When you access your emails through a desktop mail client like Outlook:

The emails are typically stored on the client’s local storage (your computer), and changes made in the client (such as deleting emails) don’t directly affect the emails on the email server (in this case, Google’s servers).

If you delete your Google account, it won’t automatically delete the emails stored in your Outlook client. However, there are some important considerations:

  1. Local Storage: The emails downloaded and stored locally in Outlook are on your computer. Deleting your Google account won’t remove these emails from Outlook’s local storage.
  2. Synchronization: If you’re using an email protocol like IMAP, changes made on one device (e.g., deleting an email) are synchronized with the server and reflected on other devices. If you delete your Google account, this synchronization won’t occur, and changes made in Outlook won’t affect your Google account.

How to Keep Emails if Deleting Google Account:

  1. Backup Emails:
    • Before deleting your Google account, consider creating a backup of your important emails. You can export emails from Outlook to a local file for archiving.
  2. Change Account Settings in Outlook:
    • If you want to keep using Outlook without the Google account, you may change the account settings to work offline. This way, the emails already downloaded will remain in Outlook even if the Google account is removed.
  3. Export Outlook Data:
    • Additionally, you can export your Outlook data, including emails, contacts, and calendar items, to a PST (Personal Storage Table) file. This file can be imported into Outlook later if needed.
  4. Verify Email Storage Type:
    • Check the account settings in Outlook to see if your emails are stored locally (using POP3) or are synchronized with the server (using IMAP). Understanding the storage type helps in determining how changes affect your emails.
  5. Consider Professional Advice:
    • If you have concerns about data loss or are unsure about the best approach, consider seeking professional advice, especially if your emails are critical for business or personal reasons.

Remember that specific steps might vary depending on your Outlook version and configuration. Always take precautions when dealing with email data to avoid unintentional loss. If you’re unsure, consider consulting with an IT professional for guidance tailored to your specific setup.

 

 

Cloud hosting is a type of web hosting which uses multiple different servers to balance the load and maximize uptime. Instead of using a single server, your website can tap into a “cluster” that uses resources from a centralized pool. This means that even if one server fails, another kicks in to keep everything running.

Visualise the cloud as a web of different computers which are all interconnected. As more machines are hooked up to the network, more resources are added to the overall cloud.

With cloud hosting, you get a part of the so-called cloud cluster. As opposed to traditional web hosting, where you get a certain amount of space from a single server.

The main benefits of cloud hosting include a major focus on uptime, isolated resources, easy scaling, and a dedicated IP address.

Cloud hosting architecture

The architecture of cloud hosting differs from the setup used in regular web hosting:

Most shared hosts use a centralized approach where one server holds multiple websites. But if that server goes down, so does every account in it.

On the other hand, the distributed approach of cloud hosting solves this problem. Since each website is “distributed” across multiple locations, you’ll get no downtime in case a server in the cluster experiences a problem.

Large websites such as search engines and social networks use the distributed approach, as no single server could handle such the load. Big projects like these either build their own cloud hosting architecture or they hire resources from a cloud hosting provider.

What kind of websites use cloud hosting?

The types of websites that use cloud hosting are as varied as those that use regular hosting, but there are cases where it’s particularly popular.

If a website is mission-critical, meaning that the company can’t function without it, then cloud hosting is a good idea. It’s also chosen by many e-commerce stores, lead generation sites, corporate websites and high-traffic projects.

At the same time, cloud hosting makes it easy to scale in case you need more power. This makes it appealing to news agencies and publishing firms who expect traffic surges or huge numbers of clicks on their posts.

Ultimately, it’s a pretty good choice in most situations, which is why it’s able to rival shared hosting and virtual servers.

Does artKenya offer cloud hosting?

We surely do! Our cloud hosting starts at just KES 3000/month and includes a dedicated IP address, 40 GB disk space, 3 GB of RAM and more. All of our accounts are fully scalable and feature extensive security measures to keep your data safe. Our plans also include:

  • CloudFlare integration
  • Free domain name registration
  • Lifetime SSL certificate
  • More goodies!

