A web site visitor should never be confused by your web site’s navigational layout.  Every web page out there should have an easy way to navigate both to new web pages and categories, but also back out of them.  Think of it as reaching a fork in an old country road, choosing to go down the left road – and then turning around and finding a pink hippopotamus in a tutu.  While that might sound ridiculous – many web sites leave visitors with the pink hippo more often than not.

Keep it Clean, Simple and Easily Recognizable

Every web site should start off with a clear, upfront way to navigate from one section to the next.  A web site visitor is not going to stick around long if they can’t find their way around the site.  The web site navigation should be around the top and stick out enough so it does not get lost in your web site’s content.

Don’t Use Crazy Names for Navigation Links

You should also use obvious names for each navigational link.  Don’t use the name “Ice Box” if you want to give a link to your page about yourself.  Instead, use the word, “About” or something to that effect.

Less is More

Keep it simple.  Less really is more when it comes to web site navigation design.  Giving your users too many buttons, links and sub-links right from the start will just lead to confusion.  Rather than link after link, you might consider using a drop down list to give your web site visitors access to pages that fit under that specific category.

Never Leave Your Web Site Visitors Lost

My last ‘bit of web site navigation advice would be to remind people where they are.  Each web page on your web site should be labeled telling the user where they are at.  If they are looking through your list of articles on bugs, then at the top of the page it should say something to the effect of, “Bug Articles”.  Also, always leave your web site with a path back to the front page – just in case they need to start over navigating through your web site.

Now, I want you to investigate your own web site’s navigation.

Is it simple enough to use?

Are you using obvious link and page names?

Are you keeping things nice and simple?

Do you remind people on the page of what they are looking at and where they are?

If you answered, “no” to any of these questions it might be about time you invested some of your time in making your web site navigation better.

Like This Article? Listen to it and more like it on podcast #202 of the Web Hosting Show!

Inspiration for a web site’s content is often hard to find.  So when I find myself in trouble, I turn towards my own list of six different content writing ideas that should help inspire you to get that new page up and running.

I would suggest you bookmark this list of content ideas, and save them for a rainy non-creative day.

1. List – A list comes in handy in a number of different ways for a number of different reasons.  Give the the top 10 reasons why this is great.  Give me the top 4 reasons why you shouldn’t do that.  Lists are also easily scan-able, so web site visitors love to check them out.
2. Quote – A great man once said something or another, and you can use that to inspire you as to why what they said was right or wrong.  Often, a quote makes a great way to start a web page’s content section – because it often breaks the ice in an article or web page, giving your reader something to think about.
3. Interview – Do an interview with somebody about something relative to your web site.  I’ve done a number of different interviews on this very podcast, found only at webhostingshow.com.  It is always interesting to hear what somebody else thinks, so reach out to people around you that might be cool to interview on the topic your web site is about.
4. Story – Tell me a story about that one time, you did that one thing, and how it is relative to the web page we are on now.  Story telling is one of the oldest forms of communication we have, so sharing that on your web site is a great way to produce interesting content that people will be sure to read.
5. Tutorial or Definition – When in doubt, show somebody how to do something.  I would say 90% of the time, when people are searching online, they are looking for a tutorial on how to do this, that or the other.  Being the source for that tutorial goes back to the idea of supply and demand.  You want to be the source for the content relative to your topic, and have people come back to learn how to do this, that or the other.
6. Argument – Now you should not fight with your web site visitors.  Rather than fighting, I want you to give an argument why something is good or maybe why something is not so good.  Get creative and passionate about your side, and then give facts to backup your opinion.

So there you have my secret six ideas for content inspiration.  I hope you bookmark this list, save it for later – and when you run into your own web site content writer’s block, you pull it out to help inspire you.

Like This Article? Listen to it and more like it on podcast #202 of the Web Hosting Show!

Do your web pages flow?  By flow, I mean can you read through it without asking yourself what is this about again?  If you find yourself stopping and starting when reading your own web pages, take this basic writing advice and try it out on your own web site content.

There are 3 Parts to Any Good Web Page

Everything I know about writing, I learned in grade school.  When writing, you want to break your content up into three parts.

• The Introduction
• The Story
• The Conclusion

How Do You Use These 3 Parts of a Web Page?

In the introduction, you want to introduce what you are talking about, and give a summary of what will be found inside, if the reader chooses to dive any deeper.

