This year, Combell has once again been nominated for the Deloitte Technology Fast 50, which features Belgium’s fifty fastest-growing technology companies. Participants in the Fast 50 are evaluated based on their percentage of growth in turnover, innovation and developed technology. The Technology Fast 50 award goes to the fastest-growing technology company in Belgium in terms of the percentage of growth in turnover achieved over the past four years.

Check out the list of all nominees

Combell Group is number 3 player in Europe

In 2017, Combell Group (which includes Combell) achieved a consolidated turnover of 72 million euros.

Chances are you have already seen Thijs Feryn, our tech evangelist, on stage at a conference you attended in the past. He often speaks at meetings, conferences and industry events and has been doing this for 10 years, both at home and abroad. Recently, Thijs could proudly announce that he had given his 200th presentation at a PHP congress in Las Vegas.

2d ago I delivered my 200th presentation at @zendcon.

10y ago, I never thought I would be speaking internationally. Now I have spoken in 15 different countries. I've spoken in front of 1000 people, I've spoken in front of 5 people.

When DrupalCamp holds its annual community meeting in Ghent, Combell has to sponsor the event. But what can you expect from the sessions that it will offer? And what about the fun factor?

DrupalCamp Ghent will feature a busy programme

On Friday 23 and Saturday 24 November 2018, Drupal community members will once again get together for their annual gathering at DrupalCamp. Two days full of inspiring presentations, in which developers will talk about their experiences and how they succeeded in solving the problems they encountered. After all, that is the great advantage of real communities like those of Drupal and PHP: their members like to share their knowledge with you, so that we can all continue to develop code together.

The DNS security extension DNSSEC can, among other things, prevent cybercriminals from redirecting your visitors to fake websites without being noticed, and it also allows your website to achieve a higher score with certain quality labels. This protection can now be enabled quite easily in your control panel. Here is a brief explanation…

DNSSEC, your digital signature

The Domain Name System (DNS) no longer needs any introduction: it is the big database that converts domain names into the associated IP addresses. The DNS itself does not include any security protocol, which is why an extension, called DNS Security Extensions or DNSSEC, was created, in order to add a digital signature.

Whether online or via social networks, we are getting increasingly close to our favourite brands. Big names, from AS Adventure to ZEB, trust Stratics to transform this huge flow of digital customer data into information that can be easily used for marketing and communication purposes. Combell guarantees secure data storage, compliant with the GDPR, as well as considerable computing power for the processing of such a large amount of personal data.

Customer contact digitally screened

Stratics captures moments when the customer gets close to the brand in order to gain insights into what is happening.

In order to stress the importance of .eu domain names, EURid is presenting the .eu Web Awards for the fourth year in a row. And a Combell customer has also been nominated. How exciting!

The fourth edition of the .eu Web Awards

A .eu domain name clearly indicates that your website operates across borders and that it is aimed at people throughout Europe. That is, in essence, the reason why many companies go for a .eu domain. In order to promote this European brand even more, EURid, the registry of this TLD, is organising the .eu Web Awards for the fourth year in a row.

WordPress 5.0, which is due for release at the end of 2018, will come with a new editor called Gutenberg. If you want, you can already try the beta version. But what is the philosophy behind this editor? What new features does it have? And how can you install it?

Gutenberg introduces blocks that are fully customisable

At present, when you create a new post in your WordPress dashboard, you are taken to the TinyMCE editor, which is a WYSIWYG editor. What you see is what you get: every time you format your text, you can immediately see the changes on screen.

West-Flanders-based Meubili, which is a trendsetting company in the world of outdoor furniture, called on Combell to outsource its hardware. Since then, its ERP software, which is indispensable for sales and order processing, has been running smoothly and flawlessly. Yet another satisfied Combell customer!

Extending indoor living spaces in the garden

In recent years, indoor living has been increasingly expanding outdoors. People now have cosy lounges, luxurious garden furniture and fully equipped outdoor kitchens in their gardens. And they do not use them during the warmer months only, but also on cooler days, with the help of, for example, patio heaters.

In a conversation with podcaster @Edd_mann, Thijs Feryn explained how the (hosting) wheel does not always need to be reinvented and why you should not necessarily replace a stable hosting environment with a new one, just because you can.

From a more technical point of view, he also examined how systems such as Packer, Vagrant and Terraform allowed him to work vendor agnostically. Here are some excerpts, which will probably make you want to listen to the full podcast!

How it all started for Thijs

Thijs Feryn needs no introduction. He earned his title as “Combell tech evangelist” by explaining the benefits and possibilities of PHP at many meetings as an active member of the PHP community.

The Belgian group Betcenter, one of the major providers of sports betting in our country, opted for Combell in 2017. “We have been growing intensively since 2013. In addition to retail, online is an important priority. Therefore, we were looking for a partner that could easily keep up with our growth rate”, according to Win Cox, online director at Betcenter Group. In the run-up to the World Cup 2018, an interactive app also provided a smooth introduction to online betting.

With over 120 employees and more than 100 sales outlets in Belgium, Betcenter has become a permanent fixture in the sports betting market.

DDoS attacks can cause major economic damage and completely shut down websites. What is a DDoS attack? How can you protect your website against DDoS attacks? And what does Combell provide for this?

What is a DDoS attack?

First, we need to explain what a DoS (Denial of Service) attack really entails. This is a situation where a computer system cannot provide the service that you are expecting as a user. This can happen due to an unintended error in the program, but usually these are situations where the access to servers, devices, services, networks, applications, or even specific transactions within applications is deliberately made impossible by e.g.

Does Google take the location of the servers of your web hosting into account? And if so, which location is the most suitable? And is hosting in Belgium a plus for your Google SEO?

What is the role of location with SEO?

When ranking the results of a search query, Google will always try to give the most relevant possible result, also geographically. Because it makes little sense to mention the address of the baker from Bruges who sells ‘rye bread with currants’ when the user who enters this query is located in Kempenland.