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How Should Web Hosts Adapt to the Social Web?

Aug/11 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

A lot of the appeal of Facebook or Twitter is that you catch people in the buff.  No, not that there are a lot of nudist on the social networks.  What I mean is there is a lot of “raw” and “un-edited” thoughts out there.  Of course, that isn’t to say you can’t organized your “raw” thoughts before you get them out there.

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.

Social Network Help for Hosts 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.

Social Network Help for Hosts

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.

Social Network Help for Hosts

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.

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Why You Should Not Host Your Own Videos

Aug/04 in Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

Marketing your Brand Using Free Hosting Services

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.

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Should Web Hosts Twitter?

Jul/15 in Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

Is Your Web Host on Twitter?

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.

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?

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A Web Host with No Uptime at All

Jun/15 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

Worst Web Host Ever?

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.

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Why Did Geocities Fail?

May/12 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

RIP Geocities The reasons as to why Yahoo! dropped the ball with Geocities will be a great debate over the next year or so.  However, I feel the main reason Geocities ended up fading off into the sunset is that Yahoo failed to evolve the product into what people needed.

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!

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What is the nofollow Link About?

Apr/15 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

You may have seen some links out there on the Web that have an attribute value that is “nofollow”.  What does this mean?  Well, this is a way a web sit can instruct some search engines that the link should not influence the target site’s rankings.

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.

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Make Your Hosting Support Better

Apr/03 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

ghandi = great support The core foundation of any web host is a great support team.  With that, almost anything else can be overlooked.  What is the reason for that?  Well, good support is hard to find these days.  So if you are a web host or a worker in the industry, I am going to give you some advice that will make sure you provide that support, in a way that the customers will enjoy.

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.

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Virtual Private Server Advantages and Disadvantages

Mar/05 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

We have covered Virtual Private Severs (VPS) in the past before.  They are what is often considered the stepping stone between a shared web hosting account and a dedicated web hosting account.  What are the advantages and disadvantages of moving to this middle of the road hosting platform?

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.

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Speed Tip – Optimize Your Site Images

Feb/03 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

Faster Web Site TipWant to know the secret to a speedier web site?  Well, if you are looking for a weekend project to help you site perform better, I have the best one you can get started with.

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:

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).

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What Can Web Hosting Learn from President Obama?

Jan/20 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

barack Politics aside, left or right – makes on difference to me, Barack Obama has a lot to teach the web hosting industry.  Looking at three of his core movements and ideas, the web hosting world can take away a little insight of it’s own from the new President.

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.

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