Website Hosting: Bluehost Review

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I have been using BLUEHOST.COM for website hosting now since December 2006. I am very pleased with the quality of service I receive from them. They recently upgraded their control panel with a new user friendly interface.

The features of the hosting package are large compared to its price of $6.95 per month. You get unlimited domain hosting, 300gb of storage, 3000gb of transfer, etc...

I have experienced downtime once, and that was when they were experiencing many issues with ridiculous amounts of spam on their email services. They have since resolved this issue and has been smooth service since.

Whenever I have an issue, they are readily available by telephone or email. They are also great at communication, explaining bottlenecks in service and how they plan to improve them.

One feature that also caught my eye was their implementation of Fantastico. Which is an auto installer script that is capable of installing many types of web based applications. For example: PHP Nuke, tikiwiki, Joomla, Drupal, etc...

BlueHost.com recently added the ability to host Ruby on Rails documents.

If you are looking for a solid PHP host on a Linux operating system, then you cannot go wrong with BlueHost.com.

Chris

Need some inspiration?

Or how about just a really nice wallpaper for your computer? Visit desktopography.net to download a little piece of nature.

Desktopography.net is just the first of 60 places you can find inspiration when you stumble into writer's or designer's block. Take a look at the full article here on freelanceswitch.com.

I downloaded the icegrass design for my desktop wallpaper. It honestly makes me feel like I have spent atleast some of my day away from the keyboard.

Chris

Web Server Blunders: Oracle, Apache, and PHP on Windows

I recently had the task of upgrading a production webserver to the latest Apache, PHP and Oracle Instant Client. This webserver was a 6 year old Compaq 3u server running Windows 2000 server. The server was running WebServ 1.13 I believe, which is basically a LAMP install for Windows (would it then be a WAMP?) Apache was version 1.x I believe, PHP - 4.3.x, and I do not know what version MySql was. Oracle client was version 9.0.

So, i began on a late Saturday evening. I uninstalled webserv, i used the installer to remove the Oracle Client, and I began copying files over for the new setup.

Now, I had setup a testbox that was a fresh install of Win2k server. I set it up with Apache 2.2, PHP 5, MySql 5, and the Oracle Instant Client. It worked perfect! (well it did after a bunch of tinkering and downloading extra dlls and placing them all over the place.)

Once I had the webserver all setup, it was time to test it. Load the local website. It loaded...good. Attempt to login to the site (accessing the Oracle Database), error. I could not connect to the DB no matter what I tried.

The strangest part, was that it did not provide me with an error being unable to locate a dll, or use an undefined function... nothing.

So I began troubleshooting. After quite a few hours, I began to strip the machine down again. Then i realized my mistake, there were footprints of both the Oracle Client and Webserv all over the machine. The installers did an awful job of cleaning it all up (no surprise coming off a Windows box). I checked the registry, wiped anything that stated Oracle or webserv. I cleaned out any files left in the file system that had to do with Oracle or Webserv. After a thorough cleaning I tried my setup again.

It worked. I knew I wasn't crazy.

Lesson learned: When dealing with Oracle on a Windows box, wipe it clean, completely clean. Clean out the file system, registry, and services before attempting to install the instant client. And do not use the installer to uninstal the Client.

I will post later on the steps to cleaning out an Oracle Client installation and how to setup Apache, PHP, MySQL and Oracle Client on a Windows box.

Chris

Social Networking: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

It has come to my attention through a question posted on LinkedIn by one of my connections, that many other networking sites use deceptive methods to build a user base.

For example, Visible Path, allows you to import your contacts. Great, LinkedIn allows you to do the same. Here is the catch, when say my friend, John Doe, decides to sign up, he imports his contacts. Me being one of those contacts, is now searchable on Visible Path's website. The person that views my info in the search results, is not aware that I am not a member or user of Visible Path, he sends an invitation to join networks.

Personally, I feel that this method is deceptive, sneaky and unacceptable. As it becomes more and more difficult to keep secure our identities, we do not need social websites using irresponsible methods to grow their business.

My connection on LinkedIn had the pleasure of receiving this response from a VP at Visible Path:

Jane Doe,

Lynda Radosevich, here, VP of Communications for Visible Path. Thanks for your questions and feedback, and for the passionate discussion your post has sparked.

You make a good point--one about which we’ve been talking internally at Visible Path --that it would be helpful for Visible Path subscribers to see more clearly who is a current subscriber and who is not when sending connection requests. We definitely plan to make this change soon, we and understand your concerns.

I’d also like to address some of the responses you received by providing a little more information about Visible Path.

Our ultimate goal is to help people see the big picture when it comes to their network of connections and to help them share connections intelligently with other people they know and trust. When people sign up and download the Outlook plug-in, Visible Path creates a visual depiction of their connections so they can see how strong their relationships are relative to each other. The system’s privacy controls make sure people’s relationships and their contact information remain hidden. Our intention is to provide a comprehensive view of who subscribers really know (based on the information gleaned, for now, from Outlook), and how close those connections are. And, in order to show the most accurate picture, we include folks who are currently using Visible Path, as well as those who are not.

