It was the best of hosts, it was the worst of hosts
It was the best of hosts, it was the worst of hosts
When looking for a Web host, one of the first questions to ask yourself is whether you look for a Quality (and somewhat costly) host, or whether you opt for the budget option. Today, we’ll take a look at both ends of the spectrum and find out that although it may take a lot of digging, there’s a good chance of finding a diamond in the rough.Web Hosting: Which is the Host with the Most?So you want to publish a web site do you? Welcome to the club. These days it seems that almost everyone has a web site of some kind, and thousands more continue to be launched every day. It’s challenging enough to design a site and fill it with interesting content, but when all is said and done another challenge still remains – where to host it?
A popular choice for newbie webmasters, and even experienced ones, is to secure a free hosting plan with a company such as Yahoo! Geocities, Tripod or Angelfire. While these are easy to setup and free of charge, they do have limitations. Most free hosts don’t offer all the nice features that paid hosts do such as FTP access, CGI-BIN, or your own personal domain name. Instead you’re stuck with minimal features and a generic URL such as www.freewebhost.com/marcswebsite. This somewhat limits your web site‘s potential. Most free hosts also require you to run banners or pop-up ads on your web site to make it worth their while – these banners and pop-ups can obstruct the view of your web page and ultimately annoy visitors and drive them away. Lastly, most free hosts have a daily bandwidth limit that is very small, so if you do get a lot of traffic you’ll most likely exceed the allotted bandwidth and your site will be temporarily disabled. Overall I would recommend free web hosts for people that are new to web hosting and want to get a feel for how it works. I’d also recommend them for web sites that are personal in nature (such as an online journal) as well as web sites that don’t plan to generate any revenue. Free web hosts are a great stepping stone to paid web hosts – I myself starting building web sites 4 years ago using free hosts, and today I run several high traffic web sites that are hosted on paid web hosting plans.
Now it’s time to get into the good stuff – paid web hosting. Web hosting companies that charge money for their services are plentiful on the Internet, and feature a wide array of hosting packages at various price points. First we begin with so called “budget” web hosts, who claim to offer you the world for only $1 per month. Having used numerous such companies I feel I must tell you to proceed with caution here, as these companies aren’t all that they are cracked up to be. Many claim to offer 24/7 e-mail support, which in my experience turned out to be 0/0 e-mail support. My e-mails were either never answered or answered a week after I sent them. Even when I got a response it was generic in nature and completely unhelpful. Also, expect frequent outages with these budget web hosts as they rarely even have their own web servers – often they are reselling space on someone else’s web servers over which they have no control. One budget web host I used went down unexpectedly for 6 days, and they didn‘t even bother to notify their customers. As a result, my web site was down for 6 days and I lost most of my visitors as well as my hard-earned search engine rankings. Lesson learned: if the reliability and success of your web site is important to you, budget web hosting might not be the answer. However, this is not to say that all budget web hosts are bad – 1dollarhosting.com is one of the leaders in the budget web hosting arena and has quite a good reputation.
It was the best of hosts, it was the worst of hosts – Mid-Range and Above
The next type of paid web host is what I refer to as a “mid-range” web host, meaning that they offer prices and service that will satisfy the majority of web sites out there. Mid-range web hosts like PowWeb, Your-Site.com and iPowerWeb offer packages ranging from $5 to $8 per month and provide the tools that most webmasters will need to run a web site, such as: CGI-BIN, tons of e-mail addresses, FTP support, visitor statistics and more. These hosts do have monthly bandwidth limits, but the limits are quite high, and most web sites will never reach them. However, if your web site features hundreds of file downloads and gets decent traffic you may be shocked at how soon you’ll reach those bandwidth limits. When you do, your site may be temporarily shut down or you’ll have to pay bandwidth overage charges, which can get pricey. Overall though, mid-range web hosts will be satisfactory for 90% of the web sites out there, and generally offer excellent uptime/reliability. In fact, many web-based businesses are successfully run using a mid-range web host. However, as mentioned previously, web sites that offer large files for download or sites that get a huge amount of traffic may find that a mid-range host doesn’t quite suit their needs. These types of web sites may require “high-end” web hosting solutions, the next topic in our discussion.
