Euro Fast Host

We host a blog for Bettabuy.com,  site that compares prices on thousands of products. The blog has sections on Competitions, New Products, Price Reductions, Sales, Top Sellers, Voucher Codes, and Web Exclusives.

The blog part of the web site is powered by Wordpress, and we have installed the Helicontech ISAPI re-write module. This means that the blog can use search engine friendly URLs (as has long been the case on Linux sites, but is much less common on IIS). An example URL is http://www.bettabuy.com/blog/2007/09/dorothy-perkins-sale/.

We have also installed the same on this blog, so it will be interesting to compare search engine rankings before and after the URL rewrite.

The nice thing about helicontech is that the htaccess file takes the same format as those on Linux, so pretty much no editing is required. This is a great bonus because writing htaccess files is not simple if you are new to them.

We will be writing some documentation on how to do this but in the meantime if any customers want some help setting it up please email support@eurofasthost.com and let us know!

Duncan

We use Windows Messenger a fair bit at work - even in the same office it’s ideal for, for example, sending links to a colleague to take a look at. And of course when people are working remotely, it’s an ideal way to stay in touch. But, it still suffers from the usual Microsoft problem of being over complicated!

I accidentally deleted a contact from it, and when I tried to re-add them, the link at the top just wouldn’t work (this is in a Vista machine). So I started messing around and before I knew it, a browser window popped up asking me to enter some details so that my contacts could stay up to date with my contact details… fair enough I thought, should only take a few minutes.

So I entered some of the required information then it all became just to much of a pain in the neck to complete - it was no longer a 2-minute job, but was looking like it could take quarter of an hour. So, being busy ;-), I gave up.

Next thing I know, there’s an email in my inbox from Windows Live Spaces welcoming me to “Windows Live(TM) Spaces!”. They have very kindly allocated my own URL where I can publish all sorts of things… is it a nice snappy domain? Something easy to remember and spell? Something you can tell someone in the pub and they might remember it? Well… its…

http://cid-00037ffe84eff1a2.spaces.live.com/

Got that? Easy peasy. No-one could ever forget that URL.

And, helpfully, the email went on to explain that this site could be viewed on a mobile with the URL:

“You can also access your space from a mobile device using this web address:
 http://cid-00037ffe84eff1a2.mobile.spaces.live.com/ ”

Now that should be a snap to enter on a mobile

Duncan

Just a quick post to air my mind on the whole 0870 premium call charging business.

Companies that insist on having premium numbers that charges you a fortune, really are raking it in. They keep you on hold and are making money from it, even when half the time it’s a problem of theirs your calling them about.

The usual candidates for 0870 numbers are Gas, Electric, Broadband, Web Hosting, after sales service lines, support lines of any kind etc.

So I scanned the internet for forums or web sites that had views and/or solutions on the whole 0870 scam.

I came up trumps with this site www.saynoto0870.com

You can enter an 0870 number for a company and it will come back with normal land line numbers for it. Or just enter the company name and again comes back with normal land line numbers or sometimes 0845.The site is all end user built so it depends on numbers been submitted by the public.
All this brings me to us at Eurofasthost.com we have a 0800 free phone number and we aren’t a chicken call centre. So you can guarantee no queues or silly phone bills.Enjoy