As your service provider, BizPartner is your service-oriented business partner empowering your company to be self-reliant, and NOT dependent on hosting companies, web designers and related IT solution providers.

As a responsible company, BizPartner is your ethical hosting provider. We stand by our values – Integrity, Service, Accountability.

Find out more about BizPartner

You want to know how to best use your domain name for your business. Be it to improve your operations, speed up communication, or just another marketing channel to promote your products.

You want the best technical support available to you when you need it to help attain what you need, and the way you need it. Nowadays, it’s normal to expect 24×7 technical support by phone and email from hosting providers.

But some customers want more personalized service. They want a technician or consultant who understands their business and their needs, one who knows their specific purposes for their domain name and hosting service.

We are not faceless people.  Why hide behind phone and email? We come to serve you at your place, office or home. These are what we provide for you:

• Setting up email service at your computers.
• Setting up email service at your mobile phones.
• Migrating, uploading and configuring your web site.
• Software installation on server.
• Basic training on email service.
• Basic training on cPanel.
• Other related training and services.

It’s personalized service, and for a start, it’s only RM280 for 6 months for unlimited number of service at your place!

And we don’t just do the work for you, but we train your users how to perform it yourself too. Talk about teaching them how to fish. Just in case, you need to DIY and have more control in future.

Perhaps most important to many business people, you’ll get to know your hosting provider more personally and intimately. It’s networking that matters.

Find out more about personalized support service here

Actually such spams are not uncommon.  The spammers use a trick called email spoofing to forge emails as if they are sent from known friends and even your good self! It’s actually not hard to forge such emails. Any skilled web programmer, include myself, is able to do it without knowing your email password.

You might wonder whether your mail server security has been compromised that it is used to send out spams to yourself. Not necessarily and not likely. I can use any server to send out such spams if I wish to.

Why do spammers want to use your or your friend’s email address to send to yourself? One reason is for them to hide their true identity. Another one is that the email recipients are more likely to open such emails, seeing that familiar names have sent the emails to them.

So is there any solution to such problem? The honest answer is no, unless you can spend huge amount of money to invest in high-tech server and firewall solution. If you are using a shared server, most likely you just need to complain to your hosting provider and they will do their best to help you.

What hosting providers can do is to institute certain preventive measures such as Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys and others. Please get them to turn on these security features for you. Most probably you will need to provide email header of the spam to them. Email header is the unseen part of an email that provides some diagnostic information for checking. Find out how to do it here.

Without going into much technical details, basically upon receiving an email, a method such as these checks with the server of the alleged sender’s domain name to see whether the email indeed comes from that server. If yes, the email will go through to the email recipient. If not, it will be blocked and will not reach you.

But there are actually other ways a spammer can use to send out spams as well, not to mention there are loopholes in these preventive methods too. For one, what if either your server or the alleged sender’s server does not support such method? Then the method will not work.

Nobody likes to receive spams.  Spams also present a big problem for hosting providers for using up a lot of server resources that otherwise would have been available for other good use.

But please work together with your hosting provider and together such incidents can be minimized. So please send the email header of such spam to them and get them to turn on preventive measures above. Find out more about email spoofing here.

The RM50 upgrade deal is back! Upgrade your to the next higher web/email hosting plan for RM50 only. Offer valid for first 25 confirmed domain names. Please contact BizPartner now to confirm your upgrade.

Each upgrade below is RM50 only:

1. No hosting plan -> Mini web/email hosting plan (100MB)
2. Mini web/email hosting plan (100MB) -> Basic web/email hosting plan (1GB)
3. Basic web/email hosting plan (1GB) -> Standard web/email hosting plan (6GB)
4. Standard web/email hosting plan (6GB) -> Silver web/email hosting plan (10GB)
5. Silver web/email hosting plan (10GB) -> Gold web/email hosting plan (18GB)
6. Gold web/email hosting plan (18GB) -> Unlimited web/email hosting plan (unlimited space)

Please contact BizPartner here if you wish to upgrade. Thank you.

* Valid for first 25 confirmed domain names
* Valid for Linux hosting only

Now you are invited to register any new domain name you like for free. Save RM40 for .com, or RM80 for .com.my. Within this week only!

Please go to the domain name registration form and enter your domain name. You must select any web/email hosting plan of your choice.

Then please complete the registration form and proceed to online or offline payment. Please deduct the domain name charges and just pay for the web/email hosting.

• Valid for payment received by 15th May 2011 (Sunday) only.
• Domain name registration must come with any web/email hosting plan of your choice.
• New domain name registration only. This promotion does not apply to domain renewal.

Please contact BizPartner if you have any enquiry.

I always plan and assess an Internet business on three levels, that is, business, marketing and technical.  Internet business is much more than just technicalities such as web design and Flash. It is also more than mere selling and marketing.

Instead, we need to think and rethink the way to attract visitors, leads, enquiries, and then convert them into customers. It is the business model that is most important.