High-end web hosts typically service web sites that are extremely popular, have a high amount of traffic, and/or require pretty much 100% uptime. Most businesses rely on high-end web hosts to host their web sites. Rackspace.com is an example of a well known high-end web hosting company. Pricing for high-end hosts varies, but typically runs from about $50 per month to several hundred dollars per month. Many high-end hosts give you your own dedicated server (which they support) that is reserved just for you and your web site. The mid-range hosts I discussed earlier typically host many different web sites on the same server – this is known as “shared” hosting. High-end web hosts offer stellar reliability, bandwidth, and just about every tool you’ll ever need to run a successful web site. Another feature that some high-end web hosts provide is “co-location” hosting. In this scenario, YOU configure and provide the web server, but you get to plug it into their data center/network. This can be very nice because their data center usually has a fiber-optic connection directly to the Internet, offering blazing bandwidth and stellar reliability. People who run web-based businesses or extremely popular, high traffic web sites are good candidates for high-end web hosting.
Hopefully this brief overview gives you a good picture of the various types of web hosts that exist, and which one might be right for you. When you begin your search for a web host, always keep in mind the old adage “You get what you pay for” because it really does hold true in this case. Before you make the commitment to host a web site be sure to take some time and analyze what you want out of the web site, and decide which factors are most important to its success. Answering these questions will get you many steps closer to choosing the web host that’s right for you.
Marc Eberhart is an IT Project Manager, webmaster, and all-around Internet junkie. His web site http://www.webhostingdiscounts.net/ offers visitors 40% off web hosting plans with top-rated hosting companies.
It was the best of hosts, it was the worst of hosts – Budget Hosting: Are they All Created Equal?
Choosing a budget web hosting company can be overwhelming. In fact, choosing any web hosting company can be a challenge due, in large part, to the fact that there are so many of them. Do a search for “web hosting” with the quotes around the keywords on Google, and it’ll return over 5 million documents! That doesn’t mean there are 5 million web hosting providers but there very well could be at least 1 million! That’s a lot of web hosts. How can you choose one that meets your need?
What is Budget web hosting anyway?Budget web hosting is generally defined as any hosting service that is below $10 per month. The budget comes from the low price. Now, most companies in the budget web hosting category only offer one year plans. Most budget web hosting companies however, will quote you the monthly fee you would pay if you divided the annual fee by 12 months. Keep that in mind when you are comparing one company with another. The other thing to look out for is the setup fee. Do they charge you a setup fee to get started?
Evaluate your general impression of the company.The first place to start evaluating budget web hosting companies is their front page. Does their website give you a sense that they are professional? Is it easy to find all of the information you need? Take a look at their contact information. Do they list a physical address, an email address and a phone number to contact them? If they don’t provide any contact details, that has to throw up a red flag. If you run into problems setting up your website, and you have no proper contact information, how are you going to get service from that company?
It was the best of hosts, it was the worst of hosts – Services
Do they have a toll free support number?
Does the budget web hosting company provide a toll free number for you to contact them? If they are based in Atlanta, Georgia and you are in Seattle, Washington, you don’t want to be paying long distance to them if you need to get them on the phone about a concern you have. A toll free number also speaks to their willingness to deal openly and honestly with their customers.
What kind of guarantee do they offer?Choose a budget web hosting company that offers a good guarantee. Most budget web hosting companies don’t openly publish their satisfaction guarantees. If you have to look in their terms and services agreement to find out where they stand with regard to giving you back your money if you are not satisfied, you should look elsewhere.
What is the uptime guarantee of the site in question?Uptime guarantee refers to the amount of time the server is live and serving your web pages. An uptime guarantee of 99% means that the host guarantees that their servers will be up and operational 99% of the time. Over the course of one year, 99% uptime would represent a downtime (the one percent) of around 87 hours in a year or an average of 7 hours per month. An uptime of 99.9% would involve only 8 hours of downtime for the entire year.
