It is always a good thing when you can share some positive news about web hosts joining web hosts for a good cause.  Hosting for Haiti is all about the biggest and brightest web hosting companies in the world coming together to support the victims of the earthquakes that happened in Haiti last month.

Here is a little ‘bit more about the project from the web site:

Although normally fiercely competitive, as members of the hosting community we know that the power we wield as a group is much more than we can wield individually. And so we’ve come together to help assist those affected by this disaster. With the generosity of all our combined customers, we hope to make a difference. And you can too. One dollar helps. One hundred dollars helps one hundred times more.

Any donations given through the web site go directly to the American Red Cross, and their web site and servers, so you know the donations you give are not going through a third party before they go to those who need it most.

If you are interested in donating, or learning more about this fantastic cause, be sure to check out HostingforHaiti.com.

How would you like to drive down town and pick up a web hosting account?

The web host Slamdot hopes you’d very much like the idea of doing that.  They announced they will begin selling professionally designed web site packages very soon through a retail store.  The first store will be open in Knoxville, Tennesee offering web site design packages, support,  and in-store training.

Other specialty stores like this, such as the Apple stores across the nation have done very well because they not only give a local and familiar face to the product, but they also create a different sense of community that you can not give online. Dropping an e-mail to a support team is very different than walking into a store and asking for help.

This is the type of new, innovative, out-of-the-box idea I really like to see, and I wish them the best of luck.

To learn more about Slamdot, be sure to go check them out at Slamdot.com.

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

You can see the chart for yourself here.

So what does this mean?  Well, a hundred different people could read into that data a hundred different ways.

Negative View – I would say the main reason why web hosting is down, is because social networks like MySpace and Facebook have kind of taking the place for some people of a standard web site.

Positive View – People don’t search for “web hosting” when looking for a place to start their web site.  Doing a search for “blog hosting” shows it has stayed steady since 2005.  People are looking for ways to host a particular type of site, rather than just general web hosting these days.  It is a much more niche market now.

As you can see, there are arguments to be made for either side on why web hosting is such a falling trend in Google searches. Which way do you see it?

To give you a little more information about the key players here, the Pirate Bay, a torrent sharing web site, provides what you could call the “path” to be able to download copyrighted materials.  The IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) is the music industry’s lobby group who is doing some of their heavy handed grunt work when it comes to shutting down web sites like the Pirate Bay.

The new tactic here is that the IFPI are skipping over the web site owners and are now going directly to the web hosts who host the torrent web sites in question.  They want to get the web hosts on a charge of assisting copyright infringement, which is a decision that has yet to be appealed.

There is one web host who has yet to given into the demands of the IFPI.  The Swedish provider Portlane has filed a complaint in the Swedish Market Court.  Now true, sharing copyrighted materials might be wrong, I will leave that judgment call up to you.

What is to be admired here is a small guy standing up against the establishment, showing the IFPI and the world that we should be a society who serves the people’s best interest and not the best interest of the one with the biggest wallet.

Why Should We Save Geocities?

The Archive Team’s goal is to save as much of Geocities as they can before Yahoo! pulls it down later this year.  Think of what they want to do as a time capsule of the Web from the mid 1990’s.  At the time, some of these web sites were the best the world had to offer, and some might have been the worst.  I have a feeling those who are against the idea of saving Geocities, probably have a web site dedicated to ALF somewhere in there they don’t want the world to see.

When it comes to copyright concerns, the idea isn’t to take credit or resell the content.  At this time there are no plans for releasing the data, but in the future it might be rolled out for the world to look back upon.

How can you help?  Be sure to check out the Archive Team’s FAQ.

Is Geocities worth saving? Well, that is a point up for debate.  Sure, there might not be any real value to the content that is being archived, however others may argue that any and all historical content must be saved so we can learn from our past mistakes, or laugh at them.

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

Now how is this going to work?  From their press release:

Attendees will have access to vendors, sponsors, exhibit booths, and other web hosting enthusiasts through live chat.  There is no software to install.  Attendees log in from their computer and listen to the sessions directly, pick-up a chat, read about exhibitor’s product and services information and network – all through the live chat.  Representatives will be available via live chat to answer questions and provide further information.

If you are interested in reserving your spot, you can do so free here.  Now I haven’t been contacted by anybody involved yet, so that is pretty much all the details I know, however I do have to say it is nice to see people trying to something new out there, and the more we can all share and learn from each other the better the web hosting industry will be.

