World’s Best Picnik
Posted by HallMarc in Webware Where? on August 1st, 2009
I have seen some great things on the internet. It seems every so often I come across something that just makes me go “Wow! This is so cool!” OK, admittedly I am a text book geek and they are sometimes things that only a geek could love. This one is up near the top of all time best things I have ever seen.
Alright, alright drum roll please….. and the winner is Picnik! What is Picnik you say? It is an online photo editing website extraordinaire. It is free. Doesn’t require registration unless, no it isn’t a catch, you want to store your photos online. It is fairly robust and includes features like color correction and red eye removal. You can send your pictures to your Facebook account, Flickr, Photobucket, MySpace, etc. There is so much you can do and it is very well laid out. So easy to find the tools you want. Go check it at http://www.picnik.com and tell everyone you know because this will be viral I’m sure in no time. Tell em marc sent ya. Course they’ll probably give you one of these o.O
- Marc Hall
HallMarc Websites
marc@hallmarcwebsites.com
610.446.3346
Yahoo! and Microsoft Plan to Sting Google with Bing!
Posted by HallMarc in Other Ramblings on July 29th, 2009
Finally, after years of Microsoft tempting Yahoo! to partner up, they have reached an agreement. On Wednesday Microsoft and Yahoo! reached a ten year parttnership agreement in an attempt to put a ding in Google’s death grip on search engine dominance. Google handles about 65% of internet searches and this partnerhip will give Microsoft a measley 28%. Not much but it’s a start. For more details on this deal read this article here.
As I hear of this today my first question is what will happen to Yahoo!’s agreement with Adobe concerning the indexing of the text found in files published by Flash and Flex. Yahoo! and Google were given this ability last year although Yahoo! had decided to put this option on hold stating “Yahoo! is committed to supporting webmaster needs with plans to support searchable SWF and is working with Adobe to determine the best possible implementation.” See more about this here. Opposing view can read here.
While Adobe has mentioned that it is“exploring ways to make the technology more broadly available” to “help make all SWF content more easily searchable.” I believe that Microsoft was left out because they are competing with Adobe by their introduction of Silverlight. Remember, this is my speculation and not a fact.
Back to this new partnership agreement between Yahoo! and Microsoft, I have read reports that Microsoft believes this will be good for everyone. They will benefit from Yahoo!’s user information gathering (more on that in a moment) and Microsoft’s new Bing technology that is focused more on what search engines can do.
I have my hopes up. I have known since I first started developing for the web that search engines could do so much more when it comes to providing relevant results. With Web 3.0 on the horizon this promise of new changes from the partnership is just the tip of the iceberg. Some of the big changes coming with Web 3.0 are along the lines of a fledgling AI managing the data. We will be seeing search results that are based on who we are, where we are, what we like; targeted results that will be more meaningful and useful to us. DOn’t kid your self into thinking that they do this just for our benefit. The main revenue stream for search engines is advertising and the more users they attract the more advertising dollars they can bring in.
Now, for the extended blurb about Yahoo!. First, this isn’t the first time a company has tried to buy or partner with Yahoo! Back in 2001 SBC (Southern Bell) teamed up with Yahoo! and for a long time we knew them as SBC Yahoo! Then Yahoo! bought Prodigy, SBC bought AT&T, Cingular buys AT&T, (funny how they always change the name to AT&T). Go figure. Such is the life of corporate America. Anyway, on to the second and in my opinion a way more important thing; Yahoo! and user information data mining. This is one of the practices that has always been a major part of Yahoo!. This is their bread that gets all of the butter and will be what Microsoft is after for the most part.
Ever hear of a Web Beacon? Chances are that unless you actually read the Privacy Policy all the way through and just happened to follow the correct link path, you haven’t. A Web Beacon is a service you agree to when you get anything and I do mean anything from Yahoo!; email, instant messenger, web hosting, anything. What a Web Beacon does is it records everything you do as you surf the Internet and then sells this information to third parties who then send you information based on the information scrapped while you were looking for baby booties.
In my opinion this is an invasion of privacy and, of course, a nuisance. You can opt out of this Web Beacon, for a time. I have found that eventually you get opted back in and the emails start coming in again. If you have a Yahoo! email account and ever wondered why you are suddenly getting email that is related to what you were looking at last night, well, now you know why. By the way you go here to opt out of this web beacon and I suggest you bookmark it for future use. You must do this from every computer you use.