What kind of after sale support can you expect?While there are many other factors you could consider, the final one I will deal with is after sale support. What kind of resources do they make available for you. Find out if the budget web hosting company offers free scripts. Do they have any marketing tools they can make available to you? What kind of support for setting up your account can you expect from the budget web hosting company? All of these factors must be taken into consideration.
Just because a company offers a budget web hosting service, doesn’t mean you necessarily have to compromise on features, quality or service. All three will only be found, however, if you make sure to do your homework to find a budget web hosting company that is a good fit for you.
This article was written by Joe Duchesne, president of http://www.yowling.com/, a budget web hosting company that specializes in helping online business owners increase their website traffic. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely.
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It was the best of hosts, it was the worst of hosts
Web Hosting Flavors: The Famous 4
Web Hosting Flavors: The Famous 4
Shared, virtual private server, dedicated, and co-located–which flavor of Web hosting is right for you? Find out the pros and cons of each, and whether you’re paying too much for what you really need.It might be easier to count the number of flavors one can find in ice creams than to count the different web hosting flavors. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but going by the current trend it does not seem far from reality.
Just for starters, ”Free Hosting, Shared Hosting, Semi-Dedicated Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, Virtual Private Server(VPS) Hosting, Managed Hosting, Budget Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Custom Hosting” and so on is what we see upon doing a simple search for hosting on the Web. Though the search shows a number of results referring to different flavors of web hosting, in essence they all are variations of four main flavors: the famous four (Shared, VPS, Dedicated, and Co-located).
This article explains the concept behind the famous four as well as the benefits of selecting one over another.
Look inside the box – It’s all about packaging
Looking down at a hosting package from 1024 feet, all that is seen is a datacenter housing the servers that hosts your information. However, the difference is more visible when looked at from a closer range.
Not only do we see a difference in access speeds and server configurations, but we also see a difference in the way these two variables, along with other offerings are bundled and packaged.
Web Hosting Flavors: The Famous 4 – Shared Hosting
What is it?: Sometimes referred as Virtual Hosting, “Shared Hosting” offers the customer a fixed allocation of disk space (data storage capacity) on a server as well as fixed bandwidth (data transfer capacity). This type of service allows a customer to leverage all the features and services that a dedicated server offers at a fraction of cost, and does not involve any server administration overhead.
Pros: Freedom from maintaining the server hardware as well as managing the server security and administration. Complete technical support is usually included with these packages.
Cons: Does not offer root (administrative) access to the server and hence access to the core functions is limited. Resources are shared by multiple sites hosted on the same server. A technical problem in one of the sites owned by a different client on a shared server may cause a system wide crash, bringing down all the other sites. Note that in case of a shared hosting, a single client does not own the server.
For whom?: This is the choice for hosting low-key sites that do not hog up server resources. Can also be used by someone requiring just a personal email address like mail@CompanyorPersonalName.com
Web Hosting Flavors: The Famous 4 – VPS Hosting
What is it?: Another form of virtual hosting is Virtual Private Server(VPS) aka Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS), which creates several logical/virtual servers on a single physical server using software. The major difference in shared and VPS hosting is how the resources are shared. Each virtual server created this way performs as if it were an independent physical server and eliminates the disadvantages of shared hosting.
Pros: Unlike shared hosting, since each virtual server in VPS hosting is partitioned from other virtual servers, a technical problem in a site hosted in one partition does not bring down the entire server. Also, in most cases each VPS account receives a fixed allocation of CPU resources and disallows one account from hogging up the entire system resources. Each VPS account comes with a shell access and can also have its own security policies.
Cons: “Overhead.” Since each VPS account runs applications within its own allocated space and resources, extra memory is required to cover the overhead. Also, if the VPS service is not managed by the provider, the client is required to know how to configure and manage different applications and services.
