Category Archives: Online Tools

Virtual Servers Offer Power, Convenience, and Savings

Posted on March 16, 2013 by jnelson

As a full-service ISP, Southwest Cyberport offers a complete spectrum of web-publishing services from simple static webpages to highly complex, state-of-the-art interactive content managed sites. But there’s even more to it than that. At one end of the range are free personal webpages we offer to all our broadband and dial-up customers. At the high end are dedicated colocated webservers owned and operated by corporate clients that access the Internet directly from our secure, access controlled machine room. In between, SWCP offers web-hosting services in three different strengths: Starter, Basic, and Professional. But now, we are happy to offer a new upper tier of web-publishing service that gives the isolation and independence of private servers without the steep costs of owning and colocating hardware. A Virtual Private Server (VPS) here at SWCP balances convenience and cost to allow website owners and administrators to run their own web-publishing software just the way they want to. A virtual machine is software on a device that emulates the functions of an entire computer. This allows many virtual servers to run simultaneously on one “real” server, all hidden from each other. Less hardware is required, space is conserved, and resources are shared more efficiently than with purely dedicated servers. Virtualization is already common and is spreading quite rapidly through data centers particularly because of its usefulness in cloud computing. These economics make virtual servers much less expensive to operate than racks of dedicated devices … Continue reading →

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The Hazards of Abandoning a Domain

Posted on September 22, 2012 by jnelson

It happens all the time: you click on a link and the website that comes up is not what you expected. If you’re lucky, the page is simply gone, but the site may look oddly similar and contain links for the subject you’re interested in, or it may be a trap bristling with malware and spam. In any case, you probably shrug and move on, pausing briefly to delete the bookmark if there is one, but you likely don’t spend much time wondering what happened. What happened is that the website owner quit. Maybe she or he died, or their lives and interests changed, or the company went broke. Possibly the owner just forgot to renew the domain registration. Whatever the cause, abandoned domains rarely just die quietly forgotten any more. Usually they are snapped up even if they are not high-traffic, popular sites, often by a domain registrar hoping to cash in on, but increasingly by people with worse intentions in mind. Not long ago, it was not uncommon for websites of churches, schools and government institutions that had lapsed to be grabbed up by Web porn purveyors. They may have done it more for the shock value rather than to make money, but in more recent times even more sinister characters have been doing much the same. Nowadays, an abandoned website may present an irresistible temptation to hackers and spammers to walk in and take over. However, unlike … Continue reading →

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10 Free SWCP Services to Help Keep You Secure

Posted on November 4, 2011 by jnelson

At Southwest Cyberport, we know that all we can do to increase our members’ security in their online activities helps keep everybody else safe, too. So we not only offer a lot of good advice to all and sundry right here on the blog, there’s also a number of tools and services we make available to our customers for no extra charge. SWCP Members are invited, nay encouraged, to make full use of them as needed. Just log in at the Members Portal  at our website with your username and password. Antispam filters –Whether you use SWCP’s email services through us or have us forward your mail to another box elsewhere, everyone should take advantage of this vigorous suite of email filters. You can block addresses, make sure that mail from other addresses reaches you filtered or unfiltered, and determine just how sensitive you want the filters to be. You can even set up addresses that mail should be forwarded to, or automatic replies for when you’re away. Spamprobe – Also located with our antispam filters, Spamprobe is an additional sophisticated spam filter,  one that learns from you. You can actually teach Spamprobe to distinguish spam from good mail, allowing you to further fine-tune your spam filters to keep the junk out. Webmail – Along with our antispam filters, this is a very helpful interface. You can directly manage your email from anywhere in the world with a web browser, … Continue reading →

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