* All prices on this site are for a two-year sign-up.

Wow. I thought July was stagnant. This month was even worse with most of the top ten not moving at all and those that did only moving by a single spot. Specifically, Startlogic swapped places with MochaHost and BlueHost swapped places with HostGator. Not much can be read into that, although it is HostGator’s second month straight of decline, which jibes with some discontent I’ve been hearing from some of their customers. We’ll have to see if it amounts to anything or if people are just grumpier in the heat.

That said, we are in September now. The kids are back at school and the geeks are back at work, so perhaps the hosting world will pick up and start moving again this month. One can hope.

Stay cool and happy hosting.

* All prices on this site are for a two-year sign-up.

Late, I know. Fatherly duties always take precedence, and I was off at Cub Scout camp with my son.

The summer doldrums continued in July, with little changing. Yeah, DreamHost swapped spots with HostGator, as did BlueHost with Just Host and StartLogic and MochaHost, but those are little blips. The only notable thing was that IX Web Hosting continues to hold strong at #2; not bad for a host that wasn’t even in the top ten a few months ago. Otherwise, things stayed the pretty much the same and will probably do the same again in August. Summer just isn’t a hot time for hosting.

Try to stay cool and, as always, happy hosting!

Whether you love it or hate it, Farmville is a phenomenon that is hard to dismiss. As with anything successful, it is worth looking for anything we can learn from it. As it happens, if you tilt your head the right way when you look at it, Farmville has a lot in common with blogging, but with a few key differences. Let’s take a look.

1. Always Be Planting

In Farmville, you need to plant and harvest crops on time. If you don’t plant crops, you don’t get experience points you need to advance in the game. If you don’t harvest on time, your crops wither and you don’t get paid. Harvest enough of a given crop and you develop “mastery” in it, which makes your future harvests worth more.

In blogging, you need to add new posts and, when appropriate, reply to comments. If you don’t add new posts, the search engines (and your visitors) may decide your site is abandoned. If you don’t respond to comments, your visitors may feel you don’t care. If you write a lot of quality posts on a given subject, search engines and visitors will associate that subject with your blog, which can help future posts on that subject.

For mastery on Farmville, however, you just need to rack up the numbers for each crop. In blogging, you need to actually produce solid posts that (a) people want to read and (b) helps people in some way (even if they just provide laughter).

You should: Add new posts and respond to comments regularly.
But: Don’t just crank out tons of posts without making them good.

2. Spread the, um, Wealth

Farmville involves a lot more cooperation than most games. For example, you can (and should) fertilize your neighbors’ crops regularly. Not only does it help your neighbors make more coins from their crops, but it gets you experience points and sometimes fuel (the truest currency in Farmville).

Successful blogging is similarly cooperative. In blogging, you can (and should) comment on your friends’ posts regularly. Not only does it help make your friends’ blogs seem more alive to casual visitors, but it also allows you to show off your own expertise and possibly gets links to your own posts (the truest for of currency in blogging).

That said, in Farmville fertilizing is just a matter of clicking on a certain number of crop squares. With blogging, you should actually have something to say or share, rather than just tossing a bunch of cow manure onto other people’s posts.

You should: Comment on your friends’ blogs regularly.
But: Your comments should be more than just a load of bullsh*t.

3. Pay Attention

The folks at Zynga keep Farmville fresh by introducing new “themes” of items. These include special crops, animals, buildings, and decorations. For example, the Swiss theme included Swiss chard, Simmental cows, Swiss cottages, and evergreen trees. These themes only last a little while, so you have to act quickly if you want the items.

In blogging, hot topics come and go. If you catch them at the right time, you can get a lot of traffic and a lot of new visitors. Wait too long, however, and you’re out of luck. If people in your field are talking about something, join the discussion. Throw out an opinion post, an analysis, or even just an overview. Don’t miss the boat.

In Farmville, you never know what the new themes will be, so you can’t plan ahead. In the real world, you can. If you have a sports blog, you should have know the World Cup was coming. A political blogger should be aware of the upcoming November elections. Even if you blog about less predictable things like the weather, you know when seasonal changes come and can have some idea of what is coming up from forecasts.

