Greetings, Gators,

Another month already!? We know we’re a little behind on this month’s newsletter, sorry about that! We once again have some great announcements for you this month though.

We Launched Unlimited Shared Windows Hosting:

We are excited to announce that we launched Windows shared hosting services last month. More information can be seen at www.hostgator.com/windows-hosting.shtml

We’re offering unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, Parallels Plesk control panel, ASP/ASP.net Support, Microsoft SQL 2008 (R2) and many more features!

Simply check out the new windows hosting page for more information.

New SiteBuilder! Beautiful Designs coming soon!

After MONTHS of searching and testing out more site builders than I originally thought were even available, we have found the best – and our clients deserve nothing but the best!

We will be introducing BaseKit, FREE to all of our clients within the next 60 days (at most).

Why BaseKit? Here are just a couple of the reasons we chose BaseKit:

• Extremely easy to use
• Completely Drag and Drop
• Huge List of beautifully designed templates that you can customize
• Tons of additional widgets for you to implement (Twitter, Facebook, Google Maps, RSS, Flickr, forms, YouTube, PayPal, calendar, and many more)!
• Supports multiple Languages
• Can add/edit your own HTML and CSS
• Can import PSD designs
• Easy styling tools

And many, many more! …

Gator Happenings

Greetings Gators,

2010 was a big year for HostGator. We have some exciting announcements in store for you in 2011, and a recap of some of the great events of 2010.

2010 Recap:

HostGator saw Record Growth:

In 2010, we grew by 2 MILLION Domains! We grew from 2.9 Million Domains Hosted in the beginning of 2010 to 4.9 Million+ Domains Hosted at the end of 2010!

We have grown to over 500 employees, and we’re growing every day! We had our largest training class ever start on Monday January 24^th, 2011 with 64 new HostGator support reps! This means much quicker response times for you, our valued clients.

Here are some of our Houston Office Employees!

We opened a new HostGator office in Austin, TX:

We sponsored a NASCAR Team: …

I’m going to share some quick facts about our business with you. HostGator currently spends:

• More than $30,000 per month advertising with Google Adwords
• More than $350,000 per month on affiliate commissions
• And $100,000′s more per year on random advertising.

When you spend as much as we do on advertising, you start to run out of places to advertise online. This has left us with no other choice but to become a lot more creative and a lot crazier with our choice of advertising venues and locations. I present to you Billy the Billboard.

Billy proudly wears the first ever permanent HostGator Tattoo on the back of his neck. Billy, an accomplished boxer and entrepreneur who is currently located in Anchorage, Alaska, sold the first chunk of his body to Goldenpalace.com. The funds were used to purchase a flight to San Diego, where he donated his kidney to a complete stranger that he met off of MatchingDonors.com. Billy has even tried to donate part of his liver to patients in need (he was denied due to having already donated a kidney). …

HostGator has partnered with RankSense SEO Tools to give away a free 30-day trial for RankSense and a recurring 20% OFF discount, all with a 90-day money back guarantee. Use coupon code: hostgator and sign up now for the special offer. This offer is valid for all HostGator Web Hosting customers and blog readers.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is all the rage these days. There’s a whole market that has developed around SEO services and tools and a lot of hype and fluff that tends to confuse and complicate things for the average web site owner.

Simply put, SEO is the process of ranking higher in the search engines (Google, MSN Live, Yahoo) to increase traffic. For most websites, increased traffic translates into higher sales, so there is no disputing the importance of practicing good SEO techniques.

Since search engines have secret algorithms that determine where a website ranks in their search results, there are tons of myths and piles of misinformation out there on the ‘net. Time after time, I’ve spoken with customers who are angry and feel misled because an SEO firm or consulting company promised that the customer’s site would rank on page one in Google. Unfortunately, most of the time, this is just not possible, and the majority of these offers and promises should be quickly dismissed.

Even with all of the myths and wrong information out there, there are still some generally accepted rules and tips on how to best optimize your website to rank well. On our SEO Blog, you’ll find many articles discussing some of these proven techniques.

Not everyone can afford a reputable SEO consultant, especially for smaller websites, so most web site owners resort to the DIY methods. …

12/27/2010 Update: The Google AdWords Coupon code for HostGator Shared clients is now $100!

