Netfirms, One of the World’s Largest Web Hosting Companies powering over 1.2 million websites, is ear to ear all smiles with the recent success of their local sponsored Boat team the Netfirms Riptide.

It has come to our attention recently that the Riptides have been doing very well and are achieving tremendous results. With a healthy dose of drive and determination alongside extra efforts in their training regimen, the accomplishments speak for themselves.

The Tides are turning – Road to Victory

• In May the Netfirms Riptides placed 4th out of 60 teams in Milton, Ontario.
• Early June saw the Riptides cruise down to Boston, Massachusetts placing 5th out of another 60 teams.
• Later on in the month, winning Division D at the Toronto Island festival, placing 19 out of 180 teams.

What is up next for this amazing group? They will be headed to battle once again traveling to Montreal, Ontario on July 26-27.

Netfirms would like to congratulate the Riptides for a job well done and sends our well-wishes on continued success for the remainder of the season.

We are all proud of each and every one of you.

Go Riptides Go!

From the Staff at Netfirms!

> “Ilovenetfirms.com”…..sounds like a dating site

Well, reading this just set our minds running and made us think about the site IN a completely different way!

The initial intent of the site was to have a place to post our customer testimonials and essentially brag about the good work that we do (it’s shameless, we know, but, hey, why not?).  What we didn’t think of was that the site could in fact be the answer for the so many people in need of hosting, but, who didn’t know where to turn.

With so many hosting companies to choose from, who do you choose?  While lower priced alternatives may woo some customers, and promises of more features may tempt others, the determining factor as to why Netfirms is the best is our constant and sincere commitment to our customers and the service we deliver.  Our offerings and our friendly support staff equal the best value currently available on the internet, so why not “hook up” with us 

As one customer put it:

“I would just like to quickly acknowledge that though competitors prices are potentially cheaper, especially for single domain name purchases, I will be purchasing my new domain name through Netfirms.

The reason is simply due to your customer service, and your assistance and support in the past. Please keep up the good work, remain competitive but don’t stop with servicing your customers with the utmost respect and “bending over backwards” attitude it pays off.”

http://www.ilovenetfirms.com/?p=185

So, whether you were on the fence about choosing Netfirms, or, know someone in need of hosting who isn’t sure about who to choose, refer to ilovenetfirms.com and know that the perfect match is just one click away.

There’s a set of instructions that you must follow in order to park your domain with Google’s new service and on this page I’ll outline what steps need to be taken within your Netfirms Control Panel to get this working.  This will assume that you’ve already completed Google’s requirements as per the Adsense For Domains Quickstart Guide.

The first task we must do is ensure that the domain name we want to park is pointing to the Netfirms name servers.  This is the most important step otherwise anything else you do afterwards will have no effect.  Pointing your domain name to our name servers gives our servers the control needed to handle the redirection to Google.  If your domain name was not registered with Netfirms then please contact your registrar and ask them to set your name servers to ns1.netfirms.com & ns2.netfirms.com .  If Netfirms is your registrar then this change can be done from your Netfirms Control Panel.

Once the name server is set, please follow these instructions:

Create a CNAME

1. Log in to your Netfirms Control Panel
2. Click on the Domains menu and then go to the Domain Manager and click the ADD button in the top right corner
   
3. On the new screen, Click the Subdomain tab and begin filling in the fields as required
   1. Enter Subdomain: www
   2. Choose the domain to apply it to from the dropdownlist
   3. Place a checkmark next to the CNAME option
   4. Host Name: pub-xxxxxxxxx.afd.ghs.google.com. (where pub-xxxxxxxxx is your unique ID listed on the AdSense setup page)
   5. Click the ADD button at the bottom

Assign the A Records

1. On the Domain Manager page, click on the + symbol beside your domain name which will open up the extended options
2. Ensure you are on the Source tab
3. Place a checkmark in the option labeled, A Record
4. Enter in the four IP addresses provided by Google each into their own box, 216.239.32.21,  216.239.34.21, 216.239.36.21, and 216.239.38.21
5. Click the Update button

Once these changes have been applied, it will take anywhere from a 10 minutes to 24 hours for these changes to be visible online.

