Host Edition

Fax My Jeans Up, Scotty

creative — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:17:46 +0000

Additive manufacturing (AM) known as 3-D printing or Direct Digital Manufacturing (DDM) makes teleporting a reality. Not people yet, but soon– though at best it would only be a copy. BAM (Biomedical Additive Manufacturing) however, is a reality, and according to a recent

Seriously, What is the Cloud?

publisher — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:40:09 +0000

The formal definition is, well “formal” and we’re inclined to think it like a definition that has been made specifically to confuse rather than explain, but we will start with it and further explain everything one by one. American National Institute of Standards and Technology gives the following cloud computing definition: “Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” This definition gives us the five characteristics of cloud computing: Ubiquitous, convenient access, On-demand access, Shared pool of computing resources, Rapid provisioning, Measurable Let’s make these characteristics clearer as follows: We have a pool of computing resources: the processor, memory, network, storage etc., Users of these resources can conveniently access them, Users of these resources can access them whenever they want, and deploy them on their own, The IT personnel can quickly deploy these resources, whether automatically as in item no. 3 or with minimal effort, Both the IT personnel and the users can meter their usage. The underlying concept of all these is the abstraction of the applications from the underlying hardware. Let’s stop and think for a moment: everyday we access tens or maybe hundreds of websites on the Internet. We just type an address and hit Enter, and we’re done. We do not, just for once, think about whether the website is hosted on an IBM/HP/Dell server, or whether the website is hosted on a physical/virtual server, or whether the website is hosted on a Windows/Linux/BSD platform, or whether the server uses an SAN/DAS/NAS as its storage.

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Seriously, What is the Cloud?

How to Bring Your Site Online? A Guide for the Small Businesses

admin — Sun, 13 May 2012 14:19:48 +0000

The importance of your business’s web site is not a point to discuss. But on the other hand some common mistakes and pitfalls can easily make this essential element of your business work against you. There are two ways that you can get your company website online: you can either go for cloud-ready packages from Microsoft ( Office 365 ) or from Google ( Google Apps ) or you can build your own website. Although cloud offerings provide a seemingly quicker way to get up and running, building your own website has its own benefits. You will have a website that is tailored for your business, which will make you stand out from the similar-looking sites, you will have a total control over the design, you will have a total control over the presentation and the like. Let’s see how you can successfully build and bring your website online. First, you need a simple and sensible web address. It should be something like www.mycompany.com [or yourcompany.com.tr, yourcompany.ru depending on your preference] and not something like www.PleaseBuyFromMyCompany.com.

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How to Bring Your Site Online? A Guide for the Small Businesses

WordPress Themes vs. Designing From Scratch vs. Portfolio Sites

admin — Wed, 02 May 2012 07:06:55 +0000

There is a debate about what is the best way to show one’s creative work to clients. Web designers, graphic designers, illustrators and photographers struggle with the question of what is best for ME? Throughout the painful quandary, there is the nagging anxiety of what other creatives will think of a person’s web site. The truth is, it shouldn’t matter what other creatives think of your site. It’s not a competition – it’s about reaching prospective clients and having the clear message about why they should hire YOU! In art school and certainly in my professional career, I have been constantly reminded that it is the client as the end user. Please the client, make it easy for them to see the message and get it right away. When I worked in magazine publishing, the desire to use grunge fonts was compelling but, as driven by the choices of editors and marketing people, grunge was unreadable and although pleasing to designers, it was quite true that the average person would not like something hard to read and skip over that article or advertisement. It’s not easy to separate one’s creative desires with what is needed for marketing reality

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WordPress Themes vs. Designing From Scratch vs. Portfolio Sites

Viral: Does Your Brand Want It Or Not?

admin — Tue, 01 May 2012 23:52:54 +0000

Viral is such a buzz term now. Every where I turn, I’m getting questions from people asking, “How do I make my content go viral” and “How do I take my business and brand viral?” It always leads me to ask the question in return, what is viral and is it a good or bad thing. The first essential step in becoming viral is simply understanding your medium. Whether you have a blog you want to become more “sticky,” a Facebook business page you want people to “like” or a Twitter account you covet thousands of followers for, you have to understand where you are in the continuum of understanding. The first level is awareness. Five years ago or so, you asked someone what Twitter was, not everyone knew. They perhaps had heard of it but really had no clue what it did and how it worked

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Viral: Does Your Brand Want It Or Not?

WebHostingPad: Common Customer Complaints

admin — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 19:42:27 +0000

Where cheap shared hosting is concerned, we have yet to see any one name thrown around more than WebHostingPad . The provider has been giving out cheap and reliable hosting for as long as we can remember, and during that time, they’ve racked up the awards, pushed the envelope, and generally made a lot of people very happy. However, just because we’ve seen loads of favorable reviews doesn’t mean the web hosting provider is quite as golden as we might think. In fact, their paper promises may not be real life gains in the slightest. How’s a burgeoning web master to find out before signing that digital lease? Simple! Read the WebHostingPad customer reviews we’ve accumulated, and then stashed below for safe keeping. Beyond the jump you’ll find a number of categorized and common complaints we’ve received from our users about the web hosting provider, sectioned off for easy reading. However, before we get into the gritty details of those reports, why not have a closer look at the web hosting company itself

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WebHostingPad: Common Customer Complaints

Dedicated Server Options: Which Are Worth Considering

admin — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:17:30 +0000

No matter what new technologies get incorporated into the hosting world, there will always be a place for the dedicated server hosting account. It doesn’t necessarily make the host the most money: squeezing a few hundred accounts on a shared server does that. But it’s a market need that will never go away. Web hosting companies to this day respond to this demand by loading up their dedicated server plans with as many goodies as they can to lure in more fish. But which ones should you bite at, and which ones should you swim by? Here is a list of some common dedicated server options, and how much they actually give you. Bandwidth A lot of at-home users have been hit with throttling or bandwidth usage charges for playing their World of Warcraft or downloading just a few too many Transformers movies. The reason your ISP doesn’t let you slide on this is that they are just as crunched on costs for it as you are. Bandwidth costs are one of the most inelastic of all services that any host can offer. So if one host is giving you a much better deal on it than another, and you think there’s a good chance that you might actually need that much, you can strongly consider going with them on the basis of that alone. The chances that a host will let you “slide” for going over are slim, no matter how good your reputation with them is. Advertising credits The important thing to remember with advertising credits that come with a hosting account is that the dollar values that you receive aren’t “real” values in any way. They are just the cost of a certain type of advertising block on that site. If, say FaceBook, were to double all their ad rates tomorrow, many hosting companies would likely follow suit by doubling, or at least increasing their offerings. You would still be getting about the same advertising placement…mostly. Saying this does neglect the fact that if FaceBook did do this, less people would be able to afford it, and you’d wind up with a higher listing by attrition. That does highlight the ambiguity with this service, though. Major web sites seldom release the algorithms they use for how someone gets a higher page rank or ad frequency rate. Worse, these algorithms can often change without notice. Your $50 might get you page 1 with Google today, and page 42 tomorrow. This should not imply that advertising credits are worthless. A lot of webmasters plan on advertising on these sites anyway: for them, these credits can’t hurt. How much it will help, though, is the great unknown. If you do want one good rule of thumb, it’s better to have your advertising credits spread out.

