Here’s something you may not know: the IT sector has a huge climate impact. At present, between 3 and 4 percent of all electricity (and the associated carbon emissions) used in the world goes to running data centers. If you’re one of the four and a half million registered users of Second Life, consider this: the average Second Life avatar consumes 1,752 kWh of electricity per year, or about two thirds that of an actual person (globally averaged). One server alone has roughly the same climate impact as a 15mpg SUV!

Climate change is real, it’s happening now, and we as a planet desperately need to reduce our IT emissions. And if we wait for the government to solve the problem, we’ll be waiting for a long, long, LONG time.

We’re thrilled to announce that HostGator has joined the ranks of many progressive companies including: Starbucks, IBM, and UPS to take action on addressing climate change right now.

HostGator has gone green, and it’s gone green in a BIG way.
We at Integrated Ecosystem Market Services are very proud to have worked with HostGator to develop a sector-leading program.

What makes HostGator’s program so special?
If you’re thinking about switching to green hosting, good for you! Green hosting is an important step in dealing with climate change. But be aware- once you start asking some questions you’ll find that not all of the .green. hosting options out there are nearly as green as they claim to be. HostGator’s program stands out from the pack for a number of reasons . . .

One, HostGator is using renewable energy to both power and cool their servers, whereas a number of green hosts only offset the electricity used to power their servers. That represents a big difference, because servers generate a lot of heat. For every watt of electricity that a server uses, 1-2 watts of electricity are typically required to cool it. What that means is that HostGator is investing in about twice as much renewable energy, on a per server basis, as those green hosts only using renewable energy to power their servers.

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Inc. Magazine compiles an annual list of the top 5,000 fastest-growing companies in America. They rank each of the top 5,000 companies depending on their revenue growth for the past three years.
Inc. 5000 announced yesterday that HostGator made their list of the top 5000 fastest growing private companies in America. Turns out, that not only did HostGator make the list, but we ranked in at #21 overall. In our industry, business services, we ranked #2, and in Texas we’re the #1 ranked fastest growing company. For our specific industry–web hosting–HostGator is the fastest growing web host out there, period.

This is quite a feat for a company that started out of a college dorm room with literally no budget.

According to Inc.’s analysis, the reason for our growth is:

Because support is key in the Web-hosting business, the company never outsources support and keeps technical support staff available 24/7, with an average wait time of one minute for inbound calls. It also provides developed templates and specialized software licensing to clients for free to enhance the company’s service offering.

I agree with the analysis, but I’d also like to share a few other points to explain why HostGator is not only floating but thriving.

• We’re a transparent company. Before potential customers sign up with us, they can check out real HostGator reviews right on our public forums from current customers.
• We truly care about our clients. It doesn’t matter whether you pay us $5 a month for web hosting or if you buy your own dedicated server through us. Every client at HG receives priority attention and 24/7 support.
• Our affiliates contribute in a large way to the success by bringing in new sales. Anyone can join our hosting affiliate program. Whether you are a client of HostGator or not, we will pay you up to $125 per sale for referring people to our service.
• Definitely the biggest asset at HostGator is our people. To offer 24/7 support, it means that we have people here for our customers at 3 AM answering calls and taking care of issues before they become problems. They keep the servers running, making sure millions of web sites and businesses stay online. HostGator would instantly become more profitable if we cut corners and outsourced support, but in doing so we wouldn’t be able to keep the quality where it is. So that’s why we continue our hiring frenzy, to keep up with the growth. The only thing that has kept us from growing faster is making sure we have enough people to support our current and future customers. We’re in this for the long haul, and we want our customers to be with us just as long.

It’s an accomplishment and something that we’re all proud of, because every employee at HG helped to make this happen. In three years time we’ve grown over 5,000%, let us know what it will take to make the most of the next three. …

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. …

We are happy to announce that we are having a sale on a batch of servers that we had leftover. Some of you may remember these servers being our former Pro Dedicated offering. For those who are not familiar with these former Pro Dedicated specifications:

Processor: Intel Xeon Conroe 3060 server @ 2.4Ghz

Memory: 4GB DDR2

Hard Disk: 4 x 500GB SATA under RAID-10 configuration.

