Ever wanted to meet others who listen to the Web Hosting Show, to discuss the podcast, share links, debate who the greatest web host is, or share cookie recipes? If so, then you my friend need to go join the Web Hosting Show’s group on Facebook. 

Right now we are discussing the Web Hosting Show reaching #78 in the top 100 software how-to audio podcasts on iTunes, sharing our web site URLs, discussing who might be current hosting our own site and a lot more.  All that I ask you do is join, introduce yourself, and I hope this ends up delivering to you one more way to meet people inside the industry we are all interested in learning more about.

I wanted to kind of give this side-project a re-launching because I think there is a demand to want to know more about the hosting world – and with my fine audience here, we have a wide enough spectrum of beginners to experts that everybody should find something to learn from.  Join and say hi!

The New Web Hosting Show Logo!

I have been teasing this one on Twitter long enough.  Today is the day you all get to see the new logo for the Web Hosting Show web site and podcast.  This was designed by my good friend and Graphic Design Specialist, Sean Barton. 

Easier to Read Text!

I know a few of you have complained in the past about the previous text being too small to read, so I have bumped it up some so that you, my wonderful viewing and listening audience, can better enjoy this entire Web Hosting Show experience.

E-mail Subscriptions, Front and Center

You can now subscribe to the Web Hosting Show by e-mail on the top of every page on WebHostingShow.com.  Just fill in your e-mail address into the text box and hit “subscribe” or click this link.  Following our updates here could not get any more simple.

Login to Comment from Twitter or Facebook!

Thanks to Disqus, you can now login and comment via Facebook, Twitter or Disqus.com.  With this new system in place, the commenting system will be much more dynamic too – providing you with a few more features:

• Threaded comments are here, so you can reply to somebody else’s reply to help, give feedback or answer somebody else’s comment.
• More profile pictures with your comments.  If you add a comment with your Twitter handle, your Twitter profile picture will show up.  If you add a comment via Facebook, then your Facebook icon will show instead. 
• Send in video replies, and if you do so – I might post them on the next edition of the podcast!
• Subscribe to a comment thread by e-mail.

I hope you enjoy all of these new additions and upgrades, and I am sure there will be more to announce soon!  Also if there is something you’d like to see added to WebHostingShow.com be sure to let me know.  I would love to see you test out this new comment system I just put in place!

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 189!
Running Time: 11 minutes | File Size: 4.89 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode: (click a link to read about that segment!)

• A Web Host with No Uptime at All
• 10 Sources for Free Web Site Hosting
• One Host Stands Up to Torrent Killing IFPI
• Squarespace is an All in One Hosting Package

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

Largest Datacenter in the US to be Built in Texas – Dallas-based Capstar Commercial Real Estate Services is investing millions of dollars to redevelop a former telecommunications equipment plant in Mesquite, Texas into what it says will be the largest data center in the country, according to a report by the Dallas News.

Trivia Question – What “celestial based” web host calls Texas its home? (to find out the answer, be sure to download and listen to this week’s podcast!)

I hope you fully enjoy this week’s podcast. If you have any show feedback or suggestions be sure to leave a comment or drop me an e-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com.  Enjoy it, share it and listen again and again!

Are you searching for a web host that offers nothing when it comes to uptime?  Well, while many think they might be currently hosted on that host in question, I can say you are wrong.  Why? Because you are not hosted with No Uptime Hosting.

NoUptime.com promises you nothing at all.  For web hosting fans, this web site is really hilarious.  Anybody outside of the web hosting world though, probably will not understand what the fuss it all about.  Take their three plans for an example:

• Hosting Package 1 (the I’m-Poor plan)
• Hosting Package 2 (the Take-My-Money plan)
• Hosting Package 3 (the Resell-Our-Crap plan)

As they say, “We are constantly working to improve our server downtime.  Keeping you awake at night is our number one priority.” Oh, and you can’t forget their testimonials with such gems as, “I want my money back”.  How do you get your content to them?  FTP? No, that is so old school.  Here is how they suggest you send it:

Don’t like uploading your files via FTP? No problem! Send us your files on a floppy and we’ll upload it for you. It’s one of the many ways we do our best to accommodate your needs. Just remember, our floppy system does not accept Windows, Linux, or Mac floppies.

