There is often some confusion about what all comes with a web hosting package. Usually the misconceptions are based on the type of support that is offered when purchasing a web hosting plan.

Web hosting providers are a lot like property or apartment managers.

Lets compare. First, I’ll start with shared hosting.

Do you remember when GeoCities first came out? In order to get a free web site, you first had to pick your neighborhood based on your site’s content. For example, if you had a site about technology, you’d choose the neighborhood silicon valley. From there you’d choose a house. Each house was assigned a number and your website URL would then be geocities.com/siliconvalley/[housenumber]. GeoCities long ago did away with that format, and web hosting has come a long way since those days but the concept of shared web hosting is mostly the same.

When you purchase a shared hosting plan, you’re essentially renting space on a web server that is shared by several other web site owners all hoping to host a web site on a budget. The server space will come fully ready for you to ‘move in to’. Essentially, the electricity will be turned on, the fridge will be present for you to store your perishables, and water will run. The property managers (web host provider) will make sure you have a clean space to move your stuff into. It is then up to you you to move your furniture in and organize it however you want.

Web hosting providers generally do not provide support for coding, scripting, development, or design. Just as apartment managers generally don’t tell you where to hang your pictures, which furniture to use or where to put your things.

What if something breaks?

“Your analogy doesn’t work. My property manager will fix the stove if it breaks.”

If something that comes with your shared hosting plan breaks, lets say cPanel in this example, we will certainly fix it for you. But we aren’t going to cook your dinner for you and neither will your property manager.

“What about all the cool programs you offer for me to install? Like Wordpress? Do you support that?”

We can host a Wordpress site and we even offer an easy way for you to install it. Wordpress is a third party product. Think of Wordpress as the refrigerator in your apartment. It may come with the apartment but your apartment managers didn’t create it. You can put whatever you want in it. But your property managers aren’t going to keep it clean for your nor throw out the food that goes bad. That’s your job. The concept is the same with hosting a Wordpress site. You need to keep it clean and updated to the latest secure version. This actually applies to any software, script, or program you install on your website.

This doesn’t mean you’re completely on your own. Your ‘property managers’ are going to keep an eye on things (servers) and make sure your ‘neighbors’ (other customers) aren’t making life miserable. Kind of like a gated community: We’ll attempt to block intruders and abusive ‘renters’ who continually have a detrimental effect on their neighbors will be asked to ‘move out’.

“What about VPS. You do everything, right?”

Purchasing a VPS hosting plan is like purchasing a condominium. It’s still shared with others, but you’ll have more control over what happens in your ‘space’. Your hosting provider will provide you with the basics, and you can purchase addons such as a control panel, extra RAM, etc, but the concept of the apartment is still the same. What you do from there with your site space is up to you. Your web hosting provider will still keep an eye on things and make sure your neighbors are all playing nice, but the space you’re renting is yours to maintain and keep up to date.

“I get it. But what about a dedicated server? Surely you’ll do anything I want?”

Not quite. When you purchase a dedicated server plan it’s like renting a house. It’s bigger than an apartment, and you have all the control to do whatever you wish with the space. You can even invite your friends over for a party! But it’s totally yours to maintain and operate on your own.

Lets say you want maid service, lawn care, and extra security. You’d pay extra for these if renting a house, right? The same holds true for dedicated web hosting. You can purchase Managed Services of different levels depending on your needs and we’ll take care of things for you. I warn you though, we don’t do windows. (Get it??) (OK. OK. I lied. You can actually add on Windows OS for just $35 more on our dedicated hosting plans.)

“I only need an apartment (shared hosting). Can I at least pay you to help me out with some things?”

Sure. We can do script installations and even upgrades of third party products if you wish. There is a fee attached, but this type of support does not come standard with a non-managed hosting account.

In a nutshell, Web Hosting and renting an apartment is pretty similar. We’ll provide you fresh clean space to work with, and we’ll keep things running smoothly. We’ll even offer a few tools and perks to keep your new place shiny and sparkly, but it’s ultimately up to you to decide what you want on your site, where you’ll put things, and how.

It seems there’s been a bit of drama today in the web hosting world that’s being played on blogs. It’s times like these I’m very thankful to work for such a grounded and solid web hosting company.

If you, like me, don’t care for any of the hassle of wondering which web hosting company is going to run you off next, it’s time to come check out JaguarPC (if you haven’t already). We offer personal service from qualified professionals with our customer’s happiness in mind.