You should: strike while the iron is hot, because it cools off quickly.
But: Don’t just wait for opportunities to show up. Look for them and prepare for them.

4. Cultivate Good Neighbors (and Save)

In Farmville, a lot of tasks require either a lot of help or a lot of Farmville cash. These tasks are often things you really want to do, such as building stables and other buildings or expanding barns and chicken coops. Since Farmville cash costs real world money, getting help is a lot more appealing, so you’d better have a bunch of good neighbors.

In blogging, building up traffic and links requires either a lot of help from friends and visitors or a lot of advertising, link purchasing, and so on. Again, since advertising and purchased links cost actual money, getting help is a lot more appealing, so you want to have some good friends.

Of course, helping out in Farmville only takes a click or two, with no risk to the helper. With traffic and link building, your friends are risking their own reputations if they recommend poor links. They probably won’t share unless your content is worthwhile, so your site has to be good.

You should: Encourage your friends (and everyone) to spread the word about your site, because many other methods will cost you.
But: Don’t expect people to help unless your content is good.
f the goodness of their hearts; your content has to be worth it.

5. Expect the Unexpected

Even the most ardent lover of Farmville has been annoyed by some of the technical issues Zynga has had over the last year. Sometimes the site has been unavailable. Other times, harvests didn’t count towards masteries. The latest snafu involved construction supplies and animals randomly disappearing. It seems like it is something new every week. It can be frustrating, but such is Farmville.

In the blogging world, there is no single overlord like Zynga, but the unpredictability of the landscape is much the same. Google updates, changes to Digg’s algorithms, Twitter downtime, security updates. Bloggers need to stay on their toes and just because something is working today is no guarantee it will work tomorrow.

You should: Roll with the punches and be prepared to change strategies if necessary.
But: You can assume most of the changes are intentional in the real world, which may make it easier to adjust.

* All prices on this site are for a two-year sign-up.

This is a few days late, but I figured most people weren’t shopping for hosting over the (American) holiday weekend.

June (and summer in general) is usually a somewhat dull time for hosting. People would, apparently, rather enjoy the sun than build new web sites. Go figure. That said, June had a couple of surprises in the top 5. HostGator moved back to the top spot, where I think it really belongs. IX Web Hosting continues its ascent and grabbed #2. DreamHost and Just Host were pushed down to 3 and 4 and BlueHost swapped places with its sibling HostMonster to round out the top of the list. The bottom was the same as in May except for a little shuffling.

I honestly don’t expect much shake up in July. Here in Pittsburgh, July is looking even hotting than June and May have been. Personally, I find anything over about 85 perfect for hiding in the air conditioning and rolling out some new sites, but a lot of people are most heat loving than me. To each their own, of course. Regardless of how you enjoy July, be careful out there.

As always, happy hosting!

If you have house plants, do you water them? Do you feed your pets? Your kids? Of course you do. The same goes for blogs. You need to give them something new each day. I know it’s hard. Writing a new post each day is, well, work, and when you have to pound them out the posts can feel like they are less than your best. Don’t let that discourage you.

You eat meals each day, right? Maybe not three, but at least a couple. Are all of them grand feasts, worthy of savoring and committing to memory? Of course not. Most are probably okay, maybe a few are crap, and once in a while you eat something really good.

The same deal applies to what you feed your blog. Not every post needs to be something wonderful and Digg-worthy. Obviously, if you have it in you to create such stellar content on a daily basis you should go for it, but most of us don’t, especially when starting out. Most of our posts will be just okay, with an occasional star shining through. This can be discouraging, as we want our blogs to be awesome exemplars that draw visitors by the thousands and links from far and wide. This can come, but first you need to get in the habit of writing posts on a daily basis.

Here are the most important reasons to keep churning out those new posts:

1. A living blog is a living blog.

I’m mixing two definitions here, of course. If you treat your blog like a living thing (in the sense of feeding it daily) it is more likely to become a living thing (in the sense of being active and thriving). Dead blogs or even just sick ones don’t inspire return visits.

