Ever wonder how interoperability is relevant to cloud computing?  The guys at Microsoft Europe have put together this great video explanation of what is is all about:

Have any other web hosting business related videos to share?  Be sure to leave them in the comments, or e-mail me at mitch@mitchkeeler.com.  Would love to highlight them right here on WebHostingShow.com.

At its core this means that the provisioning of space, bandwidth and power is controlled by a third-party data center.  They do not control it all though.  Most of the time, the web host who is using the third-party’s data center services will need to provide the management for the hardware or servers they are running from there.

To try to make sense of this, lets say I want to start a store.  I go rent a building downtown that has all the shelves, cash registers, and shopping carts – however I have to stock the store myself and, of course, figure out a way to bring the customers in the door.  Instead of spending money on buying the store and some of the basic necessities, I get to rent them – in turn bringing my overall costs down.

So, with it explained like that – where is the evil in it?

Well, many web hosting elite look down upon this practice because it is a money saving practice.  It lowers the proverbial bar on the point of entry somebody has to become a web host too.

Since building a data center from the ground up is a very expensive and time consuming act, I see no problem in getting your hosting through collocation.

Web Hosting Questions for You

Before you go shopping for your first, next or any type of web hosting plan, you should be ready to answer these questions:

• What type of web site do you want to host?
• Are you going to need any special server side technology?
• Have you ever gotten in trouble for using too many “server resources” (usually RAM or CPU)

Web Hosting Questions for Your Future Web Host

As far as questions that you should ask, I would make sure that you at least ask them these questions.

• What is the price/time period ratio? (sometimes you can get a better deal if you sign up for a longer time)
• Do you have any example web sites or server speed tests?
• Can you handle my needs (be sure to give a full list of what you would want to install or need)
• How can I reach and how responsive is the support team?
• How long is your money back guarantee? (if they have one)

Now, your own list of questions might vary depending on what type of web site you want to host and how complex it will be.

Here are ten free sources for web hosting out there today.

100webspace.com – Here you get 100 MB of web page, 3000 MB of bandwidth and a lot of extra features like MySQL databases, SSL, SpamAssassin, POP3 and web e-mail and much more.  It also allows for FTP or FrontPage access too.

Frihost.com – This free web host is offering you 250 MB of disk space and 10 GB of bandwidth per month.  It is hosted on a Unix OS, with access to MySQL, cron jobs, raw logs, backups and more.

HelioHost.org – Your monthly bandwidth will be limited to 2500 here, and 250 MB of disk space.  However, they do offer Ruby on Rails, Fantastico, and both MySQL and PostgreSQL databases.

000webhost.com – Looking at this free hosting alternative, we see 250 MB of disk space, and 100 GB of bandwidth.  You also get tools like cPanel, and access to password protected files, custom error pages, and phpMyAdmin.

110MB.com – An old one, but a good one, 110MB offers you 5000 MB of disk space and 300 GB of monthly bandwidth.  Also here to love is the fact they have no forced ads, they allow you to use your own ads, support PHP and FTP.

WebHero.com – Supporting the scripting languages of PHP, Perl and Python, WebHero also gives you 100MB of disk space and 500 MB of bandwidth, which are pretty reasonable for a free web hosting provider.

1ASPHost.com – I have one ASP host on the list, and their name ironically is 1ASPHost. Bandwidth here is set at 1,000 MB per month and you get 100 MB of disk space.  Some of the features included are MS Access, WAP, no file size limit, and online zipping and unzipping of files.

FreeHostia.com – Bandwidth at Free Hostia is set to 5,000 MB and disk space is at 250 MB.  You get stats, instant activation, e-mail, and access to install counters, message boards, polls and more.

FreeServers.com – A new favorite of mine, Free Servers offers a reliable free web hosting plan.  You do have ads on your web site, however you get 50 MB of disk space and a nice upgrade path just in case you outgrow their free solution.

