The .htaccess file is a way to make a change to the configurations of your hosting account for each directory.  For example, once you put a .htacess file in your public_html folder, on a Linux based hosting account, it will set the rules for that folder and all the folders created in it.

Here is everything you need to know…

Step 1 – Open up a text editor (such as Notepad or cPanel’s File Manager) and add in the lines you need and save the file.

Step 2 – Using the cPanel’s File Manager or your FTP client you will need to upload the file to the location you need it. This is usually inside of your public_html folder.

Step 3 – Rename the file to .htaccess, and save. It should be noted that .htaccess is the file extension. It is not filename.htaccess or yourpage.htaccess, it is just named .htaccess.

Truth be told, you really don’t need to know what the .haccess file is, as long as you can find the right snipits of code or “recipes” in it to get the job done.  At least now you know how to create it… and knowing is half the battle.

It is no secret that bad things sometimes happen to good web sites.  When this happens on your web hosting account, it is often shown as a HTTP error.  Each problem that could happen with a web site, has an HTTP error code associated with it, which is suppose to tell you what the problem is.  The problem is that they are not really translated into something the general public can understand.

Have no fear though, because I am going to give you five of the most common HTTP errors and what they really mean.

500 Internal Server Error

This is your general purpose error message from the server say, “Hey… none of the other messages really fit here, so we are just going to tell you something screwed up, please try again!”.  It could be coming up because the site in question is overloaded with requests, or it could be a system admin trip over the power cord.

404  Not Found

Hey, that isn’t there – so go away is the general message you should get when you see a 404 error code.  Probably the most famous error code, if they were ranked by popularity.  The requested resource could not be found but may be available again in the future… if your lucky.

403  Forbidden

The 403 error is telling you, that you really are not suppose to be there.  It is kind of like the 401 error code, except this time you didn’t even have the chance to try to log in to view the files.  You are just not allowed, go away, you are not suppose to be trying to look at that.

400  Bad Request

When you get this HTTP error, it usually means your browser access the page in the wrong way, or somehow your request to view the page was corrupted along the way.  The signal got lost, confused and started looking for a magic leprechaun, and totally forget about your request to view that site.

401  Unauthorized

With this web page error code, you see it when you put in the wrong user name or password when trying to log into a protected area.  For example, you were trying to log into that ex-girlfriends photo collection to see if she had deleted all the pictures of you.  Since you got the 401 error, you’ll never be able to see she simple edited your face out and replaced it with a headshot of Bill, that vampire guy, from True Blood.

Have another HTTP error that has you stumped?  Leave a comment, and perhaps we will do a round two of these geek to regular speak HTTP error translations.

Your first step would be to open up a text editor (such as Notepad or cPanel’s File Manager) and add in the lines you need and save the file. Next, using the cPanel’s File Manager or your FTP client you will need to upload the file to the location you need it. This is usually inside of your public_html folder.

This link includes the php.ini directives you can set to configure your PHP setup.

Now, rename the file to php.ini, and save. To protect the php.ini file, you can add these lines to your .htaccess file:

<Files .php.ini>

order allow,deny

deny from all

</Files>

This way, it can not be displayed when somebody types in the file path into their browser. With some web hosts, in the .htaccess file, you will need to add the following line:

suPHP_ConfigPath /home/username/public_html

Replace username with your actual cPanel user name. This will tell your account where your php.ini file exists.  Other web hosts might have other rules when it comes to setting up the php.ini file for their hosting environment, so you might check with them to see what they recommend.

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.

Some people do it because they heard a friend to tell a friend that advice. Others do it to sell ten page eBooks on the topic that cost the end user $65 a pop. I am going to help you get something done though by sharing the answers to some of these frequently asked (and answered wrong) questions.

Will having a dedicated IP address help you with search engine optimization?

The simple answer is no. It is a myth that Google or any other search engine will penalize you for hosting on a server that shares an IP address or for not having a dedicated IP address.

Is having static addresses better than having dynamic ones?

To explain, a dynamic address would be one used by a service like WordPress does by default, giving you something like article.php?post=543 after your domain in the addresses bar or something to that effect. When you see a static address, it looks much more like the one you see at WebHostingShow.com when you click on a story to read where it has in the address something like /archive/story-about-hosting.php.

In most cases, search engines would search either one but I would tend to go with the static addresses if you can, because it is more user friendly to the visitor and for keyword reasons. Now having good related keywords in the address, this is a search engine optimization tip that is slowly fading away but is still relevant right now.

For search engine optimization, what is the best way to change a domain name address?

You want to use what is referred to in the business as a 301 redirect. There are a number of ways to get this done so by searching Google for 301 redirect you are bound to find a lot of methods. Easiest would be to put this in your .htaccess file:

redirect 301 /old/oldpage.htm http://www.yourdomain.com/newpage.htm

A 301 redirect is telling the world that your page has moved permanently, that is what the 301 code stands for.