In the session, I shared 7 general steps in details to set up an Internet business:

1. Plan your Internet business
2. Register your domain name
3. Get server hosting service
4. Develop your web site
5. Set up online payment and e-commerce facilities
6. Market your Internet business
7. Maintain and evaluate your business online

I also shared 7 ways, among others, to market a business web site online:

1. Search engine marketing
2. Trade and business directories
3. Email marketing
4. Advertisements (including banners and pay-per-click ads)
5. Blogging
6. Social media
7. Mobile marketing

It had been a fruitful non-technical introduction for business people to know how to go about starting and doing Internet business online. The feedback from attendees was quite good. I love learning, and I love sharing

Are you facing any regular email problem? For example, you can’t connect to server from Outlook, or you can’t login in webmail. Sound familiar?

I acknowledge all the problems. This problem with the service provider occurs from time to time for years already. At the time of writing this, their server was down and just recovered one hour ago, after 3 hours of downtime.

Yes I’m sorry because I had been using this provider. But they were once very good before. However, unfortunately their services and server quality have deteriorated in recent years. After so many complaints, I no longer harbor any hope that they would improve.

Yes, I’m very frustrated about it as you are. Every time their server has such problem, many customers would ring me up, but sometimes I can’t contact them at all. Their technical support line is just too busy!

So, since 2008 I have started to use a few new servers located in a different data centre. These new servers have proven to be much more reliable and better for these two years. I’ve been asking, requesting, urging and even begging customers to migrate over to any one of the new servers.

Thanks goodness most customers took my suggestion and migrated. But there are still a small group of customers who have not migrated. If I asked you to read this article, most probably you are one of them!

So can I help fix all the problems for you by migrating your domain name to the new server? The migration is free. You still pay the same hosting price every year. I have done this migration smoothly for a lot of customers. I’m confident I can do this well for you too.

The only drawback of migration is that, individual emails in webmail cannot be migrated. If your users have been using webmail exclusively, they need to download their emails to their computer using any email software such as Microsoft Outlook.

However, I have customers who have hundreds of users but their hosting was migrated smoothly without problem. Everyone was happy. The much better reliability, services and features on the new server far outweight the inconvenience of having to download emails during the migration period of one or two days.

Here’s a brief guide how to go about it:

1. Let me know you want to migrate. I will send you technical details to set up your email software (Outlook etc) for steps below.
2. You need to set up your email software to download emails from the old server. If you have been using such software to send and receive emails, then you just need to change a few settings.
3. On my side, I will copy over your web site from old server to new server. I will also recreate your email accounts on new server (but I can’t copy over emails to new server).
4. I will send you the “server configuration” of the new server, which you can use to set up your email software to access the new server. The new settings will not work until domain name is migrated below.
5. I will migrate your domain name to the new server at a mutually agreed cut-off date and time. Normally it’s best to do it at night or weekends. The domain name will be down for a few hours. But you still can send and receive emails through the old server. (Technically speaking, it’s just a few mouse clicks on my side to change name servers, but the process called DNS propagation can take a few hours)
6. After migration above, your web site will be up and running on the new server. Your email software will also be able to connect to the new server. You can also use the new webmail to access your emails.
7. You may keep the old server settings in email software for a week or so, just in case there are incoming emails which “accidentally” go to the old server. After that, you may delete the old server settings when you see fit.

If you are interested to read more about the benefits of new server, please check out:

• Free Migration To cPanel Hosting
• FAQ on cPanel Hosting
• Email Hosting Migration – Zero Downtime!
• Do-It-Yoursef (DIY) Server Migration

Please contact me today to migrate over to new server!

• What is a parked domain name? You can “park” a domain name Parked.com to a main domain name Main.com, so that people visiting Parked.com will see Main.com instead. You can park as many domain names as you want.
• http://bizpartner.com.my/ is our major web site. But you can access it at http://bizpartner.my/ also. Why? Because bizpartner.my is a parked domain name of bizpartner.com.my. Would you like such other domain names to point to your web site too?
• Hi Malaysian companies, would you like to register .com.sg Singaporean domain names to protect your brand name? You can register at http://bizpartner.com.my/domain today!
• A domain name is a readable name such as “bizpartner.com.my”. Its actual address on Internet is a string of numbers called IP address such as “110.4.45.95″. We use domain name in place of the IP address to make it easier to identify a web site on Internet.
• We can pinpoint the location of anywhere on the planet by using coordinates. Similarly, we can pinpoint any computer or server connected to the Internet by means of its IP address. It is a string of numbers such as 110.4.45.95.

You can get the above tips in your Facebook by joining as fan on BizPartner page on Facebook.

• Domain name (such as rickysoo.com) is your identity on the Internet. Your web site address (such as http://www.rickysoo.com/) and email accounts (such as user@rickysoo.com) are named according to your domain name. Without a domain name, you cannot have such web site or email accounts that uniquely identify YOU.
• A subdomain (such as sales.company.com) is a subdivision of your domain name (company.com). You can host a different web site on this subdomain as http://sales.company.com/, and create email accounts such as alan@sales.company.com
• Why not use subdomains to create different email addresses for different departments in your company? You can have email addresses like ricky@sales.bizpartner.com.my. Read http://www.rickysoo.com/2009/03/25/use-subdomain-in-your-email-address/
• Who can register .com.my, .net.my and .org.my? Any ORGANIZATION registered in Malaysia, including society, association, non-profit organization etc. Individuals? Go for .com lah
• What if you need a .my domain name but have no company to register with? Go for second-level domain name, such as bizpartner.my, Yourname.my. Any Malaysian can register!
• You work in the sales department. yourname@company.com or yourname@sales.company.com. Which email address do you prefer?