Now, I don’t mean for this to come across as if I am saying that Yahoo! is the only one collecting information from you. A lot of websites use tracking cookies for many reasons and not all of them are bad. A lot of times they are used to help make the user experience better. However, I don’t know of any that are as collectively intrusive as Yahoo!.
OK, let me climb down off of my soap box, data mining is not all bad and it will be used to help make our web experiences better and richer for us as a whole. The development of a AI to manage the data that exists across the world on every computer will finally bring some awesome new services and tools to us. Yes, the net will become intelligent; over time. Did I hear someone say “Big Brother is watching.”?
- Marc Hall
HallMarc Websites
marc@hallmarcwebsites.com
610.446.3346
SEO – The Myths and Mistakes
Posted by HallMarc in Search Engine Basics on July 17th, 2009
Where do I begin? There are so many myths and untruths in the SEO world today that it is hard to keep track of them all. I have tested many of them to see the real world results for myself while some of them are just blatantly wrong.
The Myths
Meta-tags Don’t Matter
And neither does wearing shoes outside on a wintry day! This myth has been around for awhile. I have tested this “theory” with real world duplicate pages; exact duplicates except one had meta-tags relevant to the content and the other did not. Guess which one ranked higher? While you can still get ranked without meta-tags, especially if you are big news or a big corporation, your site will do better with carefully crafted and planned meta-tags that are relevant to the content.
Overnight Sensation
I can get your site in the top ten results by tomorrow! Really? Did you get your magic wand from Harry Potter?
There are no magic wands, no secret recipes for getting your site into the top ten. What these snake oil salesman are selling you is a load of bull. Notice that it doesn’t say which keywords or phrases this claim is based on and if they can get you into the top ten of let’s say of the search results for widgets then they have found a loop hole that won’t last long. Using any trick or loop hole to get your site rankings higher can spell disaster. If you’re lucky they will only demote you once they catch you, most will REMOVE you completely.
My Business is Too Small to Worry About
Not true. One of the ideas I have built my business on is that every business is unique in some way and should be treated as such. With carefully planned and crafted SEO your site will climb the ranks of the organic results. There are some changes on the near horizon as well that will benefit everyone. one of these changes is in what results are delivered to an individual. Search engines like Google are always working on providing people with meaningful results. The next big thing will be customizing the results based on your search history and click through patterns so that as time goes on, the search results you receive will become more and relevant to who you are and what you like. The other big change that has been around foe some time now is filtering your results by your geo-location. These alone will make a huge difference for everyone and means no one is too small anymore.
Set It and Forget It
Some people are lead to believe that SEO is a one time event and while this was true back in 1992 when the WWW was new; it isn’t anymore. SEO can be looked at like a garden or topiary; a well tended garden always thrives and does better than a garden that is left to its’ own. You should hire someone that understands this concept and will keep a watchful eye on your site and the traffic. They can always find room for improvement based on current traffic trends. If you have a small budget then look into the many free tools offered by your hosting company and/or Google. You could pay a small monthly fee to services like Overture and use the tools they provide.
Setting your content once and then leaving it is just plain silly. Search engines won’t waste the effort on a site who’s content is static and stale.
Multiple Domains
This is not only a myth but a really bad idea. Having multiple domains with duplicate content is a waste of money and is frowned upon by search engines. This practice can and will get you demoted in the rankings. As I said before, tricks and loop holes are bad, bad, bad.
PPC Will Help/Hurt My Rank
Pay Per Click campaigns are separate from organic results. They definitely won’t hurt your rankings and the only way they might help is by alerting the search engines to your sites existence. Plain and simple.
The Mistakes
Backlink Quantity Matters
No. As a matter of fact poor quality backlinks from link farms and the like will get you demoted and possibly banned. Spending your time and effort to provide a good quality product with relevant information will lead to good quality backlinks over time. Also, requesting a backlink from a trusted company with a good reputation never hurt anyone.
Flash RULES!!!
While I fully agree that Flash is awesome and even though Adobe has provided Yahoo! and Google with the ability to index the text found in your swf file (MSN won’t get this because of SilverLight) I still say use Flash responsibly!
