It is not easy being green, but the fast rising trend in the hosting world is to claim that you are a “green” web host.

That means that you are environmentally friendly and you fall under what is a scam in my opinion with the whole carbon offset project. Bob writes in with this related question…

“I have seen several web hosting companies claim they are ‘carbon neutral’ and ‘green web hosts’. Is this a marketing ploy or something I should be happy to see?”

To be honest there are a lot of people still “on the fence” with how good or not so good being “carbon neutral” is. On the positive side of things, before being taken over by the nutty people the idea of being carbon neutral was a good idea. It means you are releasing no carbon into the atmosphere. One of the first places that claimed to be totally carbon neutral was Vatican City, so you know if the Pope does it, it can’t be all that bad.

Then came in these special interests and people looking to make a buck on the deal. Web hosts go to a firm and buy a number of carbon credits to equal the amount of waste they are putting out. If they buy enough to cover their rear ends then they can claim to be carbon neutral. Think off it as a fat person who wants to get skinny, but instead of eating right and doing exercise they by “skinny credits” from Richard Simmons and they can claim to be skinny and health even though they haven’t changed a thing.

If your really interested in seeing how green your web host really is, try asking them what they are actually doing that could be seen as being economically friendly rather than how many carbon credits have they purchased.

For web hosts out there, from time to time they must wonder if it would help their bottom line to start up a regional web hosting franchise, such as those out there that do United Kingdom hosting.

For the clients looking for hosting, they too have a fair share of questions such as, will they get a better deal going with a closer hosting provider?

Although the web hosting business is a global game for one and all - one thing we can not get over is no matter who you are or what you do, there is always going to be somewhat of a lag when crossing the ocean. If you are wanting to deliver your services to a group of people in one region then it would make sense to have services there to cut out this issue all together.

It is a niche too or specialized hosting solution that gets attention. Which out of the two web hosts is going to get the most attention. The one that says they specialize in super fun windows hosting or the one that says they pride themselves in generic boring hosting that everybody else does. Saying that you specialize in UK hosting for an example is a good niche inside of the hosting world to separate yourself from some of the other players in the game.

One good example of a company that is doing United Kingdom hosting is UK2.net. With both shared and dedicated servers they have carved out a nice chunk of the UK hosting experience for themselves. They do dedicated UK web hosting that looks really exceptional and they are even using some US based servers too - so they are expanding themselves from one niche into another.

So remember that the regional-based hosting solutions are nothing to sneeze at. From a technical side of things they could give you a better connection if you are around their region and from a marketing standpoint it does a great job at giving you something to brag about to separate yourself from the rest of the web hosting pack.

Ever heard of Dan Grossman? I just happened to stumble across his blog via WebHostingUnleashed.com. he is the owner of Awio Web Services LLC. You might not know that name, but you should know the name W3Counter! That is one of the many services that his business owns. Need some inspiration for yourself? Check out this small part of his bio page:

Awio is a one-man company — forming a company was more about convenience and tax benefits than necessity. I’ve developed and operate all of the websites on the Awio website, with dozens more having been built and sold to new owners. I’ve been creating successful websites since Website Goodies in 1997. I am self-funded, reinvesting only profits from current sites into new development. I take on all roles including software design, development, testing, system administration, accounting, marketing, order processing and customer service.

He is a guy after my own heart, living the freelancer’s hosting dream. Check out his writings and posts at: http://www.dangrossman.info/

If you know of anymore hosting or web development insiders that have awesome personal sites or blogs, let me know.

There has been lots of talk about web hosts offering and clients needing upgrades to PHP 5. For those of you who might be outside the loop, let me first explain what PHP is. PHP is a framework that works on your hosting server’s side of things. It is a programing language that allows web developers to create content that dynamically interacts with databases.

Now the main reason you would want to upgrade to PHP 5 is that development for PHP 4 ceased at the end of 2007. You will no longer get updates for it, unless they are security related. Critical security updates for PHP 4 will be provided till August 8, 2008. So this is another good reason why a move to PHP 5 might be a good idea.

Where are the advantages of PHP 5 over PHP 4? Well without getting too geeky on you there are a number of improvements that just make it more robust, faster, more secure and easier to work with. What was wrong with PHP 4? Well, nothing really - it is just getting a little long in the tooth. PHP 4 you have to remember was released back in 2000. Think of it as a pair of old shoes you really love. the laces might be lost and your holding the heel on with duct tape but you can still put them on your feet and use them. PHP 5 would be the pair of sneakers you always wanted.

