Web Dev Notes

If you’re looking for a web host for your website or blog, stay as far away from Ipower as you possibly can! Any website that requires a MySQL back-end such as Wordpress, Joomla or phpBB will take approximately 30 seconds or more to load. This is a problem affecting all of their clients, yet they still reply to support tickets saying that either nothing is wrong or that Wordpress, used by millions of people, is the source of the problem.

In case my opinion is not enough to convince you, the following are links to other pages I’ve found mentioning their horrible experiences with Ipower.

HostJury - To give you an idea about how bad Ipower is, this blog post at host jury was first posted in May 2007! As you can see, people are still posting comments reporting the same on-going issues to this very day.

IpowerComplaints - Still not convinced? This guy registered the domain IpowerComplaints.com just too give Ipower clients a place to post all of their complaints. Visit the site and you’ll notice its disturbingly active!

phpBB.com - phpBB is probably one of the best free forum software packages available. It’s so good, most hosts, including Ipower, will let you install it by a click of a button. Here is a forum post on phpBB.com with users discussing how using Ipowerweb to host their forum has been unsuccessful because the pages just take way too long to load.

What About vBulletin? - Since Ipower will normally respond back to support tickets saying the reason for the slow load times is due to the software, how do they explain that any php-based software requiring MySQL experienced this problem? Here is an example of a vBulletin website experiencing this problem.

More Ipower Reviews - Take a look what others have to say about Ipower here. At the time of writing, their uptime is rated at 13% and their support at 5%. Honestly, thats as good as 0. Do not register a website with Ipower if you hope to ever actually monetize the website or run a business online.

SitePoint Discussion - Just another discussion discussing why you should stay away from Ipower.

HostSearch Forums - Example of another frustrated user who moved his website after attempting to first solve the problem by dealing with Ipower support. It honestly seems like Ipowerweb does not even care to lose customers.

Problems won’t get Fixed - If you are experiencing this problem, it won’t get fixed even if they tell you it will. Ipower will tell you that you were experiencing a temporary issue, however that issue will return to haunt you constantly. Here is another example of a user trying to solve the problem and realizing the only solution was to switch host.

The list could go on and on, but I think you get the idea. Stay far far away from this web host!

Which web host should you go with? Before making a purchase from any company, take the time to research reviews first on reliable websites such as HostJury. HostJury continually makes an effort to make sure all reviews on their site are real and honest. I’d personally recommend HostGator or 1and1.com.

The easiest way to boost your websites rank and increase profitability is to download the Alexa toolbar.

What is Alexa? It is a site that ranks all websites on the internet. Many people will use this as a reference when estimating the value of a website or when deciding whether or not to advertise on a website.

How does it work? Let’s ask Alexa:

Alexa’s traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period. A site’s ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and pageviews. Reach is determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day. Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single pageview. The site with the highest combination of users and pageviews is ranked #1.

So in a nutshell, if you have the Alexa toolbar, then every time you visit a website, you will basically cast a vote for that site. All your votes and the votes of everyone using the Alexa toolbar then get added up in order to rank all the websites in the world.

Guess what? Nobody visits your website more than you! Download the Alexa toolbar now so that every time you visit or update your website, you cast yourself some votes and boost your own rank!

The Alexa toolbar itself is actually pretty useful too. It will give you a search box for browsing the web and list the current rank of the page you are browsing. You will also have the ability to easily find and access more information about websites you visit and even compare your website against others.

Alexa is owned by Amazon which is a well known trusted company. Your Alexa toolbar will also give you a handy little link to Amazon.com and all of the great products they offer at excellent prices.

What are you waiting for? Download the Alexa toolbar now!

Ever since Darren Rowse from ProBlogger published his first book, many bloggers have been wondering, can they get published too? Bloggers have a lot to say and if you never thought about publishing your own book before, you probably have now. Of course, not everyone will be approached by a publisher, but don’t let that stop you because there are a lot of self-publishing services available online that can help get you started! If you have good advice to share and the motivation to write it all down, self-publishing could be right for you.

Wordclay’s Online Publishing offers a user-friendly service that will help guide you through the process of publishing your own book. With Wordclay you can choose your book size, design the cover, and make other design choices to customize the look of your book. The best part is that their self-publishing service is free! They will only make money when you sell your book so they are focussed on helping you become successful.