GoFreeServe.com – Offering 300 MB of free disk space and 10 GB of bandwidth, they also allow for PHP scripting, e-mail access, and cPanel.  Worth a shot.

There you have it, ten quality free web hosts to choose from if you are looking to learn a little more about web hosting and how it works.  If you have any reviews of these services or you have another favorite, be sure to leave them in the comments.  Would love to hear who you think the best free web host really is.

The service really does a great job a breaking down the parts of your web site down into bricks.  You kind shift and move the bricks around, make make your web site look the way you want.  The designs to choose from are great too, and you can customize them to suit your needs.

Along with hosting, and design – they also provide you with real time visitor analytics and stats about all of your pages.  That way you can work on marketing yourself better too.

Squarespace Tour Video from Squarespace on Vimeo.

At $8 a month, the service really has a lot going for it, if you are looking for a mix of hosting, plus a quality content management system.  Try them out for free, at Squarespace.com.

You can sort the dedicated hosting offers by:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Many thanks to all the great people at Peer 1 for putting together this series of videos, and hopefully we will be seeing many more great ones in the future.  If you are a web host, or you have found a web host that has also been putting videos up online, be sure to let me know at mitch@mitchkeeler.com. 

Disadvantages to Virtual Private Server Hosting

For those of you who are used to paying $5 to $10 a month for web hosting, the jump in price might be considered the biggest disadvantage.  Often VPS hosting accounts go for $40 to $50, which is more than some people wish to pay.  With a VPS hosting plan, you might also need to know a little more about server-side administration.  You will need to become familiar with application installation and maintenance.  Of course you could also hire somebody to do this, or see if the web host has an option for them to do it, but then we get back into discussing price again.

Advantages to Virtual Private Server Hosting

Now where are the advantages of VPS hosting?  With a VPS hosting account, you will have more access to CPU, RAM and other server resources that may have been limited to you with a shared hosting plan.  Also, in comparison with dedicated hosting plans, the VPS hosting is often cheaper.  You would also be sharing that server with a few amount of people, so you will have to be less worried about what your proverbial neighbors are doing with their accounts that could get yourself and the server in trouble.

Most people come to VPS hosting once they have outgrown their shared hosting plan, but are not yet ready for a dedicated hosting server.  Virtual Private Servers are a great choice for those who are wanting to move way from shared hosting, but are not ready to commit themselves to the work that it takes to keep a dedicated plan up and running.

Have you ever looked into optimizing your images?

The secret to optimizing your images is simple.  You want the best looking image at the smallest file size possible.  If the graphic editing software you have has a “web” setting when saving, use it.  If not – it might take a few trials and tribulations before you figure out the lowest size you can save it as that gives you the best results.  There will be a lot of save it, try it, doesn’t work.  Save it, try it, almost works. However in the long run, the smaller you can make your image sizes, the faster your web site will load.

DynamicDrive.com has an online image optimizer you might want to check out too:

• http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/

You can use that to see how for they get the sizes down, so you can do the same or if you are in a pinch for a good image editor to work with.

When it comes to image formats, this is my own personal rule of thumb.  Use the JPEG or JPG format when working with photographs.  When working with graphic work or logos, stick with PNG most of the time, and GIF, (if the end result doesn’t look like crap).

Offering 5GB of space for free, this service sounds terrific.  4Shared also comes with a built in search engine, so you can browse around to see the other content people are uploading.

How long are the files hosted there?  Your free account and all your files will be removed from 4Shared only if you do not log in the account for 30 days.

Here are the most popular types of files that may be shared:

• document file (doc, txt, pdf, rtf, xls)
• music file (mp3, ogg, wav, mid)
• video file (avi, mpg, mpeg)
• image file (jpg, gif, bmp, png)
• zip file (zip, rar, arj)
• any other types

If you like the free service, then you can also upload to the paid versions too.  A one year membership will remove some of the limits.  So if you out-grow the free version, the paid version is always there to give you a few more perks.

