The Hosting Nerds' Speakeasy

This is our place to give you updated hosting, development and web designer news, happenings on the website, and frivolous information about the internet.

The Nerds' gang:
Brian Franklin - Gamer and master model (so he thinks)
David Walsh - Editor with a penchant for hosting (and likes using big words)
Preeti Pradhan- Blogger, writer, and social media chick (the brains behind it all)

WHS on Youtube

January 13th, 2010

Hope that everybody had a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year! I know that it’s been a while since I last posted something. Sorry for this but I simply haven’t had the time to blog, in combination with some technical issues. However, a lot of things have happened with WebHostingSearch since last time and one of the great things that I’m proud to be sharing with you is the release of our own page on Youtube. The theme (so far) is Sherlock Holmes and the aim is to provide you with useful tips and interviews with the interesting people of the web hosting industry – yes, there are quite a few.

Click the video above to learn how to work with search engine optimization – and get access to all of our other videos.

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Blog Action Day: Climate Change

October 15th, 2009

I’m really excited today that we will be working with I Wear Your Shirt to show off Web Hosting Search on a t-shirt. If you’re wondering what IWYS is, it’s an awesome web concept created by Jason Sadler, a Jacksonville, Florida man. Everyday, without fail, he wears a shirt that someone/some company sponsored. It can be for marketing or simply wishing a Happy Birthday to grandma. We decided to get a shirt today, October 15th, in order to commemorate Blog Action Day. That’s what this post is really about.

What is Blog Action Day? BAD started in 2007 by Collis and Cyan from the Envato network. This year they turned over their efforts to something bigger with Change.org.
BAD is the day for bloggers all over the world to discuss the year’s topic: Climate Change. How YOU can help? Write about climate change and how it affects you, your community, and even your environment. Do you have ideas to share or even eco friendly products to promote? Do it now! Tell everyone why you think this a huge issue.
Later today Iwearyourshirt will post a video about BAD and WHS so we hope you come by later!

Posted in Green web hosting, Hosting News | No Comments »

WebHostingSearch Gets a Makeover

October 9th, 2009

It is finally here! After a lot of work the new design of WebHostingSearch is finally launched! As you probably have noticed the site is looking quite different and we hope that you like its new look and feel. If you browse around a bit we hope that you also notice that the design is not the only thing that has changed – we have also added a lot of new content that is intended to help you when working with anything that is related to the web, and of course web hosting in particular. Things that I’d like to recommend you guys checking out are for example our new step by step guide on how to start up your own website, where you will learn everything from the different types of hosting to what domain name to choose and how to upload your files using FTP. Another great tool is the comparison chart that helps you find hosting matching the needs of your website. Please navigate your way around the site and comment on what you think about the new updated version of WebHostingSearch.com!

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Power Admin-Windows Server Monitoring Review

October 2nd, 2009

When it comes to setting up your site, there are countless things that need to be taken care: finding your host, designing the site, developing content and so on. Once the site is up, although the difficult work is done, there are still many things that need to be dealt with. The largest of these things being the monitoring of the site, after all, a site that is not up is of no use to you or your users. You may recall awhile back that we looked at a few different monitoring solutions and reviewed one specifically. Since that period a few people have recommended that I look into the solution offered by Power Admin. They offer a number of monitoring solutions but their flagship piece is their server monitoring software.

The good news about this software is that it has a 30 day free trial, and unlike many other pieces out there, it is an actual full trial without any of the “This Feature is Only for Registered Products” or whatever. Installation is pretty straight forward and then the configuration process starts up. Of the monitoring services I have tried out, this one had one of the easier to follow configuration processes and it only takes a few minutes. Once this is finished, the program will populate with details from the server. At this point, those few minutes of work pay off with loads of info (some of which is vital , others may not be of any interest to you).

The server monitor has tons of features to it and can monitor a lot of different things. Here is a list of some of the things it can be used to monitor:
• Event Logs
• CPU, Memory, Network Usage
• Disk Space
• Running Services
• Log Files
• Server and room temperature
• SNMP Object Values
• Running Processes
• Ping Response Time
• Directory Quotas
• Changed files and directories
• FTP Servers
• POP,IMAP and SMTP mail servers
• Web Page content and load times
• TCP port response
• Citrix Monitoring
• And additional resources through user scripts
As many of you likely noticed, we have recently implemented a redesign on our site (at the same time we shifted CMS). So a few of these areas were particularly interesting to check out as I had not done so since things went live.
The page for content and load times is quite nice. In here you enter a specific page you want monitored and it will track the load times over a period of time and allow for the data to be made into a graphical representation. Load times are always of the utmost importance to us, as it is to all site owners, so it is nice to be able to take a look at this data and see how it compares to earlier designs on that page to see what the average response time is. Similarly, the ping response tool was also one of interest to me. It was a pretty straightforward tool with only a few options in it, but it does allow you to schedule a ping test and to graph out the data. The interface feels very familiar and is easy to navigate. Overall the specific tools were very easy to use and their site offers information on how to configure each one if you cannot figure it out on your own.