In addition to helping you through the steps required to publish your book, Wordclay also offers additional marketing services to help bring your book into contact with as many potential buyers as possible. Remember, their success is reliant on your success, so once again they offer a high quality service that will help increase your sales and revenues. For more detailed information regarding how the whole self-publishing process works, visit their FAQ section for answers to most of the questions you may have.

This Post Brought to you by Wordclay! If you are interested in self-publishing but are not sure if Wordclay is for you, take the time to compare them with some other online publishers like AuthorHouse or Lulu! You’ll then be able to decide which service is best for your particular needs.

Self-publishing is one great way to make money online. For more tips and suggestions regarding how to make money online, check out the Web Dev Notes Make Money section.

One of the great things about doing freelance work or running your own blog is that you get to be your own boss. When you are your own boss, you don’t have to worry about finding yourself in situations as show below…

Of course, being your own boss isn’t easy because then you have to figure out how the heck your are going to make some money to live off of! Is is possible to make a living from blogging? Obviously the answer is yes. There are many examples of people earning above average salaries just by running a website or a blog. However, even though it is possible, it is definitely not easy.

The hardest part of earning a living from the web is going through all the steps and work that must be done before earning a single cent. You have to start somewhere, and usually that means working hard on your website for up to a year before you start to see any actual returns for all that work.

Is it worth the effort? That depends, are you the chicken or the cat?

Part of being successful is being realistic. If you have certain goals you really want to reach, don’t just set out to get them blindly. Identify your final target goal, then plan smaller, more realistic steps to help set you on the path to reaching the ultimate goal.

If you set your goals too high right from the start, you’ll never reach them!

If you want to be successful you will need to work as hard as you can to reach your goals. Never give up, even if it feels like you are grabbing helplessly at thin air! Keep fighting for what you believe in and what you want to achieve!

Even if you feel like you might be running in circles, keep at it and be strategic! If something is standing in your way, find the source of the problem and address it. How long do you think it will be before you come home and the kitty has chewed up the laser pointer? The kitty always wins.

As Google continues to grow talk continues to spread regarding them secretly making plans for world domination.

The once cool & fun search engine is now becoming the big bad villain. Is this justified, or just the inevitable result of expansion? Does Google really plan to telepathically send Googlebot into my brain in the near future to index my every thought? What about all those privacy issues people keep bringing up involving Google?

I believe it is just quite impossible to be on everybody’s good side once you become the head of the class, regardless of what you do. For example, Matt Cutts has a great post about how Google does more than most companies to protect privacy, despite Google receiving so much attention for this issue.

So is Google really evil? Personally, I’d feel really hypocritical saying anything besides that I love Google, seeing as I use Gmail, Analytics, Reader, Blogger and of course Google search on a daily basis. These are all extremely powerful tools offered for free. Still, people are constantly having discussions regarding what Google is “really” doing and how it is using these tools to accomplish world domination.

Here are some interesting articles on the topic:

• IsGoogleEvil.com
• Is Google Evil at O’Reilly
• Google vs Evil at Wired.com
• And Then There were Four
• If Google Really was Evil

Contacts are extremely important if you hope to make any money doing web development. As a web developer, stay in touch with people you have done work for! Make sure these people think of you first when they need more work done! If you are developing your own website or blog, again, contacts are key to success. Make quality comments on forums and blogs with the genuine intention of helping these other sites, and you risk gaining these people as clients or visitors in the future.

Take some time every-day to help others by posting on their website and forums. Write articles about other sites from time to time. These relationships you will build will come back to benefit you in the long-run. Do not spam your link or advertise yourself. Taking the time to earn trust and respect will help you build up contacts and incoming links that will translate into more traffic and more opportunities.

What’s the best way to stay in touch? I’ve recently installed the ChatZilla IRC Client for Firefox. I love using IRC for group meetings since it is lightweight and easy for everyone to connect and join in the discussion. And best of all, the discussion can be logged so nothing important will be forgotten.

