The DMCA Process (Infographic)

In the wake of possibly the largest online protests in Internet history over SOPA and PIPA, copyright on the Internet remains no small topic on the public’s collective Internet-linked mind. Amidst this controversy, it became quite clear that the average person possesses an incomplete or even total lack of understanding in what typically happens when claims of online copyright infringement are made in the United States.

As a web hosting provider, we see no shortage of DMCA notices for content appearing on our clients’ sites. With this in mind, we felt it only fitting to be the ones to create the following flowchart that shows, in no uncertain terms, exactly what happens when a copyright claim is made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

DMCA Process Infographic

Please Share!

Posted in Nexcess | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

What Customer Service Means to Me

There was a time when you could Google my name and see an entry titled “Greg Swaney is what customer service should be”. That was the coolest thing I’d ever seen the first time I came across it. It told me a couple things. 1) I seemed to be doing things right in our help desk. and 2) Someone cared enough about the help that I gave them to write an article on their personal blog about it. I was amazed. In addition to the article, this particular client, Robbi Behr, also created a card especially for me and sent it to me.

The way I looked at our help desk wasn’t just a job that I reported to, but an experience. Granted, this was many years ago when we were smaller and I was one of the only techs responding to support tickets, but my job was to help people. It wasn’t just to fix someone’s site, that was merely a byproduct. Someone was in trouble and as far as I was concerned each ticket in the help desk was another call to the bat phone – another signal in the sky and it was off to the rescue. I loved what I was doing and it only drove me to be the absolute best I could be at it. You never see Batman scoff when he sees the bat signal in the sky or hears a damsel in distress. He was on it as fast as he could be and he wasn’t doing it for the reward but rather because he was bent on helping people. That’s just one of the few things Batman and I have in common but we’ll save that for another post.

Continue reading

Posted in Nexcess | Leave a comment

Nexcess to Sponsor 2012 Magento Imagine Conference

Nexcess to Sponsor 2012 Magento Imagine Conference
Ann Arbor, Michigan, Feburary 15, 2012 – Nexcess, a leading provider of superior web hosting services and a Gold Magento hosting partner, has announced participation in the second annual Magento Imagine eCommerce Conference in Las Vegas, NV.

Acquired by eBay in 2011, Magento is the fastest growing eCommerce platform in the world, featuring over 250 solution providers and 110,000 merchants from across the globe. As a Magento Gold Hosting Partner, Nexcess provides clients in the U.S. and in the U.K. a variety of Magento web hosting options that are uniquely optimized for speed, stability and security via the Nexcess Secure Isolated Platform for Magento (MAG-SIP).
Continue reading

Posted in News Releases | Leave a comment

Blue Hummus

When I was first approached to write a blog post I said to myself, this can’t be yet another technical article. Yes, the technical posts we write are informative; after all we are a hosting company! A hosting company that prides themselves in the quality of service we give. I wanted to emphasize that the Nexcess team is a particularly diverse group. Our teammates come from all walks of life. Some of us enjoy the outdoors and all it has to offer, while some prefer the rush of an intense Modern Warfare match, the energy of a live DJ set in front of a bunch of fans, or simply the novelty of a cosplay meetup. I personally love to cook; I find it to be quite therapeutic. Also, I love to feed off the smiles and complements I receive from my amazing friends and family that enjoy the fruits of my labor!

In case you are not familiar with hummus, it is a vegetarian dip made from chickpeas, lemon, tahini (Sesame Paste) and a touch of sumac. Chickpeas are rich in protein, iron and vitamin C and are a good source of fiber. You can thank wikipedia for that bit.

So lets get a few things straight, blue hummus? Really? Is this hummus coming from James Cameron’s Avatar? Well, if you are familiar with Nexcess, you’re familiar with our obsession for everything sky blue, and the idea of making sky blue Nexcess hummus sounded like an amazing treat for the office! The question is, how do you take a delicious golden paste and turn it in to a blue delicious paste while using only natural ingredients? Well, it’s much easier said than done. It’s hard to find anything edible in nature with a blue hue to it. That is, unless you want your hummus to taste like blueberries. After some research I discovered Blue/Purple potatoes. Naturally, I came to the conclusion that if I were to cook a blue potato and add it to a batch of home made hummus it would turn the paste blue.

Continue reading

Posted in Nexcess | 2 Comments

Good-bye Ubuntu. Sort of.