If you decide to use to register the solution for permanent use, the costs are reasonable. It can be registered for one server at $49, but for larger scale operations can be bought in packages to allow for up to 20 servers to be monitored from a single location. Enterprise licenses are also available if that is of interest to your needs. Before doing any of that though, check out their site and give the software a trial for 30 days.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Yahoo and Microsoft Partners Up Against Google

July 30th, 2009

microsoft-yahoo

Microsoft and Yahoo recently released details regarding a web search and advertising revenues alliance, all according to Reuters.

The alliance is going to be complex (as expected when dealing with two giants) but the companies will for example split the revenues coming from online advertising and Yahoo will use Microsoft’s search engine Bing on their sites. Yahoo will be the company in charge of managing the revenues from the advertising on a global scale.

“Through this partnership with Yahoo we will be able to create innovative search functions, add value to our clients as well as providing consumers with an alternative to a market that is dominated by one single company”, says Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive at Microsoft.

Steve Ballmer obviously refers to Google, who is getting increasingly dominating on the search engine market. With this alliance Yahoo and Microsoft are stepping up their position in the battle against their enemy Google.

The alliance can lead to around 500 million dollars in increased revenues per year, according to a press release in Reuters.

“This deal means a lot for Yahoo, for our users and for the industry as a whole. I believe that it creates opportunities for a new era of innovation and development on the Internet”, says Carol Bartz, Chief Executive at Yahoo.

The contract will tie the two companies together for a period of ten years. This arrangement was preceded by an 18 months long attempt from Microsoft to get Yahoo to join them in the battle against Google. I for one am looking forward to see how all of this will present itself in the future. Beating Google is not the easiest of tasks.

Posted in Hosting News, Industry insights | 10 Comments »

Monitis Review Pt. 2

July 3rd, 2009

monitis_logoOriginally launched as a free service (Mon.itor.us), Monitis SaaS has now released the Monitis Central, Cloud Edition and Web Load Tester, all provided as a managed service. And while many of the services apply to large online commerce sites mainly, there are still some highly useful tools for the small website owner. Here, we take a closer look at Monitis Central as a selected review for you the site owner.

Monitis Central

Offering up to six different services, Monitis Central makes sure to cover the vital needs of any website owner, self or remotely hosted.

External Monitoring

This service includes monitoring from the US, the UK, Germany, China, Australia and Panama, thus including all continents except Africa. Watching your servers 24 hours a day and seven day a week, if your website is performing poorly or becomes unavailable from any location worldwide, you will be notified instantly.

External monitoring requires no software or local installation.

Traffic Monitoring

Through Monitis Central service package you are also offered the option of including a site traffic statistics tool, Traffic Monitoring. Rather than having Analytics set up, thus adding yet another tool to monitor, you can track UV (unique visitors) page views, referrers, browsers, OS, geography etc. And while Traffic Monitoring offers little else than most standard site statistic tools, if you are planning to use Monitis it may be smart to include it.

Web Ranking Monitoring

An exceptional additional service with Monitis Central that many other traffic monitoring tools lack or overcomplicate (e.g. Google Analytics) is Web Rank Monitoring. This service makes it super easy to track you current keyword position, search engine ranking and backlinks.

Monitis Central is truly a full serviced website monitoring tool that may seem overcomplicated upon first glance. This is however understandable and soon forgotten and replaced with amazement.  Monitis Central comes with all the features you need as a site owner. Before purchasing, try out the 15 days trial offered.

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Monitis Review Pt. 1

June 29th, 2009

monitis_logoKeeping track of the status of your servers can be something that keeps you up worrying at night. With Monitis monitoring services however, you can rest assured that your servers, site traffic, rankings and overall performance are being tracked.

IT monitoring is high on demand and whether you run a small e-shop or a multi-site empire, Monitis’ professional web monitoring and management services may be a useful addition to your toolbox. If anything, a simple way for you to monitor your web hosting provider.