Flash is good and Flash is great yet having a site that is fully or even mostly written with Flash is bad for rankings. Period. If you have your text in a Flash file then only the two search engines listed above will see it or if you place your text in a picture (jpg, gif, png) the search engines won’t “see” it at all. Maybe one day the GoogleBots and search engine spiders will be built with OCR, it just isn’t happening today.
Frames baby!
Frames need to die. Frames as far as I am concerned have always been a bad idea. Search engines can’t index sites built on frames and forget trying to create a shortcut to the site by right clicking; you will only get the frame you right clicked in.
No Site maps
If you have a simple site built with HTML pages then site maps are not going to be a major concern. However, if your site is dynamically generated, like this blog or an ecommerce site, then not having a site map is a mistake. Good webware comes with or can have site map generators added. Some will even send a ping to Google, etc to alert them that your site map is available or updated.
Dynamic URLs
This one needs to be moved to myths actually. While it used to be true that dynamic URLs or lengthy web addresses filled with characters and letters were problematic the surge of sites where these are the norm caused the major search engines to learn how to deal with them or lose out on relevant information. I still strive to use SEF (Search Engine Friendly) URLs because if nothing else they look nicer and are easier to read remember.
Ping Em if You Got Em
Submitting your site to the major search engines is a great idea. Overdoing it is bad and can get you banned. Once a month is the maximum a search engine will allow. Remembering when and the the simple act of submitting your site to the hundreds of search engines out there can be difficult. To address this you can pay a monthly fee to companies like Overture or have your web developer write a cron job to handle it. Either way, doing this once a month does help.
Final words; do not ever use any tricks to try to boost your rankings. The search engines are on to most of them and find the rest eventually. These black-hat practices will get you banned and that isn’t what we want or need. SEO is an art and takes time to get good at it. Hire someone to take care of this for you and you should do this at the very beginning of your site development. It should be the very first thing you do when building your site and not as an after-thought. If you can’t afford anyone yet then just make sure you read up on the best practices before you jump into it. Articles like this are meant to help you do just that; steer you in the right direction and help you avoid the pitfalls.
- Marc Hall
HallMarc Websites
marc@hallmarcwebsites.com
610.446.3346
SEO – The Organic Way
Posted by HallMarc in Search Engine Basics on July 17th, 2009
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is usually one of the first questions on every one’s mind and one of the least understood. Most people realize that getting your site to appear in the top ten results of a search is important to driving traffic to your site. How do we get our site in there?
The results you see in main content area are what are known as organic results and are determined by the developer’s (i.e. Google) tightly guarded formula. There are some basic, no nonsense guidelines we can follow to help our sites climb up the ladder though.
Registering your Domain Name
Make sure you register your domain name for more than one year. The longer the better and you will save a few dollars to boot. The reason for this is because the companies that run the search engines know that fly by night companies, people with malicious intent will only register for one year and when you register your domain for 5 years or more it shows you not only have confidence in the success of your business, it shows that you are serious about being around for awhile.
Choosing your keywords carefully
Finding the right words for your site is bit tricky. There are a few things that need to be taken into consideration before you commit.
First, pick niche keywords; trying to use generic keywords like ‘websites’ will do you very little good. You will be competing with too many other websites. Unless you can afford to start bidding on a generic keyword (the big corporations spend more than $250k/month on just keywords!) and become one of the highest bidders, try to pick keywords that more closely fit your special niche.
Next, make sure you can use your chosen keywords 3 three times in the text on the page. This is considered the optimum number; any less and it loses importance; any more and starts looking like keyword stuffing.
Before we get to the next part, it is necessary to point out that there are two keyword objects; single keywords like ‘website’ or ‘apples’ and then there are keyword phrases like ‘lowest prices’ or ‘gaming software engineer’. Each of these are considered as a single item. When these are entered into the meta-tag area of your web page, they are separated with a comma and that separation determines how they are interpreted. Which brings to the next part; the golden rule here is to limit the number of keywords and/or keyword phrases to no more than 10 total. Your keyword phrases should contain 2 or 3 targeted keywords.
When it comes to SEO, keywords and keyword phrases are the key to getting found. Keyword phrases being as important as keywords. Do you your homework carefully and don’t be afraid to come back and try to improve what you have. Due diligence here can pay off handsomely.
