We expect to be back up and running on Monday or Tuesday.

HAI Hosting’s Linux CentOS and Windows Dedicated Servers have been completely revamped to include 64-bit operating systems across the board! All CPUs have been upgraded to Intel Core i3, i5, or i7 options. Storage and bandwidth capacities have also been increased.

If any of High Aspirations, Inc.’s clients are ready for their own Dedicated Server, all they have to do is contact us. Whether you want us to manage it for you as part of your regular maintenance or handle it all yourself, we’ll be happy to assist in any way you need us to.

What does that mean?

leenk.me is High Aspirations, Inc.’s plugin of choice for connecting clients’ WordPress blogs to social media sites. We use leenk.me to have each blog post our clients publish automatically post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and FriendFeed.

leenk.me is setup to use a Facebook account’s login to make that connection between blog and Facebook. The changes Facebook implemented now prevent that connection from happening with any version of leenk.me before 1.4.0.

Almost all High Aspirations, Inc. clients using leenk.me, have been setup to use Liz’s personal Facebook account. This was done to avoid clients having to notify us whenever they changed their passwords. This is no longer possible.

The Facebook connection to leenk.me will expire every 60 days. This means that regular maintenance will have to be performed to re-connect Facebook and the client’s blog every other month.

What happens now?

1. all sites need to have their leenk.me plugin upgraded to version 1.4.0
2. the client’s personal Facebook account needs to be added to their leenk.me account
3. the connection between the client’s blog and Facebook needs to be verified
4. every 60 days, a visit to leenk.me will have to be made to re-establish the connection with Facebook
5. clients must notify us whenever they change their Facebook account password

And who’s going to do this?

If you are a client on maintenance, High Aspirations, Inc. will be taking care of the upgrade and connection problem fix for you. It may already be done by the time you read this blog post. We will also schedule re-setting that connection every 60 days. But, you will have to remember to notify us if you ever change your Facebook account password.

If you don’t currently have a maintenance agreement with us, we will be notifying you of the problem and you can decide if you want to handle this yourself or hire us to do it.

Where can I find more info?

You can read all about this in the leenk.me developer’s blog post which also includes a video on what needs to be done to get the connection working again.

The New and Improved leenk.me API and Account Settings

Climate Impacts Day

May 5, 2012

Danny at 1% for the Planet says:

Climate Impacts Day is a day to draw attention to and connect the dots between climate change and the extreme weather that the world has faced in recent years.

Read Danny’s entire blog post at the 1% for the Planet blog.

Visit Climate Impacts Day to find out more information and find an event near you!

We’ve upgraded to the new version of leenk.me, reconnected our blog to Facebook, and this is the blog post to test that connection.

Crossing virtual fingers…

There is a defect in an internal component in the power supply which can overheat and pose a fire hazard. Not every M70z and M90z desktop is being recalled so consumers will need to check the serial number on their computer with Lenovo to determine if it is subject to the recall.

Consumers should visit the Lenovo ThinkCentre M90z & M70z All-In-One Desktop PC Recall page to check their serial numbers.

Visit the CPSC (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission) web site for the complete recall notice which includes the complete list of recalled models, additional contact information, and a product image.

Tech Talk, powered by WordPress (and fully updated!)

You can find more details on what was fixed on the WordPress News blog.

All High Aspirations, Inc. clients on maintenance have already been upgraded.

If you don’t currently have a maintenance agreement with us, don’t hesitate to contact us for one or for a project price to get your site updated and secure.

Anyone tackling the upgrade on their own should make a full backup of your site and database before beginning.

With every SSL Certificate purchased at HAI Hosting, you’ll receive a free Malware Scanner!

What is the Malware Scanner?

This daily scan ensures hackers haven’t infected sites with malicious links that could spread worms, Trojans, viruses and spyware. If suspicious links are found, the customer is notified and provided with information on how to remove them.

Don’t hesitate to contact us to have an SSL Certificate added to your website and take advantage of the added security of the free Malware Scanner!

HAI Tech Talk, powered by WordPress

There are many reasons to keep your site’s WordPress software up to date including getting to use new features, smaller updates now save you from the time-consuming massive upgrade later, and ease of use for both admins and users as site functionality is improved.

But, the most important reason to keep WordPress updated is security!

WordPress.org has this to say:

If a vulnerability is discovered in WordPress and a new version is released to address the issue, the information required to exploit the vulnerability is almost certainly in the public domain. This makes old versions more open to attack, and is one of the primary reasons you should always keep WordPress up to date.

Clients on maintenance don’t have to worry about any of this. High Aspirations, Inc. will take care of updating your site’s version of WordPress and any plugins it might be running. As part of that maintenance, we backup the site and database before updating. And, if your site is doing anything ‘involved’ such as e-commerce or managing a mailing list, we’ll do a test run of the entire update process on our test server so we are sure your live site’s update will be as smooth as we can make it.

If you aren’t currently on maintenance, just contact us. We’ll be happy to set you up with a customized maintenance agreement for just what you want High Aspirations, Inc. to handle for you. Or, we’ll be happy to give you a quote to just bring your site up to date.

HAI Hosting has changed the billing model for Express Email Marketing®

You no longer have to worry about how many emails are sent a month. From now on, Express Email Marketing is billed based on the number of subscribers!

Plans for 1,000, 2,500 and 10,000 subscribers per month are available.

All plans include:

• Over 160 ready-made designs
• Huge 20,000+ image library
• Automatic photo resizing
• Ability to create both HTML and text emails
• Easy Email Editor
• Social media management tools
• Sign-up form for your home page
• Easy list import
• Bounce and unsubscribe handling
• Detailed reports
• Survey builder
• List Manager
• Now-or-later scheduling

You don’t need to be hosted with HAI Hosting and you can manage this one all on your own so those money-saving do-it-yourselfers out there can take advantage of this marketing service too.

But, if you are a High Aspirations, Inc. client and you want us to handle this for you along with all your other maintenance, just let us know.