I could spend hours discussing this one great parody of a web site, but I will save you the time and just point you towards NoUptime.com.  It is a fun site for anybody who is in or has dealt with web hosting one on one.

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.

To give you a little more information about the key players here, the Pirate Bay, a torrent sharing web site, provides what you could call the “path” to be able to download copyrighted materials.  The IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) is the music industry’s lobby group who is doing some of their heavy handed grunt work when it comes to shutting down web sites like the Pirate Bay.

The new tactic here is that the IFPI are skipping over the web site owners and are now going directly to the web hosts who host the torrent web sites in question.  They want to get the web hosts on a charge of assisting copyright infringement, which is a decision that has yet to be appealed.

There is one web host who has yet to given into the demands of the IFPI.  The Swedish provider Portlane has filed a complaint in the Swedish Market Court.  Now true, sharing copyrighted materials might be wrong, I will leave that judgment call up to you.

What is to be admired here is a small guy standing up against the establishment, showing the IFPI and the world that we should be a society who serves the people’s best interest and not the best interest of the one with the biggest wallet.

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.

On today’s show we have The Planet’s General Manager of Storage and Data Protection, Rob Walters, to discuss cloud storage.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 188!
Running Time: 8 minutes | File Size: 3.60 MB

Here are some of the topics we cover in today’s interview:

• What is and what are the benefits of cloud storage?
• How is The Planet’s cloud storage business different?
• Why is creating the “shortest path” between clients and servers important?

There are five things customers should evaluate when choosing a cloud platform.

• Performance – It is important that you match the platform with the performance needs for your application.  Many cloud storage platforms only provide 2-3 Mb/sec, which is fine for most backup and archiving use cases, but is likely not sufficient for production data.  It is also important to run multiple tests and measure the variability between tests, as cloud storage platform performance can be inconsistent.
• Ease of integration – The ease of user access is critical to product adoption in web applications.  Most cloud storage products provide proprietary APIs for integration.  This means you will need to specifically develop for that cloud storage platform.  This makes integration more difficult and increases switching costs.  Check if the platform offers any standards-based integration software that allows access via CIFS, NFS, FTP or HTTP.
• Where you want your data – Most cloud products do not offer specific locations for data to reside.  In fact, these companies offer the data “in the cloud” as if “the cloud” were a location rather than an access medium.  While in many cases the physical location of data is unimportant, there are occasions when being able to select a location is beneficial.  For instance, if you are building a disaster recovery plan; working to reduce download times for a specific customer; or attempting to pass strict security audits, then where data resides is critical.
• Flexibility – One of the most appealing features of cloud storage is the flexibility of its on-demand design, which manifests itself in two primary traits: scalability and elasticity.  Most cloud storage products should free you from the task of capacity planning, hardware budgeting and upgrading.  Capacity is available on-demand, as required.  Watch out for commitments for minimum usage levels as these can negate this inherent benefit .  Cloud storage products should provide elasticity, with capacity that grows as your business requires, and scales back as soon as this excess capacity is no longer needed.
• Usage-based billing – Paying only for what you use is certainly appealing.  The primary aspects on which to judge the pricing of a cloud storage product should simply be: how much storage capacity you used and how much bandwidth was used to access your data.  Keep a sharp eye out for “hidden” fees, because in many use cases they can add up quickly to be as much or more than the primary elements of your bill.  “Hidden” fees to watch out for include: connect fees, account maintenance charges, and “puts” and “gets” charges.  Cloud platforms should offer simple and predictable monthly bills.

