Acorn Internet Services, Inc. has recently released it's own Web site "Site Lift" with many new online educational classes, portfolio pages, and much more! Take a moment to look and see what new things our "Site Lift" has to offer such as:

TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor in 2010 will allow you to pay to include your URL, E-Mail and Phone Number on your Trip Advisor Listing. For full details [Click Here]
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Google Caffeine
As per Matt Cutts, spokesperson of Google, Caffeine is to be released after the holidays. In our September News, we wrote up the full article on what Google Caffeine was and how it was going to impact organic placement. Matt Cutts of Google has indicated they have this current release running on about 50% of the searches on one (1) data center. The old test sandbox area is now gone. The current datacenter IP where this is released is 209.85.225.103 Remember, if you see your placement change in January 2010, it will more than likely be a result of the Google Caffeine release. If you find you need to know more, make sure you are attending our Webinars.

Mid-Atlantic Trade Show and Conference - It's not too late to Register!
January 10th-12th, 2010 [Click for more Details]
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Club 60
Take it to the next step and join other Acorn Internet Services innkeepers in learning even more to help your business. Club 60 if for our customers who are dedicated to making a difference in their Internet presence by attempting to spend 1 hour a day (60 minutes) on topics that relate to their everyday online business!
[Click for more Information]
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Acorn Internet Services, Inc. Industry Webinars
We continue to hold a variety of incredible online Webinars to help you in your business. If you are an Acorn-IS Customer, then these classes will remain FREE throughout 2010. A $49 value per Webinar! Don't Miss Out! Innkeepers are coming and learning how to better their business!
[Click for Schedule and Registration Information]

At the end of 2008, a plan was in place to increase our pricing structure to go in effect as of January 1, 2009. But, due to the economic temperature at the end of 2008, we made a conscious decision to not follow through with those pricing increases. Our rates stayed at our 2008 pricing structure throughout 2009.

Project Management $40 an hour
Professional Services and Marketing $50 an hour
Existing Development $65 an hour
New Development $75 an hour
Hosting $15 a month

Again, we are at the end of another year and are looking at our pricing structure. The economy is still impacting our customer base and it is our intent to continue holding our 2008 pricing structure again for one more year, with the exception of Hosting. As our costs for providing our customer base Hosting services increase, we simply cannot continue to hold at $15 a month. As of January 1, 2010, Hosting will be adjusted to $20 a month. All other pricing will remain at our 2008 pricing structure.

A note on our Acorn IS Hosting services, from Vice President and Co-Founder Mark Kolb:

We are in the process of moving our customers' Web sites to a new state-of-the-art data center. After extensive, indepth research, we have chosen to use Rackspace as our new data center provider. We selected Rackspace because of their high quality service, support and state-of-the-art data centers. This new data center offers additional features that will be important in keeping Web sites responsive, secure, and retain very high up time. The main areas of improvement involve a dedicated Cisco firewall for extra security, which will help reduce the probability of the Web sites getting attacked by hackers. The servers are running on redundant hardware so that if there is a hardware failure the Web sites will continue to run until the component is replaced. Multiple days of backup data are archived so that if there is a need to restore files that were modified we can request the date before the last change be restored.

There are many areas where a Web site can have a problem. Here are some of the more common issues: Network issues at the data center, hardware failures on the server, software updates that fail, hackers compromising the server, or simply servers that are not powerful enough to keep up with spikes in Web visitor traffic. The change to the new data center will greatly reduce these potential issues.

Our goal is to offer very high-quality hosting at an affordable rate. Since our costs have increased, we are changing the hosting rate from $15 a month to $20 a month. This new rate increase will be effective as of January 1, 2010. You will receive a separate E-mail when your site has been moved to the new data center.

Marian Talbert
Marian joins Acorn IS with over 35 years of office management experience. Her background is widely varied. Retired from Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania ... [Read More]