Overall, I like the new look and feel of the layout.  It surely beats the old design, that looks like it was pulled right out of 1995.  However there are a few things that nag me.  Here are both the good and the bad about the new look for one of the more popular web hosting web sites out there.

The Positives

• Lots more attention paid to the WHIR TV project and RSS.  Two things I am happy to see them highlighting.
• No more black and white!  The colors they picked are a nice update to the old look without seeming like the entire thing is boring.
• The membership feature is cool and a welcomed addition.

The Negatives

• It is a little ad crazy.  Now I realize people have to make money as much as the next guy (that is why I have ads on my own web sites) however it seems a little like they were just tossed everywhere without much organization.
• Some of the pages (jumping from section to section) change layouts so quickly, it is a little easy to get lost.  Maybe the inclusion of a breadcrumb trail at the top could help this.  Something like: (Front Page > Features > The Story Headline)

Overall, I would have to say they have done a fine job at the new paint job.  How do you feel about it?  Do you miss the old layout at all?  When was the last time you visited?  You can check it all out at theWHIR.com.

The problem started, when the web host IAS.net was evicted, leaving a number of businesses and non-profit organizations without hosting.  What a Christmas present, your web hosting goes out right for the holidays.  It turns out the web host had problems with late payment of rent, which lead to the owner of the building to cut them off.

A number of other web hosts chipped in and took over some of the the IAS.net clients for free – so it is nice to see some people in the web hosting industry are in the holiday spirit.

The next day, IAS.net fought back by saying they were not making payment to the landowner on purpose, due to poor upkeep of the building.  Reportedly the building had ongoing maintenance and black mold issues, which the property owners neglected to address.

So on one side you have the landlord who didn’t get paid, and on the other side you have the web host who was looking out for his workers.  Personally I can see the positives and negatives for both sides of the argument – however I think there should have been a more adult way to handle the entire situation.  It all comes off a ‘bit childish to me.

Now let us fast forward, because unfortunately GoDaddy refuses to raise the bar…

• 2006 = Another Super Bowl Controversial Commercial
• 2007 = Another Super Bowl Controversial Commercial
• 2008 = Another Super Bowl Controversial Commercial

Ok, so GoDaddy has kind of run the idea of having a pretty girl in a controversial commercial into the ground.  They shoot a commercial, tell us the Super Bowl commercial gods refused to air it, release that one Online and then give us a “censored” one for the Super Bowl.

So that brings us to today, and myself reading a press release on theWHIR’s web site:

For its fifth consecutive year advertising during the NFL championship, discount hosting provider Go Daddy has shot two racy new ads this week featuring IndyCar driver Danica Patrick, to appear in the Super Bowl, following NBC’s approval.

Oh joy, another couple of racy ads for the Super Bowl.  Let me guess, one is “too hot for TV” and the other one is “just right for the censors”.

“We have two options and they’re both absolutely ‘GoDaddy-esque,’” Go Daddy chief executive officer and founder Bob Parsons said in a statement. “They are fun, edgy and slightly inappropriate; surely network censors will have a sense of humor, people could use a good laugh these days.”

Come on GoDaddy, I was behind you the first year, waited for the encore the second year – but after that I think you have run this idea into the ground.

• Lunarpages.com – for $4.95 per month, you can get unlimited space and bandwidth!
• FastHosts.com – They are offering free unlimited reseller hosting for a year.
• HostColor.com – Host Color’s “THANKYOU2008″ promotion offers a 25 percent instant rebate on all Web hosting services to its present and prospective customers.
• GoDaddy.com – They are registering domains for only $1.99 with any new, non-domain purchase.  Regular .com registrations are marked down to $9.99.
• HostGator.com – You can get 20% off any order, if you use the coupon code “GREEN”.  On the site it says it was good till Oct. 1, however I just tested it and worked for me.

If your a web host with a special deal or offer going on, please let me know and I would love to get it featured on the Web Hosting Show.  We will all be spending plenty on presents and holiday cheer this year, so if we can get a little discount in our hosting – I do not see the harm in that at all.

Bonus! The fine people at aplus.net have also clued me into some of their great deals they have going on right now.  You can check them out here:  http://www.aplus.net/promos/

This is what Steve Cumings, the director of Infrastructure for HP had to say in an interview with eWeek.com:

“Customers are looking to expand their data center footprint with additional capacity much faster than adding a traditional brick and mortar data center.  It can take 12 to 24 months to build out one of these traditional data centers and in the case of the POD, we can have one ready to ship in just about six weeks.”