More Interesting Links from The Planet:

• The Planet’s Ever So Excellent Blog
• The Planet Provides Highest Performing Cloud Storage
• The Planet’s Storage Cloud Infrastructure Explained

For the second show in a row, we have the chance to talk with one of the big names in the web hosting game, so I hope you tune in to hear more about cloud storage and how The Planet is serving it up to you.  If you would like to come onto the show to talk to the entire hosting industry about what you do, how you host or anything else be sure to drop me a line at mitch@mitchkeeler.com.

Those questions, and many more, will be answered for you on this week’s edition of the Web Hosting Show.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 187!
Running Time: 5 minutes | File Size: 2.14 MB

Here are some of the questions we will cover in today’s interview:

• Why does Fasthosts centralize around reseller hosting?
• What is the biggest misconceptions about reseller hosting?
• What unique reseller hosting tools does Fasthosts provide?
• What is the history behind Fasthosts?
• Is reseller hosting a good way to make some money?

Also here are a few resources you might want to check out after listening to the interview:

• Fasthosts.com
• Fasthosts Reseller Tools

Thanks to Steve for joining us on today’s show. If you would like to come onto the show to talk to the entire hosting industry about what you do, how you host or anything else be sure to drop me a line at mitch@mitchkeeler.com.

Did Shared Hosting Kill Geocities?

In 2008, according to a survey by Compete.com, the domain geocities.com attracted at least 177 million visitors annually.  So with those numbers, how could they go wrong?  You can not argue the point that the lowering in price of shared hosting accounts made the Geocities hosting look less favorable.  Users could pay as low as $4 or $5 a month and get a lot more than they were getting from Geocities with a shared web hosting provider.  Free hosting might be totally obsolete these days.

Did MySpace or Facebook Kill Geocities?

Many are even saying that Geocities could have easily evolved into a Facebook or MySpace.  Looking back at the original Geocities, it was all about community and sharing your pages with others.  This is much like it is today, except badly designed free sites have been replaced with goofy zombie versus pirates or mafia wars games.

Did Yahoo! Kill Geocities?

In 2001, Yahoo decided to start offering a “premium” version of the Geocities product.  To give users something to pay for and upgrade to, they had to turn on the free hosting service.  This is when they started to limit the monthly data transfer or bandwidth to the free Geocities users.  Following that, Geocities was just another free hosting service.  Nothing more.

Yahoo!’s overall feeling towards the Geocities free users was distain and disgust.  They failed to realize or even try to turn the direction on the proverbial Titanic in front of them.  Could Yahoo! of saved Geocities?  Maybe they could have or possibly they could have killed it off sooner than now.  However, at least then we would be left with a general feeling they at least tried.

Be sure to catch the rest of our Geocities Tribute on Podcast 186 of the Web Hosting Show!

Free Hosting – Two free web site elders that might someday share the same fate as Geocities are still around.  Both Angelfire and Tripod are still around.  Here are a few more to choose from:

• 50Megs.com – Offers users 50 MB of disk space to host their files.
• Bravenet.com – Also offers 50 MB of disk space and 1.5 GB of bandwidth.
• 110MB.com – You get 110 MB of disk space with them (who would have guessed?) and 10 GB of bandwidth for free.

Specialized Hosting – For those people wanting to host their own blog, you might look into wordpress.com and their free blog hosting service.  If you want to get started with a forum, check out freeforums.org.

Shared Hosting – For those people moving from Geocities to another location, it might also be time to look into shared hosting plans.  There are many low-cost web hosting plans out there to choose from, and they will give you much more disk space, bandwidth and resources to work with.

One more place to check out for free hosting suggestions would be TheFreeSite.com.  Hey have a lot of suggestions when it comes to free web site hosting.

Have a free favorite host you would like to plug?  Leave a comment!

BONUS! Here are a few other Geocities alternatives:

• Jimdo has a special deal for Geocities users!
• Lunarpages has a special coupon to use too!

If you find any more, let me know!

Be sure to catch the rest of our Geocities Tribute on Podcast 186 of the Web Hosting Show!

Why Should We Save Geocities?

