IT Support Blog

We are trialling the Hosted Exchange service at the moment and just like Hosted desktops, I am again quite impressed.

Hosted exchange works the same way as the Hosted desktop platform, i.e. you access an external server to send/retrieve email as opposed to using a local box and I have to say that so far, I cannot tell the difference between the two.

We still get to use Outlook and the service is still identical. We still have access to publish contracts, calendars etc and we get to benefit from using out of office replies. Basically its nigh on identical to using your own exchange server.

two weeks into the trial and all is going well, I would say that it is very likely that we will carry on using the service, especially when you look at the alternative of spending out thousands on an exchange or SBS server.

That brings me to another point, it’s actually quite cheap at about £5.00 a user including 5 GB mailbox storage.

Again as with the Hosted Desktop trial, will post up the results for Hosted Exchange at the end of the month.

I had my first taste of using a hosted platform  this week, and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised with what I saw.

I was a bit suspicious at first, the salesman gave it the big’un in saying that we wouldn’t notice the difference between this and any other desktop we had used, he also said that this platform would save us “thousands” of pounds compared to replacing our existing Network with new hardware and software. But when I sat down and worked out the math, he did actually have a point.

If we upgraded our IT network then it would cost us £8,000, if we used a Hosted Desktop solution then it would cost me £55.00 per month per user which works out at around 3k per year for my company. There are two ways to look at this, 1. that’s 3k you could put towards purchasing your own hardware or 2. that’s saved you having to spend 8k upfront on hardware/software that will depreciate, plus you get support thrown in with that as well.

when you sit down and think about it, the Hosted option is a no brainer. The hardware will probably be worth half what I paid for it after a year  for starters, put that together with the fact that we will never have to upgrade our server hardware or software applications again and it looks too good to be true.

I am trialling the service for a month at the moment and I will report back with the results soon. IN the mean time , if you want to find out more about the service then I recommend taking a look at this website that details everything you need to know about Hosted Desktop solutions.

Are you thinking about using an SEO company? If you are then there are many things to take into consideration. There are a lot of jobs worth SEO companies out there that will quite happily take a monthly fee in return for little or no improvement in your Google page position. The following article gives you some helpful pointers in choosing an SEO consultant or service.

Things to consider;

Trial periods. In most industries a trial period is a good thing, but be VERY wary of any SEO companies that offer a trial period. Most of the time these companies will use unethical techniques to get your website flying up Google and you will be so impressed that you will gladly sign up for a 12 month contract. 6 weeks later and your website has disappeared from the search engines entirely because the SEO campaign does not have solid foundations, the techniques used by the SEO company were “short term” solutions that ended up getting your website penalised.

SEO done properly takes time, especially if you are in a competitive market place. Let’s use the term “IT Support London” for example, t he IT industry is very competitive especially in our capital city, if you type this term into Google it will return over 252,000,000 results. If the optimisation is done correctly then It will take at least 6 months to get into the top 3 positions for a search term like this, especially if the website is a new one. However the most important thing is that when you get to the top, your SEO Company has the ability to keep you there.

Proof of work. Get references to all of the sites they are currently working on. Remember, SEO is not like a tap and you can’t just turn it off when you reach where you want to be, consistent optimisation work needs to be applied and you want to see proof of this being successful.

Remember that you can assess the SEO work yourself. Use websites link linkpopularity.com to check the back links of any reference sites and take a look at how they have applied their work. You do not want to be seeing links back to your website from unrelated sites that are off theme and you especially do not want to see links back to you from foreign sites such as eastern European domains.

Contracts. The best type of contract is a “performance related contract” Companies such as the SEO Expert Company (our SEO Consultant London) use this type of price structure which means they have to perform in order to get paid. DO NOT get tied into long term contracts, remember Google is its own entity and the algorithm can be changed at any time so no SEO company can ever give you any guarantees.

Cost. Don’t be afraid to barter. There are literally hundreds of SEO companies out there that all want your business, if you find a company you like but they are a bit too expensive then don’t be afraid to bid them down as most of them will not have a problem in lowering the price. NEVER pay the asking price J

Keywords. The most obvious keyword isn’t always the best one, but do not get talked into a keyword you feel has no relevance to your customer base. A lot of SEO companies will try and choose a keyword that is easy for them to optimise and maintain, don’t let them.

I hope this article is of help, good luck finding a good SEO company J

The IT Support Company I work for asked me to create a CMS based website for a new project we are working on. I have never used Joomla before and although I have experience working with the Drupal interface, I have never actually created a CMS website from scratch. So far I have been very impressed with Joomla as a platform, it has its faults but the overall experience has been a good one, and we will definitely be using it again.

Installation is a doddle; you will need to host your site on a server that supports MySQL databases but most hosting companies support this nowadays. Be sure to download Joomla version 1.5 as this is the latest version. Upload it to your website directory via ftp and them log onto Joomla by accessing your URL.

The setup only takes 5 minutes. Make sure that you have a copy of your MySQL details to hand as you will need to input these during the installation period. During setup you will be given the option to install “dummy content”. If you are new to the CMS then I would suggest doing this as it gives you an idea of where content will appear on the site and where your modules will appear on the template.

Once setup is complete you will need to FTP to your site again and remove your installation folder, you will not be able to access the website until you do this.

Login to the control panel by using your domain name followed by /administrator.  Then type in the username and password you created during setup and hey presto!! Welcome to the backup of your website.

Navigation is very easy and if you have installed the temporary content then you will fast learn where everything is and how to administrate the site. For people that are concerned about SEO, ALL metadata can be amended for each individual page on your website. On page text is amended with a WGYWG editor and you also have the option of amended the on page text with an HTML editor.

Our finished website looks like this, I am quite proud of it for my first effort (even if I do say so myself!!) SEO Consultant London.

My conclusions are that Joomla is just as good as Drupal; everything is easy, from uploading content to installing extensions/modules. EVERYTHING can be done from the administration console.

Another great thing about Joomla is that it is FREE and that can only be a good thing…..

Resources.

IT Support London based company I work for. Our website was created using Drupal but I think that the Joomla interface is just as good, if not better to be honest.

joomla installtion guide. Handy documentation that you will only need once.