We have a show filled with LOL cats, WordPress upgrades, cheat sheets and free file hosting. Now what in the world do all of these topics have in common? Well… nothing at all really but you should know by now I don’t need a reason to talk, I’ll do so at any time, at any place for any reason you hand me.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 146!
Running Time: 14 minutes | File Size: 6.10 MB

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

• The WHIR Blog = Getting Better? You Tell ME!
• Cheat Sheets to Make You a Better Webmaster?
• WordPress 2.5 Finally Comes to the Masses!
• File Dropper Promises to Be RapidShare with Less Suckiness!
• Wild Cats Take Over Data Center’s Land, Who Will WIN?

My hangover on Peeps and jelly beans is now long gone, so I am back to spread the digital word on all things web hosting, web development and web anything else you might have in mind. This show is the podcast to tune into to get the first, middle and last word on the state of the hosting industry today.

Well this most recent Easter break kicked my butt as far as time goes, so afraid my time to do a podcast this week was cut a little short.  However I was able to go through the segment archive for all the past segments we have done on this show and organize them a ‘bit more. 

This is one complaint out of many I hope to give worked on this next week or so.  As you can see on WebHostingShow.com I have things divided up into:

• Backend Stuff
• Beginner Help
• Commentary
• Downloads
• Free Hosting
• Hosting News
• Online Tools
• Shopping Advice
• Web Design
• Web Hosting Tutorials

If you have any other suggestions for the podcast or the podcast web site, please feel free to let me know.

I got a question from a Web Hosting Show listener last week about how to do a traceroute. Now this might be hosting help 101 for some of us out there, but it never hurts to get a ‘bit of a refresher course.

Here is how you can do a trace route from your PC (Windows XP, Vista):

1. From the Start menu, select “Run…”
2. When the run box comes up, then type in cmd
3. When you get the command prompt, enter tracert yourdomain.com
4. Hit the “enter” key on your keyboard and wait.

For the Apple people in the crowd, you can follow these steps:

1. Double-click the Hard Drive icon > Applications folder > Utilities folder > Network Utility program.
2. Select the trace route tab and enter the domain name
3. Press the “enter” key and wait.

Hope that helps. Doing a traceroute can be very helpful when figuring out if your web site is down or if there is some bottleneck between yourself and the server you are hosted on keeping you from pulling up your web site.

We all know about the big free file hosting services out there. It seems like Rapidshare and Megaupload rule the roost but there are many inching their way up the list. The question is, how can you search through all the files uploaded to services such as these and others? here are five of the best ways to search through the Rapidshares and Megauploads of the world.

1. FilesTube.com - This resource might be my favorite of all the file hosting search options out there. All you need to do is type in what you are looking for, select the file type from the drop down box, and you are taken to tons of results. The sort by size feature also helps a lot in sorting the bigger files from the smaller ones you may not be concerned with (or visa versa).

2. Rapidshare1.com - Not as pretty as FilesTube.com, but it does get the job done when it comes to searching for a file or document from Rapidshare.com. Just wish they had a bit more description per result. They do link you to both the page the link came from and the actual Rapidshare download link.

3. Shareminer.com - This site uses the long and customized Google search string to search though and try to find what you want. Not as successful as the other two options, because since this Google search string has been in the wild a while it looks as if people have found a way to spam it.

4. FilesBot.com - Promising to be a “file storage search engine” it does a good job at filtering out the bad stuff while still delivering pretty good results. Type what you are looking for in the search box, and then find the links. Simple user interface.

5. MegaDownload.net - The last one on our list today features a pretty interface, and does a better job than most at making the search for information readable.

Are there more? Yes, but many of them are using the Google search string trick - so not really worthy for the list. If you think you know of one better than the ones on the list though, be sure to leave a comment or drop me an e-mail to let me know.

As many of you know I work my “day job” I guess you could call it, at Lunarpages and I often get asked questions about if somebody’s web site is up or not. Now more times than not it is often something to do with the web site owner’s side of things. Either their ISP is being a ‘bit wonky, they need to refresh their DNS or some other solution. One quick and easy way to tell if your (or any other) web site is down is downforeveryoneorjustme.com.

I know the URL might be a little long, but this tool is an awesome one to keep in your web hosting tool belt. The simple interface just has “Is ‘text box here’ down for everyone or just me?”. You put your domain name in the text box and hit the linked “or just me?” text and it will spit back a yes or no answer.

If you want an even easier way of using it, just type in their domain name, put a slash in there and then your domain name, such as:

http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/mitchkeeler.com

There you have it, instant site checking. Some people have reported problems with false positives - but with a little fine tuning I am sure this web site will become an instant classic for those of use who need to keep tabs on if a web site is up or not.

Mention “top ten web hosts” lists in any hosting insider circle and you are bound to get a few girly giggles. You know why? 95% of the lists you find out there claiming to be a top ten list of the greatest web hosting providers known to man are crap. There are nothing more than a 2-bit scam to build up the webmaster in question’s affiliate account. So how can you tell the difference between the real top ten lists and the ones that are bought and paid for?

Look for Affiliate Codes

The first thing to look for is affiliate codes in the links. When you hover over the link for the web host on the top of the list, you should just see their domain name right? Say I am hovering over a link for Host Monster, I should see in my browser’s status bar that is is going to http://www.hostmonster.com. You know there is an affiliate code there when you see something trailing that address such as http://www.hostmonster.com/coupons/tophosts.php or something to that effect.

Sneaky Links!

Some top ten lists are getting sneaky though. They will link you to a page that looks like it belongs to them, but really they are hiding the affiliate code when redirecting you to the web host you are interested in. Very tricky indeed.

Ugly Web Site Design and Layout

Another sign that you are looking at top ten web host list gone wrong is the web site design and layout is ugly as sin. Need an example for that one? Check out web-hosting-top.com. Visually the layout here is bad enough to make any CSS guru die a little ‘bit on the inside. There is no color scheme, everything is too close together, you have random caps all over the place and different colored text. This page was not designed to be useful, it was designed to be at the top of Google. You want to know the sad truth? type in “top 10 hosts” into Google and you will find this guy is the third result down.

Prices for List Position

You can also keep an eye out for the obvious mention on their contact us or about us pages of how to get yourself on this list. Some places out there will go as far as putting up prices for position on the list they provide.

As you can see these people can get rather tricky when it comes to trying to make a buck out of your need for web hosting.

On this week’s show I am going to give you a run down on some of my favorite search tools to find files hosted for free on the services such as Rapidshare, Megaupload and more. Also tune in to hear about the basics of traceroutes for both Window and Macs as well as a lot more hosting goodness packed into one awesome podcast.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 145!
Running Time: 14 minutes | File Size: 6.33 MB

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

• Best of the Rapidshare and Megaupload Free File Searchers!
• Web Hosting Basics - How to Traceroute?
• Is The Domain Up, or is it You?
• Answers for out Listeners Seeking Plesk on Shared Hosting!
• Learn to Spot Top 10 Web Host Scams!

If the web hosting industry was Gotham City, I guess that would make me the defacto Batman. Here to right wrongs, and help you with your web hosting troubles. Actually not much of a Batman fan, always like the Green Lantern more myself.