The Archive Team’s goal is to save as much of Geocities as they can before Yahoo! pulls it down later this year.  Think of what they want to do as a time capsule of the Web from the mid 1990’s.  At the time, some of these web sites were the best the world had to offer, and some might have been the worst.  I have a feeling those who are against the idea of saving Geocities, probably have a web site dedicated to ALF somewhere in there they don’t want the world to see.

When it comes to copyright concerns, the idea isn’t to take credit or resell the content.  At this time there are no plans for releasing the data, but in the future it might be rolled out for the world to look back upon.

How can you help?  Be sure to check out the Archive Team’s FAQ.

Is Geocities worth saving? Well, that is a point up for debate.  Sure, there might not be any real value to the content that is being archived, however others may argue that any and all historical content must be saved so we can learn from our past mistakes, or laugh at them.

Be sure to catch the rest of our Geocities Tribute on Podcast 186 of the Web Hosting Show!

How Geocities Got Started

In late 1994, a small web hosting service was founded with the name Beverly Hills Internet.  Back then, users would select a virtual “city” where they wanted their web site to categorized under.  For example, you had Area 51 for science fiction web sites, or Baja for SUV and adventure travel web sites.

Changing the Name to Geocities

As they grew in size and popularity, they knew they had to change the name.  They were getting thousands of sign ups a day and getting over six million monthly page views.  So in December of 1995, they officially changed the name from Beverly Hills Internet to Geocities.

Geocities continued to grow, and by June of 1997 they were the fifth most popular web site on the Web.  Through 1997 and 1998 Geocities introduced advertising on hosting client’s pages to hopefully make the product more profitable.

The Watermark Heard Around the World

What will be remembered as a footnote in brand awareness and web hosting, in June of 1998 Geocities introduced a watermark on user web pages.  Users were upset, because they felt that the JavaScript powered logo interfered with their web site design.

Yahoo! Takes Over Geocities

The company went public in 1998, with a listing on the NASDAQ.  At the peak of the dot-com bubble, a deal was struck.  Yahoo purchased Geocities for $3.57 billion.  Many might say Yahoo!’s first move with this new project under their belt, might have been the worst.  In 1999, Yahoo! alienated many of the Geocities fan base by including in its terms of service that Yahoo owned all of the hosted content, including pictures and any other media uploaded.  Yahoo! did reverse the decision.

As far as innovation goes, Yahoo! didn’t do much with the Geocities brand after that point.  That leads us to April 2009, where Yahoo! announced Geocities would be closing later in 2009.

Be sure to catch the rest of our Geocities Tribute on Podcast 186 of the Web Hosting Show!

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 186!
Running Time: 13 minutes | File Size: 5.58 MB

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

• A History Lesson in Geocities
• Saving Geocities for Future Generations
• Alternatives to Geocities
• What Can Be Learned from Geocities

Trivia Question – How many years old is Geocities?(to find out the answer, be sure to download and listen to this week’s podcast!)

Feel free to share your favorite (or maybe not so favorite) Geocities memories in the comments!

Now how is this going to work?  From their press release:

Attendees will have access to vendors, sponsors, exhibit booths, and other web hosting enthusiasts through live chat.  There is no software to install.  Attendees log in from their computer and listen to the sessions directly, pick-up a chat, read about exhibitor’s product and services information and network – all through the live chat.  Representatives will be available via live chat to answer questions and provide further information.

If you are interested in reserving your spot, you can do so free here.  Now I haven’t been contacted by anybody involved yet, so that is pretty much all the details I know, however I do have to say it is nice to see people trying to something new out there, and the more we can all share and learn from each other the better the web hosting industry will be.

Web Hosting + Coupon = Win for Everybody!

This is a secret I have been sharing for a number of years, and now I want to let you know.  Search for them.  That’s right, any web host worth his disk space will have coupons and rebates out there on the Web.  All you have to do is search for the web hosting in question, plus the word “coupon” or “rebate”.

For example, let say I search for Random Fake Web Hosting Company #5 and coupon.  Via Google, I find a page that says I can get $50 off if I sign up with the coupon code “50OFF”.  Now, all I need to do is go to Random Fake Web Hosting Company #5’s web site and try the coupon out.  If it works, I just saved $50, if not – then I’ll go back out to the search results to find the next best deal.

