As part of our efforts to find practical ways in which we can give, for every new hosting plan we sell, NewBlogHosting.com puts $15 into what we call our ‘well fund’. When we have collected enough, we use the money to buy wells for villages in Africa through World Vision.

People often ask us how they can donate over above what we put in to the fund and while we sometimes get selfish and feel like the well fund is ‘our’ thing, we know that every penny helps us get closer to buying the next well, so we tell them you have a couple of options:

1. You can give directly to  World Vision, if you’d prefer. That way, your donation can count as a tax deduction for you next April 15th. Just go to WorldVision.com and visit their giving page.
2. You can send your donation to us and we will add 100% of it into our well fund. Send it either via:
• Paypal – send it to payments@day3.co.uk
• Mail – checks can be mailed to Day3, 323 W Myrtle St, Hanford, CA, 93230

If you have bought hosting from us or are involved in one of our fundraisers, you are under NO obligation to give anything, but we do believe that it is a very worthy cause so if you’d like to help out, we’d be more than happy to accept!

Thank you.

Wear a NewBlogHosting.com T-Shirt on April 28th this year (and post a picture of you wearing it) and we’ll donate $10 to our well fund.

We are very proud to be sponsoring the first ever 2 to 1 Conference in Washington DC this year, (April 27th through April 29th) and are excited to be able to use that opportunity to run this fundraiser.

As you may know, we make a donation into our ‘well fund’ for every new hosting plan we sell then, when we have enough, we give that money to charity to help pay for the building of a well in a village somewhere that doesn’t have fresh, clean water.

By late last year we had raised enough to buy our first well, through World Vision, and we immediately got on with collecting for the next one – and are well on our way there.

To boost the fund, we decided to switch things up a little for 2:1 attendees and give $10 to the fund for them simply wearing one of our shirts on Saturday April 28th, 2012 and posting a picture of themselves wearing it on twitter, FaceBook, their blog, Pinterest or any other social media site.

It doesn’t stop there though because 2:1 attendees also get a year of free blog hosting on our standard hosting plan for doing it (if they want it).

No purchase necessary, we provide the shirt, we donate the money and we provide the hosting plan (if you want it) all YOU have to do is wear the shirt on Saturday April 28th and post a picture of you wearing it online.

Just complete the form below and we’ll order your shirt and bring it with us to the conference.

BUT…

What about everyone who’s NOT going to the 2:1 conference?

Don’t worry, we won’t leave you out.

If you want to join in, register below and we’ll send you a shirt and give $10 to the well fund – for the first fifty (50) non-attendees who register.

… but unfortunately, you don’t get free hosting, that’s just for 2:1 attendees.

Of course, you could sign up for the conference, there’s still some spaces left…

PLEASE COMPLETE THE FORM BELOW TO REGISTER FOR THIS FUNDRAISER

The domain name system is a lot more complicated than what you might think.

Two organizations, Verisign and ICANN each take a cut of the price of your domain name. They then license certain companies to register domain names with them and those companies in turn resell domain names to sub-resellers like us.

Our registrars have emailed us saying this:

“Since the revised contract was signed between Verisign and ICANN to maintain and manage the .COM registry in 2006, the price for the most popular TLD in the world has increased consistently over the past few years. And on January 14th, .COM prices will rise once again by a further $0.51, and .NET prices by $0.55.

With this contract, Verisign has the authority to increase .COM prices by 7% every year with a 6 month notice to its Registrars. Furthermore, a similar contract signed in June last year for .NET allows for a rise of 10%.

These price increases mean that every Registrar, including yourselves, will be forced to increase their prices, so, effective January 14th, 2012, the pricing of just the TLDs .COM, .NET and .BIZ will increase….“

We have been in business for eight years and have increased our prices only once in that time. Because the profit margins on domains are so small we’d rather give you great value for money than grab a few pennies of profit.

This price increase though is too great for us to ignore.

It’s not all bad news though. Here’s what we are going to do:

1. Although Verisign are raising their prices by $0.51 for .COM and $0.55 for .NET, we will be increasing our price by only $0.50
2. Our Registrar only told us about this last week, but we want to give you a chance to renew your domain registrations before the price increase filters through to you so we are not increasing our prices until MAY 1ST 2012
3. What many people don’t realize is that you can add years to your domain name at any time – up to a total of TEN years.