We’ve all had the experience of We come across a blog post and think “Hey, I like this… what else is one here?” only to find that nothing has been posted in weeks or months (or years!). Do you subscribe to those blogs or even make a point to come back later? I don’t. Most of the time there is little point.

On the other hand, the opposite can also be true. A busy blog gives visitors hope that more of the good stuff is coming. Feed your blog regularly and your readers are more likely to come back.

2. Practice makes perfect

The saying is trite, but that doesn’t make it untrue. Writing a post each day can be hard work at first and the posts will tend to be so-so, but the writing will get easier and the posts will get better. Even if you think your mediocre posts are just drab filler, they are helping you become better at your craft. They are harbingers of the better posts to come and that value should not be ignored.

3. If it makes Google happy, it can’t be that bad.

If regular content makes your visitors happier, it makes search engines ecstatic. Google has long made it clear that they like fresh content, so give it what it wants. Even with Bing’s rise from MSN’s ashes and Yahoo’s persistence, Google still handles the lion’s share of the searches (http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/11/comscore-may-search-market-share/). If you want traffic, Google is still the biggest game in town.

4. It makes Twitter happy too.

Social media outlets like Twitter and StumbleUpon are the only traffic drivers that can compete with Google. If you create new posts each day, you have more pages to share socially and more pages for others to share. Tweeting the same pages day after day won’t gain you followers, but new stuff each day just might. Just remember to include the appropriate tags, reciprocate attention where appropriate, and don’t spam. Social media is a big deal for a reason and blogs are fundamentally social creatures.

Small Business and Enterprise Customers Benefit From Hosting Metro’s Customer First Approach.

Bellevue, WA (PRWEB) June 9, 2010 — CloudLinux Inc., an innovative software company dedicated to serving the needs of hosting service providers, announces today that Hosting Metro, a leading Web hosting provider with datacenters in the U.S. and Canada, will integrate CloudLinux into its standard Linux Operating Systems (OS) for its customers.

Hosting Metro offers a full suite of Web hosting solutions from domain names to dedicated servers that include plans for shared hosting, email hosting, Virtual Private Servers (VPS), application hosting and SaaS hosting for small businesses. Paramount to Hosting Metro’s decision was CloudLinux’ innovative Lightweight Virtual Environment™(LVE) technology, which gives their support engineers the ability to increase control by limiting the amount of resources (CPU, I/O, memory) available to a group of processes. This is done by utilizing command line control to manage the CPU and I/O, which helps ensure that each account on a shared server is allocated enough resources to run efficiently without jeopardizing the other customers on that server.

“We have always put our customer’s needs first and when we started working with CloudLinux we quickly saw the benefits that this new OS could provide. We now have more control, flexibility and agility with our shared hosting servers and that in turn improves our customer’s experience.” said Tony Chu, Hosting Metro CEO. “Our strategy has been to expand our services and deliver the solid infrastructure our customers demand by implementing innovative solutions that provide cost effective solutions for our customers. CloudLinux does just that.”

Hosting Metro’s small business and enterprise customers depend on a stable infrastructure to host their business IT needs including websites, email and databases. With CloudLinux, Hosting Metro will be able to provide their customers with:

• Increased uptime since no one account can slow down or take down an entire shared server
• Better reliability and performance with a server that is running at peak operating capacity
• Compatibility with all major control panels for easy management

CloudLinux achieves this by using a kernel-level technology that limits the amount of resources available to a group of processes. While similar to container type virtualization technology, the technology is completely transparent and lightweight. Once installed, it works transparently to manage resources on a shared hosting server, and controls the CPU resources to ensure that each account on a shared server is allocated enough resources to run efficiently without jeopardizing the other tenants on that server, making the server more stable and delivering better performance. “Hosting Metro’s Web hosting offerings are based on providing reliable and resilient services to its diverse customer base. CloudLinux will provide the control and performance to deliver the high quality services demanded by Hosting Metro’s clients,” states Igor Seletskiy, CloudLinux Founder and CEO.

I could make this article really, really short and just write this:

No.

A slightly more accurate version would be:

Probably not.

Most web sites will never need a dedicated server. More than most. The vast majority. There are over 300 million web sites out there and far fewer than a million require a dedicated server. So, no, you probably don’t need a dedicated server.

