Sunday, November 16th, 2008
You know, I have been looking for an industry magazine for about a century now. It’s amazing how difficult my search has been.
One would think there would be hundreds of magazines out there geared towards people who work on the web. I mean, jeez, Google figured out how to target the “webmaster” community about 10 years ago and I think they hit the nail on the head.
For the uninitiated, the webmaster community is the group of people who have a lot to do with what goes on the web. If we didn’t have these folks, we would have a bunch of sales guys and a bunch of programming geeks getting a whole bunch of nowhere. The webmasters are those “middle of the road” folks who have some social ability as well as some technical ability and are able to speak to both the business side and the technical side. It’s a huge market and the population is growing every day.
For years, Google has had the good sense to target these individuals with all sorts of web tools and products. I can go on forever about who does well and who does not so well on the web, but my point here is that if Google has done it, where the heck is everyone else?
As a web guy, I get advertised to for a few things. Mainly hosting companies, domain names, software, etc…It’s most likely a heck of a lot more than I realize.
One thing I have been trying to do for the past few years is to really get involved with reading about the industry. I have been looking for a magazine. I mean, they have magazines that target butterfly catchers in Brazil. I thought a magazine for people who work on the web would be a no brainer.
A few years back, I almost got lucky. I found “Revenue Magazine.” This has been a pretty good magazine, but mainly targets the affiliate side of things on the web. It’s almost there and they do include many areas that I am interested in, but they are also lacking in many. I think they come out with a paper magazine about once per quarter, so there certainly is some downtime in between.
I recently discovered “Website Magazine.” Now, this is much more up my alley. Website Magazine is for the web guy or gal. If you like to get your hands dirty, this might be a good fit. I get emails about once per week with some pretty good articles and I just received my first paper magazine yesterday.
I must warn you, this is a fairly new magazine. The pages are quite thick, so you think there is more packed inside. I flipped through a few pages and soon realized that I was about half way through the whole thing. I am sure that more content is forthcoming though. I am patient.
In the meantime, I am at least satisfied that someone with a brain out there decided it was time to actually give a very hungry market what they are looking for.
Now, if I could just get someone to start delivering wood pellets…
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Friday, January 18th, 2008
So I broke through to support today. After days and says of no response, I actually got through to an American who knew what to do. If you aren’t familiar with what I am talking about, please read about it.
I first called Sales. I thought that if anyone would answer the phone at a miserable hosting company, Sales would…and they did. Hey, you always have to have enough people to take the money, right? I told the guy that I wanted to cancel my contract for the server because I couldn’t run a company like this. He got quiet and transferred me to the Philippines. The freaking Philippines…AGAIN!!! I am telling you, when you have a real problem, the best person to talk to is one in the Philippines. Yeah, right. I challenge you to find me one person on the planet who likes their customer service coming from the Philippines. Again, they had no idea what I was talking about but actually transferred me to a living, breathing American server technician. The strange thing is that while I was talking to him, I heard all sorts of commotion going on in the background. It was other support techs talking on the telephone. What was this? How did they get through? Do they have the good phone number? I have the regular customer support number as well as the managed server number. I thought I was golden…guess not.
I talked to the tech for a little while, when he put me on hold. While I was on hold, I was downloading some configuration files from the server. I need them for when I transfer the websites over. All of the sudden, the websites started working again. Do you want to know what he did? He restarted Apache. Gee, I think that is what I have been trying to tell this company to do all week. Apparently, when I was optimizing that huge database, the temp directory became very full. The temp directory only holds about 200MBs and the database was over 750MBs. The optimizing filled up the temp directory and locked up the server. Restarting Apache and cleaning out the temp directory is no big deal, but what good is a company if you can’t get in touch with them to get it done?
I have to say, this hosting company has awesome equipment and really great prices. If they only had awesome support, I would be with them forever. That is such a waste.
