It is here at last, FREE Website and Hosting. You can sign up for a FREE hosting account. It supports HTML and CSS. Using our FREE Site Maker package you can create an excellent FREE website using one of our templates. Customise it to suit your needs.

Everything you need to make a fully functional website, For FREE.

All Site come with Security

Yes all three types of site come with a a range of security and other features.

Firstly you can control your CDN settings. This also gives you DDoS protection and there are a range of other options you can control with the CDN. When you sign up for your FREE Hosting account you get to choose from a FREE subdomain on our minisite.pw domain, so it would be yoursubdomain.minisite.pw. You can also select to use your own domain name with the hosting. Just register your domain name of choice first, then enter it when asked with the FREE hosting.

You also get a FREE Sectigo SSL certificate for your website. This keeps your visitors connections to your site secure. There are also a range of other tools you can use with your FREE site.

There are 3 ways to use your FREE hosting space.

FREE Hosting with Site Maker

You can use our Site Maker software to make a 2 page website using the wizard and adding in your own pages with your own pictures and text. You can upgrade to unlimited pages and you can add on professional

FREE Hosting with Github

The FREE hosting is also excellent if you have a Github repository and you need somewhere to test your software. Using the setup wizard you can connect directly to your repository and then every time you commit it will automatically download the new version for you, You can get testing straight away.

FREE Hosting with FTP

If you already have a site then you can use the FTP connection to upload your site directly to our hosting servers. During setup you can fill in your existing site FTP credentials and we will upload your site directly to our servers. Then you can maintain it through FTP.

We also have specialised WordPress Hosting, read more about it or buy some now. (Link updated to the new version of WordPress Virtual Servers, all of our Feature Rich Hosting Accounts have WordPress available and the WordPress Toolkit to easily manage your installation.)

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Why are 2 year Certificates going?

This is due to Google making Chrome not accept certificates that are valid for more than 1 year. Other browsers have followed suit. Their reasoning behind this is to force certificates to be issued more frequently. If they are then there is less chance for things to go wrong with stolen certificates. Google don’t use the SSL revoked list, a certificate that has been issued, compromised and subsequently revoked can be used. Other browsers that do use the revoked list would not accept this certificate. This new method means that the certificate is only valid for a year so the maximum time it could be used is 1 year.

No matter what their rational behind it is, the fact remains that as of the 20th August you will no longer be able to purchase a certificate for 2 years and any that are issued after this time will automatically be rejected by all browsers as of next year.

What can I do?

If you want a 2 year SSL certificate then get one that is issued before 20th August 2020 and it will be valid. After that time you will just have to buy a 1 year one.

We have already removed the 2 year option from our certificates but if you want one then please submit a support ticket from your account or a presales ticket before the 18th August to give us enough time to get a certificate issued. The higher the grade certificate the longer it needs to be issued. so do not delay.

Read more about Website Security and SSL certificates.

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Let’s Encrypt has announced that it is to revoke aroound 3 million TLS/SSL certificates because of a serious flaw found in the CAA (Certificate Authority Authorization). The certificates will be revokend on the 4th March 2020 from 00:00 UTC.

Let’s Encrypt has around 116 million certificates issued at the moment which means that around 2.6% of them are to be revoked. Sites that have not reissued their certificates will find that users will be unlikely to visit them as they will be warned when trying to visit that the site is likely to be fake or compromised as the certificate has been revoked.

A revoked certificate is far worse from a security point of view for users as it shows that positive action has been taken to make users aware that the certificate has been tagged as “Not to be trusted“.

How can you fix it?

If you own a website that uses Let’s Encrypt, an automated free certificate system, then you should get your certificate changed ASAP. It is free and easy to do. There is a list of the affected certificate serial numbers which can be downloaded here and there is a tool that you can use to check your site here. Let’s Encrypt has sent an email notification to those that have registered an email address whith them but many are thought to be out of date and to be that of their hosting provider. If you are unsure please use the tools to check your site yourself.

Our clients who use Let’s Encrypt

CritchCorp Computers Ltd has already checked all of our clients sites that use Let’s Encrypt certificates; which come FREE with any of our Feature Rich Hosting accounts. Also anyone using a paid certificate from CritchCorp Computers Ltd is not affected by this latest issue.

If you are affected then you should contact your hosting company or webmaster urgently to get the issue resolved. If you have no-one to contact then we maybe able to help, please submit a support ticket from our store ticket system.

Is Let’s Encrypt still good?

We have been asked whether or not Let’s Encrypt certificates are safe given the latest bug. We are confident that they are a great starter certificate and are much better than having no certificate. Let’s Encrypt have been upfront and transparent about the issue and that is exactly what they should do, so we are confident that they ACME system is a good way to ensure that all sites have some form of security. If your site need better security or more gurentees about who you are and better protection then you should upgrade to a paid certificate whch come with different levels of security and guarentees.

Stay Safe

Support.

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Today, over 3 million UK businesses and millions more consumers use a domain name ending in .uk.

The UK Domain family, including .co.uk, .uk, .org.uk and .me.uk is managed and operated by Nominet.

From Tuesday the 1^st October until Thursday 31^st October 2019 we will be running a fantastic promotion for everyone who wants a new domain name. If you have been thinking of getting a domain name or getting a new one, then now is the time.

