April 19th 2023

SmartServerManagement closure - Alternatives?

SmartServerManagement, a subsidiary of PC Smart, have recently emailed their customers to announce their closure. The email is backed up by a short announcement on SSM's website. They've been around since 2010, and present on WHT with a great reputation (many members will be able to mention their staff by name), but it seems that PC Smart have decided they'd prefer to focus their attention on other elements of their business and close SSM. A number of WHTers (and guests) will be looking around for a replacement server management company with similar skills, reputation and pricing. Can you help with any recommendations, based on your own experiences, of companies that might fit the bill? Share your thoughts in this busy thread.

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SEO - Influence of adding the site name after the title?

Selena is working on the SEO for a site and wants to know if there's any SEO impact in adding a separator and then the name of the site to the title of all existing pages of a website. In other words, she'd modify the title tag in the head section of the site to include a separator and then the site name. She's concerned that doing so might dilute the strength of the "Page Title" / "Site Name" in SERP but in the case of an SEO strategy where "Site Name" are the main keywords that are targetted in priority can it be a good idea? And, if it is, apart from the visual aspect, is there a difference in terms of SEO or Marketing for whatever separator is used? There are a variety of opinions already expressed in the thread. Does anyone have a definitive answer and, maybe, a link to information on this from one of the search engines?

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News from around the hosting industry

Our Industry News section is the place to find current headlines from around the world of hosting and infrastructure, but other general interest threads pop up in other sections of the forum, especially The Lounge. Here we we highlight just some of the interesting news items from around the forum:

• Zayo offers fastest Manchester-to-NYC network - They have announced the fastest direct network route connecting Manchester and New York City, with a transatlantic route. The route adds to a network over 16 million fiber miles and 139,000 route miles. It is designed to provide a direct subsea cable route to North America avoiding backhauling to global internet hubs in London and Paris, reducing latency.
• GI Partners makes a few new data center acquisitions - The San Francisco based investment firm acquired a 139,000-square-foot data center in Ashburn for $150 million and have invested nearly $1 billion in data center sites in Northern Virginia over the last ten years. The company also acquired a Los Angeles address for its data center facilities and communications network on behalf of GI's Essential Tech + Science Fund. The property's substantial data center and network infrastructure include advanced electrical and mechanical equipment, extensive fiber connectivity, and satellite arrays.
• Panattoni building new Spanish data center campus - The European industrial real estate developer is planning a data center outside Barcelona, Spain, breaking ground before year end to develop a 42MW two-building campus. The two 91,945 sq ft buildings will each contain three 17,300 sq ft data halls and will include an on-site substation. It is reported that Panattoni plans to invest around €300 million ($328m) in the project. Last year the company abandoned plans to build a data center in London, UK.
• OVHcloud founder looks to acquire Qwant search engine - The French cloud computing company's founder Octave Klaba is setting sights on control of struggling search engine Qwant. Klaba and his family created a venture called Synfonium with Qwant shareholder Caisse des Depots and Bloomberg reports the parties are holding exclusive talks to buy Qwant. Qwant never gained market share against Alphabet's Google despite government support.

Got some news of your own to share? If it's news from your own company it belongs in Web Hosting Industry Announcements (no ads please!). If you've scooped some news about something else going on in the hosting industry we'd love for you to share it in our Industry News section!

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