When I say POODLE, what do you think of? Is it a fluffy dog? In most cases, I would be referring to the fluffy dog, but for this article, we will be focusing on a security vulnerability. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but if you’re currently using SSL version 3.0, you will need to perform some updates to your SSL daemon on your server. SSL stands for Secure Sockets layer. A SSL is what every ecommerce site should have. It allows for you to securely process payments through your website. In fact, if you’re taking orders from your clients, you should be using a SSL. SSL’s add another layer of security and trust for your clients. If you’ve not read my post on PCI compliance and you’re running an ecommerce site, you should read my post on PCI compliance here: (Insert link to PCI compliance post)

With SSL’s as with any piece of software on the internet, there are different versions. SSL version 3.0 is nearly 18 years, however, SSL version 3.0 is no longer secure and remains in widespread use across the internet. Nearly all browsers support SSL version 3, and in order to work around bugs, within HTTPS servers, browsers will retry failed connections with older protocol versions, including SSL 3.0. This retrying of failed connections within SSL v3, allows the POODLE exploit to be initiated. This POODLE exploit works due to the nature of the failed connections and allows for a possible leak of your customers data when processing orders. You can read more about the specifics of the attack here:

http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2014/10/this-poodle-bites-exploiting-ssl-30.html

Browsers and websites should turn off SSLv3 in order avoid compromising users’ private data.  The most straight forward method is to disable SSL 3.0 entirely, which you can see how to do at the links below, however, this can cause a myriad of computability issues. Therefore, the recommend plan of option is to enable TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV. Using the links below, they will show you how to properly secure your servers SSL daemon. These options resolve the issue of retrying failed SSL connections. It also prevents hackers with knowhow from downgrading from TLS 1.2 to 1.1 or 1.0.

For WHM/cPanel servers –  https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/CKB/How+to+Adjust+Cipher+Protocols

For DirectAdmin servers – http://forum.directadmin.com/showthread.php?t=50105

For Plesk servers – http://kb.sp.parallels.com/en/123160

Did you know in August 2014, Google announced that HTTPS would become a ranking credential? This is news worthy of mention and note as Google rarely reveals ranking criteria – and more so confirms that the SEO optimized hosting at TurnKey in fact  does raise your rankings for SEO systems (at least with google, now confirmed).

You can read more about Google’s comments here:  HTTPS as a ranking signal here. [PDF ] 

HTTPS is an added layer of encryption that Secure Socket Layers on top of HTTP or web traffic. This adds additional security to standard HTTP communications or web communications. SSL certificates are required for
e-commerce sites especially if you’re desiring your site to be PCI compliant. You can see my post on PCI compliance here: https://blog.turnkeyinternet.net/web_hosting/pci-dss-compliance-in-the-cloud-for-web-sites-servers-and-colocation/ .   Having an SSL certificate  is essential on an ecommerce site because of the secure transmission of sensitive information like credit card numbers, personal information, and login accounts.

If your website or blog begins with https://, you have likely received an uptick in Google’s rankings. This is currently a lightweight signal meaning that it doesn’t affect your site rankings greatly, but experts believe it will become stronger in the near future.

To turbo charge your web site’s rankings, be sure to use SSL certificates with a dedicated ip address on your web site, TurnKey offers an all-in one ‘turnkey’ solution to this to help you increase your search engine ranking with our Turbo SEO cPanel Web Hosting that bundles in multiple dedicated class-c ip’s and ssl certificates for one low cost in a simple to use interface.

Do You Need an SSL Certificate for Your Website?

REQUIRED: All websites should have some form of protection on them. This form of protection can come in many forms, however, if you’re going to be taking any type of data from your customers such as credit cards, phone
numbers, emails, or any personal information, you need to ensure that the data is transferred securely. SSL’s remain one of the most robust ways to do this.

As an online merchant, it’s your responsibility to make your customers’ private information is secure. If you are storing credit card information in a database on your website so you can manually charge it later, then you need an SSL certificate to secure the credit card data stored on your server. If you have any sort of log-in form where customers enter a username and password, on top of sanitizing the input from the user, a SSL certificate is highly recommended.