The story would be the meat and potatoes of your web page.  There, you talk about what you mentioned in the introduction.

The conclusion should do a quick summary again of what was in the story, and give you one last “sell” on why it was great.

By breaking your web site’s pages into chunks like this, you can help your writing flow better.  After reading the introduction part, I should know what to expect, in the story I get the information, and in the conclusion, I get a summary of what has been covered and why it is important.

Like This Article? Listen to it and more like it on podcast #202 of the Web Hosting Show!

Today I’ll hand to you four areas of your web site you can improve to get more web site visitors, have the search engines love you, and get more visitors to your web site, right here on the Web Hosting Show.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 202!
Running Time: 13 minutes | File Size: 5.92 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode:

• How to Write a Better Title Tag – The title tag might be a feature many people overlook, but it is just as important as having a nice looking web site layout.  Some might even say it is the most important thing, because it is often the first thing a web site visitors sees.  Today I’ll be telling you what the title tag is and what you can do to make yours better.
• Basic Writing Advice to Improve Web Page Flow – Do your web pages flow?  By flow, I mean can you read through it without asking yourself what is this about again?  If you find yourself stopping and starting when reading your own web pages, take this basic writing advice and try it out on your own web site content.
• 6 Different Content Writing Ideas – Inspiration for a web site’s content is often hard to find.  So when I find myself in trouble, I turn towards my own list of six different content writing ideas that should help inspire you to get that new page up and running.
• Effective Web Site Navigation Rules – A web site visitor should never be confused by your web site’s navigational layout.  Every web page out there should have an easy way to navigate both to new web pages and categories, but also back out of them.  Think of it as reaching a fork in an old country road, choosing to go down the left road – and then turning around and finding a pink hippopotamus in a tutu.

Quick Tip #3 – Your web site’s Meta Description should contain between 70 and 160 characters (spaces included).

Delays aside, I hope this web hosting podcast is one you can enjoy.  Feel free to send me your web development or hosting questions on the submit a question page, and leave a comment to let me know you listened.

Shameless Plug of the Week – Web Hosting Show Coupons – Looking for a great web hosting deal or steal?  This is the place to check!

My good buddy Barry, from Layered Tech posed an interesting quandary to me the other day.

As someone who works for a major player in hosting, one of the biggest problems I see on a daily basis is people having their server hacked and used for some nefarious purposes such as spam, DOS attacks, and more. There are many ways to combat this costly threat, what is the most cost-effective way for the small to medium-sized business?

It is important for everybody to have a good offense and a good defense when it comes to all the proverbial “natural disasters” that can happen in the web hosting world.  My best advice would be to have a good strategy in place first, so you can prevent the problems from happening in the first place. You have to be proactive, and not reactive.

Now, I know that might be hard to do in a tough economy, cause we are all short on money, time and man power.  If you can keep an eye on a couple of important things, you should have less problems to deal with, and more time to devote to your web site and business.

Here are a few key things everyone should keep in mind:

Monitor your server usage, no matter if you are on a shared hosting plan or a dedicated server.  Check in once a day or once a week to make sure your usage stays on average, and if you see a steady increase, you talk with your hosting provider to make sure you are ready for the time that increase means you need more computing power.

Stay on top of the latest updates for your scripts and plugins. Once a hole is found in a third-party script, it doesn’t take long for holes to be exploited. If you have a script installed, like WordPress or SMF, stay up to date on when it is updated.  The faster you get updates done, the less likely your web site or business will be compromised.

Get help when you need it. For web hosting clients that go down the dedicated or VPS hosting route, find a web hosting partner that will be able to get with you quickly to tackle your problems.  I have often said you can’t judge a web host by the cliché 99.9% uptime guarantee.  A true test of a web host is how they react to a tough situation.  In a shared hosting situation, it might be harder to get the attention needed 100% of the time, due to the fact that you are one in a hundred or more people on a server.  That is one of the drawbacks to the shared hosting world.

Making sure your offense is as good as or better than your defense can solve a lot of problems before they happen.  Small businesses should try to be proactive about problems in the long run, rather than reactive when the going gets tough.

Big thanks to Barry from Layered Tech for such an awesome question.  Be sure to check them out at LayeredTech.com and give them a big thank you for being the number one supporters and sponsors of the Web Hosting Show podcast.  If you have a web hosting or development question, give me your name, URL and question over on the submit a question page and I will be more than happy to help!

