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Given that adopting a cat is a significant commitment – they live for an average of 15 years – it makes sense to learn more about cat breeds before you buy. Two extremely popular purebreds are the Siamese and the Persian, although both of these have characteristics that may make them unsuitable choices for some people. Fortunately, there are a large number of other breeds to choose from, many of them less well known. Two of these less recognized breeds actually give hope to feline loving allergy sufferers, as they have a low-allergy coat and are generally well tolerated.

Although not as popular as they once were, Siamese cats have many loyal fans, and for good reason. They are extremely beautiful and intelligent, although modern breeding practices have introduced an unhealthy leaning towards an overly triangular head shape. Siamese are very vocal, however, which can be a problem for some people, as they may be a little bit determined in putting their views across. This is not a cat for the owner who doesn’t have a lot of time to spend with their pet, as Siamese are very people-oriented. They love attention, and they love interacting with their owners. They will follow them from room to room, and are naturally very curious and mischievous when bored.

Unlike Siamese, Persian cats are very even-tempered. They get along well with other dogs and animals, and integrate well in multi-cat households. They also tolerate children well. The biggest drawback – and also their most striking feature – is their amazing coat. A Persian’s coat needs daily brushing. It mattes easily, and cats need to be sedated to have their coats clipped, so keeping their long coat in good shape needs to be a priority for Persian owners.

The Siberian cat, or croshca, is another long haired feline. It requires less grooming than the Persian, and needs to be brushed only two or three times a week instead of daily. Their coat is different too. Surviving in the deep cold of a Russian winter, the croshca has a waterproof, slightly oil coat. Siberian cats are very playful, and affectionate. Like the Siamese, they grow very attached to their owners, so this is something to keep in mind when selecting a breed. The Siberian is one possibility for those with cat allergies, as their coats are believed to be hypoallergenic.

Devon rex cats are another option for those allergic to cats. They have a very thin, soft, slightly crinkly coat that sheds very little. The coat itself is also hypoallergenic. Be warned however – devon rex are extremely playful and mischievous. They are also very fond of food, and have been known to be quite resourceful in finding it even when hidden away. The devon rex is very affectionate, and another people-oriented cat that will follow you around and ‘help’ with chores.

Feline breeds all have their own distinctive characteristics. This is something to keep in mind as you learn about cat breeds before you buy. Do you have children or other pets? How much time do you want to spend with a cat, and does your work schedule allow it? Getting two cats together (if you don’t already have one) is never a bad idea as it provides companionship for both. But some cats still demand more of their humans than others do, though they often give at least as much back.

If your website has become stale or isn’t performing as you want it to, it may now be time to consider a website redesign. However, before you go ahead and start changing things, there are some things you need to think about and there are ways to go about it that will help you achieve your goals without damaging what success you’ve already had.

First of all you need to ask yourself WHY you want to redesign your website. There is no point making changes for the sake of it and without knowing what you want to achieve. Some good reasons for a website redesign include:

To Improve Usability & Increase Conversions

If your site isn’t achieving the sales or sign ups you were hoping for it could be that it’s too complicated to use or your call to action isn’t clear. Using Google Analytics you can see which are your most successful pages and which aren’t performing as well as they could.

Look at where you want your visitors to end up and how you are currently getting them there.

Make a list of what is working and what isn’t and address the latter, leaving the former alone for now.

Redesigning your website to achieve what it’s there for in the first place is a perfectly valid reason!

To Improve Accessibility

Many website owners don’t consider making their website accessible to the disabled a high priority but the reasons for doing so are, at least, two-fold.

First of all, by making your site inaccessible for those with colour blindness, poor eyesight or even blindness you are immediately reducing your target audience by thousands – that’s thousands of people who may well have bought from you if they’d been able to read your message.

Secondly, a fully compliant, accessible website is regarded better by the search engines and so will rank higher than those sites who haven’t taken accessibility into account.

Which brings me to the third good reason for a website redesign…

To Improve Your Search Engine Optimisation

If you’re struggling to rank highly on the likes of Google, Yahoo! and Bing then refreshing your website and redesigning the badly built parts can help. They key here is to not go overboard changing all your links, but to subtly ‘fix’ the areas of your site that need it – changing page titles to be more relevant, updating content, that sort of thing. It’s all part and parcel of a website redesign.

Once you know your reason and what you want to achieve, you need to know HOW to go about giving your website a makeover.
If you built the site yourself then you can, of course, redesign it yourself. Updating your site in this manner gives you more control but can be a lot of work. The addition of widgets and new technologies may not be something you are familiar with though.

An alternative is to use a web design company for your website redesign. There are many advantages to using a design agency to carry out your redesign. They have the experience, the technical know-how, they can advise you on your brief, help update your branding, ensure your site is fully optimised for search engines and accessibility and deliver the site to your budget.

Either way, as long as you have decided why you want to redesign your website and what you want to achieve through it, your website redesign will be a success.

Why do you need a dedicated server?

