Secure my Domain?

Got this in the mail the other day:

They want me to pay $100 to achieve what domain locking does for free? Idiots.

My Life

No, this isn’t an entry about Billy Joel.. It’s been quite a while since I have actually blogged about something meaningful, so I figured tonight would be a great night to write.

Where to begin..

Monica is now out of the first trimester and into the second. All is going well, and we’re looking forward to the big sonogram in six weeks. Just as we did (or didn’t) with Katie Lynn, we’re not going to find out the baby’s sex. So few things in life are truly a surprise, so we are just going to let the baby’s sex be a surprise. To keep up-to-date with baby news and goings-on, feel free to use subscribe to the RSS feed or just follow our updates over at tomandmonica.com.

Katie Lynn continues to amaze me. She’s growing up so quickly; it’s hard to believe she’s already sixteen months old. She’s enjoying her day care, her friends there, and her teachers. I love the social interaction and skills she is developing at this young age.

Wrigley is doing so much better. For those that don’t know, she had ear surgery a couple years back to resolve a condition affecting her ears. The surgeries went well but, in the end, did not seem to stop the condition. The vet in Lubbock said this was normal, so we took the “professional’s” word. When we moved to McKinney, we naturally had to find a new vet. Our new vet took a look and in five minutes knew there was a problem and how to treat it. The vet also diagnosed Wrigley with hypothyroidism, so she simply has to take one pill with her food.

Work is going great. Site5 was recently bought out by a couple of industry veterans. I had known that was the plan for quite a while, so naturally there was this sense of uncertainty. I’ve got to say though.. I could not be happier how things have turned out. Ben and Joel are exactly what the company needed, and I’m excited to be a part of the “new” Site5. I do miss working with the old owners and CEO, but luckily I still get to chat with them on a frequent basis as they’re all great friends.

I turned thirty last week. My wonderful wife planned a great surprise party for me. I had a great time, and are thankful for my family and friends that attended.

I’m still loving the MacBook that I bought back in October. I recently purchased an Acer LCD monitor to use while working. I used one back when I worked at DC, and I had forgotten how much I loved having one.

I’ve somehow gotten addicted to Twitter.. it’s even linked to Facebook. Who would have thought that I would be so into this whole social networking scene after being anti-MySpace for so long.

Instead of writing some corny summation paragraph (oops, too late), I’ll just end with some great pictures.

WordPress iPhone App

WordPress’s iPhone App is out! Downloading & installing now..

Multiple blog support..

Decent interface..

Nothing too intuitive about it to be honest, but it is GREAT for mobile blog writing but nothing more.

Features I’d like to see:

- Comment editing / approving
- Ability to see drafts on the server

Bug #1: using the iPhone bullet character causes the app to crash.

Onward and Upward!

If you’re seeing this entry, you’re seeing my website on my brand new dedicated server!

I have had it for almost two days now.. and already ran into and solved my first problem. Got to love it when mysql won’t start due to a bad my.cnf file.

Edit #1: Apache and PHP recompile complete!

Edit #2: I neglected to say thank you to my wonderful wife Monica for putting up with me.

Web Hosting Intro and Tips

This is a completed article I began writing about three years ago. It’s actually quite amazing how little I had to edit; the basics never change.

If owning and operating a web hosting account is a new experience for you, then this article is just for you. The tips and instructions outlined here do not apply to any one particular web hosting company; they are “good practice” instructions and general in nature.

For starters, a domain name is different than web hosting. The two are independent but are usually used in conjunction with each other. A domain name is what you type into the address bar in your internet browser. Web hosting is the service where a domain name’s pages, images, and such are stored on servers. Many web hosts offer domain name registrations services; some even offer free domain names with their service. If your host is one of those, it is imperative to ensure that you actually own the domain name and not the host. Personally, I like to keep my domain names and web hosting at separate companies — the “all your eggs in one basket” concept.