For Whom?: Excellent choice for someone looking beyond a shared hosting package, but is not ready yet for a dedicated server.
Web Hosting Flavors: The Famous 4 – Dedicated Hosting
What is it?: A complete contrast from virtual/shared hosting, this hosting dedicates a server and all its resources for hosting the sites of choice by the customer. Though this type of service offers complete control over the the system and its resources, it usually requires the customer to undertake the administration on their own. The alternative to this is “Managed” dedicated hosting, wherein the provider “manages” the dedicated server on behalf of the customer.
Pros: Complete flexibility with respect to configuring the dedicated server. Dedicated resources and fewer sites implies low load on the server and hence fast loading sites.
Cons: “$$$.” It is all about cost. Dedicated packages usually cost more than shared hosting because the entire resources on the server are dedicated to one client. Unlike shared hosting, with dedicated hosting the customers are pretty much on their own with respect to system administration unless a “managed” service is purchased from the provider.
For Whom?: Good choice for hosting high traffic and high profile eCommerce sites. Also a good choice for clients looking to install third party applications since this package provides complete control over the server.
Web Hosting Flavors: The Famous 4 – Co-location
What is it?: “Ownership.” Colocation is all about placing something that you own (a server of your choice in this context) at a place where it can be hooked up to the Internet. (For example, with an ISP or at a data center (DC) multi-homed to the backbones.)
Pros: Ownership of the physical server. Also, it offers mobility. To switch providers, simply move the server to a different place; there’s no hassles with backups and restores.
Cons: Resposibility and accountability. In the case of colocated hosting, the provider is not responsible and cannot be accountable for any hardware failures. Server administration is the responsibility of the customer, and everything has a price.
For Whom?: Right choice for power and resource hungry sites requiring custom hardware or software configurations, clustering and load-balancing and other advanced functionality.
The Others
All other kinds of hosting simply differ in the way the above four flavors and mixed and matched to market and sell.
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Web Hosting Flavors: The Famous 4
Use Add-On Domains to Optimize Your Web Hosting Space
Use Add-On Domains to Optimize Your Web Hosting Space
Herman Drost addresses add-on domains and their benefits by asking questions such as: Is it possible to host two or more sites with two or more domains on the same hosting account? You may want to register and market another domain name but don’t want to pay for another hosting account. The best solution is to create an add-on domain.Is it possible to host two or more sites with two or more domains on the same hosting account? You may want to register and market another domain name but don’t want to pay for another hosting account. The best solution is to create an add-on domain.
What is an add-on domain?
An add-on domain is a new domain that is added on top of your main domain. It creates a sub directory within your main web hosting directory but can show a different web site. The add-on domain collects the information from the sub domain directory using the same space and bandwidth as your main account, however it won’t have its own cpanel (web hosting manager).
Add-on domain benefits
- Create multiple domains/websites on the same web hosting
account. - Save money and web space by using one hosting account
instead of several hosting accounts. - The add-on domain shares all the same resources (disk space,
bandwidth…) with your main site. - The add-on domain has its own FTP manager, site stats,
cgi-bin which is created automatically. - Upload all pages, images, scripts, forums etc to your
add-on domain directory. - Access your add-on domain using several web site addresses
i.e.http://www.SiteB.com,
http://www.SiteB.SiteA.com
http://www.SiteA.com/SiteB
- Promote several web sites within one hosting account with
their own set of keywords.
Use Add-On Domains to Optimize Your Web Hosting Space – How to Create an add-on Domain
How to Create an add-on Domain
1. Register your new add-on domain with a domain name
registrar.
2. Point the DNS (domain name sever) information of your new add-on domain to the same DNS of your web host.
3. Allow 24-48 hours for the DNS to propagate over the Net before uploading your files.
4. Log in to your cpanel (web hosting manager) and scroll to add-on domains.
5. Fill in these three fields:
New Domain Name: SiteB.com (Do not put any http:// or www)
Username/directory/subdomainName: SiteB (Enter ‘SiteB ‘ by itself. Do not put any ‘.com’ or ‘www’)
Password: 12345
(Enter any password you wish.)
