We’ve been doing FTP Hosting for quite awhile now, but we wanted to let you know about some newer features that you may find useful:

FTP Upload notification: we setup a service where you are emailed whenever a client uploads new files into their private folder. This saves you time from having to check the folder or ask the client if they’ve uploaded any expected files yet.

FTP Upload Drop Box: we setup a web page where clients can simply upload files from their computer into a special folder where you can retrieve the files. The nice thing here is that no FTP login is required for your clients. This can also be attached to a contact form.

FTP Access logs: access a file on the server where you can view the FTP hosting log activity such as uploads and downloads, including the IP number and the date and time the activity occurred.

All these services are available for a low rate by request through our FTP Hosting service.

WordPress continues to gain popularity as a website creation tool, even though it was originally designed for blogs. Part of this popularity rests in the amazing amount of template themes available, both from WordPress.org and third-party web designers.

Other aspects that make is so popular are the search-engine friendly nature of WordPress and the seemingly endless plug-ins, from adding web-to-email forms to integrating with RSS feeds and Facebook, there’s a whole community of people keeping WordPress on the cutting edge.

A few tips if using WordPress as a website are:
1. Instead of adding “posts” you will be adding “pages.”
2. You can unclick the box that allows comments on the page.
3. You can remove the recent posts and archives from the sidebar, this is usually in the Appearance -> widgets section.
4. Keep the search function if you’d like your website to benefit from that feature.
5. Experiment with the themes until you find one that matches the look you’re after.

Have fun!

Over the years we’ve seen many trends, from AOL communities to MySpace pages to Facebook groups, but none of these trends have diminished the power of the Forum. For when it comes down to it, people who are interested in, let’s say sailing in the Great Lakes, like to gather together in a forum about sailing.

This is because forum hosting services bring together an entire community of people who gather to discuss a specific passion that’s important to them. Maybe the various forum members are on Facebook, or AOL, or MySpace, or maybe they’re not. With a forum is doesn’t matter because forums, or message boards, are stand-alone communities that function independently on the Web.

We’ve been hosting forums for more than a decade and have hosted forums that have thrived over the years, as well as brand new forums that caught on quickly and became a community hub for a certain topic. Regardless of what other trends are happening on the Web, forums are here to stay.

For more information on OLI’s forum services, please visit our Forum Hosting page to see all that’s possible.

One of our chat and forum customers recently gained over 100 members to their brand new site within a month, so we asked him what his primary method was.

It turns out he simply did a search on YouTube.com for people with similar interests to his chat and forum, and then told them about his new community by leaving them comments. Now some of the members he gained this way visit his forum daily and keep it alive and kicking.

Just thought we’d pass along the info … more details on getting traffic to your chat and forum.

By default the Simple Machines forums are set to allow only very small attachments, and the max folder size is set very low as well.

If you ever get an error that the upload file is full, you can increase the max upload size per post and max folder size (that holds all the uploads) in Admin -> “Attachments and Avatars” (under Forum). For OLI Forum Hosting customers, we recommend setting the “Max attachment folder space” to 200000 kb (which is 200mb) and “Max attachment size per post” and “Max size per attachment” to 50000 kb (which is 50mb).

Most people use the Horde Webmail for email, while the other features are nice it’s more efficient to have the application load the Mail Inbox after logging in, instead of having to click yet another button. Here’s how to do that:

After logging into Horde click “Options” then click “Global Options” then click “Display Options” beneath the Other Information header. There you can select “Mail” beneath “What application should Horde display after login?” and click Save Options at the bottom.

That’s it!

Anyone with a popular forum has seen their share of spam-bots registering to post their silly links. We found a nice forum mod that helps stop such annoyances.

It’s called the “Are You Human” mod which is added to the registration page, you can download it here.

Download the Mod by right-clicking the .zip link on the Mod’s page and choose “Save Target As…” or “Save Link As…” Save the .zip file to your desktop.

Go to your Forum and click the Admin tab and click Packages on the left (under Main) then click the “Download Packages” tab near middle of screen

Scroll down and click “Browse” next to “Package to Upload” and find the downloaded .zip file of the Mod on your computer

Then click “Apply Mod” on the lower right of the page

Scroll down and click “Install Now”

that’s it!

If you are using iWeb with OLI’s cPanel server, you will need to first publish your iWeb site to a folder or directory on your local computer, and then use an FTP client like Fetch or CyberDuck to upload the site to the cPanel server.

Remember that all of the site files must be put into the public_html folder/directory which you can specify in Fetch in “initial directory” — you may need to click the little arrow on the righ tin Fetch to open up the “initial directory” option.

The FTP username and password are the same as your cPanel login.

If you don’t have FTP software, you can get Cyberduck here:
http://cyberduck.ch

Install and go to “Open Connection”

First click the dropdown and make sure “FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is selected.
Then use:
Server: your-domain
Uesrname: your-cpanel-username
Password: your-cpanel-password

Then for More Options (you may need to click to little arrow to open the options) use:
Path: public_html

When don’t if still not loading you may need to ask support to enable a redirect on the website to open the iWeb URL, once that’s done you can make changes as needed whenever you wish using this technique.

There are a couple ways to do the fee-based chatroom. Some people have a simple paypal button (you can create a free paypal account if you don’t already have one and associate it with your email address). We add the button for you. Then when a member pays you through paypal, you can approve their membership in the chatroom, or you can register them yourself and send them the login.

We also have a new subscription add-on where people can first register a username/password, but they are not granted access to the chatroom until they subscribe to the chatroom for a duration you specify, this also uses paypal.

What’s nice is you can experiment with what works best after the room is installed (settings can always be changed).

Other add-ons like secure chat and private messages are also available.

View more about our chat software as well as the current chat add-ons

You can change the Forum Name in Admin -> Server Settings (on the left under Configuration)

Scroll down and you’ll see “Forum Title” where you can change the name

be sure not to change anything else as some of those settings can disable the forum.