PSPINC Official Company Blog

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 208 “Why Business Cards Are Still Relevant Today”

2月

23日

As important as having a digital presence for your business is, business cards are still relevant today. They’re an essential networking tool, which helps connect businesses, especially small businesses, to potential customers, partners, and/or employers. They convey professionalism and it is much more impressive to pull a business card out rather than verbally telling a potential lead your contact information.

Business cards also make it easy to market yourself and/or your business quickly but efficiently. You can easily slip it to someone in passing and it can serve as a physical reminder for people to check out your website or reach out to you later at a more convenient time. That’s why, along with our other brand and graphic design services like logo or custom web design, PSPINC offers business card design services. Get started by heading over to our Brand & Graphic Design page.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #b2b #blog #branddesign #branding #business #businesscard #businesscarddesign #businesscards #businesstips #customerservice #design #ecommerce #graphicdesign #marketing #marketingtips #pspinc #sales #smallbusiness #technology

Bluesky Opens Up to the Public: How It Could Change the Social Media Landscape

2月

21日

On February 7, social media platform, Bluesky opened to the public after previously being an invite-only platform for almost a full year. The invite-only strategy allowed Bluesky to grow slowly as its developers worked on building out the service. Bluesky was first announced in 2019 by none other than Jack Dorsey, as a side project to build a decentralized standard for social media when he was still the CEO of Twitter (now X).

What is Bluesky?

bluesky app opening on phone next to mug of coffee

Many are calling it Twitter 2.0, as it closely resembles the platform from before Musk took over. However, there’s one big difference: it’s decentralized. What that means is that instead of the company storing users’ data on their own servers, independent servers store user data, giving users more control over their overall feed. Instead of an all-encompassing algorithm, users can create their own servers and switch without losing their data, according to Bluesky’s CEO, Jay Graber.

However, decentralized social platforms already exist, with the most popular one being Mastodon, due to its focus on discussing various topics. While popular with over 8.7 million users by October 2023, it isn’t nearly as easy to use because of how tech-heavy it is, with multiple servers, making it hard to navigate. Much like Mastodon, Bluesky offers multiple different servers, but switching from one to the other is seamless, and the overall interface is very reminiscent of Twitter’s old interface.

How Bluesky is Different from Other Text-Based Alternatives

After opening the platform to the public, Bluesky announced users could follow the Super Bowl game without hearing about Taylor Swift, which accelerated its overall growth by 1.6 million new users, bringing Bluesky's total user list to 4.8 million users. Then there’s Threads, Meta’s text-based offering, which is arguably the largest of the alternatives currently out there. But while it has the largest user base thanks to how easy it is to move your account from Instagram to Threads, it hasn’t captured the discussion aspect that X (previously Twitter) is known for.

What Bluesky aims to do differently is bridge the gap between the decentralized network and focus on the discussion aspect of Mastadon while delivering a user-friendly experience that Threads offers. While Mastadon, Threads, and various other platforms seek to replace X, they have yet to succeed for a multitude of reasons. With Bluesky eliminating the invite-only aspect of the platform and focusing on the lacking factors in other platforms, it may just have the potential to be a legitimate replacement for X.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #bluesky #business #businesstips #decentralization #digitalmarketing #elonmusk #facebook #instagram #jackdorsey #jaygraber #marketing #mastodon #smallbusiness #socialmedia #superbowl #taylorswift #tech #technology #threads #twitter #web #websites #x

WebdeXpress: New Text Style Feature Out Now!

2月

20日

We’re happy to announce a new text-style feature on WebdeXpress, our website builder that comes included with our Dreamersi web hosting. With this new Text Style feature, you have more control over your website’s website design by choosing your site’s font family, text size, heading alignment, text color, link color, and/or link hover color for different regions of your website.

