Archive | July, 2007

HostingCon is Over Again

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 117!

HostingCon 2007

Well it looks like the web hosting industry made its way through yet another HostingCon. From what I hear it was a very big and exciting event. I’ve been talking with about a dozen people who went to the event – and I have to say I might just have to make the trip next year.

The major positives from an event like this is it allows one to socialize with their peers. Web hosting can be a very cut throat business, so taking some time to meet fellow industry workers and socialize a ‘bit is a good thing. From the perspective of an outsider looking in for the most part HostingCon looked like a big ol’ party which can be a positive and a negative.

HostingCon 2007The one thing I didn’t see from the coverage I have read thus far on it is an idea. You would think with this many web hosting people grouped together you could see something emerge as a whole to make the business better. Maybe we start a conversation about not hosting splogs. Maybe somebody suggests that we all hosting companies try to hire more American workers. Those are only a few examples of what one hopes would come from an event like this. If it happened it either has not been covered or it wasn’t “buzz-worthy” enough for anybody else to pick up on.

From reading people’s thoughts on forums and blog posts it seems that the experience was an overwhelming success. Everybody from the presenters to the participants seemed to give it two thumbs up.

Now that I have given both my positives and negatives on the event, I hope to hear options and thoughts from other folks that attended the show. Was it worth the trip and will you be doing it again next year? I think overall HostingCon is something good for the industry because it gives us all something to get excited about and a real meeting place just in case the web hosting gurus out there ever plan on world domination.

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Backup Hosting and Breaking Records – Episode 117

Web Hosting Radio Done RightHostingCon, was it worth the trip? I don’t know – I didn’t get to go. I’ll give you my thoughts as an outsider looking in though. Also we have unlimited backup hosting, the last part of our FastServers.net story and I might even do a funny little dance. Good thing this isn’t a video podcast – because the Web Hosting Show is now on the air.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 117!
Running Time: 15 minutes | File Size: 6.80 MB

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Here are just a few topics that we discussed on this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

  • Web Hosting Gets a Wiki
  • Post HostingCon Thoughts From an Outsider
  • Part 3 of 3 of the FastServers.Net Biography
  • Unlimited Backup Storage with Allmydata.com
  • This Podcast is Breaking Records

Link of the Week: Happy Late System Admin Day!

Never finding itself lost in translation we are back yet again to talk to you about web hosting, web development, web.. well just about anything you find out there that starts with that phrase and relates back to the hosting world we all know and love.

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Meet Hosting Pros With LinkedIn

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 116!

Are You Linked In?If your like me and sign up for just about every social network out there, you probably have a free membership at LinkedIn. I have described LinkedIn to friends and family as a sort of “MySpace for grownups” because it has a much more professional tone – but has all the social tools that you would ever need.

One good thing I have found about it is it makes it super simple to introduce yourself to other web hosting professionals out there. Here is my profile on LinkedIn to help you get started with the kissing hands and shaking babies.. no wait, that should be the other way around.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchkeeler

Once you get yourself a LinkedIn Account all you need to do is search for a person you want to meet inside the industry, a company you’d like to speak with or heck, typing in “web hosting” does the job too. After you have taken that leap – all you need to do is having one of your other LinkedIn Friends introduce you to the person you want to meet or send an invite to your person of interest directly to connect with you.

Would the same advice work with other social networks out there? Sure! I have noticed though that there are more hosting professionals on LinkedIn it seems than anywhere else out there.

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Submitting Yourself to Search Engines

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 116!

Submit to the Search Engines!It is an age old question, how should you submit yourself to the search engines. Should you not do anything at all and hope they find you? Should you go out and use one of those “all in one” search submit services? Should you go to each search engine and submit yourself by hand?

Step 1 – Go to the “Big Boys” in the Searching World!

The first thing you want to do is get yourself submitted to the big boys in the search engine world. This would be Google, Yahoo and MSN (or Live Search). Here are a few links to help you with that process:

Step 2 – Sit Back and Wait, and Work, and Wait!

Don’t get yourself stressed out if your not in Google within the next hour. Getting listed can sometimes take days or weeks. During this “downtime” you can try your best to get more folks to link to you as well. The more incoming links you have the better the chances are that a search engine spider will travel from somebody else’s web site to your very own.