You should get away from your previous hosting company as quickly as you can?

This is not always the case. You may want to wait till you see your search engine spiders and bots crawling over your new content before you go back to your old web host and cancel your web site’s old hosting account. Not doing so could lead the search engine spiders to a dead end a few times (during domain name propagation) and it might cause your web site to get dropped from the search engine rankings. This is because from the spider’s point of view, you no longer exist.

Have any other SEO myths that need to be de-bunked? Drop me a line or a comment.

Now this might be a little different depending on the cPanel skin you are using, but it should work generally for any and all.

Step one would be to login to cPanel and go to your mail settings (usually you can just click on the “Mail” icon to get you there. Next you will want to go to:

Add/Remove/Manage Accounts

This is your Mail Account Maintenance page. Here you can see all the e-mail accounts you have created. If you have not yet created one go to “Add Account” to do so. Here you can fill in the name you want to use (the thing that going before @yourdomain.com), your password and the Quota. By default the setting should be 10 Meg. This stands for 10 Megabytes.

Now it is time for some math. To make things easy, let us say you wanted to bump your e-mail quota to 5 GB of storage.

1 gigabytes = 1,024 megabytes

Using Google, you can do the conversions quicker. Just type into Google “5 GB to MB“. The answer you need to type into cPanel’s quota box would be “5120” which is 5,120 MB. If all goes well you should see the message:

The e-mail account (your e-mail address) with the login (your login) and password (your password) with a quota of 5120 Megabytes was successfully created.

To change that later on, just go back into your Mail Account Maintenance screen, find your e-mail account and click on “Quota”. See, now you know you don’t need a Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail in your life to have a larger online inbox.

You can get this done in four easy steps:

Step 1: Find a WordPress template that you like, and remove the blog related content in the sidebar (or wherever else it is posted). If you can create a WordPress layout by hand you might be better off.

Step 2: Login to the WordPress administration interface and go to Options, then Reading. On that page you can set your front page to be a static web page instead of the default blog list that you get.

Step 3: Mange all the pages on your site, by going to Write and then Write Page inside of the WordPress administration interface. To edit your creations later you can go to Manage and then Pages. From there you should get a full list of the pages you have created.

Step 4: You might have to go in and edit your template files ago to make sure you are linking to all the pages you have created. Since most sites done this way will be pretty small, you can get away with making these links by hand. I am sure there are automatic ways of doing it too using the list pages tag from WordPress. I would not bother though unless your just looking for something to tweak later down the road.

Personally this interested me at first because I wanted to know if it could be done. Now that I have done it with my own personal web site, I have found it to be an easy way to make edits and changes to my little biography on the Web. Another neat perk about doing this is you can work in WordPress plugins into the mix and get some awesome dynamic interaction for a static web site.

Traveling from web host to web host looking for news and information I see a lot of people who don’t do much as far as support pages go. On the other side of the scale, you also have hosts that push out so many support pages that there is no way they’ll be able to keep them all up to date.

How Do You Find the Problem?

Check out your web site statistical information (one of my favorites to use is Google Analytics) and with your support pages see where you are getting the most hits. Now navigate yourself to a few of these pages and see if there is anything that could be improved on or updated.

Another thing you could do while support might not be so busy is to surf around your support pages to make sure there are no broken links. Now these are sometimes harder to find – but the worst thing you can do to a customer looking for help is lead them to a dead end.

Is There an Easier Way?

Now with both of those suggestions out of the way, we can make your job easier. How can you do that? Well, time to include a link leading to a contact form at the bottom of each of your support pages saying something to the effect of:

“Dead link? Out of date? Send us an e-mail and let us know!”

This will give your customer, clients and visitors a way of contacting you to let you know you have some work to do. Getting even a little more fancy, you could setup a special address for this and have it forward over right to your designers or a specific part of your support team so they can get these fixed as soon as they come in.

Web design is a mysterious art that some can do and not many have mastered. When it comes to a Web hosting web site – people expect to see certain things as customers and if your lacking in these areas it could hurt you down the road. Sure fancy flash and really hot pictures of server racks are nice, but they won’t win you any clients.

Keep it Simple

Some web hosts out there like to fit as much content, flashing banners and overdone graphics on the front page as they can fit. This is not the best way to go. Personally, I like it when web hosts keep it simple.

Give me the Basics

I do not need to know every single detail about every single plan. Here is a basic forumula for what I want to see on your front page:

• Company Name
• Little Information About You
• Plans (Disk Space/Bandwidth at Least)
• Links to Other Pages for More Information

Finding the right balance between hype and helpful details is hard to do. Once you have done it though, I promise your current and potential clients will really thank you.

