When you have a web site of any size or shape, you come to realize that statistics, in various forms, are important to watch. They let you know how well you are doing, and what type of content seems to be the most popular. With all the different types of statistics to watch, I thought I would go through the top five that you should keep you eye on the most.
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Top Five Statistics to Monitor When Webmastering
Earn Cash on Web Hosting Referrals
There are hundreds of web hosting providers out there that provide affiliate programs for you to join. The questions now are, what is an affiliate program? Why would I want to join one? What can I do to make my affiliate links more successful? Well, I hope to bring you up to speed as I discuss the benefits of affiliate programs for your average webmaster.
The simplest way to define an affiliate program is to say that you get paid for bringing a web host more customers. For example, say your friend needs web hosting space and asks you for a suggestion. You, in turn, give them your affiliate program link to click through. When they sign up, you get the credit for bringing them in, and the web host gets a new customer. It is a winning situation for everybody involved.
Blazing Web Hosts – Episode 185
Time to hop back in the saddle and find out what is going on across this great web hosting land of ours. From the Web Hosting Talk hack aftermath to the first all virtual hosting conference and everything in between we have a podcast here you should all get a kick out of. So get listening, and join in on the fun!
Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 185!
Running Time: 13 minutes | File Size: 5.94 MB
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Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode:
- What is the nofollow Link All About?
- Find Out Who is Copying Your Content
- Compare Linux Dedicated Servers and Deals
- Best Way to Find Web Hosting Coupons
- First All Virtual Web Hosting Conference is Coming
Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:
- Credit Cards Compromised in WHT Hack – Dedicating this week’s news segment to more coverage on the webhostingtalk.com hack, the recent announcement that credit cards were compromised and what you need to do to protect yourself.
Trivia Question – The first version of the Apache web server was created by whom? (to find out the answer, be sure to download and listen to this week’s podcast!)
Hope you enjoy this week’s broadcast. Thank you all for tuning in!
Payment Gateways
If you are running any type of e-commerce solution on your web site, finding the right payment gateway for your store’s payment processing is key. You can think of the payment gateway to the equivalent of a physical point-of-sale terminal located in most retail outlets.
So which payment gateways are the best?
- Google Checkout
- MoneyBookers
- NoChex
- PayPal
- Protx
- PSIGate
- WorldPay
- 2Checkout
- BluePay
- E-Gold
- AlertPay
- LinkPoint
- Authorize.net
- CCNow
Have another favorite to add to the list? Feel free to leave them in the comments. From user reviews though, these seem to be the best of the best payment gateways out there right now.
Merry Christmas from the Web Hosting Show
Merry Christmas from your favorite web hosting podcast, the Web Hosting Show. Hope it has been a good one, and you have gotten everything you could have ever wished for. As a ‘bit of a bonus this year around, I thought I would spread around some of the holiday treats I deliver out to the public week after week. Check out some of my other projects:
This is my blog filled with geek candy. More personal and of the wall in nature, this is my personal spot to rant and rave about any miscellaneous thing that might cross my mind. From web development help to custom desktop icons – I am sure there is something for everybody to enjoy here.
My Favorite Mitchelaneous Posts of the Year:
- 10 Tools to Turn Firefox into WordPress’s Little Helper
- Open Google Notebook in Firefox’s Sidebar
- 37 WordPress Free Theme Databases and Blogs
- Free Mega Man 9 Desktop Icons
- 10 Best Paint.Net Tutorials (and 10 More Paint.Net Tutorials)
You can subscribe to Mitchelaneous.com for free by plugging it’s RSS feed into your favorite news reader of choice. Here are a few subscription buttons to help you in that process:
Firefox Facts is my daily blog about all things relating to Firefox. It started out as an e-book project, but has expanded by leaps and bounds since then. Find reviews for useful extensions, great looking Firefox themes and a whole lot more. I even toss in an occasional roundup of the best tools for this, that and the other. If you use Firefox, you need to subscribe.