To access this new feature:

Log into your Dreamersi account.
Click on the WebdeXpress icon or on WebdeXpress in the left navigation bar.
Log into your WebdeXpress account.
Click on Appearance on the left navigation bar and click on Themes once the drop-down menu appears.
Either select one of the first six themes or click on Customize Theme if you already have one of them selected for your website.
Click on Text Style, which will open a drop-down menu with your text styling options.
Click on Show Advanced Options (if not already showing) to see all text styling options. With this new feature, you can change the font family, text size, text color, heading alignment, link color, and/or link hover color for the following regions: Website Title, Website Subtitle, Page Title, and Content.
To view your changes, enter your site’s URL in another tab and refresh the site after selecting your changes and clicking on Save at the bottom.
To reset your changes, click on the Reset Text Style option on the bottom right.

With more control over your site's overall design, you'll have more opportunity to add more branding to your website. If you have any questions or need some additional help, please contact us at 1-800-232-3989 or email us at support@pspinc.com.

*WebdeXpress’s new Text Style feature only applies to the first six theme choices and is only available for English and Japanese sites.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#b2b #blog #branding #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #dreamersi #ecommerce #pspinc #searchengineoptimization #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #webdexpress #webhosting #website #websites #webtools

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 207 “Sprout Marketing Plan Now on Sale!”

2月

16日

For a limited time, our Sprout marketing plan is now on sale! For your first month with us, waive the monthly fee to get your first month of managed ads for free! Every business needs good marketing, but knowing what the industry’s best practices are and how to succeed on platforms like Google Ads can be tricky. So, get professional help setting up and running your paid search ads from our expert marketing team!

With the Sprout marketing plan, get:

One Google Ad
Campaign creation
Keyword and audience research
Conversion tracking setup
Performance analyzing and monitoring
Bi-weekly written reports
Competitor analysis
Ongoing optimization consultation
One weekly ad revision

With over 36 years of experience helping hundreds of customers grow their online business, our marketing team at PSPINC has the expertise you need. Get started by heading over to our digital marketing page and get $160 off our Sprout marketing plan now.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #b2b #blog #branding #business #businesstips #digitalmarketing #google #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #searchengineoptimization #seo #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #web #website

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 206 “Evaluate Your Website for Free!”

2月

9日

We’re happy to announce that we’ve released a new website evaluation tool, free for everyone to try out! While many business owners today know how important having a good website is, it isn’t always easy to assess how secure and optimized for search engines your site is. Now, with our new website evaluation tool, you can!

Just enter your website URL in the text box and click on the Start Evaluation button and you’ll get an evaluation on your site in minutes! With our website evaluation tool, it’ll look at:

SSL certificate: without one, users will probably encounter an error page that encourages them to leave your site.
Mobile friendliness:if your site doesn’t look good on all devices (including mobile devices), search engines won’t make it as easy for users to find via search.
Title tag: having a title tag is vital to good SEO, which affects how search engines populate your site in their search results.
Meta tag: a website without a meta tag doesn’t look good in search results, making it less likely people will click on it.
Header tags: headings won’t just make your content look nicer to users, they’ll also help with your site’s SEO.
Sitemap: a file that lists all your website’s pages and how they relate to each other and another influential factor in SEO.
Page load time: if your site takes too long to load, search engines will rank it lower in the search results.
Image alt attribute: another SEO factor that tells the “why” of an image and is an important accessibility feature.

Check out our new free website evaluation tool by going to our Web Design page to try it out for yourself! If you want to know more about how to fix any issues your site may have, enter your email in the text box below and you'll receive your diagnostic results with more information.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #cybersecurity #ecommerce #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #mobile #newsletter #pspinc #searchengineoptimization #security #seo #smallbusiness #technology #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #websites

What Every Successful Website Needs

2月

7日

Every website is different in what it looks like, what it offers, and its overall purpose, but a good website has several key qualities that will distinguish it from a poor site. For a business, a good website is vital to its success as it helps establish credibility, build trust, increase brand awareness, improve its customer experience, and keep the company competitive online.

A good website will attract more qualified visitors, keep people on your site for longer, give off a better impression on potential customers, and drive conversions like an increase in signups, readership, and sales. To do well online, a website needs to be secure and possess certain characteristics that every website needs to thrive online. While there are many types of websites (i.e. blogs, portfolio sites, business websites, etc.) available, they will all still need some of the same features needed to succeed.

