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.

1. Unlimited storage & bandwidth

(Web hosting provider: We pray a lot so that none of you are hosting a gigantic MP3 download site. What? Don’t you know that we build our hosting business by over-selling?)

2. Unlimited mailbox

(This is our marketing trick to make you signing up email hosting with us. Who really cares if you have 500 email users and overload our email server! We host more mailboxes than we can afford to in each server so that we can lower down the price of your hosting.)

3. Unlimited add-on domain name

(Mixing different sites together are not a good practise, we know that from day one. But since everyone like the magic word ‘Unlimited’, why not this one?)

4. 99.999999% uptime

(Customer never ask for an uptime report to justify our actual uptime. If they do, we can come out with one which they will never understand except that if they are from Mars)

5. Reliable customer support

(Smart customers are only a step away to know that we are sucks by googling, eg ‘exabxxxxx sucks’. See, not many are doing that, we are always safe!)

6. Free domain name

(What they do not know is that we are going to make them pay it back on the next year. If that is not enough, we can send them bills for DNS, Migration Fee, Domain WHOIS update fee, you name it.)

7. No-downtime migration

(We can point our finger to countless parties when there are any downtime – TM, DNS, Dogs & Cats, Weather, etc)

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.

Unfortunately, the web development company does not want to fix the error for the customer, unless they are paid a certain amount (which I think they should not charge at all) to “upgrade” the system. They claim to have developed the scripts using PHP version 4, but now that the server has been upgraded to PHP version 5, the scripts do not work any more. That is, they blame the problem on the server.

I checked the scripts but did not find any problems due to new PHP version. I found the errors as common programming errors, which can be fixed easily by them who developed and understand the system. In addition, the developer could not answer me when asked for exactly what outdated features of PHP 4 that the scripts are using that are not working now.

They refused to fix the problems for the customer, saying that the web site is not hosted with them. But I think this is not a very good reason, because a web site can be hosted and deployed anywhere, not necessarily theirs. They should support the web site no matter where it is housed.

Now they say they are no longer interested in serving the customer, and they say since I am so “expert”, then I should fix the errors for the customer. Well, even if I am in web development business, they are still the one who created the system. I think it is their responsibility to support the customer and not just simply pass the buck and walk away.

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.

Yes, the Internet is getting more and more “social”, with real people using the Internet to interact and influence one another.  Much thanks to the advent of blogs, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter (strictly speaking, blogs are not social media).  Even the older generation have jumped on the bandwagon and claimed an account on Facebook.  In fact, if you are not “in” social media nowadays, you are “out”!

Therefore, the social media now presents a natural channel for marketing your products and services on such increasingly social online networks.  After all, many people have always been looking for others’ opinions when deciding to buy (or not buy) something, used to be offline, but now online also.

In the local hosting industry, it seems hosting providers are picking up on marketing through social media.  I know one company has set up their profile on various social media such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Plurk!

This company is capitalizing well on social media.  They offer money for bloggers who write about them.  They give out prizes for lucky draw winners who follow them on Twitter, tweet about them, and ask others to retweet about them.  They also own a company page on Facebook and promise to offer discounts for domain names based on the number of Facebook members who become their fans.  Yeah, many social media jargons here, I know

I also had set up a Facebook group and a Twitter account for BizPartner, and tried to create some buzz in social media.  I have yet to achieve what I want, but I’m trying, and learning.

And we can expect that more and more hosting providers will soon start to use social media for innovative marketing, branding and customer relationship building.

While I’m facing the same problems competing in such fragmented hosting industry, these are a few pointers we managed to come up with.

Firstly, don’t try to fight them with even larger space at even lower price.  How about going to the other extreme, by selling small but enough hosting space at half or quarter of their prices?  For example, selling only 100MB at just RM80?  But the customers need to be educated that they actually won’t make use of so much space.

Secondly, expose the tricks (even deception) used by hosting providers.  Nowadays anyone can sell any large amount of hosting space at cheap rates using the “overselling” kind of business model.  This works because statistically an average customer will not use even 10% of the space promised to them.  Some customers are “space-greedy”.  They need to know the inconvenient truth in the hosting industry.

Thirdly, bundle hosting service with other services with prices you have more control on, such as web design.  This way, customers may not know even if you charge them double the hosting prices.

Fourthly, but a very bad strategy – fight the competitors with even larger space at cheaper price!  We know some customers will be lured into this but actually never use so much space anyway.  Nevertheless, I’m against this as it is over-promising.

Last but not least, seek out blue ocean strategies that you no longer need to compete with other hosting providers in such a red ocean.  But seek out new markets and sell to them some services which include hosting service.

Just as an example, how about an online service for couples getting married?  Many couples get married every week.  More and more couples start to want a wedding web site to commemorate such big event!  In providing such service, you no longer compete with other hosting providers but customers will have unknowingly bought your hosting service anway.

Anti-SPAM Policy Disclaimer:
Mail cannot be considered spam as long as we include contact information and a remove link for removal from this mailing list. If this e-mail is unsolicited, please accept our apologies. Further transmissions to you by the sender may be stopped at NO COST to you.