6. Click the ‘Add Domain’ button. It takes a couple of
minutes for the system to set-up an add-on domain name.
7. Once it completes, your add-on domain name will be ready.
You can then log into your account and you should see a sub
folder called /SiteB inside of your public_html folder.
Simply upload index pages, images and any other information
there.
Use Add-On Domains to Optimize Your Web Hosting Space – An Example of an Add-on Domain
Here is an example of how to create an add-on domain:
Let’s say you primary domain is http://www.SiteA.com
You add an add-on domain named: http://www.SiteB.com
through the cpanel.
Now you can access it via:
http://www.SiteB.com or
http://www.SiteB.SiteA.com/ or
http://www.SiteA.com/SiteB/
You can now set-up email for the add-on domain as if it was a separate site i.e. bubba@SiteB.com with mail servers as mail.SiteB.com
Tips: When searching for a web hosting service, be sure to check if they allow add-on domains. This will give you far more flexibility to utilize your web hosting space should you need to create add-on domains in the future.
Be sure to check how much web space you have left for your main hosting account before you create an add-on domain. Add-on domains utilize the same web space as your main hosting account.
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Know How Much Hosting Space and Bandwidth You Need
Know How Much Hosting Space and Bandwidth You Need
Certified Internet Webmaster Herman Drost provides an informative approach to assessing the size of your site so you don’t pay for more hosting than you need.How Much Hosting Space Do You Need?
Many web hosts try to sell you a large amount of web hosting space that then costs you a lot each month. However, you may not need this much space. Have you ever calculated just how much disc space (MB) your web site uses? Do you really need an expensive hosting solution for your web site?
For my first web site, I purchased 20mb of disc space and wondered if this would be enough as I added pages to it. Well, recently I checked the size of this site which had grown to over 20 pages. To my surprise the size was only 3,269KB. This means it only uses a little over 3Mb of disk space.
Most of my friends’ sites also only use 2-3Mb. Therefore it is not necessary to purchase a large amount of space for a small site (if 20 pages = 3Mb, then 20Mb = 140 pages approx). Are you paying TOO much for the actual space you need?
How Do You Calculate the File Size of Your Web Site?
1. First you need to understand how file size is measured. The smallest unit on a computer is a bit. One bit is one electronic on or off pulse. 8 bits strung together make one byte. One byte of information can put a letter, such as “B” on your screen.
If you put 1024 bytes together and then you have one unit of information called a kilobyte. Put 1024 kilobytes together and you have a megabyte. (Most floppy disks hold around 1.4 megabytes of information). Most of your graphics and web pages are measured in bytes or kilobytes.
2. To determine your total site file size, right click on the root folder where your web site is housed – this will not only give you the total site size but also how many files and folders are contained in your site.
3. If you use an editor, such as FrontPage, go to the reports view, click on the site summary and you will get a reading of the total site file size. In Dreamweaver, just use the method in No 2.
Prepare to Expand Your Hosting Plan
You may want to add pages, graphics, features eg scripts, databases etc., to your site in the future. Begin with a small hosting plan at first (even 5mb is enough to start out with), and then expand it as you add new features.
Check with your web host, if you can easily upgrade your hosting plan as you grow your site. You don’t want to go through the hassle of changing hosts every few months.
Once you have determined your total site file size, check what hosting plan you have purchased and how much disc space has been allocated for your site. If you are only using 3mb of disc space but are paying for 100mb, then you may want to switch hosting plans and save yourself a ton of money each year.
Know How Much Hosting Space and Bandwidth You Need – How to Reduce Web Hosting Bandwidth
You just received a higher than normal monthly bill on your credit card for web hosting. Your hosting company explains that you exceeded your monthly minimum for “bandwidth usage” and suggests reducing the size of your web site files.
- What is bandwidth usage?
- What does bandwidth mean?
