Winhost blog

Google Does a U-Turn on Third-Party Cookies

by jon July 30th, 2024

In a surprising turn of events, Google has announced that it will not be phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome as previously planned. Of course, this happens after I reported about the third-party cookie phase out earlier. This decision marks a significant shift in Google’s privacy strategy and will likely come as a relief to many in the advertising industry who have been preparing for a cookie-less future.

So What’s Changing?

Instead of eliminating third-party cookies, Google will introduce new control settings in Chrome that allows users to make choices about their web browsing privacy. This will give users more control over their data while still supporting the ad-supported internet that many businesses rely on.

The Privacy Sandbox APIs, which were developed as an alternative to third-party cookies, will continue to be made available. Google will also introduce additional privacy controls in Chrome, such as IP protection in Chrome’s Incognito mode.

Why the Change?

The decision to keep support for third-party cookies comes after more than four years of development and testing of the Privacy Sandbox. While early tests showed promising results, the transition to a cookie-less model would have required significant work from the industry and will have impacted publishers and advertisers. In other words, there was probably a lot of pushback.

By keeping third-party cookies and introducing new user controls, Google is trying to balance privacy concerns with the needs of advertisers.

What Does this Mean for Winhost Customers?

For businesses that use Winhost for their online presence, this change means that existing advertising strategies that rely on third-party cookies can continue for the time being. However, it’s still important to prepare for a future where user privacy takes a more center stage.

The continued development of the Privacy Sandbox APIs offers a path forward for businesses to adopt privacy-preserving technologies. As user expectations around privacy evolve, companies that get ahead of these changes can build trust with their customers and stay competitive.

Stay Ahead of the Curve

While the retention of third-party cookies may seem like a relief, it’s important for businesses to stay focused on privacy. Here are a few steps you can take:

Start testing Privacy Sandbox APIs: Even though third-party cookies are sticking around (for now), the Privacy Sandbox offers an alternative. You may want to begin exploring how you can use these APIs in your advertising strategies when you have time.
Prioritize first-party data: Building strong relationships with your customers and collecting data directly from them will be key as privacy regulations tighten. Look for ways to offer value in exchange for information.
Keep a close eye on updates: As Google rolls out its new Chrome privacy controls and continues to develop the Privacy Sandbox, stay informed about what these changes mean for your business.

By being proactive and putting privacy at the forefront, you can set your business up for success in a world where your users have more control over their privacy preferences.

Visit Winhost to learn more about our Windows hosting and ASP.NET hosting solutions

Google is Removing Support of Third-Party Cookies: What It Means for You

by jon June 12th, 2024

Google recently announced that it will be phasing out support for third-party cookies in its Chrome web browser within the next two years. While this move is aimed at improving user privacy, it will undoubtedly have significant implications for web developers and businesses, particularly those who rely on cookie-based tracking for advertising and personalization. In this post, we’ll explore what the removal of third-party cookie support means and how you can prepare for this change.

The removal of third-party cookie support will have several key impacts:

Advertising and Monetization: Many sites rely on advertising as a primary source of revenue. The removal of third-party cookie support will make it much more difficult to deliver targeted ads, which could impact ad revenue. You will need to find new ways to support advertising on your sites.
User Tracking and Personalization: Third-party cookies are often used to track user behavior across different sites and deliver personalized experiences. Without these cookies, sites will need to find alternative ways to track users and deliver personalized content and recommendations.
Analytics: Some web analytics tools rely on third-party cookies to track user behavior. You may need to switch to different analytics tools or implement new tracking methods.

While the removal of third-party cookie support presents challenges, there are steps you can take to prepare:

First-Party Data: Focus on collecting and utilizing first-party data, which is data collected directly from users on your own website. This could include subscription information, preferences set by users, and behavior on your site.
Contextual Advertising: Rather than relying on user profiles built with third-party cookies, focus on delivering ads based on the context of the page. For example, a page about hiking could be shown ads for hiking gear.
Privacy-Friendly Identifiers: Explore the use of privacy-friendly identifiers which typically groups users into cohorts based on interests while preserving privacy.
Consent: Ensure you have clear consent from users before collecting and using their data. Transparency is key in a post-cookie world.

Google’s removal of third-party cookie support will have significant implications for site. However, by focusing on first-party data, contextual advertising, privacy-friendly identifiers, and consent, sites can thrive in a post-cookie world. It’s essential to start preparing now for these changes, which will be rolled out by Google over the coming months.

Visit Winhost to learn more about our Windows hosting and ASP.NET hosting solutions

Control Panel Multifactor Authentication Using Authentication Applications

by Curtis January 25th, 2024

We added the option of enabling Multifactor Authentication (MFA) to the Control Panel using Authentication Applications, like Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator and others. By enabling MFA you can add an additional layer of security to your control panel access making it much more secure from unauthorized access.

