web hosting
Monday, May 11th, 2009
at 6:29pm
Over the past decade, the internet has transitioned from being a place where only geeks hung out to a vast cloud full of information produce by anyone and everyone. We’ve gone from a select few making a website dedicated to their cat, to everyone and their cat having a website.
It started with Geocities, Tripod, and Homestead. These websites made it easy for amateurs to the internet to create a very basic website. In the light of modern times, these sites barely exist. But free web hosting continues in the form of free web hosting, free forums, etc. And it has hurt the internet.
1) Free web hosting caters to spam
Since most free web hosting providers are ad revenue based, they typically have very low standards for what types of websites are allowed to placed on their servers. And while some may have rules, they’re rarely monitored or enforced. This has opened the door spammers to create link farms in large numbers, sites that scrape copyrighted content, and just otherwise extremely low quality content.
2) Free web hosting is too easy to use
I’m all for websites providing increasingly easy ways of performing complex tasks — creating a forum on your website in 1999 wasn’t an easy task. But today, it’s a matter of simply signing up for a free forum service. And while I inherently have no issue with this, it allows users who have no clue what they’re doing to undertake very large tasks.
3) Free web hosting promotes technological ignorance
I’m a firm believer that everyone should have access to the internet. I’m a firm believer that everyone should be able to create their own content and place it on the internet. However, that being said, let’s face it: you have to be willing to learn how to do this properly. If you’re willing to pay for web hosting–which is an extremely small fee these days–you’re typically more willing to learn how to effectively manage, maintain, and promote your website. If you’re going to be running a forum, you’re more willing to customize it and encourage a thriving community. if you’re creating a blog, you’re interested in producing quality content. However, if the decision to make a website was made in the 30 seconds it took you to create that free website, chances are it’s not going to succeed.
4) Free web hosting limits the website owner
Okay, so let’s assume that you are a website owner who wishes to really learn about maintaining a website. There’s one problem, though: Free web hosts rarely provide the “customer” with the tools they need to learn. And when you try to ask the hosting provider to do something for you (which you otherwise could have done yourself), you’re met with horrible customer service and support.
5) Free web hosting discourages innovation
When signing up for a free website, blog, or forum, typically you’re presented with a small number of pre-fabricated templates that you can use–with no way to customize them. This, over time, produces a plethora of websites that look and function identically. The website owner is left with very little choice, and browsers of the internet are forced into seeing the same thing over and over again, with little way of distinguishing between content providers.
6) Free web hosting discourages quality content
Free website owners likely don’t truly care about the long-term destination of their website. If it fails, they really haven’t lost anything monetary, besides time. If it doesn’t get maintained, there’s no loss at all. There’s little incentive to produce quality content that people will want to subscribe to and read on a regular basis. You have nothing to lose, and nothing to gain. Unfortunately for the rest of the internet, they have to sift through loads of pointless content before finding what they were looking for or interested in.
7) Free web hosting is quite simply … cheap
And I mean that in more ways than simply monetary scale. If someone is going to become a website owner and maintainer; if they’re going to become a content producer; if they have something valuable to say and share with the rest of us, they should be willing to at least attempt to do a “good job” with it. If you’re not willing to give out something to secure your place on the internet, why would the rest of us want to hear what you have to say?
The free web hosting services cater to the “I want it now” ideology, with little regard for the planning and work required to produce quality content. The internet has been cut because of it. And unfortunately, I don’t think the blade is going away anytime soon.
Monday, August 20th, 2007
at 3:23am
If you’re at all a common browser on the internet, you probably have come across a website mentioning this thing called “Web 2.0.” What is this exactly, and how does it work? There has been much confusion going on surrounding Web 2.0, a lot of fallacies, and a lot of debate among website designers as to its true definition. Hopefully I’ll clear some of these up.
Firstly, let me tell you what Web 2.0 certainly is not. As the name would imply, Web 2.0 is supposedly the successor of Web 1.0. In some ways this is true. However, it definitely does not mean there is some brand new version of the “internet” coming out or that you’ll need to “download” a Web 2.0 browser or anything. We’re still dealing with the same exact internet. Don’t let the so-called version number fool you.
Web 2.0, as I personally as a web designer and technology advocate would define it, is redefining how we look at the way websites work. For example, for the past 15 or so years, the World Wide Web has been nothing but static pages with text, maybe a few pictures, and within the last few years, possibly some Adobe Flash animations or interactive navigations. Still though, for the most part, every website you browse is simply for the display of information, page by page, site by site, everything works by itself and for itself.
Web 2.0, on the other hand, is redefining static web design concept. For example, instead of coding a website to simply display information, how about updating this information in real-time without requiring any Flash, Java, or the user manually refreshing the page? Even moreso, how about allowing users to instantly add information or make changes? Ultimately, Web 2.0 is defining the convergence of internet technology and websites on a global, standard, and non-proprietary level. Everything just works together. Every website isn’t just its own anymore, it’s able to interact with others as well.