You can get the above tips in your Facebook by joining as fan on BizPartner page on Facebook.

Say your domain name is YourDomain.com, your web and email hosting plan enables you to create email accounts like anyone@YourDomain.com and put up a web site at http://www.YourDomain.com.

Creating Email Accounts

You can create email accounts using the web-based control panel given.  It is at http://www.YourDomain.com (cPanel users) or http://mailadmin.YourDomain.com (MailAdmin users).

For cPanel users, please login and click Email Accounts icon to create new email accounts.  Once you have done this, you can start using the email service via webmail at http://www.YourDomain.com/webmail.  You can also set up your email software (such as Outlook) so that you can send and receive emails from your computer.  Please refer to the “Server Configuration” email sent to you for details.

For MailAdmin users, please login and click Users button on the left to create email accounts.  You can access webmail at http://webmail.YourDomain.com.  Please also refer to the “Server Configuration” email sent to you on setting up your email software in your PC.

Creating Web Site

Developing a web site is not an easy task.  You can either outsource web development to web developers, or try to do it yourself using many free content management software (CMS) out there.

By using a CMS, you don’t need to possess too much technical knowledge to make up a web site.  Popular CMSes are such as WordPress (easiest) , Drupal, Joomla, Xoops, and OS Commerce (for e-commerce web sites). You don’t have to download these software but simply install any of them in cPanel.  Click Fantastico in cPanel to find out more.

Using CMS to create a web site requires a little learning curve.  But once you have mastered it, you can replicate your skills to create other web sites as well.  For many business and personal web sites, actually creating a blog is quite a good choice.  You can use WordPress to do so.  Find out how to use WordPress to develop your web site.

You can also use web development software such as Dreamweaver and Microsoft Frontpage to create your web site.  How easy are these?  If you know how to use Microsoft Word, it does not take you much time to learn Microsoft Frontpage.

But if you prefer to hire a web designer to do up your web site, there are thousands of them interested in your job.  You may want to try engage a web designer among my partners here. (If you are a web designer reading this, you are welcome to join as a partner too)

Hosting Your Web Site

When you are ready to put up your web site on the server, you can do this by using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) service provided as in the “Server Configuration” email sent to you. You will need an FTP software to do the job.  Recommended is FileZilla (free). Another way to upload is by Windows Explorer as described here.

If you use software such as FrontPage to design your web site, you can also upload or publish your web site straight from the software itself.

Hope this little article help.  If you face any problem, welcome to contact me here

However, the other hosting provider, actually their outsource web developer, would not budge.  He claimed the web sites make use of certain ASP.NET components not normally available on other servers.

Fair enough.  I asked for a list of ASP.NET components required.  Perhaps they really need to stay with him.  But after checking the list, those are just standard components supported on most if not all servers.

Finally, the web developer agreed to let customer go, but not without a “transfer fee” charged for the trouble to transfer their web sites and email accounts to the new server (which I would help do for customer free of charge if given all necessary server login details).

However, after some consideration, the customer decided not to pay the “transfer fee”, not because of money, but because of principle.  Maybe.  But I suspect another reason being the fact that their web sites are under the control of the developer.  They have to rely on the web developer to access and update their web sites.

After all, the web developer has been doing a good job maintaining their web sites.  From customer’s point of view, why switch to me if there is not much compelling reason to switch over to me?  But from my point of view, it is another typical case of customer web sites and hosting being hijacked by provider.

• .com.my, .net.my, .org.my – RM40, discounted from RM80
• .my (second-level domain) – RM60, discounted from RM120
• .name.my – RM16, discounted from RM32

Customers always ask me why .my domain names are more expensive than the international .com domain names.  But now that .my domain prices have dropped, there is not much difference now.  You can take advantage of it here!

Any price reduction is good news for us consumers.  I suspect .my DOMAIN REGISTRY (formerly MYNIC) may not go back to the high price tag of RM80 any more, even after the promotion period.

After all, it happened before.  Years ago, the then MYNIC had a similar promotion to reduce the original price of RM100 to RM80, and then decided to stay put with RM80 after the promotion and never went back to RM100!

It will be good for .my domain prices to drop to level similar to those of the international domain names such as .com.  The price reduction makes our .my domain names more competitive in the international market.

Domain name resellers and hosting providers have no option but to follow suit and reduce the prices in accordance to the promotion.  After all .my DOMAIN REGISTRY (MYNIC) sent out emails to all .my customers to inform about it!