URL, Title and Description
Once the search engines (search spiders or bots) find your site thy first thing they look for besides the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the Title of the page, i.e. <title>This is my technical blog about blogging</title>, then the Description, i.e <meta name=”description” content=”This what we do. We blog about widgets.” />.
There are two things about the URL we will touch on here. One is you want to keep it short and easy for people to remember and the other is you also want it to be a name that is also niche specific. I know a lot will cringe at the idea that your domain name should be built around keywords. Just know that www.mycompanyphiladelphia.com will rank higher than www.mycompany.com.
You can help your rankings by the way you name the pages, too. Here it is easier to incorporate keywords as we don’t need to concern ourselves with how easy these are to remember.
Back to the Title tag; here we can focus on placing targeted keywords too. Generally speaking the closer to the beginning of the Title the keywords are the more relevance that will be given to them.
The Description Meta tag is also fairly important. Search engines tend to use it to gather information on the topic or theme of the document. A well written Description is phrased in two or three complete sentences with the strongest keyword phrases woven early into each sentence.
<h1></h1> Tags vs <p></p> Tags
The <h1></h1>, <h2></h2>, etc tags are given higher relevance than anything between the <p></p> tags. Plain and simple. These are of course the HTML tags that wrap the content on the page.
Links
The last thing I want touch on is the anchor tags, better known as links. You might incorporate certain keywords to any external links you may have on your page. Search engines pay attention to backlinks as well. Backlinks are links from other websites to your site.
In conclusion, a good balance between keyword balancing and professional content is an art form all on its own. This balancing act is why there are companies today that specialize in SEO and do well at it and because people are always finding new tricks and loop holes and cause the search engines to come up with new ways to rank the legit sites, it makes SEO practice an eternal learning curve.
My next article I will focus on “Bad Practices and Other Magic Wands” as related to SEO.
- Marc Hall
HallMarc Websites
marc@hallmarcwebsites.com
610.446.3346
First Things First…
Posted by HallMarc in "I need a website!" - A Checklist on July 5th, 2009
Anybody that is in business for themselves as a freelancer or starting a full fledged business is met with a new question these days; “Do you have a website?”. If the answer is “No.” then be prepared for the questioner to look at you as if you just arrived from 1972. Most customers will just assume you have one if you are worth your salt. Starting this project may seem daunting at first, yet never fear; I’m here to help clear away some of the smoke.
Let’s clear up a few myths first:
- Getting a website will not make you rich overnight- Not quite sure how this myth was spawned yet it pervades a lot of first timer’s initial expectations and usually leaves them feeling confused and frustrated when reality kicks in. Some ideas like MySpace and Twitter have caught and gone viral seemingly overnight. They are the rare exception. Most will find and should expect the site to be in addition to their current business. Traditional forms of advertising and marketing should still be the main focus to bring in new and keep repeat customers; just add your new web address to the advertising campaigns and signage.
- Developing a website is NOT cut & paste operation - This is another myth that I just cannot understand how it ever began. There are some simple solutions out there that will give you a website of sorts with a little effort. However, the old rule “You get what you pay for.” is just as true for website design and development as it is anywhere else. A poorly designed site will look amateurish at best and be more a liability to your image than an asset. Same for a poorly developed site; the layout may break. For instance, it may look great in Safari with three columns holding the content and in IE 7 everything is may be pushed into one column on the left and it will leave your visitor wondering who you hired so they can avoid them! A well designed site looks great, represents your company in a professional manner and impresses your visitors with who you are, a company that cares what impression the site offers. Same for development, a well developed site looks correct on the major search engines and the major platforms. A really well developed site pays attention to the blind as well so that the content that is read to them is clear and precise.
- Web development is a science – Most of my fellow developers and designers too will know exactly what I mean when I say that you shouldn’t treat your website contractor worse than the kid cutting your lawn! Learning everything that is necessary to build a website takes years and is an ongoing learning experience. The languages we use, the W3C specifications and the browsers (3 different IE browsers; 6, 7, and 8; must be understood alone!) people use are constantly changing and evolving. In order to keep ahead of the pack we must keep up on the latest changes and trends. If we don’t we will very quickly be left in the dust. Please, treat your “web guy” with respect and as the professionals we are.
