I like to keep an eye on some of the larger forums and message boards who’s subjects are about Web hosting. Some might call it lurking, others might just call it creepy. How else am I going to find topics that people are interested in though? One subject that has always gotten my attention since day one of my Web hosting lifestyle is the fight between rude people and nice people. I’m not talking about the battle in a general sense, but how it compares when a Web hosting support person is dealing with them. Yes, even in Web hosting you still have to put up with rude customers.

Not many folks know that I spent some time as a cook in a fast food restaurant back when I was in high school. When flipping burgers like I could only do, on occasion I’d get somebody coming around the counter to tell me some bad news. No, my dog hadn’t died and all my toes were still there. What they told me could have hurt as much though. They said their burger wasn’t right. How was this? I always paid attention, I never slip!

Well, almost never. On the occasion when I did have a slip up I was always hopping it was a nice person I was dealing with. I’d rather deal with the person who just says, “Could you please do this over?” rather than the guy who tosses the meat patty in my face and asks for his money back. The same could be said about Web hosting.

When your on the front lines of Web hosting support, you can sometimes get ten or twenty questions coming at you at once. You have to be ready with answers in one and coffee in the other. Knock them down, and get them quality answers as quickly as possible. Now lets say you forgot to pay your Web hosting bill, and your account has become suspended. Who are you going to go to first? That Web hosting support person on the front line.

Being nice to him will help you get the work done faster than yelling at him and asking why they took your Web site away. Yelling and being mean doesn’t only stress you out, but it stresses your support person out as well. Stress plus twenty other questions coming at you at the same time doesn’t make for productive work. It makes for sloppy work. On the other hand, if you are nice and well mannered then you are an easier person to talk to, and an easier person to work with. Hence, no screaming equals a better job.

All customers are suppose to be created equal though right? Yes, this is true. However, there are some folks that will never be happy, no mater what you tell them. I used to like to call these folks the customers from Hell. Human nature tells you that you are going to get along better with the nice person than the mean one. You can try your best to get along with the mean one, but most of the time it just is not going to cut it.

So what can be learned? I’ve been in both positions, both as the support person and the person in distress. From my perspective, I always try to be nice to these people. I know about the long hours and little respect. It can get you down sometimes. From time to time though, you can get that little message from a grateful customer that makes it all seem right though. That is the reason I’m still in the Web hosting world myself. What is that magical little phrase? You would be surprised how far a well placed “Thank you” can go.

With this being my 100th post on Mitchelaneous, I figured I should do something special. So here it is! Take two, or beta two of my Web hosting radio show. I cover a few headlines, a few ideas, a few things that are going down in my own professional life as well. The unofficial voice of Web hosting? You be the judge!

Click here to download this week’s show! (730 KB)

This week I have also included, an almost correct transcript of the show. For those out there who may not be able to listen to the show like you and me. Thanks goes to Meka for the wonderful suggestion. Pass the link around to your friends and as always, feel free to give me your comments, suggestions, feedback and more!

Radio Show’s Transcript:

Hello, I am Mitch Keeler, the unofficial voice of this Web hosting broadcast. I am here to talk about one thing, and one thing only… the wild and wacky world of Web hosting. If you have any thoughts, suggestions, comments or feedback on the show please send them to mitch@mitchkeeler.com

Is it true that a Web hosting company would be giving away their product? Now I usually stay away from junk like this, because that’s what it is, junk. Well this time around I could be wrong. Why? The name behind it is 1&1 Web Hosting. One of the world’s largest Web hosting companies. Technically you are only getting a test drive account, but still six months of free Web hosting is something worth looking into.

If we have any Web hosting companies out there listening, Go ahead and cut your domain name prices! It looks like everybody else is! Netcraft is reporting that Yahoo plans on keeping their $4.98 domain name prices for a little longer. The price that was supposed to go back up at the end of December, is now running till February 8.

The issue of Ping! Zine (a Web Hosting magazine) that I have an article featured in, should in my hands in a few weeks. I’m currently working on a new article for the next Ping! Zine issue right now. By next week sometime I should have a little more information on my Web hosting book I finished up a few weeks ago. I can’t wait to get this thing out to the public as soon as I can to hear what people have to say about it.

I have two interviews coming up next week sometime with two movers and shakers in the Web hosting world. Jonathan, from the Startup Blog and Pinny from BrowseHosts have agreed to answer a few of my toughest Web hosting questions. Both should be fun to talk to, and make for some interesting reading for all of you.

From the feedback I have received so far, I really think there is an audience for a Web hosting radio show out there. In the next few weeks I might shop the idea around to a few bigger folks in the Web hosting world to see if anybody is interested in picking this idea up and running with it. Well, that is as long as they keep me around for the ride…if they don’t keep me, then they don’t get to keep my idea. Ha!