The very first step in purchasing a dedicated server should be ensuring that you actually need a dedicated server. There are many other hosting options to be considered including shared hosting and virtual servers. At Anchor we see three independent reasons why customers may require a dedicated server, these are:
Performance Control Security
Performance
There are two reasons why performance becomes a factor in deciding to go to a dedicated server. The first is that the application has to date been hosted on a shared (or virtual server) environment and the load on the application has proved to be too high – ie – the hosting company has told you that you need your own server.

The second reason is that the application you’re hosting is very dependent on consistently fast response times. In a shared environment by definition you are using a shared resources, sometimes, not often, other users on the server can cause your site to slow down. If this can’t be tolerated then application performance can be a good reason to go to a dedicated server.

Control
If you need control over the server to do things that you can’t do on a shared server then you are often forced into going dedicated. Control is usually in terms of the ability to perform configuration on the server yourself without restriction. If you want to be able to log in as an administrative or root user then you will need a dedicated server to gain this level of control.

Unless you are on a dedicated server, you surrender a degree of control of the server to the hosting company. This has the advantages of ensuring all changes are made by professional Systems Administrators but there are the disadvantages that if you are a budding Admin yourself, you have to wait for someone else to make changes on your behalf.

Security
While shared servers are locked down to very high levels, the very fact that the server is accessible to other authorised users does introduce increased security risks in respect to host compromises. On a dedicated server you can be sure that any security breaches will only be a result of your own actions and not of somebody else.

Hardware specifications

The first thing that comes to mind for most people when deciding on a dedicated server specification is the hardware. You can see it and touch it so it’s an easy starting point. Choosing the right hardware on day one is critical to make sure that you find that balance between not over specifying and hence wasting money and not under specifying and hence finding you need to do an upgrade too soon.

Every application is different and so the loads that it will place on a server are very difficult to estimate. Pages, hits, visitors, data transfer/month can all act as a guide but the variability in load from one application to another can be so significant (and implementation-specific) that these figures might not tell you much.

Hardware components
Let’s have a look at the core hardware components in your server so you can see which ones warrant consideration when specifying a server. This table only attempts to discuss the components in the context of your ability to upgrade them in future, and the effect of the failure of this component on the delivery of services.

Availability monitoring

Depending on the service you purchase, your dedicated hosting provider will to varying degrees be responsible for monitoring the availability of your service.

If you need to know when services are going up or down it is important that your service provider is able to provide you with these reports. You should check for email or SMS based alert options.

Bandwidth

Most dedicated servers come with an initial data transfer allowance. This can vary anywhere from a few GB’s in Australia through to a terabyte on offer by some overseas hosting providers.

Before you get carried away with choosing the host with the most bandwidth, try to work out how much bandwidth you actually need, then make sure the hosting package you’re choosing meets that requirement.

Providers that offer excessively high bandwidth allocations may not always be the best choice. They may also be attractive to other high bandwidth clients that subsequently cause congestion on the network, or relate to a service that is not providing the same quality of bandwidth as other providers.

In comparing the bandwidth allocation, our article on [[planning/dedicated-colocation-data-billing-models|dedicated server bandwidth billing models]] may also be of assistance.

Reporting

While the server specifications are an easy component to identify in the selection process, there are other important things to make sure you get with your managed server.

Data reporting
Most dedicated servers will come with a base data usage allocation. Anything exceeding that, however, will attract excess usage charges.

It’s important that you do monitor your usage to make sure it’s in line with your business expectations, and that you have the ability to easily monitor it.

Look for a web based interface that allows you to query your usage stats when you need them. Ideally look for something that gives inbound as well as outbound data usage figures. If there is no online interface, online reports should also do the job.

Support

Support is by far the most difficult component of a dedicated server package to accurately compare when choosing between hosts. To make this worse – support is actually the major point of interaction that you will have with your hosting company after the service is provisioned. The bit that will make the difference in what you get out of the hosting service will be the day to day interaction that you have with the hosting company.

We like to consider the provision of managed hosting services as a combination of three components:
Hardware: the actual server hardware provisioned for you – as discussed above. The Environment: consisting of the Data Centre, the network and ancillary shared services that go into keeping the hosted services online. Support: the ongoing management of the software on your server.

The reason that most people use a managed hosting service is that they have an application that they need to be kept online 24 x 7, with as close to 100% uptime as possible. This goal cannot be achieved without a lot of work, the same way that you can’t expect a car to always run without fault without proper routine servicing. The higher the demands that are placed on the service, the more maintenance that will be required. To continue the analogy – consider the significant difference in maintenance of your family sedan with a race car.

If you’re buying a managed server – it’s important to make sure that you’re not just getting hardware, but also the level of support that is right for you. If you don’t, you can be assured that it will either turn up in the form of consultancy fees after you’ve signed the contract, or worse yet, you’ll suffer from outages as a result of the much needed maintenance not being carried out.

We often think of the support that is needed to maintain uptime as consisting of three core components:
Prevention Detection, and Response

The more preventative work that is undertaken and systems that are monitored, the greater the chances of picking up changes to a service before they result in outages.

