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Black Friday – Cyber Monday Hosting Offers 2016

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First and foremost before choosing a web hosting company be it on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, you must know what your plans and goals are for your Internet business. Web hosting costs can vary greatly from company to company so before settling on a price, you want to do some research. Click here to a see an excellent list of deals. Definitely worth checking out.

Black Friday Hosting Deals

For example, depending on what type of Internet business you are interested in starting and launching, your bandwidth neccesities are an aspect that you must take into serious consideration. Web hosting charges vary depending on the bandwidth that they are providing.

Make Sure You Choose a Legit Web Host on Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Secondly, you want to be sure that you are getting involved with a legit and highly recommended web hosting company.

By this I simply mean that you want to be careful who you get involved with when you are spending your hard-earned money to persue anything. Try contacting the owners of the web hosting company. Read through the websites frequently asked questions and don’t hesitate to ask the owner any questions that you may have that haven’t already been answered.

Also, reading through forums and asking other Internet business owners can be greatly advantageous.

Don’t Be Fooled By Black Friday Discounts! Check out Customer Serivce!

Thirdly, check out the level of the web hosting site’s customer service before you jump into your Black Friday discount. Customer service should be friendly, knowledgeable, and promptly responsive. Information for reaching customer service should not be difficult to find on the main webpage.

This is definitely something you want to take into consideration because if you can’t get in touch with customer service when you need help or the web hosting company simply does not have any customer service, you’ll be left high and dry and your business to flop. Ideally, search for companies that offer some type of live support whether it be through email, telephone, or chat.

No Matter the Discount, Your Web Host Should be Reliable

Finally, before jumping on the next web hosting band-wagon on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, make sure that the company is reliable. Ask around and find out the real deal on the company. Search through forums and online reviews for specific companies and especially find out their history of downtime. Yes, downtime occurs every now and then on almost every hosting site their is, but take into consideration that frequent downtime kills your business. When the web hosting is down, so is your business and lost time equals lost money. Take this into serious consideration. Don’t forget to check out CNN’s Black Friday Web Hosting Deals.

Follow these simple tips and discover the best web hosting company for your Internet business.

This was just a quick blog post on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Take advantage of the best offers of the website hosting industry.

Solid State Drives – The New Trend In Web Hosting Technology

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While definitely not widespread, Solid State Drives (SSDs) are slowly conquering the web hosting arena.

While we can say that SSDs have been around for more than 40 years now, they haven’t been really used in the early days of IT. The reason for this was very simple: it was bloody expensive.

Around the mid 90s the technology improved and more and more examples were appearing for serious use of SSDs. Systems requiring high security and availability slowly started to use them. Notable industries were the flight industry and of course the military.

The result of the steady improvement of the technology in the early and mid 2000s was that tablets and smart phones were running on these with a few gigs at the end of the decade.

We can say that 2010 was a milestone. This was the year when Samsung introduced their SSDs for enterprise use.

Soon after this the first web hosts with SSD support appeared on the market – these were not new startups but the good old players who could afford to upgrade their systems.

By now we can say that it has become a trend since more and more of them are providing SSDs in some form. From this InMotionHosting review for example it shows up that InMotion, a well known and reputable web host introduced and provides SSDs for free in every one of their hosting plans without any major price changes.

In my view those who started using them earlier gained a huge advantage on the market compared to the rest. Why do I say this? Because a number of web hosts who were not so well known caught up. Maybe they would have done it without SSDs too, but I think this played an important role in their success.

Increased Speed – As The Main Reason For Using Them

The first and most important factor for implementing SSDs is speed. For instance, in the case of the mentioned InMotion, speed can go up to 20 times more compared to the previous situation.

Some of the other reasons why SSDs are a level beyond traditional servers:

  • no moving parts
  • less heating
  • less energy consumption
  • smaller
  • no sounds

These are just a few from the long list of advantages. I think we can agree that knowing these advantages the trend will continue and in a few years it will be included in most web hosts arsenal. In the meantime the takeaway for you is to choose a web host which already offers SSD, possibly for free.

What is RSS?

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I’ve been getting a lot of questions from my readers lately about RSS. What is it? How does one use it? Do I need server-side scripting?

The goal of this article is to explain what RSS is, and how to create your own feed with or without server-side scripting.

What is RSS?

When RSS was originally created, the intended purpose was for news syndication, much like it is today. However, since its creation there have been a few different versions developed by two groups: Userland and the RSS-DEV Working Group.

Since there are a few different versions and iterations of RSS that are tough to explain without going into some background history about the format(s). I can’t even tell you what RSS stands for without explaining their histories, so that’s what I’ll do first.

The Beginnings of RSS

Back in late 1997, Userland created a new use for XML for syndicating website news, and called it <scriptingNews>. In early 1999, Netscape released a new dialect (orapplication) of XML called RSS 0.9, which stood for Really Simple Syndication.

Here is a quick timeline for the early days of RSS:

  1. In December 1997, UserLand began offering Scripting News syndicated in XML, as a public Web resource. Other sites adopted the format, known as <scriptingNews> format.
  2. In March 1999, Netscape opened My.Netscape.Com, based on an XML syndication format known as RSS 0.9
  3. In April 1999, My.UserLand.Com opened, an aggregator that processed RSS 0.9 content.
  4. In May 1999, My.UserLand.Com supported <scriptingNews> 2.0b1 format.
  5. In July 1999, Netscape introduced RSS 0.91, incorporating most of the features of <scriptingNews> 2.0b1. At the same time My.UserLand.Com supported RSS 0.91.
  6. In December 1999, UserLand shipped the Manila content management system with built-in support for <scriptingNews> 2.0b1.
  7. In March 2000, O’Reilly’s aggregation engine, Meerkat, opened, reading all the above formats.
  8. In April 2000, UserLand added built-in RSS 0.91 support to all Manila-authored sites.

