Cutting Spam With Greylisting

One of the spam filtration tactics the majority of hosting companies use including Foremost Media is greylisting. What that means is that each time a given mailbox on our email servers receives an email from an unknown contact (ip), that mail is rejected with a "try again later"-message (This happens at the machine level and is transparent to the end user- in other words our mail server asks the...

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New DNS Services Scam Sent Via Mail

Many of our customers have received a letter via the US Post office from a company called DNS Services containing a "Fake Invoice". This company has been sending realistic looking bills like the one below, which are really just a solicitation for  their DNS services (A service that Foremost Media hosting customers already enjoy for free. While this practice is  not technically illegal,...

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Monthly Microsoft Windows Update Notification

Foremost Media Server Update Notice: Monthly Microsoft Windows Update Notification Start Time: Tuesday, October 9, 2012 @ 3:00 AM in the Server's Time ZoneEnd Time: Friday, October 12, 2012 @ 4:00 AM in the Server's Time Zone Impact: Websites may be temporarily offline while servers rebootWhat will be done? Whenever new Microsoft updates are released, the servers will automatically...

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Testing Your New iPhone Application

This blog post is meant to help you with the first step for beta testing an iPhone application currently in development at Foremost Media. This is NOT the process that all your users will have to go through to install your app. Once you app is ready for prime time we will get your application digitally signed by Apple (Required for distributed on the App Store) and set up distribution through...

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PHP Vs. ASPX - What's Better

I got a note from a perspective client who heard from a competitor that: "aspx language was less secure and a dead language to build a site in" I ran that thought by our development team and it stirred some heated debate (Were a .net shop but some of our guys use to program in .php before starting with us)  Here are the points that I was able to take away from the conversation:   That sounds like a PHP developer talking. That is almost like saying the iphone is dying because of...

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I'm shooting a video for my website. What what format would be optimal?

Most of our clients will upload their video to a site like YouTube or Vimeo and then embed from there. These are the settings we recommend when exporting your video for Vimeo or YouTube Video Settings Codec: H.264A codec is the format in which your video will be encoded. Different codecs have different features and varying quality. For best results, we recommend using H.264 (sometimes referred to as MP4).Frame rate: 24, 25, or 30 FPS If you know at which frame rate you shot, it is best to encode...

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How does Google use human raters in web search?

Google's Matt Cutts explains the process in a video. Google's Quality Raters classify URLs as good, bad, spam and other classifications. After an algorithm update, Google's engineers can do a side by side (blind taste test) directed to the Quality Raters and the raters say which side they like better." ...

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Should I Use A Service To Submit My Site To The Search Engines?

We still get quite a few calls or emails from clients who have been solicited by companies offering to "Submit their site to the search engines".  My recommendation is run away from these types of companies. Honestly the best way to get on the search engines these days is to get links from other sites.  Post links to your site on Facebook, twitter and any other blogs or foms where people might be intrested.  This is the quickest and best way to get indexed by the major...

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How Internet Service Providers Affect SEO

Michael Martinez posted a great article on how the wrong ISP can create negative effects on your SEO efforts. I thought the key points were worth relaying: The ISP Blocks Web Crawlers At Their Router In an effort to minimize load on their servers some ISP's can actually block the web crawlers that help the search engines understand what your site is about. If your ISP is doing this your site won't rank well on the search engines. The ISP Puts You On A Crowded Server It's a proven fact that...

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How to Make Someone an Administrator on Your Facebook Page

Since we do a lot of work with clients and their Facebook pages and we come across this question a lot, we wanted to post it for all of you to see so you know how to make someone else an admin of your pages. Remember though, that Facebook changes literally every week so be sure to stay on top of the changes that happen. Follow these steps to make whoever you'd like an administrator of your Facebook...

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Facebook Forcing Business Page Updates

Stay Ahead of the CurveFacebook is an ever-changing beast and this morning, they announced that it won't be changing anytime soon. As of March 30th, Facebook will REQUIRE the upgrade of your business' Facebook page to the new "Timeline" format. This comes on the heel of the update to the personal Facebook pages that was highly scrutinized. Although we don't agree with the personal page changes, this...

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Top 5 Things You Can Do to Make Your SEO Campaign a Success

We all know that Search Engine Marketing (SEO) is something that each and every online business should be doing at all times. It is essential to you and your business that people can find your site and your products and services when they go to Google, Yahoo, Bing or one of the other of the millions of search engines out there. What's the point in spending thousands of dollars on a pristine site...

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Where social media advertising dollars are spent

"Facebook continues its dominance in ad campaigns with 89% of agencies planning to utilize the medium for clients (followed by Twitter (39%), YouTube (36%), LinkedIn (21%) and Google Plus (18% - up 28% over 3Q 2011). Read the full article he...

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PIPA and SOPA Threaten Harmful Regulations on Online American Businesses

There are currently two bills that sit before Congress that would censor the Web and cripple sites and businesses accused of piracy, without even proving that those websites are meaningfully doing so. It threatens the free flow of information and the potential for innovation online. What are SOPA and PIPA? Wikipedia's "Dark Wednesday" Message Essentially, they are new ways to give copyright holders...

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Buying A Video Camera For Business Use

Editors Note-  For this article I've asked Chris Larsen from our sister company Foremost Outdoor Television to help me answer a question I seem to be getting more and more frequently from customers wishing to start building their own content for their website, YouTube and Facebook-  "What kind of camera should I buy?" By Chris Larsen from Foremost Outdoor TV The Golden Era of Video is...

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