Monthly Bandwidth: 2,500GB @ 10mbps

IP Addresses: 10

OS: CentOS 4.6

Control Panel: cPanel/WHM 11 with Fantastico included.

Pricing: $350 per Month.

This is a great solution for those needing a high performance server with large data storage with redundancy. Under the RAID-10 configuration, risk of data loss would be minimized as the information is mirrored throughout all 4 hard drives. In case a hard drive fails, copies of your data should be stored on the remaining 3 hard drives. At the price of $350 per month, this server definitely provides the most bang for your buck.

This was a very popular dedicated solution when it debuted as our Pro Dedicated package, and we are very excited to be able to offer these servers to you once again. Please keep in mind that stock is limited and once we sell out, this offer will not be available for quite some time.

If you are interested in this offer, please email us at sales@hostgator.com and put it in attention to our Dedicated Sales Department.

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That’s right, the folding@home hostgator.com team is a reality and we’ve broken into the top 1,000 ranked teams!

Although we’ve kept this fairly low profile on our forum post here , we do have a large amount of users starting to come on board, so I’d like to present something a hosting company is doing to better the world.

The Folding@Home project by Stanford University is a distributed computing project used to create one of the largest supercomputers in the world. The client has long been used used as both a metric to measure processors and machines efficiency and also to help the cause. The project is distributed much in the way Seti@Home was, however, with a more direct human goal.

Just in case you’re wondering, “what is protein folding and why does this matter to me?”; the Folding@Home project simulates complex mathematical formulas about how these proteins fold, unfold, and misfold with the goal to hopefully one day learn better how many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes actually work and occur. Results? Darn right! The project has already come up with a number of notable scientific results, and is with our help and yours, continues to go somewhere tangible as you can see at Stanford’s whitepage papers …

A lot of people from the get go thought the iphone was a piece of junk, while others thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Everyone has their opinions about iphone vs Nokia just like Mac vs. PC. So moving on then…

Since Mr. Steve Jobs had announced that there would be an SDK (software development kit) for the iphone, a lot of people have really been excited. Now that over 100,000 people have downloaded the developers kit whats next?

How many people will really switch over from having an unlocked iphone that can run tons of free applications to go legit with Apple and pay a fee for every application? The reason I even ask that is because the current developers kit doesn’t allow for 3rd party music applications. Isn’t music what people would likely use their iphone most for? Or would it be games?

It seems that Apple has decided to do things this way so sales on itunes are not hurt, but there will be an effect with upcoming players like Amazon music as well as Emusic which have compatible DRM free music for the iphone. Will Apple lose some ground with their Itunes music downloads?

One thing is for sure, and that is that Apple will continue governing and restricting their own products and applications like they have been for a while. I think the mentality of Apple which seems to be the ‘we control the product even after you buy it’ for all consumers is getting a bit old. The thing is, that the larger apple gets, and the more popularity that grows for Apple products, the hacking, cracking and unlocking will only continue to grow with it. …

Ok folks, I know you have been waiting for a while, and I have had a lot of you ask me when the new Windows hosting will be available? Well I am happy to let you know that now you can purchase a Windows dedicated server. First I want to say this is just the beginning of what we will be offering for Windows hosting, so stay tuned for further announcements.So what does having your own Dedicated Windows Server offer you? You will receive the latest Plesk 8 interface for setting up your website, email etc… The Windows environment will allow you to use ASP. You can choose which version will best fit your needs along with your choice of MSSQL, MYSQL, and Access database connections which will be available at all times for you to create and take advantage of simultaneously.

Do you need a server fast? Your Windows server will be provisioned, secured and delivered within 24 hours of purchase, and we will provide you with monthly server management at no additional cost.

So I have given you the scoop, and now I am offering the first 5 people that purchase a Windows dedicated server from reading this blog a $100 dollar discount on your first month purchase. In order to receive this dicount you must email me at jgarcia(at)hostgator.com.

This is a first come first serve deal and this discount may NOT be combined with other offers, so if you want to get your first month at a reduced price you better act quick before its over. I will give anyone who emails me for this deal a 24 hour window to complete the purchase, then I will offer it to the next person in line. …