When striving to improve a website's user experience, one of the most crucial aspects to consider is the user's time. How long does it take customers to complete their visit, access your site, and have the intended impact on your company?
Every component of your company should strive to provide the best possible experience for your customers. To make the correct impression on your users, you can improve the user experience in a variety of ways.
Improving your site's performance is one of the most critical aspects since it has a direct impact on how long users stay on your site and their overall satisfaction.
When it comes to optimising the user experience, increasing site performance is critical. The goal should be to provide the greatest possible user experience while keeping a high level of performance on your site.
This article will look at some of the reasons why site performance is important, as well as how to assess your site speed with GTmetrix.
One of the most important website metrics is site speed. Here are some of the primary reasons why it's so important to have a fast website:
We already know that the typical person's attention span is getting shorter and shorter day by day. To put this into perspective, most users will abandon your website if it takes more than two or three seconds to load.
Site speed is one of over 200 ranking variables used by Google to determine how to prioritise your content in the SERPs. Google favours you if your site loads quickly. If it doesn't, you'll have a hard time getting people to locate your website.
Let's pretend users are patiently waiting for your site to load. That was extremely thoughtful of them. However, if each page takes 100 years to load, it will be tough to keep them on your site. The better the user experience, the faster your page loads.
Let's talk about a tool that can assist you to check your site speed now that you know why it's important: GTmetrix.
GTmetrix is a site speed check tool that shows you how fast your website is loading.
This software allows you to test how your site loads on a desktop and on mobile devices of various types.
You may also see how your page loads from 65 different servers in 22 different countries. If you're getting traffic from a specific location and want to check sure your site is up to par, this is a great option to have.
The good news is that GTmetrix allows you to test basic page speed aspects for free. There are a few options for accomplishing this.
Go to gtmetrix.com and type your URL into the "test your site" box for a quick check.
GTmetrix will do a brief examination and return your results after you click "test your site."
The default location for the free account is in Vancouver, Canada, and the default server is Google Chrome.
If you simply go to the main page and type in your URL, you will have access to these features.
You can get further access by signing up for a free account.
You'll have access to additional tools after logging in to your free account and running a page test, including:
Remember that you may only test one page per day with the free account.
To gain access to these extra features, go to the top right corner of the main page and click the "Sign up" box.
The procedure is the same once you've made your account. You enter your website's URL in the URL box, then select additional settings from the "Analysis Options" box before running your test.
When choosing your options, choose the place closest to you and "Broadband fast," as most people have high-speed internet.
After you've completed your test, you can explore all the different findings available to you on the free plan.
For most website owners, using the free tool is sufficient, but registering for a free account to gain access to the additional capabilities is worthwhile.
Do you have a website and are getting the impression that it’s time to upgrade your hosting plan? Maybe you already know that you need to and you’re just waiting for the right moment to make the change. Maybe you’re not so sure about it. Whatever the reason for needing to upgrade your current hosting plan, you’re going to want to read on before making a final decision about whether or not you need to upgrade your current hosting plan. Hosting plays a critical role in the operation of your website. It’s the place where your site is stored and hosted. So, if you want your website to continue operating smoothly, you should make sure that you’re choosing the right hosting plan for your needs. Here are some of the signs that it’s time to upgrade your hosting plan.
Are you preparing to launch a new product? Are you allowing new members to join your membership site? Do you have a marketing campaign in the works that you're confident will be a success?
Make sure your website is prepared to handle more traffic than usual. The last thing you want prospective buyers, members, and social media followers to see is an error message—or a site that takes more than a few seconds to load.
If you're a new web designer or developer, you may have begun by adding your clients' domains to your shared hosting account. That might work for a while until it doesn't. If you manage numerous clients' domains from a single cPanel, you should consider upgrading your hosting package or transferring your clients to a reseller package.
Sites that load slowly are aggravating. If your site doesn't load in a few seconds, visitors are more likely to leave. In addition, if your site takes a long time to load, search engines will rank it lower in search results.
As a result, fewer individuals will be able to see what your website has to offer. If you've previously reviewed and optimised your basic web vitals, you might need to upgrade to a new hosting plan with faster server response times or a content delivery network to boost your site's speed.