Gmail is of course the next obvious tool to stay in touch. Gmail is free and lets you access your email from anywhere which is what makes it more useful than using Outlook on your computer. Of course, there are many web-based email services available, but Gmail is by far the best for two reasons: Search and Labels. Labels are way better than folders because you can attach multiple labels to a single email that falls into multiple categories. Search is fast, so you can find that email you need very quick.

Instant Messaging is the next great way to stay in touch in real-time on a more personal level. There are many different messengers available, so it can become a hassle managing an MSN list, ICQ list, AIM list, etc…! To avoid this problem I use Trillain, which is a tool that combines all these instant messengers into one!

Lastly, use a tool like Google Reader to know when your contacts are posting on their website and what they are posting about. This way, you can visit them and comment when they cover a topic you are genuinely interested in.

I read an interesting article the other day titled “SEO or Content - Can There be Only One?” over at blognewswatch.com. I particularly enjoyed The Lazy SEO Manifesto which is both discouraging and encouraging depending on your point of view. SEO can be a great “get rich quick” tool, but without content, it’s like throwing magnets at a wall instead of a fridge, none of the traffic will stick.

The way I see it is quite simple. Quality content builds loyalty, quality SEO builds traffic. Content will allow your site to be successful in the long run, whereas SEO can bring you short term prosperity. Combining both SEO and content is the key to allowing your website to reach its full potential.

The reason we bookmark websites is because we have identified quality content. We would not need bookmarks if exactly what we wanted to see would show up every time we conducted a search. This leads to a major problem. Sometimes, what we are looking for is hidden in the depths of the internet because other sites with poor or equivalent content have used SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to gain higher rankings in search results. Millions of searches are conducted every week, so there is no doubt that higher rankings translate to higher traffic.

This website is a perfect example of SEO at work. While I hope to be offering quality content, there is no real reason why I should have a page rank of 5 and receive thousands of page views a week, after only my second week of writing this blog. Thanks to the 451press network of websites, each member benefits from the success of the other through extensive linking. In fact, I’ve noticed i’ve been getting traffic from search engines from people searching for “Alt-Tab Replacement” due to this article I wrote just last week! If I had posted the 100% exact same post on my Flogger blog, the post would remain, as previously mentioned, hidden in the depths of the internet.

While good SEO can lead to almost immediate success, you cannot expect your website to be viable for long without quality content. Building visitor loyalty is extremely important, because search engines are constantly working on ways to provide better results for searches conducted with their engine. As a result, if you rely solely on SEO, within a single day your website could potentially drop from thousands of visitors to virtually none should a search engine like Google make changes that cause your website to receive a lower page rank.

The best thing you can do is focus on content first. Next, build up good relationships with other websites similar to your own so that you can get quality incoming links. This will help build a solid foundation for your website such that it can survive regardless of whatever search engines are up to. If time remains, then try to do some SEO to increase traffic to your website. Don’t waste time on SEO until you have something to offer. In fact, you may actually harm your site if visitors are lured in and find nothing useful because in the future, once you have content, they may skip clicking your link if they still remember wasting their time the last time they visited it!

Bugs suck. We hate when a program crashes or when someone hacks our website to post pictures of us in that pink bunny costume we were dared to wear several years prior… Yes, bugs are horrible little critters we hope to never encounter even though we inevitably run into many which could have been easily avoided. For example, do you take the time to make sure all your software is up-to-date? If you’re running Wordpress for your blog, do you always update to the newest version as soon as possible.

Even if you haven’t had any trouble with your software yet doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hurry to upgrade ASAP! While a bug can sometimes just be a small annoyance, other times it could be catastrophic. You wouldn’t want your whole database to disappear and lose every single post you have ever written! I do hope you make backups…!

more funny pictures

There is always a glitch in the program you are running. If it’s a good program that has been tested properly prior to release, then chances are you won’t run into that glitch right away. However, as soon as you install a plugin or try something unusual with the software, the chances that you find that remaining glitch increase significantly! A program is never bug free! Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise! The older your content management system gets, whether it be Wordpress, Joomla, php-Nuke, etc, the more likely someone has found a way to hack it. Chances are, once this occurs, the developers of those software products hear about it very quickly and then end up releasing a new version with fixes to the problem. Just because your website hasn’t been affected by the problem yet will not change the fact that it is vulnerable until you take the time to upgrade!