My Favorite Firefox Facts Posts of the Year:
- Darkest Popular Themes for Firefox 3 (also have the lightest)
- Freshest Top 10 YouTube Greasemonkey Scripts
- Change the Default Search in Firefox
- 25 Tweaks for Your Firefox Statusbar (also 25 more tweaks too)
- Give Firefox 3 Firefox 2′s Address Bar
You can subscribe to FirefoxFacts.com for free by plugging the RSS feed into your favorite news reader of choice. Here are a few subscription buttons to help you in that process:
Thank you all for listening to the Web Hosting Show this year, and I hope this holiday gift of amazing posts from around my little network of web site will at least give you something to do while you are in between football games or wanting some along time after all the in-laws have gone back home.
10 Alternatives to Free Rapidshare Hosting
Rapidshare might be the most popular free web hosting alternative right now, however they might not be the best. Here are some equally as great alternatives.
SendSpace.com – Unlimited uploads and unlimited downloads. The file size limit with SendSpace is up to 300MB too.
MediaFire.com – This service provides up to 100MB file size per upload, and unlimited storage. A “pro” account will also get you a few more perks if you want to pay for it.
iFile.it – With one of the simplest interfaces, just browse, upload and cross your fingers.
MegaUpload.com – Another popular alternative is MegaUpload, unfortunately you might be looking for an alternative to it pretty soon. Hate to give you an alternative to an alternative.
SaveFile.com – With a limit of 100MB per file in size, the most enticing thing about this hosting solution would be the fact that it isn’t used by many – so speeds should be pretty good.
TransferBigFiles.com – Oh, if only the rest of the internet was this obvious.
KeepMyFile.com – Bad web site design, with a limit of 60MB per file and 300MB max. The advantage here is they say you can upload 30 files at once.
Badongo.com – With unlimited limits, and being free to use – have to say this alternative sounds like gold.
YourFileLink.com – Free video and file hosting is what they promise, and with the highest limit thus far on file size (5GB), you may want to go ahead and take advantage of this domain while it is still around.
UploadPedia.com – Oh, I get it – like Wikipedia, but you host stuff on it. So it isn’t like Wikipedia at all…
Know of another free file host that deserves to be an alternative to Rapidshare? Share your suggestions with us, and I might be able to come up with a list of at least ten more free file hosting alternatives to enjoy.
October 2008 Podcast Recap
We had a great round up of show for this past month. From interviews to bad references to James Bond movies, if anything else you can say I am at least unique at what I do. Missed a podcast from October 2008? Here is a recap of what you might have missed…
The Magnificent Fantastico – Episode 168 – From the first time I ever heard about Fantastico, I always thought about the traditional magician pulling rabbits from his hat. Who would have a clue that a few years later on down the road I would have a chance to speak with one of men behind it.
Web Hosting to Go – Episode 169 – What would I like to have today? Lets see. I will have a large data center mashup map, a side of hosting tools (just remember to hold the tomatoes), a HP performance-optimized datacenter and a definition on what domaining is all about? For here or to go?
Hostfinger – Episode 170 – James Bond’s rival Goldfinger was obsessed with gold. I am a man obsessed with web hosting. So does that make me Hostfinger? I am sure of two things. Yes, there will be a web host by that name soon if there isn’t already and I think I’ll stick with my own name for now.
Hope you enjoyed this past month as much as I did. Got any ideas on what you’d like to hear about next? I am all ears!
What is the nofollow Link About?
You may have seen some links out there on the Web that have an attribute value that is “nofollow”. What does this mean? Well, this is a way a web sit can instruct some search engines that the link should not influence the target site’s rankings.
For example, lets say I wanted to link to webhostingtalk.com, but I didn’t want them to gain any SEO rankings for me linking to them (or have any of my own SEO rankings taken away). So, I write the link out like this:
<a href="http://www.webhostingtalk.com" rel="nofollow">Web Hosting Talk</a>Now how this attribute is being interpreted differs between the various search engines out there. Here is a ‘bit of interesting information from Wikipedia on how the biggest search engines handle the information:
Now, where and why this got so much attention was when it comes to paid advertising links. Some search engines have kind of re-purposed the nofollow attribute for disclosure of paid links. They want you, as the webmaster, to use the rel=”nofollow” code when you sell a link, so that the link in question does not get any search engine optimization benefit.
Since it was announced in early 2005, the attribute has been surrounded in debate and controversy. Should you use it or should you not? I’ll let that be your judgment call to make. At least now, you know what all the fuss is about.