Monthly Archives: August 2013

We’re Now Automatically Blocking Free Domains

August 23, 2013 in News by Geeks Hosted  |  2 Comments
error

Even though I have the rules on the Web Hosting page and I have a separate page for the hosting Rules, people STILL tried to register free domains such as .TK and .CO.NF. I was getting tired of having to keep blocking all these orders where people tried to get a free hosting account for a free domain.

I’ve now successfully implemented a new feature that will not even let a customer continue if they try to place an order with a domain extension that I’m blocking such as .TK. The user will receiving a message such as this one:

 

Sorry, we do NOT allow free domains such as .TK, .CO.NF, .CO.NR and so on. We suggest that you read our rules first or go back and enter in a Top-Level Domain name such as: Example.com

 

There you have it! If you try to register a free domain name on the blocked list, you will not be able to get through. Rest assured that I will continue to scour the Internet for free domains and continue adding them to the list. I want to keep the servers as clean as possible and offer optimal uptime!

I’m treating GeeksHosted just like a paid hosting company and offering you, the customer, the best hosting experience!

How to Backup Your Computer’s Files

August 20, 2013 in Tips by Geeks Hosted  |  1 Comments
crashplan

I thought this would be a pretty good topic to bring up since I have first-hand experience about losing files on my computer. I’ve had numerous hard drives crash (too many to count) and I’ve accidentally deleted files. I learned from my lessons fast and am here to share a great tool with you!

I’ve often setup RAID-1 in my home computers to help retain data should a hard drive fail. Explaining RAID setup is beyond the scope of this post, but basically RAID-1 requires 2 hard drives. Whatever is copied on hard drive 1 is copied to hard drive 2. What happens though if your house were to burn down, there’s flooding in your region, or  lightning strikes your computer? You can still lose all your data!

I now use a little tool called CrashPlan. This is not a free tool and it does cost a small monthly subscription. It costs $5.99/month or as little as $3.95/month if you pre-pay 4 years in advance. CrashPlan offers UNLIMITED disk space and will backup whatever folders you have the program monitor on your computer. Currently I have 4TB backed up with CrashPlan and I keep transferring more and more data to them each week.

In order to use CrashPlan, you do have to have a high speed Internet connection. I currently have 10Mbps upload speed and CrashPlan typically transfers data at about 1.9Mbps up to 5.5Mbps. Their servers are located here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In order to backup 4TB of data it literally took months and months. If you have a lot of data, be prepared to leave your computer on 24/7 until your backup is complete!

If you can afford the minimal monthly fee, I would HIGHLY recommend CrashPlan to anyone that is worried about losing photos, music, videos, etc. It’s happened to me twice now and I vowed I would never do it again.

Do you use something else for backing up your files? What do you think of CrashPlan? Let me know in the comments!

 

Apache and MySQL Have Been Upgraded

August 19, 2013 in Updates by Geeks Hosted  |  1 Comments
Server Updates

Just a quick side-note, Apache has been upgraded on our servers today to version 2.4.6. We’ve also upgraded MySQL to 5.5.x.

You shouldn’t notice an effects on your site. This was a behind the scenes update that caused no down-time. As always, we backed up all your data in case something were to go wrong with the upgrade!

 

WordPress Installation

August 19, 2013 in WordPress by Geeks Hosted  |  1 Comments
how-to-install-wordpress-blog

With over 60 million websites using WordPress to power their website (much like this post you’re reading right now!) we wanted to offer a service that would host your blog for free. WeHostFree was created to help webmasters, like ourselves, bring their website online as cheap as possible.

WordPress is a free software that you can install. You do have to know some programming in order to get the software to install on your site. However, we do offer a simple solution for installing WordPress. Once you log into your hosting’s cPanel account with us, you can click Site Software >> WordPress. This will offer a painless install which takes care of all the leg work for you.

We offer a 3rd option. If you are still unable to figure out WordPress, have questions, not sure where to begin, etc. We do offer WordPress installation / support for a one-time fee of $9.99. This is very cheap considering that if you were to hire a programmer, they’d probably charge $20 minimum for just the install and offer no support.

We want to see our customers succeed! Should you need this service, please open a Sales ticket and we’ll be in touch!

FREE Daily Backups

August 18, 2013 in News, Updates by Geeks Hosted  |  1 Comments
Backup

Good news! We’ve just launched our daily backup system today. What does this mean for you? Your site will be backed up to a remote server automatically every day! Before we were running manual backups ourselves which took up precious time. In case a server ever crashes, or you accidentally make a change to your site that you didn’t mean to, you can open a support ticket and we can restore your site up to 3 days prior. Just tell us which of the 3 days you want to go back to.

What do you have to do? Absolutely nothing! This is all automated and absolutely FREE! We strive to make your free hosting experience as painless as possible!

We’ve Successfully Moved to Dedicated Servers

August 18, 2013 in News, Updates by Geeks Hosted  |  1 Comments
Dedicated Server

Prior to today, we were using reseller hosting accounts. We’ve now outgrown reseller hosting, passed VPS servers, and moved directly to dedicated servers.

We can confirm that everyone’s accounts were successfully moved over without any down time. It appears that the name-servers have now 100% propagated over to the new servers. If you’re using NS1.WeHostFree.com and NS2.WeHostFree.com as your nameservers, there’s nothing else for you to do.

However, if you’re using custom name-servers, such as ns1.YourDomain.com and ns2.YourDomain.com, then you need to update the IP addresses your name-servers point to. Otherwise your site will appear offline! If you need any assistance, please feel free to open a support ticket.

Our new servers are located in Canada, which is a central location for the entire North American continent. We have been thinking about opening a dedicated server overseas for our foreign customers. If this is something you think you’d be interested in, please feel free to e-mail us or leave a comment below.

As always, should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to open a support ticket 24/7/365.

 

How Serious Are We About Storage?

August 11, 2013 in News, Updates by Geeks Hosted  |  1 Comments
Server Storage

Take a look at our Windows storage which holds all of our files. We’re ALMOST to a FULL 10TB which translates  in to almost 10,000GB, or basically 312 Samsung Galaxy S4 phones being completely full of data!

On top of that, our 10TB of storage is also backed up remotely to another data center here in Minneapolis, Minneosta! Your site is backed up, which is then backed up to another server! Please sleep well at night knowing that your data is safe with us here at WeHostFree.

 

Server Storage

Free Hosting Rules and Success Rate

August 10, 2013 in Updates by Geeks Hosted  |  1 Comments
30

Currently at the time of this post, GeeksHosted has a successful applicant rate of about 30%. Most applicants who try to sign up for our free hosting are not succeeding because they are trying to either:

A.) register a second-level domain such as a .TK extension.
B.) Signup from a proxy, VPN, or somewhere other then their physical location (yes we know when you’re using a proxy!)
C.) Your site does not fit within our terms of service agreement.

Remember, if you read the rules first, you’ll have a much better chance at getting a free hosting account with us!

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to open a ticket.

GeeksHosted Blog

August 10, 2013 in News by Geeks Hosted  |  1 Comments
Blog

Hello to all, and welcome to the GeeksHosted blog! Here is where you’ll find the latest news and updates with what’s going on with your free hosting. Any server announcements will be posted here along with any other updates I may have.

I thought it’d be a good idea to have a blog so users can now if we’re experiencing any issues, when I’d be going on vacation, etc. As stated in our terms and conditions, all hosting accounts are manually reviewed to make sure they follow the rules. If for whatever reason I will not be able to review orders for more than 24 hours, I will post that here.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to open a ticket and ask!