Manage your hosting on the move with your iPhone
Nov.13.2009 
We have now launched our Customer Control Panel and eXtend Control Panel for the iPhone and Android powered phones.
Getting started
Using your iPhone you can manage your domain names, manage all your web hosting accounts , view the system status updates, view your invoices and go to the normal control panel. To access this, using your Apple iPhone, iPod Touch or Android phone go to your standard log-in (http://instacontrol.yourfulldomain) and log in.
INSTAhosts new iphone control panel
Whatever your thoughts about the iPhone there is no denying it represents a step change in the way we access data and spend our time on the move and thanks mainly to the ever growing app store we have immediate access to all aspects of our digital life. The success of the app store is well documented with over 85,000 apps to choose from, 2 billion downloads, over 6.3 million apps downloaded every day, and the iPhone OS is now the 4th most used OS. Our recently launched INSTA Host iPhone control panel based on customer feedback and demand is testament to the increasing importance of mobile internet access and business use.
The downside to the success of the app store is the sheer volume of apps there are to search through is mind blowing, so we have done it for you! Below are some of the best apps (paid and free) we have found for managing your website through your iPhone. We are sure there are plenty we could have listed, but there is a good chance we haven’t come across them yet, so if you know of any, leave a comment below.
http://analyticsapp.com/: Access all your Google Analytics data through a specially designed interface for the iPhone making it easier and quicker to pull and report data.
http://www.ftponthego.com/: “FTP On The Go” lets you log into your server using your iPhone to download and upload files, and comes with an inbuilt text editor to amend files on the fly.
http://iphone.wordpress.org/: The official WordPress app allowing you to write posts, upload photos, edit pages, and manage comments on your blog from your iPhone
http://www.concentricsky.com/products/iphone/: CSS, HTML, JavaScript and PHP cheat sheets on your iPhone
http://www.code-line.com/software/: Colour code selector including Pantone, web safe colours, and HTML colours.
http://ego-app.com/: Keep up to date with your web 2.0 stats including feedburner feed subscriptions, twitter followers, Google Analytics data etc.
http://www.freetheapps.com/app.php?app=crop: Crop and rotate images without any loss of picture quality
http://www.itunes.com/app/sourceviewer: (Direct link to iTunes) View a web page’s HTML, CSS & JavaScript
“must have” extensions for FireFox
As you can imagine, I find myself using my web browser almost all the time. One of the great things about Firefox is the number of free add-ons available that enhance the browsing experience. All the addons for Firefox can be found at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ – but here are a few of our favourites.
DownThemAll!
http://www.downthemall.net/
If you’re downloading a large file (for example a website backup) it can be very irritating if you get disconnected or your computer crashes. Typically this always seems to happen within the last 10%!
DownThemAll! is a download manager integrated into Firefox which is able to pause and resume downloads. The neat thing about it is that its completely integrated – when you start a download you get an option to download with DownThemAll!.
Xmarks (previously Foxmarks)
http://download.xmarks.com/download/all
Thanks to the recent fashion of “small cheap computers”, it seems everybody has at least 2 computers nowadays. With my home PC, laptop and work computer I can’t live without Xmarks – it’s a bookmark synchroniser which keeps your bookmarks identical across computers. It has some nifty features such as bookmark profiles (so you can vary your bookmark toolbar at work for example), and if you’re on a computer where you can’t install the add-on, you can still see your bookmarks from a web page.
It’s compatible with Firefox on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux – as well as Internet Explorer and Safari.
TwitterFox
http://twitterfox.net/
If you’re a Twitter fanatic like some of my colleagues, you’ll find this simple add-on a blessing. It adds an icon on the status bar which will notify you when someone you’re following tweets on Twitter. You can also quickly tweet or reply to a tweet directly from your browser without loading up Twitter.
Firebug
http://getfirebug.com/
This is one for the web developers out there. Firebug lets you inspect and alter the current webpage – allowing you to explore the document tree and CSS styles of a specific element and tweak them instantly in-place. It’s also got a powerful JavaScript debugger/profiler that helps you track down those annoying errors.