You can enable MFA using Authentication Apps in the Account and Billing section of your Control Panel. After you enable this MFA option, the next time you log into the Control Panel, you will be asked to input the verification code from your preferred Authentication Application.

Visit Winhost to learn more about our Windows hosting and ASP.NET hosting solutions

.NET 8 Hosting is here!

by Curtis December 6th, 2023

Microsoft released .NET 8.0 last month on November 14th, 2023.

Today we announce that .NET 8 Hosting is now available on our hosting platform for all our ASP.NET Hosting plans.

Visit Winhost to learn more about our ASP.NET Core hosting solutions

Why it’s better to skip VPS and upgrade to Managed Hosting

by Moises May 11th, 2023

If you’re running a website or application on a traditional shared hosting provider and you are feeling like you are outgrowing the shared environment, you may be considering upgrading to a virtual private server (VPS) as a next step. While a VPS can provide some benefits over shared hosting, it may not be the best solution for every website. In some cases, it may be more effective to skip VPS and move straight to a Managed Hosting service.

With Managed Hosting, you’ll get a customized hosting infrastructure that fits your needs, which can help your site handle more traffic and run more smoothly. And with Winhost’s Managed Hosting, you’ll have access to a team of professionals who can help you with everything from setting up your server to optimizing your site performance.

Winhost’s Managed Hosting provides many benefits over both traditional shared hosting and VPS.

No Noisy Neighbor Effect
With shared hosting, many customer sites run on a single server. With VPS, you have a slice of a server that has many other VPS customers – and they all share the resources of a single server. In either case, you are sharing resources and are susceptible to noisy neighbors. If another site is using up a lot of server resources, your site can be negatively impacted. If another site uploads a vulnerable application, your site could be affected.

No Server Management
Winhost’s Managed Hosting is fully-managed. We take care of setting up the server and the ongoing server maintenance and security patching. With VPS, you will need to manage your slice of the server. And you are also relying on the other VPS customers on the same server to make sure they manage their VPS too.

Easier Upgrading
Upgrading Shared Hosting and VPS usually means migrating your site which is disruptive. With Winhost’s Managed Hosting infrastructure, we can upgrade your server with little to no downtime.

Consultation and Technical Support
Typically traditional shared hosting and VPS are deployed through automated online signup forms. With Winhost’s Managed Hosting, we provide preplanning consultation and we customize the private hosting environment for your site/s and we assist in migration. Our team of experts is also available to help you plan for growth as well.

So, how do you know when it’s time to make the move to Managed Hosting?
Here are a few key indicators:

Your site is slow or going down often. This behavior is a sign that the shared hosting plan or VPS plan doesn’t have enough server resources to run your site with stability. You’ll need to figure out an upgrade path for your site.
Your site is experiencing high traffic levels. A VPS can provide some improved performance over shared hosting, but it still may not be able to handle very high traffic levels. A Managed Hosting solution is customized for your site requirements so it can provide the capacity and performance your site needs to handle high traffic.
You need to upgrade your hosting solution but you’re not a technical expert. An unmanaged VPS requires technical knowledge and expertise to set up and manage the server. If you’re not a technical expert, a Fully-Managed Hosting service can provide the expert support you need to set up and manage your server environment.

In conclusion, if your site is experiencing sluggish performance and/or high traffic levels, it may be best to consider skipping VPS solutions and upgrading to a fully-Managed Hosting service, especially if you do not have the technical expertise to setup and manage the server.

If you’d like to learn more about Winhost’s Managed Hosting solutions, we invite you to join us for a meeting to discuss your site and answer any questions. To join a meeting, click on this link:

Schedule a Meeting.

We look forward to discussing Managed Hosting with you and helping you get the most out of your website or application.

Learn more about Winhost Managed Hosting

The Journey from Shared Hosting to Managed Hosting with Winhost

by Moises April 11th, 2023

Running an e-commerce website on a shared hosting plan can be a great starting point, but as your business grows and traffic increases, you may find that the resources provided by a shared plan are not enough to handle the demands of your site. This is the point when you want to consider upgrading your hosting solution, but the transition can be daunting. If you choose to go with unmanaged VPS/Dedicated Server, not only do you have to worry about the technical aspects of setting up the server, you’re also responsible for the ongoing maintenance of the server. If you choose to go with a public cloud provider like Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS, you’ll need to set up and manage your own server as well, but there are also concerns about unexpected bills since you’ll be charged for every aspect of the service, like resource usage, in-and-out bandwidth and even technical support.