Email Collaboration and Communications Tools from Netfirms

Whether you’re looking to migrate off your outdated, costly Microsoft Exchange, compliment your existing solution with enhanced collaboration tools without the IT headache, or starting up your new business but don’t want the expense of a full desktop application suite - Netfirms is proud to announce availability and support of Google Apps Premier Edition – powered with Google’s latest innovation Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook.

You can now spend less time and money managing complex and costly email and other IT services, and focus more on what you do best, whether that’s teaching kids, creating award-winning products, developing creative advertising campaigns or helping non-profits organizations, or growing the next Fortune 500 business. What makes this announcement especially exciting is Netfirms is applying its famous ‘We Care’ Service team to the challenge and will be providing setup and support for all customers subscribing to Google Apps Premier.

At Netfirms we have always been focused on removing the usual tech hassle and cost associated with owning domains and websites. We are keenly aware that today you need to be resourceful, do more with less, and be more selective where you place their trust in purchasing decisions.

Web Hosting Not As Usual

This is an industry first – with a Web Host extending itself to leverage a Cloud Service for its existing domain and hosting customers. This is a big win for our customers. They get industry leading Google Apps backed by Netfirms service and support. This is the first of many new and exciting improvements for our customers this summer.

I have been listening to our customers tell us they want Netfirms to support their productivity goals… not just their websites. So backed by our award winning 24/7 Netfirms customer service, we are offering a seamless solution - right from registering a domain, to building a web site to getting setup with Google Premier Apps we’ve made it all painless for you.

Introducing Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook

With over 1.2 million customer domains and associated email accounts – we are one of a handful of Google partners that are announcing availability of Google’s new Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook application today which provides a “drop in” replacement alternative for Microsoft Exchange Outlook. Larger companies looking to save IT costs can now more easily migrate their accounts to “The Cloud” and shed the hassle, expense and headache associated with managing Microsoft Exchange.

One of the primary challenges we find with our customers is their love of the Outlook interface. You know where the buttons are, folders, etc… who has time to learn something new. That’s where the new Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook application comes in – it enables a clean connection between your existing Outlook software directly into the Google Apps Platform serviced by Netfirms.

Netfirms with Google Premier Apps will revolutionize the way you work. The best part, it’s completely seamless to you. You use your existing Netfirms domain name and get some added major benefits:

• Free Setup and Configuration by Netfirms
• No more SPAM! (Well almost no more SPAM but only a couple a week on average isn’t that bad)
• Google Search for your email means you will never lose track of your email again
• Tracking at 99.99[9]% (or better) up-time
• Email and Calendar syncs to your phone or Blackberry perfectly and updates itself in real time
• It works with your existing email client or all through the web (all email clients are supported including MS Outlook, Mail, Thunderbird and more but most people love the Gmail web interface that means that you will never have to call to reconfigure your email client ever again.)
• Shared Calendars (It syncs to your phone or Blackberry perfectly and updates itself in real time)
• Shared Documents (Collaborate on shared Excel or Word documents online in real time with anyone)
• Have a problem – call Netfirms for immediate support with your account – 24/7.

We are very excited to bring this service and support to North America and our many customers.

If you’d like to learn more about this solution from Netfirms visit us at www.netfirms.com/googleapps/ Check it out!

This is a great question and deserves a detailed response. Spoofing is a widespread issue on the internet as is viruses and spam . Unfortunately, it is very difficult to control and eliminate these occurrences and no web hosting company is immune to this problem. For information about e-mail spoofing, please refer to this Email Spoofing article titled Understanding E-mail Spoofing. This article will explain the technical stuff behind it and also give you a simple example you can follow in order to replicate email spoofing. Even the White House is susceptible to email spoofing. If you have a computer you can do it.