NOT REQUIRED: An SSL certificate is optional if you don’t gather personal information and instead forward your customers to a 3rd party payment processor like PayPal. This can be done as simply as embedding a PayPal button to your website. PayPal uses their own certificate to encrypt customers transactions.  HOWEVER, you can still benefit with SSL for search engine rankings, so it’s worth the investment but not REQUIRED for this category.

What Webmasters Should Do Now?

Decide the kind of certificate you need: single, multi-domain, or wildcard certificate. (More on this in a minute.)
Use 2048-bit key certificates. Use relative URLs for resources that reside on the same secure domain. Use protocol relative URLs for all other domains. Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt. Allow indexing of your pages by search engines where possible by avoid the noindex robots meta tag.

Purchase an SSL Certificate from TurnkeySSL.com

Turnkey Internet is a trusted reseller of GlobalSign SSLs. The GlobalSign SSL certificates includes domain validation, quick issuance, re-issues among many other options such as adding a full trusted bar in your browser that allows visitors to see your SSL is trusted across the web.

Turnkey Internet has multiple types of SSL certificates for secure communication with business, system, portals, mail and more.

Our TurnKeySSL alpha certificate  is ideal for small business, blogs, and personal websites which costs $29 per year.

The TurnkeySSL Professional certificate is  ideal if you wish to have multiple subdomains covered (example: corp.yourdomain.com and web.yourdomain.com). This Pro level SSL certificate has full organization vetting which provides higher levels of trust and includes a malware site scan service. This is also preferred for service providers and SEO companies. $150 per year.

Lastly, TurnKeySSL Extended Validation (EV) Certificates are the most secure and offer visitors the green bar and enhanced sales. It also includes malware site scan service. The green address bar that comes with a TurnkeySSL Extended certificate prominently displays your company name, providing immediate trust and improving customer conversions. This certificate is $899 per year.

Keeping your certificate always up to date is recommended as you never want your clients receiving any SSL warnings when purchasing a product from you. Ideally,you would set the certificate to auto-renew annually. You can always check the expiration date by clicking the padlock symbol and then “View Certificate”. Test your entire checkout process in Firefox, Google Chrome, and yes, even Internet Explorer.

Once again, you can go directly to turnkeyssl.com to purchase any of the mentioned SSL types above

To turbo charge your web site’s rankings, be sure to use SSL certificates with a dedicated ip address on your web site, TurnKey offers an all-in one ‘turnkey’ solution to this to help you increase your search engine ranking with our Turbo SEO cPanel Web Hosting that bundles in multiple dedicated class-c ip’s and ssl certificates for one low cost in a simple to use interface.  Learn more
Until next time…

LATHAM, NEW YORK (November 17^th, 2014) – Sustainable IT solutions provider TurnKey Internet, Inc. announced that it has launched their all new high-performance enterprise-class SEO Optimized cPanel Web Hosting platform.  The newly launched cPanel based Search Engine Optimized Web Hosting platform takes performance, speed, and efficiency to a new level, and combines up to 80 Unique Class-C IP Addresses and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificate Technology to give SEO minded web masters and web professionals the greatest possible advantage to high rankings within Google’s search engine system.

TurnKey’s SEO Optimized cPanel Web Hosting leverages the combination of ultra fast servers with unique and diverse IPv4 and IPv6 addresses utilizing Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificates to provide what Google announced August 6^th, 2014 as a key ranking signal for higher search engine results.  Google’s announcement of web sites that utilize this technology and methodology to receive preferential rankings within the Google Search Engine system has been leveraged by TurnKey to provide a one-stop complete SEO solution to help web masters and web professionals succeed online.

