We had a few important requirements that ruled out many competitors like HootSuite and TweetDeck. They work really well for smaller teams, and even larger ones in certain situations, but for us they just wouldn’t work. The thing we loved about CoTweet was the inbox and outbox; we could see all messages directed to us, and about us, allowing us to easily engage our audience. This also allowed us to assign certain team members to handle specific conversations, and topics, which they were well versed in. Another requirement of ours, was that we wanted to avoid using a desktop application, which signed directly into Twitter. There’s issues with accountability (i.e. who said what?), but also, many of us telecommute and use multiple different devices to stay in touch with social media, so we really wanted a hosted application in order to avoid multiple installations.

That’s when Sprout Social popped up on our radar, and I think I can safely say, we’ve been in love ever since. With an elegant, easy to use dashboard, that not only allows us to easily stay in touch with our followers, but also learn about them, and their interests, Sprout Social is the perfect application for us. Further, it even gave us the ability to take advantage of some unique tools, like Facebook and bit.ly integration, that we previously weren’t used to.

While Sprout Social isn’t a free application, it does have a 30 day free trial, and monthly plans start at $9 a month, something we’d glad to pay as it makes our lives tremendously easier. If you’re struggling with social media collaboration tools, Sprout Social gets a thumbs up from us!

                          

The first step towards getting started with the move is determining the platform to host your site on. Unless there is a significant detriment, such outdated software, or unreliable hosting, we typically suggest keeping the platform the same. This will prevent unnecessary path changes in the configuration of your wordpress site, or other stress inducing changes. With the vast majority of shared web hosting companies using cPanel to provide their platform, the migration can be fairly easy without many complications, as VPS.NET offers a turnkey cPanel VPS Hosting solution.

In the event that you’ll be migrating to a new platform, whether it be a different control panel or a completely different operating system, we’ve come up with an outline of some of the key things you’ll need to watch out for.

1. The path to the configuration file will likely change, resulting in an unusable site.
2. The MySQL database and/or usernames may be laid out differently, making it so your site cannot connect to the database server.
3. Different chmod settings; depending on the platform, you may need to set the read/write file attributes to a specific setting for it to work properly.

The second step is to upgrade your existing wordpress installation to the latest and greatest version. After the upgrade, make sure that all existing plugins have been upgraded, if necessary, and are still functioning properly. By confirming their functionality on the existing installation, will prevent potential unnecessary troubleshooting with your new hosting. If your install is already up to date, nice job, you can skip this step.

To keep things fresh and tidy, we’re going to use a completely new installation on your new server. If you have something like Fanastico, Installatron or Softaculous installed on the server, you can use their one click installation tools. If not, you will need to manually install WordPress on the server. This can be done by downloading the latest installation at www.wordpress.org.

Next up, we’ll need to download the content of your blog so we can restore it on your new server. To do that, simply login to your website using your favorite FTP program — we typically recommend something like FileZilla, but with so many out there, it’s really up to personal preference. You’ll want to download the wp-content directory, and then robots.txt and .htaccess files, as these will also have site-specific customizations that you have made. Once you have downloaded them, you can login to the new server using your FTP program, and  instead of pointing the FTP program to ftp.yourdomain.com, you can point it to the IP address. Simply over write the existing files, from your new installation of wordpress and you’ll be good to go.

Since we have the static content copied over, we’ll also need to grab a backup of the database. Login to the PHPMyAdmin on your website, and choose to export your current wordpress database. While using the PHPMyAdmin export option, select ALL the tables, and choose to save as a file to your PC. Once the database has finished downloading to your local PC, we can now import it to your new server. Open up PHPMyAdmin on the new server, and choose the database you installed wordpress to. Once there, select the import option and choose the export that you downloaded to your PC from your old host.

Now that we have all your content copied over, we can change the name servers for your domain registrar. Most customers who are using VPS.NET will be able to use our Anycast DNS servers, allowing them to use dns1.vps.net and dns2.vps.net. If you have chose to setup your own name servers, you will need to use them to point to your web server.

Once you have confirmed that everything is functioning properly on your new WordPress VPS Server, you can cancel the account with your old web host. If you do run into any trouble with migrating your WordPress site to VPS.NET, please do contact us — we’d be happy to help!