But what if you could have the best of both worlds? What if you could get the control and flexibility of a dedicated server without the stress of setting up and managing the server yourself. What if you can get this at a set price without worrying about unpredictable monthly fees. This is precisely what Winhost’s Managed Hosting services offer.

Winhost’s Managed Hosting service is fully-managed, so we’ll set up the server and even migrate your site over. We’ll take care of all the ongoing server maintenance, server updates and security patches. And unlike the public cloud providers, you get this at a predictable flat monthly price. You can focus on running your business and not have to worry about your server or unpredictable monthly fees.

Our Managed Hosting solution includes a web server starting with typically 4CPU, 4GB of RAM, and 40GB of disk space for your data. For most sites, this allows you to store all your files, images, and databases with ease.

With our Managed Hosting service you can increase resources, such as RAM, CPU, and storage with little to no downtime. This level of control and flexibility allows your server to be customized to fit your needs. Your site will be able to handle higher traffic and efficiently process more transactions, which is key to handling growth for your business.

If you have any questions or want to learn more about how Winhost’s Managed Hosting services can benefit your business, don’t hesitate to schedule a meeting with one of our experts. They will be happy to answer any questions and help you find the perfect solution to suit your needs. Together, we can make the transition to Managed Hosting a worry-free journey.

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Introducing Winhost Managed Hosting Services

by Moises March 14th, 2023

At Winhost we had three standard shared hosting plans for the past 12 years that I’ve worked for Winhost – the Basic, Max, and Ultimate hosting plans. As time passed, web applications continued to introduce new versions and, with each new version, the server resources they require increased. For example, a popular .NET open source ecommerce application, nopCommerce, required more memory over the years. If I recall correctly, I believe this was particularly noticeable after version 3.8. To address this trend, Winhost added a new Power plan that is perfect for semi-busy nopCommerce sites. The Power plan provides the application pool with 1GB of memory, just right for a decently sized nopCommerce site with moderate traffic. However, what happens when specific applications require more resources than the Power plan?

Managed Hosting Services
For websites that outgrow our Power plan, rather than adding yet another Shared Hosting plan, Winhost decided to introduce Managed Hosting Services. With Managed Services, Winhost provides customers with their own customized hosting servers that is not shared with other customers. The service is fully-managed so customers don’t even need to worry about any server maintenance.

What about VPS or Dedicated Server?
When outgrowing shared hosting, some consider using a VPS server or a dedicated server. However, one of the most daunting tasks is setting up a server for your site, especially an e-commerce site. Most site owners that I’ve talked to would prefer to just worry about their application. However, an unmanaged VPS or dedicated server requires the site owner to take on the server setup and administration and maintenance – something that many site owners have little experience with. You can ask the host for help, but I’ve been shocked by how little support some even “premium hosting service providers” actually give their clients, while others will charge an arm and a leg for their support.

Winhost Fully-Managed Hosting with Technical Support Included
This is where Winhost’s managed services comes into play and shines. With Winhost Managed Services, you truly only need to worry about your application. Our system admins will handle any customization or special requirements for the servers. And, they will also keep the server up-to-date with the updates and security patches. The service also includes standard technical support and we also offer an additional 2 hours of free hands-on system administrator support per month. For the sysadmin support, maybe you need help optimizing your MS SQL Database or you discovered a problem with one of your SQL queries and need our DBA’s assistance to help resolve your issue. Most e-commerce site owners probably don’t have their own database administrator but by using Winhost’s Managed Hosting Services you practically do. This is the type of support services that makes Winhost’s Managed Services stand out.

Backups
In addition, nightly site and database backups come standard with our Managed Hosting service. You can change the retention of the nightly backups to whatever suits your needs. The backups are stored in a data center entirely outside of Winhost’s data center for added security. So, in a worst case scenario, even if Winhost’s data center went down, you still can get to your backups. As long as you have enough disk space on the cloud backup service, we can keep your site backups as long as you require them.

Advanced Monitoring
Another highlight of Winhost’s Managed Services is our Advanced Monitoring service that helps reveal issues that occur on your site that you may never see without the monitoring service. The advanced monitoring service is a low-resource service that attaches itself to the process on the server. This helps monitor any errors your e-commerce site might encounter, like a slow-running query or a random error your customer experienced at checkout. How would you ever know there was an issue with your order form if your potential customer never contacted you about it? Chances are they moved on to your competitor, and you’re left wondering why an item was left in the shopping cart. The Advanced Monitoring service can alert you of any issues your site visitors may have encountered.

Let’s Meet
We’d love to chat if you want to learn more about how Winhost Managed Hosting Services can help your site. Let’s meet to discuss your needs and explore how we can help you take your business to the next level. Contact us today to get started.

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