However, a quick check on a few hosting providers’ web sites show that some of them have not yet updated their published domain prices to the lower prices.  I don’t know whether .my DOMAIN REGISTRY (MYNIC) had given them ample time to prepare for the promotion or not.

But as for me, I only received the news on 16th July, just 4 days before the start of promotion period!  It would have been better if I could know this earlier to prepare for it.

However, this web design company insisted the customer use their web hosting service.  Web hosting was part of their web development package for the customer.  Not being a technical person and not having been briefed clearly, the customer unknowingly agreed to the deal.

Later the web design company called me up to get my “cooperation” to transfer hosting to their server.  I sought clarification from customer but he said he never wanted to switch hosting provider.  He still wanted to host with me.

But the web design company was very adamant that the customer must host with them.  They claimed that they had set up everything about customer’s web site and database on their own in-house server, and so it was very troublesome to move their work to my server.  They said it was “easier” for them to develop the web site by hosting on their server.

Luck was on my side, though.  Customer insisted to host with me and gave them official notification to the web design company to host their works on my server.  Long story cut short, the customer is still happily hosting with me until now.

By some discovery later on, I found out that the web design company was actually using hosting from third-party hosting provider.  So they had not been very honest by saying the customer must host on their own “in-house server”.

From my experience, it is generally not true that you must host your web site with your web design company.  No matter where you host, as long as they get hold of the details on how to log on to the server, they can do their work.

It is also generally not true that it’s “easier” for them to develop your web site on their server.  No matter where you host, they work on your web site using pretty much the same ways – uploading and downloading by FTP, web-based administration using cPanel and PhpMyAdmin, and so on.

But I know of some cases where a customer’s web site makes use of special features available only on the web designer’s server.  Then in such cases, you have no choice but host with them.  But these cases are rare.

Web design and web hosting are two different services.  These two services can be separated and provided by different providers. But a web design company often bundle web hosting in their service, and this is perfectly good strategy.  But it is not good when they are not being honest and transparent with you.

Anyway, sometimes my hosting customers too can encounter problems in their Internet connection to our server.  I normally ask them to check their connection to server and send me report generated by a software called PingPlotter.  Customer support by phone and email is a full-time job.  So I might as well post here and refer them to this article.

So are you reading this because you can’t connect to our server, or any web site?  Download PingPlotter (free version) at http://www.pingplotter.com to find out what’s wrong. Install and run the program as usual.

As you can see above, there is a little text box at the top left.  Just type your server address there and hit Enter.  The server address depends on what you want to check.  It could be mail.yourdomain.com or pop.yourdomain.com for mail server, webmail.yourdomain.com for webmail, www.yourdomain.com or simply yourdomain.com for your web site.

A little graph will be generated on the right hand side every few seconds.  It shows what happened along the way from your PC to our server.  If the graph is mostly in green, you are having good connection.  If there is some yellow or red color, there might be some bottleneck or network problem somewhere halfway.

To churn out the report, click Edit menu, then Copy As Image.  You can then start and paste the copied image into your graphic software, such as Paint.  Then save the image and send to me at ricky [at] rickysoo.com.

Any question or comments? Welcome to comment below.

Would you like to indicate your location or department in your email address?  You can use subdomain in your email address such as sales@malaysia.mycompany.com or ricky@hr.mycompanycom!

What is a subdomain anyway?  It is anything that goes before your domain name.  For example, in “singapore.mycompany.com”, “mycompany.com” is the domain name” and “singapore” is the subdomain.

It’s easy to create email address with your chosen subdomain.  Let’s create an email address called ricky@malaysia.mycompany.com.

1. Log into your web-based control panel cPanel.
2. In cPanel, go to the Domains section and click Subdomains.
3. Enter “malaysia” as subdomain, specify the location of the subdomain (such as /public_html/malaysia), and click Create button.
4. In cPanel, go to the Mails section and click Email Accounts.
5. Enter “ricky” as the email username, select “malaysia.mycompany.com” from the domain list, enter other details such as password, and click Create button.
6. Now set up your email software such as Outlook to start using your email account. Done!

By the way, if you have created a subdomain as above, you can also use it to have a different web site for your branch in Malaysia under your domain name with the address http://malaysia.mycompany.com!

We have been communicating with others by email everyday for many years. It is such an indispensable tool that it is now part of our lifestyle. But have you taken it for granted? Do you know that the emails you send and receive can be intercepted and read by third party?

When you send an email out, your email content travels from your computer to the Internet in clear text format. That is, what you write can be read plainly if it is intercepted by someone or some machine while it travels to the destination. If you send password, it can be retrieved and your online security will be compromised. The same risk applies to incoming emails.

But worry no more. You can “encrypt” your emails before sending out, or get incoming emails “encrypted” before receiving them. When your emails are “encrypted”, it means that the email content is turned into garbage text before traveling on the Internet. When the emails reach the destination, they are “decrypted”, being turned back to normal text for your reading.

This is done by using a technology called SSL (Secure Socket Layers). By using a connection secured by SSL, your computer cooperates with your incoming or outgoing mail server to encrypt and decrypt your email message accordingly. This way, your email content becomes unreadable even if it is intercepted while traveling on the Internet.