The spiders are the little bots that crawl through web sites link to link figuring out what content you have and if it is any good or not.

Now I left out the all in one submitting solutions for a reason. Some of these places are frowned upon by the major search engines out there. These services that could be very useful have been taken over by greedy folks that want to charge you and impatient folks who hit submit every five minutes to every search engine out there.

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Setting Up Google Webmaster Tools Guide

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 116!

Google loves webmasters, and I proved that last weeks with out guide to Google Analytics. Have you tried Google’s specific tools for webmasters though? If you have not you might be missing out on a lot of good information on and about your web site.

Why Do I Need the Webmaster Tools?

Google Webmaster Tools Love YouBy using this series and set of tools you can see all kinds of information about what keywords are bringing people in from Google, the Google crawl rate, the last time your page was indexed plus around two dozen more cool tools and interesting resources. If your a webmaster who hasn’t done this your missing out on a free set of very helpful tools right from the folks at Google.

Create and Submit Your Site Map

To see what I am talking about visit the Google Webmaster Tools web site. Here you can submit your site map to Google so that have a better and easier way of crawling your information. It never hurts to give Google everything it needs, so best to play nice with them if you want to see yourself in the search results for your favorite keywords.

Got Sitemap?There are a number of tools out there to help you learn about how to create this special sitemap for Google to index. Here are just a few suggestions to help you get started:

Also if you are using a content management program (like Joomla, WordPress and others) you might be able to find a plugin that does all the hard work for you and spits out the sitemap.xml file for you.

Once the sitemap has been generated, go in and submit your domain too the Google Webmaster Tools page and then go to the Sitemap tab and then click “Add a Sitemap”.

Verify You Own Your Web Site

After you get your domain and your site map in the system then you must verify that you are the owner of the web site. You can do this either by adding some code to your index’s header information or by uploading a file with a funny name. I would say go with the second one as it is the easiest one to do.

Create your file with the funny name on your desktop, upload it to your “public_html” folder and then check to make sure it is there. Then you can go back to the Google Webmaster Tools web site and tell Google to check for verification. Once they do you are all set!

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What is Reverse IP Lookup

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 116!

Reverse IP LookupFinding out who you share your web hosting space with, if you are on a shared hosting plan can sometimes be a good thing.

It lets you know how many other people are on your server and it also gives you a few other URLs to check it something on your own domain isn’t working right. There are at least a dozen good reasons why you might need to know this information.

One Web Hosting Show listener named Neal writes in with this question.

Hey Mitch, I ran across you site while looking for some info. I’m trying to find a way to put in a web hosts company name and get a list of all the sites hosted by them. Is there any way to do that? Thanks! – Neal

In this case, what you want to do is a reverse IP lookup. This looks at your domain’s IP address and then goes out to the Web and sees how many other domains share that IP address. These would be your neighbors on that server. Now in the case of our listener’s question he would need to figure out a way to find all of the IP addresses this web host in question owns.

That might be a harder and a stickier situation.

Some web hosts own one or two servers.

Others own two hundred or three hundred servers.

As you can see this might be a pain in the rear job if you really got serious with it. One tool I can suggest to you to get the job done is found at SEOLogs.com. There you can do the lookup for free. Another good source is DomainTools.com. If the list is too long they do charge you for accessing it.

Either way you go you should be able to get the job done. Now you can see who you share your web hosting with.

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Search Engine Submit and Help – Episode 116

By Hosting Fan for Hosting FansYou know what a search engine is. They can either be your best friend or your most hated enemy. I’ll teach you how to play nice with them and get them to work for you instead of the other way around on this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 116!
Running Time: 19 minutes | File Size: 8.69 MB

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Here are just a few topics that we discussed on this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

  • Company Bio of FastServers.Net (Part 2 of 3)!
  • Google Webmaster Tools Setup Guide and Help!
  • How to Catch Hosting Friends with LinkedIn!
  • The Best Way to Submit Your Site to the Search Engines!
  • What is a Reverse IP Lookup?

Link of the Week: Add Mitch on Pownce!

