Go from sounding like a networking hillbilly to a true guru of hosting knowledge. Along with that, we are also going to discuss some of the best free hosts of 2007 and a lot of hosting tips, tools and more right here on this week’s edition of the Web Hosting Show.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 135!
Running Time: 15 minutes | File Size: 6.50 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• 2007’s Free Hosting Awards (Photos, Videos and Files)!
• Networking Terms that Confuse the Masses!
• Design Tips for a Web Host’s Front Page!
• Time of the Year to Clean Up Your Support Pages?
• Sell Yourself in Fewer Words!
• No More Tips for Getting Gum off the Side of a Server!

Saddle up and get ready to ride, the Web Hosting Show is back from it’s holiday vacation and well, I didn’t send you a postcard because since you put that restraining order on me - it has been a little hard to find out where you’ve moved to.

Merry Christmas and/or happy holidays from the Web Hosting Show. I’m taking a break from the podcast this week to celebrate the holidays myself - but I couldn’t go without wishing each and every one of the listeners out there of this podcast best wishes for the new year as well.

We will be back to our usual web hosting podcast schedule next year with the next Web Hosting Show episode coming back on the 31st. I’d also like to take this time out we have to open you up to giving me any suggestions, ideas or anything else you’d like to see me cover here on the podcast. Feel free to drop any and all suggestions or questions to mitch@mitchkeeler.com or leave them as a comment here on this post.

Need help picking the best domain name? Do you want some assistance finding the domain name register that is right for you? Have you considered the privacy concerns you might be giving up by getting that .com of you very own?

I want to tackle domain names from head to toe to give people a guide to the confusing world of domain name registrations.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 134!
Running Time: 12 minutes | File Size: 5.21 MB

There is no doubt that domain names are one of the most important parts of the web hosting game so the do deserve a little special attention. Read more »

Going into the holidays (especially Christmas) time is running short for various things, so the Web Hosting Show audio podcast might be on a wacky schedule till the start of the new year. This wacky time though should give me a little more time to try new things such as this one here.

As I test this new way of creating video content for the podcast here, I thought I would go with a question that gets asked an awful lot. How do you create an e-mail account from within the most popular of the control panels out there - cPanel.

Need your hosting news, links and reading with a ‘bit of a twist? Now I have covered other social hosting sites before - but I think the one that gets it right thus far is HostingBookmarks.com. The main pitch and reason for HostingBookmarks.com to exist is to “share hosting experiences” or at least that is what the graphic on the front page would have you believe.

There is much more than your average social voting link site here however. They have categories for just about every hosting topic under the sun. General hosting news, hosting experiences, e-mail, domains, tutorials, events… the list could go on and on.

Here is a little more information about them by them:

Hosting Bookmarks (HB) is a place where anyone involved in web hosting is invited to shared knowledge and experience. We welcome professionals to bookmark good content and consumers to share their experience with various products, services and companies. Our objective is to organize various web hosting related topics and knowledge into a database, and to build a valuable reference network based on social communication.

They also invite anybody and everybody who is interested to sign up and give it a shot. I’d love to see this web site take off in popularity so I am inviting you all to bookmark it and use it often. The great thing about a social hosting tool like this is the more people we can bring into the fold the better it will become.

Want to snoop around and see what top secret information you can find out about your web host? Ok, maybe this information is not all that secret, but you do have to jump through a few hoops to find out about it. Web sites like domaintools.com make it fairly easy to look up some general stats about your web host.

Doing a search on your own domain name you can find out:

• How many other sites are hosted on the same server.
• The server’s status on the black lists out there.
• The type of server your web site is hosted on.

Another good place to find stats on a specific web host is webhosting.info. Just type in the domain name of your web host into the search box - and then select “Web Hosts” in the radio box selection and hit the “Go” button.

You might want to keep in mind that if they are not large enough they might not get picked up by the rankings. Also if they are using several different domains for their servers you might need to do this lookup several different times with each domain and add the final numbers together.

Last but not least - there is always doing a few searches. Personally I would search for: “Insert Company Name Here” sucks.

Now you might not get the best review this way because these are often people that are just mad at the web hosting question and want to spew something out about them. It is always good to take the good in with the bad though. Google aside - you may also want to search hosting forums like WebHostingTalk.com to also get an idea of what others have had to say about your web host.

Want to get yourself 10 terabytes of disk space and bandwidth? If you believe that is even possible - you have some web hosting homework to do. FXTS.net are the ones offering the plan in question, and I really hope this is a fake web site or joke by the people behind it.

Lets let this be a time to review Mitch’s golden rules when it comes to shopping for a new or replacement web hosting account. Feel free to copy this - share it with others, bookmark it for a reminder or write it on the back of your hand. Whatever will help you remember not to be a sucker when it comes to “too good to be true” web hosting deals.

• There is NO SUCH THING as “unlimited” in web hosting. Everything has a limit and there is no magical servers that can hold unmeasurable amounts of data.
• If the web site looks like it designed by a paraplegic cross-eyed homeless man… stay away.
• 99.9% uptime is meaningless. It might sound nice, but 99.9% of the time it is sales jargon and nothing else.
• Always make sure you have multiple ways of contacting the web host in question, just in case they decide to shut down shop in a month and take your money and run.

Have any other golden rules to share for those people out there who might be looking for a new web host? Leave a comment and lets all help educate the general public on this issue.

Related Reading:

+ WebHostingTalk.com Thread on the 10 Terabyte Web Host