Next, it is important for businesses, organizations, and individuals to understand that account ownership is a very important thing. When an employee signs up for a web hosting account under their name and credit card, they own the account — not the company. Most web hosts will require some sort account verification to prove ownership such as the last four digits of the credit card on file or possibly security questions (mother’s maiden name, etc.). If said employee leaves the company, the company will need to be able to verify ownership. If the company cannot, they are in a bind and the web host’s hands are essentially tied. The same goes for an individual paying someone to be their webmaster. That individual should open the web hosting account and purchase their domain name(s) and simply give their webmaster the access that is needed. This ensures that the rightful person retains ownership if the webmaster skips town or an argument/disagreement occurs between the two parties.

I am surely going to get flamed for this next tidbit, but I am an honest person. One of the most important concepts to keep in mind, as a customer, is to be realistic. Hosting a mission-critical website on shared hosting is not realistic. Paying $5 a month for web hosting for an online business/store that generates $4,000 of revenue a month is not realistic. Obviously all web hosts strive for 100% uptime availability; however, as a client you have to remain realistic. Complaining to your webhost that the 30 minutes your server was down cost you $3,000 in sales makes you look idiotic.

As in most cases, when you have a complaint, maintain your composure. Raising your voice, typing in all caps, using inappropriate language, etc. are all sure-fire ways of quickly invalidating any and all of your comments — no matter how true and valid they actually may be. Remain professional throughout the process and better results will come of it for everyone involved.

When signing up for a new web hosting account, be sure to use an email address not a domain you plan on hosting with that company. I suggest using a gmail or yahoo address for simplicity’s sake, but it can be any other email address. If/when your server goes down, you will probably want to contact the web host’s support department. But if your server is down, so is your email. Additionally, if there is a billing problem and your account gets suspended, you will lose access to your account and therefore your email. Depending on the web host’s support setup, it may be email-based. It just makes sense to use an alternate email address.

That’s the basics as I see them. This is by no means the end-all-be-all introduction to web hosting, but it at least gives some information and reasoning.

A cPanel Revelation

As a self-proclaimed “cPanel hater”, I have often stated in the past that I could not stand cPanel. There’s nothing like putting your foot in your mouth when chatting with a former cPanel developer.. sorry Matt!

Well ladies and gentlemen, I am about to eat my words.

cPanel is not a bad control panel at all!

I’ve discovered that it wasn’t cPanel that I hated all these years; it’s the simplistic, un-intuitive “x” theme. The default theme is far from being user friendly and is not appealing to the eye.

In the past, I have always been an advocate for hosts with custom control panels. From a host’s standpoint, there are definitely advantages and disadvantages when using a custom control panel. From a client’s standpoint, it’s merely personal preference.

Shameless Site5 plug – we use cPanel with a custom “shell” called SiteAdmin which allows us to add custom features and whatnot. Its interface is very easy to navigate and work with. I love SiteAdmin’s feel and power.

As an aside, here’s an interesting observation though. From my experience, custom control panels almost always indicate distributed services (http on one machine, mail on a different machine, and mysql on yet another machine) whereas cPanel almost always indicates that all services are on a single machine.

I’ve been maintaining websites for a long time now, and while the idea of distributed services is appealing and works wonderfully in theory, my experience is that consolidated services is far more reliable.

What Is Web Hosting?

There have been a few questions and misconceptions about what Site5 actually does, so hopefully this post will clear it up for everyone.

Site5 is a web hosting company. To put it plainly, web hosting companies make websites available (“hosted”) on the Internet. There are many different types of web hosting: shared, dedicated, and VPS are the three most common types.

• Shared – multiple customers and websites (into the hundreds) are hosted on one server. One website/customer can crash the entire server therefore causing problems for other customers/websites located on the same server. Shared hosting is the most basic type of hosting.
• Dedicated – one customer, but potentially multiple websites, is hosted on a server. Dedicated is a more advanced type of hosting.
• VPS – multiple customers and websites per server; however, each customer has their own virtual server. This means that one customer does not interfere with the other customers if they crash the server; the customer only crashes their “virtual” server. VPS hosting is between shared hosting and dedicated hosting.

Site5 is a shared hosting provider, so our servers each contain multiple websites and customers.

