Still have a little ‘bit of a head cold today, so recording of the Web Hosting Show has been postponed.  That doesn’t mean I can take the day off though, so I have put together a few updates and new features I hope you enjoy into WebHostingShow.com.

Added a new “Extras” page - Wanting to check out some of the special projects, deals and tools we have brought to you since the beginning of the Web Hosting Show?  This is your new one stop shop to pick them all up for free.

Fixed “Add This” Buttons - The sharing buttons you see on the bottom of each post here on WebHostingShow.com have been updated to give you a menu choice when you hover over it, and also will open up in a new pop-up window once clicked.

Added Contact Form - Want to get in touch with me?  I have added a contact form (powered by Google Docs) back to the contact page so that you can do just that, very quickly.  So if you have a suggestion, offer, question or request - use it and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

New Feature - Hosting Directory - Are you one of the elite web hosting businesses to make it onto the new Web Hosting Show hosting directory?  Check the list out for yourself to see if you made the cut!

Have any other updates or features you’d like to see?

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!

We are all looking for something for nothing, and when you mention that phrase in the web hosting world, it can only mean one thing.  Free web hosts.  Now I don’t often recommend free web hosts to people, cause you never know when they might fall off the radar - and take your web site with them.  However, here are some of the better free hosting solutions out there.

110MB.com

With 110MB Hosting you get 5GB of free no-ads hosting to setup shop.    So where is the catch?  They seem to get all of their income from upgrades and other related services.   You also get PHP 5, 300 GB of Bandwidth and MySQL 5.

AgilityHoster.com

Agility Hoster looks to use the free hosting account they provide as a gateway into other services too.  On the free plan, you get 2 addon domains, 5GB of bandwidth, and 200MB of disk space.

DotEasy.com

When looking for free web hosts out there, doteasy was the only one that stuck out as a name I had heard before.  The free plan they provide will give you 1GB of bandwidth, 100MB of storage and up to 10 e-mail accounts.

FreeHostia.com

I hate to say it, but Freehostia is probably one of the cheesier looking out of the bunch.  They do provide 250 MB of storage, 5 GB of monthly bandwidth and hosting for 2 domains.

HostWQ.net

HostWQ.net calls themselves the ultimate source for free and premium web site hosting.  Do they deliver?  Well for free you can get up to 300 MB of disk space and 10 GB of bandwidth a month.  Very promising, to say the least.

Are you a free web hosts or do you know of a free web host that can do any better?  Drop me an e-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com or leave a comment and let me know.

Are you a web host looking for a cheap and effective way to expand your support services?  Although some of us don’t like the phrase, “outsourced support”, the truth is it can be a very effective way to cheaply expand your hosting support team.  CliffSupport is a technical support company that provides technical support, server administration, server security and remote server management for linux servers.

They offer plans covering the following services:

• Complete Server Solutions
• Server Monitoring and Response
• Per Ticket Plan
• Server Hardening and Setup
• Dedicated Admins
• Hourly Server Administration

To speak for how great their service is, they promise a response in 20 minutes or less and also have a 15 day money back guarantee.  They have been in the support field for over two years too, so they are not a fly by night operation.

If you are looking for another alternative to outsourcing support, you might also check out BobCares.  I did an interview with them a few weeks back on their business and support.  Of course I welcome the CliffSupport team on the show as well if they would like to talk with me too.  To learn more about CliffSupport be sure to go check out CliffSupport.com.

The bookmarking service, del.icio.us started an entire trend of unique looking domain names that has continue to this day.  Mixing domain names, with extensions (and sometimes tossing in a subdomain) has made for some memorable and unique domains.  So what is the secret?  There are two services that allow you to type in a phrase and then figure out different ways it could be registered and setup.

Domai.nr and domainfinder.geekfg.net both offer this service.  My favorite out of the tool is Domai.nr - so let us focus on that one for now.  For example, lets say I typed mitch into the search box and hit enter.  Some of the domain name suggestions I got were:

• mit.ch
• mit.tc/h
• m.it/ch

They also give to you the registers for that domain type, the wikipedia entry for that top-level domain type and tools, where you can see the web site (if the domain is taken) and a link to do a quick WhoIs lookup.  They also have a blog and Twitter account to follow, so you can stay inside the loop with development.

With the rise of status or micro-blogging services, more and more web hosts are looking to add themselves to the mix.  So what do these quick micro-blogging services lend themselves to in the world of web hosting?  What about server status updates?  Lets say when a server goes down, you announce it on Twitter then thousands of people can follow you to find out when it is coming back up.

Why is it a Good Idea?

It mixes support and the new social web, plain and simple.  Web hosting is often seen as the old grandfather that listens to gangster hip-hop.  We are trying to be cool, but we always seem one step behind in the times.  It would also cut down on support requests, because customers and clients would eventually learn that any updates there are, will be posted to the Twitter account for the web host in question.

Why is it a Bad idea?

The negative impact in all of this is Twitter is probably down more than any web host out there.  This could cause mass panic if both a server was down, and Twitter was down at the same time.  Then, those who praised you for unique hosting support would be calling you up saying, “How could you rely on such a flaky service?”.  There are other Twitter-clones or Twitter-like services out there, but if you want to be where the people are - Twitter is where it is at.

My final thought on this is that it would be a generally good idea.  If you had problems with Twitter or the Twitter clones out there, you could always roll you own update service with WordPress and a unique set of themes and plugins.  For an example of that, see the Prologue plugin.  Web hosts need to think outside of the box, and this might be a good way to do just that.

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 the web hosting industry’s media rock star as my self-proclaimed title for now.

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?