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My Hosting Experience

I am well traversed in hosting. My search for the right host has taken me around the internet to Web hosts of all type. Let me give you a little recap.

Godaddy Shared:

I still manage all of my Domain names there. I started out with Godaddy shared hosting. It took a while to get set up but once I got use to it I was somewhat satisfied. Over time I started noticing network performance issues. My sites were not loading nearly as they were in the beginning.

After doing an IP search and discovering the number of sites on my IP address had doubled in six months, I decided to switch to Godaddy VPS.

Godaddy VPS:

Godaddy VPS was okay at first, I think I got on a new server and was receiving a good portion of the server resources. However, a familiar story occurred, Godaddy overloaded the server and I could not even run the control panel without having to restart the server every single day to clear the cache.

Network Solutions:

I hosted a client’s site on Network Solutions for a while. There service is good, the problem is that it is not good enough for the price. Network Solutions charges way to much money not to be giving their customers lightning fast load times and primo servers.

1and1 Hosting:

I used a dedicated server from 1and1 for about six months. The customer service was lackluster, downtime occurred frequently and they would not let me out of my service without paying $120. If you have to charge a $120 cancellation fee to try and keep your customers, something is wrong. Of all the hosting services I have used, 1and1 is the only one (no pun intended) that I would recommend that you avoid like the plague.

Site Cloud:

I experimented with Site Cloud for a while and enjoyed the service. It is still a young company that was using the Amazon Elastic Cloud for hosting. This meant that when one of my blogs hit the home page of Digg, Reddit or any other site it would scale up my service without any issues.

However, they had a really hard time working with Amazon and switched to another cloud network. Unfortunately, the new network is not near as fast and every once in a while I would get a server error when visiting a page. Not something I wanted my visitors ever seeing, so in the end I had to drop them for reliability issues.

My Experience With Host Gator

I have had the best experience with Host Gator by far. The customer service is extremely helpful, the WHM and CPanel interfaces work great and there are tutorials for every problem.

If you plan on selling hosting services, their reseller accounts are cheaper than Godaddy and I think the templates blow Godaddy’s out of the water. Plus, there are 400 brandable tutorials available to offer to your customers.

The only thing I don’t like about the Host Gator reseller package is that they only offer jailed SSH with the account. So, if you want to use SSH to move your main domain, no problem, but if you want to use SSH to move a clients site for them, you will have to pay $10 for SSH access per account.

Host Gator has been the most reliable hosting service I have used. Check it out if you get a chance.

I just noticed that Godaddy is offering $5 .com domain names as a part of their black Friday/cyber Monday specials.

Today I launched a Question and Answer site for SEM. The purpose of the site is to give marketers, consultants, business owners and affiliates a way to interact and assist each other in their quest to own their own individual niche.

Often times, sites treat SEO’s and marketers with disdain and forbid them from participating. They add nofollow to links to keep them away. SEMhound.com is designed by an online marketer, for online marketers.

The site is still in Beta, so if you find any problems, just let me know.

I have experimented with different ways to keep track of tasks and due dates. I have used Google’s task manager inside of gmail, the action machine, dotproject and even Microsoft Project. Most of these have their place, especially the latter two, however I just wanted something simple.  Well, TeuxDeux fits that mold.

I was alerted to its existence by an answer and question post from Viper Chill. If Glen uses it, it must be good.

After signing up I was sold. It is a browser based AJAX application that allows you to simply input, move, edit and complete tasks. Finally, my search is over.

BTW, to make TeuxDeux super useful there is an Iphone app as well.

Check out the features:

TeuxDeux Part Deux from TeuxDeux on Vimeo.

Did I mention that TeuxDeux is free

cPanel is one of the most user friendliest site control panel systems I’ve ever encountered. I’ve always operated a website at one time or another, starting from 1995, and I’ve seen a wide gamut of server configurations ranging from the worst (AOL’s server for example) to the best: cPanel. cPanel manages Linux dedicated servers that let users interact with its configurations via a well-organized, well-documented, menu-styled graphical user interface. Nothing is too difficult to maneuver in cPanel and for that reason, I won’t use a server that isn’t cPanel enabled.

