On April 21st, we turn 10 years old!

Ten years. Wow! I’m going to let that sink in for a moment.

In 2008, Trey founded GreenGeeks with a vision to not only become the best web hosting platform available but also create an organization that led the change in being environmentally friendly. I loved the vision Trey had and although we have known each other for years online – we had never met! In 2009, we took a chance together, and I joined the company, we finally met 6 months after starting the company. Together, we had a sense of renewed excitement for the vision of being the World’s #1 Green Energy Web Hosting Provider. Since then, we have grown to become one of the largest web hosting providers servicing over 300,000 websites to customers in over 150 countries globally.

Like many startups, it was just a small team of us at the beginning. Soon thereafter, we started to put together the pieces to handle the growth that we were experiencing and haven’t looked back since. We have gradually reached to a superlative team of more than 75 — all of which work together harmoniously remotely from all around the globe. This is something not all companies can do, and do well. We have come a long way since it was just Trey and I. It’s almost surreal.

In the last 10 years, GreenGeeks has made the INC 5000 Fastest Growing Companies in America four years in a row. We’ve been recognized by the United States EPA as a Green Power Partner, have been mentioned in countless editorials, have sponsored dozens of community events such as DrupalCon, WordCamp and have given back to various charities and humanitarian efforts around the globe.

As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of GreenGeeks, I feel really proud and blessed when I look back at the journey of all that we have accomplished as a company in these significant and remarkable years. GreenGeeks has gone through a lot of ups and a few downs in all of these years and has emerged as one of the top web hosting providers in the world.

While looking back is fun, looking forward is what really thrills us.

The entire team here at GreenGeeks is excited about the next stage of our company; the next 10 years. We have been working hard to provide a better web hosting platform that empowers bloggers, web developers, and small businesses. You will see new innovative products & services, and see more value from GreenGeeks as we progress into the next decade.

Thank you for choosing GreenGeeks as your web hosting platform of choice. We really do appreciate it and we look forward to serving you for many years to come.

Cheers to another 10 years.

Sincerely,

Kaumil Patel
Chief Operating Officer
GreenGeeks.com

&

Trey Gardner
Chief Executive Officer
GreenGeeks.com

The post GreenGeeks – 10 Years of Web Hosting appeared first on GreenGeeks Blog.

Over the holidays, our system admins were busy behind the scenes launching a new application known as WordPress Protect, which provides for more robust protection for WordPress websites. WordPress Protect joins our ever growing security suite which is part of our new hosting platform.

The Issue

With WordPress accounting for over 30% of the total websites on the internet, it has become a significant target for malicious activity. In fact, back in 2013, our industry faced one of the largest and well organized targeted attacks to WordPress installations utilizing an attempt known as Brute Force.

Unfortunately, WordPress does not have built-in protection against these types of attacks and so we worked to develop custom ModSecurity rules and in 2016 developed a rudimentary CAPTCHA-based system to aid in slowing down these malicious attacks.

This process allowed our system administrators to take action to limit the impact to our customers and their legitimate traffic while protecting their websites. Unfortunately, as a side-effect caused confusion by introducing a second login prompt which our customers understandably didn’t care for. This forced us to actively work on a cleaner solution behind the scenes.

The Solution: WordPress Protect

It’s with that effort that our system administrators in conjunction with some of our third-party vendors managed to create what we feel is a superior solution that not only better protects our customers but has also helped to reduce overall server load resulting in a faster & more stable hosting experience for all customers.

During 2017 we actively tested the new solution on a small segment of our network and found that our WordPress Protect suite filtered out over 180,000 attempts daily (a little over 54 million attempts per month) while reducing page load times by up to 13% due to the filtering occurring pre-connection to the customers’ website.

Our findings were further verified after receiving praise from our customers:

“It’s comforting to see that our website is being pro-actively protected against brute force attacks, especially since it doesn’t impede on our day to day.”

“In the past, whenever there was an attack I would have to use the annoying captcha to log into my WordPress site. Now the blocks are happening without me even knowing.”

“I have resorted to using plugins that block these types of attacks, but since you all have activated WordPress Protect, I have seen a decrease in attempts via the plugin stats and decreased page load speeds. Win-win.”

So How Does It Work?

WordPress Protect is automatically enabled for every hosting account on our platform and does not require customers action to enable/disable the protection.

