Twitter makes for a pretty nice way for a web host to get it’s message out to their customers quickly.  You can send a message to everybody that is following you, or you could answer just one person, if needed.  Screenr is the way to get that job done.  You can instantly record a screencast, all with web based software – and share it anywhere.

Quick and Easy Screencast Creator

The thing that makes Screenr so twitter-tastic is that it gives you the ability to login with your Twitter account, and instantly tweet your video tutorial when you are done.  The recorder is powered by Java, so there is no extra tools to have to download either.  Just hit the record button, drag that tool over the space you want to record and your ready to go.

Here is a demo video I created with about five minutes of planning and production time:

As you can see, sometimes you can be helping one person on how to do something – and show many more in exchange.  I am sure there is a metaphor in that statement somewhere having do to with teaching that man how to fish too.  You can try Screenr for free at Screenr.com.  When you do come back and show man what you created.

For any web host out there, having video tutorials showing off your services is a nice thing to promote to your customers.  It is always better to show somebody how to do something, rather than just have them read text.  If you are looking for a low-cost way to create your own simple tutorial collection, look no further than ScreenToaster.

Once you sign up, you can use it from anywhere at any time.  It captures video on the screen with simply one click.  You can record screencasts, tutorials, demos, training and more.  Then you can turn around and embed them on blogs, web pages, or send them via e-mail.

Here is an example video to check out:

It really is a fantastic and free way to create your own video tutorials.  To give it a shot for yourself, or to learn more about how to use it, be sure to check out ScreenToaster.com.

For remote web hosting technicians, trying to remember what time it is where your business is located can be a pain.  Thankfully, I have an easy to remember bookmark that should save you both trouble and time when it comes to remembering when that next big meeting is for you and for your boss who lives across the country.

The web site to remember, bookmark (or both) is whattimeisitthere.info.  This web site takes care of the time conversions for you.  For example, many of you know I work remotely for Lunarpages, and they are based out of California.  So, with me being in Texas – that is a big shift in time. So, let us say my boss wants to have a meeting at 4:00 PM Pacific time.  All I have to do is pull up this web site, type in “at 4:00pm pacific”. I would then know that the would be 6:00pm central time, which is my own time zone.

For a handy tool to do quick US time zone conversions, go visit whattimeisitthere.info.

Like This Article? Listen to it and more like it on podcast #201 of the Web Hosting Show!

This bookmarklet is perfect for anybody who spends any time working  on web site layouts.  XRAY is used to see the box model for any element on a web page.  It will dim the area not selected, and give you statistics such as the CSS id or class assigned to it, the interface hierarchy, and the CSS code assigned to that section.

With that said, it is the perfect browser companion for people who pull up a web site and wonder, “how did they do that?” because it tells you everything right there on the web page.  It works with Internet 6 and up, and every Webkit and Mozilla-based browser out there today (that includes Safari, Firefox, Camino and more).

To use it, all you have to do is drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar.  When you are on a site you want to see more about, click the bookmarklet and the semi-transparent XRAY window will pop up with all the information you could ever want. Go give the XRAY bookmarklet for webmasters a test drive yourself (then save it for your own CSS snooping) over at westciv.com/xray/.

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

So, if I was going to start looking for a web hosting job, where would I turn to?  Well, there are three resources you should keep in mind.  You have the web host themselves, the web hosting forums out there, and special job hunting resources that will list for you spots available with a number of different web hosting companies.

Find Jobs at the Web Host

Some web hosts will look for contracted workers in their own user base, so that is something to keep in mind.  If you want to go work for one specific web host, join their user forums and help out as much as you can.  See if you can become friendly with the current staff, and let them know if there is a spot available, you would like to be the one to fill it. Many web hosts also have “employment” pages up with positions that are open in the company.

Find Jobs on the Web Hosting Forums

Web hosting forums are another place to look for web hosting related jobs.  One of the most popular out there would be the Employment Offers and Requests section over at WebHostingTalk.com.  Other web hosting forums may have equally as helpful resources too, to start looking for a new web hosting job.