To renew your domain name early and avoid the price increase, simply log into your mybillingandsupport.com account and click on Domains –> Renew Domains.

As you may know, we achieved our goal recently and raised enough money to buy a well in Africa.

To kickstart our new fund raising campaign, until the end of the day on Monday 28th November 2011, we have raised the amount we are putting into the well fund for every new hosting plan sold to $20, up from the usual $15.

We are so excited about it though that we wanted to do something even bigger and Cyber Monday seemed the perfect day for it so here’s our VERY special Cyber Monday deal:

Until Midnight tonight (Monday November 28th, 2011), ALL new hosting plans purchased through NewBlogHosting.com will cost just $20 for the first year… and 100% of that will go into our well fund.

That’s right, we’re giving you a huge discount and then giving it all to charity.

All you need to do is use the coupon code “Cyber Monday” when ordering.

… and an offer for our current customers

Why should you miss out on the deals, just because you’re already one of our awesome customers?

You shouldn’t, right?

No, we don’t think so either.

SO… if you contact us today and pay for your hosting renewal now, in advance, as a special Cyber Monday gift, we’ll give you a $5 discount on the cost of the renewal.

Happy Cyber Monday shopping!

As you may know, we are always looking for ways to give when we don’t have any spare cash (although we’ve been a little slack lately).

You can see our efforts at NothingToGive.com

One of our biggest ideas was to find a way that we could put together the $2,600 needed for us to sponsor a new well for a village in Africa through World Vision.

Named Websites for Wells, our fundraiser was that we donated $15 to the fund for every new web hosting plan we sold through NewBlogHosting.com

I am very happy to say that we have now reached our goal and can finally send in our donation to this very worthy cause.

We want to thank all of you from the bottom of our hearts for enabling us to reach our goal, particularly those who donated extra over and above the cost of their hosting!

To celebrate, for the next thirty days (Until Cyber Monday 2011), we’re going to donate $20 for every hosting plan sold to our ‘Well’ fund to kickstart our campaign to buy a second well in Africa.

So, if you know anyone who needs hosting, we’d love it if you could help us in our fundraising efforts by letting them know that if they host with us now, $20 of their first year’s hosting cost will go to charity.

Thanks!

I FINALLY got an iPad last week.

It has been a long time coming and, to be honest, I had some reservations about getting one, even though I have been wanting one for a long time.

These were my reservations:

1. It’s just a big iPhone without the useful phone function
2. It’s too big and heavy
3. We already have an iPhone, laptop, desktop and TV… what do we need this thing for?
4. It runs iOS 4 – which I’m not a big fan of

As it turns out, it’s not just a big iPhone… quite the opposite, in fact.

The iPad Came First

Steve Jobs once gave an interview in which he admitted that the iPad was in development BEFORE the iPhone (some time in 2004/2005) and it was only when he saw the user interface at work and the quality of the screen that he realized that it would work wonderfully as a phone.

This was a device which had been in development, had been shelved for a while so that it could be cut down and compacted to make a phone and then completed using some of the lessons learned and technology created for that phone.

The experience is totally different – but in a good way.

Apps which I use on both my iPhone and iPad look so different on the bigger device and have so many more functions, facilities and user interface options that it seems they were written for the iPad and cut down for the iPhone, where in reality it was probably the other way around.

It IS Rather Big and Heavy

There are many people who don’t think so, but in my opinion, the iPad is a little unwieldy.

I have had the chance to use an iPad 2 and the difference in thickness and weight is quite noticable.

However, even the iPad 1 with it’s extra bulk and weight is not TOO bad and somehow the weight makes it feel more solid, more powerful.

I Still Don’t Like iOS

iOS is the operating system that the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad all run.

It’s smooth and fairly easy to use but there’s something about it I just don’t like.

It’s too difficult to switch between (and close) apps and too difficult to organize and find your apps.

It’s slightly better on the iPad, given the screen size but still, I think a lot could be done with the way it works.

It IS a Useful Additional Device Though

iPad has changed the way my wife and I interface with technology, and the world at large.

Our other devices still play their parts but the iPad is very portable and easy to use.

It’s so much more convenient than my laptop for using as a reading device or for accessing facebook, twitter etc.

