There are often odd terms thrown about in the web hosting and web development worlds that just don’t make any sense the the common man on the street.  Phil drops me in an e-mail asking…

“What is domain kiting?  I have heard it is related somewhat with domain deletion and AdSense from Google.  Do you know anything else about the process?”

What is Domain Kiting All About?

Domain Kiting is one of those terms that seems a ‘bit odd when your first hear it, but I promise it does make a little ‘bit of sense.  Think of it as you trying to fly a kite, it says up for a while then falls.  Then you put it back up in the air, fly it some more and you do this till you get bored.  In the domain name world kiting is the process of deleting a domain name during the 5 day grace period and then re-registering it for another 5 day grace period, and so on and so forth.  Then you just wash, rinse, repeat. 

How Does it Happen?

The reason for the 5 day grace period on domain registrations is to cover the customer just in case they misspell it, or decide they don’t want it.  As you can see though, this makes it very easy for scammers to play the system to their advantage.  Now these days domain name registers like GoDaddy and the like are becoming smarter to the process.  This process doesn’t really take advantage or hurt the honest users out there, it just cheats the proverbial domain name “man”.

How Do They Make Money? 

Now I noticed you also mentioned something about Google.  Here recently Google has said their AdSense program will be looking for domains that are “kiting” and drop these domains from being able to put AdSense ads up on those domains.  Hopefully by ending the chance to earn a buck - they hope to curb the bad guys from trying the domain kiting all together.

Domain name warehousing is the act of a domain name register obtaining control of any and all domains with the intent to hold or warehouse the names for their own use or profit (making a buck).

In most cases this happens after the domain name has expired and the previous domain name owner did not renew that domain within the given amount of time. This time frame is usually 45 days after expiration. There are also several types of ways they can cheat you using this dirty and under-handed practice.

Different Types of Domain Name Warehousing?

There are three different types of domain name warehousing in practice these days. The first is when the registrant allows the domain name to lapse but the domain name register fails to delete the domain during the grace period. The end result is a paid renewal to the registry. Then the domain name register assumes the registration of the domain name. The second would be when the customer purchases the domain name through “dirty means” or fraud, and then the domain name register assumes the registration of the domain to be able to resell it and recover financial losses with the deal. The last is when the domain name register just goes out and registers domains in it own name to store them for later.

How do Regular People get Caught? How Can We Avoid It?

Now why and how does this happen? Well with some, but not all, domain name registers they make the renewal process so confusing and difficult to get through the client gives up and leaves. This probably couldn’t happen to people with established businesses or web sites Online but it could with those who might not know any better. I am reminded of the older gentleman who will hang up on a phone call anytime he is faced with a multiple choice pre-recorded option rather than a real person to answer his problems. That type of person is more likely to fall for this type of scam.

Another concern would be that the domain name warehousing domain register would be sitting there waiting for domain names to expire, and conduct domain tasting without having to pay a thing. That would be so they could see which domains did the best with traffic, advertising and branding. So you should be aware the domain name warehousing is out there and web hosting experts and novices alike can be caught by it.

Note: abandoned warehouse photo by Mr Mark on Flickr!

Having issues with random downtime or errors with your web site, but every time you contact hosting support they say:

“Well, all is fine on this end - nothing we can do.”

If you find yourself in these shoes, what you need to do is paint a better picture of the problems when they are happening so they will have more information to work from when it comes to troubleshooting your mysterious issue. It really comes down to the fact that you need to help support so that they can help you.

Step 1 - Clear Your Browser History and Cache

Before making notes for support I want you to clear out your browser history and cache. This may sound silly but you would be surprised how many times it can fix the problem any hosting customer might be having with their web site. Often times, the browser is still pulling up old information it has saved to the “memory” if you will, and not going out to the web each time to look for the new information. You might also try to clear your DNS information too, but that is often only used for new hosting accounts with a new domain or hosting accounts that have recently had the domain name changed.

Step 2 - Record Your IP Address

First thing you need to do is make record of your current IP address. If you are unsure how you can find your IP address a simple Google search for “what is my IP” will give you several Online resources that should get you that magical set of numbers that you desire. If all else fails, just bookmark whatismyip.com.

Step 3 - Do a Traceroute to Your Domain

Now the next thing I want you to do is do a traceroute to see where the bottle neck might be. We covered the basics on how to do a traceroute a few weeks ago. For those of you still not sure here is the “quicky” version:

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.

That would be for Windows XP and Vista users. Apple users can find the traceroute tab under the Hard Drive icon > Applications folder > Utilities folder > Network Utility program. When it comes to Windows, some people are confused on how exactly to copy and paste the traceroute information into a text document or e-mail to support. The best way to go about this is to right click on the command line window (anywhere in the black part) and select “Select All”. Then to copy, hit the Ctrl + C keys on your keyboard. Then you can right click with your mouse, and select paste to paste it into your text file you are saving this information to.

