According to our good buddies at the WHIR, Los Angeles county has halted plans to build a $68 million dollar data center facility because of the animals that have already claimed that spot as their home. Now these are not bears, monkeys or sea lions oh no, they are much more dangerous than all three of those put together. They are 150 wild cats with a bad attitude.

Finding new homes for these cats have put a strain on the local government. The new data center was suppose to start construction back in 2007, but those cats, those wild homeless felines have another idea. Here are some facts about the data center that could have been according to the article:

The new high-tech data center, which was supposed to begin construction in 2007, will be the county’s first energy-saving “green” facility - with a vegetated roof and built partially underground - and is to be constructed in the derelict buildings just south of the Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Downey.

According to reports by Data Center Knowledge, the county is planning to build a 46,000 square foot data center that will be used to process employee payrolls, welfare payments, court documents and other county department records. Planners are also designing the facility to meet the criteria for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification.

Now I tried to do my best to get a quote from the cats in question, and they at first had no comment but then told me all the talking they had to do would be done so through their lawyers, because they are cats and “normal” people usually can not make heads or tails out of what they are saying. They also wanted me to tell the public they really don’t like the LOL cats all over the Web.

There has been lots of talk about web hosts offering and clients needing upgrades to PHP 5. For those of you who might be outside the loop, let me first explain what PHP is. PHP is a framework that works on your hosting server’s side of things. It is a programing language that allows web developers to create content that dynamically interacts with databases.

Now the main reason you would want to upgrade to PHP 5 is that development for PHP 4 ceased at the end of 2007. You will no longer get updates for it, unless they are security related. Critical security updates for PHP 4 will be provided till August 8, 2008. So this is another good reason why a move to PHP 5 might be a good idea.

Where are the advantages of PHP 5 over PHP 4? Well without getting too geeky on you there are a number of improvements that just make it more robust, faster, more secure and easier to work with. What was wrong with PHP 4? Well, nothing really - it is just getting a little long in the tooth. PHP 4 you have to remember was released back in 2000. Think of it as a pair of old shoes you really love. the laces might be lost and your holding the heel on with duct tape but you can still put them on your feet and use them. PHP 5 would be the pair of sneakers you always wanted.

There have also been several public movements to help lead the charge to PHP 5, one of the more popular ones was the GoPHP5.org project that shared information about PHP 5 and kind of helped push a lot of web hosts in the right direction when it came to supporting the most recent stable release of PHP 5.

The name of the game is evolution. As with any technology, we need to move forward as soon as there is a solid stable release because in doing so we can continue to make things bigger, faster, better and stronger.

One phrase that gets tossed around a lot in web hosting is “oversold”. This is what happens when a web host is selling more server space than they actually have got, in the hope that their clients will never actually use the full offer that they bought into.

Take this as an example. Tom had a pie that he cut into six pieces. Tom’s problem is that he wants to give pie slices to twelve of his friends. When all of his friends show up to eat some pie, he gives each of his twelve friends a half of a pie slice and promises them if they need more pie they can have it. Tom’s problem?

He only had one pie - so he hopes his friends get full off that half a slice.

Now why does this happen? Well with prices for hosting getting cheaper and the offers for hosting as far as disk space and bandwidth go getting bigger, some web hosts don’t have any other choice.

From a purely visual side by side comparison if one place offers you 50 GB of space for five dollars and another offers you 150 GB of space for five dollars, most people are going to take the bigger offer.

Is there a real future for overselling? In the long haul - I don’t think so. Eventually web hosts are going to run into a bottle neck of what they can really promise in comparison with the technology that is out there. My hope is that people actually start to grow suspicious of such offers and rise up against it. When your getting a gift though - you don’t want to ask why or how your getting it, you just take it and smile.

For that one simple fact, the future of overselling might be a little longer in the tooth than expected.

Have a look around, web hosting is getting cheaper and cheaper by the minute. Have you ever stopped to think what price you are really paying though when it comes to these discount prices? Now I am not looking to paint every low cost web host with a broad fraud brush.

There are some providers out there that have the business plan in place to handle it. They just might be harder to find.

Do You Pay for it in Perks?

Some web hosts will get you in the door with the low prices, and then when it comes to addons or accessories to your shared hosting account they stick you with the true costs of hosting. This can often happen with upgrades for JSP and ASP support and other upgrades some, but not all, will need.

Keep an Eye on How Long Your Signing Up For!

For an example, lets say Dummy Example Web Host is offering you a hosting deal you can not beat. It is $3.50 a month for 500 GB Disk Storage and 5 TB of Bandwidth. Now when you get on the order page you notice that this $3.50 a month price is only good if you sign up for the 10 year hosting plan. To get this, you must pay up-front: $420. Now if you know they are good then you have no worries but if you have no history with the company do you really want to sign up with them for the next decade? Better yet - will they even be around that long?

The one thing you have to remember (and I have said it time and time before) you have to do you homework when it comes to signing up with any web hosting company. Don’t be fooled by the special deal - and find out if they really are the best of the best or just another guy with a server in his basement trying to make a buck.

Do I Blame the Web Hosting Companies? No!

I can not blame the web hosting companies, because they need to compete with the next guy down the street and make money while doing so. Thanks to the fact that we have so much competition out there for the proverbial bottom dollar; almost everybody undercuts and over-provides. The secret of cheap hosting is to find the one that does so the best.

Go from sounding like a networking hillbilly to a true guru of hosting knowledge. Along with that, we are also going to discuss some of the best free hosts of 2007 and a lot of hosting tips, tools and more right here on this week’s edition of the Web Hosting Show.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 135!
Running Time: 15 minutes | File Size: 6.50 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• 2007’s Free Hosting Awards (Photos, Videos and Files)!
• Networking Terms that Confuse the Masses!
• Design Tips for a Web Host’s Front Page!
• Time of the Year to Clean Up Your Support Pages?
• Sell Yourself in Fewer Words!
• No More Tips for Getting Gum off the Side of a Server!

Saddle up and get ready to ride, the Web Hosting Show is back from it’s holiday vacation and well, I didn’t send you a postcard because since you put that restraining order on me - it has been a little hard to find out where you’ve moved to.

Going into the holidays (especially Christmas) time is running short for various things, so the Web Hosting Show audio podcast might be on a wacky schedule till the start of the new year. This wacky time though should give me a little more time to try new things such as this one here.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=iDXrjxEdxJk]

As I test this new way of creating video content for the podcast here, I thought I would go with a question that gets asked an awful lot. How do you create an e-mail account from within the most popular of the control panels out there - cPanel.

Need your hosting news, links and reading with a ‘bit of a twist? Now I have covered other social hosting sites before - but I think the one that gets it right thus far is HostingBookmarks.com. The main pitch and reason for HostingBookmarks.com to exist is to “share hosting experiences” or at least that is what the graphic on the front page would have you believe.

There is much more than your average social voting link site here however. They have categories for just about every hosting topic under the sun. General hosting news, hosting experiences, e-mail, domains, tutorials, events… the list could go on and on.

Here is a little more information about them by them:

Hosting Bookmarks (HB) is a place where anyone involved in web hosting is invited to shared knowledge and experience. We welcome professionals to bookmark good content and consumers to share their experience with various products, services and companies. Our objective is to organize various web hosting related topics and knowledge into a database, and to build a valuable reference network based on social communication.

They also invite anybody and everybody who is interested to sign up and give it a shot. I’d love to see this web site take off in popularity so I am inviting you all to bookmark it and use it often. The great thing about a social hosting tool like this is the more people we can bring into the fold the better it will become.