Ok, so I am sure some of you might be a little disappointed with this tip, however you would be amazed by how overlooked it really is.

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.

How Does CopyGator Work?

The service aggregates data from other two million blog feeds, and parses over a half million blog posts in a day.  The servers then crunch the data and are able to evaluate if one post resembles another post just a little too much.  Once you sign up, you can get notices by RSS feed, or e-mail when somebody is using your content without your permission.  The service is simply fast, simple and pretty darn accurate, to boot.

You can see an example report I got for webhostingshow.com here:

• webhostingshow.com – Who’s republishing webhostingshow.com content?

When you compare the blog posts from within CopyGator, you get a percentage score on how likely it is they copied you.  For anybody who wants to protect their content online, CopyGator is a web site you just have to save to your bookmarks.  For another alternative to web site plagiarism searching, also be sure to check out Copyscape.com. It also does a good job at catching online content thieves.

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:

• Google states that their engine takes “nofollow” literally and does not “follow” the link at all. However, experiments conducted by SEOs show conflicting results. These studies reveal that Google does follow the link, but does not index the linked-to page, unless it was in Google’s index already for other reasons (such as other, non-nofollow links that point to the page).
• Yahoo! “follows it”, but excludes it from their ranking calculation.
• MSN Search respects “nofollow” as regards not counting the link in their ranking, but it is not proven whether or not MSN follows the link.
• Ask.com ignores the attribute altogether.

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.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 185!
Running Time: 13 minutes | File Size: 5.94 MB

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!

This is a great ‘bit of new for hosting customers who can have an easier one stop shop where they can get all their web site and web hosting tools.  It also offers a perk to web hosting companies, cause they can draw people in by offering these services. Google is offering web hosts the ability to have quick and easy access to Google Webmaster Tools, Google custom and site search, and Google AdSense.

• Google Webmaster Tools – helps customers understand site traffic and diagnoses potential problems by giving the user information on how Google crawls their web sites.
• Google Site and Custom Search – helps customers improve user retention and conversions by customizing the search experience on their sites.
• Google AdSense – allows customers to provide relevant ads with search results and contextual ads to match their content.

The perks for the web hosts are the ability to integrate these Google tools into their control panel, and display a Google badge to generate referral fees.  To find a list of web hosts providing the service, check out their partner success stories. Some of the web hosts included are Dot5Hosting, eHost, FatCow, PowWeb, DomainHost and more.

I would highly suggest any web host interested, go check out the Google Services for Web Sites page and sign up to give your customers an easy, one-stop access to Google’s services for web sites.

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.

Getting Ahead of the Web Hosting Support Curve

The first bit of advice I have for you is to provide the support, before it is even asked for.  This preemptive strike will cut down on your quantity of customers coming and looking for a answer.  Providing proactive support can be achieved a number of different ways.  Two of the ways I like the most are posting tutorials and articles explaining how to tackle anything you might need when it comes to your web hosting business and the second would be to send out announcements and updates when big changes come.

Provide Tutorials and FAQs – Many web hosts have a help site or tutorial database where they can cover some of the most frequently asked questions.  This will cut down on your ticket time, because the answer is already out there.

Get Ahead of Big Changes with Announcements and Updates – Now, with getting ahead of the curve with big changes, like a server going down or something else to that effect, make sure you announce as much information as you can about the problem, and be there with your customer to give updates.  No matter how small they are, you customers will appreciate it.  Things you should be telling your customer include ongoing maintenance, advance notice of maintenance,  or new features.

Get to the Point, but Give All the Details

No matter if you are answering a ticket desk or working the phone system, you have to realize people (for the most part) don’t want to talk to you.  It is nothing against you personally, people (in general) already feel like they are wasting time when they reach the point of reaching out to a support team for help.  So remember to get to the point, but give all the details you can.