Sell Yourself in a Few Words

If you doing something great it shouldn’t take that long to convey the message to others. As much as having paragraph after paragraph about how good plan number one is or how great you are in general might look, keeping things short and sweet will go a long way.

Here are a few examples of web hosts who do follow all my rules:

Hostgator.com | Lunarpages.com | HostMonster.com | StartLogic.com

It might take a while before you find the layout or design that is just right for your particular business. The basics you need to remember though are to make sure you are different from the rest, touch base with everything that you cover and don’t be afraid to try something a little different.

Doing a search on your own domain name you can find out:

• How many other sites are hosted on the same server.
• The server’s status on the black lists out there.
• The type of server your web site is hosted on.

Another good place to find stats on a specific web host is webhosting.info. Just type in the domain name of your web host into the search box – and then select “Web Hosts” in the radio box selection and hit the “Go” button.

You might want to keep in mind that if they are not large enough they might not get picked up by the rankings. Also if they are using several different domains for their servers you might need to do this lookup several different times with each domain and add the final numbers together.

Last but not least – there is always doing a few searches. Personally I would search for: “Insert Company Name Here” sucks.

Now you might not get the best review this way because these are often people that are just mad at the web hosting question and want to spew something out about them. It is always good to take the good in with the bad though. Google aside – you may also want to search hosting forums like WebHostingTalk.com to also get an idea of what others have had to say about your web host.

Bottom line? They allow support workers to get often asked questions answered as quickly as possible.

Let AutoHotkey Do the Heavy Typing for You!

Thinking outside the box though and trying to see what you really need when it comes to quickly publishing these answers – well, there just has to be a better way. Personally I set out to find something that would allow me to type in a few letters – hit enter, and automatically paste a four paragraphed answer to a question. I found my answer after spending some time playing with AutoHotkey.

AutoHotkey is a free mouse and keyboard macro program. The part your going to be interested in is the AutoText feature which allows you to write up a simple script, type in a few letters – hit enter and have your quick response typed out for you. It does have a learning curve to master but once you do get it down it is a powerful tool for anybody who finds themselves typing the same thing over and over again.

Your Own Virtual Notebook

Another tool I like to keep at my side at all times is my Google Notebook. While doing my own tech support work – it is handy to have some of the most asked questions there at my fingertips. Not much has to be said about this, because the concept here is so easy to understand.

Copy and save things you need to type out or access often inside of Google Notebook. While going through the e-mail or help desk at your hosting company, keep it open in another tab and you have yet another personal list of quick response tools.

So there you have two great ways to make your customer support work just a little easier on you.

Do you want to keep others from stealing your web site graphics and pictures? The hotlink protection provided by your hosting account’s cPanel prevents other websites from directly linking to files on your web site.

Other sites will still be able to link to any file type that you don’t specify (for example, html files). You can use the hotlink protection to keep other sites from linking to your images, videos, and other files.

Protect Against Bandwidth Theft

If your worried about others stealing your bandwidth, this might be a good thing to look into setting up. If another site links directly to your images or other files, they will be using your bandwidth to display those files rather than theirs.

Want to turn hotlink protection on? Here is how you can get it done.

• To gain access to cPanel’s hotlink protection, click on the icon above the words “Hotlink Protection” on the main screen of your cPanel page.

• Next, enter the names of sites that you wish to access your files in the first field which already contains the name of your site (or sites). This system attempts add all sites it knows you own to the list, however you may need to add others.

• Enter the file types that you wish to let those sites access by entering their extensions in the blank field next to this text… Extensions to allow (separate by commas):

• We are almost done! Now enter the URL you wish to redirect links to that are not allowed in the blank field next to… Url to Redirect to:

• If you wish to allow the sites you have entered to directly request files (view images or videos by typing their URL into a browser), click on the check mark box next to “Allow direct requests”. Click on “activate” to enable hotlink protection on your hosting plan.

Your images and files should be safe now – and your bandwidth will remain your own.

After sitting here and giving it some thought, I thought about the things I check on a day to day basis and one solution stuck out like a sore thumb screaming for attention. Twitter would make for an excellent web host to client conversation tool.

If you want to see an example Twitter page, check out my own.

How Would it Work?

For example, lets say I start up the Web Hosting Show web hosting company. I could tell all of my clients to go subscribe to my Twitter RSS or follow me on Twitter to get announcements about server upgrades, downtime and other notifications people would like to be tuned into.

The nice thing about Twitter is that you don’t have a lot of room to write – so each update would be quick and to the point. This saves time for the web host as far as writing it goes and the client as far as getting updates on any issues at hand.

Twitter Tools

Twitter has a handful of helpful publishing tools as well that would make updating it an easy task too. Some of those include:

• TwitBin – Send and view tweets from within the Firefox browser.