Remember those web hosting coupon codes I mentioned in my last post? Here they are!

VPS Coupon Code: New2008VPS

Reseller Coupon Code: Resell2008
Shared Hosting Coupon Code: BestHost2008
Semi Dedicated Coupon Code: SemiDed2008

Happy New Year! Wait.. that was so last week. Well, I hope the New Year is finding you happy and healthy so far!

Before I go any futher, I should apologize for introduce myself: My name is Tracie, one of the latest newcomers to JaguarPC Web Hosting and I’ll be taking over helping out with the JaguarPC blog. (Don’t worry… we’ve still got Connie chained to the desk around to post those awesomely interesting articles about Google, Spam, internet security, etc.)

I thought I’d start off by telling you all about my visit to the eye doctor today. (It was the kind of visit where they put a bunch of drops in your eyes that make you see double and scream, “bright light! bright light!” as soon as you step outside.)

You might be thinking, “What the heck does that got to do with web hosting?” You might also be thinking “who’s this crazy lady?” Don’t worry. You’ll get used to me.

I was called up to the counter before my appointment so they could update my records with my insurance, address, etc. and they asked me to pay my co-pay amount. I have a flex spending account through my husband’s employer that covers this. Since it’s so early in the new year I have not yet received the new account number and debit card. I asked that they bill me. She stares at me a second then says they can’t do that. I explain the situation and she doesn’t argue one bit and simply agrees to bill me. I had to explain this two more times (when I picked out my new glasses, and during checkout). At first they all told me they could not bill me. When I explained the situation, I got what I asked for.

I chuckled to myself as I walked out (that is, until the sun shone down on my extremely dilated eyeballs like the death star blasting Princess Leia’s homeworld, then I stifled a scream). All I had to do was ask, and I received what I wanted. It didn’t hurt anyone to ask and the worst case scenario is they say no.

Here at Jaguar PC, we welcome you to ask questions. We pride ourselves on offering the best possible customer support. You never know unless you ask. Need a coupon code? Ask! Need a deal? Ask! Will you always get the answer you want? Not always. But we’ll do our best and it never hurts to ask.

Today I was asked, “Are you running any specials?” Are we ever! We are almost always offering a special or a little something extra with our plans. You can find our latest deals on our web hosting forums (if you didn’t know, we have an outstanding forum community at Jaguar PC) under the thread: Web Hosting Sales, Pre-Sales, Specials and Coupons. Check it out!

That’s it for today’s installment. Check back often for tips and tricks and hopefully some minor entertainment! You can also subscribe to the JaguarPC Web Hosting Blog Feed. Now that your system administrators have blocked MySpace and Facebook at the firewall you need something to keep yourself entertained, right??

So its no mystery that we have a great community here. And Ive never hid behind anything or shy away from public postings, even ones not in this forum. This can have some great benfits, I get to know some people on a personal level, of course the branding benefit, and people can put a name or personality to the company.

Unfortunately it isnt without its ugly side either. Our reputation among clients and the internet at large is nothing short of stellar <—I love to use, and over use that term! In a certain public forum, cough w, cough ht , cough, we have been eating quantities of crud in the last mont or so. The really unfortunate issue with this is that it all stems from just 2-3 users which are double back posting on each others threads, followed by heaps of competitors thread bumping while posting what they are construing as helpful post, and paid forum posters (yes this is a web service) of seemingly anonymous posters that back, recommend, or further create false and further damaging messages on these threads. The end result, 2 straight months of thread bumpings and to the public the appearance that we are some evil bad company. It also makes the less educated think, on no, this is the end of that host , better jump ship.

These host jumpers are not going to ever stick with one host and are of little concern. Its the educated long term clients that end up suffering when this happens. The degrading and deplorable acts of other hosts and clients that beleive support is done by 3rd party public forums is really a sickness to the hosting industry. Like all large muscle bound hosts we easily over come these negative acts and rarely if ever even notice a decline in sales for them. But what they do is affect our staff, morale, and that sirs does nothing for anyone on the web. Its all too easy these days to think that you can hide behind your monitor and type what you want. Has the world forgot that there are human beings that are meant to read your comments? Its my wish that one day the gutter of the internet becomes a little more civilized and online merchants get at least the same respect you would show to a clerk working at your local best buy.

Recently we have begun to deploy just a very small portion of our overall marketing plans into action. However minor the end result was far beyond expectations. With barely a fraction of our marketing budget in play we set out with a decent stock of vps nodes, thats virtual private server for you noobs out there. A node in this case is just another way of saying a single physical server configured to act as a host to many virtual servers.

