montenegro. Then there are extensions which are just created as the need arises such as the .eu extension for the European Union which has been live for a few years. A complete list of the domain extensions currently approved by ICANN along with links to the various registry sites is available at:

http://www.norid.no/domenenavnbaser/domreg.en.html

Many domain registries have specific rules on who can register a certain domain and sometimes restrictions on what type of site it must be, or in the case of .mobi domains how the site should be visible to users and on what type of devices. Some registries issue domains rather than allow them to be registered at all such as .mil for US Military websites, and some will only allow the person who wishes to own the domain to register it directly with the registry. Others insist you are a resident of the country involved before you can register a domain with them. In essence, each domain registry is free to make up its own rules and regulations on what can be registered and who can register them.

As you can see that makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for us to be able to register some domain extensions, but that does not mean that we cannot host them. Providing customers can register the domain involved themselves and have it placed onto our nameservers, we can host any domain extension with the use of a domain reference on any paid-for hosting account and the nameservers to use are listed in our Support Database.

Heart Internet gives it’s customers a helping hand to make money online from advertising by allowing you to easily install an ad server from our CGI script library onto your website. OpenAds is a feature rich advertisement suite allowing webmasters to easily incorporate banner advertisements onto your website with minimal effort.

Below is a helpful guide on ways you can make money from your website through advertising.
 

Direct Banner Advertising

Graphical banner advertisements tend to be very effective and as a result a great source of revenue. As you will be in complete control of who is advertising, you essentially eliminate the middle-man allowing you to keep 100% of the profits. It’s not as easy as using Advertising Programs such as Google Adsense, who take care of the selling for you, it’s completely down to you to contact potential advertisers and convince them why they should advertise on your website. When approaching advertisers it’s a good idea to present to them reasons why they should advertise on your website. Good traffic statistics, including page views and unique visitors, will help your cause. Try and give as much positive information as you can. It’s also worth adding an “Advertise” link on your website, allowing people to easily enquire about advertising rates, opening up the opportunity to make a sale.

The following is a list of the most popular banner sizes used:

Horizontal:
Leader board: 728 x 90 pixels
Full Banner:  468 x 60 pixels
Half Banner: 234 x 60 pixels

Vertical:
Skyscraper:  120 x 600 pixels
Wide Skyscraper: 160 x 600 pixels

Rectangle:
Standard Rectangle:  180 x 150 pixels
Large Rectangle:  336 x 280 pixels
 
CPC (Cost-Per-Click) Advertising Programs

 There are many CPC advertising programs available on the internet, the most popular is Google Adsense (http://www.google.com/adsense/).  Adsense serves advertisements onto your website that are targeted to the content of each page, having relevant ads will result in a higher click-through rate. It’s good practice to have ads that blend into the content of your website as they will appear more natural and increase the chances of visitors clicking them. Google Adsense allows you to customise the ads to your needs - including the size and format, e.g. text, image or video and link colours. Should you get unwanted advertisements appearing on your website, Adsense has a competitive ad filter so you can block certain sites from showing. Adsense is a very easy way to make money from your website as it requires minimal effort to setup and it takes care of displaying relevant advertisements for you.

Affiliate Schemes

You can also make money from your website by joining an affiliate program where you can earn commissions by referring visitors to a website where they perform certain actions, e.g. purchase a product.  Heart Internet offers an affiliate program allowing you to earn a 10% commission on all domain and hosting sales that where referred from your website.

For more information or to sign up as a Heart Internet Affiliate and start making money, click the link below:
http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/blog/2008/05/affiliate-scheme/

OpenAds Support
Should you need any help with your installation of OpenAds please visit the official support site

Support Page:
http://www.openx.org/support

Forum:
http://forum.openx.org/

We’ve been reviewing our affiliate scheme against the competition and believe we have the leading scheme in the industry. With the Heart Internet scheme you can earn 10% commission on all domain and hosting sales by referring new customers online.

Enrolling in our affiliate scheme is free of charge and we supply a range of banner and button sizes to place on your Website. When a visitor to your website clicks on any of these banners they are sent to our website and a special piece of information is stored on their computer (called a cookie). Cookies are used by many companies, including Microsoft, Amazon and Argos, so are widely accepted by computer users. The cookie stores your affiliate ID so that when that customer places an order for services from our website we know that the customer came from you.

Once an order is placed we automatically credit your account with 10% commission for web hosting and domain names from that sale. As long as you reach £15 by the end of the month we will automatically credit the amount you have earned to your bank account. If you don’t earn £15 in a given month we simply keep carrying this amount over until you reach £15.