• TwitThis – Tool to allow visitors to your site to easily share a page Twitter.

• TwitBox – View and submit tweets, see replies and direct messages, delete your own tweets, and multiple account support.

Check out more on this list of Twitter tools I ran across on Mashable.com.

As you can see, this would be a quick and easy tool to work into your support pages – and you wouldn’t exactly have to be locked into Twitter either. There are many Twitter clones out there that might actually even have a few more bells and whistles too. With hosting support it is always good to think outside the box, and Twitter provides a unique tool that could help you provide your customers with a very different hosting experience.

To help those who are unsure how to get cPanel to backup their web sites I thought I would go through the process step by step.

How Can I Get Started Backing Up With cPanel?

First thing you must do is login into your account’s cPanel and click on the Backup icon. Backing up is a very crucial thing to do because you never know when the worst might happen, and having a good backup could be the difference between being down for a few hours or for a few days.

Now once you have made it to cPanel’s backup page you should see several options available. “Generate/Download Full Backup” (under Full Backups) will allow you to do what you need. It might take a while depending on the size of your web site to generate but once it does – download that and you are almost done.

From this same screen you can download the latest backup created, download your MySQL databases and also depending on your web host you might be able to download your mail settings too.

Now after clicking on “Generate/Download a Full Backup” link you will be given a few more choices. For most users you will back the backup destination to be your home directory. Make sure you have enough disk space to host the backup file. There are other options, but we will ignore them for now. Under e-mail address you can tell the server where to send the log of the backup status. Once everything is as it should be click on the “Generate Backup” buttons and away you go.

How Can I Get That Backup Now?

Now you should be told that once the server finishes generating the backup for you – you will receive an e-mail at the address you gave it. Now if you click “Go back” or just navigate yourself back to the first screen of the backup page you can see that the backup is still “in progress”. After a few minutes or once you get that e-mail back from the server, you can download you backup from here.

Now you should have a full backup of your web site ready to restore if the worst case scenario might happen.

How Can I Optimize Images for the Web?

Images are probably the easiest to optimize for the Web. Not many people do it correctly though. Most image formats are compacted enough as it is – but you need to use a few of the best formats for the best performance. Use .png, .jpg, .gif and please oh please stay away from .bmp. The .png format would be my absolute favorite to get the smallest file size and be best looking picture once the compression of the image has been said and done.

How Can I Optimize Video for the Web?

There is one easy way to optimize for video, use flash players instead of streaming embeds. You really want to save money and get a little exposure at the same time? Upload your videos to places like YouTube and link to it from them. That way you let them handle the hosting and conversion of the video and you also get some new eyeballs viewing your content.

How Can I Optimize Flash for the Web?

Best way to optimize for flash would be not to use it so much. My usual rule of thumb for people it to look at the flash on your web site and decide if it really needs to be there. It might look cool to have that rotating picture of a globe on your web site – but when it take 30 seconds to fully load do you really think people are sticking around to see it? I think not.

Have are just a few personal customer service rules I always take into consideration when dealing with people who are having trouble or questions about their setup on the World Wide Web. These are from me to the web hosting customer support folks out there. Next time you answer a support ticket, take these tips into consideration.

Do a Little More for the Customer

Did you fix the problem and move on to the next question? When possible you should always check and see if there is a little more information you can provide. If somebody wants to know how to install WordPress, don’t just tell them and be done.

Give them the answer they need and then maybe share a few places to get themes and plugins. Maybe a resource you know that has some good beginner information when it comes to WordPress? Taking that extra step to make sure the customer is getting what they need is never a bad thing. It’s like opening your birthday present and finding two things in the box instead of just one.

Always Call the Client by Name

This tip really goes beyond just calling people by name, what I really mean to say is personalize your responses a little ‘bit. Your not a robot so there is no reason why you should be acting like one.

Call them by your name (if their name is given) and talk to them in a way any human could understand. If that quick response your suppose to hand out isn’t clear on something – go ahead and add a little more information. The hosting client will appreciate you going that extra mile.

Welcome Them Back if They Need More Info

I always tend to end my customer service lines with “Hope that helps, and if there is anything else we can do for you please feel free to let us know”. That line (or your own version, depending on how you want to put it) welcomes the customer back and makes them feel like they are welcome to come back to you if they need more help on the topic.

Not all questions can be answered in one go around so best to welcome them back until the customer says they have been taken care of.

When it comes to basic webmastering – one of the basics you learn about is watching your stats and learning how to read them to see if what you are doing is working. This is extremely helpful for web sites that have ever-changing dynamic content. The suggestions I am going to share with you though could even go for those people with static content as well.

Use Several Stats Packages!

