Domain Name Registration – This one is the most obvious additional service a web host can provide.  Who doesn’t want to give customers the ability to register a domain and buy the hosting in one place?  By doing so, you keep you customers from looking elsewhere for one of the most important add-ons you could branch out into.

Backup Hosting – Many web hosts move into backup hosting too.  You could provide off site personal backup as a secondary service, or you could offer a subscription based service for the customer’s web site backup and the process of restoring that backup.

SEO or Marketing Services – When it comes to selling search engine optimization or any sort of marking packages, make sure you have the support team to back you up.  This sort of service has a bad reputation, because many people see it as selling snake oil.  It is a tricky one to show real results from, so if you do move into the SEO and marketing business, just make sure you provide your customers with the goods.

Gift Cards – Providing gift cards can be an excellent way to make yourself look more compassionate about the customer’s needs.  It might not make loads of money, but providing a way to give your services as a present is never a bad thing.  It could help out beginning web hosting gurus, and help young webmasters in getting their first works on the Web.

Affiliate Programs – Why sell your web hosting plans yourself when you can get somebody else to do it for you?  By giving people a “finder’s fee” when they bring you a new customer, you give your community a reward, just for sharing their opinion.  Now it might be hard to lure affiliate professionals, when some companies pay 95% of their profit to affiliates, but start out low and work your way up.

Web Site Design – Like domain name registration, offering a web site design service or an internally built WYSIWYG editor is another nice extra service to add.  It is one of those web hosting necessities that everybody needs, and not everybody has the time to do themselves.

Other Flavors of Web Hosting – When it comes to adding extra services, do not just look at things outside web hosting.  You could offer more web hosting plans.  For example, if you only provide shared web hosting right now, you could move into VPS or dedicated web hosting services.  You could even make shared hosting plans that are a little cheaper (with less extras) or a shared hosting plan that is a little more expensive (with more extras).

There are many ways a web hosting company can diversify.  The important thing to remember is to keep your quality of the service as high as possible for each new service you provide.  I have seen web hosts launch a new product, then forget about it the next month, too many times.  Make sure you give yourself ample time to build up each new service you decide to provide.

Get the Podcast! Listen to this article and more on Web Hosting Show, podcast #204!

A web site visitor should never be confused by your web site’s navigational layout.  Every web page out there should have an easy way to navigate both to new web pages and categories, but also back out of them.  Think of it as reaching a fork in an old country road, choosing to go down the left road – and then turning around and finding a pink hippopotamus in a tutu.  While that might sound ridiculous – many web sites leave visitors with the pink hippo more often than not.

Keep it Clean, Simple and Easily Recognizable

Every web site should start off with a clear, upfront way to navigate from one section to the next.  A web site visitor is not going to stick around long if they can’t find their way around the site.  The web site navigation should be around the top and stick out enough so it does not get lost in your web site’s content.

Don’t Use Crazy Names for Navigation Links

You should also use obvious names for each navigational link.  Don’t use the name “Ice Box” if you want to give a link to your page about yourself.  Instead, use the word, “About” or something to that effect.

Less is More

Keep it simple.  Less really is more when it comes to web site navigation design.  Giving your users too many buttons, links and sub-links right from the start will just lead to confusion.  Rather than link after link, you might consider using a drop down list to give your web site visitors access to pages that fit under that specific category.

Never Leave Your Web Site Visitors Lost

My last ‘bit of web site navigation advice would be to remind people where they are.  Each web page on your web site should be labeled telling the user where they are at.  If they are looking through your list of articles on bugs, then at the top of the page it should say something to the effect of, “Bug Articles”.  Also, always leave your web site with a path back to the front page – just in case they need to start over navigating through your web site.

Now, I want you to investigate your own web site’s navigation.

Is it simple enough to use?

Are you using obvious link and page names?

Are you keeping things nice and simple?

Do you remind people on the page of what they are looking at and where they are?

If you answered, “no” to any of these questions it might be about time you invested some of your time in making your web site navigation better.

Like This Article? Listen to it and more like it on podcast #202 of the Web Hosting Show!

Do your web pages flow?  By flow, I mean can you read through it without asking yourself what is this about again?  If you find yourself stopping and starting when reading your own web pages, take this basic writing advice and try it out on your own web site content.

There are 3 Parts to Any Good Web Page

Everything I know about writing, I learned in grade school.  When writing, you want to break your content up into three parts.

• The Introduction
• The Story
• The Conclusion

How Do You Use These 3 Parts of a Web Page?

In the introduction, you want to introduce what you are talking about, and give a summary of what will be found inside, if the reader chooses to dive any deeper.

The story would be the meat and potatoes of your web page.  There, you talk about what you mentioned in the introduction.

The conclusion should do a quick summary again of what was in the story, and give you one last “sell” on why it was great.

By breaking your web site’s pages into chunks like this, you can help your writing flow better.  After reading the introduction part, I should know what to expect, in the story I get the information, and in the conclusion, I get a summary of what has been covered and why it is important.

Like This Article? Listen to it and more like it on podcast #202 of the Web Hosting Show!

Before you claim that I am just overly suspicious of bad thing happening, let me make my case.  What would you do if your web site went down?

You’d contact your web host to find the problem.  Now let us say they lost your web site, and have no active backup.  Well, you could then turn to your own backed up files.