Well that is it for this week. Please keep sending me your comments, feedback, suggestions and ideas to mitch@mitchkeeler.com. If your listening to this on my blog, then please feel free to leave a comment or two as well. This has been your weekly dose with Web hosting’s voice, I am Mitch Keeler.

Alright I am done messing around with my blog’s layout for now. Let me know how you like it! Tomorrow I am going to do a new audio entry/radio show, so if you have any ideas, topics or suggestions for things I should talk about let me know! Next week I’m going to be pretty busy, so I want to make sure I get this out of the way while I still have the time. Also tomorrow’s post will be my 100 entry on Mitchelaneous! A special event indeed! Well, special for me anyways.

I’m going to be doing some layout tweaking this weekend. So if things look a little funny over the next few days, don’t fear! By Monday, everything should be back to normal!

I have gotten tons of feedback about my first attempt at doing an audio entry, podcast, mitchcast.. whatever it is you want to call it. I’ll probably be giving it a second try sometime next week, so stay tuned for that. If things go well enough with it, I might look to get it hosted on a different Web site, or maybe shop around for a sponsor for it.

Maybe only having one audio entry up (for that week) then after that, I could archive them by transcripts of the show. What do you think about that? My only concern is the amount of space and bandwidth hosting too many of these audio files might take up for me, so after a couple of more shots I might be looking for a more permanent arrangement. I’ll also be working on a name, and some audio tweaking to make sure I get it low enough on file size but high enough on quality.

As you could probably tell from my rant a few weeks back, I have given thought about setting up ads on both my blog and my official Web site for some time now. After a few failed attempts in the past, I think I have finally found a winner with AdBrite. Got to thank Matt, since he was the one who suggested them to me after my last try at delivering ads on this Web site.

I have tried everything from Google to Blogads, but so far AdBrite has delivered more of a return than either one of those combined. Why the ads? Well, as the costs and demand goes up, Mitch needs to cover his proverbial backside. So many thanks to the sponsors I have gotten so far, and hopefully this will work out best for all of us!

As the Web hosting control panel questions keep rolling in, I’ll keep answering them. This latest question came to me after writing the three part series on control panels a few weeks ago for Lockergnome. I made a request for folks to send me any questions they might have about control panels, and they did just that. I received an E-mail from Sheldon about this subject just the other day.

Mitch, Thanks for your site. I am finding some good info there.

I founded (as a BBS in 1991), ran and sold a small ISP. I now have a single web server that I host a school and a church website on. Now a couple more non profits want to host with me too. I am using Windows Server 2k (because I know it best) and setting up things the hard way.

My former company uses Plesk but it is not cheap ($199 for 30 domains). In your research, have you found a functional, low cost or free control panel? I do not need to set up email or DNS, just site and FTP permissions on the web server. Doing it all manually I seem to forget some permission setting every time I do it! Now back to reading your site…

Now I do have to admit, I have yet to stumble across a free Windows-based control panel. If you happen to know of any, please let me know and I’ll be sure to include it in a future article. I suggested to Sheldon that he read through my control panel round up articles to see if he liked any of my examples from there. There are more than a few Windows-based control panels listed. Success! He found something that worked out for him.

I did find your articles just minutes after I emailed you. InsPanel has a free version for 10 or less sites. It also limits a few other items. At $499 for the unlimited version, it is still a good deal. I am playing with this software some more, but it looks like I will be uninstalling it and reinstalling it to fix a goof I did during install. But their email support already answered a question, so that was impressive!

I did look at a virtual server setup, but I have free bandwidth as long as my former company stays in business. It is kind of nice to have a fiber cable to your home! So I take advantage of this and host some low cost sites just for spending money (so I can buy more computer hardware…).

I am surprised at the limitation of free or low cost Windows panel solutions. Microsoft makes the much of code available and if I was a programmer I would try and make my own. But I am a hardware guy and could not program my way out of a paper bag.

Another tough Web hosting question, now answered. Remember, if you have any Web hosting or Web development questions, feel free to shoot them my way! I’m always looking to help folks out when it comes to understanding all this Web site mumbo-jumbo. The thing to remember here is, never give up on looking for a better solution out there. Chances are if you think it should exist out there, then it probably does, and in more than one version.

After my article describing what a .htaccess file is and how it can be used to help your own Web development, I received dozens of E-mails on the subject. It has been one of the most popular topics I have covered for 2005 so far. Of all of them I have plowed through so far, my exchange with Randy (a loyal Lockergnome fan) has been most enlightening.

