Archive for January, 2005
· January 27, 2005 at 3:22 pm · Odds & Ends
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.
· January 26, 2005 at 8:36 pm · Odds & Ends
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!
· January 26, 2005 at 12:39 am · Odds & Ends
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)
· January 23, 2005 at 5:10 pm · Odds & Ends
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.
· January 23, 2005 at 3:25 pm · Odds & Ends
We are living in an age where robots and spiders are crawling all over your Web site. No, this isn’t a tag line from an old 1950 horror movie, this is the way things are. Don’t be frightened though. The fact that you have robots and spiders on your Web site is a good thing. A very good thing if you care about your own success Online. How can you make the most out of the robots and spiders? it all starts with a little file called “robots.txt”.
Before I get into what the robots.txt file is all about, there is something I have to cover. If you have been around the proverbial Web master block a few times, you have heard about search engine spiders. They are small “robots” that search engines send out across the Internet to look for content. Just about every major search engine uses them.
Now let us start with what it is. The robots.txt file is a small text file that sits in your root directory. When search engines send out spiders to roam the Internet looking for content to pick up, they read the robots.txt file first. Think of it as your way to talk directly to the search engines.
This is how your Web site ends up on a search engine, like Google. When you “submit” your Web site to a search engine you are putting your domain on a list of Web sites for them to spider over. Now which is best? Is it better for the search engine spider to find you by itself or with you submitting yourself ot the search engine? There is debate for both sides, so I will not get too deep into that.
So you know now that a search engine sends out spiders to pick up content on the Internet. You know you can talk to the spider with including something within your robots.txt file in your root directory. Now comes the fun stuff.
Now that you have a robots.txt file in your root directory, you can figure out what you want to tell the search engine spiders. This time, “Hey, how you doing?!” isn’t going to cut it. You have to learn how to speak their language. First there is the User-agent code. The User-agent code specifies the specific search engine you wish to speak to. Each search engine spider has a name. For example, Google’s search engine spider’s name is “googlebot”. Other search engines have other names.
Here is a good Web site to check out if you are curious about what names certain search engines are using.
Search Engine Dictionary - Spider Names
The Web Robots Database
To use the User-agent code to call for a specific search engine spiders to read, do this:
User-agent: googlebot
This tells Google’s spider that you want them to follow the rules you set in your robots.txt file.
To use the User-agent code to call for all search engine spiders to read, do this:
User-agent: *
This tells all search engine spiders that you want them to follow the rules you set in your robots.txt file.
Now instead of telling them, “It is okay for you to get content from here, here and here” it is much easier to tell the spiders where not to go. That is where the robots.txt file is most helpful. That is where the Disallow: command comes in handy. Using it, you can tell a search engine spider not to get anything inside your “photos” folder for an example. How does it look in the robots.txt file?
Lets make this command for all search engines spiders to stay out of my “photos” folder located in my root directory.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /photos/
That is it! Now I don’t have to worry about any search engine spiders looking inside my “photos” folder and indexing what is inside. The thing to remember is to keep your paths relative to where your root directory is. What does that mean?
If your domain name is (http://www.mitchkeeler.com) then in the above example, I just told the spider to stay out of my folder here (http://www.mitchkeeler.com/photos/). If my “photos” folder was inside my “images” folder (http://www.mitchkeeler.com/images/photos/, then the above example wouldn’t have worked.
It would have had to of been changed to this:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /images/photos/
For an example of what a robots.txt file looks like in action, lets take a trip to the White House! Here is the White House’s Web site’s robots.txt file:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/robots.txt
Now you are ready to get into your own favorite text editor and create a robots.txt file for yourself. If you still have any questions feel free to shoot me an E-mail or check out these handy links:
Search Engine World - Robots.txt Exclusion Standard Information
robotstxt.org
· January 23, 2005 at 1:39 am · Odds & Ends
I’m bored, so when I am bored I do random Google searches. Nothing I am too proud off, because I know it honestly sounds as dull as watching paint dry. After going through my usual name searches though, I noticed that I am the number two and three entries for free mac mini in Google.
Not that this has helped me any at all. I still only have one person who has signed up and completed an offer. Brandon was right though, the easiest thing to do is to sign up for the free efax trial, no costs at all.
I was going to cancel it, but the customer support person I was talking to gave me ten dollars worth of more credit to stay around for the rest of the 30 days. How could I say no to that?
Speaking of which I got my free DVDs in the mail today for finishing up my original joining of the Columbia House DVD club for my first offer. That one I guess never went through, but the efax one did. Go figure. Still want that free Mac Mini? Then please click my link and sign up! I promise it is not evil!