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

One thing you have to watch out for when you start working remotely in the web hosting world is how many hours you work.  Now some might think you should be working as much as you can, while this is true – you also need to have limits.  Any web host who would hire you as a remote worker should get you a set number of hours per week to work.

Don’t do more for less. When looking for a remote position with a web hosting company, many hosts may ask you to do as much as you can.  You should do your work assigned to you, however don’t let them get away with not giving you a set number of hours a day to work.  Any remote position should have the same benefits of a regular “going to the office” job, meaning you should work X amount of days, get X amount of days off and work a set number of X hours per day.

I can speak from experience, as somebody who will usually go beyond the call of duty, and as somebody who was fooled into this in my first remote web hosting job.  At the time, I was inexperienced and thought it might be normal to be on call 24/7 to help out with answering e-mails, or working live chat for a web hosting company.  What was the end result?  I was so burnt out I didn’t take another remote web hosting job for two years.

Now, I am not saying any web host out there will go out of their way to screw you over, sometimes they need all the help they can get and they might forget about the fact that they are overworking you.  If there is one thing I could tell every remote web hosting tech out there, to sum things up, it would be don’t allow yourself to be available 24/7.

So when you sign up to work remotely for a web hosting company, be sure to get it in print in your contract your weekly hours, days off and when or how you get paid if your asked to work overtime.  Both the web host an yourself need to be clear on these limits so that they can get the expected work out of you, and you don’t get overworked in the process.

How should web hosts act on social networks? It is all about striking the right balance of many different things you want to get out into the public.  Here are a few topic ideas.

Contacting Customers – Be sure to search around Twitter, Facebook and the like for people who are mentioning you, good or bad.  With the people who might be saying they are having trouble with you (you can often spot this, because they are saying that you suck) be sure to lend a helping hand.  To those who are singing your praises, be sure to thank them for doing so.

Support Updates – Having a major problem that is effecting many customers?  Rather than hiding under your desk and sucking your thumb, it might be better to get out there in the angry mob and let them know what is going on.  For the most part 95% of the population out there will be ok with disaster, as long as they know what is going on.  Just think how happy those people on the Titanic would have been, for example, if the ship had a better PR person.  It is something to think about.

Plug Yourself and Market to All – If you have a good following of people requesting to be your friend, you need to make sure you strike a good balance between giving your current followers something they can use, and also give the searchers out there a reason to look into you.  Half you marketing posts should be focused towards your base and the other half should be focused toward potential customers.

So there you have it, follow these steps and you will finally have something to do on that Twitter account or Facebook fan page you haven’t touched in a while.

Bad Hosting Customer Stereotypes

The Baby – This is the customer that cries or throws a fit when he doesn’t get things his way.  Making the proverbial checks his rear end can’t cash and saying things, such as, “If you don’t fix this, I am going to the police to report you!”.

The Negotiator – This type of hosting customer thinks he can wheel and deal his way into or out of any situation.  Now while making some negotiations and compromises is a good thing, The Negotiator takes it a step too far.  Watch out for his stereotypical, “Well, I can upgrade but if I do I want you to cut the VPS price in half and give me a pony”.

The Know it All – Be very careful when it comes to arguing how to fix a problem when you come to support to fix your problem.  The Know it All thinks he knows more than the web host and likes to point it out in every occasion he can.

Be a Better Hosting Customer

Now with that said, I don’t want to color all hosting customers with the same broad brush.  There are many out there that are perfectly fine.  However, just keep these tips in mind next time you contact your hosting support team.

• Be Nice and Courteous – you’ll catch more flies with honey, than you will with vinegar.
• Show You Are Willing to Work – sometimes, a problem will be solved faster if you work with and not against support to get it fixed.

The customer is always right? Yes, but sometimes the customer can be more unwelcomed than a midget working in the men’s big & tall section of your local mall.  If you work as a team with your hosting support, and try to relate with them, and then do the whole “give and take” dance you will have a higher success rate when it comes to getting quality hosting support.

