Performance

New Zealand web hosting comes at a premium to offshore web hosting; however in turn it offers superior speed and performance for New Zealand based users compared to US based hosting, particularly if it is on the East Coast of the US or in Europe.

The geographic distance alone adds substantial latency; however you run the risk of slower performance and downtime as their overnight backups and maintenance windows will fall in the middle of your day rather than overnight when you and your users are less likely to notice it.

Downtime costs money

If your web site is down for 6 minutes, 6 hours or 6 days how would your business be affected? If not at all then going with the cheapest website hosting provider may not be a bad idea as there is no reason to pay a premium.

However if you rely on your website and email to operate your business, then paying a premium to a New Zealand based web hosting provider will help to ensure you have direct contact with a local company that can be held far more accountable than an offshore provider.

Not all web hosting is equal

Web Drive charges hundreds for it’s cloud servers, where as Open Host charges just $6.99 for web hosting. Clearly there is a difference beyond price! Generally with web hosting, the cheaper the product the less redundancy and support you can expect.

In the above example Web Drive provides hosting on a cluster of high end servers with a very high up-time guarantee and support agreements, where as Open Host provides a lower SLA and business hours support.

How to choose a web hosting provider?

• What service guarantees to they offer?
• Can you view any customer feedback? (e.g. Finda reviews, News articles, Forums, Twitter posts etc..)
• How long have the been in business?

And most importantly, how much would it cost you if they have extended downtime? If you only spend a few dollars a month on hosting, but downtime costs you hundreds of dollars per hour then you need to seriously reconsider your priorities!

This allows a user with a VPS (Virtual Private Server) to remotely host a MS SQL database without requiring SQL to be installed on their server, reducing overhead and licensing cost. For customers using shared web hosting, SQL is available to use within their customer control panel.

Windows hosting is essential for web site developers looking to develop in ASP, .NET with Microsoft SQL. OpenHost provides Windows hosting from $6.99 per month.

We recently conducted a test using Google’s Keyword tool to see which CMS reigned supreme. We tested a wide range of popular CMS scripts, however found that only three had any significant number of searches:

WordPress – 33,000 /monthly searches
Joomla – 14,000 /monthly searches
Drupal – 12,100/monthly searches

Evidently WordPress is the most search for CMS in New Zealand distantly followed by Joomla and Drupal. With a wide range of plug ins, addons and themes it is not surprising that these three lead the way compared to other CMS scripts which are in practice very good but no where near as well supported (Jojo CMS, Etomite, Concrete etc..).

Should this affect your decision when choosing a CMS?

It should, as more popular CMS scripts are likely to have a wider range of themes, templates and plugins. With a thriving community of developers are less likely to sit for years without new features and enhancements.

There is a downside in that more people will be looking for security vulnerabilities, however so long as your script is kept up-to-date the risk is relatively low. Web hosting providers such as OpenHost utilize PHP security restrictions to minimise the risk from these vulnerabilities as well as having a script auto-updater that handles keeping your site secure.

Who is the cheapest domain name registrar?

Our research shows Domains4Less offers New Zealand’s cheapest domain names. With providers such as FreeParking and Domainz registering domain names more than double the price!

What to look for when buying domain names?

Price isn’t everything, so what services should you look for when registering a domain name?

• Free DNS zone management / Nameserver delegation
• Options for web hosting or email services
• Direct access to manage UDAI codes (to transfer nz domain names)
• Check feedback and reviews, not all services are created equal.

We hope this article helps you to find the most affordable domain names.

PCI Compliance

PCI Compliance is a requirement of most New Zealand banks for merchants wanting to process credit cards via an online store.

Getting PCI compliance for your server  is relatively straight forward if you follow some basic best practices.

1# Use a Payment Gateway

By using a payment gateway you remove the handling and processing of credit cards from your system. This makes gaining PCI Compliance a great deal easier. If you need to store credit card details, you will need to under go a much more rigorous PCI self assessment.