If you are currently connecting to your mail server without SSL, it’s time to consider adopting such security measure now. Please change your email settings as below now to enable SSL on your end!

Outgoing mail (SMTP) port number: 465
Incoming mail (POP) port number: 995

Please turn on SSL for both outgoing and incoming mail servers. In Outlook Express, this is in the “Advanced” tab, the same place where you change the port numbers above.

For customers hosting on the new cPanel-based Linux server, SSL works immediately upon changing your settings as above. For customers hosting on the old server (non-cPanel based), please inform us at info [at] bizpartner.com.my that you wish to activate SSL email service.

Click here for some basic instruction to set up your Outlook Exress for SSL

I know the process is not easy for non-technical people.  But we will be available anytime to ensure smooth transfer, including doing most if not all of the tasks below for you.

First some definitions.  Transferring domain name means changing your domain name registrar (the company with which you or your hosting provider registered your domain name) to the one we use.  Transferring hosting means migrating your web site and email service from another hosting provider to us.

Domain Name Transfer

To transfer your international domain name (.com, .net, .org etc), please ask your current domain name provider to “unprotect” your domain name, and obtain the “domain name secret code” (domain authorization code) from them and send to us.  It is a little password to protect your domain from unauthorized transfer.

Once received, we will do the rest to transfer your domain over from your existing registrar to the one we use.  The process can take a few working days, but your web site and email service will not be affected.  After transfer, your domain name will be renewed for another year starting from the current expiry date.

For .my domain names, there is no “domain transfer”.  You can simply login to MYNIC web site as billing contact, and change the “Invoicing Party” from your existing provider to the one we use, so that we can take care of your domain name and bill you in the future.

Web Hosting Transfer

To transfer your web site to the new server, please obtain a copy of your web site (most probably you already have), and just upload to the new server using FTP software.

If your web site uses any database, such as MySQL, MSSQL or Microsoft Access, please be sure to backup and upload to the new server too.

Email Hosting Transfer

To transfer your email service to the new server, please first send us a list of your current email accounts.  I’ll create on the new server.  It is possible to achieve zero downtime for email service by checking your emails from both old and new serveres at the same time.  Please read here for more information.

Changing DNS

When you are ready to transfer hosting, just login to your domain name control panel and change the domain name server (DNS) to ours.

Please contact us at info [at] bizpartner.com.my should you have any question.

Some customers are very technical inclined, even more knowledgeable than me on server matters   No surprise if they want to do the migration themselves.  So if you are interested in DIY migration, here is a summary checklist for you.

To start with, please make sure your web site can run on Linux server.  Web sites using ASP or .NET technologies will not run and should stay with your current Windows server.

Please also have your domain name control panel login details with you.  You need the username and password to login to change domain name server (DNS).  The details were sent to you when you first registered the domain.  Please contact me if you need help retrieving the details.

After you have decided to migrate, please let me know and I’ll create a hosting plan for you on the new server.  I will send you the hosting details with access to your cPanel.

Please carry out these three things before migration:

• Your web site – Please backup your web site from the current server and upload to the new server, using the temporary FTP details given to you.
• Your database – If you have any MySQL database on the current server, please backup and upload it to the new server using PhpMyAdmin in cPanel.
• Your email accounts – Please retrieve your current list of email addresses from the current server, and recreate them on the new server using cPanel.

However, your emails on the current server, if any, cannot be migrated over.  Your users need to download the emails to their computers.  But you can keep on sending and receiving emails during the migration.  Read here for more information.

Finally, at the migration date and time of your choice, just log on to the domain name control panel and change DNS setting according to the hosting details sent to you.

You can do it!

But some customers are not migrating for fear that there might be downtime disrupting their email service during the few hours of migration.  Can there be zero downtime?

I don’t know how other hosting providers do it.  But for me, the answer is yes!  You can still send and receive as usual!  Firstly, you make a small change to the account in your email software to connect to the old mail using IP addresses.  Secondly, you create another account to connect to the new mail server after the migration.

For the old account, you simply change the “incoming mail server” from pop.yourdomain.com to the IP address of your current incoming mail server, and change the “outgoing mail server” from smtp.yourdomain.com to the IP address of your current outgoing mail server.  You can get the IP address by doing a “ping” test to pop.yourdomain.com and smtp.yourdomain.com.  Or you can just ask me and I’ll send you the IP addresses.

Once you enter the IP addresses for both “incoming mail server” and “outgoing mail server”, you can retrieve your emails from the old mail server and send emails as usual, before, during and after the migration.  Please do download all emails to your PC within a few days after the migration, as your email service on the old mail server will not be kept long.

For the new account, you create one in your email software in order to connect to the new mail server.  The settings are a bit different and I’ll send to you everything you need.  You can create the account any time but it will work only after the migration.

In addition, please send me the list of your current email addresses under your domain name so that I can help create the addresses on the new server.  This ensures that incoming emails after the migration will not get lost or bounced.

Easy migration!  No more migrane!   Find out more if you are interested to migrate your hosting too.