                          

In order to understand how you are going to fund your business you better understand what your financing needs are in addition to the types of options that will be available to you. Money, or capital, not only helps your business get off the ground but keeps the business sustainable. Some options that exist for your business entail borrowing money, using business versus personal finances, and other eligible business assistance.

In my experience most young companies entertain the idea of either equity financing or debt financing. Equity financing is money that is raised by a company in exchange for a share of ownership. This is not limited to publically traded corporations but is a viable option for all facets of business. Obtaining equity allows a business to obtain funds without incurring debt, or simply put, without having to repay a specific amount of money at a particular time. Equity financing can come from a plethora of sources including friends, relatives, employees, customers, industry colleagues, or non-professional investors. The most common equity finance contributors are venture capitalists.

In contrast to equity financing, debt financing is borrowing money that must be repaid over a period of time, usually with interest. This debt can be short-term, which is fully repaid in under one year, or long-term, repayment is due in excess of one year. The difference between equity and debt is ownership. With debt financing the lender does not gain ownership interest in the business, and the return on investment is tied to interest payments. In general debt financing requires some collateral to guarantee the repayment of the loan and interest. If you are an LLC or private corporation the lender can ask for a personal guarantee in case of default in addition to the collateral placed against the loan. This tactic is used to mitigate lending risks as well as ensure the borrower has sufficient personal interest at stake towards making the business succeed.

After funding and sustaining your business operations the next question is always tied to making money. One key question I am often asked by startups is, “When will I start seeing profits?” The answer to this question lies in the breakeven analysis. This tool is used to determine when a business’s revenue will outpace its expenses, which is also known as, making a profit. In order to determine this extensive research should have been conducted on start up costs. Generally speaking this can be obtained from the business plan (if you do not have a business plan it would be beneficial to begin there). Knowing what your expenses are going to be will inform you of the sales revenue you need to cover those expenses. In addition to market demand this should help set a guideline for pricing of your products as well. For established businesses or business units, to calculate the breakeven point, identify all of your fixed and variable costs.

Fixed costs are typically referred to as overhead because they are needed to run the business but not attributed to sales volume. For example, rent, administrative salaries, telephone lines, and other non-sales volume related expenses are considered fixed costs. Variable costs are just the opposite and are tied directly with sales volume such as additional servers, increased bandwidth, and disk drives. Knowing your fixed and variable costs will help determine how many unit sales are needed and how much to sell them for to breakeven.

For example, if it costs $25 to create one virtual private server, and there are fixed costs of $1,000, the break-even point for selling the Virtual Private Servers would be 40.

(If the price of each server sold was $50), 1,000 (fixed cost) / (50 – 25) = 40 Virtual Private Servers.

Revenue = $50 x 40 units sold = $2,000 | Fixed Cost = $1,000 | Variable Cost = $25 per unit sold = 25 x 40 = $1,000 | Net Income = Revenue – Expenses or $2,000 – $1,000 – $1,000 = 0 [Break-even].

In the same analysis, selling 41 virtual private servers would be the point of profitability. 41 VPS x $50 = $2,050 – $1,000 – (25*41) = $2,050 – $2,025 = $25. Undercutting or underestimating your variable and fixed costs is only going to undermine the integrity of your analysis. Be sure to include realistic figures and be able to support how you derived these numbers. Many investors will pick this analysis and ask you how you plan to get to the number of units needed to break-even. If you have any questions please feel free to contact Doug@YIPFolio.com.

Doug C. is a Financial Analyst for a top 20 Fortune 500 Financial Services company and owner of YIPFolio Financial & Management Consulting Services. He specializes in Financial & Accounting services including balance sheet, P&L, fixed assets, and capital funding. He has spent several years in the Hosting and Technology industry while consulting management and senior management on all aspects from raising capital to managing daily cash flow. Doug received his BS in Finance from Fairfield University and resides in the Greater New York City area.