- What kind of site do I need? – Now, for the rest of the show. This is the first question you need to ask yourself when you are ready to get your business on the net. Will you need a site where you clients can buy your products and/or services? Do you need an online brochure or maybe just a simple page telling them about your location, hours of operation, etc.? Do you need to collect information from your clients? How will they contact you? Will they need to come back and get an update from the site or maybe reschedule an appointment? The answer to these questions are very important and will help your web contractor get your site in the right direction.
- How much will it cost? – One of the first questions that may come to your mind; is this something you can afford. Most companies use funds from their advertising budget to pay for the site design and development. If you are a start up and don’t have much in the budget; don’t panic or think you can’t have a site. A good developer can help you get something that will fit your starting budget. Think of this as just a beginning, a foundation; you can come back when you the funds become available and make additions, changes and upgrades.
That is a pretty good start on what you should consider when you are ready to get your site live on the web. Depending on what you want your site to do for you and your clients, there can be other things to consider. For instance, if you want to sell things from your site, you will need a credit card merchant account, an SSL and it will need to be PCI Compliant. You will also need to consider how you will get your initial catalogue set up. Most developers and designers do not handle data entry and is almost always best handled in-house.
- Marc Hall
HallMarc Websites
marc@hallmarcwebsites.com
610.446.3346
Protecting/Repairing Your Computer
Posted by HallMarc in PC News You Can Use on July 3rd, 2009
Virii, mal-ware, spy-ware and trojans oh my! Not to mention the big nasty, root kits. More on root kits later in this post.
From the very instant that you connect your computer to the internet you are being bombarded by malicious scripts. If you’re on a PC; a PC is generally understood to be any computer with Microsoft Windows installed on it as the operating system; then you definitely need something to protect yourself against these intrusions. I have tried many products and many combinations of products and this is my current recommendation; notice I said current, this is because the world isn’t static. The digital world is in a constant state of flux and always evolving.
My recommendation is a combination of products and practices. They are in a particular order for a good reason; please follow it to avoid frustration during installations.
Step 1. If your system is running well enough and you have a CD/DVD/Blu-ray burner or external storage device with plenty of room, then do a backup of any important files you wouldn’t want to lose. Everyone should do this as a matter of standard practice. It is the golden rule of the digital age – Backup, backup, backup! If your system crashes then you will need to take your PC to a reputable shop and ask them if they can rescue your important files from the hard drive. Some shops will only rescue certain folders and not do a thorough search, be sure you ask what they will rescue before you give it to them.
Step 2. Download these three products and MAKE SURE you are on the site that provides the product;
- Spybot Search & Destroy - This is provided by Safer-Networking and is free of charge. Please donate something to them to help this product stay alive!
- Malwarebytes Anti-malware - This is another great product that helps pick up stuff that the other 2 in this list miss. This statement can be applied equally well to all 3 products. Nothing is 100% effective. You can use this product for free or purchase a license. The only difference is that one requires manual operation while the licensed version is hands free.
- Eset Smart Security 4 - This has to be one of the all time best antivirus programs out there and has been for the past 5 years in my opinion. I have used many of the competitors’ products and none have succeeded as well as Eset’s NOD32 Anti-virus. I have been using the entire suite for the past year and am amazed at how well it works and it doesn’t slow down my computer like some others.
Step 3. After you have downloaded these products you need to disconnect your computer from the internet because the next step requires you to uninstall any anti-virus programs you currently have. This will leave you computer more vulnerable to being compromised. This process may require you to restart your machine a few times. Make sure you have your product key(s) handy. You will already have used your username/password to download Eset.
- Norton products may need you to download the appropriate “Removal Tool” to finish the uninstall process. It can be found here. Make sure you make note of which product you have before you uninstall it.
- McAfee needs to be completely shut down before it can be uninstalled in some cases. You will know if you need to do these extra steps during the uninstall process as your computer will tell you that xxx needs to be closed before it can be removed. In that case read the helpful posts found here.
Step 4. Install the programs you downloaded in the following order and please note the special caveat about IE 8.
- Spybot Search & Destroy – follow the on screen prompts and I recommend unchecking the box next to “Install Tea Timer”.