This spammer has a serious misunderstanding of what a spam is.  Any unsolicited commercial bulk email is spam.  But the spammer tries to justify his action by deceiving people the real meaning of spam.  Or maybe he tries to avert his own guilt by talking himself into believing this is not a spam!

Further transmissions to you maybe stopped at NO COST to you?  If you ever reply or click on the unsubscribe link hoping never to hear from the spammer again, sorry but you are wrong.  By receiving your request to unsubscribe, a spammer can verify that your email address is active and so, worth spamming to!  He may not spam to you again himself, but your email address can be used by other spammers to send you even more garbage!

It is good for businesses to use email marketing to promote products and services.  But not in this way.  Spamming is very ineffective yet it brings many negative consequences to our business.  Some of us just have to mature up and know what works and what does not.

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.

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!

First of all, I am quite a supporter of Google (at least more than Microsoft ).  If I were to work for others, I wish I could work for Google.  They are the number 1 best employer in a survey!  I admire most for their business strategy and innovation.

The team in Google have so far done a terrific job working towards their mission to organize the world’s information and make it easily accessible through their search engine and other applications.  And I believe they will continue to grow and dominate the Internet, at least in the foreseeable future.

In these few years, one of their applications called Google Apps has developed into a formidable application that stores your data in the “cloud” (meaning on the Internet instead of your PC or server).  It allows you to host your domain name, build your web site, access your emails using their famous Gmail (more than 2GB per user!), collaborate with others with online calendar, receive event notifications by SMS, edit, store your office application (vs. the non-free Microsoft Office), and do many other things.

In fact, I already have customers switching their email service to Google Apps.  In future, I believe more and more enterprises will register their domain name and sign up with Google Apps.  I also have one domain name with Google Apps in order to try it out, though I have not started using it yet

Google Apps has a strong selling proposition in email service.  But in terms of hosting your web site, especially the more complex web applications, it has yet to be comparable to normal hosting providers.  But I believe one day they will be as good as, if not better than, us the hosting providers in web hosting too.

So is Google Apps a threat to hosting providers?  Definitely yes.  They think from the user’s point of view and bundle applications in such an innovative way into a complete solution for businesses.  Perhaps one day end users will not know the term “hosting” any more.  They no longer need to “find a hosting provider”.  Just register your domain and “google” it!  And the word “google” here does not only mean to search as of now, but to put up your documents, emails, web site and every other data on the Internet.

As long as Google is a responsible company and does not do evil (as what they swear by and I believe they do walk their talk), their entry into the hosting industry should be welcomed.  The hosting industry may just disappear or change to something else in the future.  But it’s natural progression as the Internet landscape develops.

As the saying goes, if you can’t beat them, join them.  And this is what I’m contemplating to do.  When one day comes that Google Apps is so dominant in the market and becomes a must-have tool for businesses, at least I will be in better position to retain and continue to serve my current over 600 customers.

What do you think of Google Apps?

Upon some checking, I found others in the hosting industry know about their practice too. Sometimes the company even unknowingly call up hosting providers and resellers.

A contact told me this company “hijacks” other companies’ customers. We may accuse them of “stealing” customers from competitors. But they could claim it’s their marketing strategy.

Legally speaking, they don’t do anything wrong, unless they mislead customers into thinking they are their domain name or hosting provider, which I guess is possible since many customers are not so IT-savvy on domain and hosting stuff.

There is no such thing as a “hosting industry association” in Malaysia. No organization for us to appeal to. We can’t complain against them. They also didn’t break any law, unless we can get the proof of their misrepresenting other companies.

For now they maybe able to “steal” many customers from others. But their name is notorious in the industry for what they do. This does not translate into good business for them in the long run. At the end the customers will know their plot also.

One interesting question is that, where do they get the list of expiring domain names? They told a “mystery shopper” that they check your domain name from the domain name search service (WHOIS) provided on the Internet. But without first knowing your domain name, how do they do a search on your domain name?

The company admitted they have such a list of expiring domain names but refused to reveal the source citing confidentiality. As I understand, domain name registrars like MYNIC, Webnic.cc and others do not share the list of expiring domain names to their partners and resellers.

A possible solution is to register customers’ domains under our own contact details. But for me this would be breaking my promises to customers. Another solution is subscribe for private WHOIS service, where customers’ details will not be available online. But it costs money and add to customers’ expenses.

For me, I think those companies who rely on “stealing” customers from others are desperate short-term businesses who choose to compete in the red ocean and have no unique business strategy for themselves. For them, I think they can choose to gain customers for today and lose their reputation for tomorrow.

What do you think?

Simply put, a domain name is an easier-to-remember name for resources on the Internet, such as rickysoo.com and MyCompany.com.my.

Internally, every resource on the Internet is identified by a series of numbers called IP address, such as 202.188.10.99.  Now if you need to access a web site, instead of typing 202.188.10.99 into your browser, you are better off with an alphabetical domain name, such as http://www.rickysoo.com.