                          

Gross margins, which can also be referred to as gross profit margins, by definition is a company’s total sales revenue minus its cost of goods sold (COGS), divided by the total sales revenue, expressed as a percentage.  The gross margin represents the percent of total sales revenue that the company retains after incurring the direct costs associated with producing the goods and services sold by a company.  Obviously, the higher gross margin percentage the more a company retains on each dollar of sales.

For example, if Company XYZ were said to have a Gross Profit Margin of 25%, it would retain $0.25 from each dollar of revenue generated. Strong gross margins vary between companies and industries depending on the service or product being provided.  However, keep in mind gross profit margins do not translate directly into net profit.  The gross margins are generally put towards capital expenditures and operating expenditures, including general and administrative expenses.

One of the first analyzes I put forth with my clients always relates to profit margins and knowing what your COGS are in comparison to your net sales (or earnings capacity for new company’s).  In close to ten years of industry experience around the Hosting Industry I find many new companies and founders tend to overlook Accounting and Finance principles.  Two very important concepts assets and liabilities and net profit can be found on two separate financial statements that should always be viewed by senior management.  They are the P&L, or statement of net income, and the balance sheet.

The balance sheet is a financial statement that summarizes a company’s assets, liabilities and shareholder’s equity at a specific point in time.  It is the best depiction of what a company owns versus what it owes.  In translation to the hosting industry this can be viewed as leasing a server from a reseller versus leasing space in a data center and purchasing servers.  In most US GAAP scenarios the expense of purchasing new server and co-locating it would be pushed to the balance sheet and depreciated over the useful life, typically three to five years.  On a month-to-month operating lease, that same server [as an example] costs $500 at your local reseller is shown on the Statement of Net Income or P&L (profit & loss statement).  If the cost of that server to purchase is $5,000 and the useful life three years, the P&L would receive approximately $140 a month in depreciation expense versus $500/mo for data processing and data center expenses.  Granted additional upfront costs and other fees apply; further analysis is required to understand which model, operating leases or ownership, works best for you.  Keep in mind separate business models and key management philosophies can determine whether purchasing assets or leasing them is best, not just in terms of upfront capital costs, but also from a maintenance and support perspective.

The P&L statement  summarizes the revenues, costs and expenses incurred by your company during a specified period of time. Generally speaking profit centers and corporations report quarterly whereas cost centers look at monthly P&L’s.  This statement shows the ability of a company to generate profit by increasing revenues and reducing costs.  A good measure of company growth is not always looking at the bottom line and seeing the fluctuation of profits but rather the increase in sales.

Doug C. is a Financial Analyst for a top 20 Fortune 500 Financial Services company and owner of YIPFolio Financial & Management Consulting Services. He specializes in Financial & Accounting services including balance sheet, P&L, fixed assets, and capital funding. He has spent several years in the Hosting and Technology industry while consulting management and senior management on all aspects from raising capital to managing daily cash flow. Doug received his BS in Finance from Fairfield University and resides in the Greater New York City area.

                          

WordPress users can easily join them in this blackout, with the new SOPA Blackout Plugin. This plugin makes it easy to configure your site to stage a blackout, without having requiring significant reconfiguration of your website. Users attempting to view your website, would simply see an anti-SOPA message, which you can see a preview of.

                          

Outside the high life of running VPS.net. I’m a father to my daughter, a husband to my wife and a convenient source of food to 5 cats, 3 guinea pigs and a dog. I enjoy gaming with Skyrim taking up far too much of my free time. My new years resolution is to learn to play the piano which so far has got me unto playing 3 Blind Mice. Of course by Xmas 2012 I will have a top 40 chart hit

Your resume says you’ve got a bit of experience in hosting, want to talk about that?
Many years ago I started hosting using a bit of software called User Mode Linux which was a precursor to today’s virtualisation platforms.  In that time I’ve seen resources go up, prices go down and technology just growing by leaps and bounds. The things that are being done with clouds now-a-days we couldn’t even image a few years ago. Whatever the future holds its going to be an exciting time to be in the industry.

What kind of tricks have you got up your sleeve for VPS.NET and its customers?
Well we’ve got some lovely new HP Sans rolling out in Q1 as well as a few new funky products and offerings. I can’t say too much currently as they are still under wraps but they are going to be fantastic offerings for the entire VPS.net and UK2 customer base. A little sneak preview however is that this year we are aiming for new locations with Europe being our first stop in the first 3 months of 2012. For the other 9 months well you will just have to wait and see.