Soon, Netscape decided to go with a different strategy, and stopped developing RSS. At this point, Userland picked-up where Netscape left off, and continued RSS’s development.

Userland then updated the RSS spec with versions 0.92, 0.93, and 0.94… all of which were minor updates to this emerging standard. As of this writing, version 0.91 is still one of the most popular RSS formats, although RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 are catching up.

The New Kid

In 2000, the RSS-DEV Working Group was created out of discussions happening on the O’Reilly internal mailing lists, in an effort to create a standardized RSS format based on RDF (Resource Description Framework), which, in-turn, is based on XML. They called their new syndication language RDF Site Summary, and gave it a version number of 1.0.

So, you mean to tell me that there are two completely different news syndication languages that are both called RSS? Yes. RSS 0.9x is a simpler syndication language that gets the job done. RSS 1.0 (based on RDF) is more complex, but in-turn is more thorough.

Userland’s New Version

In late 2002, Userland beefed up the old RSS 0.9x spec. Even though they had a full-fledged version 1.0 on their hands, they couldn’t call it that because the W3C had already taken the name. Could you imagine two languages, both called RSS 1.0? That’d be terrible. So, they named it RSS 2.0 because they had to.

Although RSS is not flawless, it is a very good specification for news and website syndication. Because of this, the 2.0 line of RSS has been frozen at version 2.01. Astatement made by Dave Winer, founder of UserLand software, says this:

RSS is by no means a perfect format, but it is very popular and widely supported. Having a settled spec is something RSS has needed for a long time. The purpose of this work is to help it become a unchanging thing, to foster growth in the market that is developing around it, and to clear the path for innovation in new syndication formats.

Therefore, the RSS spec is, for all practical purposes, frozen at version 2.0.1. We anticipate possible 2.0.2 or 2.0.3 versions, etc. only for the purpose of clarifying the specification, not for adding new features to the format. Subsequent work should happen in modules, using namespaces, and in completely new syndication formats, with new names.

Although I could very well be wrong here, this sounds to me like the promotion of RSS 1.0 as the syndication format to follow, as there is room for modules, namespaces, and further expansion.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. So How Do I Utilize RSS?

Now that you understand the history behind RSS, I feel I can explain how to put together an RSS 2.0 feed by hand.

When I first re-released version 20 of my website in March 2003, I introduced an RSS feed for the first time. I did everything completely by hand until I came across Movable Type in July 2003, and did a slight redesign of my website for usability reasons.

With the release of version 21 of my website (which is what you’re looking at) and the introduction of Movable Type as my CMS, I don’t have to create my feeds by hand anymore. However, many of us do, and that’s what the rest of this page will be about.

Get To It, Bucko!

When I put together my first RSS feed, I based it on Zeldman’s feed. Here’s a slimmed down version of what I’m using now:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”iso-8859-1″?>

<rss version=”2.0″>

 

<channel>

<title>Skyzyx.com</title>

<description>Advocacy for Standards-Compliant Design.</description>

<link>http://www.skyzyx.com</link>

<copyright>(c) 2003 Ryan Parman</copyright>

<language>en-us</language>

<date>2003-12-16T11:22:13-08:00</date>

<docs>http://backend.userland.com/rss</docs>

 

<image>

<title>Advocacy for Standards-Compliant Design.</title>

<url>http://www.skyzyx.com/img/banner88x31.gif</url>

<link>http://www.skyzyx.com/</link>

<width>88</width>

<height>31</height>

</image>

 

<item>

<title>Winamp 5, Wasabi, and the Future</title>

<link>http://www.skyzyx.com/archives/000131.php</link>

<description>I’ve been a Winamp fan…</description>

</item>

 

<item>

<title>Christmastime Is Here</title>

<link>http://www.skyzyx.com/archives/000130.php</link>

<description>It’s time to sit down…</description>

</item>

 

<item>

<title>Wierd IE Rendering Bug Fixed</title>

<link>http://www.skyzyx.com/archives/000129.php</link>

<description>Last summer, I…</description>

</item>

 

</channel>

 

</rss>

Most of the tags seem fairly self-explanitory, right? The ones that I had a hard time with when I first started were the <date> tag and the <docs> tag. The <docs> tag is for people who want to know more about the format that has been used. This allows people to look-up the specs for the format, so that they can understand it.

The <date> tag is formatted as follows: YYYY-MM-DD, followed by a “T” as a delimiter, then HH:MM:SS, followed by the GMT value for your location (mine is -8:00).

So, How Do I Make My Own?

You can begin by copy-pasting this sample code into a text editor, such as Notepad or BB Edit. Then you just need to modify the values for your own use. Voila!

Yes, the descriptions can be as long as you want them to be. They’re very short in this example so that I could get them to fit inside the box. Another thing to remember is that some RSS Parsers are limited to a maximum of 15 <item> tags, meaning 15 different postings are allowed in a single file. This is a limitation of the older RSS 0.9x formats, as RSS 1.0 and 2.0 are allowed to have more news items.

However, not all parsers are limited by this item count. I use SimplePie to power my SimpleReader. It’s fantastic.

Now Go Away, Or I Shall Taunt You A Second Time!

Thus ends the article. I hope it will serve you well. If you have any comments, corrections, additions, or other stuff, let me know.