Surf7.net Blog

Selamat Hari Raya

Dear Valued Customers,

On behalf of everyone here in Surf Seven Network, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you and family “Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri, Maaf Zahir dan Batin”. For those who is traveling home, I wish you a safe journey.

Regards,
Ben.L
CEO
Surf Seven Network

P/S - Our sales and admin office will be closed from 1st October until 3rd October. However, technical support via email will be available as usual.

Register domains before the prices increase in October

Grab the last chance to register/renew/transfer-in your domains with Surf7.net!

Domain registries verisign, Afilias, and Public Interest Registry (PIR) notified all ICANN-accredited registrars that they will be raising their wholesale prices. As a consequence, all registrars will increase the .COM/.NET/.ORG/.INFO prices in October, including Surf7.net.

The new price is yet to be announced. However, it is expected at around 7% to 10% increase.

According to the ICANN-VeriSign Settlement, this price increase can and may be implemented each and every year. This may be a good time to bulk-renew your domain names and register new domains while pricing remains low.

Act now and SAVE immediately!

How to use a custom domain name for your BlogSpot blog

You know why you must get your own custom domain for your BlogSpot blog. Firstly, you must register the desired domain name and managed DNS service. If you haven’t register both yet, you can do so here.  After that, you need to update the DNS and your Blogger settings.

Update the DNS Settings
Now it is time to tell all the servers in the World where should Internet users go to when they visit www.yourcustomdomain.com. To do that, you must login to the control panel of managed DNS service. If the managed DNS service is purchased from Surf7.net, then the control panel is located at http://storefront2.surf7.net/customer. Please refer to the welcome email with the subject “Welcome! Extra Service Details For yourcustomdomain.com” for your username and password.

This is the screen you will see after you login. The most convenient way to find your domain name is go to Domains > List Last 10.

Your domain name will be listed here. Next, click on Managed DNS link.

In this screen, click on Manage DNS Records button.

This window will pop up. You need to add CNAME record. Click on CNAME Records button. On the next screen, click on Add CNAME Record button.

Now, leave the host name blank, enter ghs.google.com. in Value field and enter 14400 in the TTL field as shown above. Please note the period at the end of ghs.google.com. . Finally click on the Add Record button.

Add another record as shown above. But this time, enter www in the host name.

That’s all you need to do for the DNS setting. Next is to update your Blogger setting.

Update Your Blogger Settings
Now, log into your Blogger account. Go to Setting > Publishing.

On this screen, you will see that it says you’re publishing on blogspot.com together with your Blog*Spot address. Click on the Switch to Custom Domain link.

It will ask you to buy a domain name. Since you already registered the domain name, ignore it and click on the Switch to advanced settings link.

Finally, key in your domain name (without the www) in to the box. Update the setting.

Now your new blog address is http://yourcustomdomain.com/ (without the www).  To redirect user who go to your blog with the www prefix, tick the option “Redirect www.yourcustomdomain.com to yourcustomdomain.com”.

Now the only thing left to do is to tell everybody about your new address!

Important notice:

• If your new domain isn’t taking you to your blog, wait another day or two to make sure all the DNS servers have been updated. If it still isn’t working, contact your registrar to make sure you entered the DNS settings correctly.
• Your original Blog*Spot address will automatically forward to your new domain. That way, any existing links or bookmarks to your site will still work.
• Your posted images will continue to display on your blog unless they are more than 400px. For images more than 400px, you need to update your post to use the custom domain URL.

Google Launches New Web Browser - Chrome

Google Chrome is a latest open source web browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier. Find out why they want to built a new browser.

These are the features of Google Chrome

1. One box for everything -  Web search. Web history. Address bar. Suggestions as you type. One unified box serves all your browsing needs.
2. New tab page - Every time you open a new tab, you’ll see a visual sampling of your most visited sites, most used search engines, and recently bookmarked pages and closed tabs.
3. Application shortcuts - Use web apps without opening your browser. Application shortcuts can directly load your favorite online apps.
4. Dynamic tabs - You can drag tabs out of the browser to create new windows, gather multiple tabs into one window or arrange your tabs however you wish — quickly and easily.
5. Crash control - Every tab you’re using is run independently in the browser, so if one app crashes it won’t take anything else down.
6. Incognito mode - Don’t want pages you visit to show up in your web history? Choose incognito mode for private browsing.
7. Safe browsing - Google Chrome warns you if you’re about to visit a suspected phishing, malware or otherwise unsafe website.
8. Instant bookmark - Want to bookmark a web page? Just click the star icon at the left edge of the address bar and you’re done.
9. Importing setting - When you switch to Google Chrome, you can pick up where you left off with all the bookmarks and passwords from your existing browser.
10. Simple downloads - No intrusive download manager; you see your download’s status at the bottom of your current window.

Download Google Chrome here.