What am I attracted to in particular?

A couple of the most important features to me – effortlessly handled by cPanel, mind you – are its mySQL database management and cron job features. I operate a WordPress blog, and WordPress is a PHP mySQL database dependent blogging system. Since I don’t know beans about mySQL, I really appreciate the way cPanel lets me set up databases and manipulate their records via simple forms. Since I use cron jobs to automate the archiving of my blog (and because I don’t know beans about setting up complicated cron jobs either), I appreciate how I can automate the process by answering simple ‘when and where’ questions.

I also love cpanel’s internal file manager which lets me upload, delete, move, copy, rename, and set permissions for both individual and groups of files (web pages, images, archives, you name it). I can’t think of a single control panel that lets me work with all of these features and more within a single interface like cPanel does, and if you’re serious about site management, you won’t want to use a server that doesn’t provide it.

Usually, a webmaster has to maintain site files, databases, bandwidth statistics, private areas, traffic data, and backups with individual, separate software programs. With cPanel, you can manage it all from one website. You can even manage email from within cPanel! Read, write, delete, archive all the messages you want within cPanel or run an email based mailing list if you like. cPanel makes installing mailing list and forum scripts as simple as clicking a button. Oh, and if you need a shopping cart, you can click a button for that too!

Let me get back to the documentation for a minute because it’s hugely important. There are some features in cPanel that I admittedly don’t know how to use. Because of cPanel’s extensive documentation, they don’t make me nervous in the slightest bit. Whatever feature or function cPanel provides, you can bet it’s going to be well defined, described, and explained no matter what your level of expertise is. That means anyone can use it — whether you’re a webmaster noob running your first site or you’re a site pro running multiple sub domains and parked domains. cPanel has your back.

Nicole Miller writes for Argos discount vouchers where you can find Dell discount codes

These tools quickly add reflections and other effects with minimal effort. You don’t have to be a Photoshop guru or even jump through a bunch of hoops (like registration) to use these tools either. All you need is an image and you can create the web 2.0 effect you have always wanted.

Water effect

Continue reading →

As you may have already figured out, I am a big fan of Firefox. Mainly because it is not made by Microsoft or Google and is open source. I don’t know where I would be without Firefox addons such as web developer, firebug and yslow. I use Firefox addons more than any other diagnostic programs I own.

Anyway, Mozilla had planned on releasing 3.6 before the end of the year. But alas, the release date has been pushed back to the end of the quarter. 4.0 has been pushed back to the end of 2010.

I am actually quite ok with that, since I would rather have a stable release anyway. Its nice that Mozilla does not feel the need to rush things with Google Chrome nipping at their heels.

Speaking of Mozilla’s relationship with Google, it appears to be strained. Oh…and thanks for letting us know how you feel about privacy Google

As I sit and stare at the Belkin N wireless router box that promised so much {and take long, deep breaths so I can write this review), I remember why I bought the thing in the first place. Increased wireless speeds of 300Mbps and double the range.

That is the one positive I must mention. The Belkin N Wireless Router’s claim to be fast is true. It’s almost like websites just can’t wait to be downloaded. Online gaming has a higher quality as well. However, I am going to take issue with the part of the box that says “HIGHPERFORMANCENETWORKING”.

Yes its fast, but in order to rapidly download high definition youtube videos to your heart’s content, you have to be connected… Continue reading →

I have been logged into Google analytics working on clients sites etc. I like how Google gives you a calculation for how well your site is performing by giving you a percentage. My percentage was around a 20% improvement about a week ago. However, I noticed that it was starting to drop. Traffic comes in waves so I wasn’t concerned.

Anyway, I was doing a search to see the cache date of a recent link I had acquired. I happened upon a document by the government of Australia that had a link to me. This peaked my interest of course because it is not everyday you get a .gov link unsolicited, or solicited for that matter.