So what about the stats?

A complete 8-foot-by-40-foot POD container can hold up to 3,520 servers or 12,000 hard disk drives in total, providing 12TB of data storage. The POD also has a unique cooling system too.  It includes hot and cold aisles for optimized heating and cooling, allowing hot air from one side to be distributed through the ceiling heat exchange, cooled and redistributed as cold air to the other side.  So the POD itself is like one big personal computer in its own right.

HP hopes will compete against similar high-density, mobile container offerings from IBM, Sun Microsystems and others.   With this juggernaut, I think they stand a pretty good chance.

Domain People want to Make You into a .Pro

DomainPeople, well not all domain people – just the company with the name is accepting reservations for .pro domain names from new registrants through August 31.  For more info on the .pro domain name check out registry.pro.

Verio Hands out Hosting to the Needy

Verio, a web hosting company, has decided to donate a few designs to help out the charities out there in the world.  They have agreed to host 18 Ann Arbor, Michigan charity web sites until January 2010, giving them the opportunity to understand how online presence can help them gain wider support, connect with their members and maintain information more accurately and transparently.

Media Temple does Cloud Spam Filtering

The people hosted over at Media Temple are going to get a little ‘bit better spam protection.  The Cloudmark Authority plug-in for SpamAssassin helps Media Temple to more effectively spot spam, phishing and viruses, increasing its ability by 80 percent, says the company.

If you would like to see your own hosting headlines mentioned here please be sure to drop me an e-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com and I’d be happy to get you included on the next edition of the podcast.

I have a quote here that will scare the pants off of you.

60 percent of the top 100 most popular Web sites either hosted malicious content or contained a masked redirect to lure unsuspecting victims from legitimate sites to malicious sites.

That comes from Websense’s latest “State of the Internet Security” report.  They say that their research also shows that 75 percent of malicious sites are from legit, trusted sources with “good” reputation scores.

Also in the report, now more than 76.5 percent of all emails in circulation in the past six months contained links to spam sites and/or malicious Web sites.  That is an increase by 18 percent since December of 2007.

That is only a handful of highlights I saw, but the full report has a lot more interesting information I think we should all read and take in account when browsing the Web.  Download the Full State of Internet Security Report (.pdf)

Here is a video of the Websense Security Labs Manager discussing some of the report’s highlights:

This report covered the first half of 2008, from January 1 to June 30, 2008.  For more information about this recent report be sure to check out Websense.com.

There is a lot of buzz about them both, and a lot of the internal kinks are still being worked out.  Both seem to have a lot to offer to the table when it comes to organizing the web hosting world and the people inside of it.  From my point of view it seems both have very separate main goals.

The Association of Internet and Hosting Service Providers seems to be more focused on bringing people together to achieve certain goals, like you would see more so with an organized  trade association.

The Hosting Industry Organization on the other hand seems to be more focused on the social side of things.  They want to be a place to make connections, hire workers, sell businesses and that side of the hosting business.

Which one are you more excited about? I have passed out an open invitation to both organizations to come do an interview right here on the podcast.  I would like to ask them both the same series of questions so we can all decide which one might be the better choice in the long haul.

cPanel Staff Working Longer Hours

The control panel gurus at cPanel announced that as of Monday, July 21st customer service hours will be extended from 7am to 7pm EST.  So if you are a customer looking to get your questions about cPanel answered, they will be available to help.

China Has More Web Users than US

19.1 percent of China has web access.  How much is that?  Oh roughly 253-million people.

HostingCon Gets Going

The biggest news story of the week would be that HostingCon is taking place July 28th through the 30th at the Navy Pier in Chicago.  I have skipped out on the festivities yet again, but looks like a great show all around.  HostingCon is the yearly meet up for all the biggest players in the hosting industry.  This year Parallels and Microsoft seem to be keynoting the conference and I am sure we will hear more about it from those who were “on the inside” soon.

Do you have any hosting news to share?

Drop me an e-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com and I’ll be more than happy to share it with the rest of the web hosting industry right here, next week on this very podcast.

GoDaddy has also released this response to the claims that there was some wacky stuff going on during the first day of .me domain name registrations:

We knew the .ME Open Registration response would be tremendous, but it went beyond even what we had expected. As a result, we experienced some system issues in our communication with the registry.