Everybody appreciates enjoys a website with quality graphics, photos, and videos, and they all want them to load as soon as possible. It is best to optimise your images and videos for optimum functionality on your website. Compression and appropriate formatting can go a long way toward speeding up your site, but you may have more media than your current hosting package can manage at some point.
Easter is fast approaching and with it, the chance to find hidden easter eggs on the internet, or as we like to call it, the rabbit hole. If you’re anything like us, you can’t wait until the week of Easter to start looking for the best-hidden easter eggs on the internet! But how do you find them? Well, luckily for you, we’ve got an entire list of tips on how to find hidden easter eggs and how to find them quickly. Whether you’re looking for the best-hidden easter eggs on the internet, or simply looking to survive the next few days before the big day, we’ve got you covered!
Friends, the American sitcom, celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2019, and Google added a slew of Easter Eggs to commemorate the occasion.
Type in search and then click on the image on the right (make sure sound is turned on):
Do you still have a nostalgic feeling? To take a trip down memory lane, type in "google in 1998" without quotation marks.
Google will show you games to play in your browser if you type Pacman, Tic Tac Toe, Snake Game, Minesweeper, or Solitaire into the search bar.
You can type a lot of phrases into Google Search to receive a unique numerical result. If you search for "once in a blue moon," for example, you'll find the mathematical formula for calculating how often a blue moon happens.
To find Easter eggs that bring up the calculator, look for the following phrases:
A hidden arcade game can also be found in Google Images. If you type "Atari Breakout" into the image search field, you may play the game by clicking on any of the elgoog.im results that read "Play Google Atari Breakout" (there are a bunch!). You have the option of sharing your score at the end of the game.
When your wifi goes down or Google Chrome can't discover a connection, it redirects you to a dinosaur-themed error page. You're in for an addictive game if you press the spacebar.
Do you want to play even if your internet is down? Simply type chrome:/dino and press the spacebar in your address bar.
To begin playing a text adventure game, follow these steps:
When you say yes, the journey begins!
Your mission is to reassemble the letters that make up the word "Google." You progress through the game by inputting instructions and selecting options. Best of luck!
It's a long set of instructions, but if you follow them all to the point, you'll be able to play a fun surf game in the new Edge browser.
For a business to thrive, efficiency is critical. Any organisation may become more effective by being able to develop, collaborate, and communicate in a seamless manner. Having access to productivity tools that allow workers to accomplish their jobs more simply - and from any location - allows businesses to be more adaptable and competitive in their industry.
As a result, we now provide Microsoft 365 exchange emails and Office 365 suite subscriptions and licenses at Hosting Australia to help your business grow.
Microsoft Office 365 is a productivity suite that includes products such as Word, Exchange, Excel, SharePoint, Teams, and more. Because Office 365 is cloud-based, users can access the complete suite of features from any location, on any device, as long as they're connected to the internet.
Office 365's products complement one another and function together effortlessly, making it a must-have for any organisation.
With Office 365, your business can keep all of its files on the cloud. This means they may be accessed from any device with an internet connection, from any location. Being able to access all of the apps and files you need when you're not in the office is invaluable for companies that value mobile working.
Unauthorized users can't access your files if they get on your device since Office 365 is a completely secure environment with strong security measures in place, such as two-factor authentication. Security threats are recognised and eliminated instantly using threat detection and anti-malware, which is especially crucial for organisations that deal with confidential data or information. When you use Office 365, you can run your business without worrying about security.
Users can utilise Office 365 to keep communication centralised and simple across Skype and Outlook. You can hold conference calls and meetings with employees and external agencies from anywhere in the world with Skype for Business, so you can always cooperate and communicate regardless of location or time difference. Teams have an instant messaging feature that allows users to contribute comments and upload files at the same time, which is excellent for cross-departmental collaboration and document co-authoring. On Teams, you may also 'at' people so that they are notified when a comment is directed at them. All of these capabilities allow you to stay in touch with teams and individuals at all times, regardless of where they are situated. Yammer is another Office 365 service that functions as a form of social network for your company. You may instantaneously message your whole workforce by posting to your company's 'news feed,' and employees will receive an email reminder when a new post is made, ensuring that messages are not missed. Anyone can leave a comment on a post, and you can use Yammer to create several 'channels' for different purposes, so you don't have to post to the entire organisation all of the time.