2# Use a server that is PCI compliant

If you use shared web hosting chances are it wont be PCI compliant and gaining compliance will most likely be impossible. The process of buying a server and configuring it for compliance is difficult so purchasing server hosting from a provider with PCI compliant servers is a good idea.

Web Drive provides PCI Compliant servers and handles regular server scans to ensure ongoing compliance.

3# Ensure ongoing compliance

Regular scans ensure your server remains compliant, if you do not regularly scan for compliance and fail you run the risk of breaching your merchant agreement.

These steps apply to ecommerce web sites looking to achieve PCI compliance, larger merchants, bricks and mortar merchants or companies that directly handle and store credit cards will have a different process and requirements. In all cases you should follow the directions of your Bank or merchant provider.

Choosing a SEO web host

When choosing a SEO friendly web hosting provider here are some things to look for:

1. Server location, this should be close to your target audience. For New Zealand web sites you should host in New Zealand, however if you target Australia you should host there and so on.
2. Neighbours, the sites that share your IP range can affect how Google treats your web site. For example if you host on a server that has numerous Malware reports against it or is blocked as a spam server this will severely impact your site. You can check this using sites such as TrustedSource.
3. Domain Name, your domain name is part of how search engines determine your sites target audience and will in turn how you rank on google.co.nz. Needless to say, if you target New Zealand you should own a nz domain name.
4. Performance, if you have a slow web host or one that is unreliable this will affect how search engines crawl your web site. Ideally you want to make this easy for them to ensure you maximize the number of indexed pages. Choosing a fast, local web host is important.
5. Content,  Blogs such as WordPress make it easy to get indexed and to generate content. Choose a web host that makes it easy to set these up with an auto-installer.

Follow these four criteria for choosing an SEO friendly web hosting company and you will get a head start on your search engine optimisation.

WordPress Web Hosting

WordPress Web Hosting

WordPress is a popular blogging and CMS script used by millions of web sites around the world. Via OpenHost’s Application Vault it is easy to setup WordPress Hosting.

WordPress has a template system, which includes widgets that can be rearranged without editing code, as well as themes  that can be installed and switched between. Thousand’s of New Zealand web sites use WordPress as their web site platform, and it is by far the most popular application installed by OpenHost customers.

Joomla Web Hosting

Joomla Web Hosting

Joomla is one of the worlds most popular CMS scripts and is often chosen by web designers due to it’s flexibility and wide range of plugins. Setting up Joomla web hosting is easy with OpenHosts Application Vault.

Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.

OpenHost customers can install WordPress or Joomla in seconds by visiting the “Application Vault” section of their Plesk Control Panel and choosing WordPress 3. Once installed it is easy to customize WordPress and Joomla with Themes and Extensions.

Ecommerce Hosting

Web Site Hosting provider OpenHost recently updated it’s application installer to include a popular range of ecommerce scripts with the goal of being New Zealand’s leading ecommerce web host.

The updated application installer includes scripts such as Joomla, Wordpress and SugarCRM as well as over a dozen ecommerce scripts including Magento, Oscommerce and Cube Cart.

The application installer works by allowing web site hosting customers to select an application from a list, then run through a brief online configuration. This saves the hassle of downloading and uploading scripts, setting up databases and then configuring the script.

OpenHost customers will be able to install unlimited scripts within their disk space. The service is also ideal for Resellers and web designers looking to reduce the time and cost associated with deploying popular scripts.

This is not legal advice, but a basic guide. We recommend consulting an advisor before proceeding!

How to register a company in Australia

1. Decide on your company structure.
2. Choose a name.
3. (a) Reserve the company name using Form 410
   (b) Register the company using Form 201
   (c) Register as a Foreign Company using Form 402

To register an Australian company you will need to have a registered office in Australia. This can be an accountant or a solicitor.

For a more comprehensive guide to registering an Australian company please see the NZ Companies Office webpage Company searching and registration in Australia.

Once you have established a company you are free to register Australian domain names!