1&1 Professional Package and Dedicated SSL

[bentleybloke]

Greetings,

Has anybody any experience of the 1&1 professional package? You get a dedicated Geotrust Certificate with it, but 1&1 don't really give much info about setting it up. I asked them a few questions by email and then again over the phone only to receive different answers!?

My questions were:

1/ If I were to setup the dedicated cert to mydomain.com would that domain and all subdomains become secured permanently i.e. one would not be able to switch between http:// and https://

-email reply said everything would be https; the guy on the phone didn't seem to know.

If the answer to this is that everything is always https:// then surely it would be better to use a subdomain? e.g. secure.mydomain.com like you would with the 1&1 shared cert?

2/ Relating to the subdomain, I asked if there were any disadvantages of using the cert on a subdomain?

- 1&1 didn't answer that bit!

3/ Once the cert has been activated thro the 1&1 control panel, can the domain it is set to be changed at a later date?

-email reply said no and guy on the phone said yes?


As you can imagine, I am perplexed and would greatly appreciate any advice regarding the above. The last thing I want to do is click the setup button and then find that I've ended up having to have the whole site secure!

[dave_finlayson]

I have to say I have no experience of 1&1 so, to be honest, can't answer any of your questions. However, the first thing I would ask them is where their servers are physically located (I suspect they will tell you they are in Germany). If they are then you will almost certainly drop off Google UK who will only list sites whose servers are UK based. A business aquantance of ours recently changed to 1&1 dedicated hosting and subsequently disappeared from google, they have now changed back to their old (more expensive but UK based) hosting company.

Im no expert here but there are some posts regarding this. I would have a search around before things get too far.

David

[stampingmad]

I once had the misfortune to deal with 1&1 - I thought their technical support sucked. I couldn't get Actinic to work and contacted them for some settings and was told that it was a software issue and their support only covered hardware problems.

I cancelled immediately but it took nearly 3 months and the threat of legal action for them to change IPS tags to my current host. Of course during that time we made no sales which nearly killed us.

I possible just had a one off bad experience but it certainly put me off them for good.

Best wishes

Helen

[Laylah]

Hi

We use 1&1 Pro and it is brilliant!

Terrific value for money, fantastic options and no problems with Actinic Business.

We use the GeoTrust SSL!

As to 1) changing tags etc. it's all within the administrators control panel now and 2) dropping off Google because you are with 1&1 is nonsense -- we monitor Google quite closely and levels have been maintained.

1&1 are highly recommended . . . saved us hundreds of pounds per year

bentleybloke : call me to discuss on 01844 260990 during office hours

[dave_finlayson]

Tony,

Im no expert here so quite happy to be proved wrong but if you go to google.co.uk, make sure you are searching only on "pages from the UK" and type in Mandrake Press, your site does not come up, plenty of references to you but not your site. However, maybe this is not a problem, but reading through this thread:-

http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=11287

it certainly seems it may be!

Dave

[David@MPL]

You're right about the UK search thing, however we have just completely revamped the site and that will be affecting things. Personally I run a .co.uk forum hosted on 1&1 and I know that my server is in Germany but I've got exactly the same listings from UK google searches as worldwide ones.

However, this thread has gone way off topic. With regard to the SSL, we didn't have any problems at all, so if bentleybloke wants to give us a ring we can go through the exacted settings with him.

[Laylah]

Just to round off and update : Bentleybloke has been in contact and is now concerned about 1&1 German hosting -v- appearing in Google.co.uk listing.

Fact: Google will list relevant pages in the appropriate region if the content is appropriate. So German Language Pages hosted in the USA will appear in google.de if the content of the pages meets the criteria of the google algorithm.

I would suggest inserting the following html

<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-gb">

in the <head> of each page . . . this tells google the content is British!

For example www.ghostfindergeneral.co.uk is on 1&1 servers in Germany . . . search google.co.uk for the three words 'ghost' 'finder' 'general' and it is top of the list.

[Mike Hughes]

true, but the Google algorithm is pretty basic.

To be sure of getting into the correct listing there are only two things that are sure to work. i.e. for the Uk listings, you should either:

1. have a Uk domain name. i.e. .co.uk

or

2. Be hosted on a server located in the UK.

So a .co.uk site will apear in the Uk listings even if hosted on a 1&1 server in germany, but a .com will almost certainly not.

Mike

[Laylah]

But then neither of those methods are 'sure' to work either if you mean they are guaranteed to get you listed.


Google says, as an example, it will list German language pages hosted in the USA on google.de if the content is deemed appropriate by its search algorithm.


The only guaranteed method is when you pay google for adwords and specify where you want your ad to appear.

[Mike Hughes]

Tony, have you been drinking too much coffee or are you just being deliberately pedantic?

You can't really on google's unspecified algorithm to get into a geographical index.

My previous post, which I won't repeat, tells you what you have to do.

Mike

[Laylah]

I assume you left out the word 'rely' so it reads "You can't really rely on google's unspecified algorithm to get into a geographical index." . . . but then I didn't say you could rely on it or that it was a failsafe method.

Neither of your proposals will guarantee a listing . . . there are other factors which can affect a listing!

The only guaranteed method of getting a listing in a specific region is by paid advertsing such as adwords!

Re: Pedantic and too much coffee - it seems to me the pot is calling the kettle black!

[Mike Hughes]

Re: Pedantic and too much coffee - it seems to me the pot is calling the kettle black!

Could be, it's happened often enough.

You're right about the 'rely' being missing. My mistake.

Maybe I'm just confused though. The discussion seems to me to be about what you need to do to be included rather than excluded from Googles geographical listing such as their UK results. This was raised as a concern about using 1&1's hosting which is based in Germany.

The two options I've given have been shown to work by lots of webmasters and will make that difference.

Now you can take my post of out context and raise issues about being guranteed to be in the index if you want to. But that isn't what I said and wasn't what the topic was about.

Mike

[Dybbuk]

Out of interest, go to google.co.uk and search pages within the UK for the term "ebay".

You should find www.theregister.co.uk near the top of the listings, with an additional two links to www.theregister.com near the bottom of the same page. Different stories, different sites - UK & US/World version.

Strangely, ebay.com is nowhere to be found...

Now search for "accomodation" within the UK. Positions 1, 2 & 3 are occupied by a .net and two .coms respectively.

Pabulum.

[Mike Hughes]

Both the theregister.com and .co.uk are hosted on the same server in England somewhere which is why they both show up in Google's UK index.

Ebay.co.uk does appear for me in Google's UK index. But Ebay.com doesn't (no surprise there).

the accomodation results all appear to be hosted on UK IP addresses.

Mike

[Dybbuk]

I know this is well off topic now, but where do you think .net stands with regard to geogoogle?