To join simply login to your account/sign up for a new account and click the “Affiliate Link” once you have logged in.

Heart Internet takes the strain off creating your own forum and allows its users to install phpBB 2 & 3 easily from its extensive library of scripts.
 
phpBB is a high-powered, fully scalable and customisable open-source bulletin board package. phpBB has a user-friendly interface, simple and straightforward administration panel and helpful FAQ.

Below are some Top Tips in helping you run your own forum and get your community off to a good start.

Start off Small
Many forums make the mistake of creating too many categories too soon. If you’re just starting out with your forum, you’re going to create a negative atmosphere if you have plenty of categories but with zero or very few posts. Plan out the minimum amount of categories your forum needs and use those for now. Once the community becomes more active with regular posts and contributing members, you can start to introduce more categories that will suit your target audience.

Make the Forum Appear Active
When you first start building your forum, it’s important to create a sense of activity, as it will be less likely that users will register to a forum which appears to lack enthusiasm and where there are no new topics being created. If you’re determined to make your forum a success then you should either get friends to sign up and post topics or create multiple accounts that you can login and post as, so inevitably you’re answering your own questions to begin with, but it makes the forum appear more active.

Creating & Running a Successful Forum
Every member that is newly registered to the forum should be sent a “Welcome to the Forum” message via the private message system. This is a really nice touch that new members will appreciate, it doesn’t have to be unique to every user, you could have a standard template that you can simply copy from and paste into a message.  It’s a good idea to include links in your welcome message to the most popular categories on the forum , encouraging new members to participate. Give them the opportunity to introduce themselves to the community, add a link within the message to the “Introductions” forum on your board and make sure you greet them with a reply.

Reply to Posts as Soon as Possible
Make the right impression by subscribing to all forums so you will be alerted of new threads and posts. Login and reply as soon as you can, if you are unsure how to answer the question, it may be worth searching the internet to see if it has been answered before and use that information to help, be sure to credit the original source.

Hire Moderators
Over time you will find it harder to monitor your forum as post rates and the amount of new registrations increase. It’s almost impossible for yourself to monitor the forum 24/7 for inappropriate content, such as spam and advertising.  It would be highly advisable to hire a moderator to help run your forum, approach the active members on your forum and ask if they would like to help improve and grow the community. Due to their commitments to the forum, it’s likely they will accept your request and be happy to help. It’s advisable to create a set of rules and instructions for moderators to follow so the forum is still run in exactly the way you want. Also, try to hire a moderator who is in a different time-zone so when you’re asleep, the forum is still being moderated.

Remove Spam
Nothing can turn visitors away more quickly from a forum than spam, so make sure you keep a watchful eye on members trying to sell unrelated products and remove posts that do not serve any purpose or that are offensive. It’s advised to create a forum for “General/Off Topic” posts so members can chat about other things which are not forum specific.

Send a Regular Newsletter
Send a regular newsletter to your forum members which includes the latest popular topics and encourages them to participate. It’s a great way of reminded members about your forum and also a way of generating traffic back to your boards.

Useful Links:

Support:
http://www.phpbb.com/support/

Modifications and Styles
http://www.phpbb.com/customise/

Heart Internet offers our customers access to an extensive library of free cgi scripts allowing them to install professional applications very quickly and with minimal effort. This article will cover the benefits of using our Content Management Systems (Joomla, Drupal, Typo3 and Nucleus) and why using them will help streamline the publishing of content online.

Quick and Easy to Update
Content Management Systems allow users to add new pages to a website with minimal effort. Your entire website is managed via your administration control panel where you can add new articles, images, polls and many other features via an intuitive interface.

Web Experience not Essential
Traditionally you would need to hire a web designer/developer to manage your website. Using a CMS eliminates the need to do this. Everything from the look and feel of your website to article management can be handled via your control panel.  It is also a very cost effective way of running your own website as everything can be updated and managed by yourself. If you are ever in need of help or guidance, you can check the CMS provider’s FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section of their website or try posting your problem over at their official support forums. A list of useful links can be found at the bottom of this article.

Automatic Navigation Generation
Menu’s will be created automatically when you add new pages/categories which will form the basis of your websites navigation, e.g. Homepage, Contact, Articles, etc. This eliminates the need to manually update your navigation each time you add a new section, saving you time, effort and preventing the risk of creating dead links.