- How much bandwidth do you need?
- How can you reduce bandwidth usage?
Let’s discuss each of these topics in more depth.
What is “bandwidth usage?”
This refers to the total amount of information that has been served to your web site visitors each month. Every file on your Web site has a specific size (e.g. 22K). Every time a visitor downloads that file, your bandwidth usage goes up by that amount.
The larger the file, the higher the bandwidth usage when it is downloaded. The more traffic to your site, the more bandwidth you will use.
Know How Much Hosting Space and Bandwidth You Need – Defining Bandwidth
What Does “Bandwidth” Mean?
Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time. The “data transfer rate” is the speed with which data can be transmitted from one device to another. Data rates are often measured in megabits (million bits) or megabytes (million bytes) per second. These are usually abbreviated as Mbps and Mbps, respectively.
Bits and Bytes
8 bits = 1 byte
1,024 bytes = 1 kilobyte (Kb)
1,024 kilobytes (Kb) = 1 megabyte (mb or meg)
1,024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte (gb or gig)
How Much Bandwidth Do I Need?
To determine how much bandwidth you need, estimate the file size of each web page, and then multiply it by the number of pages on your web site.
Multiply this figure by the number of the number of page views you expect per month from your site.
For example, if your web page consists of two 15Kb images and 3Kb of html, you would have 33Kb of data for that page. Now multiply this by the number of page views you expect to have per month (e.g. 100,000 per month). This would mean 3.3Gb of data needs to be transferred per month for that page.
Now recalculate this number for each page, and you’ll know approximately how much bandwidth your entire site requires.
Know How Much Hosting Space and Bandwidth You Need – How Can You Reduce Bandwidth Usage?
The easy way is to reduce the size of the files on your site, particularly images and other graphics. For example, you have a large image (i.e. 200KB) on your web page that is downloaded by each visitor every time the page is requested. If you reduce this image to 20KB or remove it altogether, it will dramatically cut your bandwidth usage. It will also speed up your site’s performance.
For more information on optimizing images for the Web, read my article, “Preparing Images for Your Web Site”.
Web Sites that have MP3s to download, movies, music playing in the background and large images, will obviously have a higher bandwidth. Large web sites or sites that expect a lot of traffic will also use a lot.
If your site has mainly HTML pages and small images, your bandwidth will not be that high.
Bandwidth Tools
Monitoring bandwidth
http://www.utoronto.ca/ucres/netup.htm
Web Page Checker
http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/page_size.cgi
Tuning up your Web Site
http://websitegarage.netscape.com/
Bandwidth Tips
If you make changes to your site by adding more files and/or web pages, recalculate your web site file size.
Estimate how many visitors will be accessing your web pages over the next few months.
Recalculate the bandwidth usage for your site. You may need more web space and bandwidth for your site to function effectively.
Check with your web hosting company to upgrade your hosting plan.
Conclusion
Now you can avoid the shock of exceeding your monthly bandwidth usage and paying higher hosting fees. You are now ready to receive more traffic to your site and therefore make more sales.
Copyright 2002 Herman Drost
Herman Drost is a Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of iSiteBuild.com Web Site Design and Low Cost Hosting
(http://www.isitebuild.com)
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Know How Much Hosting Space and Bandwidth You Need
I’ve Got 99 Problems, but a Host Ain’t One
I’ve Got 99 Problems, but a Host Ain’t One
Check out all the features a web hosters offers to make sure they really work. Tips here from Ian Felton include keeping control of your domain name and verifying their email capabilities. Oh, yeah, and he makes a suggestion related to insanity that you might want to check out too.At this point in the web hosting business, it’s a buyer’s market. With hundreds of people running hosting businesses out of their basements, offering the same services as bigger companies at a fraction of the cost, most businesses can have even a high-trafficked site hosted for under $100 a year.
To be competitive, a hosting business must offer a large amount of storage space (usually around a gig) and plenty of bandwidth. In addition, Perl, PHP and MySQL are almost the industry standard installations on commercial web farm servers. If a web host doesn’t provide the general features: control panel, databases, statistics, SSH at least 100 email addresses and sub-domains, they are below standard.