I found it very interesting that Steve Jobs recently announced at an Apple conference when presenting iLife ‘08 that iPhoto was “officially Web 2.0 compatible.” I seriously had to laugh at this. Not only did he miss the mark completely, he has a completely warped idea of what Web 2.0 is really trying to accomplish. What Jobs supposedly meant by saying this was that you are now able to upload your photos directly to your .Mac account. Keyword, there. .Mac. Nothing else. You have to use Apple’s services. For iPhoto to truely be able to take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies, it would have to be able to work with (or work with after installing a simple addon or putting in an API key) other online photos services such as Flickr, or Sony’s PhotoStation, and many others at the mercy of the API’s developers.
The whole point of Web 2.0 is making every website work together and connect with each other seamlessly. It’s not just flashy AJAX programming, live updating, or cool rounded edges. It’s about the convergence of all internet technology into one collective memory. Microsoft gets it (with things such as Microsoft Windows Surface and Microsoft Research’s Photosynth), the open-source community gets it. The mainstream and “talented” web designers get it, but apparently Apple doesn’t. Going off in a slight tangent, Apple will seriously be hurting in the next 5-10 years if they don’t back off of their proprietary mindset and realize everything is going online to the collective memory.
What’s even funnier is people are starting to talk about Web 3.0 when 90% of people don’t even know or give a wooden nickle about what truely is Web 2.0.
Friday, August 3rd, 2007
at 9:24pm
Welcome to the new http://www.adamreyher.com. I got tired of dealing with my old CMS and migrated the site to Wordpress 2.2, and in the process, redesigned the site from scratch.
I hope it’s a bit easier to navigate and find content. And remember, if you have a question relating to technology, be sure to Ask Me! and I’ll be sure to answer … it may even become an article post.
Of course, any comments or suggestions pertaining to the new site are always welcomed.
Thursday, August 2nd, 2007
at 3:12pm
This question was brought up awhile back when I wrote my Standards of Web Design article. The question comes from Greenweaver
Anyhow, get your own off site links to use a (target=”_blank”) and open any links in a new browser window instead of people having to leave your site, DOh!!
The answer to this, while in technical terms is simple, turns out to be a bit complicated at this point in time. As Greenweaver correctly points out, in order to open up a hyperlink as a new window instead of in the same window, traditionally you would use similar code to the following:
<a href=”http://www.google.com” target=”_blank”>link</a>
In this code example, the target attribute tells the browser where the new link should be opened, whether it be the same window (default if left out entirely), a new window (_blank), or even another frame on the same page. However, in XHTML 1.0 Strict, the target attribute has been removed completely from the standards. So how exactly do we get a new window to open up when clicking a link?
The answer, in short, is two parted. While a new standard hasn’t been put in place yet (which I would very much like to see), the rel attribute has been added in XHTML 1.0 Strict. This is the relationship attribute and describes what this object is or how it should behave in relationship to everything around it. The accepted standard at this point is to use rel=”external” in order to create a link relationship that will cause the page to open in a new window. However, by itself, this will not happen. This just describes the relationship.
In order for the new window to actually open, JavaScript must be used. This is where things get somewhat complicated. In the past, JavaScript use on pages was strictly prohibited, mainly because back in 2000/2001, a majority of browsers barely supported it, let alone few users actually had it turned on for security reasons. Times have changed. Not only do all major browsers thoroughly support JavaScript, an extreme minority of users switch it off purposely. So in effect, JavaScript is perfectly acceptable to use in small quantities.
However, the complications arise mainly with popup blockers. Built in blockers, such as those in Firefox, IE7, Opera, or Safari, do a perfectly fine job at being able to understand when a link was physically clicked by the user and to allow that popup. Other third-party vendors are a different story. Sometimes they won’t allow any form of a popup to show. The good news is these are few at this point, so again, I wouldn’t worry too much about those users.
Anyway, the JavaScript code to grab the rel=”external” attribute and open it in a new window should look similar to this:
function externalLinks() {
if (!document.getElementsByTagName) return;
var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName(”a”);
for (var i=0; i < anchors.length; i++) {
var anchor = anchors[i];
if (anchor.getAttribute(”href”) &&
anchor.getAttribute(”rel”) == “external”)
anchor.target = “_blank”;
}
}
window.onload = externalLinks;
Put this code in a file and name it something like rel_external.js
In order to load this, put the following code in your head section.
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”/rel_external.js”>
</script>
All in all though, the question arises, why should the web designer dictate how a hyperlink to an entirely different page opens? With modern browsers which have tabbed interfaces, it should be up to the user how the new window opens. I would very much advocate not using this method and having all external hyperlinks open in the same window if even if they have to navigate away from the site. And indeed, on this site, you’ll notice no links open in a new window.
Why? Those are the standards without having to resort to JavaScript, and ultimately, it’s the user’s decision, not mine.
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
at 1:34am
Let’s start back in 2003. I decide that I’m going to begin a small hosting business. I do so and http://www.pylonhosting.com is born. I had registered the domain name through RegisterFly for the simple reason that they were recommended to me by a friend who was also in the hosting business For a while I have a lot of clients, I’m making a fair bit of money, and all is good in the world. But after I got neck deep in college work and an real job, I slowly began to let customers go and at this point I’m only hosting friends and my own sites.