How Should You Backup Your Web Sites

What if your own backup went bad? What would you do then?  Your entire web site, and for some of us that is years of data, would be lost.  So what is the perfect backup solution?

1. Find a web host that does local backups, and make sure you have access to them.
2. Do a backup of your hosting files to your own computer, or to an external hard drive you might have handy.
3. Sign up for an off site backup service. Places like Carbonite.com specialize in offering you unlimited disk space and bandwidth for backing up any files on your computer, including your web site files.  This way you have one more location to get a backed up copy of your web site incase the worst might happen.

Online Backup Providers

Now, I only use Carbonite as an example backup service.  There are many others to choose from, such as:

• Mozy.com
• KeepIt.com
• Amazon.com’s S3 Service

All four of these are great off site backup solutions.

So now that we have a new year, it is time to make one more resolution.  Make sure you backup your backups, because it never hurts to have too many copies, especially right after you lost the one you are looking for.

Like This Article? Listen to it and more like it on podcast #201 of the Web Hosting Show!

You do not have to drastically change the way you do business though.  If you are successful in one area of business, do not toss it aside to do something else that is more popular.  I got a question submitted to me the other day from Matt, which touches on this very topic.

Here is what Matt had to say:

I run a free hosting site, and I’ve been at it for 4 years, and we’ve got very high rating, and uptime, and server speed, but I’ve still got this problem where everyone expects our service to be a sort of scam or not very good because of the price. If I start charging for it, I have to say goodbye to a lot of people who I’ve been helping for a long time, and if I don’t, it seems to me there’s always this group of people who wont choose it. I mean, if you want to pay money for your hosting, I’ll gladly take donations, and I have many people who do donate. If you have time, because I know you’re very busy, could you give me your honest opinion of our service and what we need to do to appeal more to small businesses and community organizations?

How can a free host become successful?

People are always skeptical when it comes to getting something for nothing, so as long as you give free services – you’ll always have somebody out there dismissing your claims of success because they think you’re a fraud.  Thankfully, they might also think we never landed on the moon or one of the muppets assassinated JFK.  The fact of the matter is there will always be somebody out there to complain.

My question is, do you have to pick one business plan, free hosting versus paid hosting, or can you have your cake and eat it too?  I would suggest you keep your free hosting in place, it sounds successful, and you have happy customers – which is something many web hosts, free or not, can not claim.  As a secondary service, roll out a paid hosting solution that offers a few perks over the free version.  It could be in features, support or anything else you feel like you could offer a little more of to the people willing to pay for it. Then, once that is in place, start marketing your new paid hosting service to those customers you do have, and let them know that it is an option you are providing for them.

Some might bite at the proverbial worm you are tossing out there, and others may say no thanks.  Past that point you can sell your new paid hosting option to the masses using the free service as a way to get your foot in the door, as far as seeing how great your hosting setup is.  You might even sell it as you are so confident they will enjoy their hosting with you, you are willing to give it away for free.

Thanks to Matt for the question, and to check out his web site – or maybe send some more suggestions his way, be sure to check out ismywebsite.com.

Like This Article? Listen to it and more like it on podcast #200 of the Web Hosting Show!

My good buddy Barry, from Layered Tech posed an interesting quandary to me the other day.

As someone who works for a major player in hosting, one of the biggest problems I see on a daily basis is people having their server hacked and used for some nefarious purposes such as spam, DOS attacks, and more. There are many ways to combat this costly threat, what is the most cost-effective way for the small to medium-sized business?

It is important for everybody to have a good offense and a good defense when it comes to all the proverbial “natural disasters” that can happen in the web hosting world.  My best advice would be to have a good strategy in place first, so you can prevent the problems from happening in the first place. You have to be proactive, and not reactive.

Now, I know that might be hard to do in a tough economy, cause we are all short on money, time and man power.  If you can keep an eye on a couple of important things, you should have less problems to deal with, and more time to devote to your web site and business.

Here are a few key things everyone should keep in mind:

Monitor your server usage, no matter if you are on a shared hosting plan or a dedicated server.  Check in once a day or once a week to make sure your usage stays on average, and if you see a steady increase, you talk with your hosting provider to make sure you are ready for the time that increase means you need more computing power.

Stay on top of the latest updates for your scripts and plugins. Once a hole is found in a third-party script, it doesn’t take long for holes to be exploited. If you have a script installed, like WordPress or SMF, stay up to date on when it is updated.  The faster you get updates done, the less likely your web site or business will be compromised.

Get help when you need it. For web hosting clients that go down the dedicated or VPS hosting route, find a web hosting partner that will be able to get with you quickly to tackle your problems.  I have often said you can’t judge a web host by the cliché 99.9% uptime guarantee.  A true test of a web host is how they react to a tough situation.  In a shared hosting situation, it might be harder to get the attention needed 100% of the time, due to the fact that you are one in a hundred or more people on a server.  That is one of the drawbacks to the shared hosting world.

Making sure your offense is as good as or better than your defense can solve a lot of problems before they happen.  Small businesses should try to be proactive about problems in the long run, rather than reactive when the going gets tough.

Big thanks to Barry from Layered Tech for such an awesome question.  Be sure to check them out at LayeredTech.com and give them a big thank you for being the number one supporters and sponsors of the Web Hosting Show podcast.  If you have a web hosting or development question, give me your name, URL and question over on the submit a question page and I will be more than happy to help!