Most web hosting accounts come with a few stats packages you can use to keep up with the incoming visitors, traffic and downloads. You might also want to use a few others. You don’t just want to hear one opinion on how your web site is doing. You want as many as you can get. Some other good (and free) solutions are:

• Google Analytics
• FeedBurner’s Web Site Stats

Watch for Peaks!

You have to learn to read peaks in your traffic and figure out why and how you got them. Lets say on Thursday your traffic jumped by 200 visitors. First thing you need to figure out is where are they going to. Next would be where they are coming from? Hopefully if you can establish similar content while the peak is going on, you can make it last a little longer.

Don’t Live in the Past!

Don’t let yourself keep looking at your stats from three months ago when you had 500 new visitors come and go in a week. You will not be able to recapture every sudden surge, so you have to learn when to hold them and when to fold them. If you spend too much time trying to redo something you did in the past that got a lot of traffic your doomed to miss out on future chances for the same thing.

All in all statistical information is an important aspect of the webmaster’s daily life. They can bring you good news and bad news – so it is best to learn how you can make them work for you instead of the other way around.

Many of the big boys in the hosting business (and ever a few of the little ones) seem to be rolling out affiliate deals so that you can help them get more clients to host. Now the questions I know a lot of people have are how does this benefit the web host and how does it benefit the web hosting client?

First let me tell you what an affiliate deal is and how it works in web hosting. You see you have a web host and you have a hosting client. The hosting client usually puts a link on his web site or is given some sort of tracking code so that when he suggests to his viewers or buddies to sign up with the web host, he gets some cash back.

What is in it for the web host?

So what does the web host get out of this? The web host in question gets a new client, which in the short term might be a loss because they had to pay out a little to get him, but in the long term will end up being a success because the new client will be paying in each time to the web host when the billing comes up again.

To a web host, the most important thing is to bring in new clients and that is what the end user has just helped with.

Are customers making money with these deals?

Is there really money to be made by the end user? You can kind of think of this as bounty hunting – but everybody has the same bounty on their heads. Wanted, new clients – dead or alive doesn’t sound too “PR friendly” but in all honesty this is what is going on. Some other web hosts let you credit the affiliates you bring in to your current hosting account too. So say you bring in Billy, Bob and Frank that would be three months off your hosting bill.

All in all, I’d say it is worth looking into if you think you can persuade enough people to come make the jump and sign up with the web hosting company you are pimping out. The more sign ups you get – the more money there is to be made. These days web hosts are happy to get clients by any means necessary. So if that means shaving some of their income off so you get a perk or two, then that is a worthy trade off for them.

Having a server or entire network go down is never a good thing. The web host should always have a good plan of action when this sort of thing comes up. They should be ready to inform the public about the problem and last but not least they should never ever panic.

Have a plan. Lets say a worst case scenario has just taken place for a web host, a server has gone down and they don’t exactly know the reason yet. What are they to do? Running around like a chicken with its head cut off is just not an option here. Web hosts need to make sure they have a good guy in charge, that can direct support to handle new e-mails and help desk tickets.

They need somebody who can send the system admins in after the server to find out the issue. Every web host should have a plan in place before bad things happen so that when they do happen the Web hosting support gurus know – ok, this is a code red so we go to backup plan 233.

Let your clients know about it. Some web hosts like to keep the bad things a secret and only prop up the positive. This might seem like good PR advice, but in all honesty your current hosting clients are going to want to know what the heck is going on with that server. Use a forum, blog or any other web host to public tool you might have in place to put your clients’ mind to ease.

Let them know you have found the problem, established the cause and are working for a solution.

Don’t panic! The worst thing a web host could do is to panic in an emergency situation. As long as you stay cool, calm and collected – so will your clients (with maybe a few exceptions). Don’t get freaked out – just get to work. That server is depending on you. Your clients are depending on you. If you can’t stand up to pressure and stress, maybe the web hosting business is not he business for you.

Not every web site out there has the best search features. Heck, some of the web sites out there don’t have any way to search through them. When you have a web site or resource that you need to search often, trying to use the lame ways the respective owners want you to use is no way to go. Google offers anybody the chance to use their technology to create your own custom search engine.

Step 1 – Visit and Sign In: To get started all you need to do is visit Google’s custom search engine web site. Once there, create a Google account or login to your existing account and your ready to get going.

Step 2 – Lets Get to Creating a Search Engine: Now you should navigate yourself to the “create a new search engine” page. Most of the boxes you fill in explain themselves. When it asks “What do you want to search?” make sure you select “Only sites I select”.