I’ll be sure to cover that too on this week’s edition of the Web Hosting Show.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 177!
Running Time: 13 minutes | File Size: 5.94 MB

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

• How to Score 5GB of Free File Hosting!
• How can Obama Inspire the Web Hosts Out There?
• Three FAQs about SSL
• Making Money with Google AdSense

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• GoDaddy Attack Sends Thousands Offline
• Get Your Free 8GB USB Flash Memory Stick at Hosting-Nation.net

Please be sure to send any feedback, questions or comments about this week’s podcast to me directly at mitch@mitchkeeler.com or leave a comment! Would love to hear from you all!

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

Now for some of the weirdest (and possibly greatest) web hosting names just just never got off the ground…

Perfect Toilet Hosting – The name was suppose to inspire downloads and 5th grade humor, but flushed itself before it got started.

Hamster Dance Hosting – What else were the guys behind the original annoying Internet meme suppose to do?  The hook here is they will only host your content if you Rick-roll, claim all your base are belong to us, or have a love for dancing babies.

Tighty Whitey Hosting - For when you want hosting with that secure fit.

Kentucky Fried Hosting – Inspired by the fried chicken king, this web host was unique in fact that promised a free bucket of chicken for every hosting plan you purchased.  The bad thing was, sending chicken through US mail ended up with very stinky surprise once it made it to your house a few weeks later.

GoMommy – Well, there is a GoDaddy – so why not a GoMommy?  The downfall of GoMommy as a company happened when she caught you trying to register adult domains and told you you’ll go blind if you do it too much.

TWO – Launched as a competitor to 1&1 Hosting, but nobody else got the joke.

What is in a name?  Well if you make me giggle like a school girl when I have to say it in public, it could be both a good or a bad thing.  It could be considered memorable or it could be considered embarrassing.  It all depends on if your glass is half empty or half full.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 174!
Running Time: 12 minutes | File Size: 5.45 MB

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

• What is Domain Sniping?
• GoDaddy Shoots Super Bowl Commercial, and Fails to Raise the Bar
• The List of The Greatest Web Hosts That Never Made It
• 10 Alternatives to Free Rapidshare Hosting

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• Aventure Host Launches Web Hosting Affiliate Program
• Hivelocity Offers Customers Unlimited Bandwidth and Double the RAM

Yes, as of late – I have been on a movie-title themed podcast naming trend haven’t I? Well, I can’t promise Jack Nicholson, but I can promise you that listening to this podcast weekly will make the wacky and wild world of web hosting make a little more sense to you.

• Lunarpages.com – for $4.95 per month, you can get unlimited space and bandwidth!
• FastHosts.com – They are offering free unlimited reseller hosting for a year.
• HostColor.com – Host Color’s “THANKYOU2008″ promotion offers a 25 percent instant rebate on all Web hosting services to its present and prospective customers.
• GoDaddy.com – They are registering domains for only $1.99 with any new, non-domain purchase.  Regular .com registrations are marked down to $9.99.
• HostGator.com – You can get 20% off any order, if you use the coupon code “GREEN”.  On the site it says it was good till Oct. 1, however I just tested it and worked for me.

If your a web host with a special deal or offer going on, please let me know and I would love to get it featured on the Web Hosting Show.  We will all be spending plenty on presents and holiday cheer this year, so if we can get a little discount in our hosting – I do not see the harm in that at all.

Bonus! The fine people at aplus.net have also clued me into some of their great deals they have going on right now.  You can check them out here:  http://www.aplus.net/promos/

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.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 173!
Running Time: 16 minutes | File Size: 7.17 MB

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

• Marketing Tips from Your Ugly Friend and a Cheese Sandwich
• Your Shared Hosting Shopping List
• Top 5 Holiday Deals from the Web Hosting World

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• Daily.co.uk Giving Away Reseller Hosting
• Lycos Europe Goes Down Under (and not to Australia)
• Will Your Web Site Survive the Holiday Season?

Time to warm up the thanksgiving leftovers one more time, have a seat and enjoy a little talk, information, news and more on and about the wild and wacky world of web hosting. Hope everybody had a nice Thanksgiving break, and your ready for another award winning** web hosting podcast.

