Webs Canada Blog


New Servers

We have purchased new servers to replace our old hosting servers.  They have done us well for over 6 years, but it is time to upgrade to newer and faster technology.  Over the next few months, we will be migrating our customers over to the new server.  If you have any problems with your website or email during this time, please contact our office immediately.

Is Your Site Mobile Friendly?

Recently, Google announced that it has changed the way it ranks websites in its search engine.  Sites that are not mobile friendly will be listed lower than the sites that are mobile friendly.  So, how do you determine if your site is mobile ready?  Well, you have three options.  First, you can visit your site with your smart phone – does it look the way you want it to?  Your second option is to Click Here and use Google’s very own Mobile-Friendly Test Tool.  The last option is to contact us and have us test the site for you.

In any case, if Google likes your site, then you have nothing else to do!  More than likely, Google will not like the mobile friendlyness of your site.  If you want to make your site mobile friendly, then we can help.  For as little as $100, we can make a simple mobile site that will look and navigate well on a smart phone or tablet.  The best option, however, is to re-program your entire site so that it meets all the specifiations of the Google Analytics program.

New SEO Service Now Offered

We have recently purchased a new SEO analytics program that will provide a neutral, analytical view of your website — it’s like looking at your pages through a search engine’s eyes. Browse through the generated report and get valuable insight in the experience and impressions of your human visitors too.

For only $25, we will scan your site, and provide you a written report of what the program has found.  We can also provide a quote to complete the recommendations and when completed, we will run another report for you, absolutely free!  That way, you can see if the changes have made a difference.

Contact us right away, and we will complete that scan for you!

 

Global WordPress Bruce Force Attack

There is an on-going and highly-distributed, global attack on WordPress installations across virtually every web host in existence.  This attack is well organized and again very, very distributed; we have seen over 90,000 IP addresses involved in this attack.

At this moment, we highly recommend you log into any WordPress installation you have and change the password to something that meets the security requirements.  These requirements are fairly typical of a secure password: upper and lowercase letters, at least eight characters long, and including “special” characters (^%$#&@*).

You have now changed your WordPress password, correct?  Good.

The main force of this attack began last week, then slightly died off, before picking back up again yesterday morning.  No one knows when it will end.  The symptoms of this attack are a very slow backend on your WordPress site, or an inability to log in.  In some instances your site could even intermittently go down for short periods.

We are taking several steps to mitigate this attack throughout our server farm, but in the same breath it is true that in cases like this there is only so much that can actually be done.  If you are hosted with us and you would like for us to take a more severe, heavy-handed approach to mitigate this attack, we can do this via means such as password-protecting (via .htaccess) all wp-login.php files on the server.  If you would like our assistance with this, please contact us.

Again, this is a global issue affecting all web hosts.  Any further information we could provide at this moment would be purely speculation.  Our hope is that this attack ends soon, but it is a reminder that we must all take account security very seriously.

We will update this blog post when we have further information.

New Website

After over 15 years in the web hosting and design business, we have finally built ourselves a new website.

Free Hosting

Did you know that we offer free hosting to churches, charities, and non-profit groups?  We will give our Beginner Hosting Package at no charge… All we ask is that you give us credit for hosting the site at the bottom of your page.  If you are interested in taking us up on our offer, just contact us.

Webs Canada is Back!

In 2002, Paul Hock of Fergus, Ontario started Webs Canada.  At the time, a one-man operation, helping small businesses and organizations build a web presence.  Although very successful, Paul decided to persue other career choices, including getting back to his first love… music.  In 2008, Jeremy Woods of ICS Computers took over the Webs Canada name and all the current customers.  Since ICS already had a number of hosting customers, it was easier to absorb those customers under the ICS banner.  Then, in 2010, ICS made a deal with Dan Hutten at Digital Hexagon to take over his website hosting customers as well.  Jeremy then decided in 2012 to revive the name Webs Canada, still under the ownership of ICS Computers Inc., to better serve his growing list of customers.