Summer is in full swing, and you know what – so is Lunarpages!  We have a lot of great news, tutorials, and more in store for you this month.  From the launch of a brand new Hosted Help Desk Service to our favorite television shows, you are bound to find something to love and lots to learn from.  Join us as we bring you the best of the best Lunarpages has to offer.

Here is what we have lined up for you this month:

LunarNews: June 2009

TremenDesk: the Best Hosted Help Desk Solution Big News!

Exclusive Backup Deal from Keepit.com

Lunarpages Community Survey

5 Freebies for June!

How to Stay in Touch with Your Customers & Grow Your Business

Lunar Legal – Read it Before You Sign it

Why Should I Consider VPS Hosting?

Gumblar Exploit and What Every Webmaster Should Know

WordPress Links-o-plenty!

Lunarpages Picks – What’s on TV?

Add Interactivity with Google Web Elements

As always, remember to give us your feedback, either as comments or drop us an e-mail at affiliate@lunarpages.com.  If there is anything you enjoy, learned from or would like to know more about, we would be happy to hear from you.

It’s hard to believe it’s already June! Time for bathing suits, beach trips, fireworks, and new web hosting news from Lunarpages.

TremenDesk Special Introductory Offer & FREE Trial!

Need an easy-to-use but incredibly powerful web-based help desk solution for your customers and staff? Check out our featured article on TremenDesk, Lunarpages newest solution for all your help desk needs! The special introductory offer of $34.95/month won’t last long, and we’re offering $65 affiliate commissions on this to boot! PLUS you can get a 100% FREE TRIAL instantly, without having to put in any billing details whatsoever.

Lunarpages Twitter Exceeds 700 Followers!!!

Here at Lunarpages, we love all things to do with social networking, and Twitter is about as social as you can get–it helps us keep in touch and assist you guys with your questions. Help us reach more than 800 followers (we are currently at 701 by the time of this post) by visiting our Twitter and joining us! Tweet away and get to know Lunarpages.

Great Deal for Web Hosting

Want a great deal on your next web hosting purchase? Consider our Basic Web Hosting for 60 months, securing a rate of $4.95!! This great deal is only available exclusively through Lunarpages.

New RSS Feed for the Lunarpages Newsletter

Please be sure to re-subscribe (or subscribe for the first time) to our RSS feed for the Lunarpages Newsletter.  In the next coming weeks and months, we hope to have a lot more features coming to it that I am sure you will enjoy.  You can find the new feed here:

• http://feeds2.feedburner.com/lpnewsletter

Special VPS Hosting Discount!

See our Featured Article on Why Should I Consider VPS Hosting for more information on how you can save $35 off your next Linux or Windows Virtual Private Server from Lunarpages Web Hosting!

Lunarpages Website of the Month for May 2009

The winner of the May 2009 Site of the Month contest at LunarForums is AtlasDesigns.net! This fanastically-designed site is a a full-service custom design and print studio, specializing in the creation of one-of-a-kind wedding and speciality invitations. And really, we mean one-of-a-kind: check out their invitations for weddings, babies, graduation, and more.

They even have a new service that includes cartoon-based invitations, a service I bet you’d have a hard time finding anywhere else.

Congratulations to Atlas Designs! You guys have such a lovely website and definitely deserve your win.

If you would like to submit a site for consideration for Site of the Month, visit the forum at LunarForums and get voting!

Author: Tiara Rea

Do you run a business that requires a fully-functional web-based help desk system? How about one where you can send and receive up to 1,000 emails every day? Or one where you can create unlimited custom queues (like Support@, Sales@, Business@), that doesn’t require maintenance, runs incredibly efficient and fast, and has an integrated FAQ System to boot?

Welcome to TremenDesk, the Fully-Featured Hosted Help Desk Solution from Lunarpages.

Since this is a preliminary launch of TremenDesk Help Desk, we are offering it to all Lunarpages customers for a low Introductory Offer! This means you can take advantage of some amazing discounts on this phenomenal hosted help desk solution.

PLUS, there’s a 30 Day Free Trial offer for all Lunarpages customers!! It really doesn’t get any better than this.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Mitch Keeler

I can tell you from personal experience, that having a good backup of your information and data is one of the most important things that you can do.  A lot of us put it off though, because the general assumption is that it is difficult to do, or we just don’t have the time.  Well, I am happy to say that assumption is now wrong thanks to services like Keepit.  They specialize in online backups done right, and have partnered with Lunarpages to provide our community with three free months of service!  This is an offer you will not see anywhere else, and is exclusive to you – the Lunarpages customers.