There are a few ways to upload files to, and download files from, your web server by means of FTP (file transfer protocol). The most common way is using an FTP software for this purpose.

But I’ll show you a basic way which works, and which does not require you to install any FTP software.  If you know how to copy and paste files in Windows Explorer or My Computer, you can copy and paste files too to other servers.

1. Open up Windows Explorer or My Computer on your computer.
2. Make sure there is an address bar in Windows Explorer where you can type address.  Can’t see?  Go to View menu, click Toolbars, and turn on Address Bar.
3. Type this into the address bar – ftp://username@ftp.domain.com .  Please substitute username with your FTP account username, and ftp.domain.com with your FTP server name.  You can get these details from your hosting provider.
4. You will be prompted for your FTP account username and password.  Enter them to log on to your web server.
5. Once successful, you will be able to see the file content on your server.  If necessary, browse to the folder where you want to copy files to.
6. To copy files to your server, just copy them from your file system, and paste it to the folder.  Done!

By the way, I host a little Java applet which lets you quickly upload files by FTP here.  Try it out!

What? It’s free of charge! No string attached!

Grab your Free Web & Email Hosting Plan now. More details below:

• Linux server
• cPanel control panel
• 10MB web and email space
• 1GB data transfer (bandwidth) per month

And listen up. More goodies below!

• Unlimited email accounts (POP, IMAP, webmail)
• Unlimited FTP accounts
• Unlimited subdomains
• Unlimited parked domains
• Unlimited MySQL databases

If you own a domain name (whether registered with us or not), you can subscribe for the Free Plan. You can also register a a new domain name and subscribe for the Free Plan.

10MB may be too little for some domains. But if you don’t have a web site, or have a very simple one, and you plan only a few email accounts, Free Plan maybe enough for you.

If it is not enough, you can always upgrade to other plans later. But hosting under Free Plan will give you a taste of what cPanel-based Linux hosting is like.

To grab it, please fill in the form here, put in your domain name, and choose Free Plan under Web & Email Hosting Plan.  If you need to pay for the domain name, proceed to the payment page.  Change your domain name servers to our ns1.vesselbiz.com and ns2.vesselbiz.com when ready.  You will receive your hosting plan details by email on the same working day!

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.

But the way Outlook Express stores its emails may not be the best way. Unfortunately things can happen that the emails can get corrupted. For example, if you suddenly power off your computer when it is downloading emails, the downloading is interrupted and your emails in Inbox and some folders can be gone.

So if you are using Outlook Express, or any email software for that matter, it’s prudent that you back up your emails regularly, especially when you have important company emails. One customer of mine opens and saves every email as a file in the hard drive. But this is just too tedious

Worry no more. Just grab a copy of the free Outlook Express Quick Backup. With a click of the “Complete Backup” button, it backs up all your emails in all folders. Not only your emails, but your folder structure, address book, email accounts and settings are backed up as well. Great tool!

In case your emails are lost, you can always restore back your previous backup. Just click the “Complete Restore” button, your Outlook Express will be back as previous. Thumb up!

Thirty days before the domain name expiry date, my system sent out reminders by email and SMS to the reseller as usual, who I believed passed the reminders to the person in charge. But somehow the domain was not renewed until it fell into the “redemption grace period” 40 days after expiry.

In this period, the end user customer could no longer renew the domain at the usual price of RM40, but had to pay a “redemption fee” of RM450 (about US$ 128) charged by my registrar to claim back the domain name. It’s 10 times more than the renewal price! I don’t know whose fault it was. But finally the customer got in touch with me, paid the amount, and got back the domain name.

About 40 days after the expiry of a top-level domain name (eg. .com and .net), it will go into a period called “redemption period” for 30 days, in which the domain owner needs to pay a “redemption fee” to claim back the domain. The amount is different among domain registrars. But it’s definitely much higher than the usual renewal price.

If the domain name is not redeemed within this period, it will go into another period called “pending delete” for 7 days, after which the domain name is made available for public registration.

So the “life cycle” of an expired domain name is like this:

Expired (40 days) -> Redemption Period (30 days) -> Pending Delete (7 days) -> Available

So what if you failed to renew your domain name and it falls into redemption period now? You either have to pay a lot now to redeem back the domain, or you can wait for another one month when the domain is made available again, but it may be snapped up by other people.

It is unfortunate that we have to pay so much to get back our domain name. But thanks and no thanks, there is such a 30-day “grace” period so that your domain will not be taken by others so early, but you have to part with much money to get it back It is not so gracious.

So don’t ever miss your domain name expiry!

If you buy a new Honda Civic, would you want the iDSi or Variable Timing Injection Engine?  Can you make a decision?

This question is what a customer threw me after I sent offer to customers to convert their existing hosting to cPanel-based hosting free of charge.  How do non-technical people know whether to choose cPanel or not?  Just like how would I choose an injection engine if I don’t know what is inside a car

There have been many similar questions from customers on cPanel.  So I suppose I will answer all common questions here.  If there is anything else you wish to know, please let me know and I may add below.