Tracking Spoofed Emails

You can try to locate the origin of this spam through spam e-mail full headers:

• Get the spam full headers

1. 1. If you are using Outlook Express right-click the message and select ”Properties’ and ‘Details’
   2. If you are using Outlook, double-click to open the message you wish to check, then go to ‘View’ and ‘Options’. Right-click and copy the headers inside “Internet Headers” box

• Go to http://www.spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml to sign up; log in information will be e-mailed to your e-mail address
• Once logged in “Click on “Report Spam” tab
• Paste the full headers in the text box
• Click “Process Spam” button
• An e-mail address will be generated; you can use this e-mail address to report a spam abuse

Here are some tips in minimizing spam/junk mail to your account or having your email account spoofed (spammers may send mail in such a way that the e-mail appears to have been sent from your email address):

Web Forms vs Displaying Your E-mail Address

1. Don’t publish your email address on your web pages but rather use web forms to receive email. If you wish to publish your email address, place it in an image. This way web crawlers cannot spider through your web pages and extract coding to get your email address

OR

2. If you prefer not to implement a web form the alternative is to display your e-mail address in such a way that web crawlers would be unable to crawl it. This can be accomplished by displaying your e-mail address via a javascript similar to the example below (replace yourname and domain.com accordingly):

In the head of the html file we call the external javascript file with this command

in fun.js we put this code

And we call the function by putting this in the body of the html

Safe-Guarding Your E-mail Address From The Public

3. Don’t submit your email address to public forums, mailing lists, newsletters, etc. Similarly don’t give out your business card that contain your email address to contests or draws as often the info. get submitted to marketing campaigns where any number of individuals may have access to your e-mail address information.

4. For POP clients, filter email into a “junk” or “spam” folder which can be configured to be auto-deleted.

For more information regarding e-mail spoofing, please visit the following URL:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=on&q=+email+spoofing&btnG=Search&meta=

The Search Engine (Google) is now intelligent enough to consider newly registered domains as infants which in that regard garner almost zero reliability and credibility factors. When one implements Multiple Year Registrations they start becoming more credible and reliable to Google’s eyes and in turn gain you the right results and exposure that your website deserves. Don’t hesitate and Renew now with Multiple Year Registrations!

The new Data Center alongside with Netfirms office expansion continues to define Netfirms as one of the few firms investing in their customers’ needs head on. The new Data Center facility (21,000 sq ft) located in Markham, Ontario will support up to 40,000 server slices. We continue to see unprecedented demand for our award winning web hosting solutions, honest and helpful customer support, and we intend to  capitalize on this success with continued innovation for our clients.

The main difference between the two methods is that when using POP before SMTP, your mail client is not required to send any login information to the server once you’ve already downloaded(POP) your email account and with SMTP Auth your mail client must send login information for each email you send.  We put together some simple instructions on how to update your mail client to use SMTP Auth on Friday.

The change in settings is the same regardless of which email client you use it may just be in a different location.  Below are some screenshots of where you’ll find the setting in Thunderbird and Outlook.

Check out our tutorials for various mail clients with instructions on how to make the necessary changes.

In order to resolve this we ask that you check your SMTP settings within your EMAIL client (Outlook, Thunderbird, Macmail, etc…) and check with PORT Number your SMTP server is set to use. Below is an outline of our suggested and confirmed settings:

1. SMTP Server: smtp.yournetfirmshosteddomain.com (replace “yournetfirmshosteddomain.com” with your actual domain name so if your domain was hello.com it would read as smtp.hello.com)
2. SMTP Port: 587
3. My SMTP Server Requires Authentication should be checked.
   • Therre are two choices for authentication: Log on using same settings as incoming mail server or Log on using:
     
   • Please ensure that you choose the option, “Log on using:” and then supply your Netfirms email address and password
4. Please use your full username@domain.com as the login information rather than just “username”

We have included below a list of instructions on how to configure your email client to use SMTP Authentication. The instructions below are for various EMAIL clients so please choose the set of instructions that matches the application you are using.