I enjoyed reading your article on htaccess files. (FWIW, I obtained the article link through one of Lockergnome’s daily newsletters.) Learning more about this file’s functionality actually can address a temporary need of mine. I have several domains parked under my active domain’s ip address. At some point, one or more of these domains will have a unique ip address assigned. Until the site(s) go live, parking the domains saves some cash; I would like to use the htaccess file to redirect visitors to a custom page which describes the project’s scope and provides a tentative “go live date.”

(Essentially, a customized under construction page.) Can you point me to an article or resource which will provide me some specifics as to what changes need to be made in the primary domain’s htaccess file to accomplish this redirection (the file already exists in the domain’s root directory)? Also, I have perfectly legitimate business reasons for wanting to make these changes but don’t want to be penalized by search engine spiders for making these changes. Are there any issues along these lines which I should be aware of before proceeding?

First off, I thanked him for the kind words, and then I suggested two options that I knew of right off the top of my head. The first was creating the redirects for the domain names through the .htaccess file itself. The Javascript Kit Web site has a good article on how to do this and how to make it as painless as possible.

The second thing I suggested was trying to tackle the problem with the domain name register. Depending on who your domain name register is, you might be able to do this on their end. Some domain name registers allow you to specify where your domain name is pointing exactly. Since you are running your Web page off the IP address currently, you could tell them to go to:

http://123.456.789/testsite/index.html

Then when your ready for the Web site to go live, just change it with them. The only problem there would be waiting for the domain names to propagate, which could mean it would be 24 to 72 hours before you started seeing any results.

Randy read through my solutions, and to his credit came up with an even better one.

Not being one to throw in the towel on what I thought would be a reasonably simple exercise, I did some further research and found the following code snippet:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(ww+\.)?parked-domain\.com

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/parked-domain/

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /redirect-folder/$1 [L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(ww+\.)?second-parked-domain\.com

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/second-parked-domain/

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /redirect-folder-2/$1 [L]

Adding this code to the global .htaccess file works flawlessly for me. As you can see, there is no problem writing additional conditions to cover multiple parked domains should the need arise. (I have tried this code with two parked domains and the code works as “advertised.” Now I don’t have any excuse for not posting the professional, information filled, under development pages, which initially spurred my interest in this area.

There you have it, three ways you can choose from to solve an easy problem. Remember if you have any other tough Web development or Web hosting questions, send them my way! I’m always looking to help a few people out with the many Web site problems there are out there today.

Also if you enjoy what you see here, see how you would like it in audio form! I am still looking for feedback and responce to my first attempt at Internet broadcasting through my own Web hosting radio show. Thanks!

It has been done! First things first, I have to ask all of you to be very very nice to me as this is my very first attempt at trying this out. It is just one of those things that I would probably kick myself for if I hadn’t tried it. Hopefully it will be worth listening to. If you have any comments, suggestions, feedback or praise just leave a comment or E-mail me. Enjoy! It was a lot of fun.

Beta 1 of Mitch’s Web Hosting Radio Show (6.81MB)

The new “no follow” linking rule that Google and the other search engines want to establish will in effect do what they want it to do. Bring down the numbers of comment spam and trackback spam links. Unfortunately though, I have the feeling that it will slowly be killing relevant search results Online. Why? The reason is people are greedy.

With the introduction of this, the search engines are creating a tool for the popular Web master to pimp for his advantage. No longer can you make an agreement for a link exchange between two similar Web sites. Now you will have to worry about if they will give you a “real” link, or if they will be handing you one of these new “no follow” links.

In that effect, the search engine results will become more bias towards content cliques and less focused on friendly linking. I have neither the time or the effort to check Google to make sure everybody who is linking to me is not using the “no follow” rule. I just have to focus on dealing with people I can trust.

For myself, when I write an article and allow it to be published elsewhere, I am not only looking for the average viewer to click the link back to me to find out more articles and information. I am also looking for that proverbial PageRank push. I have worked hard to follow the search engine rules, and be more focused on good content rather than search engine tricks. In effect, I could get punished right along with the spammers.

I can promise you I will not be putting this code into any of my pages myself. If I have a link here, it is because I wanted it to be here because it was relevant in one way or the other. If somebody gets a PageRank bump because of it, good for them. Honestly I don’t have that much of a problem with comment or trackback spam due to people having to sign up and register before they can comment here.

I think that is a much more reliable solution than this new “no follow” code. So far the best article I have read on the subject comes from kuro5hin.org. I suggest if you are interested in seeing the issue from a different perspective, you check it out there. So will the new linking rule kill relevance Online? Let me know what you think.