Today, we’ve launched the new layout and design of our site – we hope you like it! We’ve always had a blog on this site – - but only used it for updates and news. Now, we intend on using it a great deal and blogging about topics that we think our clients may find useful – - especially in the areas of web hosting, WordPress and other blogging platform information, blogging technologies, social media and anything else we can think of to make managing and maintaining your site more fun and easy! We’re open to recommendations from YOU, our clients, on what information you would like to see here. We’re all ears!

In addition to the new design and layout – we’ve launched our CPanel Video Tutorial Section where you will find very helpful video guides on how to do all sorts of things with your hosting account, via your CPanel. Video guides include information on:

• Email Creation and Management
• FTP Account Management
• MySQL database creation and management
• Using the File Manager
• Password Protect Directories
• IP Deny Manager
• …and more!

We realize that not everyone is a ‘guru’ when it comes to managing and maintaining a website and/or blog – so we hope that these videos teach you how to do some of the back end administration stuff that needs doing, saves you some time and helps you along your way!

As we announced in an earlier post, you can follow BlogsAbout on Twitter – our Twitter will always update when there are new posts made here, but more than just post announcements – we just like to Twitter..and we’d like to see you Twitter, too – - so, add us and we’ll add you!

We hope you like some of the new changes around here! We’re working behind the scenes to bring additional features to this site, and to your accounts – - things like an affiliate program, more video tutorials and we are currently at work at an integrated billing system that will allow our clients to manage their billing and add/edit features to your account all through your own CPanel! We’re busy bees – but we like it that way!

Hoping you all had a GREAT weekend!

Yes – we’ve finally joined the Twitter revolution over here! You can follow us on Twitter here: BlogsAbout. We’d love to see you there!

PLUS! We’re gearing up for a completely new site design around here — it should be launched pretty soon. We’re looking to make this site more useable, informative and beneficial to our clients and visitors!

Keep updated via RSS!

I’m writing to inform our clients, and any other WordPress users who come across this post, about a plugin called WP Super Cache.

What is it?
From the plugin description on the developers site:

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

As many of you (our clients) know – yesterday (October 16) we had a pretty rough server load day. There was one particular site on our server that was getting a blazing amount of traffic to a post they made on the elections (Political season is just HUGE for us!) – - this site got linked by the media and by large blogs like Instapundit.

Everyone likes that kind of attention to their blog, don’t they? We do! What really isn’t so great is when the HUGE traffic spike caused a very slow loading time on the site; and then on the overall server.

Here’s what we did, once we localized the problem to one site in particular – - it was a very quick and easy solution and it solved the problem immediately! We installed WP Super Cache on that account and while his traffic spike stayed pretty much the same – - the server load went down to ‘uneventful’ – WP Super Cache was handling it all.

So, moral of this story? If you cannot afford a dedicated server (it’s pretty costly) — and you’re running WordPress to power your blog and you tend to get a LOT of traffic spikes… install the WP Super Cache plugin and you will find that those traffic spikes are not as scary as they used to be. They call WP Super Cache “Digg proof” for a reason – - because it handles those traffic spikes (like when you get Dugg) with ease and grace!

If you would like to install the plugin, but feel like you need help – - drop a ticket in our Help Center..we will be MORE than happy to assist you!

We’d like to extend a warm welcome to the clients from Weblog Design Studios! As you have all heard by now, clients who were previously hosted with Weblog Design Studios were transferred to our servers here at Blogs About Hosting over the weekend. Weblog Design Studios had some severe issues with their servers last week and Danalynn and I worked out a hosting solution to make sure that you no longer experienced an interruption in services for your website.

Within the next 72 hours, you will each receive a personal email from us explaining our services and to set up your billing arrangements with us.

In the meantime, if you have any questions at all about our services, or need technical assistance with your site – please visit our Support Center to file a help ticket with our technicians – the will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have. Our Support Center does require that you register a user account — the username and password you use for your CPanel will NOT work in the Support Center, for security purposes – we do need to keep those two accounts separate. So please register an account there and let us know how we can assist you.

More importantly, we’re thrilled to have you on board!

WordPress announced the release of the new version 2.1-Ella. This is a major version release and we encourage everyone to read the information about what has changed in this version, as well as the details upgrade instructions for upgrading to WordPress 2.1.

Also, here is a listing of WP Plugins that are compatible with this newest version – also listed there are plugins that are NOT compatible with WordPress version 2.1 – - make sure you read that information as it applies to plugins you may have installed on your WordPress blog.

We strongly recommend that you follow the threads in the WordPress Support Forums regarding major issues that users are having after upgrading to version 2.1 – - read through these issues before deciding to proceed with the upgrade. Typically, after such a major release – - they will release another version shortly that addresses any major bugs found only after several thousand users have upgraded and reported back with the issues. Please keep that in mind before jumping on the upgrade bandwagon.

As always – - back up your data before you proceed with an upgrade! We cannot stress this strongly enough. Yes, we do keep backups of your account – however, please read our Terms of Service as it pertains to the restoration of your back ups. We will restore the first back up for no charge – - after that, if you continue to experience issues due to failing to back up your own data, there will be a charge for each instance of back up restoration to compensate for time involved and the server resources it utilizes with each occurrance. You are able to create a full back up of your account via your CPanel – login and find the ‘BackUp” icon – - click that and follow the instructions on the creation of a back up file. This way, if the installation goes wrong, you have a full and complete back up that you can restore via your CPanel, as well.