What exactly is cPanel?

Just a web-based software to manage your domain name and hosting.  Currently you are using webcp to manage your web hosting and mailadmin to manage your email hosting.  cPanel?  All in one!

What is cPanel so good over the current hosting?

Told you some good features here before. But best if you can try it out for yourself.  Please contact me and I’ll send you a trial account right away.  Login and experience it for yourself.  Those who have tried the demo account have commented it’s very nice and user-friendly.  One customer migrated because of its pre-installed content management system (CMS) such as WordPress and Drupal.

Which version of cPanel are you using?

cPanel 11 – check it here if you like to read the technical document.  Below is a screen shot.

What happens to my email accounts after migration to the new server?

It’s a totally new server.  You need to recreate your email accounts.  But if you can provide me the list of your current accounts, I’ll do it for you.

What happens to my emails then?

If you download all your emails to your PC just before migration, the emails are safe with you.  But if you don’t, your emails are still on the old server and can’t be migrated over.  So you must download all your emails before DNS is changed.

But if you really need to access the old server to check emails after the migration (only a few days allowed at most), I’ll give you the IP address of your old mail server.  You can change the “incoming mail server” setting in your Outlook from pop.domain.com to the IP address.  Then you can receive the emails as usual.

What happens to all my settings – FTP,  MySQL and so on?

It’s a totally new server.  Everything is to be recreated on the new server. I will send you the new server settings.

Will you help me to transfer my web site, database and emails?

Some hosting companies charge you for such help.  But I’ll do it free for you.  Just let me know your FTP and database settings and I’ll transfer for you.

But I’m doing the physical transfer of files only.  I will not be responsible for any web site problem due to difference in server settings.  Please consult your web developer first before deciding to migrate or not.

I’m hosting on a Windows server now.  Can I still run my web site on the new server?

The new server is a Linux server.  If you are using any Windows-specific technologies, such as ASP, ASP.NET and Microsoft Access, your web site will NOT run on the new server.

How long does it take to migrate everything?

Please decide your preferred migration date and time (night time preferred).  The next morning you should be able to use the new server.

Is there any downtime during migration?

Yes, there will be.  This is due to a process called DNS propagation, which can take a few hours to finish if you are lucky, or one whole day (or night) normally.  I have no control over the process.  So I suggest you migrate at night time.   The next morning everything should turn out fine.

Can I migrate everything myself?

DIY?  You are welcome.  Just let me know when you want to migrate.  I’ll send you the new server settings including the domain name server (DNS) settings.  You can then upload your web site and create your email accounts using a temporary cPanel web address.  Make sure your web site is running fine at the temporary address.

Then you change the name server to the new settings at the time you want to migrate.  After changing DNS, you domain will be down and won’t be able to do anything.  Wait until DNS propagation is over, then it’s done!

Will I still get the same hosting package?

You still get the same hosting package you subscribed to.  For example, if you purchased the Standard Web & Email Hosting (6GB) on the old server, you will get the same 6GB on the new server.

The only difference in space is that, on the new server, there is no more division between web and email hosting space.  You can use 1GB for web and 5GB for email if you like

I want to keep my web hosting (or email hosting) with the current server, but migrate email hosting (or web hosting) to the new server.  Can I do so?

Yes you can.  Please contact me for technical details.

Until when is this free migration offer valid?

If you are already using our hosting on the old server, you can migrate to the new server anytime when you are ready.

I registered a domain name with you but don’t use your hosting.  Can I migrate my web site to the new server?

If you have a domain name with us without our hosting, you can take advantage of this separate offer to get 100MB web & email space free of charge!  But the last day of the promotion is TODAY.  So act now!

A domain name search service, or WHOIS service, lets you query the availability of a domain name. If it is available, you can register it. If it is not available, the search shows you who registered it.

It took me one whole day on Monday to revamp the previous WHOIS service. The service is now more robust, accurate and useful. It took me another one whole day on Tuesday to make the search available for bloggers and site owners to monetize their web sites.

Being a site owner and blogger myself, I understand the dilemma on how to monetize (make money from) a blog or web site. A business web site can sell products and services. But how about a non-commercial one, such as many personal blogs out there? How do they make money?

One common way is to make money from pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements such as those of Google Adsense. You just put up some snippet of HTML code on your blog, and it turns into advertisements relevant to your content. When your visitors click on any ad, you get paid by Google.

Another way is to sell other people’s products or services. This is “affiliate marketing”. You become their “affiliate”, and put up a link from your blog to their web site. When your visitors click on the link, and buy from the supplier, you get a cut of the profit.

This is what I’m trying to do with my domain name registration service. But instead of putting up just a link, you are given a domain name search box to be placed on your blog. When your visitors search for any domain name, and buy any domain name within 3 months, you get a commission.

This way, it’s win-win-win for you, your visitors and me. You provide an extra feature or service to your providers and earn money from it. Your visitors can search for their desired domain names on your site, without going to a domain name provider’s web site. And I can get more customers referred from you.