Like This Article? Listen to it and more like it on podcast #199 of the Web Hosting Show!

Could H1N1 (the Swine Flu) take down the Internet?  Now, as we all get ready to get out shots, wash our hands and cough into our elbows, once has to wonder if an increase of sick people staying at home and browsing the Internet could possibly threaten the stability of the system?

According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, absenteeism during a pandemic could peak at 50% during a six week period.  That would cause an unsteady rise in Internet usage for watching movies, playing games and doing other bandwidth heavy activities that are usually saved for the later hours in the day.

Now the question is, can the Internet handle a upswing in usage that great? One would think that they have designed backbones in the Internet networking structure to handle surges in traffic during big events.  For the web hosting workers out there, here is another disturbing report:

In 2007, the Department of Homeland Security published a report studying the effects that a pandemic could have on the Internet at large, and on telecommuting adults in particular. The report said that 90% of the telecommuting population would experience slowdowns or blackouts when accessing the Internet.

Many of the people who work in the web hosting industry work remotely, so mix an upswing of Internet usage, with the fact that many web hosting workers can’t get online and we have big problems.  Now that same report recommends that the general public should limit their usage of online gaming and video browsing during any sort of pandemic.

So let us go back to the question, could H1N1 take down the Internet and effect many people who work in the web hosting world?  Yes, however – I wouldn’t start panicking just yet.

For more information about this topic, check out the Could Swine Flu Take the Internet Down? article over at the Wall Street Journal.

1. Most independent contractors do not get vacation time.  So, if you need to take time off, either forget about it or expect to not be paid for the time you ask off.
2. Make sure you read the contract from head to toe before you sign up to work for any major or small time web hosting company as a contracted worker.
3. Look into getting multiple monitors.  Sometimes you will need to keep an eye on or do several different tasks, so like with any job, be sure you show up with the tools you need to succeed.
4. In the contract, make sure they give you a set number of hours per week, and a shift each day.  Don’t let them fool you into being “on-call” in any hour of the day.
5. You have to have the patience of Ghandi to work tech support at times.  No matter how big of a jerk the customer is, you need to smile and do what is best for the company you are working for, and not yourself.
6. Be sure you feel at home with working by yourself at home.  While you might have the occasional phone call from your employer, much of the time you are your only company.
7. Get ready for an overly-complicated tax season.  When taxes are due, be sure you get your taxes done by somebody who knows what you independent contractor job is about.
8. You’ll need to educate yourself a times to extend the types of jobs you can cover.  Want to help with web design or development?  Start putting together web sites in your free time.  Experience is the best training out there.
9. Get a comfortable chair for your computer desk.  Nothing is worse than being uncomfortable all day long.
10. Treat it like a real job.  Since you no longer go to an office, you never have that separation of home time and work time.  You have to be able to mix the two together, responsibly.

If you keep these ten tips in mind, I am sure you will be a very successful independent contractor, and any web host around the world would be more than happy to have you.

One thing you have to watch out for when you start working remotely in the web hosting world is how many hours you work.  Now some might think you should be working as much as you can, while this is true – you also need to have limits.  Any web host who would hire you as a remote worker should get you a set number of hours per week to work.

Don’t do more for less. When looking for a remote position with a web hosting company, many hosts may ask you to do as much as you can.  You should do your work assigned to you, however don’t let them get away with not giving you a set number of hours a day to work.  Any remote position should have the same benefits of a regular “going to the office” job, meaning you should work X amount of days, get X amount of days off and work a set number of X hours per day.

I can speak from experience, as somebody who will usually go beyond the call of duty, and as somebody who was fooled into this in my first remote web hosting job.  At the time, I was inexperienced and thought it might be normal to be on call 24/7 to help out with answering e-mails, or working live chat for a web hosting company.  What was the end result?  I was so burnt out I didn’t take another remote web hosting job for two years.

Now, I am not saying any web host out there will go out of their way to screw you over, sometimes they need all the help they can get and they might forget about the fact that they are overworking you.  If there is one thing I could tell every remote web hosting tech out there, to sum things up, it would be don’t allow yourself to be available 24/7.

So when you sign up to work remotely for a web hosting company, be sure to get it in print in your contract your weekly hours, days off and when or how you get paid if your asked to work overtime.  Both the web host an yourself need to be clear on these limits so that they can get the expected work out of you, and you don’t get overworked in the process.

At its core this means that the provisioning of space, bandwidth and power is controlled by a third-party data center.  They do not control it all though.  Most of the time, the web host who is using the third-party’s data center services will need to provide the management for the hardware or servers they are running from there.

To try to make sense of this, lets say I want to start a store.  I go rent a building downtown that has all the shelves, cash registers, and shopping carts – however I have to stock the store myself and, of course, figure out a way to bring the customers in the door.  Instead of spending money on buying the store and some of the basic necessities, I get to rent them – in turn bringing my overall costs down.

So, with it explained like that – where is the evil in it?

Well, many web hosting elite look down upon this practice because it is a money saving practice.  It lowers the proverbial bar on the point of entry somebody has to become a web host too.

Since building a data center from the ground up is a very expensive and time consuming act, I see no problem in getting your hosting through collocation.