At the core of the cPanel based Search Engine Optimized Web Hosting are TurnKey’s lightning fast servers powered by Intel’s Multi-Core Xeon CPU technology providing up to 32 CPU cores combined with ultra-fast Samsung SSD solid state drives attached via Raid-10 redundant connections.  Each cPanel SEO Hosting Server produces over 600,000 DISK IOPS (input/output operations per second) and accesses Gigabit Bandwidth (1000 up x 1000 down)  throughput with direct connections into TurnKey’s Juniper powered BGP4 redundant network infrastructure housed within TurnKey Internet’s SSAE 16 Type 2 Certified and ENERGY STAR^® designated datacenter in New York.

“This new SEO hosting service provides the most innovative technologies in today’s market combined with enhanced performance over traditionally hosted web sites.  This all adds up to give our web hosting clients the absolute best advantage in the competitive search engine ranking market place.” Said David Conboy, TurnKey Internet’s Director of Client Services. “This is the most innovative, highest-performing SEO hosting configuration on the market, and a ground-breaking alternative to the other hosting options out there.”

The TurnKey cPanel SEO Optimized Web Hosting platform is a top-of-the-line hosting solution for webmasters, businesses, and individuals alike that want blazing fast response times from busy web sites and applications like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, high-traffic blogs, and any expansive database drive web site.  For more information on TurnKey’s new high performance SEO web hosting service visit:

https://turnkeyinternet.net/turbo-seo-hosting/

About Turnkey Internet

Founded in 1999, TurnKey Internet, Inc. is a full-service green data center and leading provider of sustainable web hosting and IT solutions. From its SSAE 16 Type 2 and ENERGY STAR^® certified facility in Latham, NY—New York’s Tech Valley Region—TurnKey offers web hosting, communication services, web-based IT systems, software as a service (SaaS), enterprise colocation services, and computing as a service to clients in more than 150 countries. For more information, please call (518) 618-0999 or visit www.turnkeyinternet.net/media.

Howdie do Turnkey Lovers,

I have a quick question for you. When you think of Google, what is the first thing that comes to mind? If you’re like most people, the first thing may be Search engine or Gmail. For the purposes of this post, we will focus on the search engine aspect of Google. Now, when you think of panda’s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Is it a cute, loveable creature that is known for eating bamboo. Bamboo being the favorite food for pandas. My last question is, how are these two items related?

Do you feel you’re back in high school yet with the metaphors and pandas? If you haven’t figured it out yet, what pandas and google search have in common, I will help you a bit. When you go to Google and enter a search term, you’re immediately greeted with a page that shows the sites that could match the query you’re looking for. The pages are listed in a ranking. With the 1^st site being the most likely result to match your query and the last result, being the furthest away from your query

You’re probably saying, “Hey, I know that. I know that Google ranks sites. What does this have to do with pandas?” Well my friend, did you know that the algorithm used to rank sites is called Google Panda? I bet you thought I was never going to connect Google with pandas 🙂

Google has recently released a blog post that shows that the Google Panda algorithm has been officially patented which you can read about here:

http://searchengineland.com/google-granted-patent-for-panda-algorithm-187573

However, this article isn’t about that update. This article is about Google Panda’s update that is being released to help smaller businesses to gain better rankings. You can read about it here:

http://searchengineland.com/google-working-softer-gentler-panda-algorithm-help-small-businesses-186619

You may be wondering, what does this have anything to do with Turnkey Internet and how does this affect my hosting? I would ask you back, would you like your site rankings increased? Have you ever wondered how sites are ranked so high in Google? Well to answer those questions, we must first delve a little deeper into what Google Panda actually is.

Google Panda was introduced in February 2011. The algorithm was released to help deal with low quality sites or thin sites. These are sites that you visit and are just flooded with advertisements when you view the site. It could be scrolling down the site or clicking a link and you’re instantly bombarded with advertisements. Google in 2011, wanted to fix this by creating an algorithm that would check sites content and rank those higher on in search results. This is what is known as Panda.

Several iterations of the algorithm have been released since its inception in 2011. These revisions were set to increase scrutiny and make it harder for sites to command the first page of site rankings. However, at times, this became to stringent for small businesses. A small business site may not have content that is updated every day. They may only update their sites once a week for a new special.