Wordpress is more than for blog

Most people don’t realize it; WordPress, the most popular blog platform is actually a darn good CMS (Content Management System) for websites other than blog. To prove my point, our development team has developed an online travel portal based solely on WordPress. The final result is…

Penanginfo.com - The Unofficial Penang Travel Guide

What so impressive about WordPress is the way the developer seperate the core program from its design. That way, we can customize the design and functions to our heart content with almost no worry on future upgrade on the core program.

On top of that, WordPress has a very strong community base; a healthy sign of open source movement. Plugins are release frequently by any programmer who wish to contribute back to the community. Plugins are used to enhance or extend the core functions of WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine. There are plenty of plugins for you to choose from. Currently, more than 2,700 plugins are listed on WordPress Plugin Directory alone, excluding others that are scattered all over the web.

For our Linux web hosting clients, you can install WordPress via Cpanel’s Fantastico, the auto installer. It takes less than a minute and no technical knowledge is required. However, if you wish to customize your WordPress to become something like Penanginfo.com, you may need professional service if you have no experience in web development.

Oh! Did you know our Corporate Website Design Package is based on WordPress too?

Why you must use a domain name for your Blogspot blog?

Attention bloggers who blogs on blogspot (blogger.com) platform. I only have one advice. Please get your own domain name and use it as custom domain for your blogspot account because, whatever happen to blogspot, your domain stays with you - forever!

One classic example is blog of Malaysia’s ex prime minister; Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. Previously, his blog was hosted by blogspot. Not long after his blog become popular (remember the 1 million hits record?), blogspot unreasonably shut down his blog. Luckily he is using his own domain name; chedet.com. Can you imagine what a disaster it would have been if his blog’s address was something like chedet.blogspot.com? He would have lost all his readers. All the efforts in promoting the blog and search engine ranking would have gone down the drain! Now, his blog is self hosted using Movable Type (a blog CMS) on a dedicated server. Well, it was down for few days, but at least the damage was very minimal.

Don’t take it for granted. You never know what will happen in future. It could be another dotcom burst coming soon.

One great feature from blogspot is they allow you to use a custom domain name on blogspot platform. That means, you still blog normally using the same platform but using your own domain. How cool is that?

For example, if you own abc123.com, you can easily convert your current address from http://abc123.blogspot.com/ to http://abc123.com/ for free. Anyone who goes to the old address will redirect to your new domain. Not only you will not loose any readership, it is short and easy to remember too.

All you need is…

1. A domain name
2. DNS management service

Finally, refer to this article to learn how to use a custom domain name on your blogspot account.

How to create PDF file for free?

Have you ever receive a complain from your supplier or customer that they cannot open the PO or invoice you send to them because they don’t have the compatible software to open the file? Or, they can open it but it doesn’t display correctly because they are using out dated or different version of the software from yours? I am sure many have experienced it. That is why PDF become so popular. Anyone can open any PDF file as long as they have the reader (it is free!) and it displays and prints out exactly like how you intended it to be.

Good news is, you don’t have to spend RM 1,800 simply to create a pdf file. In fact, you don’t have to spend a single cent to create a PDF file. Here is how…

1. Download PDFCreator. Current version is 0.9.5.
2. Install it. PDFCreator will install as a printer driver in your Windows. That means, you will find a new printer call PDFCreator in the printer selection window whenever you want to print your document (refer to below image).
   
3. To create your PDF file, just open the file with any Windows application that has print function. Go to File > Print or press CTRL+P. A window similar to above will appear.
4. Select PDFCreator from the printer selection list. Click on Properties if you need to adjust the output setting. Click OK when you are ready. This window will appear.
   
5. You can ignore it and click Save and this window will appear…
   
6. Firstly, select a location in your PC to save the PDF file. Then, enter the filename of the PDF file. Finally click Save.

That is it. You just created your first PDF file using PDFCreator. Hope this will help you save some expenses on your company IT budget.

Are you selling to these countries?

Here is the latest statistic from internetworldstats.com showing 20 countries with the most Internet users…

For more details such as penetration rate, percentage of world users, country population and growth rate, please visit here.

Major Online Credit Card Payment Gateways Comparison Chart for Malaysian

View our comparison chart of major online payment gateways that are available for Malaysian merchant to accept credit card from their customer.

Download Firefox 3 today

Firefox 3 is here at last! If you haven’t already upgraded to Firefox 3, you can get it here.

Remember that Mozilla is trying to set a new Guinness World Record on Firefox 3 Download Day, so please do your bit.

Top New Features:

• Password Manager - Remember site passwords without ever seeing a pop-up.
• One-Click Bookmarking - Bookmark, search and organize Web sites quickly and easily.
• Improved Performance - View Web pages faster, using less of your computer’s memory.
• Smart Location Bar - Find the sites you love in seconds—enter a term for instant matches that make sense.
• Instant Web Site ID - Avoid online scams, unsafe transactions and forgeries with simple site identity.
• Full Zoom - See any part of a Web page, up close and readable, in seconds.
• Platform-Native Look & Feel - Browse with a Firefox that’s integrated into your computer’s operating system.

Read more about it here.