Your name appears in a Visible Path search because one or more Visible Path subscribers know you. Only the people that know you (or already know your email address) can connect to you, and only the people that know you can introduce someone they know to you. And if that person wants to introduce someone they know you to you, Visible Path sends you an email to make sure that you’d welcome the introduction. Ideally, this offers people all the privacy and control of the real world, and an even better way to connect.

To people using Visible Path, it's not the size of network that matters but the quality of the relationships within that network. Anything we can do to help improve that experience is very important to us, so thanks again for bringing your concerns to our attention.

Regards,

Lynda Radosevich
Visible Path

My thoughts regarding Lynda's response are simple really.

One, how many times have you gone to a mixer and there is atleast one person just hoarding business cards...I have a strong feeling that they use a site similar to Visible Path. How can Visible Path honestly control what they state as "Quality Relationships", since there is no way for you to disallow someone to add you.

Two, if John Doe performs a search, and finds my name, how difficult do you think it would be for him to find an email address for me that works? Unfortunately for me, and just about every professional that promotes themselves using the internet, hiding your email address is nearly impossible. It is somewhere and with the power that is Google, it is not hidden by any means.

Lastly, it is a fallacy if you believe that it is not Visible Path's goal to grow their network as large as possible. If they didn't they would not be able to attract investors, advertisers, or large endorsements.

Despite Lynda's best PR efforts, this is a losing battle for her regarding our privacy.

When it comes to privacy, I live by Ben Parker's quote from the first Spiderman. "With great power, comes great responsibility".

ViaTalk Continues to Show Signs of Poor Support

ViaTalk, one digital phone service provider who has gained greatly since SunRocket's demise, is continuing to display their current state of poor support.

If you are a BYOD(Bring Your Own Device) subscriber and you filed the paperwork necessary to port your SunRocket phone number to ViaTalk, you may not be notified when the porting is complete. Instead, you may come home and find your phone has no dial tone.

If this has happened to you, you simply have to login with your ported number and your old password, click on softphone configuration and view your new device password. Then simply login to your gizmo's admin pages and update your user name and password.

Under normal circumstances, I would not tolerate such poor service and lack of concern of keeping my phone service uninterrupted, but I continue to blindly show leniency to ViaTalk.

New Admin Password Found for Linksys Gizmo (SPA-2102)

undefined has posted a comment on one of my earlier posts, releasing a new password for the admin pages of the SPA-2102 Gizmo from SunRocket. The new password corresponds to the following password used to unlock the admin pages:

79309925

The admin password is qwe%zxc5.

Nice work to all who contributed.

Chris

Don't Use Ajax for Your Website

As web 2.0 becomes the craze that is taking over the internet. More and more companies are developing websites and applications using AJAX. If you look at job postings on Monster or Dice, one of the most common web developer requirements is that the candidate of experience with AJAX.

Find a website that uses Ajax, right click and select view source. What do you see... html, head, and body tags. Thats about it, there is no source code to be read. Here is the issue, what you see when you click "view source", is the same thing that Google's web site crawler sees. Which means that Google sees a blank page equaling no text or information for Google to cache and index.

If Google (and the others) cannot read your websites content, then your website will not show up in search results. In order to have an Ajax website that is compatible with search engines, you have extra work to do.

IMHO: Leave Ajax for intranet and extranet websites, websites that are private and not indexed or searched by search engine crawlers. It is not worth the time or money to program extra code so that a search engine can index your site.

Chris

Update: Quality of ViaTalk

So i promised an update on the quality of ViaTalk. Here it is, if you didn't read my previous post, you can do so here.

Quality of phone call has been much much better.

Still having issues accessing voicemail through the handset, most of the time I get a busy signal. I feel like I should submit a trouble ticket and demand they tell me who keeps checking my voicemail messages. :D

Best result to listening my messages has been going online and listening to them that way.

Have not had consistency in sending faxes. 1 out of 5 go through. I am also unsure as to whether ViaTalk has any restrictions preventing me from faxing so that I pay for a dedicated fax line. That would be very sneaky, but completely understandable in respect to such cheap phone service.

Customer support is still sluggish. They are responsive, but do not expect a quick response. This is also to be expected considering the large amount of orders for new service from displaced Sun Rocket customers.

IMHO: ViaTalk is doing well. You have to remember, VOIP is a low cost alternative to a land line telephone. You get all of the services and more of a basic telephone line at a fraction of the cost. ViaTalk is a relatively small company compared to the major players, but I feel that they are not sneaky as Teleblend is, they are one of the lowest priced, and the quality of phone service is good. Their support needs work and their network needs work, but hopefully with all these new orders, they will have the cash flow to make the right moves.

Chris