Essential Features of a Good Website

Having a secure website is vital to attracting users to your website, not just to protect users while browsing, but also to prevent them from encountering error messages. The easiest way to do that is to have an SSL certificate for your site, which will guarantee users’ data is safe when they’re online. Without one, they’ll run into a page that informs them the connection is not secure and not private, and it will recommend users go “back to safety”.

While having a secure site is a start, other essential features include:

Mobile friendliness: how well a website looks on a mobile device. An easy way to make sure your website works and looks great on all devices (including mobile devices) is by using responsive design practices.
Search engine optimization: elements that affect how search engines rank your website in its search results.
- Page titles: the title of a web page.
- Meta tags: an HTML code snippet with information about a website.
- Alt tags on images: read-aloud text for users that conveys the “why” of images that search engines index to determine your site’s search ranking.
- Header tags: HTML tags that separate headings and subheadings on a webpage.
- Title tag: an HTML tag that defines a web page’s title.
- Sitemap: a file that lists all of a website’s pages and how they relate to each other.
- Page load time: how long it takes for a page to load. The longer it takes, the lower search engines will rank your site.
- Backlinks: a link on your website that links to another website.
- No broken links: If a link on your website doesn’t properly link to another web page, search engines will rank your site lower in the search results.
Clear calls-to-action (CTAs): a direct instruction on what you want users to do on your website. Without CTAs, website visitors won’t do anything on your site, which is a missed opportunity to convert them into customers.
Easy and helpful navigation: a menu of buttons and links that let users explore your website. Making it easy will lessen the possibility of users getting frustrated.
Fresh, high-quality content: new or updated content on your website will result in a more favorable search ranking, and exceptional content will encourage users to not just come and stay on your site, but it will also encourage them to come back.
Strong brand identity: A website is just another opportunity to create a cohesive brand identity with your company logo, color scheme, types of graphics, tone of voice, and brand messaging.

If you’re not sure how well your website fares or if it needs an update, check out our new free website evaluation tool that will help you assess your website at a basic level in just minutes. Just check out our Web Design page to try it out for yourself!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #branding #business #businesstips #ecommerce #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #mobile #responsivedesign #searchengineoptimization #seo #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #website #websites

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 205 “PSPINC /Apps Now Available!”

2月

2日

To better manage your PSPINC web apps, we're happy to announce that we've released PSPINC /Apps, an all-new multi-service login! With PPINC /Apps, you no longer need to remember every login to your multiple PSPINC accounts. Instead, they’ll all be in one place for you! All you have to do is sign up by clicking on Products on our website and clicking on the PSPINC /Apps banner on the right side. After signing up, you can connect your PSPINC web apps’ accounts, including:

Then you can log into any of these accounts with just one login with PSPINC /Apps. And to make your accounts even safer, add an extra layer of security with two-factor authentication (2FA) to your PSPINC /Apps account:

Log in to your PSPINC /Apps account
Click on My Account
Connect your account to your choice of authenticator app by either scanning the QR code or manually entering the key. Although PSPINC /Apps should support all authenticator apps, we recommend:

Enter the code displayed in your authenticator app to confirm the connection.

Get started today to make it easier to manage your PSPINC accounts all in one place with one login.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#app #b2b #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #cybersecurity #data #digitalmarketing #newsletter #officetips #pspinc #pspincapps #security #smallbusiness #tech #technology #update #web #websites #webtools

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 204 “Dreamersi Web and Email Hosting”

1月

26日

The first product we created as a company was web hosting. Before 1996, PSPINC focused on growing the Japanese market with already-popular software technology from the U.S. But in 1996, we introduced our premiere web hosting, Dreamersi, which we created in-house, and our customers still use today. Over the years, we’ve continually updated and improved our software and eventually introduced email hosting as part of Dreamersi services.