On the market since 2007, Monitis is already trusted by companies like Acer, BMW, Arizona State University and many more. With an easy sign up process and a devoted customer services team, choosing and setting up Monitis various service packages is fairly straight forward as well.

Divided into two plans, Monitis services comes with external monitoring, internal monitoring, transaction monitoring and traffic watches, each plan differing in volume. The basic plan costing a mere $95.80 a year and the plus plan $383.80, it is safe to classify this web monitoring tool as affordable.

Of the three main service packages, Monitis Central is perhaps the one that with the broadest customer base. Additionally, all services are provided as a managed service, which requires little effort from the customer. Notifications on monitoring results can be sent through SMS, Email, Twitter, IM or RSS on a monthly basis.

For more in-depth information about included services with Monitis check out part two of our review next week. Sign up for our RSS feed.

Posted in Industry insights | 1 Comment »

Why all the fuzz about Virtualization?

June 26th, 2009

cyber

I don’t know if you are as tired as me about hearing how great and “happening” virtualization is, but I am getting pretty sick of hearing about it. However, there’s a lot of truth to all the positive things that’s being said so I thought that; maybe I should publish a post about Virtualization as well… :)

First of all, what is virtualization? I guess that it can be explained from a very techy point of view or from a more basic aspect. I’m gonna go with the latter; Virtualization allows you to run several different virtual machines on one single physical system. This means that you for example can have your file server, DNS and print server all operating at the same time.

The advantages with Virtualization are plenty but the main advantage, at least according to me, is that it cut downs power and hardware costs. Another benefit with Virtualization is that it will simplify operations as well as ensure data protection and availability for people or businesses that are involved in a project on the web.

So, that’s my short and concise contribution to all the fuzz and buzz about Virtualization. Hopefully you feel a bit more informed on the issue now and if not – browse the web, there are thousands of articles on Virtualization…

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Word of mouth is no more

June 12th, 2009

Friends

Not that long ago the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) released a report about the evolution of e-commerce and the online shopping habits of Europeans in 2008. Around 80% of all Internet users bought a product or service online in 2008. This figure was 40% in 2004. There has hence been a 100% increase in just four years all over Europe. Each user has in average shopped for 747€, during the first six months, which means a total sum of 1.3 billion Euros.

The products that people buy are 1. Travel tickets (54%) 2. vacation trips (42%) 3. books (40%) 4. concert tickets (38%) 5. clothes (33%). Out of these online shoppers do 59% consider the brands own websites to be a good resource for information on products, and a majority of people think that search engines is a greater source for information rather than personal recommendations.

This means that we in average trust the Internet more than we trust word-of-mouth. And keep in mind that word-of-mouth is the marketing technique that as good as all experts have proclaimed as the best marketing method these latest years. Maybe the new direction is not that strange either. On the Internet you are able to read hundreds of reviews on a single product. Your friend might be wrong about something but can a hundred people be mistaking?

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Posted in Industry insights, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Google Wave – The Next Big Thing?

June 5th, 2009

wavelogo

The next big thing to look out for seems to be Google Wave, a soon to be released real-time communication platform which has been under construction for about two years now. When the platform hits the public is difficult to say so I guess that we just have to settle with “sometime later this year”. With every new release from the major web companies follows a heap of info, tending to make it all a bit overwhelming. To clarify what Google Wave is all about I thought that it was about time that I wrote a little something about it.

As mentioned is Google Wave a real-time communication platform and it combines everything from email, social networking (for example FaceBook), instant messaging and wikis. In other words: you will get access to all of this and much more through a one in-browser client. Want to share files with your friends and colleagues at work? Yes, you guessed right – Google Wave is a tool that can help you with this. Some of the features that are included are: drag and drop file sharing, wiki functionality, real-time, embeddability on your blog or website, playback and natural language which means that the wave corrects your language.

As with most new hypes nowadays do Google Wave come with its own lingo. Yes, you will yet again have to learn a couple of terms if you want to be in the “it crowd”. A wave means a specific threaded conversation. A wavelet is part of the mentioned thread bit it is just a small part of the larger picture. A Blip is the smallest part of the conversation, being a single line of a conversation.

This was just a short walkthrough but other things that could be worth reading up on are wave gadgets, robots and wave embeds. If you have the time you can check out the video below. In my opinion is Google Wave one of the most exciting things happening on the web this year and I look forward to seeing it in all its glory when it gets released.

Posted in Hosting News, Industry insights | 4 Comments »

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