Where do you think Cloud Hosting will go in the future? Is it a niche product or something that the mainstream is moving towards?
Cloud is going from a new thing to just the way things are done so soon cloud hosting will just become hosting as it becomes commoditised. The new big thing will be the way we interact with the internet. Most people consider their phones to be a device but if you
take that device, add on augmented reality, 4G connectivity you get the ability to have a virtual realm hooked into the real world. The ability to just look at a building using a smartphone and then it pulls up a full HUD of information isn’t that far off. Taking things
being integrated even further with the screen being a contact lens, hooked up via a fast wireless connection to your smartphone opens up possibilities that we can only barley in visage today. Cloud will provide the infrastructure, while the smartphone will deliver the experience.

                          

A VPN is great for securing your connection if you are on an untrusted network, e.g. a coffee shop or an open network and want to make sure that you information stays safe. We are offering the VPN free for the first month for all VPS.net customers! Setup is as always simple to do.

Simply goto the VPN section of your control panel. Click “Create New Account” and select the location of the VPN you want, the type you want (If not sure choose PPTP) and click “Confirm”.

If you need help installing and setting up your VPN then you can contact support@vps.net and we will be more than happy to get you going.

                          

To enable support for our new VPS.net desktop you just need to go to https://control.vps.net/profile and click “Generate” next to the API key

Once generated goto https://desktop.vps.net and put in your VPS.net username + password. You will be then put into the new VPS.net desktop!

As always have fun and as always if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us

                          

VPS.net first to join initiative

ANN ARBOR, Mich., November 22, 2011 — CloudLinux, Inc., developers of the only commercially-supported Linux server operating system made specifically for shared hosting, today announced its Preferred Partner Program with VPS.net the first to join.

VPS.net, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, with operations and data centers all over the world, is part of UK2 Group, which provides web hosting and Internet services to a million customers worldwide. With offices in London and Utah, the UK2 Group employs more than 200 staff. VPS.net provides a high-performance, optimized and scalable cloud hosting service, which includes the CloudLinux OS, which it offers to all of its customers worldwide.

As a Preferred Partner, VPS.net and CloudLinux will do joint marketing and sales while VPS.net will have special access to technical resources. Additionally, VPS.net will host CloudLinux repositories allowing for exceptionally fast and reliable updates for VPS.net customers using CloudLinux software.

“The combination of CloudLinux OS with service from VPS.net gives shared hosters ready access to deliver to their customers,” said Igor Seletskiy, CloudLinux CEO. “The enhanced security and stability offered by CloudLinux OS provides an unmatched experience for shared hosting customers and is proven on over 5,000 production servers running CloudLinux OS.”

“The opportunity to expand our relationship with CloudLinux made perfect sense for us,” said Terry Myers, chief evangelist, VPS.net. “They deliver a product that is in high demand from our customer base and offer an innovative solution addressing common problems faced in shared hosting environments.”

CloudLinux cages each user account within its own Lightweight Virtual Environment (LVE), allowing system administrators to limit CPU, memory, and concurrent connections available to each tenant. LVE effectively prevents the, “bad neighbor effect,” wherein one tenant can slow or take down an entire server. By limiting abuse, shared hosters can substantially increase server density, bringing far greater efficiency to their business.

Also, CloudLinux OS includes MySQL Governor, which enables tight control over the MySQL resources available to users, and will soon release CageFS, the industry’s only virtualized file system for shared hosters. CageFS assures that user files are only available to, and viewable by, their owner. CloudLinux also offers the fastest updates in the industry, with professional support available 24/7.

About CloudLinux, Inc.

By providing expertise in the areas of hosting, kernel and open source, CloudLinux serves the specific needs of those in the web hosting industry. Founded in 2009, CloudLinux is privately funded and headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

CloudLinux has been recognized as a leader in the industry and received numerous awards. Twice, CloudLinux has been listed as a top 10 cloud provider by HostReview. Also, CloudLinux received the Editor’s Choice Award by Web Host Magazine & Buyer’s Guide.