How should web hosts act on social networks? It is all about striking the right balance of many different things you want to get out into the public.  Here are a few topic ideas.

Contacting Customers – Be sure to search around Twitter, Facebook and the like for people who are mentioning you, good or bad.  With the people who might be saying they are having trouble with you (you can often spot this, because they are saying that you suck) be sure to lend a helping hand.  To those who are singing your praises, be sure to thank them for doing so.

Support Updates – Having a major problem that is effecting many customers?  Rather than hiding under your desk and sucking your thumb, it might be better to get out there in the angry mob and let them know what is going on.  For the most part 95% of the population out there will be ok with disaster, as long as they know what is going on.  Just think how happy those people on the Titanic would have been, for example, if the ship had a better PR person.  It is something to think about.

Plug Yourself and Market to All – If you have a good following of people requesting to be your friend, you need to make sure you strike a good balance between giving your current followers something they can use, and also give the searchers out there a reason to look into you.  Half you marketing posts should be focused towards your base and the other half should be focused toward potential customers.

So there you have it, follow these steps and you will finally have something to do on that Twitter account or Facebook fan page you haven’t touched in a while.

Should you host your own videos, or should you turn towards some of the free video hosting services out there to do it for you?  This is an internal battle going on with many web hosting providers out there – and I’m going to tell you why the second choice might be the better one for you.

Video Sharing, Converting and Playing are All Server Killers

The number one reason why you should not host your own videos, is simply put in two words, server resources.  By outsourcing this task to a place like YouTube, Revver, and other online video sharing services, you take the load video hosting and distributing takes on a server.  For those of you using shared hosting services, this is particularly important, because you want to keep your resource usage as low as possible.

Open Your Videos Up to a Wider Audience, to Gain More Eyeballs

My second reason for saying you should not host your own video content is for marketing reasons.  Stop and think for a minute, who gets more traffic – you or YouTube?  YouTube would be the obvious answer to many.  Now, how could you turn that to your advantage?

• Publish videos people are looking for
• Make sure to include your brand name and domain name

Now you are creating one more way for people who might be randomly surfing for content via YouTube (or any other video sharing service out there) to find your videos, and your web site.

If you have the resources to host your own videos, because you do not fear the server resource issue, chances are you don’t need to market yourself using these means.  However, for us small guys and gals in the wild and wacky world of web hosting, we need every advantage we can take – and this is one free service available to you worth taking advantage of.

There are a great number of web hosts using Twitter for social communication, support and marketing.  If you get any big group of web hosts geeks together though, on this topic, the argument usually goes one of two ways.  Either people are really for it, or they are really against it.

For those of you who may not know, Twitter is a micro-blogging service that lets you post message under 140 characters online to your own page, (like the great and wonderful twitter.com/mitchkeeler).

Let us take a look at both sides of the argument.

Wasting your time? Some may say that your time is better served doing one on one support with customers, rather than virtually pimping your goods on Twitter.  Others might also not really understand what Twitter is all about, since it is highly referenced as that site where you type what you are doing, such as “about to mow the lawn” or “I’m really bored”.  There is a good side to this coin too though.

A helpful marketing and support tool? I have seen a lot of tweets that pretty much can be summed up as “_____ sucks”.  Now I ask you, wouldn’t it be handy to be able to go out and communicate with that person if they think you suck, and ask why?  Twitter can be used as a quick and easy customer service tool.  Also, posting news about your web hosting company,  links to your blog articles, or even coupons and deals can lead to a lot of new eyeballs seeing those, and coming into your digital empire.  Think of it as one more proverbial driveway they can drive into, to get to your services.

• Check out the large list of web hosts on Twitter!

My final opinion on the matter would be to go for it.  I think that it always helps to get your name and brand out there in every way possible.  I would really be interested to hear what you think though – do you think web hosts should tweet on Twitter?

Are you searching for a web host that offers nothing when it comes to uptime?  Well, while many think they might be currently hosted on that host in question, I can say you are wrong.  Why? Because you are not hosted with No Uptime Hosting.

NoUptime.com promises you nothing at all.  For web hosting fans, this web site is really hilarious.  Anybody outside of the web hosting world though, probably will not understand what the fuss it all about.  Take their three plans for an example:

• Hosting Package 1 (the I’m-Poor plan)
• Hosting Package 2 (the Take-My-Money plan)
• Hosting Package 3 (the Resell-Our-Crap plan)

As they say, “We are constantly working to improve our server downtime.  Keeping you awake at night is our number one priority.” Oh, and you can’t forget their testimonials with such gems as, “I want my money back”.  How do you get your content to them?  FTP? No, that is so old school.  Here is how they suggest you send it:

Don’t like uploading your files via FTP? No problem! Send us your files on a floppy and we’ll upload it for you. It’s one of the many ways we do our best to accommodate your needs. Just remember, our floppy system does not accept Windows, Linux, or Mac floppies.

I could spend hours discussing this one great parody of a web site, but I will save you the time and just point you towards NoUptime.com.  It is a fun site for anybody who is in or has dealt with web hosting one on one.

Did Shared Hosting Kill Geocities?