Step 3 – Fill in Your Domains: Now we get to the fun part. In the text box under “Select some sites” type in the domains you want to search. If there is only one – your job is pretty easy. If there are many – you had better get to typing. Here is Google’s advice on how to format your URLs to match how you want to search the domain:

• Individual pages: Specifying www.mysite.com/mypage.html will just include the mypage.html page on www.mysite.com.
• Entire sites: Specifying www.mysite.com/* will include all the pages on www.mysite.com.
• Parts of sites: You can use wildcard patterns to include just certain parts of a site. For example, www.mysite.com/*about* will include only files on www.mysite.com that have about in their name.
• Entire domains: You can also specify an entire domain using *.mydomain.com. If you specify mydomain.com, we will automatically convert this to *.mydomain.com/*. If this is not what you want, you can change it back in the control panel.

Step 4 – Test Out Your New Search Engine: Hit the “Next” button and now you get to play with your new search engine to make sure it works the way you want it to. Finish that up and you have yourself a customized Google search engine that will only search the domains you put into it previously.

Now some might ask why would you want to do this? Here are just a handful of reasons why you might:

• You need an easyier way to search your web host’s support site or forums?
• You want to deliver a better search for your web site’s visitors?
• You want to search all of your favorite “insert subject here” web sites?

Google makes it pretty easy for anybody to make a custom search for any domain or set of domains out there. This is one webmaster tool that just can not be overlooked.

I love using PHP code and scripts. They can come in handy a lot of different ways in a lot of different places. In most cases people learn that if you want to run PHP scripts or execute PHP code your pages need to be in the .php format. What if all of your pages are already .html, .htm, or dot something else?

You are not left in the dark – I promise.

For an example, lets say Chuck has a large web site that is all done with .html pages. It was setup a long time ago, he didn’t know about any of the new web technologies out there, and he was happy with his simple static site. Now his friend Billy tells him he could add a few more dynamic things if he used some PHP code here and there.

The problem is Chuck doesn’t want to turn all his .html pages to .php pages.

What Chuck needs to do is add a few simple lines to his .htaccess file:

RemoveHandler .html .htm
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .htm .html

After that, all of Chuck’s .html pages will be pushed through the server as .php pages. So this way he can keep his .html extension but use PHP. Now I know that isn’t the most technical way of putting things, but it is a way that we can all understand. The important thing is now Chuck can now execute PHP scripts in .html files.

Have you ever gotten one of those letters in the mail from places like the Domain Registry of America? They are nice enough to send you a letter to let you know your domain name is unprotected, about to expire, is going to die a horrible horrible death – but they will save you. They will renew your domain name for you as long as you send them that check back in the mail.

Now many of us know to toss out this crap, because all it is – is an advertisement. Other folks though I am sorry to say are still falling for it hook, line and sinker. Now it isn’t the user’s fault. Nobody told them they would have to watch out for these types of scams. The name for this practice is domain slamming – and it is something everybody needs to be aware of.

In a way you could think of it as a form of domain name hijacking. Instead of hijacking the domain name and taking control of it, they just take over the registration of the domain. They make it sound like if you don’t reply you are going to lose your domain name. This is not true. If you respond back to them, you are making them your new domain name register. Your giving them your permission to switch over.

So we have now covered what will be lost. Now I bet you are wondering, how do they get your information? They can get everything they want about your domain from our good old friend, the WHOIS domain name database. That information if free for the public to browse, and has your name, home address, phone number and more. One more good reason to get privacy protection put on your domain name.

Here are some more links to help learn more about domain slamming.

• Wikipedia: Scams in Intellectual Property
• EasyDNS: Domain Registry of America Scam Letter
• Ask MetaFilter: Who Will Stop DRoA?

Slamming first started with the phone carriers. You would be with company A, then company B would tell you how much better their service is (sell it to you) and then ask you if you would like to switch over. Domain slamming is the same shell game – just played with different shells.

Want to hide the content of that folder you just uploaded? Here are three ways of doing just that.

When you view a folder on the web that does not have any sort of index file in it, such as your standard web page or anything else of that nature, most server setups show an index of the files and folders inside of that folder. It shows everything that is in there and gives it a slightly pretty way of doing so.

Create a Blank Index File

What if you don’t want this folder content to be seen though? One quick way around it would be to create a blank index.html file, upload it to the folder in question, and your done.

Do it Via a .htaccess Edit

Another way of getting the same thing done is to navigate to the folder where you want to hide the default index, then create or edit your .htaccess file. You want to add this line to the top of it.

options -indexes

That will turn off the default index for that folder.

Hide That Folder via Your Control Panel

Most control panels also have this feature built in too, just in case you are looking for an easier solution. Via cPanel’s File Manager v3 (in cPanel 11) you can right click on a folder, select “Manage Indices” and get to the options for that folder that way. A few check mark boxes later you should be good to go.

Every time I get an e-mail with a hosting question in it, I do my best to get it answered for the folks that ask me stuff. I don’t get paid for it – but hey, I’m a guy who likes to help out where I can. Here are some of the best random questions on and about web hosting that I’ve been asked about this week.