As soon as we became aware of the issue we began taking steps to correct it. It is now resolved.  For our customers, if we did not successfully register the domain name requested they will receive a full refund.

Now that the first week’s hype is over, it might be a little easier to search around and see what .me domain names you can register from GoDaddy.  Only problem your left with is, are all the good names taken already?

King of Spam to be Sentenced

You would think that the king of spam would at least get a crown made of mixed meat or something cool like that, but the only thing Robert Alan Soloway has to look forward to now is a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and fines of more than $500,000.  How did he get the crown?  According to Jeffrey C. Sullivan, a United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington, “Our investigators dubbed him the ‘Spam King’ because he is responsible for millions of spam emails”.

Switzerland Tops World in Spam

The Swiss are usually only known for banks and watches, but now they can add one more title to that list, spam.  According to security vendor MessageLabs, Switzerland has exceeded former front-runner Hong Kong as the most spammed country.

ICANN Blames Register.com for Hack

Last but not least, to give you an amusing story for the web hosting water cooler, it looks like ICANN has tossed Register.com under the bus.  Since ICANN’s web site got hacked a few weeks back, looks like Register.com is becoming their scapegoat.  “The DNS redirect was a result of an attack on ICANN’s registrar’s systems.  A full, confidential, security report from that registrar has since been provided to ICANN with respect to this attack.” Register.com is a good company, and I don’t think it is totally fare that ICANN is looking to pass the buck so quickly with it’s own security problems.

If you have any news you’d like to share, be sure to drop me a line or leave a comment and I’ll be more than happy to spread the word about your latest happenings or interesting web hosting article.

How about firstname.lastname?

Well thanks to those wacky and crazy people at ICANN and a few bottles of expensive French wine, we might see that go into effect sooner than you would think.  In an unanimous vote held in Paris, France last week ICANN has given approval for new top-level domain names including multilingual ones.  No longer will you just have the traditional domain name extensions.  Now you could practically have anything dot anything registered once all the regulation and paper work has gone though.  Unless something goes wrong, this should all go in effect in 2009.

Dr Paul Twomey, the chief executive of ICANN had an interesting quote:

“Like the United States in the 19th Century, we are in the process of opening up new real estate, new land, and people will go out and claim parts of that land and use it for various reasons they have. It’s a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the Internet.”

Yeah, you’ll be able to claim a part of it if your a multi-million dollar company or have a hidden stash of cash hidden under your mattress.

Don’t let your blood boil yet.  I highly doubt that your traditional top-level domains are going anywhere.  People already have in their head that a web site domain has to be something with a dot com behind it (or dot org, dot net, ect).  Also it isn’t like you or me will be setting up our own domain name extensions because the application fee to get it going will cost around $100,000 or more.

From industry news, to domain stories.  From big business to the little guy.  Gawkwire is already providing news from all corners of the hosting world and doing well at it.  Here is how Robert Lang, Gawkwire managing editor describes this new hosting resource:

“We designed Gawkwire to build on the strengths of other hosting news portals and magazines. Unlike many sites, our content is updated continuously, not once a day or even once a week. We take it a step further, by creating a dialogue with our readers that enhances the overall experience of our site.  And we don’t stop with just news articles. Gawkwire’s rich content covers a wide spectrum, with everything from video blog posts to executive interviews.”

I am very excited to see the launch of something new out there in the hosting news bubble.  Too long has the field grown more than a little stagnite, and the hopes for Gawkwire is to add a little ‘bit more spice, interest and information to the world of Internet and hosting news.

That includes approximately 14,000 Domain Direct, NetIdentity ItsYourDomain.com customer accounts.

That is a ton of cash changing hands.  One has to wonder why Tucows wanted to get out of the shared web hosting game and what will they do now with this extra surplus of cash on their hands?  Colin Campbell, the CEO of Hostopia release the usual quote out to the public saying they had high hopes and more…

“Our plan is to provide customers with numerous upgrades and additional value-added services to earn their loyalty and continued business. Traditional web hosting is fast evolving to the SaaS (software as a service) model and Hostopia is perfectly positioned to offer these services to these customers.”

This is a big buyout for sure, and big congratulations deserve to be sent towards Hostopia for getting the deal.  If you were Tucows, what would you do now being the actual “cash cow”.

“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?

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.

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.