This resulted in some legitimate sites being listed lower on Google as smaller business may not have the funds to purchase additional resources to increase their page rankings. With this new update, Google is promising to help smaller businesses have high ranking sites within the Google databases. Google did do a softer update last year in July to help in this aspect as well which you can read about here:

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-update-17094.html

Now, you may be saying, how does this affect me? Well, I you’ve been working on improving your site ranks for your business, Google’s new Panda update will make it easier for you. You just need to ensure that you’re following some basic guidelines:

1. Make sure you have valid site content
2. Make sure you have valuable keywords that relate to your site throughout the page
3. Try to use “pretty” links instead of long, hard to deciper links. E.g http://yourdomain.com/pets instead of http://yourdomain.com/page1
4. Try to develop some content on the site even if it’s a weekly update that shows your new specials

There are many other options that you can take, but knowing that Google is updating Google Panda to help smaller businesses get better page rankings is a welcome update in many our eyes here at Turnkey Internet

Until next time Turnkey Lovers

Howdie do Turnkey Lovers,

Jeremy here again. This past week, one of my co-workers made an interesting comment to me. He said, and I quote, “One day when the internet runs out and we have no more IP’s, what will people do then?”. Now this lead me to an interesting set of questions. Is my co-worker right? Are we going to run out of the “internet”, will it just ‘stop’ workign since IP’s are becoming scarce and how will that affect hosting (SEO/cPanel/Reseller).

Well, in order to answer these questions, we must first look at what an IP even is and are their different types? Now, for most of you technies or self-proclaimed geeks, you are probably shaking your heads saying, that’s such a dumb question. Of course there are different type of IP’s and everyone knows what IP’s are. For this article though, let’s assume that you were from a distant planet who knew nothing about the internet. You and you’re family had decided to make your way down to this glorious planet for a vacation.

Upon arriving, you notice everyone is talking about social media, smart phones, computers, and tablets. You’re quite the inquisitive alien life-form and begin to wonder, “What do all of these things have in common?”.  Enter Google. You begin to search the internet as one of your new Earth friends, let’s call him Jeremy(no relation), informs you that you need to find a computer and Google Internet. Upon your search, you discover that the internet is essentially a cluster of computers connected together globally using something called a TCP/IP Protocol.

This protocol, as they call, it seems to be rather important. So important that I included the definition from Wikipedia below on it:

The Internet protocol suite is the set of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_protocol> communications protocols used for the  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet> Internet and similar networks, and generally the most popular <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_stack> protocol stack for <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_network> wide area networks. It is commonly known as TCP/IP, because of its most important protocols: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol> Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol> Internet Protocol (IP), which were the first networking protocols defined in this standard.

Not to be the alien to leave information out, you decide to research further into the Internet Protocol (IP). Definition is below:

The Internet Protocol (IP) is the principal <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_protocol> communications protocol used for relaying  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datagram> datagrams (also known as  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_packet> network packets) across an  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internetwork> internetwork using the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol_Suite> Internet Protocol Suite. Responsible for  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Routing> routing packets across network boundaries, it is the primary protocol that establishes the  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet> Internet.

Or in lamen terms, it’s an individual address that every computer, smart-phone or tablet uses to connect to the Internet. Ok, I think the alien role-playing has gone on long enough. Let’s bring this back to Earth. Now let’s say you read my previous article and learned a bit about cPanel/Reseller hosting. It’s probably safe to assume that you’re aware that when you purchase a reseller or cPanel account from Turnkey Internet at http://www.turnkeyinternet.net/ , you can receive a dedicated IP. Essentially, the address to which you can host your website.

That IP is from the IPv4 family or the Internet Protocol Version 4 family. Now if we reference the statement made by my co-worker made earlier in the article, you can safely assume there is a finite number of these type of IPs. 2^32IP address or around 4.29 Billion IP addresses. The 32 is essentially 32 bits or 192.xxx.xxx.xxx. That’s a rather large number, but so is the number of people joining the internet every day. Eventually, those IP’s will run out which will force a new IP family, IPv6. Now, I won’t bore you with the details about the differences between the two families, but there is one key difference, the number of IPs each family can produce. For IPv6, they can make 2^128 available address or 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. The 128 is essentially 128 bits or 192.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx(I think you get the point).

