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.

Search engine optimization (otherwise known as SEO) is not as difficult as some may make you think. Honestly, if you use a little common sense, and you learn the basics then you should have no problem at all at making the search engines fall head over heels for you. Here are 10 tips I think anybody could use to make the search engines give you a little more love.

1. Don’t overuse or “spam” the meta keywords or description with content that is not related to what is on your actual page.

2. Contact other webmasters that deliver content much like your own and get them to link back to you. The social aspect of Web popularity can not be forgotten about. Chances are if somebody like something you do - they will link to it to share with others.

3. Make sure your title tag changes depending on the page you are viewing.

4. Make good use of your headlines, and keep them in order. Your main headline should be h1, then go to h2, and then to h3. Also toss a couple (one or two) keywords in your headlines.

5. Use common sense. If you hear about an awesome SEO tip online somewhere, and it sounds kind of fishy - don’t do it. I’ve never met anybody who made it to the top of Google and said it was all thanks to his free 101 SEO dirty tricks handbook he bought of a page that looks like it was designed in 1995.

6. Create a XML sitemap and learn to keep it updated. Many content management systems offer plugins for creating them too. The best one for WordPress is Google XML Sitemaps.

7. Use relevant keywords in the content of your web page, but do not go overboard. If you try to go over the top with the keyword usage - you are often labeled by the search engines as a “keyword stuffer” and that can hurt more than help in the long run.

8. Use Google’s webmaster tools and also submit yourself to Yahoo’s site explorer. Both offer ways to submit and watch your status in those two search engines.

9. Keep tabs on the search for your web site’s name. I often search for “web hosting show” just to keep tabs on who else is showing up for that search phrase.

10. Get use out of title tags for links and anchor text for images. Use them to describe where they go and what they are though.

Be patient, your search engine rankings are not going to change in a day. As long as you are delivering good content that is relevant to your topic of choice the search engines should love you.

I am probably not the first person to have this idea, but it seems like day after day you hear about these terrorist web sites that are spreading propaganda and talking about nefarious things. Anything on the Web is hosted somewhere right? So why not talk with the web hosts who hosts the material about brining it down.

According to a report from theWHIR.com this might be starting to happen. As the story goes, a local Tampa, Florida reporter told local web host Noc4Hosts about an al-Qaida related site they were hosting. This is not the only case of this happening though.

Over in Arizona, CrystalTech Web Hosting also took down an al-Qaida related site after being tipped off by the Arizona Republic newspaper. This site in question was sharing information about how to recruit car bombers, promote war on the West and provide a forum for Islamic militants.

So as you can see, US based web hosts are not except from being used for these low down and dirty reasons. No mater which political side of the fence you are on I think any web host out there that finds content like this one their servers should shut it down as soon as they can.

Why is it Happening and How Do We Stop It?

Now why are web hosts of any location such a good place to target? Well many web hosts out there host so many web sites it is hard to keep track of every single domain. You could check them out on sign up - but if you are signing up a new hosting plan and new domain name there is no way to check out the history of the person.

So should web hosts keep relying on customer complaints and reporters tipping them off to such sites or could web hosts start creating a “watch list” of their own for suspicious new signups and transfered domains? There are a lot of “maybe” and “could be” answers but what we need to do in a whole is bring the topic into the public web hosting discussion.