Office 365 is billed per user, per month, similar to a subscription. The price of your licenses is determined by the degree of capability you select for your company. The cost of each license is determined by the multiple enterprise levels, which comprise different applications and products. Paying per user, each month ensures a consistent outlay and allows you to plan your IT budget for the coming year. Upgrades are already included in the price of your licenses, so there are no hidden expenses. If you purchase your licenses through Core, you can adjust the number of licenses you have at any moment, for example, if you employ or fire workers. You will never be over-licensed, and there will be no waste.
Your business may continue to run normally even if there is a disaster at the workplace because files are kept in the cloud and backed up on a regular basis. Your email, files, and data are all safely kept on the cloud, regardless of what happens to your physical devices. Individual emails or entire inboxes can be restored using Exchange's recovery tools if necessary. If you're utilising Office 365, it can be business as usual in any situation
All of the main apps, like as Word, Excel, and Outlook, are included and may be used online without installing any software. Upgrades occurs at specified times, so you don't have to worry about being on the most recent version; it will happen automatically. The cost of purchasing new software is also eliminated because updates are included in your Office 365 licence subscription.
Through collaboration technologies, Office 365 allows you to share mailboxes, calendars, contacts, and modify documents in real-time. Sharing calendars in Exchange allows you to know who in your company is available when allowing you to organise meetings that are convenient for everyone the first time. Multiple users can access the same inbox with shared mailboxes, so messages can be filtered to land in the shared mailbox and not be missed. Another important tool for facilitating cooperation is SharePoint. Any staff member can access and work on documents saved here, and they can be shared through email as a link. Multiple users can simultaneously edit documents saved in SharePoint, making co-authoring simple. Thanks to little coloured flags that identify each user, you can see who is in the document at any time and even where they're working.
Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote are among the most popular products available with Office 365. Office 365 offers an unrivaled breadth of services for any organisation. The monthly subscription model for Office 365 allows businesses to purchase a plan that is appropriate for their size and number of users while continuing to operate as usual.
If you would like to find anymore information or purchase a license, please contact our support staff on (07) 4914 2433 or via our ticketing system
You might have come across the term “DNS TXT Record” as you browsed the web. If you haven’t heard about it before, you’ve probably come across a website that is using Text-Based DNS to work with their site. If you want to use this technique to work with your website, keep reading.
In this article, we will be discussing what a DNS TXT Record is, how it works, and examples of how you can use this record to work with your site. Keep reading to find out what a DNS TXT Record is, how it works and how you can use this record to work with your website.
A DNS TXT Record is a special type of DNS Record that is used to store extra data besides the standard DNS Record information. This record is stored in the DNS server and is accessible to the end-users of the DNS.
You can use the TLD (Top-level Domain) of the DNS server to define what type of data is stored in the TXT Record. Each TLD has a set of predefined TXT Records that you can use if you want to use a specific technique to work with your site.
For example, if you have a to validate your Domain name with Google and you are hosting with Hosting Australia, you can use Hosting Australia's DNS servers to create a DNS TXT record that points your Domain name to Google to validate your domain name.
TXT records can be used to ensure email security with the following records.
These records can be used to prevent phishing, spamming, and other malicious activity:
SPF is a standard email authentication method. SPF helps protect your domain against spoofing and helps prevent your outgoing messages from being marked as spam by receiving servers. SPF specifies the mail servers that are allowed to send emails for your domain. Receiving mail servers use SPF to verify that incoming messages that appear to come from your domain were sent by servers authorized by you.
| 2025.hosting-australia.com/ | TTL | Type | value: |
| 2025.hosting-australia.com/ | 3600 | TXT | v=spf1 ip4:192.243.61.237 ip6:2a05:d018:e3:8c00:bb71:dea8:8b83:851e |
DKIM Adds a digital signature to every outgoing message, which lets receiving servers verify the message actually came from your organization.