Our system will track failed login attempts over a specified timeframe using a quota-based system for the following pages: xmlrpc.php and wp-login.php. In the event that a connection fails to login 10 times (across our entire network), we will begin to throttle that connection, where page loads will take 30 seconds. Those connections that do not fail, will not be throttled.

So to put it into layman’s terms, if there is a brute force attempt happening anywhere on our network, our system will automatically shut them down while you, the legitimate user will continue to use your website without issue.

What’s to come

As we work to evolve WordPress Protect, we will bring additional features that will allow customers to have greater control of how connections are filtered for their hosting accounts.

We look forward to hearing more positive feedback from our customers as we continue to enhance and expand our security suite options. Feel free to comment below.

The post Introducing WordPress Protect: Enhanced Brute Force Login Protection appeared first on GreenGeeks Blog.

The Impact

Hurricane Harvey dumped an estimated 27 trillion gallons of water on Texas and Lousiana and is looking to be one of the most damaging natural disasters in U.S history. Tens of thousands have been forced to evacuate their homes and while we won’t know the ultimate toll on life and property for sometime, current estimates are pegging $75 billion dollars worth of damage — even worse, the death toll continues to rise.

The Impact to GreenGeeks

The impacts of Hurricane Harvey hits close to home for GreenGeeks, a rather large portion of our team is located in Texas, particularly in Houston — good news is that our team has been accounted for and is safe. Our decision to diversify our staff across the globe meant that we were able to continue to support our customers during a disaster, albeit, slower than normal.

Climate Change

GreenGeeks has always been part of the community. We’ve stepped up and made an effort to bring awareness to disasters, causes and other events which impacts us all. It’s our duty as a company with a voice and simply because we’re human. While the debate on climate change, its impact on the environment and natural disasters such as Hurricane Harvey is on-going, we are in the opinion that it doesn’t hurt to be conscious of the environment. Making small changes lead to big impacts. Web hosting being a prime example. Its impact on the environment is huge, and not many people know about this.

What We’re Doing

In support of those in need, GreenGeeks will be donating $1 from every sale in September to the American Red Cross. You can directly make a donation by going to the Hurricane Harvey Relief Donation Page.

The post Hurricane Harvey: Its impact on GreenGeeks & Our Relief Effort appeared first on GreenGeeks Blog.

Today, I’m excited to announce a few improvements that we’ve made to our hosting platform, as we work towards our goal of providing next-generation web hosting services.

These improvements are the initial stages of our plan to provide powerful web hosting solutions that will simplify the way our customers deploy and manage websites.

Here they are…

100% SSD RAID-10 Storage Array’s

We are now deploying 100% RAID-10 SSD-based (Solid State Drives) servers, which is a setup up from our previously SSD-cache based setup. We’ve seen performance increases of 30-35% on several dozen websites that we’ve tested.

PHP7 is now enabled by default

Last year we announced the roll out of PHP7 on our servers. We’re now deploying accounts with PHP7 enabled by default.

Real-time Security Advancements

We have made considerable improvements to our real-time security scanning engine to make use of aggregate data from our entire network along with tweaks to allow for a more smoother, more secure hosting experience.

Scaling built-in.

Hosting accounts that are provisioned onto our new platform will be able to scale resources (I/O, Memory and CPU) to accommodate for growth by simply upgrading to a higher tiered plan.

All new customers will be automatically placed onto the new platform. A transition plan is already in place to migrate our existing customers to the new platform.

The post GreenGeeks Revamps Shared Hosting Platform to Increase Performance, Reliability & Scalability appeared first on GreenGeeks Blog.

GreenGeeks is a rapidly growing web hosting company that is always looking add to its family. GreenGeeks has made the INC 5000 Fastest Growing Companies in America two years in a row. We are looking for a web developer who is passionate about web hosting.

Why Work for GreenGeeks?

– No more commuting and traffic! You will be working from the comfort of your home!
– All staff members receive 18 days of paid time off per year.
– We’re a home grown company with just over 40 team members and have great opportunities to move up and further your career!
– Your input and suggestions matter to us, we listen to all of our team members. We work as a team.
– Loyalty Merit Program: We’ll increase your pay the longer you work for us.