You can now get 2 years for the price of 1 on any .UK domain name. That is any domain name that ends in .UK, .CO.UK, .ORG.UK or .ME.UK.

Look for you perfect .UK domain name now.

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This is a question we are often asked:

Why should I pay for email when I can get Google Mail for Free?

There are many reasons for this; we usually don’t need to mention more than a couple before people understand the importance of paid versus free email.

Firstly, I believe that if you use email for business then it is not a good sign for your business if you use insecure free email to keep customer data. The fact that you can’t or won’t attempt to look professional and keep the basics, email, secure as possible, is a big indicator of other parts of your business where you may not have adequate standards and for many that mean potential clients will be put off. I personally will not use anyone who uses a free email address for any type of business. Using your own domain and email is not necessarily expensive and is no guarantee of anything, but it is the first hurdle and if you fail here it doesn’t matter that you have any awards for this and that and customer comments and reviews because I will not entertain the idea. This is shared by many people that I know. Remember that fraudsters generally don’t bother to use their own domain name as they need to keep costs down and be able to change at the drop of a hat, so they use free email. Most people who sign up to us with free email accounts were just fraudsters trying their luck with us, that is why we no longer accept free email account signups.

Even if you don’t use it for work or business then it’s better to have your own domain and email that you can control. Anyone can get a free email from Google and most fraudsters use Gmail or some other free email account to con people all the time, so you really will put some people off from even looking at you if your email address is a free account. I know that I will not entertain any business that uses them and one of the main reasons is below.

It is important to say that if you don’t care about your email and who is reading it then you may be able to use free email account such as Gmail. I have a Gmail account myself. I use it mostly for testing purposes, sending and receiving test emails from/to servers that I am testing so I can be sure that email is getting in to and out of our network correctly. The only thing that any one will find is test emails, so I am not concerned with who else reads it.

Why would you be concerned with who else reads your email?

Well, it surprises me just how many people don’t bother to read all of Googles various, complicated and hard to follow and sometimes hard to find terms of service and all the addendums that you agree to in order to use their services. Google does own some 50+ companies and is listed, at time of writing, as the third biggest company in the world by turnover, or at least its parent company Alphabet is. Do you think they are that big because of the free services? Well actually yes, they are in part. If you have the time to read all of their T’s and C’s then you will note the following:

(Concise version) – By using their services you give Google and anyone else they want, UNLIMITED LICENSE TO USE, MODIFY, RESELL, AND ANYTHING ELSE THEY WANT WITH ALL YOUR DATA. Yes every email you send or receive, they can use, including the attachments to do whatever they want with. If you send your latest play or movie script using or receive it in your Gmail account, you allow them to use it as they want. They can take your idea, change it and make the movie themselves. They don’t even need to change it as you gave them unrestricted license to do as they please.

You can read the full details here: https://policies.google.com/terms?gl=UK&hl=en but below is the extract verbatim that I refer to, I have underlined the interesting bit, they do their best to make it sound soft and cuddly but read it carefully:

When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.

The last line is particularly important as you must have the rights to the content you are sending/receiving in order to be able to grant this license to others or you are in breach of the copyright of copyright holder who can sue you for breach of copyright because you sent it using Gmail.

This happened recently on another free service, Flickr, where a model had some pictures taken by a professional photographer, uploaded them to her account, but she didn’t realise that she did not hold the copyright to the pictures of herself but the photographer. As there is a similar granting of license to them as with Google as with all the other free services that I have looked at, she was promptly sued by the photographer.

This sort of thing is not new, Microsoft’s Hotmail used to have in it’s terms and conditions that anything you uploaded, sent or received actually belonged to them and not you at all. This was challenged and they backed down after some media attention and replaced it with you granting them an unlimited perpetual license to do as they please with it which is now used by everyone. Free just means you don’t pay up front, but they make their money out you. It’s better to retain control over how companies make money from your custom rather than letting them run freely to do whatever they like behind your back.

Also the new GDPR (or Data Protection Act 2018 in the UK) can cause a business using any free service a hassle. That is because you are required to keep personal data secure and you can’t do that if you send any personal data through a free email account as you grant the right to Google and anyone else they see fit to do with it they please, leaving you, not them responsible and quite likely in breach as you have effectively lost control of the data.

There are many other reasons to add to this discussion as well but I think there is enough to think about here.

CritchCorp Computers Ltd offers email accounts from as low as £1.50+vat per month. With cloud accounts you have many more features to help you secure your email, using encryption etc. Keep your business or home email safe by making sure you have control over your email.

Keep Safe

CritchCorp Computers Ltd

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Click here to go get one now!

This promotion runs from 11th July until 31st August 2018 and all orders must be submitted through your yesDomains.co.uk account by 16:00 on the 31st August to ensure they are processed in time to qualify, so don’t leave it too late!

With Google Chrome’s new release imminent and the fact that it will start to heavily penalise those who do not have an SSL certificate, we are working hard to bring down the cost of this must-have product for your website. We take care of the techy bits so you don’t have to worry about it and you get a FREE TrueSeal Secured Site seal to show that you are now secure.

We are working hard to bring the prices down for the managed SSL products but they are not likely to come down this much! At the moment everyone is in need of these, so take advantage of the offer now!

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