* – ok, maybe not the greatest ever, but who wants to listen to second best?
** – actual award winning content may vary!

Here are the top seven dirty web hosting words (and phrases) that every hosting customer should know or be able to define.

1.  Server Resources - This is often the limitation you don’t hear about until you have reached it.  Many people might call it the, “Haha, got you now!” clause, but if you stop and think about it, it does make sense.  You can only do so many things on your computer before you begin to have performance problems, and the same could be said for a hosting server.  If one script, service or person is taking up all the RAM and CPU up for themselves, they have to be taken out of the picture to help everyone else who may be hosted on that server.

2.  Database Connections - Depending on who the web host is, and how they have their servers setup, you may only have available to you so many connections to a database.  For example, Joe hears that his database connection limit is 25 simultaneous connections.  What Joe doesn’t stop to think about is what the word simultaneous actually means.  For him to go over his limit, he would need 25 connections in roughly the same few seconds to get in trouble.  Since most scripts only connect for a second, this is not something most of us need to worry about.

3.  E-mail Sending Limits - Yes, you are limited on the number of e-mails you can send out.  This is a pretty new limitation that web hosts have been putting on their customers, mostly to curb spamming in any form.  If you are doing any sending of newsletters or something that goes out to a great amount of people via e-mail, you might want to look at scripts that will spread the wealth sending around.  That way instead of sending your newsletter to 10,000 people at once, you will be able to send it to maybe 2,000 people per hour through the day.  Both DadaMail and phpList will allow you to do this.

4.  Unlimited - There is no such thing as unlimited in web hosting.  It is a marketing word though that is bound to bring people in.  People like to get something for nothing and the chance to be able to grow their web site and brand to unlimited boundaries is a dream we can all be excited by.  Now, why does this word not really bug me that much anymore?  Well, even if you are sold by the word unlimited, chances are you aren’t even going to use enough of your unlimited disk space or bandwidth to hurt the server.  In most cases, it doesn’t do any harm.

5.  Uptime and Downtime - The one thing you see asked about by people who like to think they know a thing or two about web hosting is, “How is the uptime?” or “How much downtime have you had?”.  These are kind-of important questions, but I wouldn’t put too much weight into their answers.  Like I have said before, you are not going to find a web host who is perfect and has not even the smallest single flaw.  You will need to find an example of the problems they have had, and see how they have dealt with them.  That is how you can really tell how great a web host is.

6.  Overselling – In the world of web hosting, overselling is the term used to describe be hosts who put more customers on a server than the server can really support.  Most big name web hosts won’t have a problem with this, but some of the smaller to mid-range web hosts do.  The problem is that they can’t afford to bring more servers online, or they are packing you in like sardines into a can to save on costs.  It is something to try to be aware of, but chances are you won’t know about it till it is too late.

7.  The Comparison Box – I hate the comparison box of features you see web hosts use.  We have all seen them.  You have the features listed down the side, the different plans listed across the top and the thing that bugs me is every plan has every feature.  Why do a comparison chart, if every stinking plan has the same features?  The comparison chart should be use to compare the differences.  Most of the time, the only difference might be the disk space, bandwidth and price.  Give me a shorter comparison box, and just give me those three items if that is the case.  One more smaller item that bugs me about these boxes too is when they list stupid features that even your 98 year old grandmother knows are there.  For example, I am looking at a web host who does this, the comparison chart is as cheesy as ever and what is one of the features each plan has?  “support”.  As if in some bizarro world, there would be a web hosting plan that doesn’t come with “support”.

Know of another dirty web hosting word that didn’t make it onto the list?  Drop me an e-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com or leave a comment and we’ll see if we can find at least seven more amongst us all.

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

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

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

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

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 172!
Running Time: 14 minutes | File Size: 6.18 MB

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

• My Favorite (and the BEST) FTP Client
• The Seven Dirty Web Hosting Words (and Phrases)
• Get Access to Photoshop Online for Free!