Question – You’ve talked about a lot of file backup web hosting solutions here lately. I have been doing all of my off site backup storage with Carbonite. Do you like them as a choice?

Answer – Yes, the folks at Carbonite do a really good job and the whole online backup solution. Now the reason you might want to go with a solution like this instead of just backing it up to DVD or external hard drive is simple. What if you house explodes, or an army of un-dead midget warriors attack? Your computer would more than likely bite the dust. With your files backup somewhere else though – at least your files will make it out alive.

Question – I want to get into the web site business. Is it better to host a web site with a lot of topics on one domain name or setup different domain names for each topic?

Answer – I would say try to find a niche domain name for each type of web site you wish to host. The “all in one” web sites are really hard to manage and make popular. People want to learn about or deal with places that are based around one topic of discussion.

Question – Why does my server web statistics not match up with my online web statistics when tracking my visitors?

Answer – When using something like Webalizer compared with Google Analytics, the server side solution is going to be looking at everything, robot crawls, people and more as all one thing – traffic. With a off-site web stats solution like Google Analytics, it can’t see (or gain access to) that information, so it’s tracking numbers are based more off of real people.

Do you have a question? Feel free to send it my way and I’ll do my best to help you out too! Who knows, your question might even make it to the podcast too.

It is an age old question, how should you submit yourself to the search engines. Should you not do anything at all and hope they find you? Should you go out and use one of those “all in one” search submit services? Should you go to each search engine and submit yourself by hand?

Step 1 – Go to the “Big Boys” in the Searching World!

The first thing you want to do is get yourself submitted to the big boys in the search engine world. This would be Google, Yahoo and MSN (or Live Search). Here are a few links to help you with that process:

• Submit Your URL to MSN Live Search
• Submit Your URL to Google Search
• Submit Your URL to Yahoo Search

Step 2 – Sit Back and Wait, and Work, and Wait!

Don’t get yourself stressed out if your not in Google within the next hour. Getting listed can sometimes take days or weeks. During this “downtime” you can try your best to get more folks to link to you as well. The more incoming links you have the better the chances are that a search engine spider will travel from somebody else’s web site to your very own.

The spiders are the little bots that crawl through web sites link to link figuring out what content you have and if it is any good or not.

Now I left out the all in one submitting solutions for a reason. Some of these places are frowned upon by the major search engines out there. These services that could be very useful have been taken over by greedy folks that want to charge you and impatient folks who hit submit every five minutes to every search engine out there.

Google loves webmasters, and I proved that last weeks with out guide to Google Analytics. Have you tried Google’s specific tools for webmasters though? If you have not you might be missing out on a lot of good information on and about your web site.

Why Do I Need the Webmaster Tools?

By using this series and set of tools you can see all kinds of information about what keywords are bringing people in from Google, the Google crawl rate, the last time your page was indexed plus around two dozen more cool tools and interesting resources. If your a webmaster who hasn’t done this your missing out on a free set of very helpful tools right from the folks at Google.

Create and Submit Your Site Map

To see what I am talking about visit the Google Webmaster Tools web site. Here you can submit your site map to Google so that have a better and easier way of crawling your information. It never hurts to give Google everything it needs, so best to play nice with them if you want to see yourself in the search results for your favorite keywords.

There are a number of tools out there to help you learn about how to create this special sitemap for Google to index. Here are just a few suggestions to help you get started:

• XML-Sitemaps.com
• SiteMapsPal.com
• SiteMapDoc.com

Also if you are using a content management program (like Joomla, WordPress and others) you might be able to find a plugin that does all the hard work for you and spits out the sitemap.xml file for you.

Once the sitemap has been generated, go in and submit your domain too the Google Webmaster Tools page and then go to the Sitemap tab and then click “Add a Sitemap”.

Verify You Own Your Web Site

After you get your domain and your site map in the system then you must verify that you are the owner of the web site. You can do this either by adding some code to your index’s header information or by uploading a file with a funny name. I would say go with the second one as it is the easiest one to do.

Create your file with the funny name on your desktop, upload it to your “public_html” folder and then check to make sure it is there. Then you can go back to the Google Webmaster Tools web site and tell Google to check for verification. Once they do you are all set!

What is one of the best free solutions for tracking statistical information on your web site? Personally I like Google Analytics. It has just as many tracking and stats options as any of the expensive big boys out there but it is totally free for anybody to use. Free plus good equals a winner in my book.

The question is, how do you get it up and running on your own web site? I have seen a number of folks have trouble with this – so I figured I would go through the steps and tell you how to get it done, one on one.

Step 1 – Go to the Google Analytics web site and sign up for an account or login with your Google login information. After you login, click on the “setup” button to get started.