- the only caveat here is this; after you install it, it will run automatically, I usually skip the registry back up on machines that have been running longer than a few minutes after the INITIAL start of the computer after Windows is first installed. It has never been used to rescue any systems that I have worked on. I do everything else. The issue with IE 8 is this, as of the time of this post there have been reports of IE 8 running very slow after installing Spybot. This seems to be due to new security features installed with IE 8 that overlap the ones in the Immunization feature of Spybot. This is easily remedied by following the instructions found here.
- Malwarebytes – just follow the onscreen prompts
- Eset Smart Security (or Anti-virus if you opted for the stand alone instead of the full suite) follow the on screen prompts.
During this installation process you will probably go through a few restarts. If you have noticed your computer isn’t running as fast as it used to then you may want to run a scan with Spybot as soon as it installs and then hit the “Fix Selected Problems” when it finishes. Some issues need a restart before Spybot can fix them. It will start scanning you PC again right at the beginning; this is normal. If you still get a message saying it needs to restart to remove certain infections then you may need to take it to a professional to clean up your system.
Make sure you run these programs to do a FULL scan of your system periodically. Always keep Windows up to date, keep your programs like SpyBot and Malwarebytes (if you didn’t purchase a license so that it can be set to do it automatically) up to date with the latest patches and definitions. I do this once a week at least, more if I can remember. the Spybot/IE 8 fix usually needs to be applied every time I run the Immunization tool after I get an update. Eset takes care of itself except for full system scans which are always manual. Eset is always on guard though and even then new things can slip by and won’t be caught until a full scan is run.
If you are diligent, and that means keeping everything updated and running a scan at least every two weeks minimum, you should find yourself happy and problem free for years.
However, there are times when a big nasty virus will slip through. It happens. Here is the bad part no one wants to talk about much; all of these protection systems can be compromised by certain malicious bugs. They will look like they are running and are rewritten to report all is well. Sometimes they don’t even bother with that, they just disable and even remove the protection programs and now for the biggest baddy of them all; rootkits. Rootkits are written to take complete control of your computer, operating system and all. As a matter of fact they ARE the operating system and everything else including Microsoft Windows becoming a program installed on them. Because of how they operate they are almost impossible to detect and even harder to remove by hand. The amount of code they rewrite would take a skilled technician way too long to find and repair. At this point; and this also holds true for some other infections that can corrupt your operating system, it is just simply easier and faster to backup your important files and wipe the hard drive clean; re-install Windows and all you software from scratch and remember to install the three programs above BEFORE you connect to the internet.
By the way, when it comes to rootkits; everyone is vulnerable and that includes Mac and Linux users!
I hope you find this information helpful and maybe I have save you a trip to the repair shop. Oh, and I also repair, build, upgrade computers of all types. I also provide full file rescue services as well. Contact me if you need me.
- Marc Hall
HallMarc Websites
Located in South East Pennsylvania
marc@hallmarcwebsites.com
610.446.3346
Web Hosting – the Good, the Bad and the Lack of Unicorns
Posted by HallMarc in Web Hosting on July 3rd, 2009
Web hosting – what it is and how do I get it? These are common questions I get everyday and I try to remind myself of the day I first wondered about it myself. With this post I will help remove the mystery and explain some the marketing terms you will see being touted by many web hosting companies out there. I do not intend to bash anyone in the process, yet….
When you finally decide you need a web site for business or personal reasons you will need 3 things:
- A Domain Name- your domain name is a unique address very much like your house address. There can be only one and thank God or otherwise mail delivery people would have a tough time knowing where to drop your letters and packages! You will need to register your domain name with a registrar. I highly recommend GoDaddy or if this is your first site and new domain then this process and cost is included with my shared hosting packages and it is the registrar I use. This registration is necessary so that when a person types http://www.insertCo0lDomainNameHere.com the web knows where to find the server where the site lives. Which brings us to…
- Web Hosting- your web site is a set of documents, pictures (jpg’s, gif’s, bmp’s, png’s) and maybe some video or animation. These files are stored on a server which is just a computer, not unlike your own, that is customized to serve web pages, email ,etc. I hear the next question already; “Why can’t I just use my computer then?” The short answer is you could! However, in order to do that you need to install the right server software, pay for a new ISP account that allows your computer to act as a web server and open Port 80. This is expensive and really not necessary, not to mention you’ve just opened your personal computer to the public. It’s a jungle out there. Now for the third part…
- A Web Site – The pages that govern your web site can be written in a variety of languages. Some of them are HTML, PHP and ASP. Then there are additional languages used to control the layout or provide additional features that may not exist in the other languages. Two of those are CSS and Javascript. Also, you may want audio, video or animation of some sort so we might need Flash, QuickTime or AJAX which is not a language actually. AJAX is referring to a framework that features are built around and is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. All of this is stored on the hard drive of the server provided by the hosting company you choose which brings us to the reason I felt compelled to write this today.