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• GoDaddy Does Makeovers for Lucky Web Sites
• 1&1 Internet Moves into a Nuclear Facility
• Hosting.com Get More Free Money to Blow Away

Come on, now how could you read a show description like that and not want to listen? Download and tune in to this very special edition of the Web Hosting Show. If you do, I promise to… well, do it again next week?

Performance of Clustered Hosting

You use the power of many, for one.  Clustered hosting “virtualizes” the resources beyond the limits of one physical server, and as a result, your web site is not limited to one server.  The work your web site does, and any strain it might cause to a single server would be distributed in real time.  To translate that, you know all of those “unlimited” offers you see with some web hosts?

Well with clustered hosting – that might actually be true.

Poorly-written scripts will not hurt neighboring accounts either.  Troublemakers are isolated, monitored and restricted to the account’s available CPU cycles.  So if Billy down the block is getting his web site dugg by digg, it will not take down your web site hosted on the same server.

Redundancy, Control and Price

In the redundancy department, all functions failover because all the servers serve all the functions out there.  Services are not local to a server, so loss of a server is not fatal to the overall service.

On the web hosts’ side, accounts should be provisioned in real time depending on the resources that account needs.  Also server admins have one single login where they can go in and control the clustered hosting when needed.  Like editing databases, changing DNS and other server side duties.

For the end user, cluster hosting should be pretty cheap.  I would say somewhere between a regular shared hosting plan and a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in price should be about right.

It is a server side software library that concerts video and audio files into a preferred audio or video format to play them or embed them from a web site.  YouTube is a good example of this type of technology at work.  In turn, FFmpeg hosting is a term used to cover the assortment of FFmpeg and other server side technologies that help with converting digital video or audio.

So let’s say you go to your web host and tell them you want to start up a YouTube clone.  While there are many web hosts out there that can host your normal web site, only a small amount of web hosts will be willing to accommodate your needs for your YouTube clone script.

The reason this is so, is that these types of scripts can be unfriendly to the server.

They use up a lot of disk space for storing the videos.  They use a lot of bandwidth, with the embedding and streaming of the videos too. Then count in the CPU and RAM usage with converting the videos from one format to another on the server side and you have a real big mess.

The solution, in most situations, is to turn towards Virtual Private Servers (VPS) or dedicated hosting accounts.  Right now, if you want to be any kind of success, shared hosting can not support YouTube clone scripts and everything you need from what was earlier defined as a FFmpeg hosting.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 170!
Running Time: 14 minutes | File Size: 5.82 MB

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

• Twitter for Web Hosting Support?
• Secret of Finding Unique Domains!
• Outsourced Hosting Support with CliffSupport.com
• 5 Ways to Get Free Hosting

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• 100 Registrars To Offer .tel
• iNet Interactive Purchases Australian Competitor

Kick back, relax and get caught up with some of the latest and greatest happenings inside of the web hosting world. We are going to have tons of fun this week, and the only way you can join in is to listen. What are you waiting for?

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

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

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

Blog Perfume’s Feed Analysis

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

Yoast’s Feed Circulation Graphs

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

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

Feed Compare

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

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

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

All that and a bucket of chicken on this week’s edition of the Web Hosting Show.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 165!
Running Time: 13 minutes | File Size: 5.66 MB

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

• How to Read Bad Hosting Reviews
• Domain Hijacking, Not for Gangsters
• Best FeedBurner Analysis Tools
• Free Performance, Availability and Traffic Monitoring

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• Google to Build Data Centers that Float?
• EstDomains.com Involved in Hundreds of Online Scams?
• Hostway Gives Away More Apple iPhones
• GoDaddy Races Sing This Song, Doo-dah! doo-dah!

Web hosting world, you had better get ready cause we got yet another great podcast from pillar to post to share with all of you. Give a download, listen to it, and let me know what you think!

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

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

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

• E-mail
• RSS
• SMS Messages

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

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