Getting Ahead of the Web Hosting Support Curve

The first bit of advice I have for you is to provide the support, before it is even asked for.  This preemptive strike will cut down on your quantity of customers coming and looking for a answer.  Providing proactive support can be achieved a number of different ways.  Two of the ways I like the most are posting tutorials and articles explaining how to tackle anything you might need when it comes to your web hosting business and the second would be to send out announcements and updates when big changes come.

Provide Tutorials and FAQs – Many web hosts have a help site or tutorial database where they can cover some of the most frequently asked questions.  This will cut down on your ticket time, because the answer is already out there.

Get Ahead of Big Changes with Announcements and Updates – Now, with getting ahead of the curve with big changes, like a server going down or something else to that effect, make sure you announce as much information as you can about the problem, and be there with your customer to give updates.  No matter how small they are, you customers will appreciate it.  Things you should be telling your customer include ongoing maintenance, advance notice of maintenance,  or new features.

Get to the Point, but Give All the Details

No matter if you are answering a ticket desk or working the phone system, you have to realize people (for the most part) don’t want to talk to you.  It is nothing against you personally, people (in general) already feel like they are wasting time when they reach the point of reaching out to a support team for help.  So remember to get to the point, but give all the details you can.

Don’t waste time, if you don’t need a ‘bit of information, don’t ask for it.  Try your best to troubleshoot the issue, find out all the information you need to gather to get the issue fixed or to find out more, and then get that response sent out.  Also, do your best to stay kind, no matter how big of a jerk the customer is.  You should consider yourself the web hosting world’s version of Ghandi or Mother Teresa at all times.

Keep those response times as low as possible, so you can keep your work load light, and spend more time with the customers who need your attention.

I have really just scratched the surface, but hopefully this will help to inspire somebody to give a little more when it comes to web hosting support.  Now this one is aimed all of of those out there who give the support, not the ones that receive it.  However, when push comes to shove I think we all are responsible for supporting our projects, businesses or jobs so hopefully the lessons learned here will be something everyone can be educated from.

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.

For an example, webhostingshow.com is a podcast – that is a niche.  Some web hosts out there are doing specialized hosting just for people who podcast.

The premise of this argument can be understood with one simple idea, they need hosting too.  No matter what the niche is out there; any group of people would be happy to have a web host that looks out for just their needs.

Focus on the Features

You want to offer your customers a few special perks they will not get by going elsewhere.  These could be:

• More Expertise in that Area of Interest – Going back to the podcast metaphor, let us say I started up a web hosting company just for podcasters.  The perk here is that I have done podcasting before, so I know a thing or two to help you with your podcast hosting.
• Tools to Help that Specific Niche Topic – You could offer special tools that would help that specific type of niche web site grow and prosper even more.  An example of that would be if you are a blog host, and you distribute free blogging software to your clients to make publishing on the web easier.
• Special Deals on Services that Might Be Needed More – Some web sites use more of one resource than others do.  If you were running a photo gallery hosting service, you could give that niche more disk space so they have plenty of room to store all of their photos.

All you have to do is ask yourself, what I can do for them to make their lives easier?

Not a Web Host?  Grab a Reseller Hosting Account!

For those who are not web hosts, but would like to host for a specific niche of people a reseller account might be a good way to start.  Having a reseller hosting plan is already like running your own mini web hosting company.  So that proves the point that this is something anybody can do – not just your high dollar hosting companies.

The last benifit of hosting to please the niche markets out there is that you will also be building a community of like-minded web sites.  Encourage your customers or clients to talk to one another, share ideas and give each other help and feedback.  The social aspect to the Web is the hot topic right now, and you can build a hotspot of your very own.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 175!
Running Time: 10 minutes | File Size: 3.84 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode:

• What Happens When Web Hosts Don’t Pay Rent?
• See How Fast Your Page is REALLY Loading!
• Roll Your Own Video Tutorials for Free!

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• Netcraft’s Releases List of Most Reliable Hosts for the Month
• Newtek Web Hosting Unveiled a New Web Site Design

As the resident Santa Claus of the web host industry, I am here to give you your happy ho ho hosting gift. A free podcast, for you to enjoy. Beats a lump of coal, doesn’t it?

When visiting some of the web hosting forums out there, it seems that everybody is asking the same question, and nobody else has realized this but a select few.  More times than not, somebody will have a list of four or five web hosts and then saying, “Which one is the best?”.  There is no way anybody is going to be able to tell you that.  Why?  Well, what is good for you might not be good for the guy down the street.  With that in mind, I have decided to give my own shopping list for people out there looking for perhaps their first web hosting account.