At the same time, it’s so much better than using my iPhone for the same things.

The iPhone still wins for simple portability and my laptop is still heavily used because it’s more powerful and flexible but the iPad has added a level of technological integration into our lives which is hard to explain because I didn’t even realize it was missing until this new device entered our world.

What Has All This Got To Do With Blogs Though?

Good question…

and the answer is…

The iPad and other devices like it are here to stay and from what I’ve seen will only increase in popularity so when you are designing your blog, you need to think about how it will look on one of these devices.

Something that not too many bloggers take into account is screen resolution.

If your header image is 1400 pixels wide and someone is trying to view it using an 800 pixel wide screen, then they can’t see it all.

In fact, if you have a sidebar 250 pixels wide on each side of your blog, and the main content area is a fixed width, then if everything is designed around that 1400 pixel wide header, the poor gal with her 800 pixel wide screen can’t see either of the sidebars.

This is where Google Analytics can really help.

Google Analytics will show you, amongst a whole host of other things, what screen resolutions people are using to view your site. It will look a little like this:

As you can see, at least 75% of my visitors had a screen resolution at least 1024 pixels wide.

You can discount the 320×480 ones because they are mobile devices which will either use your mobile theme (if you have one) or will scale the site to fit.

1024×768 is what the iPad and iPad 2 currently use and the new Motorola xoom uses 1280×800.

If the tablet market is going to grow like it seems, 1024×768 will account for a sizable chunk of your visitors for the foreseeable future so you need to make sure that your site is geared to easy viewing on that size of screen.

That means you need a maximum width for your site of about 960px, to account for the scroll bar and window borders and still allow the site to fit comfortably on the page.

Do you know how wide your site is?

A lot of people have asked me for graphics / Images / Ads / a logo to go on their sites.

I am incredibly grateful and have begun putting together some different choices for y’all:

Sample Image	Copy this code to use on your site
This is 300×300 but can be resized	<a href=”http://www.newbloghosting.com” target=”_self”><img src=”http://newbloghosting.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/logo-square1-300×300.jpg” alt=”NewBlogHosting.com” width=”300px”; height=”300px” /></a>
125×125	<a href=”http://www.newbloghosting.com” target=”_self”><img src=”http://newbloghosting.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/NBH125x125.png” width=”125px”; height=”125px” /></a>
400×60	<a href=”http://www.newbloghosting.com” target=”_self”><img src=”http://newbloghosting.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/NBH400x601.png” width=”400px”; height=”60px” /></a>
400×60	<a href=”http://www.newbloghosting.com” target=”_self”><img src=”http://newbloghosting.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/logo400x601.png”  alt=”NewBlogHosting.com” width=”400px”; height=”60px” /></a>
101 x 24 (if you want something really small!)	<a href=”http://www.newbloghosting.com” target=”_self”><img src=”http://newbloghosting.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/logo101x24.png”  alt=”NewBlogHosting.com” width=”101px”; height=”24px” /></a>

I’ve also created a flyer aimed at writers.

If you know a writer who has questions about blogs, hosting and all that jazz, feel free to download and email them the flyer. You can download it here.

New Blog Hosting has a new logo!

With an incredible amount of help from the amazingly talented Brian Russell we have brought to fruition my dream of having something permanent to help people visually connect with Newbloghosting.com.

I am so grateful to Brian for his creative genius and his patience with me and I am so very excited that the new logo has come out so well.

Along with the logo, we are launching a newsletter, which will be aimed at helping people understand hosting and to be able to use it more fully and also to share stories, advice and tips for making WordPress blogs just that little bit more fabulous.

The newsletter is free and is aimed at anyone who has a blog or website, whether it’s s free one or a self-hosted one and will not be aimed just at newbloghosting.com customers.

You can sign up in the sidebar here at newbloghosting.com or by clicking here.

As a ‘thank you’ for signing up, you will be entered into our free giveaway, where we’ll be giving away NewBlogHosting branded t-shirts, pens and other goodies.

You can get additional entries into the giveaway by ‘liking’ our Facebook page, or following us on twitter!

I hope you like the new logo and I hope that you’ll connect with us through the newsletter, this site, Facebook and twitter so we can keep you up-to-date on the latest news and help you get the most out of your blog / website.