The good news is that there are hundreds of companies offering all of the above and more for next to nothing. However, to get into a situation that will actually work out over the period of time in the contract, a savvy web host customer should do several things and ask several questions to the sales rep before handing over the plastic. Even though on the surface these companies appear to be alike, there are vast discrepancies in the philosophies that actually run these companies, and it can be a big surprise to some customers at just how inconvenient some hosts can make it to have your site living on their Internet space.
I’ve Got 99 Problems, but a Host Ain’t One – Keep Control of Your Domain Name
First, never let a web hosting company have control over your domain name. A popular marketing strategy for many web hosts is to provide you with a ‘free’ domain name when you sign up for their hosting. Bad idea. As soon as you let most hosts register your domain, they have control of it. They may not even let you keep the domain if you decide to move to a different server. If they register the domain, they may very well not allow anyone to change the DNS servers in the record, which means that as long as you like your domain name, you will host your site on their machine.
What kind of customer service do you think you will receive after attempting to move your site somewhere else? Make sure you register your domain by whatever means necessary so that you can freely change DNS servers and not lose ownership of the address you have worked so hard to make popular.
I’ve Got 99 Problems, but a Host Ain’t One – Verify Their Email Capabilities
Second, ask detailed questions that go beyond covering the services mentioned on the company web site. Just because a company offers 10,000 email addresses doesn’t mean that their email service even works.
I’ve signed up for hosting before, got up-and-running and then sent out a newsletter to a thousand people on my list. How do you think I felt about the great deal I got when half of them bounced back because the web host’s email server was black-listed? Yes, I had 10,000 email addresses. Too bad none of them could reliably send emails to other people.
In that same vein, ask about potential problems with sending out newsletters. Several AOL users on my list, instead of unsubscribing using the correct method, were repeatedly clicking the big ‘SPAM’ button that AOL has conveniently placed to encourage their users to anti-spam every competing company out of existence.
So after I sent out a newsletter, the next morning I woke up to find that my domain had been suspended for ‘spamming.’ Instead of all my users coming to my site to see all the improvements I made, they saw a big “NOTICE: This domain has been suspended. Please contact the billing department immediately.” It wasn’t good enough that they shut down my service, they had to make it appear that I couldn’t afford to pay my bill. How many users do you think I lost over that one?
I’ve Got 99 Problems, but a Host Ain’t One – Maintain a Good Working Relationship
The third step is maintaining good rapport with your hosting company. Once a host passes all the tests and you have signed up with them, be sure to remain very cordial. The people on the other end have a lot of power over your site’s uptime and how quickly and thoroughly they respond to your needs. However, if you find that your host is being overbearing or snide, you must make them believe that you are crazy.
If the domain you registered with them is something like luvmypets.com, you absolutely must register a second domain and have it pointed to your account. The second domain should be something like, mercenarykillersclub.org or satanismycopilot.net. Whenever you call about your account, don’t use the nice name, use the crazy name. It’s worth the $12 a year fee.
Don’t mess around with this step or you might find yourself being talked down to by the typical arrogant systems administrator who will be working on your account. If you even hear a hint of condescension in the tone of voice on the other end of the phone, start talking to yourself and say things like, “I hope I don’t have to drive over there. That means I have to steal some gas and stop by Bubba’s first.” Then act as if you didn’t say anything and say, “What did you just say?” Make sure you sound completely annoyed. You’re probably wondering if I am serious or kidding. That’s exactly how you want to make a testy web hosting support person feel so that you don’t get walked all over while keeping them on their toes.
If you follow these tips you can avoid being a turnip on a web farm. If you spend the time to really refine your approach, you may find that the support people immediately jump on your requests. Remember, it’s the year 2004 and if you want good hosting service, you have to have game. Good luck!
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I’ve Got 99 Problems, but a Host Ain’t One