10/12/2009 Update: The Google AdWords Coupon code for HostGator Shared clients is now $50 (used to be $25)! Reseller coupons coming soon.

Ever run a Google search and notice the “sponsored listings” around the search results? Ever click one of those sponsored links? It’s likely that you have already visited a link that was advertised through the Google AdWords program and now HostGator is giving its shared web hosting customers the opportunity get started with Google AdWords by giving them $25 $50 $100 in free marketing credits*.

HostGator has partnered up with the Google AdWords pay-per-click (PPC) advertising program and is now offering an AdWords Coupon voucher good for $25 $50 $100 in credit with all Hatchling, Baby, and Business shared web hosting plans.

What is Google AdWords?

Google AdWords is a pay-per-click advertising program by Google. With AdWords, advertisers can promote their website’s products and services on Google.com’s search results in the “sponsored links” section. Quality ad text and relevant keyword buys will give you an edge over your competitors. And with AdWords, you can set your own budget and change your campaigns at any time – there are no commitments or spending requirements of any kind.

We at HostGator currently use Google AdWords for our own internal marketing efforts, and we truly believe that most businesses can benefit from the highly targeted traffic that this program can yield.

Great, how do I sign up? …

In October of 2008, Google announced a new feature known as SearchWiki. SearchWiki allows anyone with a Google account to change the order of search results and make notes about each result in Google.

Once logged into a Google account, you’ll notice that the search results have two small icons next to the listings that can be used to promote or remove a result. By promoting a result, you can bring the site above other results on the page.

You can learn more about the SearchWiki by watching the Google SearchWiki team’s video.

Now, this is hardly news to many of you out there. We covered Google’s Promote Feature in early December.

What is interesting though, is the idea that Google’s index of results will be swayed by user input on the SearchWiki. On Google’s Official Blog announcement for SearchWiki,it mentions that: “The changes you make only affect your own searches.” While this is true directly, it’s not hard to imagine that Google will collectively use user input to influence search results and page ranking.

Currently websites are listed in order on Google’s web page according to their super-duper secretive algorithm. Those in the search engine optimization industry have been trying to figure out this algorithm for very obvious reasons. If you can cheat the search engines and get a website listed on the front page for certain keywords, than you are able to get more traffic to your site, which generally equates to more revenue for web site owners and businesses. …

A Growth Industry
Recently the number of sites being hacked or infiltrated has risen rapidly. We see a lot of distraught site owners who have had their sites damaged, experienced a loss of rankings, or had data stolen.

Use Protection
Although most good hosting companies will protect their servers (and usually your site to some degree) it’s important to understand that you are responsible for your own site.

Take this analogy: You can use the strongest safe in the world, but if you leave the door open and someone empties it, you can’t blame the safe manufacturer.

Hacked Huh?
Before we offer you some simple tips, it’s worth understanding a few basics about the different kinds of hacks, their purpose and how they can affect you.

We won’t go into detail at this stage, but the number of exploits and the number of different types are increasing. Some of the most common include: XSS, SQL Injections and defacing

Staying up to date is a full time job, but like most types of crime, being prepared and protecting yourself should give you a better chance of weathering a storm should it happen.

So without further ado, here’s a basic primer on protecting your site from being hacked when it’s on shared hosting.

Simple Security Tips

1. Keeping Software Up to Date
If you are running old versions of software chances are it’s insecure, make sure you upgrade to the latest release. Most updates to software are security or functionality related, which means if you aren’t running the latest version you are likely to have missed a few security fixes.

2. 3rd Party Scripts and Code
Plugins, widgets or any other code (including free templates and themes) you install are written by other people under unknown circumstances. Some may be great, some may be full of holes. Be sure to research any code you want to use that you didn’t write yourself. Even a few Google searches should help you find out how secure the code you are using is.

3. Your Own Fault
One of the biggest causes of Identity theft and an easy way for someone to get details to your site(s). Your own computer is likely to be a weak link in the chain. Whether it be from poisoned powerpoint files or someone phishing your account details, the vulnerabilities are limitless. No matter how secure your site is, if the machine you access it from (including logging in and editing etc.) is not secure you stand a good risk of being compromised and it may affect more than just your site. …