Step 4 - Try View Your Web Site via a Proxy Service

Now that you have that information collected, I would like for you to try to view your web site via a proxy service. This checks your web site from another server’s location from somewhere else in the world. If you can’t pull it up from the proxy service or your own regular browser experience, there may be something wrong on the hosting side. If you can’t pull it up on your PC but you can pull it up via a proxy, there might be a few thing wrong. It could be:

• A Network Issue Between Yourself and Your Service
• Your IP Maybe Blocked from the Server
• Might be a Problem on Your ISP’s Side of Things

Here are a couple of proxy services to try:

http://www.megaproxy.com/freesurf/ or http://www.proxify.com/

Do these suggested things each time you notice the problem, and this way you can paint your hosting support team a better picture of what the problem is. This is no knock on the hosting customers out there, but sometimes they don’t realized that a tech support’s best chance to get a problem fixed is having tons of good information passed along so we can recreate the problem on the server side of things.

If that can happen, and they can rebuild the events from the information you pass to them your web site will go back up a lot quicker.

I received an e-mail from a soon to be web host the other day, and they asked:

“How often should I look over my terms of service?”

Most people think a terms or service and acceptable use policy are things that you should put up once and then forget about. We could not be further from the actual truth of things though. Sure you don’t need to review it daily, weekly or even monthly. I would suggest reviewing it once a year though to make sure all your ducks are in a row.

Has your business model changed? Maybe you started offering new plans or features you didn’t in the year before. If so this might be the time to include something about them so nobody will say they were not featured or told about when it comes to these new things you are offering.

Have bad things happened? We often learn from our mistakes - and if any have been made you should update your terms of service to reflect them so they don’t happen again. Maybe you had somebody not aware of the DMCA or you had somebody hosting a kind of script that ate away at your server resources?

Cover all the basics! Here are some of the basic things you should make sure you cover in your terms of service or your acceptable use policy.

• Spammers are not Welcome
• DMCA and Copyright Notices
• No Breaking the Laws
• Terms of Cancellation and Suspension

Last but not least you should make sure you have something in the bottom of the terms of service that says something to the effect of, “We have the right to change this at any time for any reason. As soon as it gets updated, the new policy will be in place. Please check this page often for updates”. This covers your bases for quick changes you need to make.

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.

Have a look around, web hosting is getting cheaper and cheaper by the minute. Have you ever stopped to think what price you are really paying though when it comes to these discount prices? Now I am not looking to paint every low cost web host with a broad fraud brush.

There are some providers out there that have the business plan in place to handle it. They just might be harder to find.

Do You Pay for it in Perks?

Some web hosts will get you in the door with the low prices, and then when it comes to addons or accessories to your shared hosting account they stick you with the true costs of hosting. This can often happen with upgrades for JSP and ASP support and other upgrades some, but not all, will need.

Keep an Eye on How Long Your Signing Up For!

For an example, lets say Dummy Example Web Host is offering you a hosting deal you can not beat. It is $3.50 a month for 500 GB Disk Storage and 5 TB of Bandwidth. Now when you get on the order page you notice that this $3.50 a month price is only good if you sign up for the 10 year hosting plan. To get this, you must pay up-front: $420. Now if you know they are good then you have no worries but if you have no history with the company do you really want to sign up with them for the next decade? Better yet - will they even be around that long?

The one thing you have to remember (and I have said it time and time before) you have to do you homework when it comes to signing up with any web hosting company. Don’t be fooled by the special deal - and find out if they really are the best of the best or just another guy with a server in his basement trying to make a buck.

Do I Blame the Web Hosting Companies? No!

I can not blame the web hosting companies, because they need to compete with the next guy down the street and make money while doing so. Thanks to the fact that we have so much competition out there for the proverbial bottom dollar; almost everybody undercuts and over-provides. The secret of cheap hosting is to find the one that does so the best.

Diving into networking when it is related to web hosting is a little tricker than it might seem. There are a lot of confusing terms and even more confusing explanations of them all. I figured I’d take some of the most often used hosting network terms you might here and try to break them down.

Propagation - It takes 24 to 72 hours for domain name prorogation to take effect. What does that mean? Well this is the time that it takes for the ISPs to update their cached DNS records so that they learn that your new domain (or old changing domain) now points to the new address.

Traceroute - This is a network tool used to determine the route taken from when you type in a domain name till it reaches the web hosting server the web site is hosted on. You can think of this as following the breadcrumbs, and watching how your domain gets resolved to the place it is hosted.

Whois - Whois is the protocol that is used when asking a database to find out the owner of a domain name or an IP address on the Internet.

Ping - This is another networking tool tht use used to test if a particular server address is reachable across the Web. A good example of this would be if your house was a domain and I came knocking at your front door. Now where it comes in handy to ping is to find out how long it takes for you to come answer the door.

DNS - This stands for Domain Name System, and it is the system used to translate Internet domain names to IP numbers.

As you can see, once you break these down and explain them - all the pieces start to fit together in your head and make a little more sense. The important thing to remember is to do some homework when it comes to terms you don’t know in hosting so that you are better informed about what your web host is doing or what your hosting clients might want.