Don’t waste time, if you don’t need a ‘bit of information, don’t ask for it.  Try your best to troubleshoot the issue, find out all the information you need to gather to get the issue fixed or to find out more, and then get that response sent out.  Also, do your best to stay kind, no matter how big of a jerk the customer is.  You should consider yourself the web hosting world’s version of Ghandi or Mother Teresa at all times.

Keep those response times as low as possible, so you can keep your work load light, and spend more time with the customers who need your attention.

I have really just scratched the surface, but hopefully this will help to inspire somebody to give a little more when it comes to web hosting support.  Now this one is aimed all of of those out there who give the support, not the ones that receive it.  However, when push comes to shove I think we all are responsible for supporting our projects, businesses or jobs so hopefully the lessons learned here will be something everyone can be educated from.

If you have spent any time working with WordPress, and trying to customize it to make it your own, you know that finding the right tag for the right job is a pain at times.  WPLookup.com allows you to quickly find Wordpress Codex documentation for a function or template tag.

Once you search there, the web site will take your query and send you to the corresponding codex documentation page on the topic you searched for.

You can also add the search to your browser:

• Add WPLookup Search to Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer

I am looking forward to seeing what this tool will bring to the WordPress development world in the future.  If you need a way to find functions and template tags fast in WordPress, WPLookup is the place to start searching.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 184!
Running Time: 14 minutes | File Size: 6.16 MB

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

• Make Your Hosting Support Better
• Find Special WordPress Tags Faster
• Become a Better Web Hosting Client
• Google Offers Services to Hosting Clients

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• Web Hosting Talk was Hacked!
• DemoWolf Tutorial Updates and Sale!
• Surpass Launches Plan for Web Developers

Trivia Question – What year did cPanel first start? (to find out the answer, be sure to download and listen to this week’s podcast!)

Now I am not going to get all touchy-feely Dr. Phil on you here, I am just going to tell both the web hosts and the web hosting clients what they need to know to make the working relationship between them even better. So lay down on that couch over there, and let me know how your feeling.

On today’s show I am going to speak with Aplus.net’s CEO Phillip Spencer on what exactly they do and his own views on the web hosting world.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 183!
Running Time: 6 minutes | File Size: 2.55 MB

Here are some of the questions we will cover in today’s interview:

• What is Aplus.net and how long have you been around the hosting industry?
• For those who have not been to your web site, this question might be a little out of the blue, however – who is Jeff?
• Looking back at the past few years, in what ways do you
  see the hosting industry changing?
• You also have a blog. As one of the few hosts that do this, do you feel it has hurt or helped your business?
• If somebody out there is looking for a web host, could you give me a quick reason why they should turn to Aplus.net?

Also here are a few resources you might want to check out after listening to the interview:

• Aplus.net’s Official Web Site
• Aplus.net’s Blog

Many thanks to Phillip for being on today’s show. If you would like to come on and speak to the entire web hosting industry, feel free to contact me at mitch@mitchkeeler.com.

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. 

Instead of doing a weekly show, like we have now for the past four years, the main podcast will change to a production time of ever other week.  So this will roughly average two shows per month, instead of four.

Now why make the change?  The first and most important reason is so that I can be sure I am giving myself enough time to get a quality show together.  Slapping things together last minute, and trying to hurry up and get it done is no fun.  The idea is by giving myself a two week window of production, instead of just one, I can spread out the workload on myself a little more.

Who knows, this might even launch or inspire some more unique content between the podcast episodes.  I am always open to suggestions!

This site and podcast is very much still a fun side project for me.  The only money I make off of it, is when you click the ads on the web site.  Of course, four years ago I was unemployed and only had two web sites to work on.  These days I am all over place with projects, work, and more.

So if things change a little in the weeks to come, don’t be scared – it is just an evolutionary track to make sure that even after four years we can keep this podcast and web site an entertaining and informative web site for everyone (web hosts and webmasters alike) to enjoy.

Need more?  I will be posting episode three very soon! I really hope PEER1 keeps this up, it is probably the most entertaining web hosting video series I have seen.

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.