Earlier today I found myself needing to refresh a page on a regular basis. I was monitoring for changes that were being made by a 3rd party developer and while clicking refresh wasn’t that big of a deal, it was annoying having to keep clicking refresh. So I decided to have a look around the web and see what I could find that would allow me to refresh a page. I stumbled upon “Page Reboot” at http://www.pagereboot.com

This handy little site allows you to enter ANY website and have it refresh at an interval of your choosing. For me, it was every 300 seconds (5 minutes) as I didn’t need the page refreshing every 30 seconds, but still needed it refreshed regularly.

This was the perfect tool at the right time. I’m not sure how much use it might be to others, but it was a big time saver for me. There’s a few others out there that are paid programs or websites, but Page Reboot is a free website that did exactly what I needed it to do.

On the website, they talk about utilizing the website to refresh an ebay listing or monitor an ebay auction. I’d never thought of using it that way before but it looks like it would work there too. Check it out and let me know how it goes for you! I’m interested to hear how you used the tool to help your day!

On December 6th, 2012, Google quietly killed off it’s free version of Google Apps for Business.  Through a blog posting, Google announced that any existing users of Google Apps for Business would not see any issues, and the App would continue to work without issues.  If, however, you don’t already have Google Apps for Business, there is no longer a free version and the charge would now be $50 per user per year.

The Standard Google Apps was available for free for businesses with under 50 users, and it provided calendars, emails, shared documents, spam and virus filtering and up to 7 GB of space per user.  Many of our own clients here at Hands-on Web Hosting utilize Google Apps for Business to handle their mail rather than using the built in services that we offer.  Google states that this will continue to function as it had in the past.

From the posting:

Starting today for all new customers:

• Individuals wishing to use Google’s web apps like Gmail and Google Drive should create a free personal Google Account, which provides a seamless experience across all of our web services on any device.
• For Businesses, instead of two versions, there will be one. Companies of all sizes will sign up for our premium version, Google Apps for Business, which includes 24/7 phone support for any issue, a 25GB inbox, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee with no scheduled downtime. Pricing is still $50 per user, per year.

The news comes with mixed feelings for the general community.  Businesses that are utilizing the Google Apps, and were serious about it, needed more space than was available in the free version, so many of them upgraded to the paid plans.  New businesses just starting out however, or those that were just testing the platform, will surely miss the free applications provided.

Google’s move to pull the free version and make it a paid only application will help ensure the longevity of the program, after-all, you can only go so far without financial support.  Again, the recent change will only affect NEW customers, so there’s no impact for users that were already using the system.  Google still offers a “Free Trial” for those that want to test the service, but continued use will result in a fee.

To experiment with Google Apps for Business, please check out their website at http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/

2012 has been a busy year for many people. The economy is starting to get back on track and people are once again spending money at the stores.  We’ve seen a huge movement for the “Shop Local” initiative, and at the same time, Online Sales are through the roof for many people. Enter Black Friday!

This year’s Black Friday Event was just like all previous ones – breaking records all over the place.  Over $1 Billion was spent ONLINE on Friday alone, and according to comScore, Americans have spent $13.7 billion during the 2012 holiday season (November 1-23rd).  We see it everywhere, Black Friday sales for this and that.  It was previously associated that Black Friday was mainly at brick and mortar stores, and then we had Cyber Monday for the online crowd, but this year has been different.  $1 Billion spent Online, and then another $633 Million spent online on Thanksgiving Day.

For the online world, Amazon has come out on top again as being the most trafficked online store.  Walmart, Best Buy, Target and Apple rounded out the top 5.  The big drive this year is focused on digital content and subscriptions   More users are downloading movies, TV shows, books, music and games and it’s not just for the smartphones and tablets – PC’s and gaming consoles are also getting involved.

Ready for another staggering figure – $59.1 Billion – that’s how much US shoppers have spent in just the 4 day weekend, and it’s estimated that Cyber Monday will bring in as much as $1.5 Billion alone.