I called my new hosting company today to have them set up another server over there. Now, let me tell you why I am with this company…they are the IT provider for some pretty serious companies, like Bluetooth, Motorola, Webmail.us, etc… They have managed backup that is real, they have server monitoring, their support is simply fan-freakin-tastic and their equipment is great. Can you tell that I am happy? The new server should be set up by Monday afternoon. This will make five servers in total, but before you think I am crazy, I want to let you know that I will be skinnying them down to just two over time. With this kind of company, I can afford to have more sites on fewer servers. Also, I am having them locate the servers in separate datacenters in different areas of the country, just in case something goes wrong with one datacenter.
So, I guess I know what I am doing next week.
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Tuesday, November 27th, 2007
I was doing some changing around of things last night, when I came to the point of having to delete some files and folders off a few of my servers.
The funny thing is, when I went to delete them off my old server, everything disappeared just fine. When I went to delete them off my new server (different host), there were some directories that wouldn’t delete. This got a little annoying to me.
I called the hosting company to figure out what was going on. I told them that some directories wouldn’t delete and told them which ones. The dude took a look and told me that there were still some files in those directories and that their server configuration required that all directories be empty before they will delete. I told him that they were empty. He responded by telling me that there were some “.htaccess” files still in there, but I probably had my FTP program set to not see hidden files.
I hung up the phone. I then looked at the settings on my FTP program (FileZilla). He was right. The setting was to hide hidden files. I switched the setting, closed the program, reopened the program and deleted the directories.
What’s the moral of the story? If you want to see hidden files on your server, switch the setting.
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Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
…and I hope it stays that way. I hate surprises.
Just a nice day to writet a post about what’s in my head. Nothing too much has happened today. I am starting to have some issues with the second server with the horrible hosting company I choose not to mention. The server was unavailable for a few minutes today, so I sent support an email. I got two replies with the canned response…”We are working on it.” If I believed them every time they said that, I would be out of business.
I already set up two domains today, to move over to the new server. These domains matter, so I want them taken care of. I also plan on getting a fifth server for two other websites. Yeah, this is getting to be fun. I just need to get these sites away from this company.
In other news, I finished sanding the bathroom ceiling and walls last night and gave them some paint. The ceiling is white, so there were no surprises there. The walls were supposed to be a “bone” kind of color. We wanted them to be very neutral, so the dark furniture would offer a nice contrast. As I was putting the paint on the walls, I was pleased that the green was being covered up. After I was done, I stepped back to view a semi-pink bathroom. Laura even thought so. The good news is that the pink turned into more of a bone color after it dried. I wanted to get up the crown moulding last night too. No such luck. I plan on making the cuts tonight and getting that done. Then, I need to caulk the gaps in the moulding and paint it. After that, I need to get in touch with the tile place down the road and pick some colors. We also need to go shopping for a vanity and a mirror. It should be good.
That’s about it. Laura gets home late tonight, so I hope to have this done before she gets home. I hate surprises, but I love to give them.
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Monday, October 22nd, 2007
I usually always look at the online reviews when it comes to buying something online from Circuit City, Amazon or someplace like that. These reviews have a huge impact on my purchasing decision. I guess I read them because they are in my face. They are usually on every single product page.
The problem is, I don’t usually do all that much research when it comes to very important things, like my business. I mean, I do my fair share of reading, but I miss some things. Let’s look at an example. Say I am interested in buying a new car. Let’s say that I spend a month or two looking at all the possible features and price of the car, but totally forget to look at who is actually making the car. I may very well end up with a crappy car maker with tons of features. What good is the car and it’s features if it stops working altogether?
Due to this realization, I have decided to take another look at all of my vendors. I am now most interested in product support, product quality and reputation, as well as other things. Support is way up there on the list. I really am the kind of guy who needs someone at the other end of the phone line at 3AM on a Sunday. I really am. I am willing to pay more for it.
So, there you have it. I am a review madman now. It is just unfortunate when I come across poor reviews on companies I currently work with. Oh well, I guess there are a few contracts I am going to have to eat.
To live and learn.
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