Even all these years later, Dreamersi is still our biggest selling point because of how much control our developers have over the system, making it easier to customize it toward our customers’ needs. We also offer even more specialized web hosting with VPS packages. In addition, we also sell SSL certificates, which everyone needs for their website today. Learn more about our Dreamersi web hosting plans by going to our Dreamersi page on our website.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #dreamersi #email #emailhosting #marketing #newsletter #officetips #pspinc #smallbusiness #ssl #sslcertificate #tech #technology #vps #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #webhosting #websites #webtools

Important Security Update Notice

1月

26日

At PSPINC, we are always working on doing our best to improve our services for our customers. One of our company’s top priorities is the safety and security of our customers’ data. That’s why we’re updating our SSL encryption strength to maintain higher security standards.

Why We're Updating

To address vulnerabilities of our SSL Cipher Strength (SSLCipherSuite) in case of cyberattacks like DHeat attacks, where criminals perform a denial-of-service (DoS) attack without needing authentication, privilege, or user interaction, and Raccoon attacks, which can either be a side-channel or man-in-the-middle type of attack that leaks the most significant part of the SSL cipher.

This security update will equip your personal and transactional information and other sensitive data with even stronger protection against cyber threats like DHeat and Raccoon attacks, among others. Additionally, we are terminating HTTPS access from Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 7, which Microsoft has already stopped supporting.

Scheduled Date & Time:

Feb 1, 2024, at 10 a.m. PST

Target Users:

All Dreamersi users with a website with an SSL certificate

*There is no action required for most users. However, if you’re using an older browser or system, you may need to update.

We strive to create a smooth and secure online experience for our customers. We appreciate your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions, please contact us at 1-800-232-3989 or email us at support@pspinc.com.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#announcement #blog #business #businesstips #customerfeedback #cybersecurity #dreamersi #google #officetips #pspinc #security #smallbusiness #tech #technology #update #web #webdevelopment #webhosting #website #websites #webtools

Adobe Photoshop’s New AI Tools

1月

24日

Artificial intelligence (AI) has only gotten more popular over the past few years and will continue to, as search engines have employed AI-powered chatbots and AI image generators have only improved and become trendier. Because of this rise in popularity, Adobe has integrated AI tools into their Creative Cloud using Adobe Firefly, which they describe as “the world’s first ethical text-to-image generational tool”. Photoshop’s new Generative Fill and Generative Expand tools are Adobe’s first Creative Cloud products that incorporate Firefly completely.

Part of the hesitation users have toward AI in general is the lack of transparency with AI. With images, there’s also the issue of creative licensing and intellectual property. In a calculated effort toward increasing overall transparency, Adobe’s new tools powered by AI will include a label in their content credentials (which Adobe calls “nutrition labels”), which adds metadata to photos, making it clear the image has been altered using AI.

How to Expand a Photo with Photoshop's New Generative AI Expand Tool

Choose a photo.
Create a new file (CTRL+N/CMD+N) with the size and/or ratio you want your photo to be (if you don’t have a specific photo size or ratio in mind, go ahead and skip this step).
Expand the photo by clicking on the Crop tool (C) And pulling the left and right sides.
Click on the Generate button from the Generative Expand pop-up – Photoshop uses AI to fill in the rest of the photo for you.
Choose from three variations of the expanded photo, shown on the right side of the photo under the Properties tab.
If you’re not happy with the three variations, generate again by clicking on the Generate button, which is now above the three variations.
If you don’t have a specific photo size or ratio in mind, but just want to create a landscape (horizontal) image out of a portrait (vertical) image, just save (CTRL+S/CMD+S) the photo variation you like as is.
If you have a specific photo size and/or ratio in mind, select all (CTRL+A/CMD+A) and copy all (CTRL+C/CMD+C).
Open the pre-selected photo size file before pasting (CTRL+V/CMD+V) the AI-generated photo.
Zoom out to fit the image to screen (CTRL+0/CMD+0) and resize the image to fit in the pre-selected photo.

If you’re looking for more graphic design help, head over to our brand and graphic design page. Or if you’re looking for web design help, head over to our web design page where our Starter web plan is currently $200 off the original price for a limited time!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.