What do you plan to do on and with this web site?

Why put the cart before the horse?  Before you go out looking for a web hosting account, you need to figure out what type of web site you wish to build.  For example, if it is a store – you will want to look for deals on dedicated SSL certificates, payment processors and shopping cart scripts.  If it is a blog, you will want to look for compatibility with scripts like WordPress or Joomla.  The web host in question you look into should be able to tackle your questions about any web site niche you wish to develop and create.  Ask them how they can make your web site work, and what will they provide you with to get the job done.

What features do you or don’t you need?

Once you figure out what type of web site you wish to create, you are going to need to dive a little deeper and figure out what do you need to get that web site up and running.  Here are a few examples:

• Blog Hosting – look to see that they support the blogging script you would like to use, or if they provide any blogging tools out of the box.
• E-commerce Hosting – look for costs on dedicated IP, SSL certificates, payment processing and shopping cart scripts.
• Forum Hosting – See if they meet the needs for you forum script you wish to use, and see if they have had any trouble supporting that script’s necessities in the past.

Also, don’t get suckered in by features they promote that you really don’t need.  Sure, we all love icing on the cake, however you need to make sure you have the eggs, flour and sugar you need to make the proverbial cake that will be your web site.

How much support are you going to need?

Support always plays a big part in any customer and business relationship.  There is no web host alive that has perfect service, 24/7.  If you go out trying to find the perfect web host, you will be shopping for a very long time.  Instead, you need to go out and investigate how reliable support is when something bad does happen.  Go check out the public forms of support they provide.  Are their tutorials in-depth and user friendly?  Also, if they provide them, be sure to check out their user forums.  Here you can really see how well the customer and support relationship really is.  The important factor isn’t that bad things happen (because they will, no matter who you decide to go with).  The important factor is to find out how they react to problems and pressure.

Have you reviewed all the legal documentation available?

This is a step that many people overlook.  Most people will never read the legal documents that a web host provides, and then when they break one of the rules – they act as if they have no clue what is going on.  The key legal documents you need to review are:

• Terms of Service
• Acceptable Use Policy

Be sure to find these two documents (most web hosts will have them posted somewhere on their web page) and go over them from head to toe.

Figure out your budget.  How important is price to you?

Money is the last important check mark box I want you to have on your shopping list.  Do not just look at the final costs though.  I want you to do your best to plan a budget around this web host and customer relationship.  Add the hosting costs to the domain name registration costs, and then figure out the price for the next five years.  Remember to add or subtract any discounts that are available. Now compare that with some of the other web hosts you are looking at.  Your first instinct might be to go for the cheapest one.  That is wrong.  You should go for the one that gives you the most bang for the buck.  Weighing in all the earlier questions, and adding those to the final price you get, which is the best offer?

I want you to copy this address, or quickly write down these questions before you go shopping any further for a web hosting company.  If you can answer these five questions yourself, you should be in better shape to find the web host you are looking for.  There is no need to submit a list of five or six web hosts to any group of people and toss your decision out to them.  This is your purchase to make and to live with, so you had better do your best to make sure you find the right web hosting situation to meet your needs.

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.

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?

“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.

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.

Shared Hosting with Addon Domains – This would probably be the cheapest route to go. Many web hosts these days are offering hosting plans with the ability to host multiple domains from a single plan. Each site is hosted inside a folder of the main domain so if you wanted easy access to all the files this might be the best way to go.

Reseller Web Hosting – Getting a reseller account would allow you to act as your own little mini-hosting company. From there you could setup each account as you need it, give each it’s own control panel and manage everything from one spot.

VPS or Dedicated – For those with some cash to burn or “resource intensive” web sites going with a virtual private server (VPS) or a dediated hosting plan might also be a good solution. You’ll not only have plenty of disk space and bandwidth. You will also have plenty of of the server’s RAM and CPU to use up too.

Like with most problems that face webmasters with web hosting, there are more than couple of ways to skin the proverbial cat. With the increase in disk space and bandwidth we’ve seen in hosting in the past few years I feel that many more people might also be finding themselves in Diane’s shoes. Best thing would be to do your research on each hosting type and see which one would work best for your situation.

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.

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.

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.