In 2008, according to a survey by Compete.com, the domain geocities.com attracted at least 177 million visitors annually.  So with those numbers, how could they go wrong?  You can not argue the point that the lowering in price of shared hosting accounts made the Geocities hosting look less favorable.  Users could pay as low as $4 or $5 a month and get a lot more than they were getting from Geocities with a shared web hosting provider.  Free hosting might be totally obsolete these days.

Did MySpace or Facebook Kill Geocities?

Many are even saying that Geocities could have easily evolved into a Facebook or MySpace.  Looking back at the original Geocities, it was all about community and sharing your pages with others.  This is much like it is today, except badly designed free sites have been replaced with goofy zombie versus pirates or mafia wars games.

Did Yahoo! Kill Geocities?

In 2001, Yahoo decided to start offering a “premium” version of the Geocities product.  To give users something to pay for and upgrade to, they had to turn on the free hosting service.  This is when they started to limit the monthly data transfer or bandwidth to the free Geocities users.  Following that, Geocities was just another free hosting service.  Nothing more.

Yahoo!’s overall feeling towards the Geocities free users was distain and disgust.  They failed to realize or even try to turn the direction on the proverbial Titanic in front of them.  Could Yahoo! of saved Geocities?  Maybe they could have or possibly they could have killed it off sooner than now.  However, at least then we would be left with a general feeling they at least tried.

Be sure to catch the rest of our Geocities Tribute on Podcast 186 of the Web Hosting Show!

For example, lets say I wanted to link to webhostingtalk.com, but I didn’t want them to gain any SEO rankings for me linking to them (or have any of my own SEO rankings taken away).  So, I write the link out like this:

<a href="http://www.webhostingtalk.com" rel="nofollow">Web Hosting Talk</a>

Now how this attribute is being interpreted differs between the various search engines out there. Here is a ‘bit of interesting information from Wikipedia on how the biggest search engines handle the information:

• Google states that their engine takes “nofollow” literally and does not “follow” the link at all. However, experiments conducted by SEOs show conflicting results. These studies reveal that Google does follow the link, but does not index the linked-to page, unless it was in Google’s index already for other reasons (such as other, non-nofollow links that point to the page).
• Yahoo! “follows it”, but excludes it from their ranking calculation.
• MSN Search respects “nofollow” as regards not counting the link in their ranking, but it is not proven whether or not MSN follows the link.
• Ask.com ignores the attribute altogether.

Now, where and why this got so much attention was when it comes to paid advertising links.  Some search engines have kind of re-purposed the nofollow attribute for disclosure of paid links.  They want you, as the webmaster, to use the rel=”nofollow” code when you sell a link, so that the link in question does not get any search engine optimization benefit.

Since it was announced in early 2005, the attribute has been surrounded in debate and controversy.  Should you use it or should you not?  I’ll let that be your judgment call to make.  At least now, you know what all the fuss is about.

Getting Ahead of the Web Hosting Support Curve

The first bit of advice I have for you is to provide the support, before it is even asked for.  This preemptive strike will cut down on your quantity of customers coming and looking for a answer.  Providing proactive support can be achieved a number of different ways.  Two of the ways I like the most are posting tutorials and articles explaining how to tackle anything you might need when it comes to your web hosting business and the second would be to send out announcements and updates when big changes come.

Provide Tutorials and FAQs – Many web hosts have a help site or tutorial database where they can cover some of the most frequently asked questions.  This will cut down on your ticket time, because the answer is already out there.

Get Ahead of Big Changes with Announcements and Updates – Now, with getting ahead of the curve with big changes, like a server going down or something else to that effect, make sure you announce as much information as you can about the problem, and be there with your customer to give updates.  No matter how small they are, you customers will appreciate it.  Things you should be telling your customer include ongoing maintenance, advance notice of maintenance,  or new features.

Get to the Point, but Give All the Details

No matter if you are answering a ticket desk or working the phone system, you have to realize people (for the most part) don’t want to talk to you.  It is nothing against you personally, people (in general) already feel like they are wasting time when they reach the point of reaching out to a support team for help.  So remember to get to the point, but give all the details you can.

Don’t waste time, if you don’t need a ‘bit of information, don’t ask for it.  Try your best to troubleshoot the issue, find out all the information you need to gather to get the issue fixed or to find out more, and then get that response sent out.  Also, do your best to stay kind, no matter how big of a jerk the customer is.  You should consider yourself the web hosting world’s version of Ghandi or Mother Teresa at all times.

Keep those response times as low as possible, so you can keep your work load light, and spend more time with the customers who need your attention.

I have really just scratched the surface, but hopefully this will help to inspire somebody to give a little more when it comes to web hosting support.  Now this one is aimed all of of those out there who give the support, not the ones that receive it.  However, when push comes to shove I think we all are responsible for supporting our projects, businesses or jobs so hopefully the lessons learned here will be something everyone can be educated from.

Disadvantages to Virtual Private Server Hosting

For those of you who are used to paying $5 to $10 a month for web hosting, the jump in price might be considered the biggest disadvantage.  Often VPS hosting accounts go for $40 to $50, which is more than some people wish to pay.  With a VPS hosting plan, you might also need to know a little more about server-side administration.  You will need to become familiar with application installation and maintenance.  Of course you could also hire somebody to do this, or see if the web host has an option for them to do it, but then we get back into discussing price again.