I also think that if domain name search is ubiquitous, more people will be encouraged to have their own domain names. Getting own domain name is also what I strongly recommend to those who want to blog. No more using free blog address!

Look at the search box I put up on the left of this blog. It may not look nice here, but you can change its appearance. Find out more here on how to put up a domain name (WHOIS) search box on your blog or web site.

If you are currently having the old, non-cPanel hosting plan with BizPartner, now you can choose to migrate to our new cPanel-based Linux hosting, free of charge!

Why convert to cPanel hosting?

• Unlimited number of parked domain names
• Unlimited number of subdomains, eg. subdomain.domain.com
• Unlimited number of FTP accounts
• Unlimited number of MySQL databases
• Check emails using IMAP technology – synchronize emails in your webmail and Outlook!
• Free content management system (CMS), web builders and many other software and services can be installed with a click of button!
• Many other services provided through cPanel, powerful web-based control panel

To migrate to cPanel hosting, please let us know these details:

• Your domain name
• Your preferred migration date and time
• List of current email addresses under the domain name

Migration of server involves updating your domain name server (DNS) records. There will be a downtime of about half a day. Migration can be done at night time to minimize service disruption.

Please take note that the new hosting plan runs on Linux server. Web technologies such as ASP and ASP.NET are not supported. For supported features on cPanel Linux hosting, please refer to http://bizpartner.com.my/hosting.

If you are interested to migrate now, or you want a demo on cPanel, please contact me here.

Update on 10th October 2008 – Check out some frequently asked questions (FAQ) here.

Good news for you! Get your 100MB web and email hosting space free of charge!

If you are currently having an active domain name or hosting plan with BizPartner, you are eligible to claim a new Mini web & email hosting plan!

The hosting plan is hosted on Linux server and runs the famous cPanel web-based control panel system.

It allows you to access your emails using the new IMAP technology, where your webmail and Outlook can be synchronized all the time.

It also allows you to have unlimited number of MySQL databases, without paying for anything extra!

There are also many great benefits such as unlimited number of parked domains and subdomains. With cPanel, you have more control!

Valid until 10th October 2008 (Friday) only. Find out how to claim your free hosting plan here.

So how to avoid or reduce spams getting into your mailbox?  First things first, be careful to expose your email address, especially online.  For example, when you need to give your email address to someone or enter it on a web site, first make sure who you are dealing with.  Always check out the web site’s privacy policy to see how the other party will handle your personal information.  If in doubt, do not proceed.

If you publish your email address on your web site, please be sure to protect it so that automated programs used by spammers called spambots, which crawl around the Internet looking for possible email addresses, will not be able to find yours.

You can do this by using an image instead of plain text to display email address, or JavaScript to jumble your email address into something readable by human but unreadable by program.  Please consult your web designer on how to do this.  Strongly recommended.

Another good idea is to use a separate email address online, such as subscribing to a newsletter online.  I know some people use different email addresses when dealing with different web sites.  If any of their email addresses get spammed, they will know which web site has mishandled their email address!

Your hosting provider should also provide antispam protection.  For BizPartner customers, you can login to your email control panel (mailadmin) or cPanel to set up your antispam features.  You can even “teach” the server which is spam and which is not so that it can better deal with spams in future.  Let me know if you need to know how.

There is also a notorious way of spamming by forging a bogus email address based on known domain names on the Internet.  If you find your domain name appear in the spammers email address, then you have fallen victim to such spams.

One good way to counter this is to turn on Sender Policy Framework (SPF).  When an SPF-enabled mail server receives emails appear to be from your domain name, it checks with your mail server to verify whether that email address exists or not.  If it does not, it will not be delivered to the recipients.  Please check with your hosting provider on SPF.  BizPartner customers are already protected by SPF.

As an added protection, you can also use the filtering features in your email software such as Microsoft Outlook to filter out unwanted emails.

These are just among many ways to fight spams.  Please let me know if you need any clarification or help.  If you have any good ideas on how to combat spams, please let me know in comments.

From now onwards, we will start selling cPanel-based hosting services for the Linux platform, in addition to the current non-cPanel packages.

Among the many advantages of cPanel-based hosting are:

• Unlimited subdomains eg. http://subdomain.domain.com
• Unlimited parked domains
• Free domain redirection
• Unlimited FTP accounts
• Unlimited IMAP email accounts
• Unlimited MySQL databases
• No more fixed space allocation between web and email hosting
• Access to world-famous cPanel web-based control panel
• Fantatisco Deluxe and many scripts preinstalled, such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Os Commerce, PhpMyAdmin, Xoops and many more

In summary, you will get to enjoy more FEATURES, more CONTROL, and more SERVICES by using cPanel.

In addition, these are new cPanel-based hosting packages available:

1. Mini Web & Email Hosting Plan (100 MB) for RM 80 per year
2. Basic Web & Email Hosting Plan (1 GB) for RM 180 per year

So if you think your current space is TOO BIG, you can consider these plans.

cPanel-based hosting is available only for new registration or renewal cases only.

For more information, please check out these new cPanel hosting services. Please contact us if you have any question. Thank you.