Find Jobs on the Web Hosting Employment Resources

Be sure to check out the web sites that specialize in advertising web hosting jobs too.  One of the more popular job boards for web hosting positions is webhostingjobs.com.  Run by the same staff the control TheWHIR.com, they have a lot of jobs listed for local and remote positions.

Don’t get discouraged if you get turned down by the first web host you try to get a job with.  Just go to the next one on the list, or try to ask around at several web host if they have any spots available for you as a local technician or remote contracted worker.

Looking for a new site to measure the effectiveness of your web site in a number of different ways? BuildStats.com will give you all kinds of details about your domain, or any domain name out there from around the Web.

Some of the statistics included are:

• Indexed pages in Bing, Yahoo, and Google
• Onsite Information
• Rank on Traffic Scoring Sites
• Popularity Graphs
• Social Popularity on the Web

Using tools like this will help you determine where you might need to spend more time working on your web site.  For example, if your web site is not the popular across the social sites, you might look into seeing what needs to be done to get your domain mentioned there more.

BuildStats.com is a handy domain scoring tool that you should keep handy.

Free Hosting – Two free web site elders that might someday share the same fate as Geocities are still around.  Both Angelfire and Tripod are still around.  Here are a few more to choose from:

• 50Megs.com – Offers users 50 MB of disk space to host their files.
• Bravenet.com – Also offers 50 MB of disk space and 1.5 GB of bandwidth.
• 110MB.com – You get 110 MB of disk space with them (who would have guessed?) and 10 GB of bandwidth for free.

Specialized Hosting – For those people wanting to host their own blog, you might look into wordpress.com and their free blog hosting service.  If you want to get started with a forum, check out freeforums.org.

Shared Hosting – For those people moving from Geocities to another location, it might also be time to look into shared hosting plans.  There are many low-cost web hosting plans out there to choose from, and they will give you much more disk space, bandwidth and resources to work with.

One more place to check out for free hosting suggestions would be TheFreeSite.com.  Hey have a lot of suggestions when it comes to free web site hosting.

Have a free favorite host you would like to plug?  Leave a comment!

BONUS! Here are a few other Geocities alternatives:

• Jimdo has a special deal for Geocities users!
• Lunarpages has a special coupon to use too!

If you find any more, let me know!

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

You can sort the dedicated hosting offers by:

• Management
• CPU Type
• Bandwidth
• Memory
• Disk Space
• Platform
• Price

The HostMonk web site was founded by a group of IT professionals who found themselves spending way too much time sifting through hosting plans to find the best deal.  So what did they do, they built a tool that helps you sort dedicated web hosts more easily.

Here is more on why and how they think they are different in comparison with other web host ranking tools:

Choosing a hosting service is a decision that will affect the way you work and impact your customers’ experience. The choice should not be made on the basis of which provider buys the largest banners or spends more money getting your attention. The choice should be made according to the facts.

HostMonk is committed to bringing you a thorough index of the world of hosting services. We present the facts for you to make your decision. What you see is impartial, based on the cold hard facts with nothing added or removed.

The beta web hosting tool currently compares 2,901 different dedicated hosting plans.  Go check it out at HostMonk.com.

How Does CopyGator Work?

The service aggregates data from other two million blog feeds, and parses over a half million blog posts in a day.  The servers then crunch the data and are able to evaluate if one post resembles another post just a little too much.  Once you sign up, you can get notices by RSS feed, or e-mail when somebody is using your content without your permission.  The service is simply fast, simple and pretty darn accurate, to boot.

You can see an example report I got for webhostingshow.com here:

• webhostingshow.com – Who’s republishing webhostingshow.com content?

When you compare the blog posts from within CopyGator, you get a percentage score on how likely it is they copied you.  For anybody who wants to protect their content online, CopyGator is a web site you just have to save to your bookmarks.  For another alternative to web site plagiarism searching, also be sure to check out Copyscape.com. It also does a good job at catching online content thieves.