First, I would like to remind the readers that I offer web hosting and I keep things running smooth so that my clients have as few problems as is humanly possible.
With that being said; during your search for a web host you will run into a lot of different packages. The type I will write about is the most common type of hosting package anyone will use; shared hosting. You will find some companies claiming Unlimited Disk Space, Unlimited Bandwidth and/or Unlimited Domains/Sub-domains. Sounds great! Sign me up! Whoa!!! Hold on to your horses! Think about that. Unlimited. Really?? Do I get a field of Unicorns, too?! There is no such thing. Every hard drive has a limit and most of these servers have only one hard drive and even if they have two the amount of space available is limited. Same with the bandwidth. By the way, for those who don’t know, your bandwidth is how much content can be delivered to the public usually in a given month. Kind of like when mail a letter, the size and weight are limited by the amount you spend on the postage stamps. Every server has a limit on the bandwidth and so do you. The disk space limit also means that the number of domains and sub domains is limited.
Why and how can they make such a ridiculous claim? Because they know that most web sites will never come close to exceeding the actual physical limits. If you are successful and do start to push the limits you will find that they will contact you and tell you that you need to Upgrade your plan which will cost more money. Not usually a problem for anyone. However, it pops the myth about unlimited anything. If it were true then the original architects and engineers of the Iinternet would have been right; “The entire Iinternet can be stored on just a few computers.” Hell, they would only need one if it truly had unlimited everything! And, yes, they really did think that back in the beginning.
The last thing I would like to discuss before I sign this post off; the Bad of being in a Shared Hosting Environment. Most of the shared hosting plans out there are not policed as well as I think they should be. Why does this matter? It will matter to you when you or a client or a friend try to browse their way over to your sight only to find a Page Cannot be Found message. This happens when another account on the same server is using it in a manner that is eating up the server so that it is too busy to do anything else. Like I said before it’s a jungle out there or more like the Wild, Wild West. When this happens and depending on the severity of the issue, it may take many complaints from other clients before anything is done to correct it.
So, why don’t they police them better? My best guess is this; the competition for hosting is fierce. Most new clients will be dazzled by big numbers and unrealistic promises combined with low cost. You get what you pay for, ALWAYS. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, etc. In order for any company to provide that kind of 24/7 watch dog service they would have to raise the cost of their plans. This would scare most new clients away. It’s a vicious circle.
I am working with an idea on how to set up an automated system that can be used to police the servers I use to provide shared hosting to my clients. Currently I eat the cost of providing a safe shared hosting environment for my clients because it is that important to me. I don’t do this alone. I do this with the help of the company that provides my dedicated servers, HostGator. I’ve been with them since they started and I couldn’t post this without giving them a big shout out for all of the help and support they have provided me and most of that was FREE. Thanks guys, your help will never be forgotten.
Enough of the mushy stuff, I hope this helped clear the fog about hosting accounts. Stay tuned about my post regarding web design and development.
- Marc Hall
Free roaming digital guru
Hello world!
Posted by HallMarc in Other Ramblings on July 1st, 2009
Seems fitting to start this blog with the generic statement that is taught to all developers to use for testing their code; “Hello World!”.
I have finally given into the pressure from friends and colleagues to start a blog. I don’t consider myself much of a public speaker (or blogger) yet you never know what might happen unless you try.
The opinions and views in my posts are definitely mine and no one elses! I will be adding a new post often. This blog is meant purely as a vehicle for me to offer helpful and sometimes insightful information regarding the WWW. Some posts will contain information about how to best protect your PC and, heaven forbid, clean up any infestations you may already have.
Thanks for stopping by and my hope is that someone will find the information they were looking for.
So, “Hello World!” and stay tuned.
Marc Hall
HallMarc Websites
marc@hallmarcwebsites.com
610.446.3346