Domain Names Made Simple

Hover is looking to make the domain name registration and management woes we all go through a lot easier. You get all the important basics like domain forwarding, email forwarding and even custom URLs. The prices are also very simple and easy to understand too.

Create Your Own Short Links

The best feature of Hover is the ability to create your own short URLs with your own custom domain, using the Hover tools. All you need to do is install the Hover This! bookmarlet, and then you can create your own list of shared links with your own domain name.  So, you no longer have to use somebody else’s domain name in your shortened links.

Great Domain Name Support

Hover’s support and tutorials are also top notch too.  They are very simply written, so you can easily understand all the steps and how to do this, that and the other.  You can check out the help resources yourself by visiting help.hover.com.

Overall, Hover gets two thumbs up from me.  I might even start moving my own domain registrations over from GoDaddy so that I can manage my own domains in a much easier to understand straight-forward interface.

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

Some of the statistics included are:

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

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

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

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 194!
Running Time: 10 minutes | File Size: 4.80 MB

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

• What is FTP and how do you use it?
• A great domain scoring web site resource!
• What is so bad about collocation hosting?
• How to take better web site screenshots!

Here is this week’s web hosting news headline:
Brinkster Launches URL Shortener – Web hosting provider Brinkster announced this week that it has launched a new URL shortening service it is calling br.st!, throwing its hat into an already quite well-served market associated with several of the most popular social networking services.

Bonus! Check out br.st and see if it is better than the rest!

Trivia Question – True or false, Brinkster’s CEO Jared Stauffer is on Twitter.  (to find out the answer, be sure to download and listen to this week’s podcast!)

Tons of fun and useful tools packed into this week’s show.  Don’t forget to leave your feedback in the comments or contact me anytime at mitch@mitchkeeler.com.  Also, if your like what you hear, and you want to get more subscribe to our RSS feed (it is free to do!) so you never miss another post, interview or podcast!

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

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

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 182!
Running Time: 11 minutes | File Size: 5.01 MB

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

• How Payment Processing Works
• Find Available Domain Names – Domain Pigeon
• Virtual Private Server Advantages and Disadvantages
• Faster Domain Search with DomainTyper

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• Aplus.net Provides Google Webmaster Tools to Clients
• Japan Cybercrime Grows by 15.5 Percent

Welcome to my web hosting school of hard knocks. On this very podcast, week after week, I do my best to help make the wild and wacky world of web hosting make a little more sense for everybody out there.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 181!
Running Time: 12 minutes | File Size: 5.19 MB

Here are this podcast’s domain name terms:

• Domain Parking
• Kiting Domains
• Domain Name Warehousing
• Type-in Traffic
• Domain Front Running

Click a link above to learn more about that particular term in detail.  Remember, I didn’t coin any of these phrases – so send your hate mail for their absurdity elsewhere.  I am just a web hosting guru here to help you learn a little more about their meaning.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 180!
Running Time: 10 minutes | File Size: 4.57 MB

Here are this podcast’s domain name terms:

• Domain Name Hijacking
• Cybersquatting
• Domaining
• Domain Name Speculation
• Sniping Domains

Click a link above to learn more about that particular term in detail.  I guess none of us can choose how or why a web hosting term is coined.  What we can do is work together so that we all know what each wild and wacky world really means.

Makes me wonder what ever happened to these two guys, Doug and well… the other one.  Seems like GoDaddy wanted to make them a staple as well in the ads, however the GoDaddy girls seem to still get more attention.

Best GoDaddy Ads Countdown: #5,  #4,  #3,  #2,  #1

Now you might watch that and say it wasn’t that funny.  I will give you that, but at least it had a point and told a story a little better than most of them have.  In comparison, you have the Basic Instinct knock-off ad which, well – there is nothing funny there.  They just tried to rip on that movie’s most famous seen but do nothing to make it their own.

Best GoDaddy Ads Countdown: #5, #4, #3, #2, #1

So where should we start?  How about in the shower?  Starting with number five on my best list would be the Danica Patrick “extended” shower spot from the 2009 Super Bowl.

Overall, it didn’t make me laugh out loud – but didn’t annoy me either, so it belongs on the list.  It is “T and A” meets the three stooges.  So what do you think about this one, was it a hit or a miss?  Share your thoughts, and there will be another look back at the GoDaddy commercials tomorrow.

Best GoDaddy Ads Countdown: #5, #4, #3, #2, #1