Advantages to Virtual Private Server Hosting

Now where are the advantages of VPS hosting?  With a VPS hosting account, you will have more access to CPU, RAM and other server resources that may have been limited to you with a shared hosting plan.  Also, in comparison with dedicated hosting plans, the VPS hosting is often cheaper.  You would also be sharing that server with a few amount of people, so you will have to be less worried about what your proverbial neighbors are doing with their accounts that could get yourself and the server in trouble.

Most people come to VPS hosting once they have outgrown their shared hosting plan, but are not yet ready for a dedicated hosting server.  Virtual Private Servers are a great choice for those who are wanting to move way from shared hosting, but are not ready to commit themselves to the work that it takes to keep a dedicated plan up and running.

Have you ever looked into optimizing your images?

The secret to optimizing your images is simple.  You want the best looking image at the smallest file size possible.  If the graphic editing software you have has a “web” setting when saving, use it.  If not – it might take a few trials and tribulations before you figure out the lowest size you can save it as that gives you the best results.  There will be a lot of save it, try it, doesn’t work.  Save it, try it, almost works. However in the long run, the smaller you can make your image sizes, the faster your web site will load.

DynamicDrive.com has an online image optimizer you might want to check out too:

• http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/

You can use that to see how for they get the sizes down, so you can do the same or if you are in a pinch for a good image editor to work with.

When it comes to image formats, this is my own personal rule of thumb.  Use the JPEG or JPG format when working with photographs.  When working with graphic work or logos, stick with PNG most of the time, and GIF, (if the end result doesn’t look like crap).

Hope

Alright, hope might be a kind of silly reference to start with.  Many of you might think, “I hope my web site will stay up!”.  On that notion, I would like for the web hosts out there to listen to the hopes that their clients and customers have.  Feedback is an important thing in web hosting, and you have learn to change the game plan depending on what the people want.

Change

Riding on the coattails of hope, we have change.  If a web host stays static and does not change a thing in lets say, four years, they will not do much movement in the growth department.  Web hosts have to learn to watch the trends out there and change to meet the demands of the public.

Inspiration

Last, but not least, the web hosts out there have to be able to inspire the web hosting public out there to do more.  For an example, let’s say Billy comes in wanting a web site, but has no clue how to do that.  A good web host has to be ready to listen to Billy’s needs and formulate the best type of web site he needs to build.  Billy says he wants to post an online diary but doesn’t know how to do that.  Give him a guide on how to install the popular blogging scripts out there.  Show him what he can do, and give him a firm push in the right direction.

If a web host can deliver in the departments of hope, change and inspiration – they too will have a very positive future ahead of them.  Now the only thing left to see is if the web hosts and our new President will deliver the proverbial goods.

Capture your Desktop with CamStudio

You can pick up an awesome desktop capturing program at CamStuido.org to capture the video from your computer’s screen.  After installing, all you need to do is highlight the area you wish to record – and then hit the record button.

Record Your Audio Track with Audacity

Audacity is the free audio editor I have used to produce my podcast since day one.  It is free and really easy to use.  You could use it to record any audio commentary you wanted, so that way you add a little more helpfulness to the tutorial you are making.

Edit your Video Tutorial Together

To edit your video, there are several programs out there you could use.  Personally, I just used the free Windows Movie Maker than came with my computer.  Then again, I am all about keeping things as ghetto as possible.  If not Windows Movie Maker, I am willing to bet you have some free program that came on your computer that would do the deed.  An online video editing alternative would be Jumpcut.com.  Another free desktop solution would be VideoSpin from VideoSpin.com.

Check out Wikipedia’s List of Commercial and Free Video Editing Software

Final Tweaks, Edits and Uploading the Final Product

Before you upload, you might also want to make sure you have your URL, brand or logo somewhere on the video.  It never hurts to do a little advertising – so people know where they can get more of your fine work.  After that has been done, you can upload your video to YouTube or a number of other video sharing sites.  Grab the embed code, and you have your own video tutorial ready to go.  To get you inspired, here is one I created on doing trace routes:

If you are a web host on a budget, there is no reason to spend more than you need to.  If you have the free time and creativity, then rolling your own video tutorials can also be a great way to gain exposure and do a little self advertising too.

Now for some of the weirdest (and possibly greatest) web hosting names just just never got off the ground…

Perfect Toilet Hosting – The name was suppose to inspire downloads and 5th grade humor, but flushed itself before it got started.

Hamster Dance Hosting – What else were the guys behind the original annoying Internet meme suppose to do?  The hook here is they will only host your content if you Rick-roll, claim all your base are belong to us, or have a love for dancing babies.

Tighty Whitey Hosting - For when you want hosting with that secure fit.

Kentucky Fried Hosting – Inspired by the fried chicken king, this web host was unique in fact that promised a free bucket of chicken for every hosting plan you purchased.  The bad thing was, sending chicken through US mail ended up with very stinky surprise once it made it to your house a few weeks later.

GoMommy – Well, there is a GoDaddy – so why not a GoMommy?  The downfall of GoMommy as a company happened when she caught you trying to register adult domains and told you you’ll go blind if you do it too much.

TWO – Launched as a competitor to 1&1 Hosting, but nobody else got the joke.

What is in a name?  Well if you make me giggle like a school girl when I have to say it in public, it could be both a good or a bad thing.  It could be considered memorable or it could be considered embarrassing.  It all depends on if your glass is half empty or half full.