With Keepit, you can be guaranteed that your music, photos, important files are backed up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author:  Mitch Keeler

How do you like our social community of web sites?  We currently deliver to our customers, this fine newsletter, our Lunartics blog – which is updated daily, the Lunarforums, the Lunarpages Twitter account, and our Facebook group.  What we want to know from you is simple, how can we make these resources and web sites better for you?

Please take the following survey and make your vote count!

Thank you for taking the time to take our survey, your feedback means we can deliver an even better product for and to you.  So we appreciate all the help you can give us to make our community of web sites even better for you.

Author: Tiara Rea

I love free stuff (who doesn’t?). Whenever I go to hotels, I always steal the little shampoo and lotion bottles (my favorite is from South Point in Vegas!!), and whenever I go to Olive Garden I am obsessed with those chocolate mints they give you after dinner. Free stuff always has the ability to make me smile, because stuff is so much cooler when it doesn’t cost a cent.

So as a little summer gift for you guys, here are 5 awesome Freebies that you can use to design, redesign, or cleanup your website!

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Tiara Rea

There are so many reasons to stay in touch with your customers and clients:

1. Knowing your customers means knowing what  they want
2. Talking to your customers creates a positive environment
3. Getting your customers’ feedback can help you improve your business
4. And finally, staying in touch with your customers can help you grow your business!!

This last point often surprises business folk, but did you know that “86% of consumers read online business reviews before making purchasing decisions” and that “90% of them say they trust these reviews”*? Well, it’s true! And now Lunarpages is extending our partnership with RatePoint and their online management suite to offer you a unique way to take advantage of this exclusive information. You may remember we talked a bit about this offer several months ago, and now it’s back and better than ever!!

You can try RatePoint, the leading provider of customer feedback and online reputation management services, free for 60 days! This phenomenal offer will help you organize and manage your customer’s reviews and feedback to help you grow your business.

So what makes RatePoint different? Read the rest of this entry »

It sounds obvious. However, as the economic downturn begins to show signs of a turnaround, the frequency of Internet transactions is on the rise. The downturn created some major changes in the market, but companies have become more efficient than ever. The market downturn also restructured the workforce significantly and has (in some instances unwillingly) created thousands of new Internet entrepreneurs seeking either to supplement their income effected by lower raises or bonuses or in many instances replacing jobs that were eliminated as the result of layoffs and restructures.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Tiara Rea

Lunarpages has been offering Virtual Private Server Hosting for Windows and Linux customers for years, and we host some of the biggest and best VPS-based sites in the world. Considering our reputation for reliable and redundant VPS plans in the industry, I am always shocked that many customers do not know or understand the value of VPS.

For example, did you know VPS plans are perfect for web designers and hosting resellers? Or that VPS plans give you guaranteed RAM and Managed Hosting options? Here’s some further information on our amazing VPS plans and some reasons maybe it’s time to consider VPS Hosting for yourself. Read the rest of this entry »

Author:  Mitch Keeler

Some of you might have heard of Gumblar, and some of you may not have.  So, with that in mind, I thought this would be an important enough security concern to bring up with you all here in the newsletter.  The Gumblar exploit is becoming a big nuisance for many across the Web, so I wanted to create a thread here to discuss the general problem (not site specific issues) so we can all help each other get more informed about the problem.

What is Gumblar?

According to the US-CERT, here is how they define the exploit:

US-CERT is aware of public reports of a malware exploit circulating. This is a drive-by-download exploit with multiple stages and is being referred to as Gumblar. The first stage of this exploit attempts to compromise legitimate websites by injecting malicious code into them. Reports indicate that these website infections occur primarily through stolen FTP credentials but may also be compromised through poor configuration settings, vulnerable web applications, etc.

The second stage of this exploit occurs when users visit a website compromised by Gumblar. Users who visit these compromised websites and have not applied updates for known PDF and Flash Player vulnerabilities may become infected with malware. This malware may be used by attackers to monitor network traffic and obtain sensitive information, including FTP and login credentials, that can be used to conduct further exploits. Additionally, this malware may also redirect Google search results for the infected user.

According to security experts, if you have run all the latest updates to your computer, and you are using a fully patched system, you should be protected from these attacks.  To They’ve worked by hitting the victim with malicious PDF or Flash files.

Read the rest of this entry »

We have a new RSS feed address!

In an effort to make things simpler, we have updated our RSS feed to be a little shorter – and in turn a little easier to remember for our Lunarpages Newsletter.  I want everyone to please update their RSS feed readers to this new address:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/lpnewsletter

If you don’t, you might miss the next great newsletter we put out (which should be coming very very soon, along with some more big announcements!).  So please, take a few minutes to re-subscribe to the Lunarpages Newsletter web site – or use these subscription buttons. 

Thank you to all, and happy (early) Flag Day!