There have also been several public movements to help lead the charge to PHP 5, one of the more popular ones was the GoPHP5.org project that shared information about PHP 5 and kind of helped push a lot of web hosts in the right direction when it came to supporting the most recent stable release of PHP 5.

The name of the game is evolution. As with any technology, we need to move forward as soon as there is a solid stable release because in doing so we can continue to make things bigger, faster, better and stronger.

In my opinion, the worst thing that could ever happen for the web hosting industry as a whole would be if Google bought GoDaddy. Now before you write me off as being some crazy anti-corporation loon let me explain the web hosting industry’s doomsday scenario.

The Merger Begins

Lets say in this alternate reality, Bob Parsons (the man in charge over at GoDaddy) gets an offer he can’t refuse from the Google team. He decides to sell to Google for (well, insert large dollar amount here) and Google is now the world’s biggest search provider and the world’s biggest domain name register all in one smart business move.

A few months down the road, Google announces it will get into the web hosting game. They have the money, servers and resources to start doing serious web hosting at any given moment now. Some might say they already are with their page creator service - but I don’t really count that as it has yet to even really get any decent buzz. If they needed a base for it, they could always use GoDaddy’s hosting business as a starter. Yes, ladies and gentlemen we now have Google Daddy.

Google Daddy Takes Over Web Hosting

With their two tier plan, you can get unlimited disk space, bandwidth and resources for free. Then they charge you five dollars for a domain name and your web site is up and running. Where is the catch? Well Google’s main business is not search - it is advertising. To pay for the hosting, you will agree to put Google AdSense ads on your web site and split the profits with Google 50/50. They get half of your ad revenue (on top of what they take from AdSense profits already) and you get reliable free hosting.

The End is Upon Us

Over the next few months, web hosts would start to drop like flies. Nobody out there can compete with Google Daddy and in one year or so down the road (after that acquire the Planet, Rackspace and a few other dedicated server hosts) they control seventy-five percent of the hosting market. What Google was just a little over a year back for just search they are now for search, domain registration and web hosting.

That would be the ultimate doomsday scenario that would bring the web hosting world to its knees. Google Daddy controls the three things that pretty much defines the Web as we know it and there is not a major force that can stand in their way.

Without monitoring, nobody would know what is happening with the web server you are on. Is PHP running? Does MySQL need to be restarted? You would be without direction just in case a bad situation popped its ugly head. As you can see server monitoring might be the most important part of the hosting business.

Now with shared hosting, monitoring is a given. Most people have no clue what is going on. They just know their Joomla install isn’t working and they want it fixed. With dedicated hosting though monitoring becomes more important because the web host you go with may or may not “hold you hand” in this regard.

The basic things you need to keep your eyes peeled on are HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3. Then you have other services that are second tier to that and you go down the line service by service.

There are services out there that will monitor for you. SiteUptime.com is one service that comes to mind. Another one that I would highly recommend would be Wormly.com. If you remember I had an interview about Wormly with its founder back on podcast 105. Shared, VPS or Dedicated, if you are not sure how, when, where and why your own web host does server monitoring you might want to ask.

Yes, Yahoo has jumped in on the unlimited hosting bandwagon. For $11.95 a month (plus a $25 setup fee) you can grab a shared hosting account with unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited e-mail storage, and 1,000 email accounts.

Now usually with an offer like this, I would be pretty mad because they are selling a service they can not possibly deliver. There is no such thing as unlimited anything in the web hosting world. Now why has Yahoo still not gotten on my bad side yet? Well, unlike other hosting companies they spell out what “unlimited” really means.

What is the Catch?

First thing first, they prohibit hosting any files that are not linked with your web site your hosting. That is a good thing. With unlimited disk space they spell it out like this:

You can now create as large a site as you like (you won’t face an upper limit, or “ceiling”), but we will place some constraints on how fast you can grow. In other words, you can add as much content as you want, but maybe not all at once. The vast majority of our customers’ sites grow at rates well within our rules, however, and will not be impacted by this constraint.

The explanation for unlimited bandwidth is also along the same terms. The FAQ for that says…

In most cases, if you use our service appropriately, visitors to your web site will be able to download and view as much content from your site as they like. However, in certain circumstances, our server processing power, server memory, or anti-abuse controls could limit downloads from your site.

So I have to give Yahoo’s web hosting division a pat on the back for actually putting it down in writing what unlimited means.