Job Code: WD2015

Requirements:

– Proficient in PHP, Perl, Bash, MySQL
– Knowledge of JavaScript Framework
– Knowledge of PHP Frameworks
– Knowledge of Linux-based Operating System
– Knowledge of HTML5, CSS3
– Is able to speak fluent English
– Has a reliable high speed internet connection.
– Has knowledge/understanding of the Hosting Industry

Responsibilities:

– Development & Maintenance of Internal Applications
– Development & Maintenance of Client-facing Applications
– Server-side Programming

To Apply, e-mail jobs@greengeeks.com with a cover letter + resume. Ensure that your subject line includes the code mentioned above else it will be rejected. We prefer individuals located in the United States and Canada. We are not interested in Outsourcing companies.

The post Are you a web developer? We’re looking for you… appeared first on GreenGeeks Blog.

GreenGeeks, a leader in providing green energy web hosting solutions, is proud to announce its 2014 ranking at 2095 on Inc. Magazine’s 500|5000 Fastest Growing Companies list, putting the company amongst the elite firms representing America’s fastest growing companies.

GreenGeeks provides website creation tools and web hosting services to small and medium sized businesses which are powered by 300 percent wind energy. Due to the massive power consumption by website providers, the hosting industry is slated to become as large of an environmental polluter as the airline industry by 2020. GreenGeeks mission is to provide exceptional web hosting services while promoting environmental responsibility within the web hosting community.

“I’m pleased to report GreenGeeks has made the INC. 5000 fastest growing U.S. companies list for the second year in a row.” said Trey Gardner, founder and CEO of GreenGeeks. “We’re all very grateful for the trust of our clients in managing their websites, emails, domain names and overall online presence. Moving forward we will endeavor to continue to raise the bar by always searching for new areas and new practices to further enhance our service capabilities.” He added.

GreenGeeks also ranked #127 in Los Angeles based companies, #268 in IT Service providers and #340 in companies located in California.

“To be part of a company that ranked on the INC 500|5000 fastest growing companies in America for two years in a row is a recognition that I’m really proud of,” mentions Kaumil Patel, COO of GreenGeeks. “I want to take the time to thank the GreenGeeks team for their commitment to ensuring the execution of our vision to be the best green energy web hosting provider in the world.”

The Inc. 500|5000 list includes the fastest-growing private companies in America, showcasing the country’s most successful private businesses and distinguishing them from their competitors. This list celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit of America’s most innovative businesses, and GreenGeeks is proud to be among them.

About GreenGeeks
Founded in 2007 by Trey Gardner, GreenGeeks provides the industry’s leading green energy shared, reseller, VPS and dedicated server hosting services. GreenGeeks replaces to the grid 3 times their  energy consumption with energy having been produced by wind, making GreenGeeks a carbon-reducing company. The company is based out of Agoura Hills, California serving tens of thousands of customers in over 150 countries. For more information, visit www.greengeeks.com

About Inc.
Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures, Inc. is the only major brand dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies, with the aim to deliver real solutions for today’s innovative company builders. Total monthly audience reach for the brand has grown significantly from 2,000,000 in 2010 to over 6,000,000 today. For more information, visit www.inc.com.

The post GreenGeeks makes Inc. 5000 America’s fastest growing companies list 2nd year in a row appeared first on GreenGeeks Blog.

GreenGeeks has always been at the forefront of providing the latest hosting technology and late last week an e-mail was sent out to customers announcing that every GreenGeek would be receiving a free upgrade that will boost performance and reliability.

So what exactly is being done?

1. Core CPU & Memory Upgrades.

We will be replacing older processors for newer, faster ones and increasing the available memory on all of our servers across all services. This means that our servers will be able to handle even more load and faster than ever before.

2. Introduction of SSD Accelerated Storage.

We will be implementing SSD Accelerated Storage, which makes use of Solid State drives on top of our already powerful and reliable RAID-10 storage array configuration. We’ve been able to decrease page load times by 50% and overall system load by over 150%.

3. Introduction of FastCGI PHP Processing.

Implementation of FastCGI on shared, reseller and premium servers will allow repeatedly accessed PHP scripts, such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal to be stored and loaded from cache which greatly improves the speed of your website load times.

These upgrades are being made available to customers automatically. Over the next few weeks, as we progress from server to server, customers will receive a scheduled maintenance e-mail that will be required to make these upgrades happen.

Thank you for choosing GreenGeeks as your web hosting provider and look forward to helping your web presence succeed in 2014.