Searchable
Using a CMS will allow your entire website to be searchable enabling people to find content fast.  The advantages of having a search system in place on your website will save users the time of having to trawl through static pages trying to find what they need. It makes for a much better user experience and is certainly less frustrating.

Scheduled Content
With most Content Management Systems you can post date articles allowing you to publish them on a certain time or day of the week.  This is especially handy if you need to publish content at certain times but you’re not available to do so – the CMS will update it for you.

Protected Content
A CMS can make certain pages viewable only to people you choose. For example, you can allow visitors to your website to view all of your basic articles but require registration for them to view premium content.

Consistent Design
Don’t worry about creating new pages for every article as a Content Management System will automatically produce them for you. The article page will be created from a single template and, no matter how much content you add, you can rest assured the look of your website will stay the same.

Extendable
Content Management Systems, such as Joomla, have an excellent resource of extensions allowing you to develop your website further and offer more functionality.  There are hundreds of extensions available, including Ecommerce, Forums, Galleries, Classified Advertisements and so much more. A link to the entire database of extensions can be found below.

Remember you can easily install your own CMS from our database of scripts that come with any hosting account.

Helpful Links

Joomla Extensions
http://extensions.joomla.org/

Joomla Community Forum
http://forum.joomla.org/

Drupal Forum
http://drupal.org/forum

Typo3 Documentation
http://typo3.com/Support.1228.0.html

Nucleus Support Forum
http://forum.nucleuscms.org/

We have updated some more of the CGI scripts you can install from eXtend 2.0, these include:

Drupal to 6.1
AgoraCart to 5.2

If you would like to install any of these onto your website please login to your eXtend Control Panel.

We have updated some of the CGI scripts you can install from eXtend 2.0, these include:

 - WordPress Blog to 2.5
 - Nucleus Content Management System to 3.32
 - Geeklog Blog to 1.4.1

If you would like to install any of these onto your website please login to your eXtend Control Panel.

Heart Internet provides our hosting customers with an extensive library of CGI scripts to help build, maintain and improve their websites. The following article will focus on our installable blogging software, WordPress and Geeklog and why maintaining a blog can be beneficial for your website.

What is a Blog?
A blog is an online journal that displays posts in chronological order.  It’s an ideal solution for people who want the ability to publish and share regular content online with as little effort as possible.

Search Engine Marketing
Google will rank a website that publishes unique, quality content regularly much higher than a website that is static and rarely updated. Thanks to blogs it has never been easier to keep your website fresh and increase your chances of appearing high within search results. If your blog is tailored towards your industry, your posts will be full of targeted keywords and related content and by having this will increase the likelihood of your website ranking higher with related search terms.

Attracting New & Repeat Visitors
If you’re publishing regular content, chances are you will be getting repeat visitors looking to read your news, this is especially effective if your content is unique, industry related and interesting. Attracting new and repeat visitors by running exclusive promotions, e.g. a sale or discount on some of your products, not only will this attract people to your website but also increase the likelihood of you making a sale though these promotions. Allow people to subscribe to your Blog via RSS, so they can be alerted when your blog is updated, this will send them directly back to your website.

Easy to Update
Once your blog is installed you can manage everything from an intuitive admin control panel.  From here you can easily and quickly add, edit and remove your posts, plus many other features such as changing the look and feel. Many blogs offer the ability to set a publish date for your content, this is especially useful if you are going on holiday and are unable to update your blog. Simply create your posts before you go and set the publish date for the period you are away, this way you’re able to maintain a regular supply of content.

Keeping the Costs Low
Wordpress has become much more than a standard blogging tool due to its thriving community of developers. WordPress is very extendable, you can easily add modules such as image galleries, videos and widgets yourself with minimum effort and no cost. WordPress even offers free themes, so changing the look of your website can be done quite easily yourself, eliminating the need to hire a potentially expensive web designer. WordPress and Geeklog run excellent communities who can assist you with your blog should you need any guidance. A list of helpful links can be found below:

WordPress Modules:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

WordPress Forum:
http://wordpress.org/support/

Geeklog Forum:
http://www.geeklog.net/forum/

We have added a new feature to WebMail so that you can manage autoresponders from http://www.outitgoes.com/. You can specify your mailbox username and password and then create, delete or disable an autoresponder.

This is handy for when you are out of the office for the day or for when you go on holiday. Remember that you can also change your mailbox password on http://www.outitgoes.com/.

If you are a Heart Internet Reseller this features allows any of your end users who do not have access to the eXtend control panel to manage their own autoresponder.