Our cloud hosting infrastructure uses the latest technology and best practices, and reliability and performance are guaranteed.

The future of cloud hosting

Cloud computing, in general, is becoming more and more important for our modern society. The technology can bring many industries and business the cutting edge in the online world. Web hosting is just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s also the cornerstone that makes cloud possible.

Don’t be surprised when you see cloud hosting forming the backbone of everything from digital health records to property databases, legal agreements in the upcoming future!


Learn more about our cloud hosting plans

At first glance, it may seem easy to choose the best. Although, in reality, it’s quite a frustrating process when you don’t have pointers that could help you decide what is the best choice for you. So, let’s get straight into it.

The first thing to check is if the host, which you’re considering to use, meets recommended requirements for WordPress support:

  • PHP 7.3+. In this case, I would recommend PHP 7.4. WordPress websites present faster execution times and less memory usage when using PHP 7.4, compared with previous versions. Just make sure that your WordPress theme and plugins are updated for the recent release. Also, it’s worth mentioning that PHP 7.4 comes with many other exciting features.
  • MySQL 5.6+ or MariaDB 10.1+. Make sure that your potential host uses a secure and high performing relational database management system (RDBMS). An industry-standard like MySQL or MariaDB with its cutting edge features like GIS support should do the trick.
  • HTTPS support (SSL/TLS). HTTPS is a secure extension of HTTP. Websites that install and configure an SSL/TLS certificate can use the HTTPS protocol to establish a secure connection with the server. The goal of SSL/TLS is to make it safe and secure to transmit sensitive information, including personal data, payment, or login information. SSL/TLS is a must whenever confidential information such as usernames and passwords or payment processing information is being transferred.
  • LiteSpeed web servers (LSWS). I would definitely recommend this, although it isn’t a requirement. LSWS increases the performance and scalability of web hosting platforms through its event-driven architecture. So, it has the capability of serving thousands of clients simultaneously with a minimum usage of server resources such as memory and CPU. To put a cherry on top – WordPress has the LiteSpeed Cache plugin developed by LiteSpeed engineers. It vastly improves the loading speed of your website.

Since many of the hosts meet these recommended requirements, it shouldn’t be hard for you to find an attractive web host. After you’ve done that, there are other things to check:

  • Price. Keep in mind that you don’t need to choose the most expensive hosting or plan to get the best quality. There are hosting providers that are perfect for WordPress hosting, and for a simple website that doesn’t require many resources, you can get a deal from KES550/month. So, your budget doesn’t have to be huge!
  • Uptime. One of the most influential aspects when choosing a web host. What you should settle for is a host with an uptime of at least 99.9%.
  • Support. Time to time, things get complicated or confusing. In this case, hosting providers have customer support agents who do their best to help you out. What you should look for is if they provide 24/7 live chat support. I believe that this kind of support is the most effective when solving technical problems. Sharing structured, easy to read instructions, making it easy for a client to follow, even without much technical knowledge.
  • Easy WordPress installation. If you’re merely a beginner, using a CMS could be overwhelming. So, it’s a bonus if a hosting provider offers WordPress auto-installer. Just fill the required fields and click “Install”!
  • WordPress tutorials. Some web hosts got your back on that part – many WordPress and web hosting related tutorials (*). Not a must but a good thing to have within a hand’s reach.

(*) Artkenya hosting includes a full suite of WordPress video tutorials.

Artkenya hosting meets all of the above requirements. Click here to check out our competitive hosting plans.

The last thing left to do is to choose the right plan for your website. It isn’t too hard of a task when you know what each plan is best used for:

  • Shared hosting. The most popular type of hosting. It isn’t the best option for websites receiving lots of traffic but a really excellent and cheap choice for blogging and small businesses.
  • VPS hosting. With Virtual Private Server (VPS) you get dedicated server space, so it’s a more secure and stable solution than shared hosting. However, it’s smaller-scale and cheaper than renting an entire server. Perfect for high-traffic blogs and established websites.
  • Cloud hosting. This type of hosting uses multiple different servers to balance the load and maximize uptime. This means that if one server fails, another kicks in to keep everything running. The main benefits of cloud hosting include a significant focus on uptime, isolated resources, easy scaling, and a dedicated IP address. If a website is mission-critical, meaning that the company can’t function without it, then cloud hosting is a good idea. It’s also chosen by many e-commerce stores, lead generation sites, corporate websites and high-traffic projects.