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.

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

Hi Mitch, great podcast I try to download each show weekly. I was bitten by the RegisterFly.com problems a while back and today while browsing to their web site it looks like they are still in business? How can this be?

RegisterFly’s demise as an ICANN accredited register was one of the biggest hosting stories of last year. These days you don’t hear much about it though. Technically, yes – they are and can still be in business.

Look Back at the RegisterFly Mess

Back inn 2007, ICANN launched an investigation of RegisterFly since there were a lot of allegations they were sticking it to the customer. With other issues and lawsuits that followed, the RegisterFly co-owners Kevin Medina and John Naruszewicz had a breakup of their own. The road was rocky, the public was mad and then it was made known by an unsealed class action lawsuit that there were claims RegisterFly defrauded customers trying to register or renew domain names.

According to Wikipedia, one of the early lawsuits within RegisterFly was pretty hilarious.

Meanwhile RegisterFly filed suit against Kevin Medina, alleging he had stolen company funds for a $27,000 escort service, a $6,000 liposuction procedure, a $10,000/month penthouse apartment in Miami, Florida and a $6,000 chihuahua dog.

March 31, 2007 was the date that ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) removed RegisterFly’s ICANN accreditation and told them to take the ICANN logo off of their web site. Skipping ahead though the legal mumbo-jumbo they could no longer act as a domain name register themselves and had to give up the domain name registrations they had done to ICANN. GoDaddy and other companies stood up and offered the RegisterFly refugees a home for their domains and that pretty much catches us up to the present date and time.

So Why is RegisterFly Still Around?

Well, this message from Robert O’Neal, Chief Executive Officer for RegisterFly should give you a candy coated reason:

We are an authorized reseller of domain names, the same as we have been for 6 years prior, this has not changed. We are NOT OUT OF BUSINESS as the message may imply to some.

So they can’t act as a domain name register themselves, like a GoDaddy can but they can resell domain names to you, like many web hosts do out there though a reseller service. This is how they did business before becoming an accredited register. So technically they are no longer a domain name register, they are just reselling somebody else’s registration services to you.

Lets let this be a time to review Mitch’s golden rules when it comes to shopping for a new or replacement web hosting account. Feel free to copy this – share it with others, bookmark it for a reminder or write it on the back of your hand. Whatever will help you remember not to be a sucker when it comes to “too good to be true” web hosting deals.

• There is NO SUCH THING as “unlimited” in web hosting. Everything has a limit and there is no magical servers that can hold unmeasurable amounts of data.
• If the web site looks like it designed by a paraplegic cross-eyed homeless man… stay away.
• 99.9% uptime is meaningless. It might sound nice, but 99.9% of the time it is sales jargon and nothing else.
• Always make sure you have multiple ways of contacting the web host in question, just in case they decide to shut down shop in a month and take your money and run.

Have any other golden rules to share for those people out there who might be looking for a new web host? Leave a comment and lets all help educate the general public on this issue.

Related Reading:

+ WebHostingTalk.com Thread on the 10 Terabyte Web Host

Well it looks like the web hosting industry made its way through yet another HostingCon. From what I hear it was a very big and exciting event. I’ve been talking with about a dozen people who went to the event – and I have to say I might just have to make the trip next year.

The major positives from an event like this is it allows one to socialize with their peers. Web hosting can be a very cut throat business, so taking some time to meet fellow industry workers and socialize a ‘bit is a good thing. From the perspective of an outsider looking in for the most part HostingCon looked like a big ol’ party which can be a positive and a negative.

The one thing I didn’t see from the coverage I have read thus far on it is an idea. You would think with this many web hosting people grouped together you could see something emerge as a whole to make the business better. Maybe we start a conversation about not hosting splogs. Maybe somebody suggests that we all hosting companies try to hire more American workers. Those are only a few examples of what one hopes would come from an event like this. If it happened it either has not been covered or it wasn’t “buzz-worthy” enough for anybody else to pick up on.

From reading people’s thoughts on forums and blog posts it seems that the experience was an overwhelming success. Everybody from the presenters to the participants seemed to give it two thumbs up.

Now that I have given both my positives and negatives on the event, I hope to hear options and thoughts from other folks that attended the show. Was it worth the trip and will you be doing it again next year? I think overall HostingCon is something good for the industry because it gives us all something to get excited about and a real meeting place just in case the web hosting gurus out there ever plan on world domination.