That said, there is a chance that you fall into that small group that does. There are legitimate reasons for getting a dedicated server and they do deserve examination.

• You need more CPU than a shared host will give you.

  Maybe you do a lot of back end processing for each request or you have a lot of auxiliary processes that have to run. Either way, a server solves the problem.

• You run custom persistent software or a custom web server.

  Most shared hosts use Apache or IIS as their web server. If you need to run something else or something custom, you simply can’t share the server. Similarly, if you need to have some other software always running, most shared hosts are not going to be too happy about it.

• You need more inodes (files) than a shared host will give you.

  This is the hidden gotcha at a number of shared hosts with “unlimited” packages. You can use as much space as you want, but there is a limit on the number of files. The limit might well be very high, but if you need to exceed it, a server may be the way to go.

• You want better security.

  Even with the best security precautions, at the end of the day a shared server is still shared. Over the years a number of attacks have appeared that use exploits against one shared hosting account to gain access to the whole server. If you have data that you desperately need to keep secure, a dedicated server may make you more comfortable.

  That said, a dedicated server is not inherently more secure. It still needs to be managed, either by you or by the same people who manage the shared servers. It’s like this: you might feel more secure in a private home than in an apartment complex, but you still need to lock your doors.

• You want better performance.

  There are actually two very different situations you have to think about when it comes to performance: everyday performance and performance during traffic spikes. Some web hosts run their closer to capacity than others and even though shared servers are usually very fast powerful machines, they do get overworked at times and your site’s speed can suffer even if your traffic is perfectly normal.

  Now imagine what happens if you make the front page of Digg or go viral on Twitter. The server gets hammered and one of three things happens. The server crashes, your sites becomes unbearably slow, or the web host takes your site down for using up too many of the server’s resources (read the fine print!). No matter which happens, you are losing out when you should be shining. For most sites, a dedicated server is overkill 99.9% of the time, but can definitely come in handy when you get your moment in the sun.

  Before resorting to a dedicated server, you should also make sure you’ve explored other options for improving your site’s speed, such as database optimization, caching of generated pages, etc. A little time to install a WordPress cache plugin is a lot cheaper than the cost of a dedicated server.

There is one other reason to get a dedicated server which may or may not count as “legitimate.” Sometimes you just want one. I have little doubt that I could run just about all my sites on shared servers without a problem. I don’t. I run most on a dedicated server because it gives me more flexibility. Sometimes I want to try out some persistent software than wouldn’t really be possible in a shared environment. And sometimes I recompile PHP with some extra stuff thrown in (or out). I use some of the space for extra offsite backup. And a few times a week I use the server for a things having nothing to do with websites at all, and just treat it as extra processing power.

Dedicated servers are a lot more expensive than shared hosting. Make sure you need it, or at least want it, before making that jump.

* All prices on this site are for a two-year sign-up.

I can’t speak about your neck of the woods, but in Pittsburgh May was hot and not in a good way. Luckily the hosting world was not nearly as unseasonal.

DreamHost held on at #1 for yet another month, while JustHost and IXWebHosting advanced to grab #2 and #3 respectively. HostGator dropped a few spots, but remained in the top five where it belongs. HostMonster moved up to #5, but BlueHost dropped three places to #6, supporting my idea that their interchangeability leads to volatility rankings-wise.

The bottom half (after BlueHost) contained only one surprise. After being out of the top ten for a couple of months, ANHosting came back to grab the #7 spot, pushing everyone else down and Arvixe off the bottom. Given ANHosting’s history on the list, it isn’t shocking, but it is interesting to see a host with actual storage and bandwidth limits place well.

We are now going into the summer hosting doldrums. For some reason people would rather spend their free time outdoors and with their families than build new websites. Weirdos. Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on things and let you know if anything interesting happens out there. You just worry about your sunscreen.

Happy hosting!

* All prices on this site are for a two-year sign-up.

They say that April is the cruelest month. Certainly those of us in the states had to deal with taxes, but otherwise I can’t really complain about April this year.