DKIM help's to protect your domain against spoofing and helps prevent your outgoing messages from being marked as spam. Spoofing is a type of email attack that forges the From address of an email message. A spoofed message appears to be from the impersonated organization or domain.
DKIM detects when a message has been modified, and when unauthorized changes are made to the message From: address.
Without DKIM, messages sent from your organization or domain are more likely to be marked as spam by receiving mail servers.
| 2025.hosting-australia.com/ | TTL | Type | value: |
| big-email._hosting-australia.com | 3600 | TXT | v=DKIM1; p=76E629F05F70 9EF665853333EEC3F5ADE69A 2362BECE4065 8267AB2FC3CB 6CBE |
DMARC: Let you tell receiving servers what to do with outgoing messages from your organization that doesn’t pass SPF or DKIM.
DMARC is a standard email authentication method. DMARC helps mail administrators prevent hackers and other attackers from spoofing their organization and domain. Spoofing is a type of attack in which the From address of an email message is forged. A spoofed message appears to be from the impersonated organization or domain.
DMARC also lets you request reports from email servers that get messages from your organization or domain. These reports have information to help you identify possible authentication issues and malicious activity for messages sent from your domain.
| 2025.hosting-australia.com/ | TTL | Type | value: |
| _dmarc.hosting-australia.com | 3600 | TXT | v=DMARC1;p=reject;pct=100;rua=mailto:postmaster@hosting-australia.com |
You can use TXT records to verify your domain with providers such as Microsoft, Google, Wix, Squarespace. This helps the provider find and validate the domain the provider gives you a record to add to your domain settings, when the provider sees that you’ve added the record, your domain ownership is confirmed and can allow other records to be added such as MX and CNAME.
| 2025.hosting-australia.com/ | TTL | Type | value: |
| businessmappingsolutions.com.au. | 3600 | TXT | google-gws-recovery-domain-verification=382251239 |
A CNAME record is a DNS record that allows you to associate one name with another name. When you create a CNAME record, you can point your domain to another record — or alias — that has the same name as itself.
The purpose of the CNAME record is to provide a way for you to leverage a domain name (to which you have the rights) for purposes that you do not own. For example, you may have the rights to build a site on http://hosting-australia.com, but you do not own the name itself. You can create a CNAME record pointing the domain name to your domain. The name used for the CNAME record (e.g. http://au.hosting-australia.com) is the alias (or target) for the domain name.
A common misunderstanding is that a CNAME record must always resolve to the same website as the domain it points to, although this isn't true. The CNAME record merely directs the client to the root domain's IP address. The web server will still handle the URL properly once the client reaches that IP address. For example, au.hosting-australia.com might have a CNAME that links to 2025.hosting-australia.com/, pointing the client to the IP address of 2025.hosting-australia.com/. When the client connects to that IP address, the webserver checks the URL and sees that it is au.hosting-australia.com, thus the blog page is delivered instead of the home page.
| au.hosting-australia.com | TTL | Type | value: |
| @ | 3600 | CNAME | is an alias of au.hosting-australia.com |
You can see that au.hosting-australia.com points to 2025.hosting-australia.com/ in this case, and assuming that it is based on our example, We know that the IP address 151.139.128.10 will eventually resolve to a record.
It's impractical to point a CNAME record to another CNAME record because it needs numerous DNS lookups before the domain can be loaded, slowing down the user experience, but it's feasible. For example, au.hosting-australia.com may have a CNAME record that linked to www.hosting-australia.com's CNAME record, which then pointed to the A record for 2025.hosting-australia.com/.
| au.hosting-australia.com | TTL | Type | value: |
| @ | 3600 | CNAME | is an alias of www.hosting-australia.com |
This option adds a step to the DNS lookup process that should be avoided if at all possible. Instead, both au. 2025.hosting-australia.com/ and www. 2025.hosting-australia.com/ 's CNAME records should link to 2025.hosting-australia.com/.
MX and NS records must point to an A record (for IPv4) or a AAAA record instead of a CNAME record (for IPv6). A mail exchange record (MX record) is a record that routes messages to a certain mail server. An NS record is a 'name server' record that specifies which DNS server for a domain is authoritative.