The perfect comparison that is often used is the hot girl that brings her ugly friend around to parties, so when they hang out together, the hot girl looks even hotter.  I am going to go in a different route.  Let us say it is lunch time in the office and your boss has put out two sandwiches for you to choose from.

One is cheese on bread, and the other is the greatest sandwich known to mankind, ham and cheese on bread.  Now if there was just a cheese sandwich, you might settle for that.  Now that you have the ham and cheese option though, you want that instead.  It looks better cause you are getting a better deal.

Now let us look at web hosting accounts.  Every web hosts should have one plan they consider their hot girl or ham and cheese sandwich.  It is the one that gets the best sales.  Now, you need to develop a plan that might seem appealing to some, but has enough flaws that it makes people want to check out the hot girl plan more.

The one hosting plan on its own might be great, but putting it beside a cheese sandwich plan would be even better.

Here are the top seven dirty web hosting words (and phrases) that every hosting customer should know or be able to define.

1.  Server Resources - This is often the limitation you don’t hear about until you have reached it.  Many people might call it the, “Haha, got you now!” clause, but if you stop and think about it, it does make sense.  You can only do so many things on your computer before you begin to have performance problems, and the same could be said for a hosting server.  If one script, service or person is taking up all the RAM and CPU up for themselves, they have to be taken out of the picture to help everyone else who may be hosted on that server.

2.  Database Connections - Depending on who the web host is, and how they have their servers setup, you may only have available to you so many connections to a database.  For example, Joe hears that his database connection limit is 25 simultaneous connections.  What Joe doesn’t stop to think about is what the word simultaneous actually means.  For him to go over his limit, he would need 25 connections in roughly the same few seconds to get in trouble.  Since most scripts only connect for a second, this is not something most of us need to worry about.

3.  E-mail Sending Limits - Yes, you are limited on the number of e-mails you can send out.  This is a pretty new limitation that web hosts have been putting on their customers, mostly to curb spamming in any form.  If you are doing any sending of newsletters or something that goes out to a great amount of people via e-mail, you might want to look at scripts that will spread the wealth sending around.  That way instead of sending your newsletter to 10,000 people at once, you will be able to send it to maybe 2,000 people per hour through the day.  Both DadaMail and phpList will allow you to do this.

4.  Unlimited - There is no such thing as unlimited in web hosting.  It is a marketing word though that is bound to bring people in.  People like to get something for nothing and the chance to be able to grow their web site and brand to unlimited boundaries is a dream we can all be excited by.  Now, why does this word not really bug me that much anymore?  Well, even if you are sold by the word unlimited, chances are you aren’t even going to use enough of your unlimited disk space or bandwidth to hurt the server.  In most cases, it doesn’t do any harm.

5.  Uptime and Downtime - The one thing you see asked about by people who like to think they know a thing or two about web hosting is, “How is the uptime?” or “How much downtime have you had?”.  These are kind-of important questions, but I wouldn’t put too much weight into their answers.  Like I have said before, you are not going to find a web host who is perfect and has not even the smallest single flaw.  You will need to find an example of the problems they have had, and see how they have dealt with them.  That is how you can really tell how great a web host is.

6.  Overselling – In the world of web hosting, overselling is the term used to describe be hosts who put more customers on a server than the server can really support.  Most big name web hosts won’t have a problem with this, but some of the smaller to mid-range web hosts do.  The problem is that they can’t afford to bring more servers online, or they are packing you in like sardines into a can to save on costs.  It is something to try to be aware of, but chances are you won’t know about it till it is too late.

7.  The Comparison Box – I hate the comparison box of features you see web hosts use.  We have all seen them.  You have the features listed down the side, the different plans listed across the top and the thing that bugs me is every plan has every feature.  Why do a comparison chart, if every stinking plan has the same features?  The comparison chart should be use to compare the differences.  Most of the time, the only difference might be the disk space, bandwidth and price.  Give me a shorter comparison box, and just give me those three items if that is the case.  One more smaller item that bugs me about these boxes too is when they list stupid features that even your 98 year old grandmother knows are there.  For example, I am looking at a web host who does this, the comparison chart is as cheesy as ever and what is one of the features each plan has?  “support”.  As if in some bizarro world, there would be a web hosting plan that doesn’t come with “support”.

Know of another dirty web hosting word that didn’t make it onto the list?  Drop me an e-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com or leave a comment and we’ll see if we can find at least seven more amongst us all.

It is a server side software library that concerts video and audio files into a preferred audio or video format to play them or embed them from a web site.  YouTube is a good example of this type of technology at work.  In turn, FFmpeg hosting is a term used to cover the assortment of FFmpeg and other server side technologies that help with converting digital video or audio.

So let’s say you go to your web host and tell them you want to start up a YouTube clone.  While there are many web hosts out there that can host your normal web site, only a small amount of web hosts will be willing to accommodate your needs for your YouTube clone script.

The reason this is so, is that these types of scripts can be unfriendly to the server.

They use up a lot of disk space for storing the videos.  They use a lot of bandwidth, with the embedding and streaming of the videos too. Then count in the CPU and RAM usage with converting the videos from one format to another on the server side and you have a real big mess.

