If you are in Malaysia, I’m sure you’ve heard of Chef Ismail or his space venturing partner, Dr Sheikh Muszaphar.
Maxhosting.com.my is proud to sponsor the hosting of their restaurant’s, Rebung.com.my, web hosting plan. The actual site was developed and designed by Irfan Khairi’s team.

Rebung is located in Bangsar, KL and has awesome authentic Malay food. Check it out for yourself.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Wordpress adalah blog/content publishing system yang paling popular dan senang untuk digunakan. Lagi2 ia adalah percuma dan terdapat pelbagai plugin untuk pengunaan masing2. Berikut adalah pilihan top 10 kami di Maxhosting:

1. Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog.

2. All in One SEO Pack

Optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization)

3. WP-Cache

WP-Cache is an extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make you site much faster and responsive. It works by caching Worpress pages and

4. Viper’s Video Quicktags

Allows easy and XHTML valid posting of YouTube, Google Video, Stage6, IFILM, Metacafe, MySpace, FLV, Quicktime, and generic video files into posts.

5. Lightbox JS v2.03.3 Plugin

Plugin used to overlay images on the current page into neat Javascript-powered overlay popups. Also check out out post on videobox here.

6. cforms II - contact form

cforms II is an extremely customizable, flexible & powerful contact form plugin. A plugin we implemented on kevin zahri’s contact page

7. Google Analyticator

Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics. Allows you to track stats and much much more.

8. Share This

Share This is a plugin that provides an unobtrusive way for your visitors to add your post to various social bookmarking sites, or send a link via e-mail. Great to get your sites linked to more sites.

9. SimpleFlickr

This plugin allows you to embed a Simpleviewer Flash Object integrated with a Flickr account. For Picasa users go here.

10. Popularity Contest Which of your posts/pages are most popular? Make sure they are visible at all times.

Looking for more great wordpress plugins. Check the following links:

• Official Wordpress Plugin Page
• Smashing Magazine Wordpress Plugin Guide
• WORDPRESS GOD: 300+ Tools for Running Your WordPress Blog

Popularity: 23% [?]

Most of us have heard of Lightbox, a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page….but it only supports images….until there was VideoBox.

Now Videobox is a 6kb script, which allows you to show your videos in Lightbox. It’s written for the wonderful mootools library. And used swfobject to embed flash. It has done a really great job, if you would like to show your videos in the page with an overlay, Videobox is a really great choice.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Showcase: WanZurina.com

We just completed another small website for one of our client, wanzurina.com. Some of the site’s highlights:

• No Tables. Pure CSS XHTML
• Ajax Contact Us Form

Check out wanzurina.com. If you like what you see, do visit our web design services.

Popularity: 14% [?]

We had an earlier post “10 tips to drive people to your website” which received many positive responses. Due to the popularity of the post, we would like to expand the article to include a basic guide on how to effectively market and promote your website. Enjoy!

So where do you begin when attracting more customers or clients is your goal?

In a word…marketing.

Effective marketing is what brings customers to you.

A dependable, consistent marketing plan and implementation system delivers customers efficiently, on a regular basis, and for a much lower investment than the hit-and-miss methods many business owners attempt.

Acquiring new customers and then keeping them for life is what it’s all about.

Ideally, it should be a matter of delivering superior products and service, then renewing the sales relationship with each new customer, so they buy over and over again and… are happy to do so.

With this kind of customer satisfaction, you’ll not only turn one-time buyers into lifetime customers, you’ll also automatically gain many more first-time customers by word-of- mouth referrals.

Business success begins with the first-time customer.

Unless you already have a large list of customers… your primary focus should be in the area of attracting more and more first-timers, on an ongoing basis.

As always, if you need assistance on how to conduct a successful marketing campaign, we at Maxhosting are more than happy to assist. You are welcomed to contact us here.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Good news for anyone in Malaysia that uses paypal as their “ecommerce payment gateway”. Paypal now enables accounts holders to withdraw their funds directly to their VISA credit card.

So now, all you need is a Malaysian VISA credit card to withdraw funds from your paypal account. Problem remains that paypal does not (yet) accept Ringgit Malaysia (RM) as a valid currency but I’m sure that’ll change some day.