This is a great ‘bit of new for hosting customers who can have an easier one stop shop where they can get all their web site and web hosting tools.  It also offers a perk to web hosting companies, cause they can draw people in by offering these services. Google is offering web hosts the ability to have quick and easy access to Google Webmaster Tools, Google custom and site search, and Google AdSense.

• Google Webmaster Tools – helps customers understand site traffic and diagnoses potential problems by giving the user information on how Google crawls their web sites.
• Google Site and Custom Search – helps customers improve user retention and conversions by customizing the search experience on their sites.
• Google AdSense – allows customers to provide relevant ads with search results and contextual ads to match their content.

The perks for the web hosts are the ability to integrate these Google tools into their control panel, and display a Google badge to generate referral fees.  To find a list of web hosts providing the service, check out their partner success stories. Some of the web hosts included are Dot5Hosting, eHost, FatCow, PowWeb, DomainHost and more.

I would highly suggest any web host interested, go check out the Google Services for Web Sites page and sign up to give your customers an easy, one-stop access to Google’s services for web sites.

If you have spent any time working with WordPress, and trying to customize it to make it your own, you know that finding the right tag for the right job is a pain at times.  WPLookup.com allows you to quickly find Wordpress Codex documentation for a function or template tag.

Once you search there, the web site will take your query and send you to the corresponding codex documentation page on the topic you searched for.

You can also add the search to your browser:

• Add WPLookup Search to Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer

I am looking forward to seeing what this tool will bring to the WordPress development world in the future.  If you need a way to find functions and template tags fast in WordPress, WPLookup is the place to start searching.

Out of all the domain name finder tools out there, DomainTyper might be the prettiest one, to date.  The idea here is simple, type in a phrase, word or series of words you would like to register as a domain name.  As you type you will see if the .com, .net, or .org versions of that domain (as far as you have typed it in) are available.  You can also add other domain name extensions, if needed.

The fun doesn’t stop there though.  They also give you a list of domain name hacks you can try.  For example, when I typed in “Mitch” they suggested mit.ch and mitc/h as domain name hack alternatives.  Down the left side of the page, they have the “Web 2.0 Domain Name Generator” which seems like nothing more than a wacky list of oddball names.

If you want to add the domain name lookup to your own site, they give you the code to embed it.  Overall DomainTyper is a nice alternative if you are looking for another way to find your next domain name you wish to register.

Once you visit their web site, you put your mouse over a domain name for additional information. The color of each domain listed (and there are hundreds to choose from) is color coded based on availability and popularity.  Over 12,000 domain names listed to pick from, with 1,000 more added daily at 2 PM EST.

If you sign up for a Domain Pigeon account, you can effortlessly keep track of all the domains you are interested in.  For anybody who loves to collect interesting domains to use at a future date and time, Domain Pigeon is a resource well worth checking out.

If your web site goes down, they can give you alerts via e-mail and SMS.  They have multi-protocol support for ping, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SSH, SMTP, DNS, POP3, IMAP, MySQL, and any arbitrary services running on TCP/IP.  You can also user their service to automatically send email to your provider during downtime, to request for a reboot or any additional investigation.

Not to sound like a game show host, but really – that is no all.  They also provide:

• Add “Live Status Report” to Your Site
• False Alarm Elimination
• Uptime & Performance Reports
• Maintenance Scheduling

If you want to become your own uptime monitoring service, they also have reselling options for their services too.  Just slap your logo and domain on, and set your prices.

To learn more about HyperSpin’s services, be sure to go check out HyperSpin.com.

How do you Sign Up and Use Google AdSense?

Signing up is a pretty easy process.  All you need to do is sign in with your Google login, and follow the on screen instructions.  Once that is done, you can create the ads you want to use, then grab the code for them to place them into your web site.  I have been using it for so long, I don’t see where this could be seen as a complicated process.  They make it all pretty easy.

You also have several different ways you can setup ads.

• AdSense for Content – your run-of-the-mill ads you are used to seeing.
• AdSense for Search – use Google to power your web site’s search and make money from it.
• AdSense for Feeds – Place relevant ads in your RSS feeds.
• AdSense for Domain Names – Park your un-used domains with Google.
• Video Units – add YouTube partners’ video content to your site, and earn extra revenue.
• AdSense for Mobile Content – create ads for special “mobile” pages.