Microsoft Outlook Express and Outlook 2000

1. Click Tools
2. Click Accounts
3. Click the Mail tab
4. Double-click on the account
5. Verify that the email address is entered in all lowercase letters (General Tab)
6. Click the Servers tab.
7. Verify that “Server Requires Authentication” is checked
8. Click the Settings button and verify that you choose the option, “Log on using:” and then supply your Netfirms email address and password
9. Click ‘Apply’ (if available), then ‘OK’, and then ‘Close’.

Microsoft Outlook 2002 (XP) and 2003

1. Click Tools
2. Click Email Accounts
3. Click View or Change Existing Email Accounts
4. Click Next
5. Double-click on the account
6. Click on More Settings and then click the Outgoing Server tab.
7. Verify that “SMTP server requires authentication” is checked and please ensure that you choose the option, “Log on using:” and then supply your Netfirms email address and password
8. Click ‘OK’, then ‘Next’, and then ‘Finish’
9. Click send / receive to check for errors

Mozilla Thunderbird

1. Click Tools
2. Click Account Settings
3. Click Outgoing Server from the left
4. Select the outgoing server
5. Click the Edit button
6. Verify that Use Name and Password is checked
7. Verify the username is entered correctly

Apple Mail

1. Click Mail
2. Click Preferences
3. Click the BlueTie account
4. Click the Account Information button
5. Click the Server Settings button
6. Verify that Authentication is set to Password
7. Verify that username and password are entered correctly

Microsoft Entourage

1. Click Tools
2. Click Accounts
3. Click Mail
4. Double-click on the BlueTie account
5. Click Account Settings
6. Click the Advanced Sending Options button
7. Verify that “SMTP server requires authentication” is checked and please ensure that you choose the option, “Log on using:” and then supply your Netfirms email address and password
8. Close the window by clicking the box in upper-left corner

Qualcomm Eudora

1. Click the Eudora menu
2. Click Preferences
3. Click the Checking Mail icon
4. Verify that ‘Authentication’ is set to Passwords
5. Click the Sending Mail icon
6. Verify that Allow Authorization is checked

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority, the non-profit organization responsible for operating the dot-ca Internet domain, today announced it is taking prudent steps to counter possible misuse of the dot-ca domain by the Conficker C worm.

Conficker C is the latest variant of a malicious Internet software program that acts in two stages. The first stage has infected potentially millions of computers around the world and, beginning April 1, is expected to try to communicate with command codes placed on web sites by the worm’s authors.

This potential virus will be like one we have not seen before.

In an effort to shield their activities from Internet security authorities, Conficker C’s authors have programmed their worm to randomly generate domain names from 110 country-code domains around the world, including dot-ca. CIRA has put in place a plan to counter this potential misuse of the dot-ca registry and to maintain its integrity as one of the most secure and robust domains in the world.

With knowledge CIRA has gained about this virus they are taking the necessary steps to try and protect the targetted .CA domain names that may be part of this attack.  Domains that CIRA has identified as potential targets are now being placed on a “restricted” list of domain names that cannot be registered by anyone.  This is an attempt to limit the impact that an attack of this nature can have on Canadian domain names and domain name owners.

Conficker C expected to activate April 1
In early March, a third variant, Conficker C, appeared. Whereas Conficker B generated a daily list of 250 new domains to connect to in search of a command and control file, this latest variant will begin on April 1 generating a daily list of 50,000 country-code domains in which these files could be hidden. These names are drawn from 110 country-code domains, including the Canadian extension dot-ca.

If you attempt to register a seamingly ‘available’ .CA domain name only to find out shortly afterwards that the regsitration has been rejected by CIRA, you are witnessing CIRA’s damage control in action.  This is being done in an effort to reduce the number of .CA domain names that may be affected if this virus takes shape.

If you have any questions about this or would like some clarification drop us a line in the comments or contact our Support department from your Netfirms Control Panel.