Other options? check out ipay88: its cheaper, more flexible and made especially for Malaysian eCommerce shops. 

Popularity: 17% [?]

RM88 Cash Back - iPay88 Payment Gateway.
Get RM88 cash back (refund) when you sign up with iPay88 through Maxhosting. (Use Maxhosting as referrer during signup)

iPay88 Link is a simple Internet Payment Switching Gateway system created especially for Malaysian online shops. iPay88 Link absolutely simplifies the payment process with ease.

What Payment Methods can iPay88 accept?
With only RM68/month, you can only accept payments through credit ards and other popular Malaysian online payments from:
Credit Cards: Visa & MasterCard
Online Banking: Maybank2u, RHB, Alliance, Public Bank etc
Others: FPX, Mobile Money & PosPay

How How much does iPay88 Link Cost?
One time Setup Cost: RM400 (after RM88 Maxhosting refund)
Monthly Fee: RM68 per month
Transaction Fee: The charge rate depends on the type of payment. Approx 2-4% per transaction. Contact iPay88 for more info.

Wanna Get Started? Click here for more info….

Popularity: 57% [?]

Content taken from SiteProNews

1. Give people a free subscription to your newsletter. Almost everyone is publishing a newsletter nowadays so it is important to give something extra with the free subscription. You need to set yourself apart from the other internet marketers out there. This might be done by offering a gift or free advertising when people subscribe.

2. Provide visitors with new and original content. Your content will be more attractive to your visitors if it is up-to-date or original. You could also offer people the option to reprint the content in their newsletter or web site. You will need to change your content frequently if you do this. But the benefits are worth the effort. The search engines will love your site and keep coming back. Your site will rank highly in their results and your visitors will keep coming back for the latest updates.

3. Use PPC directories. You can advertise in pay per click directories. With PPC you only pay when some one clicks on your link. If no one clicks you pay nothing. This method is very good if you are selling a product at your site. It is easy to assess the cost of each sale and measure you success.

There are lots of PPC sites out there now. Google and Yahoo! are not the only ones. You can often get a better deal at these other sites depending on the competition for the keyword you are using. Shop around. There is probably a site out there with your keyword going cheap. But, Make sure that it can deliver the traffic. You can do this by checking its Alexa rank. If it is not getting much traffic itself, how is it going to direct traffic to you?

4. Give visitors a free ebook. You could write your own and include an ad in the ebook linking to your site and allow other people to sell it or give it away. If you don’t want to take the time to write one, you could ask other writers permission to use their articles and assemble an article eBook. Or commission an eBook. There are plenty of writers around willing to write a fresh eBook for you at a fair price.

5. Hold free online classes or seminars. They could be held in your web site’s chat room. The idea of “live” information will entice people to visit your web site. You will become known as an expert on the topic.

6. Offer free consulting to your web site visitors. You could do this via e-mail or by telephone. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive. Use a separate business line if you use the phone or you will have calls coming in to your home phone around the clock as the world turns. If your site becomes known for this service you may need to employ people to help keep up. If this happens you can bring in a two tier system whereby you have a free service and a paid service offering something extra.

7. Give visitors a free entry into a contest. The prizes should be something of interest or value to your visitors or relevant to your site’s topics. Most people who enter will continually revisit your web site to get the results. Do not be discouraged if the first one or two contests do not set the world on fire. The word has to get out. People will talk to their friends about this site that is running this great contest, and before too long your site will have a name for running contests. There are people out there who really go for that sort of thing and will visit your site regularly.

8. Let visitors download free software. It could be freeware, shareware, demos etc. You could even turn part of your site into a free software area and let other people sell it or give it away from this area. You do not need to produce the free software yourself. There are plenty of sources on the web. All you have to do is link to them. If you gather a significant amount of software of a type relevant to the topic of your site you will make your site a valuable resource for your visitors and they will keep coming back to get more.

9. Offer free online services or utilities. They could be search engine submitting, copy writing proofreading etc. The service or utility should be helpful to your target audience.

10. Give your visitors a free membership to an online club. People like to feel that they belong to something, why not your online club. You could also give away a free newsletter for club members only. The members will very likely want to contribute a large part of its content making it easy to source articles. If you offer them a link back to their own site your members will be queuing up to put content in your newsletter.

Popularity: 11% [?]