What Are the Rewards of Using Google AdSense?

The good thing about Google AdSense is that it automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers text and image ads that are relevant to your audience and your site content.  Relative ads are what you want in the long haul.

Now you will not become rich over night, so if you want to quit your day job – you had better set your goal a little lower.  However, aiming at small goals first (such as having the ads pay for your $5 a month hosting bill) is a good start.

Want to learn more?  Here are some Google AdSense resources worth checking out:

• Google AdSense Blog
• Google AdSense Help Forum

Overall, I would say it is definitely work checking into. If you are looking for a name you can trust, Google has won many people over in that aspect too.  Sometimes, I don’t want to sign up with some company I have never heard of, especially when I need to get or receive important information from them (thinking about tax related stuff).  So overall, I would say Google AdSense will not make you uber-rich but it is a trustworthy choice out there.

There is no doubt that uptime is one of the most important factors to running or owning a web site.  So if a web site goes down, common sense would tell you that you want to know about it, right?  A new service called Ding It’s Up! will help you keep track on your domain or any other domain you give it.

Here is how the service is described via the official web site:

Ding It’s Up is a free service that alerts you via text (SMS), twitter or email when a website goes down or when it comes back up. We will never send you a text/email unless it is to inform you about a website you requested information for – you can unsubscribe at any time.

Now I would not rely on just using this tool to keep tabs on your web site, but it does make a nice accessory to other tools you could use.

To learn more about or to use this service, go check out dingitsup.com.

One of the better free web site performance and speed analysis tools I have used in a while is from WebSiteOptimization.com:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

With this free test, you can quickly get a number of statistics about how your web page loads.  Just put in your domain name for the “URL to diagnose” and hit the “Submit Query” button.

As an example, here are the connection times I got for WebHostingShow.com:

There are tons of more details there via the web site too. You have:

• Global Statistics
• Object Size Totals
• External Objects
• Download Times …and more!

If you like this tool, you might also check out some of the other Web Site Optimization services that they provide too.  If your looking for a prettier alternative, then I would also highly suggest Pingdom Tools.

As a matter of fact, I am still using Paint Shop Pro 7 if you really want to get into how “old school” I am.  However, when I heard that Adobe released a free online version of Photoshop, I had to try it out.

The thing that I like about Photoshop.com is they have made the interface really simple to understand and use.  You may want to play around with a few images before you get too in depth with it, but you’ll be editing images like a pro in no time flat.  You can crop, correct, and edit your images in many different ways.  Professionals might find it a little light weight, but I liked the simplicity of it all.

The little extra mile with this tool is that they provide hosting for your images too.  You will be given a special URL to share with friends and family, such as yourname.photoshop.com. This a a very nice extra touch.

To try it out for yourself, visit photoshop.com and sign up.  It does not cost a thing, so you will at least have a fun alternative to save for a rainy day, if nothing else.

You fill in the basics that you need, and this web site will take care of the rest for you.  Based on web standards, accessible and easy to use, this is the best online layout creator I have used in some time.

So what does YAML stand for?  With this builder, you can create Yet Another Multi-column Layout.  To try it out for yourself, go visit:  http://builder.yaml.de/

Take a look at the CSS file for your web site.  Is it a little on the messy side?  If so, I have the perfect web site for you to add to your bookmark collection.  CleanCSS.com is an online tool that will optimize and format your CSS.  Why would you need to do this?  Well, a clean CSS is a happy CSS!

To use it, just visit the web site and then copy and paste your code into the CSS box.  If needed, you can also just post the URL to your CSS file too.  Then, under code layout, you can select how clean you want it to be (based on readability and size).  Here you can see all the options you will have at your fingertips:

One thing that CleanCSS doesn’t do is validate your CSS code.  For that, I would still recommend visiting the W3C CSS Validation Service.

