How come the web hosting world doesn’t have more Online networks where we can meet and greet each other?  Here is another question from well, the best podcast audience ever.  Speaking of groups of people who gather in one place, Mark asks:

“How come there hasn’t been a web hosting social network yet?  Something like MySpace or Facebook for hosting people is what we need!”

Personally, I could not agree more and it looks like it maybe happening before you think.  Web Hosting Talk, one of if not the most popular set of hosting forums is getting ready to take this leap.  You can check out a demonstration of what it may look like here:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/memberprofiles

These “enhanced” member profiles have all kinds of ways to connect with your forum friends via the various social networks already out there.  

Another one worth mentioning where I have seen a lot of hosting professionals gather is LinkedIn.  Now there are not just hosting people, but out of all the networking sites out there there are more hosting people at LinkedIn than anywhere else.  I’m even there:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchkeeler

So if you need a friend to start with, feel free to use me.  One more link I really love is HostingBookmarks.com.  This site allows you to share your hosting news and bookmarks with the rest of the hosting industry.

That is the best that the hosting world has thus far - which social network is your favorite for hanging out or meeting web hosting professionals?

The king of control panels (cPanel) says soon that there will be a new prince in their kingdom. The most popular web hosting control panel out there today has announced that they will be releasing a new VPS optimized cPanel. Now news yet if it will get a new name, but it should fit right in with the cPanel and WHM (Web Host Manager) relationship.

Why upgrade? Looks like they are mainly wanting to provide VPS hosting clients the same feature rich functionality of cPanel and WHM while helping to reduce memory usage by up to 60 percent for VPS accounts. Another nice perk about this newest version of cPanel is it will lower the costs hopefully for cPanel powered VPS hosting as right now most VPS customers have to pay the dedicated hosting license fees to use it. Also due to the earlier mentioned cut in memory usage, web hosts should be able to reach a higher account density per machine. So how can you lay your hands on it right now?

The word is that cPanel will offer this newly upgraded VPS version for free for its customers, probably while they test it out.

According to our good buddies at the WHIR, Los Angeles county has halted plans to build a $68 million dollar data center facility because of the animals that have already claimed that spot as their home. Now these are not bears, monkeys or sea lions oh no, they are much more dangerous than all three of those put together. They are 150 wild cats with a bad attitude.

Finding new homes for these cats have put a strain on the local government. The new data center was suppose to start construction back in 2007, but those cats, those wild homeless felines have another idea. Here are some facts about the data center that could have been according to the article:

The new high-tech data center, which was supposed to begin construction in 2007, will be the county’s first energy-saving “green” facility - with a vegetated roof and built partially underground - and is to be constructed in the derelict buildings just south of the Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Downey.

According to reports by Data Center Knowledge, the county is planning to build a 46,000 square foot data center that will be used to process employee payrolls, welfare payments, court documents and other county department records. Planners are also designing the facility to meet the criteria for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification.

Now I tried to do my best to get a quote from the cats in question, and they at first had no comment but then told me all the talking they had to do would be done so through their lawyers, because they are cats and “normal” people usually can not make heads or tails out of what they are saying. They also wanted me to tell the public they really don’t like the LOL cats all over the Web.

There are tons of goodies on and about the web hosting world if you know where to look Online. Here are a few gems I scrapped out of the blogging dirt this week.

The Hosting Industry Organization

This new virtual posse of the hosting industry promises to be a socialized group of hosting professionals. Based off a list from LinkedIn - there are many that have already joined (including yours truely) and I am looking forward to seeing what becomes of this just budding project later on down the road.

New Blog! Web Hosting Topics Rocks!

Here is yet another good hosting blog worth subscribing to. Brought to you by the same folks as the DAW Web Hosting Blog and HostingBookmarks.com it promises fresh content for the web hosting addicted. Yes, that would be both you and me!

Blog.Verisign.com? (I didn’t know either)

Did you know that VeriSign had their own collection of blogs from insiders in the company? The company is based around providing secure SSL certificates so, I mean, how exciting can the blog be? Well I was delightfully surprised by a few so the list here is well worth checking out.

Have you found any hidden treasures in or on the web hosting blogs out there? If so drop me an e-mail or leave a comments and let me know about it.

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.

ICANN has sat up and taken notice when it comes to the shady practices of “domain tasting”. I hate to be one to call myself a profit, but back on podcast 138 I am pretty sure I said:

Where is ICANN with this type of practice? I say if they were all over RegisterFly for what they were doing then Network Solutions really should not be treated any differently.

ICANN Comes in to Save the Day!

I am happy to see ICANN has decided to stand up and do something about this money grubbing nonsense. Under current ICANN rules, anyone who registers a new domain name has a five-day grace period to back out and receive a total refund. The problem is people use this period to test how well the domain name does in the real world and also slap ads all over it to make a buck.

So what is the solution? ICANN is talking about charging the ICANN registration fee right from the start instead of waiting. That way companies and individuals would get less of a “freebie”. The cost would be picked up by the domain name register and hopefully this would end the practice of people testing to see how profitable a domain name is for free.

What About Front Runners?

This will also hurt companies like Network Solutions that have started “front running” domains (a fancy name for the same dirty tactics). This is where a domain name register will register your domain name searches and offer to resell them to you for a higher price.

The whole thing kinda reminds me of the mafia and being called in to “do a favor” for the godfather himself. Google is also getting a chance to get some positive press out of all of this. They said that they will no longer allow AdSense revenue to be collected on domains that are less than four days old. Now that will cost Google some big bucks but nice to see that they are doing the right thing. What they are losing in finances they are gaining in public trust in praise.

Whatever you do, be very careful before you search for your next domain name at Network Solutions. They have jumped in on the game of pre-registering domain names based on user searches. The hook? You decide you want that domain, you’ll have to register it with them.

Now I am not usually the kind of person to boycott anybody for their business practices, but I do have to say what Network Solutions is doing is pretty low down and dirty. Here are the facts thus far:

• If you search for a domain name’s availability with Network Solutions, they will register the domain name.
• If you would like to register the domain name you thought you might want after that point, you have to pay them $35/year for the domain name.

According to TechCrunch, this isn’t costing them a dime either:

This isn’t costing the company anything, either. Registrars are permitted to register domains for five days without paying any fees to the domain name registry (in this case, Verisign). If they delete the domains after 5 days, which they will almost certainly do, they do not pay for the registration.

Where is ICANN with this type of practice? I say if they were all over RegisterFly for what they were doing then Network Solutions really should not be treated any differently.

Related Reading:
DomainTools.com Blog - Network Solutions is Getting Better