The post We’re making your hosting experience even faster! appeared first on GreenGeeks Blog.

Earlier this year, Internet Corporation of Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN) published an updated Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA). These changes are scheduled to go into effect January 1st 2014 and will affect all domain owners both with GreenGeeks® or another domain registrar. To review a quick technical summary of the policy change check our our educational article ICANN RAA 2013 Changes. This blog article is a more simplistic explanation including examples of what will take place.

Part of ICANN’s RAA changes require all Whois data be valid and requires domains to use only approved proxy/privacy based services. Whois data is used to determine the owner of any internet resource, such as a domain name or IP address. For web hosting customers this data would include your Name, Address, Telephone and email address and is accessible to the public via a Whois Search. NOTE: GreenGeeks does offer ICANN compliant Whois Privacy services which allow us to proxy your information insuring your privacy. The use of Whois Privacy does not override the need for valid Whois information.

In addition to mandating that valid Whois data is stored on all domain names, additional verification processes have been implemented. In order to remain compliant, GreenGeeks effective Jan. 1st 2014 will begin sending email verification’s to the registrant email address on a domains WHOIS. This process must occur upon a new registration of a domain and/or upon the modification of the Registrant Whois records.

Customers will be given a period of 15 days (starting on the day of Registration or Whois Update) to verify their records or ICANN will suspend the domains access until verified. Note: GreenGeeks has no control in this process. Should a domain verification fail, only ICANN has the control to override your DNS records and serve the domain verification pending page.

To help illustrate the process we have included the following flow chart:

Since GreenGeeks provides Reseller Hosting services and handles our resellers registry services we will send out white-label notices to all customers. Similar emails will be sent directly to GreenGeeks customers as well with our contact information. An example of these notices is below:

Please note, at no time will these emails require you to login! Should these verification emails be ignored OR the email bounces ICANN will suspended the domain name until contacted and the Whois is verified. ICANN has provided us with examples of their suspension pages which we have included below:

Upon verification, your website will be reverted back to the original nameservers, however DNS Propagation will occur. ICANN has thought of this and provides the following notice to customers upon a successful verification:

Additionally, ICANN has notified us that this process will only be required once per Registrant Firstname/Lastname + Email combination. As a result, once completed on your first domain name, all additional domains purchased with GreenGeeks will skip these verification steps. However should you update your Whois records, a verification process will begin effecting all domains associated with that combination.

The post Recent ICANN changes & How they affect you! appeared first on GreenGeeks Blog.

For your safety, please always visit our website at www.greengeeks.com and click on the Client Login link at the top right hand side of the page.

Below is an example of the e-mail.

Remember, if you aren’t absolutely sure that the e-mail you receive is from GreenGeeks, you are more than welcome to contact our support to double check with us. Phishing scams are all too common and you should use safe practices with any provider that you have online.

The post Phishing Scam Alert: Tariff Plan Changes appeared first on GreenGeeks Blog.

After we came across some unusual activity on many of our servers, we pushed out an article to help our WordPress users protect their WP-Admin areas from attackers. As the day went on we started to see more of the unusual activity, but this time with tens of thousands of IP addresses. This is a very well organized, highly-distributed global attack on WordPress installations across pretty much every web hosting provider in the industry.

We strongly suggest that you change your password on your WordPress installation. Something that is very hard to guess. lower case, UPPER CASE, 1234’s and $*@#&$’s.

We first noticed traces of this attack last week, it came and went. Last night is when we started to see the brunt of the brute force attack on the WP-Admin area. This caused websites to be slow and in some cases go up and down throughout the day today.

We’ve taken several steps to mitigate this attack but there is only so much that we can do and protect ourselves from attacks such as these. Servers with more WordPress installations are ones seeing the most service interruption.

This is an issue that has/is affecting not only GreenGeeks, but many other well known web hosting companies. It’s an on-going industry-wide attack. CloudFlare, with whom we work really close with has mentioned on its blog that it has pushed out a patch to protect WordPress users from this attack if they have their websites enabled with CloudFlare. Not using CloudFlare? Here are 4 reasons as to why you should. Also, if you haven’t protected your WP-Admin area, you should do that too.

*** UPDATE ***

Please ensure that you’re practicing the suggestions mentioned in our blog post: protecting against WordPress login attacks. 

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