Pick a Day for Backing Up! – Now depending on how big your web site is and how often it is updated, you might want to backup once a day, once a week or once a month. When it comes to once a week or once a month – and easy way of getting a reminder to yourself would be to use one of the many Online calendars out there.

Pick the 15th of every month to be backup day. Maybe you want to do it every Wednesday night. Whatever schedule you decide to go with make sure it is something you can stick with.

Get as Much of the “Real” Data as You Can! – There are many backup systems and scripts that dump everything into an unreadable huge file that you can not browse through. Now when backing up databases – this might be ok. When backing up pictures, HTML documents or anything else of that nature, you might want to go a different route.

The main problem I have with these services that dump everything together is it makes it hard to check and see that you got everything you should have. If at all possible, make sure you have a way of checking, importing and exporting the files in the backup.

Don’t Get Too Cocky! – Just because the worst has never happened to you. You have never lost a web site, an article or any work at all doesn’t mean it isn’t going to happen. Everybody should make sure they are backing up no matter if your the most popular web site on the web or just starting out. I promise, it is a good habit to have.

Now I hope you too can learn from my mistakes. Remember to backup, because you never know when the worst might happen and you don’t want all of your hard work to vanish just because of one stupid mistake.

When it comes to bringing in new folks into your web site you would be willing to try just about anything and everything, right? One thing that you might have not of considered is the idea of developing something for the public and then giving it away for free. A perfect example of this would be making a free layout for your users to use.

If there is one thing that gets attention it is free MySpace or free WordPress layouts. Those two seem to be the hot search items these days, and you should cash in on the benefits as well. First thing you need to do is find a designer or learn some basic design skills yourself.

The next thing you should do is decide on what audience you want to target. I mentioned both WordPress and MySpace themes earlier, but you could just as easily develop a basic template and design for anybody to use for a standard static web site.

Lastly you need to find a way to release this theme out to the public. Put it on your web site, and then ask some of your blogging buddies if they will mention something about it. Going down the chain there, hopefully you will get the friend tells a friend effect. Before you know it, you might have the Web’s hottest new design.

One good place you can see this type of marking in action is Lunarpages. They have just released three free WordPress themes for anybody to use. Notice the use of ads on the theme preview pages. Your watching a Lunarpages commercial and you didn’t even know it.

Now where to you reap the rewards? Well with all of these people coming back to you to check out the theme, you get page views and hits. For folks inside of the web hosting business (web host or not) this makes a perfect combination of supply meets demand.

Not all Web Hosting Plans Are The Same…

• Flavors of Web Hosting
• What is VPS Hosting?
• What is Dedicated Web Hosting?
• What Are Server Resources?

When Shopping for Web Hosting You Need to Check…

• The Truth Behind Top 10 Web Host Lists
• Test Your Web Host’s Speed
• Are There Too Many Web Hosts?
• Secret Taboo Topics in Web Hosting

Once You Get That Site, Remember This…

• Quick Tips for Hosting Bliss
• Search Engine Submit and Help
• Classic HTML vs CSS – Who Wins?

Other Tools You Should Keep Handy Are…

• Setting up Google Webmaster Tools
• What is Reverse IP Lookup
• Setting up Google Analytics Guide
• 5 Great Web Dev Tools

Here Are Some Popular Marketing Tips…

• What is a Landing Page?
• 7 Ad Design Tips and Tricks
• Marketing Talk with Amy Armitage of Lunarpages
• Inform, Then Pitch Your Goods
• Marketing Your Site with StumbleUpon
• Write a Better Press Release

There is no doubt that starting out with a new hosting account or web site can be a scary thing. Hopefully with these resources by your side, you’ll be ready for anything that comes your way.

I think that just about covers it. Now while I start to filter out the e-mails I’m already starting to get from English teachers from around the world you listen to this episode of the Web Hosting Show.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 112!
Running Time: 13 minutes | File Size: 6.12 MB

Here are just a few topics that we discussed on this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• Some Hosting News and Gossip
• Interview with Dan Garon from Press Advance
• A Little ‘Bit of News on Intenet 2
• Even Hosts Are Getting into iPhone Hype
• Calling Out This Podcast’s Haters

Link of the Week: WHT Rejects Try to Review This Show

Howdy there, salutations and all that good stuff. We’ve all met back at the same spot and I know exactly why your here. You browsed in from the Web or your a dedicated fan, and the topics I tease you with – they make you want to listen. Hey, I don’t blame you – I’d be enticed too by legal threats from English teachers and press releases.