When considering alternative dedicated hosting providers, find out exactly what level of support is included in the quoted monthly charges and what services will attract additional fees.

Depending on your level of skills or interest in performing systems administration tasks, you need to make sure that the right level of service is being provided to keep the server online.

Typical support and maintenance tasks that you should ask about are:

Firewall & Security Is a firewall configured on the server or on a dedicated firewall device? Who is responsible for maintaining it and making configuration changes? Are there any systems in place to detect if the security of my server gets compromised?

Application and security updates

Will security updates and patches for the programs and operating system be applied to my server? How often will updates be applied? What time of day will the updates applied?


Monitoring

What services will monitoring cover? How frequently does the monitoring system poll the services? What reporting is provided for monitoring? What response is provided to problems when they are detected? What will happen if my application isn’t working but the monitoring system detects no problems?


Application installation

What applications will be installed at the time the server is built? What happens if I need additional applications installed at a later date?


Configuration management

Who is responsible for making configuration changes to the server? Do changes cost each time or are they included in the monthly fees?


Provision of support services

Can I call and have questions answered over the phone or will I have to email all support requests? Will I be able to talk directly with the support staff that build and maintain my server? What is the typical turn around time on non-urgent/urgent support requests?


Performance

If my application is running slowly will you help to diagnose the problem? Do you collect any data on server load trends over time?


Ideally your hosting provider will be able to offer you with a support pack that covers either the rudimentary tasks required to keep your server secure, or better yet, the services that are needed to meet your expectations of support.

Any such support pack that is offered for a fixed monthly fee will have a defined scope to avoid it costing the hosting company too much money in the case of the more demanding clients. Find out what the scope is, or what the limits are if you’re choosing a support pack. Make sure they are documented as part of the contract.

Chat Rooms can be dangerous places, especially if you’re the type of person who freely provides personal information. Unfortunately, some less scrupulous individuals will try to gain your trust with their main intention of trying to scam you their number one goal.

So it pays to be vigilant and never disclose anything in a Chat Room that could be used to identify or defraud you. Obvious things to remember would be never to post your real name or postal address.

Even with bad press, there has been an explosion of Chat Room and Profile websites appearing all over the Internet, and for good reason, it can be a fun and enjoyable way to meet new and interesting people the world over.

Some of the better Chat Rooms are moderated in an attempt to filter out those individuals that are up to no-good, and largely, this works well. Often it’s the actual members of a Chat website who oversee things, the idea being, the more people who monitor the rooms the better the overall chat experience will be.

At fist glance you would be forgiven for thinking that Chat Rooms were solely for the young and computer literate. This simply is not the case as more and more over 50′s and seniors discover the joys of chatting in real-time.

Seniors in particular have discovered new ways of using Chat Rooms as a great pastime and means of making new lasting worldwide friendships. Less mobile, and seniors who have become isolated for whatever reason are turning to Chat Rooms and profile sites as a means of reaching out to others in similar circumstances and finding support and friendships that otherwise would have been impossible.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, this may just be the salvation you’re after.

People who care for sick or the elderly also benefit from a decent Chat Room as it gives them the chance to voice and vent their frustrations with others.

Victoria’s Secret ladies undergarment are much sought after and for good reason. This company that was created in the seventies by Roy Raymond on account of the difficulty in those days of being able to find suitable ladies undergarments has not looked back since its early and humble beginnings. The lingerie items that were being sold in those days were either not well suited for every woman’s taste or they were too uncomfortable and not all that easy to find.

Tremendous Strides

Victoria’s Secret was an answer to these difficulties and from its early days, this company has made tremendous strides in providing women with exceptional ladies undergarment that are sexy as well as classy and best of all, is easy to shop for and which has equal appeal for either gender.

By choosing to buy Victoria’s Secret’s ladies undergarment you will be placing your trust as well as confidence in one of the better products on offer in the market today. The company has now become a multi-billion dollar one that employs the leading models to show off various items of their ladies undergarment and this is buttressed with the most aggressive advertising as well as constantly making front-page news on all major women’s fashion magazines.

When shopping for this particular brand of ladies undergarment you should look for discounts because Victoria’s Secret sells many of its ladies undergarments as well as other products at reduced prices – though only after they have gone out of fashion and are not included in their current catalogs.

So, if you look around at places such as eBay and at discount stores you can pick up some top quality ladies undergarments at vastly reduced prices. Of course, the line of ladies undergarments and other items will be discontinued lines. Still, for the price that you pay you will generally not be able to find a better deal.

Victoria’s Secret provides women with excellent and fantastic items of ladies undergarment and when you buy from them you are assured of quality, good craftsmanship as well as superior quality of materials. So, why waste your time and money on buying less reputable products when with a little bit of effort you can pick up quality ladies undergarments at vastly reduced prices?

Silk undergarments are comfortable, stylish and much sought after. If you have purchased these undergarments then it pays to know how to care for them so that they last longer and provide you with required amount of softness and comfort.