XILO Communcations Ltd. : Blog http://blog.xilo.net/ en XILO Communications Ltd. Copyright XILO Communications Ltd. 2011 2011-12-23T10:59:01+00:00 Seasons Greetings http://blog.xilo.net/article/967/ http://blog.xilo.net/article/967/#When:10:59:01Z As this year draws to a close, we’d like to take this opportunity to wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

We’d like to thank you for your custom this year and we look forward to serving you well in to 2012.

During the festive season, our telephone support hours will be open as follows with normal service resuming on Tuesday 3rd January.

Friday 23rd December - 10am - 1pm
Saturday 24th December - Closed
Sunday 25th December - Closed
Monday 26th December - Closed
Tuesday 27th December - Closed
Wednesday 28th December - 10am - 5pm
Thursday 29th December - 10am - 5pm
Friday 30th December - 10am - 1pm
Saturday 31st December - Closed
Sunday 1st January - Closed
Monday 2nd January - Closed
Tuesday 3rd January - 10am - 5pm

Our on-call engineer will be available for managed servers or enhanced care broadband lines. The support centre will be manned throughout the festive season including Christmas, Boxing and New Year’s day to answer any emails or tickets that are raised.

Once again, have a lovely Christmas and New Year, from the team at XILO.

]]> Announcements, 2011-12-23T10:59:01+00:00 New Be powered ADSL2+ services http://blog.xilo.net/article/964/ http://blog.xilo.net/article/964/#When:16:42:59Z We’d like to release tentative pricing for our Be ADSL2+ service.

Unlike Be’s own product our base service will be up to 16Mb instead of their up to 12Mb.

Our packages are as follows:

Be 16 (1.3Mb upload)
£14.99 per month (£12.49 ex VAT)

Be 24 (1.3Mb upload)
£20.99 per month (£17.49 ex VAT)

Be 24 Advanced (2.5Mb upload)
£26.99 per month (£22.49 ex VAT)

All packages are unmetered, one-month rolling contract as standard.

Existing customers are able to migrate to the service free of charge by contacting us via your account. If you wish to check availability, please do so at https://my.xilo.net/adslcheck.php.

Although we say tentative pricing, we expect this to be launch pricing.

]]> Announcements, 2011-11-24T16:42:59+00:00 Blocking certain countries from viewing your website http://blog.xilo.net/article/951/ http://blog.xilo.net/article/951/#When:01:09:16Z We’re often asked if there is an easy way to block certain countries from viewing sites hosted on our servers. Whilst it has been possible in the past, it was complex and tricky to implement.

You may want to block individual counties from accessing your site because of a high amount of “comment spam” on your blog, or maybe you have a site that you need to restrict to certain countries due to the content being region specific. This is all possible using a quick .htaccess rule.

Since our switch to the LiteSpeed, this is very easy to implement and we’re going to give a brief guide on how to do this.

We’ve added a sample rule that blocks 6 locations where we see the most comment spam originate from on our own community forums; Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Russia. We’re also going to add a filter for Anonymous Proxies.

You will need to create a .htaccess file and upload this to the directory you want to protect, or if the whole site, create in public_html.

Our sample content looks like this:

RewriteEngine on

GeoIPEnable On
RewriteCond %{ENV:GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE} ^(A1|BR|CN|IN|ID|RU)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.google.co.uk$1 [L]

If the visitors IP address matches one of the counties listed on the “RewriteCond” line, it will then send them to http://www.google.co.uk as shown on the “RewriteRule” line. As it uses mod_rewrite, you could adapt this to only allow listed countries instead of rejecting them or even show specific content and languages for different regions.

When entering the country, the ISO code should be used. As an example, for United Kingdom you should use GB and not UK. There are also some addition codes to cover special locations as follows:

A1 - Anonymous Proxies
A2 - Satellite Providers
EU - Europe
AP - Asia and Pacific (ASIAPAC)
US - America but also includes overseas military bases regardless of country.

We hope you find this new feature very useful and this is one of many improvements that we are rolling out on all shared, reseller and premium hosting servers over the next few weeks.

