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Roll Your Own Video Tutorials for Free!

Dec/26 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

Are you a web host who is low on cash, but wants to produce a line of their own video tutorials?  This is a pretty easy thing to do (totally for free) as long as you have some free time and imagination.

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.

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Greatest Web Hosts That Never Launched

Dec/09 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

bad-web-host-names We have all seen some weird company names when it comes to web hosting.  You have OutGay, for those looking for web hosting with an alternative lifestyle.  You have FatCow, which sounds like something you’d call your mother-in-law, not your web host.

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.

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Marketing Tip from a Cheese Sandwich

Dec/02 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

hot-girl-cheese This one is for the web hosts out there, or really anybody who is selling a product out there to the public.  You can always make something look better, by putting something of lesser value next to it.

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.

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7 Dirty Words Every Hosting Customer Should Know

Nov/19 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

George Carlin We have talked in the past about taboo topics inside of the web hosting industry before, but right now I am going to share with you something even better than those inside secrets.

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.

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Problem Finding FFmpeg Web Hosts?

Nov/13 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

youtube_logo Why would you have problems finding a web host that supports FFmpeg?  Well, first let us tackle what FFmpeg is.

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.

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Using Twitter for Server Status Updates?

Oct/28 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

With the rise of status or micro-blogging services, more and more web hosts are looking to add themselves to the mix.  So what do these quick micro-blogging services lend themselves to in the world of web hosting?  What about server status updates?  Lets say when a server goes down, you announce it on Twitter then thousands of people can follow you to find out when it is coming back up.

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.

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How to Read Bad Hosting Reviews

Sep/16 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

444639 We have all done it.  We went out to see what reviews we could find on or about the web hosting we have now or the web hosting we are interested in picking up?  Then you see it.  A big, bad and nasty negative review.

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.

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Fundraising for Your Next Web Project

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

Get Free Money! We hear everyday about new web projects that are starting up, and becoming popular and maybe even you too have an idea of what the Web’s next big thing will be.  The problem is, where do you get the cash to get started?

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.

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Trademark vs Copyright for Webmasters

Aug/26 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

I have often gotten asked, how can you or what does it mean to put that little “R” with the circle around it or the little C with the circle around it on a web site?

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

Rt 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_symbol_9 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.

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Why “Today’s Special” is Good for Hosting

Aug/14 in All Posts, Commentary, Web Hosting Tutorials

You have seen the deals out there all of your life.  They are for “a limited time only!” or “the special weekend offer”.   These are what I would call “today’s special” marketing pitches to your customers or soon to be customers.  I am amazed though that more web hosts are not taking advantage of this type of deal.

It offers a unique service for one.

web-hosting-specialThink 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.

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