So to answer my co-workers question, which I’m sure you already know the answer to about running out of IPs, we just switch to a new IP family and the Internet will live on. Now, for the win, how does this affect your Turnkey Internet cPanel/reseller packages?

Well to be honest, the effect will be pretty negible on the cPanel/reseller side of things. The biggest noticeable difference will come during the transition period of switching to IPv6 as DNS propagation will take a bit of time to respond to the new IP addresses. This could affect your sites load times during the transition period. Other than that, the main difference will be cost. IPv4 will and already is becoming a premium as these IP’s are being filled by potential new Turnkey Resellers as yourself. Only a few companies are offering the IPv4 IP’s at a low, competitive price such as Turnkey Internet. Which means, you need to get them while you can.  Those who for instance start a web site a year from now when there are no more IPv4 addresses left, will only have a new IPv6 address, making their web pages possibly slower to load because of how the Internet as a whole will be using dns and specialized proxy systems to ‘store/forward’ to connect IPv4 and IPv6 together (think of it as a 4 lane highway that connects 2 big cities together).  IPv4 and IPv6 connections between each other will be congested on that 4 lane highway at times – which is why it’s very important to try to get yourself hooked up with a good web site that includes IPv4 space (and a provider that supports IPv6 too!).  TurnKey of course has that already setup for you and has been a leader in this space offering both for some time.

Well that was quite a handful or is it mouth full? I’m not sure anymore.  The reality is – the Internet will continue, IPv4 address will run out (or already are out, depending on which provider you are with) – and IPv6 will be a transition behind the scenes that may be a little bumpy and congested for people, but will happen.

Until next time Turnkey Lovers  – Jeremy

Yes, the countdown has begun. IPV4 address exhaustion and depletion. What is an IPV4 IP address? IPV4 addresses are the (4th) revision in the development of Internet Protocol; however the most widely developed among all of the versions. About 4.3 billion IP addresses spread out, all across the world. Think about that for a second, about 4.3 billion websites.. And there almost gone? Well the Internet started making a name for itself in the early 80’s, and as we all know, BOOM, all of a sudden we had Millionaires coming out of the woodwork. The Internet was the way of the future. Everything and anything could and can be found on the World Wide Web. But we are talking about a billion here.

Well believe it or not, in less than 35 years, more than 3.9 billion IP address have been allocated in one way, shape or form. Why is this so important? Well most of you reading this blog know about SEO Hosting, or Search Engine Optimization, and how it can affect your website(s), its traffic, and in some cases the success of your business. You are able to take an IPV4 (IP) address and in a matter of speaking, attach your website to that specific dedicated IP. Now when your website is the only site on a specific IP, and someone uses a “search engine” to look up your industry, you’re not sharing your IP with any other company, or website. Which in turn allows your website to be viewed first, more so than people sharing an IP. So since the development of IPV4 and the Internet boom, companies have paid top dollar to make sure that they were the only ones on a specific IP, so again, when a consumer was searching specific products, your company shows up first in line, right on top of the page. This leaves such an importance on a single IP…. Now they are running out….

In comes IPV6, to allow more people and traffic on the internet. Now remember I said that there were around 4.3 billion IP addresses in IPV4.  So mathematically IPV4 allows for 32 bits and therefore has 2³² (4 294 967 296) possible addresses, IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, for an address space of 2¹²⁸ (approximately 3.4×10³⁸) addresses.

You are now into the trillions, more IP’s than anyone could even think about.

You can see how the amount of IPV6 IP’s will greatly diminish the importance of a specific IP.  With so many IP’s, well beyond the billion mark, where is the individuality and diversity?  With such a number, how can we make one website more important than the other, especially when web traffic is designed to follow internet protocol, IP’s.

Now don’t get me wrong, in the next few years your company will still be found on the web, no matter what, but at what cost?

Find out in Part 2….