]]> Hints and Tips, 2011-09-25T01:09:16+00:00 August Domain Promotion - .co £10.99 http://blog.xilo.net/article/940/ http://blog.xilo.net/article/940/#When:14:31:47Z We’re pleased to announce that we have lowered the cost of new .co registrations.

Until 31st December 2011, the pricing of new .co registrations is now £10.99. This is a saving of £9 on the standard new registration cost.

.co domains are a realistic alternative to the already saturated .com suffix. Many names are still available so why not search for your ideal name today?

There is no limit on the number of domains that can be purchased during this offer but all domains will renew at the standard rate. The offer is only valid for 1 year registrations.

]]> Special Offers, 2011-08-29T14:31:47+00:00 Shared Hosting Package Upgrades http://blog.xilo.net/article/928/ http://blog.xilo.net/article/928/#When:02:34:20Z We’re happy to announce that we have upgraded the bandwidth allowance on all Shared Hosting packages.

The increases have been across the board for SH-1 all the way up to SH-10 and a short summary is shown below:

SH-1: 10GB > 100GB
SH-2: 25GB > 200GB
SH-5: 50GB > 300GB
SH-7: 75GB > 400GB
SH-10: 100GB > 500GB

If you are on an older shared hosting package that isn’t listed, you are able to upgrade your account immediately via My XILO by clicking Your Packages and then selecting Upgrade / Downgrade.

There is no additional cost and the monthly package price remains the same as it has always been.

]]> Announcements, 2011-07-30T02:34:20+00:00 Invoice Extensions due to Playstation Network breach http://blog.xilo.net/article/912/ http://blog.xilo.net/article/912/#When:09:07:26Z A number of customers have contacted us regarding their accounts asking for extensions to be able to make payment due a change of credit card.

Recently, a gaming service for Playstation users was breached and it is estimated that details of over 100 million users were stolen. Sony advises that this does not include raw card details as they were encrypted.

We appreciate that some of our customers will want to be cautious and have cancelled their cards and ordered new ones from their card issuer.

If you have an invoice due and require an extension, please raise a ticket on your account for billing and we’ll be happy to offer a 7 day extension.

]]> Miscellaneous, 2011-05-04T09:07:26+00:00 Testers Required : Email Filtering http://blog.xilo.net/article/884/ http://blog.xilo.net/article/884/#When:14:36:19Z We’re looking for about 25 users to try a new email filtering service for us.

There is no charge during the trial and the service is provided as-is for us to gain feedback on the effectiveness of a new product.

To register an interest, you need to be an existing hosting customer - if you’d like to help, please email us at beta@xilo.net from your account registered address.

]]> Miscellaneous, 2011-01-25T14:36:19+00:00 .info and .mobile promotion has been extended http://blog.xilo.net/article/876/ http://blog.xilo.net/article/876/#When:17:26:04Z We’re happy to announce that we’ve extended discounted pricing on .info and .mobi registrations.

Until 31st March 2011, all new .info and .mobi registrations will be charged at £2.99 and £5.99 respectively.

All registrations are valid for 1 year and will renew at their standard rate, at the time of renewal.

This offer ends on 31st March 2011.

]]> Special Offers, 2011-01-10T17:26:04+00:00 .me domain registrations only £8.99 http://blog.xilo.net/article/875/ http://blog.xilo.net/article/875/#When:17:20:45Z Due to a promotion at the .me registry, all new registrations for new .me domains are currently reduced by £10.

All registrations are valid for 1 year and will renew at their standard rate, at the time of renewal.

.me is a great alternative to .me.uk and many great names are still available.

]]> Special Offers, 2011-01-10T17:20:45+00:00 Beat the VAT increase! http://blog.xilo.net/article/870/ http://blog.xilo.net/article/870/#When:19:46:15Z As you may be aware, the rate of VAT is due to increase on 4th January to 20%.

If you have an invoice already due for service, paying this prior to the 4th will enable you to make a saving.

For customers that have a monthly or quarterly service, you may be able to make additional savings by paying for the year in full - please contact us to change your billing cycle before 4th January.

It is also possible to renew many domains ahead of time, some for up to 5 years in advance via the “Renew Domains” link in My XILO.

Any invoices paid after 00:00 on 4th January will be billed at the standard rate of VAT at 20%.

]]> Announcements, 2010-12-29T19:46:15+00:00