Artkenya offers all of these hosting plans (VPS hosting on request). In addition, we offer ‘Managed Web Hosting’ on our Cloud server, which includes a full suite of maintenance, SEO and security tasks.

In the end, it all comes to many choices when trying to discover the best. As you can see, there are numerous things to consider, but it’s well worth it to dedicate time for some research and make sure that your website is in the care of the most significant web hosting company you could find. Hopefully, this answer will aid you in finding the best fit for your project.

Go ahead and contact us today to find out more about web hosting, email hosting and web development!

 

As a website owner you’ve probably heard the words “SSL certificate” getting thrown around a lot. When you’re first getting your website built all of this technical jargon can seem like you’re trying to learn another language.

However, if you plan on having your customers input their private information online, then you need to utilize the additional security measures provided by an SSL certificate. Below we highlight what an SSL certificate is, how they work, and what situations it would be smart to encrypt your website with SSL.

What is an SSL Certificate?

Confidence is so important on the Internet. Any site that acquires a reputation for unreliability, insecurity or dishonesty can expect to see traffic dwindle to zero. On the other hand, a site that can prove it takes security seriously can attract more visitors. And that can be good, whether your hosted web site is for a community, a membership service, or e-commerce. Surfers and online shoppers also increasingly recognize the on-screen presence of a small padlock icon or a website address that begins with “https://…” as signs that they can trust the site they’re connecting to. That’s SSL or ‘secure sockets layer’ in action.

The biggest reason websites use SSL is to protect sensitive information that’s sent between computers and servers. If information like credit card numbers, passwords, and other personal information isn’t encrypted this leaves it open for hackers to easily step in and steal the information.

With the SSL certificate. your information is unreadable to anyone who attempts to steal it. The only people able to decipher it are the intended recipients at the other end of the connection.

With an SSL certificate, your customers can do business with you knowing that their information is going to be safe from identity thieves and potential hackers.

Read this article why Google punishes websites which are not secure.

How Does an SSL Certificate Work?

SSL operates between a visitor’s browser and your site or application. It’s an industry-standard mechanism that ensures the encryption of data being passed backwards and forwards, so that no unauthorized person can spy on the information and hack it. It also prevents cyber criminals from diverting visitor traffic to their own site using their own encryption, and gaining access to your data that way. All major web browsers have SSL capability built in.

SSL certificates add an additional level of security between your website and the information visitors are sharing. They protect your website in two main ways:

1. Enabling Encryption

It can be scary to share your personal and financial information online. A lot of people prefer to use large-scale eCommerce sites like Amazon, because they feel much safer and protected. With an SSL certificate sensitive data will remain encrypted and secure, thus providing your customers with a sense of relief.

2. Verifying the Identity of the Site Owner

The SSL credential identifies the owner of the website, and create an additional layer of trust. Put simply, your customers will know with whom exactly they’re doing business.

Before the certificate can even be issued the identity of the website owner has to be verified through multiple methods. With digital communication it’s often difficult to determine the person on the other side of the connection, but with an SSL certificate you can be sure you’re doing business with your intended recipient, and vice versa.

Do I Need an SSL Certificate for My Site?

An SSL certificate can help to build trust between your visitor and your website. Building trust online is all about giving subtle cues to your visitor that you can be trusted.

By having the little green lock on the browser bar, you’re guaranteeing to your customer that your site can be trusted.

If your website requires the exchange of any personal information, then you might want to consider getting an SSL certificate. If your user is required to enter their credit card information, then an SSL certificate is almost mandatory.

However, you don’t always need a sitewide SSL certificate. Since going through multiple levels of encryption can slow down your website it may be disadvantageous to have certain pages of your site encrypted. There’s also a decent cost involved in order to get your site verified and operating effectively, so this also has to be considered.

