Tech Tip Tuesday: Hosting Real Estate

Oops, forgot to publish this yesterday.

Hosting, it’s big business these days, and it’s big money too.  Most people looking for hosting are concerned primarily with price (and in this economy who wouldn’t be.)

But let me give you an insider tip on this one.  The first question shouldn’t be, “How low can I go?”  It should be, “What do I need it to do?”

As with anything in this life, you get what you pay for.  So it’s important to know what you’re getting and why it may, or may not, work for you.  Additionally, you want to make sure that you get something that you can use easily and quickly to fulfill your needs.

Finance Fridays: Domain Names Again

Yes, there has been a bit of a theme this week, as I’m sure you see by now.  Today, though, depends more on what you can spend versus trying to save money.

Buying domain names can be a business in itself (it’s called “domaining”) and frankly, it’s a business practice that drives me insane.  I personally believe that if you have a domain name you’re not using, you should point it somewhere it’s going to be useful.  Otherwise, sell the thing.

Alright, now that that’s off my chest, back to today’s post.  My suggestion is to buy as many company specific domain names as your budget affords you.  Get all the .coms, .nets, .bizs you can and point them (with proper 301 redirect of course) to your website.

But wait, there’s more.  Don’t just get the TLDs (that’s Top Level Domains) for your main site, get anything you can afford that correlates with any sub-page within your site, and point those domain names there as well.  (Again, properly 301 redirected, you don’t want duplicate content.)

Why should you do this?  Two reasons:

1. So you can get as many people to your site who attempt typing in random domains (yes, people still do that, and more often than you’d expect.)
2. To keep your competition from getting traffic that should rightfully come to you.
3. So know one else makes money off your idea (start typing I can has cheeseburger options in the address bar, good luck finding the one with the cats.)

OK, that was three ideas, but the second and third are basically the same (I just wanted to throw something in there about LOLcats.)

So that’s my tip of the week, go and buy some domain names, and don’t pay more than $10 on each.  If your current company chareges more than that, start Googling, there are cheaper (and better) options out there.

Website Wednesday: Picking The Right Domain Name

Picking the right domain name isn’t necessarily as important as you may think.  Unless you’re Coke, or Nintendo, or the American Broadcasting Corporation (and I think they all have theirs locked down by now) your domain name can really be anything.

Of course it is wise to have something that has to do with your industry and keyword rich, so if you can (and if it’s available) get something like that.  A good domain name should have something to do with your industry — like design for me — and something to set you apart from your competition — like start page.  Here are some good examples of good domain names:

1. Bakespace.com — a MySpace clone for chefs and cooks.
2. TempeCarWash.com — a local car wash company.

Now the next question is whether to go .com, .net, .biz, or what.  Here’s my personal opinion on that:  ALWAYS GET THE .COM!!!  If it’s available that is.  Most people using the web automatically think your domain name will end in a .com if they ever get confused or forget, so make sure you own it if you can.  You don’t want to be sending money to your compitors or to some adlink site, like the ones I mentioned on Monday.

That said, if you can bet the .net, .biz, .org, .info, .us, .mobi, etc., etc., etc., and you have the budget to get them, do so.  If you point them all to your main page, and rewrite the URL to the .com, you’re going to increase your rank and authority.

Another suggestion would be to buy the .net, .org, etc. of your competitors domain names.  Of course you probably shouldn’t do this if your competition is using a copyright, and even if they’re not, I’d point those domain names to the adlink sites (Sedo.com is great) instead of pointing them to your own site.  You don’t want to get into a costly legal battle over a $10 domain name.

So there are my 2¢ for the week.  Now go buy some domain names.

Tech Tip Tuesday: Make A Backup

I work in the hosting industry for my day job.  It’s interesting and educating (and many times humbling) work.  Other than the day job, I build websites, run a few (3) blogs, keep a few (5) Twitter streams, do the whole Facebook thing, the Flickr thing, and teach others about using the social web to market their businesses and websites.

One of the things that has amazed me in each and every one of these positions is how little people create backups of their information.  Most people create a backup once a month, many don’t make backups at all.

Of course I have had experience in this.  About a year ago my girlfriend’s computer crashed and she lost her entire educational portfolio (not fun when applying to Law Schools.)  Unfortunately she did not have a backup of any of these items anywhere, so they were lost to the ether.

I personally have always backed up my data in some form.  Whether it be online with Carbonite, some other online storage, or on an external hard drive.  I’ve even used my GMail account to save files as attachments. 

Website Wednesday: Learn A Language

This post is going to be a fast and easy, no frill, Southwest Airlines type of post.  Future Website Wednesday posts will be longer and more intense, and probably a lot better written, but for now, here’s this weeks tip.

Learn a website coding language.  I personally began with HTML because I wanted to pimp my MySpace profile.  (Yes, somewhere out there I still have a MySpace profile.)  Back then I had to search around and Google most of what I was doing.

Luckily my search eventually lead me to w3schools.com and the tutorials there.  I don’t care if you’re just starting in web design, or want to learn a new language, I recommend going there and checking out what they have.

So that’s it for today.  Like I said, short, sweet, and simple.

The Measuring Cup Test

So I said I’d be doing at least one video a week, and well I’ve slacked on that so far this year.  But I finally had an idea today, and I decided to run with it.  Nothing fancy, just a quick test.

Does a dry measuring cup measure the same as a wet measuring cup?  I say that a measuring cup is a measuring cup is a measuring cup.  Liv tells me I’m wrong.

The reason for the differences between a wet and dry measuring cup, in my opinion, are for convenience.  You can’t level off a wet measuring cup, and you’re apt to spill if you use a dry measuring cup for liquids.

So, here are the results: