geeky tutorials, tips, guides and reviews
The Web Hosting Show’s video tutorials are coming soon! I can not give away all the details just yet, but I can promise you it will be something worth waiting for. Watch the video tease for yourself and let me know what you think.
Running Time: 6 seconds | File Size: 1.04 MB
We covered a lot of great topics on this Monday’s edition of the Web Hosting Show. From hosting deals to the latest Web hosting headlines, we had a little of everything this week. Here are two of my favorite stories though that I’d like to share with all of you.
Reading over at HostRocket Network Operations Center Blog this week I learned about two great things they are doing to help the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.
The first thing that caught my attention was that they are donating five percent of ViaTalk’s revenue to Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund. For those of you who don’t know, ViaTalk is HostRocket’s VoIP solution. The second thing that made me happy to see was that they are giving away gas this week!
ViaTalk is giving all new customers who activate service with a 24 month prepay term free gas for a limited time. Select any package and a 24 month term and your welcome kit will include an Exxon Mobile cash card good for $20 in free gas. This promotion will end on Monday, September 12th at 11:59PM.
So sign up and get some free gas along the way!
The second story I’d like to share with you this week has to do with HostingCon 2006.
George Roberts, the man behind the magic at Interjuncture.com E-mailed me this week to let me know that HostingCon 2006 is right around the corner!
This year’s event will be held at The Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada on July 17 through July 19. Thats right, the Web hosting world is taking over Las Vegas! Elvis impersonators need Web hosting too. For more details on the event, check out HostingCon.com. I am sure I will have more coverage of the event as it inches closer and closer on the calendars.
Download the Web Hosting Show, Podcast 29!
Running Time: 27 minutes | File Size: 12.5 MB
Now Firefox fans may not like the idea, but every so often you still need to view a Web page in IE due to some goofy developer working for some big company that doesn’t think they should have to bother to check to see if the Web site in question works with Firefox, or any other alternative browser out there. Putting my anger aside, there is a simple way of switching over to Internet Explorer from inside of Firefox.
That is where the IE View extension comes into play. After downloading it and setting it up, you now have the power to right click any Web page from within Firefox and select, “View This Page in IE”. If you know you will always have to open up a certain Web page in Internet Explorer, you can add it to the “Always Open in IE” list. That way no mater when you go to the page, it will always pop up in the browser of the big blue “e”. At the moment, this extension only works for Windows. Now when is the Internet Explorer team going to build in a “View This Page in Firefox” addition to Internet Explorer 7? I would not hold my breath.
So there you have it, although a little bit of me dies inside every time it is done, you now have two options to take when a Web page will not work correctly inside of Firefox. You could create a riot and scream at the company in question to work with Firefox, or you could take the easier route and install the IE View extension. The call is yours to make.
Yep, here is another Web hosting interview you can add to the list. I had a fun time talking with the folks at HostSearch.com on a whole plethora of topics out there, both inside and outside of the world of Web hosting. Want to know more about my Web hosting background?
HOSTSEARCH: Mitch, you are certainly one of THE characters in the web hosting world. What’s your background and how did you get into the business?
MITCH KEELER: I broke into the Web hosting world as your average customer support guy for TotalChoice Hosting. I was answering help desk tickets and taking client questions just like a lot of folks are doing out there right now. Later on I moved up to Customer Support Manager then Customer Support Director for TotalChoice Hosting. After leaving TotalChoice, I worked for a few more hosting companies just to make a few dollars here and there, while doing some article writing on the side. The article writing led into an eBook deal with Lockergnome, and shortly after that I started up the Web Hosting Show. I would have to give TotalChoice Hosting the most credit though for teaching me the ropes and the best way to handle both the good and the bad situations that the Web hosting world has to offer.
Be sure to read the rest of the interview, and let me know what you think! If anybody else out there wants to reach me, you should know by now how to get ahold of me.
Wait a minute, Singapore has Web hosting?
Singapore’s leading SME-dedicated broadband web hosting service provider, has launched new Virtual Private Server (VPS) and Dynamic Dedicated Server (DDS) hosting plans for the Windows platform. USONYX becomes the first hosting company in Singapore and across Asia to offer virtual private and dynamic dedicated server hosting for Windows.
I guess so. Read the rest of the article over at TheHostingNews.com!