If you’re doing business online and are exchanging sensitive information with your visitors, then an SSL certificate will provide an additional layer of security, while increasing your trustworthiness.

Artkenya includes SSL certificates with our ‘Managed Web Hosting’ plans. Whether you need SSL encryption for your eCommerce site or something else, you can secure your site today.

By Michael Rojek, Founder at Husaria Marketing

According to a survey of the most popular content management systems by W3Techs, since February of 2018 WordPress is being used on 30% of all websites on the net, up from 25% in 2015. Its market share of the content management industry is over 60% as a result. WordPress is the market leader and also the fastest-growing CMS, beating SquareSpace and Wix combined by threefold in new website statistics. W3Techs bases their statistics off of data collected from the top 10 million websites ranked by Alexa, averaged over a three month span.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system developed by the WordPress Foundation. It makes publishing content online simpler through an easy-to-use and customizable GUI, and a wide range of themes and plugins that give nearly endless possibilities to developers.

WordPress Themes

WordPress websites employ themes, which let you change the look of a website without having to do any changes to the code. WordPress requires at least one theme to be active, but you can keep as many as you like on reserve, and shuffle through them to decide which is the best fit for you.

WordPress Plugins

WordPress is approaching 55,000 officially recognized plugins. Plugins let users further extend the capabilities of the WordPress CMS, and have dedicated developers around the world. Plugins let you do everything from creating a temporary pop-up notification, to integrations with other business systems you use like MailChimp, and can support an agile and flexible e-commerce storefront.

WordPress makes content management systems more accessible

What Are My Options?

WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS for a good reason: it’s free, open-source, and highly flexible. You can build complex sites in minutes, and have nearly endless opportunities for how you want your website to look and feel.

Here at Husaria Marketing we build our website in WordPress, as well as those for numerous clients. We offer our clients the flexibility and reliability of Divi, the most popular premium theme and visual page builder. Among other useful plugins offered alongside it is Bloom, which is responsible for the e-mail signup popup that showed up on the bottom right (at the time of writing this of course).

Additional plugins to consider for your WordPress installation, and those we install for our clients are the WooCommerce ecommerce platform built for WordPress, AIOSEO Pro for making SEO optimization a breeze, WordPress MultiLingual (WPML) for multi-language sites, as well as more niche options for delivering PDF invoices, handling e-mail signups, and map integrations.

 

By Sandra Jocic, Digital Marketing Manager at theiuvo.com

Google’s intention to debunk and penalize potentially unsafe websites is going further.

The recent Chrome 56 browser release introduced a novelty, making sure that non-techie users understand that the green padlock hanging in the left-hand corner of the address bar is not a mere gimcrack, as many users perceived it so far.

Google announced the change last fall, and there it is.

 

There’s hardly a possibility to ignore or misinterpret the “Not secure” label that now hangs on the websites without the safe protocol. A few visitors to a flagged website might understand that this means it simply lacks the SSL certificate – but if they weren’t about to enter any confidential info, it would still be OK for them to hang there. However, a great majority will probably take it for an alarm and just make a U-turn from the website, not willing to take any risk.

HTTPS became a ranking signal on Google as early as 2014, but these days the new Chrome version showed us that they are serious about boosting the “HTTPS everywhere” campaign. They started penalizing all non-secure websites, rather than just rewarding the secure ones, as before. By some estimations, this means that up to two thirds of all the websites on the Internet will suffer the consequences.

Which is fair enough. If you are ignoring your website’s and its visitors’ security, the search engines (and therefore, the users) will be encouraged to start ignoring you. Therefore, users’ confidential information won’t be jeopardized in any way, but it will be your SEO which will take the shot. It seems that the only way to persuade people to raise the safety level is to strike them where it hurts most – on the profit side.

So, let’s wrap it up. What does the SSL certificate that Google so strongly recommends you to obtain actually mean?

Opening any website is done by establishing a communication with servers. Just like any other communication, this kind can also be intercepted by potential attackers (who may be human, but in most cases they are actually human-operated programs), who try to steal any valuable or confidential information either by eavesdropping or redirecting you to their own website that is identical as yours.

