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We came across this interesting post from Pingdom who have put together some high level statistics around the internet in 2012 - some of the numbers are mind blowing!

We’ve brought together a few highlights of the list. In some cases, we’ve also put in comments for some of the highlights for comparison.

A few highlights;

• There are 2.2 billion email users (31% of the world population)
• 144 billion emails sent each day (an average of 65 emails per email user, per day)
• There are 634 million websites
• There were 191 million visitors to Google sites (includes google search, youtube etc)
• There are 246 million domain names
• There are 2.4 billion internet users (34% of the world population)
• Australian has an internet penetration of 67%, with Asia at 27.5% and North America 78% (we suspect Asia being so low has to do something with the large population numbers in Asia)
• There are 1 billion active Facebook users, and 2.7 billion likes on facebook each day
• The most popular web browser is not Internet Explorer, instead its Google Chrome.
• There were 1.2 trillion searches on Google in 2012, and
• There are 1.1 billion smartphone users

The list is quite comprehensive, so surf over to pingdom’s artice; Internet 2012 in numbers and check out the rest of the article.

Web3k are excited to announce its partnership with CloudFlare, a leading Content Delivery Network based performance and security service. CloudFlare is designed to speed up website response times by storing a copy of static website files on servers located around the globe, meaning websites and files are closer to their visitors.

The CloudFlare service also provides an extra security layer, blocking threats and limiting abusive bots before they reach Web3k’s servers, meaning less wasted bandwidth and server resources.

As a certified partner, Web3k customers and their websites can benefit from the CloudFlare service and the basic service is free and easily enabled by Web3k customers through their hosting control panels. Media such as streaming audio or video is not compatible with CloudFlare, unless the website has embedded YouTube or Vimeo videos.

With over 20 data centers and locations where it hosts the cached websites and performs its traffic filtering, Web3k customers can ensure they’re delivering their content to their customers faster than ever before with Clouldflare.

Areas covered by CloudFlare are:

• U.S: Los Angeles, San Jose, Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta, Washington DC & Newark.
• Canada: Toronto
• Europe: London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Warsaw, Prague & Vienna
• Asia: Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul & Tokyo
• Oceania: Australia

If you have a website with an international audience, why not try CloudFlare through your hosting control panel today?

When choosing a web hosting package or provider, you should consider where it will be hosted, geographically.

Depending on the content of your website, who you’re visitors or customers are likely to be and how quick you want your website to respond, you may wish to consider where it in the world your website is hosted.

For example, if the visitors of your website or your prospective customers are located in Australia, it makes sense to choose a package which will see your website hosted in Australia. There are a number of advantages, including the speed of content delivery, search engine optimisation and overall a better customer experience. Similarly, if your customers are located in the U.S, or all around the world, it makes sense to purchase a web hosting package that ensures your website is hosted in the U.S.

Generally, hosting websites in the U.S. can offer a cheaper alternative, however hosting in other parts of the world, including Australia can be worth paying a little extra for if it provides benefits to your customers.

If you update your website often, or store large files on your web hosting package, you’ll want your website to be hosted somewhere geographically close to you so it doesn’t take along time to upload or download files.

When you choose your next web hosting plan, be sure to ask where your website will be geographically located.

Nominent, the registry responsible for .UK domain names, has celebrated reaching a milestone of 10 million active domain names.

The ten millionth domain to be registered was swarvemagazine.co.uk.

In the country code top level domain stakes, .UK is still roughly 4.5 million domains behind Germany and the .de domain name space. In the context, .org domains total about 9.9 million and .net with 14.5 million, roughly the same as .de.

Looking to get your hands on your own .uk domain? Head over to our domain search and register your .uk domain name today!

If you’re looking for a new web hosting plan or looking to transfer from your current host, why not take advantage of a free $75 Google Adwords voucher by signing up to any of Web3k’s hosting plans!

For customers who sign-up in January to any of our Web Hosting plans, each will get one $75 Google Adwords voucher to help kick start their online advertising. Adwords is the most powerful online advertising solution available today and allows you to advertise online with Google, the largest online search engine on the internet, quickly and easily and allows you to target customers using selected keywords which match your business and your products and services.

Some of the great features of Google Adwords are;

• Control your advertising costs; set your daily spend limit and there is no minimum spend or contract required.
• Target people specifically searching for your brand, product or service.
• Pay only when people click on your ads.
• Measure the performance of your advertising with detailed reporting.

The $75 credit can only be applied to new Google Adwords accounts within 30-days of signing up for a new Google Adwords account. New Google Adwords accounts attract a $10 set-up fee and vouchers must be used by the 31/03/2012 otherwise they will expire.  Offer ends 31 Jan 2012.

Your Google Adwords voucher will be sent to you within a business day or two of signing up with Web3k.

There is a lot of confusion for individuals looking for web hosting services. Is Linux or Windows better? Which will better suit your needs? We try and explain the differences to help you choose which is the right hosting technology for you - Linux web hosting or Windows web hosting.

Linux is an open source and largely free operating system and competitor to Microsoft Windows. Open source means that rather than one company having control over the software, many thousands of people commit their spare time to making the product better.

Linux is very popular for web hosting, with most web hosting organisations, like Web3k opting to use Linux for its servers. It’s quick, comes with all the software both we and our customers need to easily manage their websites and it’s a very reliable system.

Some might think that because they use Microsoft Windows at home, they need a web hosting plan that’s Windows powered too, though that’s not the truth. Truth is, if you’re hosting a basic website, both Windows and Linux will work in much the same way and most customers won’t know the difference.

If you’re a seasoned programmer, or you’re getting a web development company to build your souped up website with lots of features, then what hosting you need will come down to how the website is programmed and coded. There are two main programming languages for the web besides HTML, and they are PHP (Linux) and ASP/ASP.Net (Windows).

Windows hosting generally commands a premium too, as the software is at little more expensive. Generally the security and availability of websites on either Linux or Windows is much the same.

So, it really comes down to what how you’re website is coded – if it’s a basic website, coded in HTML or PHP, then a simple Linux based web hosting plan will do the trick. If it’s built using the ASP or ASP.Net programming languages, then a Windows web hosting plan is the go.