If you really stop and realize it, you can get an entire education just by hanging out on certain spots on the Internet. There are sewing websites for those who love their needlepoint. There are music web site for those who want to learn to play a tune. This web site and podcast is all about how to learn about and get more from the web hosting and web development worlds that we all have to live with each and every day.

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Setting up Google Analytics Guide

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 115!

Google AnalyticsWhat is one of the best free solutions for tracking statistical information on your web site? Personally I like Google Analytics. It has just as many tracking and stats options as any of the expensive big boys out there but it is totally free for anybody to use. Free plus good equals a winner in my book.

The question is, how do you get it up and running on your own web site? I have seen a number of folks have trouble with this – so I figured I would go through the steps and tell you how to get it done, one on one.

Step 1 – Go to the Google Analytics web site and sign up for an account or login with your Google login information. After you login, click on the “setup” button to get started.

Step 2 – Next you load up a screen that wants you to put in some information about your web site. Type in your domain name, account name and set your time preferences. The account name will be the group name for the series of web sites you use Google Analytics on. Not really important at this time – so you could really jut call it “Charlie” if you wanted to.

Step 3 – The next page wants you to put in your contact information. If you don’t want to do this – just select your country and you should be good to go to the next step.

Step 4 – One of the last pages you will see is Google’s terms of service and legal agreement. Skim through it, read it if you want to. I know your probably not going to though. Click the “I agree” check mark box and move on.

Step 5 – The last step gives you a ‘bit of javascript to cut and paste onto all of your web pages that you want to track. Just copy it from there and paste it into your web site. Get past that step and your done! You have successfully setup Google Analytics.

If you did all of that correctly, in a few days you should have a lot of new statistical information to view. Google Analytics is an awesome free tool so there is no reason why everybody with a web site shouldn’t be using it. Have any other questions, comments or concerns? Shoot them over my way at mitch@mitchkeeler.com and I will be more than happy to help you out.

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Push Your Host to PHP 5

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 115!

It is time for the masses to look ahead in PHP support and development and move towards using PHP 5. Now I am not alone in my opinion – it seems that is the growing opinion of the masses out there. So what is the hold up all about then? Well, there is some PHP 4 support dropped with PHP 5.

Since it might break some PHP 4 web applications out there, not everybody is in a hurry to upgrade from PHP 4 to PHP 5. That much is understandable. I think if we really want to see a change we are going to have to push the web application developers to think ahead – and not the web hosts.

Support GoPHP5.org

One good place to check out to read more about “fighting the good fight” for PHP 5 is GoPHP5.org.

Here is a ‘bit of information from their mission statement on the front page.

PHP 4 has served the web developer community for seven years now, and served it well. However, it also shows its age. Most of PHP 4′s shortcomings have been addressed by PHP 5, released three years ago, but the transition from PHP 4 to PHP 5 has been slow for a number of reasons.

If you want to learn more about the debate, I would suggest checking out GoPHP5.org for yourself. While your there, if you are looking for a web host that supports PHP 5.2 or greater – check out their ever growing list of choices you have out there.

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Free Hosting With a Twist

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 115!

When it comes to hosting these days, you really have to pick up a more interesting business model if you want to succeed out there. For folks wanting to start a business – but might not have the capital to put up for advertising and marketing just yet – life can be tuff.

I got an e-mail the other day from Stanley, a Web Hosting Show listener and the guy in charge of All or Nothing hosting. He wanted me to pass the word along to all of you that he would be happy to host free clients, artists, designers, programmers, coders, who are in desperate need for hosting and end up stuck with craptastic free solutions.

What does All or Nothing provide that the crappy hosts might not? He promised e-mail, control panels, MySQL databases, PHP support, ect. Sounds like a good deal for free right? Well I have to ask the million dollar question after this point – where is the catch?

It is ad supported hosting. You live with them making a buck on your web pages – and you get free hosting that is better than your average free web host out there. Not too bad. Also if you can stay active in their forums then you might be able to ditch the ads all together. So that is a nice alternative to have as well.

So if your wallet is empty and you want to setup a new web site, give the folks at All or Nothing Hosting a call and be sure to let them know that it was the Web Hosting Show that sent you there.

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