A domain name system (DNS) is a set of guidelines for mapping Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to domain names. A DNS A record is the resource record that maps an IPv4 address to a host name. The DNS server stores this information and can answer queries from other nodes on the Internet that are trying to resolve the IP address. This way, you don't have to memorize IP addresses for individual websites or servers on the internet. These A records are stored in a database called Zonefile.
There are different types of DNS records, and each one has a different function. It's important to know these records. But, this article will be focusing on the most common DNS record - The A record.
An A record is a mapping between a domain name and the IP address of the computer that hosts the domain. An A record is used to find the IP address of a computer connected to the internet using a domain name.
It’s quite simple, The A in A record stands for Address. The address you type every time you visit a website, send an email, connect to Twitter or Facebook, or do nearly anything else on the Internet is a collection of words connected by dots.
For example, to get our site Hosting Australia website, type www.hosting-australia.com into your browser. There is an A record on our name server that corresponds to the IP address 151.139.128.10. This implies that a request to www.hosting-australia.com from your browser gets forwarded to the server with the IP address 151.139.128.10.
A records are the most basic sort of DNS record, and they are one of the most commonly used records in DNS servers.
A records can be used for a variety of purposes, including providing redundancy and fallbacks by employing numerous A records for the same domain. Additionally, many names could point to the same IP address, in which case each would have its own A record.
The A record is essential to the functioning of the Internet since it maps a domain name to an IP address for devices connected to the Internet.
With the rise of email, we’ve all become accustomed to using a webpage to check our email. After all, you can't exactly turn your phone upside down and shake it to see if you've received an email.
This is where MX records come in. MX stands for mail exchange and an MX record is the address that tells other computers how to deliver emails sent to your domain name. Here's what you need to know about DNS MX records and how they work, so you can make sure your emails are being delivered correctly.
Email is directed to a mail server using a DNS'mail exchange' (MX) entry. As per the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, the MX record specifies how email messages should be delivered (SMTP, the standard protocol for all emails). An MX record, like a CNAME record, must always point to a different domain such as mail. or the Google MX records listed below
For these MX records, the 'priority' numbers preceding the domains indicate preference; the lower the 'priority' value, the better. Because 10 is less than 20, the server will always attempt mailhost1 first. The server will fall back to mailhost2 in the event of a message send failure.
First, you will need to have access to your cPanel. If you are not sure how to access your cPanel, CLICK HERE.
There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to managing your domain name. One of the most important things to have in order is an MX record. This is a record that controls how your email is delivered to your inbox. If you have a domain name, you have an MX record.
It's important that you know if your MX record is working correctly and if it's not, how to fix it. This is one of the simplest ways to keep your email flowing smoothly.
Have you ever wondered what an IP address is? An IP address is like your internet phone number. This number lets your computer talk to other computers over the internet. IP addresses usually look something like this: 192.168.1.1
If you want to visit a website, type in the web address (such as www.google.com) into your browser, and then hit enter to go there, your computer will contact another computer with the address of 192.168.1.1 and ask it for instructions on how to get there from where it is now.
a unique identifier is assigned to each machine in a network. Computers utilise unique identification to convey data to specific computers on a network, just like you would address a letter to send in the mail. The TCP/IP protocol is the standard for network communication in most networks today, including all computers on the internet. The IP address is a unique identifier for a computer in the TCP/IP protocol.
IP addresses are divided into two categories: IP Version 4 (IPv4) and IP Version 6 (IPv6) (IPv6). IPv4 addresses are used by all computers using IP addresses, and most also utilise the new IPv6 address scheme. The following are the distinctions between the two types of addresses:
IPv4 uses 32 binary bits to generate a single network address. Four integers separated by dots make up an IPv4 address. Each number is the decimal (base-10) representation of an octet, which is an eight-digit binary (base-2) number. Consider the following scenario: 14.203.8.145
To produce a single unique address on the network, IPv6 uses 128 binary bits. An IPv6 address is composed of eight groups of hexadecimal (base-16) numbers separated by colons, such as 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. To save space, groups of numbers with all zeros are frequently deleted, leaving a colon separator to highlight the gap (as in 2001:cdba::0370:7334).