Good-bye Ubuntu. Sort of.
I started using Ubuntu in 2009. By the following year I had dropped the dual boot with Windows XP and was completely Ubuntu. When I hit a glitch during an update in 2011, I figured I would re-install with the latest version – 11.10 at that time. Unfortunately, I didn’t know about the major change they had done to the desktop environment by the name of Unity. Sorry Ubuntu, you lost me.

There are a number of “Unity hate” posts out there and that’s not the point of this one. I’d like to share with you what I eventually did as an alternative to Unity in the hopes that it may be a good choice for you too if you’re looking for one. Continue reading

Posted in Nexcess | 1 Comment

Reintroducing the Nexcess Client Portal

Reintroducing the Nexcess Client Portal

Last summer, we were proud to roll out our Client Portal – a robust, integrated system that allows Nexcess clients to quickly and easily manage their hosting account and utilize the Support system, from a single login.

It’s been over 6 months since we converted (completely) to the new system, so it seems fitting to shed the spotlight on it again and remind all of our valued clients – and present to prospective clients – how this system can simplify the various tasks that go into managing your hosting account.

Continue reading

Posted in Nexcess | Leave a comment

Nexcess Announces WordPress Cluster Hosting

Nexcess Announces WordPress Cluster Hosting
Ann Arbor, Michigan, January 30, 2012 – Nexcess, a Michigan-based managed hosting company with specialized solutions in Magento and WordPress hosting, has announced a new enterprise line of managed server clusters that are uniquely optimized for WordPress-based web sites.

This brand new set of hosting solutions for WordPress cluster hosting has been built from the ground up, and rooted in the same technologies that power the company’s more basic WordPress-Optimized Blog Platform (WP-OBP) hosting environment.  The Nexcess WordPress cluster is expected to offer site owners the same level of performance optimization that Nexcess’ entry-level WordPress hosting clients enjoy, with added benefits in scalability, reliability through increased redundancy, and potential for higher system resource availability to combat unpredictable patterns in blog traffic.
Continue reading

Posted in News Releases | Tagged , | Leave a comment

SOPA / PIPA & The Way We Do Business

If you are reading this blog post or host a site with us, you have more than likely heard about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP act (PIPA). There is so much information circulating regarding these two pieces of legislation. Some of it is true, some of it false, regardless, amongst the plethora of information, there is one reality, if SOPA or PIPA pass, the Internet will never be the same.

Most of this week’s news coverage is revolved around the “Great Wiki-Blackout of 2012” and their public demonstration against, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, being rammed through the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate this past year. The intent of both bills is to stop any and all copyright infringement committed by foreign web sites, while opposition groups of the bill claim, both bills attempt to prevent online piracy in a way that actually infringes on free expression while harming the Internet.
Continue reading

Posted in Nexcess | Leave a comment

Nexcess Announces UK WordPress Hosting Services

Nexcess Announces UK WordPress Hosting Services
Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A., January 16, 2011 – Nexcess, a United States-based managed web hosting company with specialized services in WordPress web hosting, has announced a new line of UK WordPress hosting solutions to be made available effective immediately.  This decision was made with the intent of better serving bloggers that desired lower latency to European and Asian audiences.

“In recent years, it’s become very important to us to make sure that our friends across the pond are given the same high caliber of web hosting solutions that we provide here in Dearborn, Michigan,” commented Chris Wells, President & CEO of Nexcess, “We’re very happy to be bringing this new WordPress hosting solution that our engineers worked so hard on developing, and are confident that it will be as popular in the United Kingdom and throughout Europe as we have already seen in the states.”
Continue reading

Posted in WordPress | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Choosing a Load Balancing Solution

Choosing a Load Balancing Solution

When a website reaches the point where a single web server can no longer handle the amount of traffic to the content or services it provides you must find a way to reliably distribute its load over two or more individual web servers. This type of service is called load balancing which is where a specific device or service accepts connections, processes them using a balancing algorithm, then directs that incoming request out to an available server of many servers to handle the request. To perform load balancing, there are a few options you can choose from. DNS load balancing is possible, but not widely used. Software based load balancing where software performs the balancing of requests on a linux server is a powerful and reliable method of distributing load. Hardware load balancing where you have a dedicated hardware device handles the load balancing can be used for advanced applications and needs.

Continue reading

Posted in Nexcess | Leave a comment