Considering adding video to your website? It can be a great way to connect with your visitors and boost your conversion rates.

This post will assume you already have a video file you want to use (you can use Windows Movie Maker or iMovie to create one). So, here are two options you may consider:

1) Use a Video Hosting Website

This is the easiest way to get your video online. It allows you to quickly get your video on your website without worrying about extra bandwidth charges (video files are HUGE), and also gives you additional promotion because your video is posted on the video hosting site. Plus, they’ll convert your video file to flash for you which saves you from downloading additional software and spending time on the conversion.

Here are some to look at:

• YouTube
• Google Video
• Photobucket
• Stream Load
• Vimeo

This is the option I personally recommend (quick and easy!) unless you really need more control over your video.

2) Host the video on your website and use a flash player.

Yes, I know there are multiple video formats you could use (Windows Media, Quick Time, etc) but Flash is the most compatible and has a reasonably small file size for video.

The first step is to convert your video file to Flash format. Here are some programs you can do that with:

• Riva VX: Free, Windows Only*
• FFmpeg: Free, Windows & Mac (not for beginners)*
• Visual Hub: Under $25, Mac Only*

* These programs will give you a .flv video file only. This is what your Flash .swf file will use to play your video.

• Moyea Video4Web Converter: Free, Windows Only
• Adobe Flash: $699, Windows & Mac
• SoThink Flash Video Encoder: $45, Windows Only

If you used Video4Web, Adobe Flash, or SoThink Flash Video Encoder, these programs will provide the flash player you need to add to your website. Just follow their directions.

Otherwise, if you’ve just got a .flv file, the next step is to setup the player.

If you’re on Windows, Wimpy Wasp ($30) is a nice program for this. Or there’s Any FLV Player (free).

Once you’ve got all that together, you’re ready to upload your files (remember to upload both the flv and the swf) and then add the code to your website! You can do that part through the cPanel File Manager or your favorite FTP program.

Customer requested!  Icons below may be used on your website to share that the server is powered by the wind.  Just right-click to download, then upload the image to your website.  If you’d like to link it to the Elemental Muse website you’re welcome to.

For more info on our wind powered servers, click here.

I’m happy to share with you that Nikki DeNapoli will be joining us at the client support desk.  Nikki lives in Mesa, Arizona with her children and husband.  Beginning in July she’ll be helping me with billing and payment support so you can get a quicker answer to any billing related issues.  If we need to contact you about your account, she will be the helpful person on the other end of the email or phone.  Thanks for your help, Nikki!

Over the last few months, Elemental Muse has been steadily growing. We’re so excited about this growth and honored to be able to serve our clients! In the next few months you’ll see big changes and news from us here that will allow us to keep improving our service and offerings.

To continue to provide excellent uptime on reliable servers and provide for continued growth, one of the steps we are taking is to move to a new datacenter.

This new facility is called the Telecom Center, and is situated less than 500 feet from our current datacenter. It’s an excellent datacenter and under the direct control of the same wonderful team of server administrators as the current servers. There are security cameras watching the datacenter 24/7, a built in network operations center, temperature monitoring of the air conditioning units, and more. There are only advantages to moving here. This move makes sure that we have the ability to expand, which is critical. You won’t have to do anything, other than sit back and relax.

The Move:
The server administrators have already conducted trial runs and extensive testing to ensure that everything goes as smoothly as possible. The process of what will happen is as follows:

• Shut down 1 server at a time
• Walk the server 500 feet to the new facility and rack it
• Press the power button
• That’s it!

We anticipate there will be 30 minutes of downtime while we move the servers to the new datacenter. While this is being very conservative, we feel that we should be very upfront about this whole process so everyone knows what to expect. We want to be as transparent as possible. No client will have to do anything. IP addresses will stay the same, the network that we have will stay the same, everything is exactly the same.

The moves for both Melete and Iris will occur Sunday afternoon, July 6, at approximately 12PM-1PM PST (GMT -8:00). It’s on the weekends, so we don’t interfere with normal business operations. There is NO change in service at all. The only downtime, as stated is a physical move of 500 or so feet.

Email:
For those of you who are concerned about email delivery, don’t worry. Once the server is racked and back online any mail sent when the server was physically moved, will be in your email account when the server is back up. Email servers around the internet are configured to retry sending mail for days if not weeks, and it is quite rare to lose mail because of this.

Networks Speed:
Since we are physically moving the servers, nothing changes. The speed actually only increases since we have upgraded capacity at the new datacenter. We have 10Gigabit switches, with a new private backend network, which is something we currently don’t have. So we will have at minimum a multiple 10G frontend network (and a 10G backend, which is something that I haven’t seen any other datacenter in the world do.

Providers:
Since this new facility is so close to our current one, nothing will change. We will have the exact same network providers that we have now, but with major network upgrades which will be announced soon. The network is solid through and through. We have added a route optimization device, which does some amazing things, and all of this is FREE to you.

Other Tenants:
For those of you who want to know which other big clients are in the new datacenter, let’s just say too many to mention, but we’ll say Sprint, Global Crossing, Level 3 Communications, Above Net, and the list goes on and on. There are major players here, just like at our current facility.

Upgrades:
Over the course of the move, we will be introducing some wondeful upgrades and enhancements to our service offerings. Being in the new facility allows us to introduce these new upgrades for all of you.

Datacenter Pictures:

Once you’re all signed up for hosting, the next step is to get your website online. Where should you begin?

First, you need to know what the purpose of your website is. Is it an informational website where you can provide details of your organization, group, or services? Do you want a blog? Or are you planning to sell online with an ecommerce site?

