I was shopping at Home Depot for a sander on the weekend. I looked at them all for a good 30 minutes. There was no clear measurement of how to tell which one was better. There was an expensive one, a cheap one and a mid priced one. There was no measurement to judge vibrations per second, there was no measure of them at all. I ended up leaving the store with a sanding block because it was the only one I really understood in the end.

On the drive home it made me start to wonder.

In a recent poll you our visitors and customers said that hosting is a commodity.

Has hosting become a commodity where there is no distinguishable way to tell which one is better. It use to be who had the best support and up time. The stronger servers get the easier it for hosts to achieve high up time and all hosts provide 24/7 support. Instead of it being a service it moved to who had the most space and bandwidth. That model is called overselling. I have explained that before on this blog if your not familiar with that model. If you notice most hosts these days have unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth and unlimited domains. In essence there is no way to distinguish between hosts again. So where does that leave the customer?

I don’t really have any answers to that question. When I was searching for a sander I was confused. Maybe potential hosting customers are confused too.

I am left wondering if our model is out dated and if we need to test models of hosting.

I think we should do several controlled tests of some various models of hosting.

Overselling Model

We will put together 1 server which we will host 100 unlimited space, bandwidth and domain account. The packages will cost $214.80 ($8.95/month) for 24 months or $119.40 ($9.95/month) for 12 months.  I will be interested to see how long the server stays online and how long it will take to sell 100 accounts.

High Paying Affiliates

The 2nd model will be based off another trend where more hosts are paying $65 or more per customer lead. This is a lot of money to pay out but again perhaps we can increase sign-ups by paying out more. This model will be controlled again on 1 server. We will create an overselling package for the affiliates to sell in the $149.40 a year range. We will then pay affiliates $88 after 30 days if a customer is still with us. Again it will be interesting to see how well this model works if at all.

What do you think? Any model you think we should try? Which one do you think will work or not work?

We are currently testing a new service where you can purchase a domain, dial a local number and then domain cost will be charged to your phone bill. This means you would not require to have a credit card, use PayPal or send cheques through the mail to pay.

The service we are using is through Daopay who allows phone payments around the world. The setup was easy and takes minutes to add to our site.

The option has already been added to the bluefurdomain.com site and you can buy domains today with just your phone.

Does this seem like a convenient way to buy hosting and domains?

Every press release on the hosting news site recently is grid this and cloud that. Yes these new technologies have taken us all by storm. I use the word storm for multiple reasons which I will allude to shortly. A grid, cloud or cluster is basically a large collections of computers that spread resources across several servers. The advantage to this idea is you can add another server to the cloud and it will help improve all the sites. The cloud is definably a possible future solution to web hosting for most sites.

Most cloud hosting companies would have you believe that everything is soft and fluffy and for the most part they are. When you look over a long period of time though things are not so calm within the cloud. Here is the issues with clouds as I see them…

1. The clouds are still in beta with most companies. The technology works well with 1 site but as a shared solution with 100,000′s of sites it is not perfected. You are paying both money and your sites up time to use a beta service which they market as a high up time product.
2. When something goes wrong on the cloud it goes horribly wrong. Also what these companies won’t tell you is that these clouds are installed by 3rd party companies. They bring in a team of highly skilled experts to install and set it up. The problem is those experts are not in great abundance and the host you pay does not have one on staff.
3. When a cloud goes down you have 100,000′s of customers needing support. How long do you think it would take to reply to those tickets? I am willing to bet a while.
4. Sites that require a dedicated server seek out a possible cheaper cloud solution. Your fellow customers will be sucking the resources from those servers hard. For the price you pay for a cloud you can get your own managed dedicated server.

I am sure that one day clouds will be the standard in the hosting industry for shared hosting. Today they are not and I would not recommend it to anyone that is running a production site.

Note: we do provide a clustered managed server solution for customers with 1 site. These systems run a near 100% up time and can handle insane amounts of traffic.

Update: An example of what happens when a cloud dies. You will see it takes a long time to restore it and that it’s not the first time it happened.

How many social media sites do you belong to?

I know there are already 35 notable one’s that are out there already and that list grows daily. As it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of your various social site activities, I see a need.

A need for lifestream hosting.

If you had your own customizable lifestream account which you could have complete modifiable control over. You can add your lifestream components to it from the various social media’s.

Being a business we would need to charge for this. So I am thinking in the $9.95 a year range.

What are your thoughts?

I am going to rename it Comment Tag.

Here is how it works.

1. You leave a comment on this blog.
2. Vist the commentors blog above your comment and leave a comment there.

Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it? Well that’s the whole idea.

Get to know your neighbours and they will get to know you.

Like this topic for Sunday’s? vote for it to be sure it stays.

We are currently working on building a Dedicated Server Reseller program. We would like to get your input on how you would see something like this working?

Other providers system works as following…

• You sign-up and agree to being a value added reseller (VAR).
• You are able to order servers at a discount.
• You usually need to purchase 1-3 servers before a discount applies.
• Discounts usually are tired to bigger discounts for more servers sold.

Here is some things I would like to see in it…

• A program that is more beneficial for the reseller. Current programs seem to be more beneficial for the host.
• A system where the reseller can build the server specs and purchase w/o waiting for a custom quote.
• Our program should be based on the keyword ‘easy’ and ‘helpful’ and not on cheap.

If you were to set up your own Dedicated Server Reseller program how would you like to see it?

