Archive | March, 2008

Wild & Wacky Web Hosting – Episode 146

Mar/31 in All Posts, Web Hosting Podcasts

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

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 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.

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Easter Break and New Segment Archives

Mar/24 in All Posts

new-segment-archiveWell 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:

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

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Rapidshare Searching Made Easy

Mar/21 in Online Tools

ShareMiner is another great free file host searching tool.  It does a great job at indexing many of the websites and forums that might contain Rapidshare file sharing links, and gives you an easy way to navigate through them.

Continue Reading →

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How to Traceroute? (on Windows and Mac)

Mar/21 in All Posts, Beginner Help, Web Hosting Tutorials

Traceroute Help 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.

+ Watch the Trace Routes Video Tutorial!

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Free File Hosting at FilesTube

Mar/20 in Free Hosting

FilesTube is a great place to go to search for almost any sort of file you might need. It features special areas for groups, games, video, software and more too. All you have to do is search for the file you need, and download from one of the many sources out there.

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Is That Site Down, or is it Me?!

Mar/19 in All Posts, Online Tools, Web Hosting Tutorials

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.

Is Your Domain Working?

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.

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Learn to Find the Top 10 Web Hosts Scam Lists

Mar/18 in All Posts, Shopping Advice, Web Hosting Tutorials

Top 10 Web Hosts? 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.

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Searching the Free File Hosts – Episode 145

Mar/17 in All Posts, Web Hosting Podcasts

Web Hosting Podcast 145 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

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 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.

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FreshBooks – Invoice Elsewhere!

Mar/14 in All Posts, Online Tools, Web Hosting Tutorials

FreshBooks Online Billing ManagerThe other day I was chatting with Alex from Sliqua.com and he was telling me about this awesome billing service I had to check out. FreshBooks.com promises to deliver you painless billing. The real question is, can they deliver?

FreshBooks is an online invoicing and time tracking service for small, medium and large sized businesses. You let them manages the invoicing and billing side of your company and you can get back to running the actual business side of things.

The nice thing is that it is not just for web hosts. Anybody can use their service. It will allow you to manage invoices, track expenses, track your time, accept various payment methods, sent invoices by snail mail and generate reports. It does a ‘bit of everything.

Depending on how many clients you need to manage, the prices go from $14 a month to $149 a month, so they are very flexible in that regard to meet your needs.

I think this service would be perfect for any web host, web designer, freelancer or anybody that needs to manage multiple clients giving them money. Check them out at FreshBooks.com and let them know that the Web Hosting Show sent you there.

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From the Hosting Blogs

Mar/13 in All Posts, Hosting News, Web Hosting Tutorials

There are tons of goodies on and about the web hosting world if you know where to look Online. Here are a few gems I scrapped out of the blogging dirt this week.

The Hosting Industry Organization

This new virtual posse of the hosting industry promises to be a socialized group of hosting professionals. Based off a list from LinkedIn – there are many that have already joined (including yours truely) and I am looking forward to seeing what becomes of this just budding project later on down the road.

New Blog! Web Hosting Topics Rocks!

Here is yet another good hosting blog worth subscribing to. Brought to you by the same folks as the DAW Web Hosting Blog and HostingBookmarks.com it promises fresh content for the web hosting addicted. Yes, that would be both you and me!

Blog.Verisign.com? (I didn’t know either)

Did you know that VeriSign had their own collection of blogs from insiders in the company? The company is based around providing secure SSL certificates so, I mean, how exciting can the blog be? Well I was delightfully surprised by a few so the list here is well worth checking out.

Have you found any hidden treasures in or on the web hosting blogs out there? If so drop me an e-mail or leave a comments and let me know about it.

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