Step 2 – Next you load up a screen that wants you to put in some information about your web site. Type in your domain name, account name and set your time preferences. The account name will be the group name for the series of web sites you use Google Analytics on. Not really important at this time – so you could really jut call it “Charlie” if you wanted to.

Step 3 – The next page wants you to put in your contact information. If you don’t want to do this – just select your country and you should be good to go to the next step.

Step 4 – One of the last pages you will see is Google’s terms of service and legal agreement. Skim through it, read it if you want to. I know your probably not going to though. Click the “I agree” check mark box and move on.

Step 5 – The last step gives you a ‘bit of javascript to cut and paste onto all of your web pages that you want to track. Just copy it from there and paste it into your web site. Get past that step and your done! You have successfully setup Google Analytics.

If you did all of that correctly, in a few days you should have a lot of new statistical information to view. Google Analytics is an awesome free tool so there is no reason why everybody with a web site shouldn’t be using it. Have any other questions, comments or concerns? Shoot them over my way at mitch@mitchkeeler.com and I will be more than happy to help you out.

When you talk about online marketing, a phrase you hear a lot about is landing pages and creating effective landing pages. If your new to the online advertising or marketing game, this phrase might be a new one for you so let me break it down.

Landing Pages 101

A landing page would be a special page (or series of pages) that you create on your web site for a certain audience or set of visitors.

Lets say I started an advertising campaign with Web Hosting Talk. Now I could have them all come to my index, just type in WebHostingShow.com but that wouldn’t give me a chance to sell myself to them or to see how effective this advertising deal really was.

Instead I would create a landing page with maybe some of my most popular podcasts, some of the best interviews and sell myself a little more than I would on the other pages. I would want to make people feel like, “hey, I’ve found a good deal here and I’m coming back!”.

Reference and Transactional Landing Pages

For the most part there are two types of landing pages out there. A reference landing page would be like the one I described above. You highlight some of the best, sell yourself and hopefully you’ll hook a few new visitors or clients. The second kind is transactional landing pages. The transactional landing page is created to help you complete a step of some kind. From that page I want you to complete a transaction, such as going through a sale of a product.

For an example, for web hosts you could put your hottest plan on your transactional landing page, have the form there to put in the domain, client information and more and then to move on to step two all they have to do is hit that “order now!” button.

So hopefully that now gives you a better handle on what landing pages are and why you might want to look into setting a few up for your next advertising campaign.

The first one comes from Jim.

To Copy Protect or Not To Copy Protect?

I want to sell my music Online, but I want to put up samples of the songs that people can’t download without paying for, what should I do?

Jim, I say stay away from any type of script or service that promises you copy protection. As soon as you put those tunes Online in any way, shape or form – chances are they will be stolen.

What I would do is just release them all for free (might get better results this way – popularity wise). If you really want to earn a few bucks though you could always upload 30 second samples of the songs to play for folks when they want to hear what it sounds like.

This next question comes from JulieG.

Free FTP Program Suggestions

Hi Mitch, I am tried of my current FTP program, is there a super program out there or anything better that what I am using? I’m just looking for a few quality suggestions. Thanks!

Well, I was in the same boat recently and I had a few programs suggested for me to try out. Give Filezilla and xplorer2 lite a shot.

Our last question comes from Mark.

Podcast for a Podcast Guide

Any chance of you creating a “how to podcast” audio guide, like you have done with ecommerce and blogging? Thanks for putting on a great podcast too. I listen every week!

Never say never, and I’d say that sounds like a pretty good idea. I’ve written a few ghetto guides to podcasting, but I’ll see what I can come up with and if I can get something recorded on the topic, you can bet it will find its way here.

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 109!

Edit the Default User – Login to WordPress and then click on the “User” Tab. After that you should be brought to a page that has the default “Admin” user. You need to go into here and customize it for you. Set your own password, your name, your link, your nickname and more. This way when you post something it won’t show up as “admin” it will show up with your own name.

Make SEO Friendly URLs – From inside of WordPress click on “Options” and then “Permalinks”. By default WordPress has a pretty crappy way of setting up your links. You want to use something that is a little more search engine friendly. Click on the radio box for “Date and name based” and then hit the “Update Permalink Structure” button. You might have to set your .htacess inside of your WordPress install. You must chmod the .htaccess file to 666 to allow WordPress to write its rules to it automatically. If not, then you can download or create the .htaccess file by hand and do it yourself.

Check the Other Options – After getting into the “Options” tab inside of WordPress you might check each tab under that section to make sure things are configured the way you want them to be. You might have to use WordPress for a while before you start noticing little things you’d like to change here or there. Click each sub-tab under your options to get familiar with where to find what also. This way you won’t be left hunting for a half hour to figure out how to change one little configuration.

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 108!