Even on the hosting front things have been mostly pleasant without too much upset. The top few spots are largely unchanged. DreamHost, HostGator, and BlueHost stayed at the apex and JustHost moved back up to 4 from 5. The number 5 position is more interesting with IX Web Hosting making it to the top five for the first time. Good Windows hosting is hard to find and it seems like folks are finally catching on that IX is a good place to find it.

The bottom half is a little more varied. MidPhase and HostMonster both fell (and, no, I can’t explain HostMonster falling while BlueHost holds fast, given that they are the same plans from the same company). MochaHost and StartLogic held on to #8 and #9 respectively. Premiering this month in the top list is Arvixe, another good Windows (and Linux!) shop. It is nice to see some of the lesser known but solid companies getting some attention.

Also noteworthy is that, with EasyCGI being bumped from the list, we have a completely unlimited list for the first time. Now, most of us will never need more than what the hosts with limits are offering. We won’t. That said, it is hard to shake the feeling that you are getting more from an “unlimited” plan than one with limits you won’t ever reach. The human mind is an irrational place and hosts that stick to limits may find themselves paying a price for that.

Enjoy May before the oppressive heat of summer is upon us (and the kids are home from school!) and, as always, happy hosting.

Only 10 registrars will be handling .CO domains and they are hoping to hit it big. Mark Boost from LCN suggest that the .CO roll out “has the potential to become the biggest global domain since the 1985 launch of .COM”. David Andrews from domain.com predicts “we’ll see a rush of companies launching or re-launching their brands around their .CO name.”

Okay. I’ll buy that a boat-load, hell a fleet-load, of money will be spent for these domains. I don’t doubt that .CO will be far more successful than, say, .biz. I even believe that there will be an insane landrush and normal folks will be lucky to get obscure things like antiquebutterdishes.co.

But I don’t buy it replacing .COM or even seriously challenging it.

Consider phone-based businesses. 800 was the original US area code for toll-free numbers. As a result, there are companies with names like 1-800-flowers, 1-800-contacts, 1-800-batteries, and so on. Since then, 888, 877, and 866 have been rolled out as well. While 877 and 866 might be questionable, 888 is very catchy. So, where are the 1-888-whatever companies? I’m sure some exist, but it isn’t the same. “1-800″ has meant “call us free” in the US since 1967 and many other countries use 800 as the basis for their toll-free numbers as well. Other prefixes may be just as toll-free, but they don’t have the cache that 1-800 has.

Now think about the Internet. The term “dot com” is synonymous with the Internet. Businesses make “dot com plays.” People going to work for Internet companies say they are working for a “dot com.” The big implosion of Internet companies in the late 1990s and early 2000s was the end of a “dot com bubble.” The .COM top level domain has been around for 25 years now and is an intrinsic part of the Internet for most people. A few companies and organizations may have successfully branded a .net or .org domain, but by and large it is a .COM world.

The .biz top level domain was launched in 2001 as an alternative to the crowded .COM domain, and as of the end of 2009, there are over two million domains registered within .biz. That sounds great until you consider that there are almost 84 million .COM domains and .COM, picked over as it is, is still growing faster than .BIZ. Even .ORG and .NET are still growing faster than .BIZ. Past is not always prelude, but this shows how resilient .COM is in the face of competition.

Some people point out that “CO” as an abbreviation for company or corporation is more internationally recognized than “COM”. They also point out that a lot of country top-level domains use .CO as the second tier for business (e.g. amazon.co.uk). Both of these statements are absolutely true, but .com remains the big gun domain worldwide. If you don’t believe me, go to some non-US google sites and search for “dot com”. Heck, make it harder and limit the search to the last week. Google China found me 22,700 from the last week. Russia gave me 12,000. Japan coughed up a whopping 295,000 in the just the last seven days. Can you really imagine that global footprint eroding anytime soon?

I may be wrong. I have been before and no doubt will be again. As they say, time will tell. In a few years, we can all look at the stats and see whether .co had the chops to take on the champ. For now, if you want to buy a .co domain, go for it. Domain.com and GoDaddy will be happy to oblige you. I’ll stand by the title of this post: .CO is no .COM.