In this day and age of online shopping, it’s imperative that web sites are online and available for visitors.  Hands-on Web Hosting has taken a number of precautions this year when it comes to traffic and usage, and so far, it’s paying off.  We’ve beefed up our machines, introduced new monitoring on the servers and removed some of the limitations of bandwidth usage.  There’s a slew of Virtual Servers (VPS) available and an even wider range of dedicated servers for those demanding websites.  We introduced new Cloud Hosting packages earlier this year and this too has been a huge success.

All in all, it’s been a successful weekend for most buyers and sellers.  The Black Friday Events have turned into Black Friday Weekend Events, and looking into the future, I’m guessing that we’ll see Black Friday Week Events.

Earlier today we had a client asking us about the ability to change the file upload size in WordPress.  They had found several postings on the web saying to edit files in the /includes/ directories, and others saying to manually edit the php.ini or .htaccess files on the websites.  Another person suggested a Plugin called Memory Bump.  I’ve never used that plugin before, but updating the upload file size is a very easy task none the less.

I’m going to list two directions for you.  The first is geared toward clients hosting with Hands-on Web Hosting.  We have streamlined the ability to modify the php.ini files directly through the users control panel rather than having to play with code and using FTP etc.  The second method is if you are hosting with another hosting company – which then brings up the question of why you would do that anyway?

Hands-on Web Hosting Customers

We took the time to write a knowledgebase article for you in the past.  This helps when users are entering tickets for support as the answers will automatically pop up.  You can see the full KB article at this link - https://billing.handsonwebhosting.com/knowledgebase.php?action=displayarticle&id=377

Basically, you’ll log into cPanel, and follow these steps:

• Click the PHP Variables Manager icon
• Click the wp-admin folder
• In the variable section, type “post_max_size” and click ADD
• In the space beside “post_max_size” enter 20M
• In the variable section, type “upload_max_filesize” and click ADD
• Now type 10M beside the “upload_max_filesize“

You’ve just increased the upload filesize to 10MB.  Be aware that in the variables manager you must use “10M” and not “10MB”.  A good rule of thumb is to always make the post_max_size twice as large as the upload_max_filesize.

For people that are not Hands-on Web Hosting Customers

The method is going to be different depending on your host.  Places like HostGator and GoDaddy usually have different sets of directives than that of BlueHost or 1&1.  What I’ve outlined is the basic steps that you would perform.  If it does not work, you will need to contact your host – or better yet, just change your hosting to Hands-on Web Hosting as we know it works here, and all our staff are very friendly and helpful too!

• FTP to your website and move to the /wp-admin folder
• If there’s a php.ini file on there, download it so you can edit it.  If not, we’ll create one from scratch
• Open NotePad and type the following:
  post_max_size=20M
  upload_max_filesize=10M 
• It’s entirely possible that you’ll need to insert IonCube Loaders or Zend Optimizer commands if your website is using those features.  This will be provided to you by your webhost – every host is different.

Upload the file back to your website in the /wp-admin/ folder and check in the Media Area of WordPress to see if the file size for uploads has changed.  It should have, but if it didn’t there’s a few possible explanations.  The most basic is that you didn’t upload the file to the /wp-admin folder – doublecheck!  The second is that your host doesn’t allow you to override the php.ini commands on the server.  If that’s the case, your only option will be to contact your hosting company.  These days, there’s no reason to restrict the php.ini file like that, but when you deal with larger web hosts, you’ll find they use antiquated security measures to keep things secure, or they’ll lock a portion of things so they don’t have to make systemwide changes.

That’s all you should need to update the file upload size in WordPress to be bigger than the default of 2MB.  Don’t get crazy and set the upload size to 100MB as that’ll just crash your browser in most cases.  Most web hosts have time limits for uploads.  If you have a slower connection, your browser could crash or timeout.  Then again, what were you thinking uploading a 100MB file to your website?!

For more helpful guides, check out our extensive Knowledgebase Articles at http://support.handsonwebhosting.com.  If you have a little extra time, browse around our website at http://www.handsonwebhosting.com and see how we match up with your existing hosting.  Chances are, we’re providing more services for less money than you currently pay for.  Keep in mind that webhosting choices are not only about price, many times it comes down to resource availability.  Since we have less clients on a single server, websites generally load much faster than with the competition!