Most Web hosts (and other Online businesses and Web sites as well) would do well to have a customer testimonial Web page added to their Web site.

How do you do it?

Go ask your customers after signing up if they will give a little review of your services and send it your way. You don’t need to make this process more complicated than it has to be. Now once you start getting a few of them rolling in – create a special Web page on your Web site for them.

For a short example of one go check out my testimonial Web page on MitchKeeler.com. Your more than free to add to it as well, just shoot me over your thoughts about me and your name/business (don’t forget your link too).

Now you have a place for people to see real reviews of your real services, no matter what you do. This would be helpful for Web hosts, for bloggers, for any type of service around the Web. You can even try to get creative with it as well.

I know FastServers.net has started putting up video testimonials of their services.

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 104!

Now actual help on content writing is something I am not going to cover here – that is a sweet science that will have to be saved for another day.

What I want to talk to you about is learning how to watch where your links are coming from and what’s popular to decide on which direction your Web site should go in the future.

For an example, lets say you are running a blog and you write about a whole bunch of tech related material. Now after watching your Web site stats for a while you start to notice that your articles you wrote about Google Reader are really starting to pick up in popularity. It is bringing in a lot of people via the search engines and the blogosphere just loves that post to death.

What would you do? Now I wouldn’t stop writing about other things and focus on creating a Google Reader blog by itself. What that does tell you though is that there is a demand for that kind of post. You might experiment and write a couple of more, maybe one a week to see if you can keep getting those folks interested in that one topic coming back for more.

Most Web site statistics packages will let you know which Web pages or posts are the most popular. Learn to read that information, take into consideration how long it is popular and decide if you should post more or less about that topic in the future.

There is no basic ten step program to success here – so if that is what you are looking for you’ll never get it. You have to learn to watch trends and what your visitors want and enjoy if you want to becoming a success Online. You don’t give people what they want, they will go elsewhere to get it.

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 104!

Too many of the Web hosting standards and staples want to stay with the old way of doing things. Some hosting resources though are seeing the payoff when you use the new social Web to your advantage.

I am seeing several Web hosting Web sites using del.icio.us and other social bookmarking Web sites to gain a little more popularity for them self. You see the icons on the bottom of the posts and this builds in a lot of interactivity with the visitor. It gives them a way to save it for later or let others know about this great thing they found.

You can see a good example of this if you visit the Lunarpages blog, Lunartics. Scroll down to the bottom of any post and you will see what I mean.

A lot of Web hosts out there have big fan followings as well. Via their message boards or blog they could “rally the troops” and get loads of folks to digg them, bookmark them and share them via all these different methods. Here are a list of resources that you should check out and make sure you are listed on – one way or another.

• StumbleUpon
• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• MyBlogLog

Have more resources? Leave a comment and share them with the rest of us.

The important thing to remember is don’t feel bad if you are not making headroom just yet. No mater if you have two or two hundred people socially interacting with your links, it is good to have them there. When people search or do some random browsing, you will be there.

In a business that is driven by getting people’s attention – you can think of this as free advertising.

+ Check Out the Podcast This Was From! Listen to the Web Hosting Show, Episode 91!

I want to see something that both your customers and support staff could update. I could see this setup very easily using a wiki. It would have to be moderated, of course, but it could really connect both the Web host with it’s support staff and it’s users as far as what questions are out there and what needs to be fixed.

If you didn’t want to give you clients full access to this type of system then you could at least setup a place where they could post questions. Not questions that need to be answered as soon as possible. Questions that are more general that might come in handy knowing if a bad situation ever pops up in the future.

As far as I know, there are not any Web hosts that do this just yet – but if you know of one or you are one please, let me know! I would be more than interested to check out your setup and see how you handle your own Web hosting knowledge base.

+ Check Out the Podcast This Was From! Listen to the Web Hosting Show, Podcast 86!

Download the Web Hosting Show, Podcast 81!
Running Time: 10 minutes | File Size: 4.77 MB

Hello I am Mitch Keeler, your digital daddy when it comes to the wild and wacky world of Web hosting, and you are listening to the voice of the Web hosting world, the Web Hosting Show. Just like every week before it, this podcast is brought to you by the fine folks at WebHostingChat.com so give them a visit and tell them you like what I am trying to do here.