The most common comment I then hear is “so Google and Microsoft would call you guys to host their websites?”  No, not even close. Companies such as Google and Microsoft invest millions of dollars and host their own websites on their own servers.  We host the small and medium-sized businesses as well as personal websites (such as tomsepper.net).

What Site5 does not do is actually design and/or program the websites we host; that is our customer’s responsibility.

Any questions?

Observations, Ramblings, & Utter Randomness

This will be a hodgepodge post containing a random assortment of topics. So clear your mind, start reading, and try to keep up.

Family & Friends
Monica and I have some of the greatest family and friends. Everyone has been exceedingly generous with baby gifts. To everyone that has been kind enough to send us or give us cards and gifts, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Additionally, a huge thank you to my Mom, my sister Kim, Monica’s sister Amanda, and friends Dru, Stephanie, and Mandy for throwing two wonderful baby showers for Monica.

Fuel Costs
Gas costs significantly less in DFW then it does in Lubbock. By significant I mean $.10 – $.20 cheaper. Ridiculous.

Tollways
I love tollways. Sure you have to pay, but it’s worth the money. Driving from Irving to Frisco took ten minutes. Can’t beat that.

Texas Tech
I hate using this phrase, but once again, it fits. Typical Tech. Come off a great win versus Texas A&M, get cocky, get put in your place by Mizzou. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Mike Leach is not the man to lead Tech to the next level. Until we hire a head coach that realizes a team is only as good as its weakest link, Tech will continue to be the red-headed stepchild of the Big XII South. On a happier note, we received our Red Raider and Lady Raider basketball season tickets in the mail. This is the first year we’ve bought both men’s and women’s season tickets, so we’ll have an abundance of games to attend!

Chicago Cubs
Swept out of the first round. I’m definitely not a fair weather fan, but it’s rather repetitive to have to keep saying “Just wait until next year”. I guess it could be worse..

NFL
The Bears are struggling for consistency. It’s too early to assess whether or not they can rebound and turn the season around. The best news is that Grossman was finally benched; he was given far too many chances and failed almost every time. On a happier note, I’m in a fantasy league for the first time, and through yesterday, in first place! Let’s hope I can sustain that for the rest of the season; I could use the $120 prize.

Work
I’ve been at my new job for over a month now and I’m loving it. Like all jobs, there have been some stressful situations – namely a rather large one that still is on my mind. It’s a different kind of stress than my former job, and I am much happier where I am now. It’s what I was born to do.

2007-2008 TV Shows
Lots of great shows this year – new and returning!

• Damages – GREAT new show on the FX network. If you haven’t been watching this show, wait until they start over and replay it from the beginning. It’s another “serialized” show in that you can’t just pick it up mid-season. It was a summer show that I would imagine will come back next summer. The season finale airs this coming Tuesday.
• CSI: Las Vegas. We have too many shows we DVR, so we’re only following CSI: Las Vegas this year. We don’t watch the Miami version as David Caruso is a horrible actor. We’ll put CSI:NY in our Netflix queue.
• Heroes. After a rather slow start in the first episode, it’s gotten far better. I don’t know how long this show will last after last year’s fantastic rookie season.
• Back To You – A new show on Fox staring Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton.
• Carpoolers – A new show on ABC staring Jerry O’Connell and a bunch of other people I’ve never heard of before.
• Grey’s Anatomy – This is more Monica’s show than mine, but it’s actually not that bad.
• Private Practice – As we watch Grey’s Anatomy, of course we’d watch its spin-off..
• Desperate Housewives – We’ve watched this show since day one, and this season is already far better than last year’s.
• Jericho – After the widely-covered fan outrage, CBS will be bringing Jericho back as a mid-season show to close up the storylines.
• Cold Case & Without A Trace – We love these mystery-type shows!
• The Big Bang Theory – This is definitely Monica’s show.. I’m not really that sold on it.

Hmm.. that list makes it seems like we have no life! Oh well – we enjoy it.

Well, that’s the end of this post.. I’ll be surprised if anyone makes it this far!