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Dedicated Server Options: Which Are Worth Considering

Akamai Review

creative — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 12:53:54 +0000

Akamai Still Reigns As A Legendary CDN In the world of content delivery networks (CDNs), there’s hardly a more well-known name than that of Akamai . In the late 1990’s, the service was a pioneer of CDN technology, pushing the boundaries of what was possible for the end-user and the consumer. Thankfully, they’re unique dedication to innovative hardware sets, improved mathematics, and sheer, grandiose size makes the every bit as effective now as they were ten years. Akamai is one of our favorites solutions for any and all content delivery needs, making it practical and cost-effective to bring your media to the masses with reduced lag and increased satisfaction. Content Delivery Where You Need It We like Akamai for a number of reasons, but first and foremost, we’re extremely appreciative of the provider’s expansive network. With a grand total of more than 56,000 servers, Akamai’s EdgeNetwork is one of the largest point-of-presence based networks in existence, providing single-handedly the most area out of any other CDN provider we can name. This, of course, goes hand-in-hand with their 1,000 subsidized networks that span a total of 70 countries the world over.

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Akamai Review

The Truth About Managed Web Hosting

admin — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:21:29 +0000

We troll the same Internet sites you do, and trust us, we know what’s out there: If you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of myths circulating about managed server hosting. Though the style of hosting isn’t perfect, it certainly deserves a better rap than it’s earning. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a brief list of our biggest complaints with the naysayers, as well as some general thoughts on why managed web hosting is the best thing since sliced bread. If you dare to clarify your knowledge set, press onward, Solider! There’s a lot of rumors to be sifted. Only Newbies Need Managed Hosting : This thought is derived from the idea that paying someone to manage your server for you is somehow a sign of geek weakness: Only those inexperienced enough to run their own server need to hire a company to manage their content. However, this is completely untrue, and can wreck your business model if you’re not careful. The idea behind managed hosting is not to tie over gaps in your experience, but to save you the pain of having to manage the thing yourself.

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The Truth About Managed Web Hosting

Cheap Web Hosting – How to Still get a Good Value

admin — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:20:02 +0000

If you are literally counting pennies these days, don’t take it as a reflection on yourself. Everyone at every economic level is doing everything they can to tighten their belts. If this means that you are looking for good, cheap web hosting, then this is nothing to be ashamed of. It also doesn’t mean that you have to settle for an inferior product. There is a major quality fight going on in the web hosting world among inexpensive web hosts. Believe it or not this is a buyer’s market, or perhaps more accurately a user’s market. They want your business bad, and are willing to do what they can to get it. These are some of the common features and strengths you should look for when browsing among potential hosts: Customer service still reigns supreme The tech world may like to sometimes think that it exists somewhere outside of universal economic laws. It doesn’t, though. All of the same principles that apply to the rest of the business world apply to it as well. This includes the necessity of having a good customer service team. With our world moving to a more service-oriented economy this in itself is now an entire industry, which means that everywhere you look you will at least see claims of strong customer service. But how do you know if you’ll get it? There are a few things to check. See if they offer 24/7 chat support: most places offer 24/7 phone, but you will honestly prefer chat to phone service: it’s not as easy to copy and paste something someone says to you (not to mention, as much as it is considered a bit uncouth to say so, that you don’t need to worry about understanding the person on the other end). Ignore the “unlimited” One thing to not get caught up in are cheap plans that offer “unlimited” anything. It’s a weird statement on the web hosting world that this is considered something of a norm when any can tell you that nothing can ever be unlimited. Usually that means that the host won’t, for example, restrict your bandwidth unless your really naughty: but then, how do you know exactly how naughty you can be? How cheap is “cheap”? Prices have come down since the early days of web hosting. This is a reflection of how much more technology has advanced than the average user has needed. This means that what was once dirt cheap is now commonplace. Right now, if you are looking for something inexpensive but good, you probably don’t want to spend any more than $12/month, and that’s near the high end. More common are packages for under $8/month, and they go lower from there. Steer away from free accounts: you are generally better off paying even $4/month (also a common offer) than you would be dealing with the drawbacks of a “free” host. And keep an eye out for specials, though do note that some providers live in a constant state of “specials”, meaning that you don’t have to drop everything when you see one

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Cheap Web Hosting – How to Still get a Good Value