I?m pleased to announce that our affiliate program has now officially launched and is now accepting affiliate registrations. It has been requested by many customers and non-customers for what seems like years? and finally it is here!

Simply put, you send us business and we send you cold hard cash. Unlike our competition, we are paying up to £80.00 per referral and top earning affiliates will be earning thousands of dollars/pounds in affiliate commissions on a monthly basis.

For more information, and to get started today, please see our website: http://www.clook.co.uk/affiliates

This work isn’t quite complete yet and will be detailed via the announcements system at a later date. I couldn’t resist posting about some of the improvements made here recently…

Thankfully, we don’t need to call on backups for total server restores all that often. However, it remains a critical element of any hosting service because at the very minimum, clients should be able to expect to have their files backed up regularly and stored in a safe and secure environment so if the worst should happen (either single file restore, whole account or entire server) backup archives can be called upon.? Depending on how far one wants to go, it can get pretty expensive! (more…)

Just a quick notice, we are now tweeting on Twitter!

Follow us here: http://www.twitter.com/clookinternet

I’m happy to report that our new Direct Debit payment gateway is now live! The whole process has been quite a learning experience for me…

As most already know, Direct Debits allow providers to charge their clients direct from their bank account using a Direct Debit agreement. Due to the ever increasing restrictions on Maestro card use we felt this was the best way to go for offering clients an alternate method of payment without using credit cards.

I hadn’t accounted firstly on how difficult direct debit facilities were to get setup. Assuming you can find a bank/provider who wants to do business (especially in the current climate), the application process is very similar to credit card merchant accounts with a large amount of detail, credit checks, references and so on.? Thankfully we’re in a decent position on this front and have nice figures to back us up from the credit card processing stats so this wasn’t a major problem.

The second hurdle was the technicalities involved in automating the whole process. To compare, most credit/debit card gateways are pretty straight forward and use a variety of HTTP or XML calls back and forth which can be coded up easier.? For Direct Debit, how things are different!? For security reasons I cannot go into huge detail but the programming involved with automating our Direct Debit facility involved some technologies that are not exactly standard – nevertheless, after a lot of all night coding sessions and a huge amount of testing + tweaking we’re now ready to make it live after a few months of private trials.

Our clients can setup a new Direct Debit agreement online via the client area without the hastle of filling in and posting the paper form that many think of with Direct Debits.? Following this, the agreement is activated and the rest handled at our side!

For further info, see here: https://www.clook.info/kb/151

It’s with great pleasure that we can inform all clients of a new addition to our highly skilled team!

Today we have appointed new hire Tim Greer as our Lead System Administrator. Tim brings over 18 years of experience to the table and has previously held the same position with other industry leading firms. His in-depth knowledge and firsthand experience of advanced server management will bring great benefits to all customers.

Once settled into his new position, we will be sure to have Tim introduce himself personally to the community.

Welcome Tim!