Well, chapter two has been done for a while now. I just haven’t had the time to update my progress in a while. I just finished the rough draft of chapter three as well a few short minutes ago. So far things are going great. The only problem I have run into is that my first two chapters are a little longer than my third.

A few more important things are covered though, so hopefully it will not be too much of a problem in the long run. Keeping up with how much I have been writing, I could end up with around fifty pages when it is all said and done. Some might get cut out when editing comes around though. I’ll tackle that problem when I get to it though.

When I first signed up at the Web Hosting Toy Drive, they had barely raised over $200. I thought it was a good cause, so I contributed my sum to the pot. Now congratulations are in order to all those who made the first Web Hosting Toy Drive a success. $8,056.96 was raised by the time all was said and done, and I couldn’t be happier.

I plan on being a part of it next year as well. This just goes to show you that the world of Web hosting is not as cut throat as many may think that it is. When there is a good cause, it is nice to see that so many people can come together to help. This is the true meaning of the holiday season for sure.

Sorry I wasn’t around much yesterday. Since Tuesday I’ve been battling a cold that I caught from my sister’s kids. On the bright side of things though I do have some news about the Web hosting book I’ve been working on. Yesterday I finished a rough draft of the first chapter. Things are coming together nicely so far.

I’ve set a target date, for the end of January, for me to reach a finished “rough draft” of the book. Then I’ll probably go through and make some modifications, then let a few other folks play editor for me, then I might be ready for a public release.

Ever been confused on the ways DNS works? Do you know what DNS is? Don’t be ashamed if you don’t because you are one of many not know all the facts behind it. Our good friend Google tells us DNS is, “(Domain Name Server) – Used to map names to IP addresses and vice versa. Domain Name Servers maintain central lists of domain name/IP addresses and map the domain names in your Internet requests to other servers on the Internet until the specified web site is found.”

What does that mean? It is pretty bad when you need a definition of the definition. The friendly folks over at Splodgy Web Design have put together one heck of a tutorial on this very subject.

DNS stands for Domain Name System. It is the process that connects the domain name you typed into your browser, to the server that serves or hosts the information for that domain.

People often get very confused when it comes to understanding DNS and nameservers. They get all mixed up with domain names, web servers, resolvers and IP addresses. Even people who are very computer literate can get in a complete fuddle over DNS. But it’s not really that difficult really. It’s just that whenever someone starts to explain it to you, they end up using all manor of buzz words. Things like bind and resolver. In some ways, DNS is like the offside rule in football (soccer). Everyone can play the game but just try an get them to explain the offside rule and things get very complicated. This tutorial is intended to help you understand how DNS works.

If that didn’t get your questions answered then try looking over at Webopedia:

(1) Short for Domain Name System (or Service or Server), an Internet service that translates domain names into IP addresses. Because domain names are alphabetic, they’re easier to remember. The Internet however, is really based on IP addresses. Every time you use a domain name, therefore, a DNS service must translate the name into the corresponding IP address. For example, the domain name www.example.com might translate to 198.105.232.4.

The DNS system is, in fact, its own network. If one DNS server doesn’t know how to translate a particular domain name, it asks another one, and so on, until the correct IP address is returned.

No mater which source you turn to, they are both well written, full of information, and right. There is no such thing as a stupid question, and with the Internet at your fingertips you have a plethora of answers to choose from!

Alright, I finally have some news to talk about. The rough draft of my introduction is finished. I know it has been a while and some might be disappointed that this is all I have done, but there are several factors that play into that. Number one is the fact that I have never written a book before! A lot of mine time thus far has been spent writing notes to myself, making outlines and trying to visualize what the book will look like in my own mind.

Hopefully later today I will be able to get a little more done before I have my nephews and niece over here for the next two days. I love them to death, but it is really hard to get any writing done unless the house is empty, I’m in my underwear and I’m packed full of caffeine. Not exactly the visual you wanted? For that I am truly sorry.

On a somewhat related note, I did a little updating to my own Web site, MitchKeeler.com this morning as well. Mainly I did a little book plugging here and there. One thing I am pretty proud of getting done is creating pdf versions of the example articles listed on my Web site. So now you have the option to view it as HTML or a PDF.

No real magic behind how it was done though. Just copied them into Open Office, did a little formatting, and exported them into the PDF format. I figure if the Web hosting book goes into e-book form, I had better get used to trying to play with PDF formatting, reading and viewing. I had not been a big fan of the format till I checked out a few of Lockergnome’s tutorials. Now I am hooked.

When you have yourself a pie, chances are you are not going to want to eat the whole thing yourself. Instead you will divide the pie into several pieces so that it is easier to manage and everybody can get some. Think of a Web hosting account in the same way. You might want to have a section of it devoted to your blog. You might want another section of it to be devoted to your favorite links. With or without subdomains this can be done. However, with subdomains the process is so much easier to navigate.

Now I will save you the horrible trouble of what goes on during the Web hosting server side of this. Trust me, it is nothing exciting and probably nothing you need to worry about just yet. Most of you should know by now that when you create a new folder inside your Web hosting account, the directory for it should look something like this:

Without Subdomain:

http://www.yoursite.com/blog

Now that is all fine and dandy, but it might be a little hard to remember. Now what if you got a different address that pointed at that same exact spot, but was easier to remember? Try this on for size:

With Subdomain:

http://blog.yoursite.com

Did you see what happened? We dropped the “www” and put in “blog”. Now that this is up there, you can drop the use of “/blog” at the end. This my friends is a subdomain.

How can you create one of these beauties on your own? Well, your Web hosting company should have provided you with a control panel when signing up for your Web hosting account. If they did, you should have a setting somewhere in there telling you how you can get it done. It differs from control panel to control panel, so I will leave that much as homework for you.

In effect you are telling the server that “http://blog.yoursite.com” points to your “blog” folder. This can be done with any folder that is inside your root or home directory. Now how would a folder look if it was inside the blog folder? Like this:

Without Subdomain:

http://www.yoursite.com/blog/mitchrules

With Subdomain:

http://blog.yoursite.com/mitchrules

Now why would you want to use subdomains? For easier navigation and organization. The shorter you are able to make a URL, the more likely a visitor is going to remember it and come back.