Even though Pylon Hosting really isn’t a business anymore and for the sake of reason has ceased to exist, I still keep the domain name active and the account serves its purpose as file storage and my main bandwidth eater. I kept renewing the domain name with RegisterFly.com and couldn’t have been happier with their service. They were awesome, mainly because they were an eNom reseller at the time.
Fast forward to 2006. In February of that year, RegisterFly became their own ICANN accredited registrar. This is when things really started to slip. Their website began to have extreme problems, support literally dropped off the map, and the complaints started to go flying in. I heard about this and, due to my past experiences with RegisterFly, determined that it was just a bump in the road and they would rectify the situations immediately. Little did I know I wouldn’t feel the repercussions of that decision until now.
On March 17th of 2007, ICANN terminated RegisterFly.com’s accreditation thus forcing a plethora of problems on them. eNom severed all previous ties they had with RegisterFly and forcefully stripped back the domain names that had originally been registered while they were still an eNom reseller as they still had the rights to them.
On March 23rd, PylonHosting.com expired. This shouldn’t have been the case as I had auto-renew on. However, due to RegisterFly’s problems, this never went through, though RegisterFly’s site claimed it had gone through. My account was charged $12.99 to renew through PayPal, but I never got the domain name back. I then went ahead and registered an account on Godaddy.com and began the process of transferring over all of my domains, PylonHosting.com included. It was successful, however, I still needed the authorization code from RegisterFly’s site on that domain. So I log in and to my surprise, there is no such code. In fact, according to the site, no such transfer was initiated.
This is where the problems really start to begin. I immediately try to get on the phone with them. I was sorely unsuccessful in doing so. Practically every number I called (including Google Address look ups and WHOIS lookups) had either been disconnected, was busy, or the automated message would just go in an infinite loop. I never did actually get through to someone. Good job, RegisterFly. All totaled, I was on hold for 7 hours, my domains hadn’t been fixed, and I was out of $12.99 for which I never received a service in return.
I then decided to call eNom as I had registered most of my domains while RegisterFly was still a reseller. I explained my situation to them and they definitely knew about what was going on To my luck, after sending them a copy of my photo ID, I was able to get these domain names pushed to an eNom account and those that needed to be re-registered.
I’ve given up completely on calling RegisterFly to get my money back. At this point, I’ve filed a complaint with PayPal. If it cannot be taken care of through that medium, I will definitely be on the phone with the Police Department in West Orange, NJ (where they are headquarted). I know, it’s only $13, but it’s the principal of the matter. Don’t mess with me. I’ll win.
All in all, my time with RegisterFly was extremely satisfactory up until this whole thing. I do indeed feel sorry for the company and that it had to come to this and that they let it come to this. They were one of the best, now they’ll go down in history as an example of what not to do as a registrar.
UPDATE: It seems PayPal has taken the initiative and gone ahead and refunded my account without question. I’m sure I’m not the first and that they’ve had thousands of these already. Kudos to PayPal.
Thursday, October 5th, 2006
at 8:29pm
In a previous entry, I invited my readers or any visitor to ask me a question via the Ask Me section above. I’ve gotten a few good questions. Most of them are about phpBB which I specifically asked not to be submitted. Some were about how to solve simple physics problems? Huh? What, do I look like a calculator? But regardless, I got a few that I think I’ll turn into an entry.
The first question is about static IP addresses from an ISP that only provides you with a dynamic IP address. If I’m gathering the question correctly, I’m assuming this person wants to setup a web server on their computer, but has no way to access it for any length of time due to their computer’s IP address changing every hour, or day, or week, depending on the ISP.
First, I should warn you that running a web server on your computer opens it up to potential security hazards unless you know what you’re doing or have some kind of firewall setup either on your router, or firewall software. And that said firewall software is properly configured, not just “I installed the disc, so it must be okay.” I won’t get into the specifics of that in this post, because it’s way too involved and there’s no one “correct” way to do it.
Sticking with the topic at hand, in order to get someone access to files on your computer via a web browser, you’ll need to have some static address in place. Most often, this won’t be in the form of an IP address, but an actual domain.
There are a few services out there that offer DNS redirecting services for free. My personal favorite, and the most popular, is No-IP. Basically, you sign up for a free account, choose the domain name you would like to use (or sub-domain rather), and then install a small program on to your computer. What this program does is (every 10 minutes or so), get the IP address for your computer and send that address to No-IP’s servers. So when anyone accesses the No-IP web address, it’ll be forwarded (and masked) to your current IP address, whatever it is at the time.
One other thing to consider as well is the port you’ll be using. No-IP is able to forward any port you wish to your computer (for example, I go to my-no-ip-domain.com:5900 to access the VNC server on port 5900 on my desktop at home). Most often, if your ISP doesn’t allow a static IP address, they’ll also block incoming traffic from ports 80 and 21 (HTTP and FTP respectively). In this case, you’d need to configure your web server software (Apache, IIS) to use a different port. I use 8090. And then you’ll need to access it from my-no-ip-domain.com:8090.
Simple? It really isn’t that hard to set up.
Good luck! Email me back if you need any more details! And keep the questions coming!
