Ricky’s Online Business Blog

Have you ever had problem connecting to their web or mail server? While it is possible that the server is down, in many cases the connection from the customer side to the server has problem, is congested, or simply fails to work.

In such cases, it’s best to find out whether there is anything wrong in our network connection or not. You can simply use the “command prompt” service in Windows and run a few tests – namely ping, telnet and tracert.

To start, click the Start button, click Run, type cmd, press Enter, and you will be a blank screen awaiting your input. You are then ready to start each test. Let’s assume your domain name is domain.com. You should substitute domain.com with your own domain name in tests below.

Ping

This is a quick connection test to the server. If the connection is OK, you should receive responses from the server. On the command prompt, type:

ping www.domain.com – test the web server
ping pop.domain.com – test the incoming mail server (old server)
ping smtp.domain.com – test the outgoing mail server (old server)
ping mail domain.com – test the mail server (new cPanel-based Linux server)

Telnet

It tries to log you on to the server and sees whether it’s successful or not.

telnet pop.domain.com 110 – test the incoming mail server at port 110 (old server)
telnet smtp.domain.com 28 – test the outgoing mail server at port 28 (old server) – change to port 25 if you are using fixed IP address
telnet mail domain.com 110 – test the mail server at port 110 (new cPanel-based Linux server)

Tracert

It reports any connection problem along the way connecting to a server.

tracert www.domain.com – test the web server
tracert pop.domain.com – test the incoming mail server (old server)
tracert smtp.domain.com – test the outgoing mail server (old server)
tracert mail domain.com – test the mail server (new cPanel-based Linux server)

After each test, you can copy the result and send to us. To copy the result, click on the little icon at the top left corner of the command prompt window, and then click Edit and then Mark. Use your mouse to highlight the area of the window you want to copy, and then press Enter to copy.

Then you can email the test result to us. To exit from the command prompt window, simply type exit and then Enter.

Should you have any question, please contact us here.

I’m trying to make a quick note why you should consider blogging for your business.

Search engine friendliness – A normal web site is “static”, meaning that it doesn’t change much over time. But a blog updated regularly can provide fresh content to the search engines. Google can crawl your web site and so update its search results more often if it has a blog.

Keywording – What keywords you want people to type in Google to find you? In blog you can stuff your blog posts with the keywords you want. A blog is ever-growing and so your keywords’ exposure grows as well.

Ease of setup – You may need a web designer to do up your web site. But with blog, there are so many free blogging software available, such as WordPress, that you don’t really need so much technical knowledge to create a blog site. DIY stands for Do It Yourself!

Ease of maintenance – With a normal web site, you may need to spend much for a web designer to update your content (maintenance is not cheap so that’s why you can see so many web sites not updated). But with a blog, you can just login any time to make changes yourself! Again, it’s free!

Low cost – You may need to spend thousands of dollars to hire a web design firm. But with blogging, web development can be literally FREE! At most, you need to pay up for your domain name, web hosting, and maybe hire someone to set up your blog. Then you are off to blogging!

So if you already have a conventional web site, I guess it’s time to add a blog to it. If you don’t have a web site yet, why not create your whole site as a blog?

Not convinced?  Find out more from OneCoach – the 3 ways how blogging can help your business.

I often receive question on how my business came about and what I’m doing now. Perhaps I’ll answer here once and for all This is a very brief history of my business. If you have further query, please feel free to contact me here.

In 1999, I started BizPartner with 2 other partners when we were university students. We provided all kinds of IT services we knew such as selling and repairing computer, computer training, computer networking, web design, and so on. There was no focus at all.  Naturally the business was not good and soon my partners left me.

I carried on and narrowed down to three major services – computer training, web development and SMS marketing. Before long, I became the top reseller of a hosting company as I managed to get quite a number of customers to host their web sites with me.

In 2001, I registered the domain name bizpartner.com.my (so late!) and started to focus on web hosting services only. Since then I’ve been providing domain name registration, web and email hosting services until today.

In 2002, I launched NextLevel Tutor Network, a home tuition portal for Malaysia and Singapore. The business model was quite different from other players in the tuition industry, and it did shake the industry a bit at that time. The web site went on until today, although many similar sites have emerged.

In the same year, I also launched RichQuote.com, an affiliate web site selling products on personal finance. For a while, it was quite successful as I became the number 1 affiliate around the world earning US Dollar everyday. However, the business model was quite controversial. To avoid any trouble, I later decided to sacrifice the money and turn it into a very normal web site. The site has since disappeared into oblivion, though still earning a little of income every month.

In these few years, I also launched a few other online businesses, some mine, some joint ventures with others. These include an online photo album about Malaysia, a web hosting service using single-level marketing, and so on. I also helped form a company which sells an IT outsource solution. Unfortunately these ventures didn’t work out. But at least I tried

So started in 1999 as a general IT service provider, I changed to become a developer of online businesses as years went by. I no longer wanted to provide IT services (except web hosting), but to build automated (or nearly automated) Internet businesses so that I have free time to do other things.

But starting from 2004, although my little business still went on, I started to get involved in certain non-business activities. As a result, I spent too little time working on business that it has remained stagnant until this year (2008).

This year in 2008, I decided to give up many good activities to refocus on business (often “good” is the enemy of “best” use of my time). The relaunch of RickySoo.com as a business blog this year was a milestone as I decided to devote time working on the business again (not just in the business). I’m trying to learn up everything as I did in my early years, and I believe I can catch up.

As a start, I’m now working first to transform my existing sites, and will later work on some business ideas I have kept for years. If you have good ideas and need a technical partner to team up, you are welcome to contact me here.