They offer plans covering the following services:

• Complete Server Solutions
• Server Monitoring and Response
• Per Ticket Plan
• Server Hardening and Setup
• Dedicated Admins
• Hourly Server Administration

To speak for how great their service is, they promise a response in 20 minutes or less and also have a 15 day money back guarantee.  They have been in the support field for over two years too, so they are not a fly by night operation.

If you are looking for another alternative to outsourcing support, you might also check out BobCares.  I did an interview with them a few weeks back on their business and support.  Of course I welcome the CliffSupport team on the show as well if they would like to talk with me too.  To learn more about CliffSupport be sure to go check out CliffSupport.com.

The bookmarking service, del.icio.us started an entire trend of unique looking domain names that has continue to this day.  Mixing domain names, with extensions (and sometimes tossing in a subdomain) has made for some memorable and unique domains.  So what is the secret?  There are two services that allow you to type in a phrase and then figure out different ways it could be registered and setup.

Domai.nr and domainfinder.geekfg.net both offer this service.  My favorite out of the tool is Domai.nr – so let us focus on that one for now.  For example, lets say I typed mitch into the search box and hit enter.  Some of the domain name suggestions I got were:

• mit.ch
• mit.tc/h
• m.it/ch

They also give to you the registers for that domain type, the wikipedia entry for that top-level domain type and tools, where you can see the web site (if the domain is taken) and a link to do a quick WhoIs lookup.  They also have a blog and Twitter account to follow, so you can stay inside the loop with development.

BuiltWith.com is a perfect companion if you want to do a little spying on how a web site was made and what is running behind it.  From the web site, all you need to do is type in the domain name and hit the “Lookup” button.  For an example, lets spy on thewhir.com to see what it was built with.

Under server information, we can find out it is using IIS 6.0.  So that would tell us they are using a Windows-based server to host from.  For tracking, we can see they use Google Analytics – which is never a bad thing.  Under framework, they are running Adobe ColdFusion and ASP.net.  As you can see – this gets pretty interesting for those of us who are geeky enough to have the desire to see what is going on “under the hood”.

From the BuiltWith.com web site, you can also get quick and easy access two two more tools, AboutUs.org and WebsiteGrader.com.

Not all tools have to be useful, that can just be fun to play with too.  DataCenterMap.com is one of those geeky hosting tools you may just want to play with on a Sunday afternoon when you have some free time.  As you can see, it is a big Google mash-up map with a ton of datacenter located on it.

All you have to do to see more is zoom in.  You’d be amazed by the number of data centers out there.  Once you find one you want to know more about, just click on it’s spot on the map and you can pull up the actual location as well as the profile on it and their official web site link.

Here is a little more about the project from the developers:

Data Center Map, is a free web service for companies around the world in need of housing / co-location space, whether it is just for hosting of one server, a rack cabinet, a cage or a dedicated room. I created Data Center Map because I, as co-owner of a hosting company, felt that there was a need for such a service in this constantly growing market.

If the map isn’t doing it for you – you can also use this list to navigate datacenters by country:

http://www.datacentermap.com/datacenters.html

At the present data and time they have indexed 980 co-location data centers from 50 different countries.  To play with this tool yourself, go to DataCenterMap.com.

There is a company out there providing for free, performance monitoring, availability monitoring, and traffic monitoring?  Yes, there is.  Mon.itor.us might have a silly name, but it delivers awesome and free monitoring tools for your web site.

Here is how the web site describes the services they provide:

We provides a “24 x 7″ network and web site monitoring service to help its users quickly identify faults and deficiencies to ensure continuous operations of their IT infrastructure and maintain business operations that provide the ultimate web experience.

From within an Ajax-powered dashboard, you can check server performance and availability, generate uptime reports, track visitors, CPU, memory and other system resources you need to know about.

Mon.itor.us is currently monitoring over 134,000 web sites right now, and I am sure there will be many more to come in the future.

Blog Perfume’s Feed Analysis

With the toolset that Blog Perfume is providing, you can see some details statistics on just about any FeedBurner feed.  You can see the number of subscribers per month, the hits, subscribers and views from a day to day basis, the number of subscribers depending on the day of the week, and more.