VertTabbar
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8045
When one of my colleagues mentioned this add-on to me, I was sceptical. But I find myself becoming more and more attached to it. The add-on simply moves the tab bar to a vertical position on the left-right of your browser. This means you can have more tabs open and still see their titles. It works perfectly on a widescreen monitor where horizontal space isn’t at a premium.
Speed Dial
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4810
Speed Dial adds a “quick launch” page to Firefox, where you can put your most used websites with thumbnails for each of them. This feature will be familiar to Opera and Chrome users. It can be configured to appear every time a new tab is opened, making it a good “jumping page”. It’s just a shame it can’t be synchronised with Xmarks!
What are your favourite add-ons? Let us know here and we can all share!!!
Or have you jumped ship to Chrome or IE8? Let us know!
The rise and rise (and rise) of social networking
Please take a look at our community software….http://www.instacommunity.co.uk which can be purchased at our INSTA turnkey store HERE
Following on from our recent post about Hitwise’s research in to social networking in the UK yet more research is pointing to social networks as being THE growth area online.
Nielson Online has released findings in to the use of social networking around the globe and from a virtual standing start a few years ago their category has exploded in to 4th place.
Grouped with blogs to create a category named “Member communities” they have now over taken email and are only behind search engines, portals and PC software (I’d argue ‘adult sites’ would be in there somewhere if they were not consciously excluded in this type of research).
Other stats that jump out are:
- 67% of their research panel use member community sites
- 1 in every 11 minutes online are spent on these sites
- The 35 – 49 age category saw the biggest increase in uptake
- UK mobile web users are the most likely to access these sites through a hand set than any other country
- 69% of the UK online audience visit a member community site
Social networking doesn’t really offer anything new in terms of what you can do (posting on a board, send a message, chat online, share images…) but what is different bringing all of these in to one handy place where our ‘friends’ can access them.
I wonder how it will be before we can search the internet from Facebook?
This looks like a great time to jump on to the social networking band wagon and our addition of social networking software Elgg to our CGI one-click Internet library of one click install programs lets you to take full advantage.
You can read Nielson’s press release summary here: http://www.nielsen-online.com/pr/pr_090309.pdf (PDF)
PS, dont forget that we offer a fully installed INSTA community over at http://www.instasite.biz
Auto-responder HTML emails – Brand new!
With INSTA Host you can now spruce up your auto-responders using HTML graphical emails. Setting up your HTML autoresponders is quick and easy:
- Log in to your email/ webmail account
- Click on ‘Autoresponders’
- Set the ‘content type’ as ‘HTML’
All that is left to do is enter your HTML in to the ‘message’ field!
Why use HTML instead of plain text?
Professional image:
Put yourself in the place of your customers/ leads and how you perceive a company or service that sent an attractive email compared to one that sent a plain text email.
Consistent branding:
The best and strongest brands carry their messaging through every communication tool, ensuring all copy, colours, and logos are the same wherever you look. There is nothing stopping you doing exactly the same.
Add more content and links:
With HTML emails you can turn your autoresponders in to much more than just a “We will get back you” notice. With menus, images, side bars, boxes etc you can continue selling your services without intruding on the central message.
Designing and coding HTML emails
If you have no or little experience with creating and sending HTML emails, or you want a few tips on taking them to the next level, you can find a couple of really good articles that will help you with HTML email coding & HTML email lay out & design at sitepoint.com
Manage your projects efficiently with dotProject
Managing your projects is not always the easiest task, especially with so many different aspects to take into consideration, you may feel like giving up before you even begin. At INSTA Host we want to make sure managing your projects is as painless as possible, which is why we have dotProject listed as one of our installable scripts from our powerful control panel. dotProject is an extremely easy-to-use and intuitive project management tool packed full of features that will undoubtedly save you time and money. dotProject has mutli-project support allowing you to manage more than one project at a time, progress can be tracked via the in-built calendar, events and task list. You can assign multiple users to each project and allow them to collaborate easily via a handy discussion forum and also via email, automated notifications will also keep yourself and your users updated on the progress of each project.
dotProject features include:
- User Management
- Email-based Trouble Ticket System
- Client/Company Management
- Project Listings
- Task List
- File Repository
- Contact List
- Calendar
- Discussion Forum
- Resource Based Permissions
- Plus many more!