Alright, I have some advice for any Web host or anybody thinking about becoming a Web host. When it comes to advertising yourself out there in the world, try to do it with a little class. Here lately I have seen more and more Web hosts “invading” other Web hosts’ forums so they can put in a plug for themselves.

Now this isn’t just a bad idea, it is also tacky and rude. How would you like it if I came knocking on your door, shoved you out of the way and wrote WebHostingShow.com really big across your living room walls? You would be pretty mad right? Well these folks that come in and invade a Web host with another Web hosts’ ads are in the same camp.

Now I know these folks can’t be thinking they are going to get people to sign up this way. So where do they get “paid” in all of this? Well they hope that the forums moderators aren’t watching and they get some free links back when the search engines crawl the Web site. That way they get a little Google Page Rank juice off of you and rise in the ranks Online.

My best advice for anybody wanting to do something like this? Don’t. There are better ways of getting yourself known. You are not getting clients this way – you are only getting enemies.

Web Hosting News and Views

FastServers Adds Affiliate Program

Managed hosting provider FastServers.Net announced on Thursday that it has teamed with advertising group Commission Junction to introduce an outsourced affiliate marketing program.

FastServers will implement Commission Junction’s affiliate marketing service, designed to manage and optimize advertisers’ affiliate channels using its network of more than 50,000 publishers. According to FastServers, the company will pay affiliates 100 percent of the first month’s fees for all conversions. Its products range from $200 to $5,000 per month, with average recurring revenue per customer of $500.

I am a big fan of FastServers.Net, and this sounds like a great marketing idea. For any Web host out there, if you haven’t looked into setting up your own affiliate program, you should. It is a great way to make your customers work for you – having them find more customers.

In return, you pay them a little ‘bit of a finders fee. In the highly competitive Web hosting industry we find ourselves in today – any way to get a leg up on the competition is a good one. Don’t be afraid to part with some of your profits, because you might be gaining more than you are loosing in the long run of things.

+ Click Here to Listen to Our Interview With Ian Andrusyk of FastServers.Net!

Web Hosting Site of the Week

This Wednesday is not just going to be any Wednesday – you know why? From now, till I hope many years from now it is going to be Web Hosting Wednesday! No, I didn’t hit my head again, that is the name of our Web hosting site of the week for this week.

WebHostingWednesday.com is giving away a Web hosting account every single Wednesday. What do you have to do? To get in the drawing – all you need to do is pay one dollar. As the Web site says, “Get 2Gb of Disk Space and 32Gb of Bandwidth for a buck”. I say that is a pretty good deal.

I really love this idea because it is something new and different for the Web hosting world to sink it’s teeth into. When it comes to Web hosting, new ideas are not exactly a dime a dozen, so check this Web site out; and when you do make sure you let them know that the Web Hosting Show sent you there.

Web Hosting Tip of the Week

When it comes to content management systems to run your Web sites, there are many choices out there. Now these days it seems like people are going one of two ways though. Many years ago, MovableType used to be the way to go. Now that they are too expensive and bloated though – two new free solutions have come our way. Both Joomla and WordPress are two good suggestions, and probably the two most used When it comes to an engine that runs the back end of your Web site.

Remember these are just two out of many choices you have out there. For more choices, check out OpenSourceCMS.com. These folks have put together one heck of a nice resource when it comes to finding a good open source content management system. For each script, they have a download link, and also some demos of the administration panel and the script in action.

There are plenty of portals to choose from on the Web site, so why not give it a look? You might find an engine that inspires you to create the next great Web hosting resource! Just make sure it isn’t a Web hosting podcast – that’s my gig.

Final Web Hosting Thoughts

Well that is it for this week’s edition of the Web Hosting Show. If you want to interact with this podcast, it is easy to do.

+ Send me your audio questions or comments!

+ Go post on the Web Hosting Show’s Fan Forums!

+ Send me an E-mail with your thoughts on this week’s show!

Also, if you want to make sure you don’t miss a week’s episode, get our RSS feed and plug it into your syndication method of choice:

I am Mitch Keeler, and you have been listening to the Web Hosting Show, the number one Web hosting podcast across the nation and the one and only voice of the Web hosting world.