Yoast’s Feed Circulation Graphs

Yoast takes a simpler approach and just gives you a graph based on the number of subscribers that you have.  Type in your feed name (what follows after the feeds.feedburner.com/) the time frame and the width of the graph.

Example: Web Hosting Show’s Subscription Number Graph for 6 Months

Feed Compare

This one might be my favorite of them all.  Feed Compare takes your subscription numbers and compares them with anybody else who uses FeedBurner to power their RSS feeds.  You can give it up to four feeds to compare too.  You can view stats for up to 1 month to 24 months, so there should be no concern about getting the big picture when it comes to this alternative FeedBurner stats tools.  For example, you can see the Web Hosting Show’s RSS feed and The WHIR’s RSS feed are pretty close in comparison.

Example: Web Hosting Show’s RSS Feed vs The WHIR’s RSS Feed

For many of these tools, you must have awareness API turned on for your feed in question.  If your trying to look at data from somebody else’s feed, and you get an error – this is probably the reason why.

With both paid and free versions, Site24×7.com looks to be a great web site monitoring package.  They do monitoring of uptime and performance of your web sites, online services and servers.  They also promise to deliver instant alerts the moment something goes wrong.

You can set the monitoring tools to check the web site in question you wish to monitor in intervals ranging from 5 to 60 minutes or above.

If the worst might happen, and you need to be told, here are the various ways they can alert you to trouble:

• E-mail
• RSS
• SMS Messages

For those of you just wanting to beta test the service; when you first sign up, you are given a fully functional, 15-day trial account. At the end of 15 days, your account will be downgraded to free unless you upgrade to either Standard or Premium account.

Check out the screenshots, then give them a shot at Site24×7.com.

FileField.net gives you a ton of tags to start out with, and a pretty simple interface to go by.  There is a search box of course, and the results were pretty easy to figure out.  They say they search rapidshare.com, megaupload.com, sendspace.com, yourfilehost.com, badongo.net, mediafire.com, zshare.net, 4shared.com, depositfiles.co, and milefactory.com.

OplaHol.com gets at least the award for the funniest name.  The standard search box interface is there.  What is nice about this one is it also gives you social bookmarking links and video thumbnail previews on the right side.

FileCrop.com offers searching for both Megaupload and Rapidshare.  It works a little differently than most.  It spiders pages, looking for links to free file uploads and then adds them to it’s database.

RapidshareData.com is our last one for today.  From the top of the page it lets you choose what type of file you are looking for (audio, video, docs, pictures and more) and then the regular ol’ search box.  Quick and easy to use, but nothing much to separate it from the competition.

Word of warning, some of these links may contain links to adult material.  So as always, be careful what you click and with anything you find Online where you can’t verify the source, be sure to scan the files with your anti-virus to make sure there is nothing bad inside.

First thing you must do is login to the Gmail web site, and then Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page, and open the Accounts tab.

Now on the Account web page, scroll down to the Get mail from other accounts section, click Add another mail account. Now Gmail will walk you though a wizard (like with any other e-mail client) to gather information about your e-mail account.

Now personally, I would make sure you check not to keep your messages on the server.  This way all your messages are sent to Gmail and stored there, and you don’t have to worry about cleaning out your server side mail from time to time.

Once you have finished with the wizard, hit click Add Account.  Now you can use your e-mail from your web hosting account with Gmail.  If you are a fan of Gmail, this will keep you from having to jump from client to client to get your e-mail all checked.

Based around what started as a group on LinkedIn.com, this project has flourished into an organization to connect people in the web hosting world.  Around the end of July, the Hosting Industry Organization setup a member directory, classifieds, a job posting board, and a hosting companies for sales section.  They are also looking for suggestions, just in case you have any other big ideas to pass to them.

Just looking over the directory section of the web page, they have listings for:

• Brokers/M&A for the Hosting Industry
• Datacenters and Rack Space
• Marketing Services
• Job Resources
• Server Hardware Providers
• and more!

Right now membership stands at over 2,000+ with, I’m sure, more members joining every day.  Want to sign up?  Use this special link to do so now.