Each of these types of sites should be approached differently. Here are four ways to get your website online.

1) Hire a Designer

If you do not want to create the site yourself, or do not have time, there are many excellent designers available who can provide this service for you.

2) Use a “content management system” or “site builder”

This is software that is installed on your hosting space where you can login to an administrative interface through your web browser and choose a design, add pages or posts, and maintain your websites. These systems work well for those with at least a bit of computer experience (if you can use Word, Outlook Express and similar programs and follow video tutorials or written tutorials to learn about the site builder you choose, you’ll be fine).

Elemental Muse hosting packages include Fantastico, which is a script auto-installer that allows you to very easily get setup with several site builder software options, including:

SohoLaunch — great for informational websites and has the PayPal buttons available so you can easily sell your products/services if you do not need inventory control. Many designs to choose from and good support options available including this series of video tutorials at http://info.soholaunch.com/index.php?pr=Flash_Tutorials and also a free weekly webinar to show you the basics you can sign up for at www.soholaunch.com

Wordpress — this is a blog software, but also works very nicely for informational websites as it allows you to create pages and blog posts. Many plugins and themes are available but it takes a bit more technical knowledge to use those features (downloading, unzipping, uploading with FTP). You can find very good lessons for beginners at http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Lessons

3) Install an ecommerce system

If you plan to use your site to sell products or services, especially with limited quantities then you may want to choose a store & shopping cart system to power your site. Several choices are available free with your hosting package, and many paid systems also work nicely on our servers (XCart, Iris Market Builder, and others).

These three are free and available through the auto-installers in the cPanel so they’re easy to setup:

• osCommerce — www.oscommerce.com
• Zen Cart — www.zencart.com
• Cube Cart — www.cubecart.com

4) Build your website with a program on your computer then upload to the server

You can also choose to create your website with a program like Front Page, Dreamweaver, etc and then upload it to your hosting space. This option requires more technical knowledge, but also allows you to work on your site offline so it’s good for people on dial up connections.

This covers a few of your options for getting a website online. There are many other programs and shopping carts out there that you can also choose from. But this should get you started and give you an idea where to begin.

**wooosh** Elemental Muse is pleased to announce that our servers are now powered by the wind.

Through Bonneville Environmental Foundation’s Green Tag program we’ve purchased green tags to offset the yearly energy usage of our servers.

Our official certificate is in the mail, but I’m excited to share the news so here’s a screenshot of the receipt page and I’ll post the certificate as soon as it arrives.

When you are unable to access your site, or if it’s loading very slowly, support may ask you to run a “traceroute” to help us figure out where the problem is. A trace route will “trace” the “route” that the information follows from your computer to the server when you view your website.

Or, for a more technical definition, let’s look to Wikipedia:

traceroute is a computer network tool used to determine the route taken by packets across an IP network.

How to Run a Traceroute on a Windows PC
- Click on your Start button, then choose Run.
- In the box, enter cmd
- At the command line prompt, enter tracert yourdomain.com
For example: tracert elementalmuse.com
- Now you’ll see the results. This is what you want to copy and paste into an email or ticket for the support team.

How to Run a Traceroute on Mac OS X
- Go to Applications
- Choose Utilities
- Choose Network Utility
- Click on the Traceroute Tab
- Enter the domain name and click Trace
- Now you’ll see the results. This is what you want to copy and paste into an email or ticket for the support team.

What Traceroute Results Look Like
Here is an example of what traceroute results look like:

(Click to Enlarge)

If you’re using webmail to access your email and want to archive your messages, here’s how.

1.  Login to your webmail account at http://www.yourdomain.com/webmail (replace yourdomain.com with your domain name).

2.  Choose Horde mail:

3.  Choose “Login”

4.  Click the “Mail” icon in the top navigation bar:

5.  Click the “Folders” icon in the top navigational bar:

6.  Next choose the folders you want to archive by clicking to check the box next to each, or click the box at the bottom to select all the folders to archive:

7.  Click the arrow to see the drop down menu, then choose “Download Folder(s)” from the menu:

8.  Choose “OK” on the popup asking if you want to save the file:

9.  Choose “Save” to save a copy of the file to your computer:

That’s it! You’ve successfully archived a copy of the folder(s) you selected.

The Emergency Status Page at http://elementalmuse.info has been updated to include links to the various server monitors we have running as well as a feed from the blog. Our emergency status page is hosted on a server that’s in a different datacenter from our own servers, so in the event of an emergency at the datacenter or with the servers, the status page will continue to be up and running. Be sure to bookmark it and in the event of datacenter downtime you’ll still be able to get updates and information.

We’re pleased to share that Elemental Muse is now 100% replanted!

We strive to be an environmentally friendly company and do as much as possible by email (including invoicing and related communications) to reduce our use of Earth’s limited resources. But we realize that’s not enough. To help lighten the footprint we create, we’ve chosen to participate in the 100% replanted program.

Here’s a bit of information about the program and it’s sponsor:

Trees Water & People, a non profit 501c(3) organization in Fort Collins, Colorado has planted millions of trees worldwide and oversees the planting and care for this project. Trees for 100% Replanted are planted with rural communities in western El Salvador. The ecological value, cost of planting, and community education factors make these the most effective areas. TWP and our local partner, ARBOLES, coordinate tree planting campaigns with villagers to plant the trees. ARBOLES then supervises and monitors the planting and trains the communities to protect them from draught, fire and other common hazards. TWP’s International Director or Assistant International Director verify tree plantings during multiple visits each year.

You are invited to visit 100% Replanted and make your home or business 100% Replanted, too!