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How much more traffic would you have if you did keyword research for every blog post that you did. Keyword research can be so time consuming, and that is why I love this Firefox Addon from Wordtracker.

The plugin puts this nifty little “w” at the bottom right of my screen so I can click on it any time I want to instantly do some keyword research.

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I am many things. A husband, a father, a son, brother, handy man, mechanic, consultant, developer and the list goes on and on. But one thing that does not make that list – GRAPHIC DESIGNER. All though I would love to be a photoshop web design ninja, I’m just not…oh well. So, I have to find creative ways to make sites more appealing when I do not want to use a graphic designer. When I do though, I call Sherry (404-226-0822) – she does great work. I have often used sites that generate cool graphics. Sites like button generator have great styles for navigation buttons. But, recently I stumbled upon a great site that has some really great looking buttons that you can use for almost anything. Check out some of the ways I have used the buttons. And here: Some buttons I made… They give you the ability to modify one they have already created or create a new button from scratch. Alright, so go pimp your website.

When someone hires me as an SEO Consultant, the first thing I do is take a good long look at their site coding including navigation and HTML elements used. This can be a time consuming process especially when I am preparing bids for different projects. SEO Automatic is a huge time saver!

I have always liked Scott Hendison and his contributions to the SEO community. He has been a successful SEO Consultant for some time now and is well proven in the SEO field. He recently released one of my favorite SEO Consultant Tools available which gives you instant feedback on some of the basics of search engine optimization.

The tool analyzes many of the things I initially look at when I am diagnosing the SEO woes of a new site. He has a free version to test it out. Even if you do not agree with all of his interpretation, it can save you tons of time looking directly at the code:

Of course no automated tool should replace good old fashion research and analysis, but he does a good job of pointing out that even though the site may have passed the automatic tools validation, the elements still may not be used correctly.

Color Wheel Pro – a unique software program that allows you to see color theory in action. With Color Wheel Pro, you can create harmonious color schemes and preview them on real-world examples.

I have really used this software extensively because I do not naturally see the best color combination. A must for any web designer. Enjoy!

The best places on the web to
submit your pad file.

Manually Submit PAD files

I will start out with my PAD submission tool. I like it because I do not have to hit the back button. It is a list of 255 different software directories.

Continue reading →

Use this PAD submission tool to save
tons of time submitting
PAD files

There is software out there that will submit your PAD files for you. The problem is that the success rate is not very high. If you want to do a more thorough job of software promotion and link building, manually submitting your software is the way to go.

Pad Submission Tool
Continue reading →

I discovered this great tool that analyzes search traffic and gives you a list of 100 questions that were asked in the search engines. Its currently free over at Wordtracker Labs. Thanks to Richard Cotton and SEO Moz for the tip.  Richard discusses the benefits of using such a tool to find negative keywords to save money on a PPC campaign. But being an organic man myself, I thought we could take a look at how to use this tool to increase traffic to our sites organically. Continue reading →

I have been using a new tool for commenting (link building) that is very impressive. Basically, you do a keyword search and the tool returns around 1000 blogs related to that keyword. It classifies the blog as either “dofollow”, “nofollow” or “http error”. It is a great piece of software and I have gained some quality links for some of my sites using it. It has saved me countless hours when I am commenting on blogs to build links and add valuable content

Some of the features:

• Toggle “nofollow” tags highlighted on page
• Keeps track of when comment was posted
• Easily organize favorite blogs
• Keyword search returns around 1000 related blogs
• This is not spamware!

Download a free trial of Fast Blog Finder (aff link).

I like free tools. This is a great one too. It offers monthly estimates on keywords in Google, MSN, and Yahoo! I have found this tool to be very useful when looking for new keywords. I try to determine which ones will bring the most traffic for my clients. Its always a good idea to understand what the searchers are searching for before starting an SEO campaign.

Check out SEO Book’s Keyword Tool to use the tool for free. I like the fact that it provides related terms. It uses wordtracker as a base.

Are you ready to get started with some Atlanta SEO