Business Hosting Relaunched
Last year we introduced business hosting using a failover DNS solution which required files to be synced between 2 locations. The problem was that databases and and multiple domains were not synced so if your site was dynamic (doesn’t everyone now?) then the failover would not work right. Based on that we scrapped that model at the beginning of this year

To take over for that we will be launching a 100% managed VPS with cPanel. The VPS will be setup, updated and managed by our staff just like a shared server. The customer who purchases this will receive a regular cPanel login to administer there site. There are several advantages to this for businesses…

• 1 IP for your business which is not shared. This will mean you will not need to worry about your domain being flagged as spam.
• Higher reliability because there will be fewer people on the server. A maximum of 30 customers will be on one server.
• More control over how the VPS is setup so that there hosting fits there needs.

The plan will look like this…

vDedicated Business
25 GB Disk Space
1000 GB Monthly Transfer Limit
cPanel with Fantastico
Unmetered emails, add-on domains, MySQL, etc…
$49.95 a month

We will not be providing root access to these servers as we do not wish to dive back into the reseller hosting market. Again this hosting is good for a business that wants a step up from standard shared hosting.

BlueFur Xvps Launch
We announced earlier this year and will be adding VPS Servers. The test with openvz did not go well so we have decided to go with Virtuozzo. This server is good for anyone that would like to sell Canadian VPS server. The server specs are…

BlueFur Xvps
Dual Xeon Quad 2.5GHz
750GB SATA2
15GB RAM
2 TB Monthly Transfer Limit
100 Mbps Uplink
30 Unique IP’s
Rapid Remote Reboot
Virtuozzo – 30VPS
Virtuozzo Control Center
$599.95 a month
cPanel with Fantastico can be added for $20 a month per VPS.

We will be adding this to our server offerings in the coming days.

VPS Development Hosting
I did some quick searching and there are very few VPS developer servers in Canada. My thinking is there is a need for a VPS where you could install software which you would not normally find on a shared host so you can test and build scripts. The server would be unmanaged and not include cPanel. The developer would have access to Virtuozzo Control Center where they can reload the Os anytime they need to. The plan would look something like this…

vDev
25 GB Disk Space
1000 GB Monthly Transfer Limit
512 MB of RAM Guranteed
Virtuozzo Control Center
$19.95 a month

This price is not etched in stone but is where I would like to see these Dev VPS price at the $20 or less mark.

Your Feedback
We really appreciate your feedback on these plans. Your idea’s suggestions will help us become a stronger company. Leave a comment if you have anything to say.

In most industries there are 2 or more similar services with each having unique features that sets it apart. In the microblogging or cloud communication world the two major players are twitter and FriendFeed. One thing that FriendFeed does well is pull in your outside feeds into one location. On the other hand twitter does not do this by default so pulling in your outside feeds you will have to do manually.

Blog Posts
We have gone over this before but you can pull in your blog posts using Twitter Tools or WordTwit.

YouTube Videos
You can use twitterfeed to pull in your youtube videos. The process is easy, sign-up at twitterfeed and add your youtube feed. To get your youtube feed replace your youtube username in the following link…

http://www.youtube.com/rss/user/[youtube_username]/videos.rss

Delicious Links
Like youtube you can pull in your delicious bookmarks into twitter to share. Again sign-up at twitterfeed (if you have not already) and add your delicious feed. Like before replace your delicious username in the following link…

http://feeds.delicious.com/rss/[delicious_username]

With twitterfeed you can add any RSS feed to your twitter. The trick sometimes is finding the RSS feeds.

Does any one know how to find the Stumble Upon RSS users feeds?

 

What is twitter?
twitter is a micro blogging system that allows you to post your ideas, thoughts, questions and links. Think of twitter as a large chat room in which you can correspond with others. Unlike a chat room you can choose who to listen to and who you wish to speak to.

How do I use twitter for my business?
To make use of twitter, you should start by building a group of people you’d like to follow.  For example, if you are a web designer,  you might want to use the search and start following other local web designers.  The designers you are following will post their own tweets which you will see if you have installed twhirl. The best way to make contacts on twitter is to be helpful and reply to others tweets.

Should I use twitter to advertise?
No. If you’re thinking of using twitter as a tool to advertise, not only will it not be effective, you will likely receive an adverse reaction from the community.  The people who are on twitter are very technical and will quickly block you if your only tweets (posts) are advertising or spam.

Can I send my blog posts to twitter?
If you have a blog there are 2 plugins (WordTwit and Twitter Tools) you can use to post your latest posts to your twitter. It is acceptable to post your own blog posts on twitter.

How do I get followers?
The true secret to twitter is not to try and get followers. Followers will find you if you are helpful and post meaningful content.

Do you use twitter for your business?

 Here is a step by step on how to make your own Storefront Widget…

1. Go to the PayPal Storefront Widget Page.

2. Login to PayPal if you have an account. If not create one.

3. Click on Create new storefront to begin the customization proccess.

4. Choose a Theme (like a wallpaper) or colour.

5. Enter the Store Name and upload a 60 x 35 logo.

6. Add  your shipping information, contact information and additional information.

7. Add your products. You can have multiple products to sell and it will scroll through them.

8. Choose if your store is open or closed.

9. Publish your storefront. If you have a TypePad blog you can publish to it or just grab the HTML if you do not have a TypePad blog.

10. You can then paste the code into your page where you want it to display.

How do you see yourself using this on your site?