With our nodes lined up and more on the way for what we hope will be a slight overstock murphy paid us a visit. We soon found ourselves filling nodes so fast, literally several overnight, that we began pulling select nodes designated for other purposes such as future shared, reseller, and semi-dedicated machines. Still new nodes arrived and those were setup as well until we just plain ran out. Sitting on a pile of orders makes us all warm and fuzzy inside normally…as it should. Sitting on new orders with nowhere to put them while we wait for loads of new hardware is a very unsettling experience. The nodes in service are all well balanced and lightly loaded but still loaded to what we have designated as a safe, acceptable, profitable capacity. We could put a few extra orders on all the many nodes to get the order queue down but where do we draw the line? We’ve opt’d to bite this bullet and gross underestimate in sales head on. Rather than risk damaging our support needs, existing clients and their businesses, and doing what other host do all the time we will just let it ride. Id rather not lose a single order and while every client and order are very important to us, its more important that those clients that have received our stellar services continue to get those services on the same level as they have come to expect. It may cost us sales but the cost of crashing or overloading nodes would be far more damaging to our reputation and more importantly to the livelihood of those clients that put their trust in us to deliver.

This stance is a slap in the face to some and while most hosts would just tuck a few accounts here or there to “get by” its simply not our style. Hopefully its this same jag style that has you reading this post .  In the jag world : current client > potential new client  and  hopefully that fact is looked upon  in a positive manner despite its negative connotations.

Well Ive been out of the office and busy a bee the last few days. This time there is no silly software or service announcement, no its much greater than that. On monday apr 24th, at 5:08pm we welcomed a new member to our family. Anna Reese Landis was born at only 19.5 inches long and 6 lbs 11 onces . She came home yesterday with mom and both are doing very well. She has one sister (Sydnie) and one borther (Greg). Sydnie will be 6yrs old this Aug and Gregory turned 3yrs old this month. We’re trying to soak in all the baby time we can becuase they truly do grow up so fast.

One of the most common first questions people ask is; Is this your first child?  No, shes our 3rd.
Most people pause there becuase apparantly people are planning larger families much more these days. When asked if she will be last most parents reply with  “oh ya!” by the third child but honestly me and my wife could see us with more. Whats weird is with one kid going on two you just cant imagine how you can love another person as much as your child. When your second child is born you learn something very important, love isnt divded among the people you love, its multiplied with each new person. I could see us reaching the 4 or 5 kid mark even. Now our home is happily filled with 3x the love and growing. Welcome home Anna.

I see it happen sometimes when a service fails on a server such as email and clients, rightfully so, freak out to say the least. “HEELLLPPP, Im about to lose a $1million deal becuase my email is down”. Sound funny? Not to that guy! Ok so your asking who does a $1MM deal via email, well I don’t know how true that is and really don’t beleive that is anything short of extreme exageration but I have heard before. The first thought that comes to mind is, who does a $1MM deal from a $10 hosting account? Well the fact is that jsut becuase you aren’t closing some big deal via doesn’t mean your email is not important. Protecting that mail and ensuring you and your recipient get it is also important. Heres a few things I can think of to help you keep the mail flowing without spending thousands on larger redundant clusters:

Setup an alternate account on another server as a backup and make sure your dns zeon files have multiple MX (mail) records with decreasing priorties. Whats all that really mean?

Lets say you have www.siteA.com with us on a server, lets call it Earth. Well one day Earth goes down due to hardware failure or just the mail service goes out due to some other problem. In this situation your mail would likely just bounce around until the server is back up and the server can receive it. In other cases it could be lost to the internet gremlins forever but in either case you won’t be getting it anytime soon if ever.

What you could do to prevent this is setup a backup account on another server, lets call it Mars. Your dns zone file would have a second MX priority (dont worry, our techs know what this is even if you dont) which points to Mars.

Now when Earths mail server isnt accesible before the message gets returned its already been told by the dns server that this zeon (this domain name) has another mail server it can try. Now your mail will be routed to the Mars server where you can retreive it at your leisure. That email will not be sent again to Earth server, nor will it be lost to space. When Earth server starts listening and responding to requests aghain, your email will starting going to it again by default.

Give it a shoot, we can help you set this up so that $1MM account isnt lost and your peace of mind is secured by just one low cost shared account.

This is our first test post. Lets go blogging!