It’s like everyone of us having an identification number such as IC number (who doesn’t have?).  But instead of remembering your friends by numbers such as 760814-14-5617, it’s easier (and more humane) to call them by name such as Ricky.

Examples of domain name are such as YourCompany.com, YourCompany.net, YourCompany.org, YourCompany.com.my, YourCompany.my, YourCompany.sg, YourCompany.cn, YourCompany.biz, YourCompany.co.uk, YourCompany.us and so on.

You won’t need to get a domain name if you don’t plan to put up a service on the Internet.  But if you wish to put up a service, such as your own web site (eg. http://www.MyCompany.com), or having your own email address bearing your company name (eg. contact@MyCompany.com), you will need to own a domain name.

Certainly you don’t want your service to be remembered as a cryptic series of numbers, right?

PS: You can buy a domain name from domain name registrars and resellers such as me.

Thanks to Exabytes who treated business partners, suppliers and customers to watch Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa in Cathay Cineplex, free of charge!

As we could see, the cinema hall was packed with people.  As we walked around the cineplex and The Curve shopping mall nearby, many people were carrying the free bags given by Exabytes.

From a humble beginning of a few staff members just a few years ago, Exabytes have grown into the most successful, interesting, admirable, enviable and happening hosting provider in Malaysia!

Not to mention many awards they have  won over the years, including the prestigious Golden Bull Award given to the best SMEs in Malaysia, not one time, but two years in a row – last year and this year again!

Years ago I already thought of using their services, but was bogged down by my hesitation to switch provider.  I also considered their lack of their own data centre, and lack of 24-hour phone support as their down sides when compared to another I was using.

But as their boss Chan told me, even if they had the money for a data centre, why use it for a data centre while it could be used for other better purposes?

We know the web hosting industry in Malaysia is a typical red ocean.  But Exabytes seem to have adopted the four action framework (Eliminate, Reduce, Raise, Create) in the blue ocean strategy, among other things they have done.

Unlike some other providers, they eliminated the need for their own data centre.  They reduced their phone support to the minimum.  These two alone are very costly yet not very productive for a hosting provider.

But they raised the quality, variety and innovation of their products by catering to the niche markets such as students, bloggers and resellers.  And most importantly, (to the customers ) they created the FUN in hosting with them with their regular freebies, prizes, giveaways, PR events such as this movie day.  Hosting service is very much a functional product, but Exabytes are not just providing the functionality, but appealing to our emotions as well.  I believe they are also among the most interesting companies to work in!

The thrust of a blue ocean strategy lies in the value innovation, the innovation of values offered to customers yet at a lower cost.  They save much money and do away many headaches by eliminating and reducing unproductive things, but use it to raise and create something very interesting and impactful.  Money well spent!

So Exabytes, congratulations on your success.  I believe you will not sit on your laurels, but grow from strength to strength to become not just a good company but a great one!  Syabas!

But recently they have been having some service problems with that provider. They contacted me and migrated everything back to me.

When they left me, they took their one domain name away. But when they came back, their business has grown and now they returned with three domain names!

I’ve been wondering what problems they have been facing with that provider. If it was not because of those problems with the provider, I guess perhaps they would not switch provider again. I heard a businessman said that one business can beat another not because of its own strengths, but often because of the folly of the other.

But why did the customer return to me and not choose yet another provider? Perhaps this is due to the policy to continue serving customers even though they have left. Or perhaps they subscribed to my mailing list before and so have been hearing from me by email and know what my hosting services are up to.

So it’s good to bless (and never curse) customers even they leave us. Those who bless others will be blessed, perhaps even three times more

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!

Sorry but you should not be too excited about the numbers above – the large space and lots of bandwidth as promised. You will never use that much.

Firstly, an average web site will not use so much space. All but one of my own sites are below 50MB each. Check this out.

Secondly, you will not use so much bandwidth. Almost all my customers’ web sites use less than 2GB per month!

Thirdly, I’m wrong. Your web site is another The Star or MalaysiaKini. You indeed need lots of space and bandwidth. But in such case, your site will have consumed too much so-called “server CPU resources” that we will have to ban your site because it has used too much space and bandwidth compared to others! Read the fine print, you have violated the hosting policy!

Fairness is a virtue in shared hosting. No site is allowed to take up too much resources at the expense of other sites shared on the same server. Is your web site having more than 1000 visitors per day? Chances are your traffic is too high compared to others that your site will be banned for monopolizing the server resources!

So even if you have access to 100GB server space and 1000GB bandwidth, you will not get to use it. Better go for dedicated hosting – one whole server just for you.

This is an “overselling” kind of business model. Let’s say a server has 100GB hard disk space. One can dare to offer 10GB hosting to 100 customers! Does the extra space of 900GB come from the air? Because, statistically speaking, we know an average customer will not use even 1GB!

If that’s the case, I can also claim to offer you 1000GB space and 5000GB bandwidth per month for the price of 1GB only. Overselling is over promising! But this seems to be how some of us compete in hosting industry

So by claiming to offer unbelievable tons of space and bandwidth to customers, are we actually deceiving people?