Now, if you have enabled the HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), instead of the traditional HTTP, this means the communication is being encrypted in a way that is decodable only by the computer that is sending the request and the server that’s receiving it. Anyone else would only get an unintelligible code that they can’t put to any use.

The process of obtaining the SSL certificate should be quite easy. You don’t have to enter the mishmash by yourself – the first thing you should do is contact your hosting provider. Some of them even offer SSL for free. Even if you have to pay additional fees (typically ranging from about $100 up to as much as $1.500 per year), just think about the potential damage you’re avoiding, which will soon be measured by decreasing numbers of visits because people got averted from your website.

So, if you care about your online business, the first thing you should have in mind is protecting it by raising its security.

WordPress powers one in every four websites you visit online. Huge, right? It’s safe to say WordPress is no longer just a blogging tool – it’s by far the most popular content management system online and we’ve got the numbers to back it up.

If you’ve ever had trouble convincing clients WordPress isn’t just for bloggers, here are 13 facts that proves its dominance – and are worth sharing at your next client meeting.

1. WordPress Powers 25.5% of the Web

WordPress’ remarkable growth isn’t slowing down any time soon. WordPress hit 20% usage just two years ago and if that trend is set to continue, we could see WordPress reach its next milestone, 30%, in 2017.

In October, 29.7% of all new sites used WordPress.

2. WordPress Powers 30.3% of the Top 1000 Websites

If you don’t think that figure is impressive, consider this: using a standard CMS is not very common among the top 1000 sites, and more than 90% of them are using custom solutions. That 30.3% has some weight behind it now, huh?

Drupal comes in second with 19.7% and Adobe Experience Manager this with 11.8%.

There's no questioning WordPress' dominance.
There’s no questioning WordPress’ dominance.

3. WordPress is the Most Popular CMS

Among the 300+ content management systems that web technology survey service W3Techs routinely monitors, WordPress dominates with a whopping 58.7% market share.

It’s worth noting that 57% of websites don’t use any identifiable CMS, so there’s still a lot of room for WordPress to further make its mark.

4. WordPress is the Fastest Growing CMS

Every 74 seconds a site within the top 10 million starts using WordPress. Compare this with Shopify, the second-fastest growing CMS, which gains a new site every 22 minutes.

5. WordPress Powers Some of the World’s Biggest Brands and Names

These include Sony, Microsoft, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time Magazine, The New Yorker, Mashable, TechCrunch, Coca Cola, Mercedes Benz, Samsung, Star Wars, PlayStation, General Motors, NFL, Bloomberg, MTV, Facebook, eBay, Google, LinkedIn, Flickr, NASA, and TED.

Then there’s Jay Z, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake, Kobe Bryant, The Rolling Stones, Malala Yousafzai, Sylvester Stallone, just to name a few.

WordPress.com’s VIP service hosts many of these brands and names. WordPress.org also showcases some of the Fortune 500 companies that use the CMS.

6. There Have Been 143 versions of WordPress to Date

This figure includes both major and minor (security, maintenance etc.) releases.

Volunteers all over the world contribute to the WordPress project, ensuring it is regularly and continually updated to improve both its functionality and security. WordPress 4.4 alone had 471 contributors.

The latest version, WordPress 4.4, has been downloaded more than 6.5 million times since it was released just three weeks ago.

7. WordPress is Available to Download in 57 Languages

WordPress can deliver your content to visitors worldwide in a variety of languages. If English isn’t your native tongue, you can download WordPress in Bengali, Danish, Esperanto, and Icelandic, just to name a few of the translations on offer.

If the language you prefer isn’t available, it probably will be soon – the WordPress translation team has almost finished translating the CMS into 12 other languages, with even more translations underway.

According to W3Techs, 37.3% of English language websites use WordPress, while usage numbers are between 38% and 40% for Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish sites, and they reach 51.3% for Bengali and 54.4% for Bosnian.