You back up just about every other type of file on your computer, why not back up your Firefox extensions, bookmarks, and history? You probably spend more time in your browser than you do in any other part of your computer, so loosing that data is just as dangerous as loosing any other files on your computer. You always want to be prepared for the worst, and thanks to BackupFox, now you can be.
BackupFox creates a backup of your Firefox profile. It dives deep into Firefox itself and pulls out your bookmarks, extensions and history and then saves them all in one tiny .zip file that is ready to be moved to another hard drive or burned onto a CD. This tool could also be helpful if you are wanting to run a experimental version of Firefox, but don’t want to loose any of the settings you had on your old install. If something goes wrong, you can uninstall that version of Firefox, reinstall the old version then load up your backup and you are back to normal.
If you are a Thunderbird user, it also backs that information up as well. This is good news, because sometimes backing up Thunderbird can be a little more confusing task than backing up Firefox. BackupFox is only for Windows for now as well. So read up about it, and then give it a shot. Your Firefox will thank you.
It is really easy to stay on top of the Web hosting world by using Google news. Here is how it is done in 60 seconds! The Web Hosting Minute has returned to the Web Hosting Show. Google is a great news source. Sure it has a few problems, but what doesn’t these days?
For those of you who don’t have a minute to spend listening to me, here is the walk through:
1. Go to the Google News Web site.
2. Find and Click on News Alerts (Should be on the left side of the Web page)
3. For the search term, type in “web hosting”.
4. Set the other preferences to the way you want them.
5. Hit the “Create Alert” Button.
There you go! Now wasn’t that easy? This is just one of the many ways I like to stay on top of what is going on in the world of Web hosting. Have a news reader? Then grab the RSS feed for the search term “web hosting”.
Google News – Web Hosting RSS Feed
Plug that into your favorite news reader, and you don’t have to bother with creating the Google alert!
As a bonus, here are the links to the past two Web Hosting Minutes I did earlier this year.
Have any other Web hosting tips you’d like to share with me? Be sure to let me know!
Download the Web Hosting Show!
Running Time: 60 seconds | File Size: 236 MB
Tired of your Firefox’s homepage? What if you could create a Web page that lists all of your bookmarks? That way you could go right where you need to go, and skip that step of loading up your start page every time you open up Firefox. With the Firefox extension, bookmarkshome, it can be done.
BookmarksHome makes a pretty startup page out of your bookmarks. The layout of this page is highly customizable. Items high in the bookmarks tree (as you see it when you open the Bookmarks menu) will appear at the top of the page. Changes in your bookmarks will be visible after reloading the BookmarksHome page. Take a look at the screenshots to see what BookmarksHome is about.
With customizable CSS, you can change the look and feel of your home page as well. Check out this page to see a few styles that have been posted already. Another nice feature is you can select which bookmark folders are shown on the customized home page. So try it out, and let me know what you think!
I am looking to make some upgrades to the way I record the Web Hosting Show, so I need some suggestions from you which way I should go and which purchases I should make. First things first, let me give you my current setup here in the Web Hosting Show studio.
Microphone:
Logitech USB Desktop Microphone
Headset Microphone:
None
Recording Software:
So give me your thoughts! Got any suggestions?
The folks over at I-Hacked.com have written up an article with several “hacks” for Firefox itself. In my opinion, hacking into Firefox, adding things and taking them away is what separates Firefox from the rest of the browsers out there. You can totally customize it to fit your needs. You can make it your own, to where it will fit you perfectly like a glove.
Ok, its no secret..Firefox is my favorite browser.. in fact, if you are not using it (for example using… Gasp, IE) you need to change. Well I decided to write an article on how to “hack” Firefox to make it even better. Using a few tweaks here and there, we can make FireFox considerably faster, enable advanced tab options, make newer versions compatible with older extensions, run directly from a flash disk, and on and on.
I-Hacked.com – Firefox Browser Hacking
The hacks mentioned in this article cover everything from making Firefox faster to playing around with ChromEdit. So don’t be scared to do a little Firefox tweaking yourself. Who knows, you might even come to like doing it.
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Mitch Keeler is nothing more than your average Joe trying to leave his mark on the world though both his professional work and his online projects, articles, podcasts and more.