The solution, in most situations, is to turn towards Virtual Private Servers (VPS) or dedicated hosting accounts.  Right now, if you want to be any kind of success, shared hosting can not support YouTube clone scripts and everything you need from what was earlier defined as a FFmpeg hosting.

Why is it a Good Idea?

It mixes support and the new social web, plain and simple.  Web hosting is often seen as the old grandfather that listens to gangster hip-hop.  We are trying to be cool, but we always seem one step behind in the times.  It would also cut down on support requests, because customers and clients would eventually learn that any updates there are, will be posted to the Twitter account for the web host in question.

Why is it a Bad idea?

The negative impact in all of this is Twitter is probably down more than any web host out there.  This could cause mass panic if both a server was down, and Twitter was down at the same time.  Then, those who praised you for unique hosting support would be calling you up saying, “How could you rely on such a flaky service?”.  There are other Twitter-clones or Twitter-like services out there, but if you want to be where the people are – Twitter is where it is at.

My final thought on this is that it would be a generally good idea.  If you had problems with Twitter or the Twitter clones out there, you could always roll you own update service with WordPress and a unique set of themes and plugins.  For an example of that, see the Prologue plugin.  Web hosts need to think outside of the box, and this might be a good way to do just that.

As your palms get sweaty, you think to yourself, “Should I read it?”.  Well, I am here to tell you that you should, but take it with a grain of salt.  A healthy dose of skepticism never did any harm.

After reading a bad review, the first thing I want you to remember is that every coin has two sides.  Your only hearing from the ticked off customer in many of these cases, and you don’t know what they did to to the web host in question.  Something else I have learned over the years of working in the hosting world is that happy people usually don’t post reviews.  If you are happy, and you know it you usually don’t do squat.  Is it beyond belief?  Well, when was the last time you wrote Oscar Mayer to tell them you love their baloney?  I promise you though that the guy who found a human finger in his baloney wrote them a nasty letter.

Not to say there is anything wrong or bad with leaving good reviews.  Heck some of those are the ones that really make people excited, due to their lack of actually happening.  It is kind of like finding a duck dressed up like Abraham Lincoln.  You don’t know how he got there, he probably won’t come back again, but he did put a smile on your face.

So remember, not all bad reviews are as bad as they seem.  Sure, they may be rooted in some truth, however you should get a wide variety of opinions to see if this was just one guy out of the blue having problem, or if you can spot a trend.

Ask for Money from Strangers

One way you could go is ask for donations.  If you have a current web site, dropping in a PayPal donate button might be a good way to go.  This way people can give what they want to give to help you out.  Chances are, unless you are really popular – this might not best way to go.  People don’t give away money very easily.

Beg Your Family and Friends for Cash

Another route would be to borrow the money from somebody else.  Look for a friend or family member that is loaded, and beg them the for money.  If begging doesn’t work, then tell them they will get their money back as soon as you can get it back to them.  Maybe even offer an investment bonus back to them, so they feel like they are getting something out of the deal.

Save the Money Up Yourself

Last method for fundraising I have is take it out of your own pocket.  You could pick up a few extra jobs, so you have a little more money in hand or you could set back a little cash from each paycheck till you have reached the amount of money you need to start.  This way might take longer, but you don’t owe anybody anything and it gives you plenty of time to plan you project out before spending a penny.

Two of the confusing terms you may hear tossed around the web these days is trademark and copyright.  Are they different?  Are they the same?  Do you need either of them?  Here is a better way to describe the two.

Trademark

A trademark is a type of intellectual property, such as a name, phrase, logo, design or a combination of two or more of these.  If you register your trademark, you can then go after legal proceedings if anybody ever tries to use that trademark without your permission.  Check out more information about US trademark law at uspto.gov.

It should also be mentioned that trademarks cost money, due the the registration fees with the government.  What are the costs?  It could cost anywhere from $300 to $400 per international class. An international class would be, for example, if you sold t-shirts and hats, those would be two different international classes.

Copyright

Copyright is about giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to that work for a limited time, before it enters public domain.  This is a somewhat dated idea these days though, thanks to companies like Disney who keep stretching out how long a copyright should last.

If you want to customize your copyright a little more, you should look into the Creative Commons.  Unlike with trademarks, it doesn’t cost anything to claim your copyright.  Technically speaking, by law, if you have created something then you own the copyright for it.

When Should I Use Either?

As you can see, the two legal terms trademark and copyright have their own good uses.  My general hosting rule of thumb would be to save trademark registration for larger web sites, companies and businesses.  Copyright however, that can be used by anybody and everybody.

It offers a unique service for one.

Think about it like this, if you are comparing two web hosts and one has a special offer for you only good for 24 hours and the other has nothing special going on, which one excites you more?  I have said it time and time again, to get “buzz” in the hosting world we live in you have to strive to be different and unique in every way.

This is a way you can make yourself stick out like a sore thumb in a good way.  Not like that time you wore the sombrero to your high school reunion.

The first place I saw doing this was GoDaddy.com.  They have a special “Today’s Offers” section that is well worth checking out if you are needing some inspiration.  Last marketing tip for the day would be to also use this to pitch offers and specials to your current customer base too.  Try to find something you can offer them that is new and they would be happy paying for.  Perhaps you give them a special deal for being current customers or yours?  Now you are thinking along the “today’s special” line of marketing.