If the language you prefer isn’t available, it probably will be soon – the WordPress translation team has almost finished translating the CMS into 12 other languages, with even more translations underway.
If the language you prefer isn’t available, it probably will be soon – the WordPress translation team has almost finished translating the CMS into 12 other languages, with even more translations underway.

8. There Are 42,000+ Plugins for WordPress

And that’s just the plugins you can download for free. There are more than 100 premium plugins on our site, another 4000+ hosted over at CodeCanyon, any many developers release their own plugins for free on GitHub or on their personal websites.

With many thousands of plugins available, there’s no end to how you can extend and expand the functionality of WordPress.

9. Tuesday is the Most Popular Day for Downloading WordPress

According to WP Central, users are more likely to download WordPress on a Tuesday than any other day of the week. Saturday is the least popular day.

10. WordPress.com Gets More Monthly Visitors Than Apple

On average, WordPress.com receives visits from 35,910,572 people each month, compared to less than half that number, 16,837,476, at apple.com. To put it into perspective, that’s the population of Canada inundating WordPress.com monthly to start new blogs, write new posts, or visit existing sites.

11. WordPress Developers Earn $50 an Hour

In his 2012 State of the Word, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg revealed 6,800 self-employed people had built more than 170,000 sites personally, and charged a median hourly rate of $50. If each site took only 3 hours to make, that’s $29.5M of work at the average hourly rate. Combine that with data from the 2014 State of the Word, which showed a quarter of the people who filled in the annual WordPress Survey make a full-time living off the CMS.

Over at Quora, WordPress contributor Mark Jaquith puts the $50 figure into perspective, saying a “WordPress consultant” could be someone who can copy-paste some basic theme modification for $30-$60 an hour, to someone who can code a plugin from scratch ($80-$150 an hour), to high-end consulting on performance, security, scaling and deployment ($200+ an hour).

Freelancer, a popular outsourcing marketplace, lists 739,794 WordPress developers worldwide and reports 393,250 projects have been completed, worth $71,020,304.

Upwork lists “WordPress” as one of its top skills, with an average project cost of $194 and an average project duration of 5+ weeks.

According to SimplyHired, the average salary for “WordPress jobs” is $40,000.

12. 18 New WordPress Posts Every Second

In an average month, bloggers who use WordPress.com or have Jetpack installed on a self-hosted setup post 53.1 million new posts. That’s 1.7 million new posts every day, 71,000 every hour or about 1000 every minute.

All up, bloggers produce 43.5 million new comments each month.

Traffic-wise, more than 409 million people view more than 20.3 billion WordPress.com pages each month.

WordPress.com regularly publishes traffic stats.
WordPress.com regularly publishes traffic stats.

13. WordPress Takes Care of 80-90% of Google’s Crawling Issues

According to Matt Cutts, the former head of Google’s web spam team, sites built with WordPress are capable of ranking higher in search results because the CMS takes care of 80-90% of Google’s crawling issues.

That’s most of the hard work done so you don’t have to worry about the small things and you can get on with creating quality content for your site.

Do you share any other WordPress stats and facts with clients? Have we missed any of your favourite stats? Let us know in the comments below.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design)

Responsive web design (RWD) is an approach to web design aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing and interaction experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones).

A site designed with RWD adapts the layout to the viewing environment by using fluid, proportion-based grids, flexible images, and CSS3 media queries, an extension of the @media rule, in the following ways:

  • The fluid grid concept calls for page element sizing to be in relative units like percentages, rather than absolute units like pixels or points.
  • Flexible images are also sized in relative units, so as to prevent them from displaying outside their containing element.
  • Media queries allow the page to use different CSS style rules based on characteristics of the device the site is being displayed on, most commonly the width of the browser.

Responsive web design is becoming more important as the amount of mobile traffic now accounts for more than half of total internet traffic. This trend is so prevalent that Google has begun to boost the ratings of sites that are mobile friendly if the search was made from a mobile device. This has the net effect of penalizing sites that are not mobile friendly.

Note

All artKenya websites are responsive! See our portfolio here: artkenya.net/what-we-do/portfolio/