Due to my PC being in bad shape, going to postpone recording this week.  Do not freat though, because I hate to leave anybody empty handed.  I have had a great collection of people on the podcast of the 3+ years.  My question is, have you heard them all?

Here are some of my favorite interviews I have done with the elite of our business.

• Emory Rowland of Clickfire.com - Episode 152
• Errett Cord of eCord.us - Episode 149
• Mario Rodriguez of R1Soft - Episode 139
• Alex McMillen of Sliqua - Episode 121
• Gary Jones of BlueFur Hosting - Episode 120
• Ben Welch Bolen of WebHostingUnleashed.com (2nd Interview) - Episode 118
• John Hughes of HostSearch.com - Episode 113
• Dan Garon of Press Advance - Episode 112
• Troy Augustine of iNet Interactive and Web Hosting Talk - Episode 111
• George Roberts of HostingCon - Episode 110
• Ben Welch Bolen of WebHostingUnleashed.com - Episode 109
• Amy Armitage of Lunarpages - Episode 106
• Julien Szemere of Wormly.com - Episode 105

Interested in hearing somebody on the show or being on the show yourself?  Drop me an e-mail and I would be more than happy to hear about it.

These are some questions for the web hosts out there. Are you ready to retire? Want to get out of the web hosting game to do something else? Well there are a lot of legal loopholes and dotted lines that need tending to first.

How does one sell their web hosting company? I’ve got Errett Cord on the show today to answer your questions on this hot topic in hosting.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 149!
Running Time: 9 minutes | File Size: 3.94 MB

Here are just a few topics from this special edition of the Web Hosting Show.

• Why would you want to sell your hosting company?
• Is it easy to sell a web host?
• What are some of the legalities and loopholes?
• How long does selling a web hosting company take?
• What is the best advice for anybody looking to sell a hosting company?

No matter if your looking to retire for the hosting business or you just want to get out now and do something else I have your exit strategy planned out and ready to go on this episode of the Web Hosting Show. When it comes to doing something new, why not talk with somebody who has done through it before?

I received an e-mail from a soon to be web host the other day, and they asked:

“How often should I look over my terms of service?”

Most people think a terms or service and acceptable use policy are things that you should put up once and then forget about. We could not be further from the actual truth of things though. Sure you don’t need to review it daily, weekly or even monthly. I would suggest reviewing it once a year though to make sure all your ducks are in a row.

Has your business model changed? Maybe you started offering new plans or features you didn’t in the year before. If so this might be the time to include something about them so nobody will say they were not featured or told about when it comes to these new things you are offering.

Have bad things happened? We often learn from our mistakes - and if any have been made you should update your terms of service to reflect them so they don’t happen again. Maybe you had somebody not aware of the DMCA or you had somebody hosting a kind of script that ate away at your server resources?

Cover all the basics! Here are some of the basic things you should make sure you cover in your terms of service or your acceptable use policy.

• Spammers are not Welcome
• DMCA and Copyright Notices
• No Breaking the Laws
• Terms of Cancellation and Suspension

Last but not least you should make sure you have something in the bottom of the terms of service that says something to the effect of, “We have the right to change this at any time for any reason. As soon as it gets updated, the new policy will be in place. Please check this page often for updates”. This covers your bases for quick changes you need to make.

What is the best way to manage multiple web sites with only one hosting account? That is the question Diane e-mailed to me a little earlier this week, and there are a few different ways you could get this done. Here is Diane’s dilemma.

I am a web designer and I have a bunch of little web sites. I’d like to have multiple web site hosting, so I can easily get in and work on my collection of little web sites.

Right now, I have each one hosted on its own account, so I have to ftp to one, do my thing, disconnect, ftp to the next one, do my thing, disconnect, etc. Also, I don’t want to spend a lot of money on the hosting for these little web sites because they are just little tiny web sites. Can you give me any advice on getting this type of web hosting? Thanks for help.

Now as I noted before there are several ways you could tackle this problem. Read more »

One question that I get from a multitude of web hosts is, “Are there any alternative methods to tech support that you know of?”. With everybody doing the standard e-mail, help desk and live chat support, people are looking for an alternative to give them an edge over the competition.

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. Read more »

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 123!

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”. Read more »

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 123!

From time to time stupid things happen to good people. Now if that alone isn’t a good enough reason to backup your web site - I don’t know what is. I learned a very valuable lesson this past weekend when upgrading WordPress on all of my projects that use it. Make sure your current theme folder does not match one of the ones that they install by default. If you do - the layout will forever be lost, and you will waste a Saturday designing a new layout.

The lessons learned from a mistake are often the best ones to learn though. That way you are sure you never fall in that same trap again.

Now there are a lot of different ways to manage a web site, so there is no way I could tell you how to backup every single kind in a 15 minute podcast. It would just be too hard. What I can do for you is to share a few organizational tips to help you get this job done. Read more »