The internet wasn't the commercial phenomenon it is now at the time of IPv4 addressing, and most networks were private and isolated from other networks around the world. With only 32 bits to establish a unique internet address when the internet first took off, there were fears that we'd run out of IP addresses before long. There are 232 potential IPv4 combinations, resulting in just over 4.3 billion distinct addresses. IPv6 increased the number of available addresses to a stress-relieving 2,128. Later, we'll look at how to decipher your computer's IPv4 or IPv6 addresses in more detail.
A dynamic or static IP address can exist. A static address is one that is assigned indefinitely. Internet service providers rarely assign static IP addresses. Static IPs can be assigned to devices on your local network, but doing so without a solid understanding of TCP/IP might lead to network problems. The most popular are dynamic addresses. The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network service that assigns them. Network gear, such as routers or dedicated DHCP servers, are commonly used to run DHCP.
A leasing system is used to issue dynamic IP addresses, which means the IP address is only operational for a certain time. The computer will automatically request a new lease if the current one expires. This may result in the computer receiving a new IP address as well, particularly if the computer was unplugged from the network between leases. Unless the computer alerts the user about a network IP address conflict, this process is normally invisible to the user (two computers with the same IP address). A conflict of address is uncommon, and today's technology usually resolves the issue automatically.
An IP address that does not change is known as a static IP address. When your device is given a static IP address, it usually stays that way until it is retired, or your network architecture changes. Servers and other key equipment typically utilise static IP addresses.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) assign static IP addresses (ISPs). Depending on the terms of your service agreement, your ISP may or may not assign you a static IP address. Your options will be discussed later, but for now, except that a static IP address will increase the cost of your ISP contract.
A static IP address might be IPv4 or IPv6; the crucial quality is static in this situation. Every piece of networked equipment we have may one day have a unique static IPv6 address. We haven't arrived yet. For the time being, permanent addresses are normally assigned to static IPv4 addresses.
There are many reasons that you might need to have an IP address. For example, if you have an online business, you will need an IP address in order to connect to the internet. You can purchase one from your internet provider, or if you are looking to save some money, you can rent one. If you are running a business, it is important to know how IP addresses work, and how they can help you reach your goals.
An IP address is a unique number that distinguishes your computer on the internet. An IP address is separated by periods and is expressed as a set of four numbers – an example address might be 192.168.111.25.
Each number in the set can range from 0 to 255. So, the full IP addressing range goes from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255. Every device connected to the internet has its own IP address, which enables data packets to
be routed along with networks and prevents duplication of addresses.
IP addresses are not generated at random. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), a part of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, creates, and assigns them mathematically (ICANN). ICANN is a non-profit organisation based in the United States that was founded in 1998 to assist keep the internet secure and accessible to everyone. Every time someone registers a domain name on the internet, they do so through a domain name registrar, who pays ICANN a nominal fee to do so.
Hosting Australia servers have security features in place to protect and prevent themselves from malicious attacks and block the IP address.
An IP blacklist may be caused by the following:
You may have had your IP blacklisted if you are unable to receive emails or access your website. If you believe your IP address has been blacklisted, please contact support at (07) 4914 2433 or via our ticketing system with your IP address so that we can unblock it and investigate why it was blacklisted.
If you need to know our IP address for support, go to whatsmyip.org and it will be displayed at the top of the page, or just Google – What's my IP and it will be displayed at the top of the results.
There are methods you can use to unblock your IP address without contacting Hosting Australia support – You can follow our step-by-step guide HERE!
Hosting Australia's support team will explain why the IP was blacklisted, why it happened, and the best way to resolve the problem. If the IP has been blacklisted because of a failed IMAP login, for example. Support will notify you of the account that is causing the problem and advise you that the account's password must be updated on all devices, or the block will occur again.
Hosting Australia will temporarily whitelist your IP, this prevents your IP from being blocked again while trying to correct the problem devices. If an IP address is whitelisted indefinitely and a device or account is hacked, it would allow the hacker complete control over the server, causing a slew of problems for all accounts and the server's integrity.
So, if you can't access your emails or your website, it's possible that your IP has been blacklisted, and you'll need to contact support to find out why and what you can do to prevent it from occurring again.
