As mentioned in the last post where we showcased some exhibitor and attendee feedback from Webhosting Day 2008, here we have an interview with Michael Korbacher, the director of Web and application, Hosting Communications Sector, Microsoft International.

He had some enlightening things to say about the launch of Windows Server 2008, Microsoft's developer network and what the company's been up to, but from a more of an International standpoint.

And on the topic of Microsoft, theWHIR's editor-in-chief, Liam Eagle, our director of marketing and business development Candice Rodriguez, and yours truly with the WHIRtv team will be attending Microsoft's 2008 Hosting Summit in Seattle next week, so if you see us around, definitely come up and say hello!

Like most humans, we, web site creators, need to be loved. Of course, we are not talking just about romantic love. We want to know whether anyone cares about what we (or our web sites) have to say, offer or sell. Unless we are willing to wait for an award to find out how much (and how many) people REALLY like us (think Sally Fields at the 1985 Academy Awards), we need a faster way to find out.

Here are four easy approaches. Try them and find the one that works best for you.

1. Introspection
2. Vanity
3. Thinking outside the box
4. Outside, looking in

1. Introspection:

Socrates noted that the unexamined life is not worth living. Introspection and the search of truth are existential virtues. In our context, we seek to learn how much people like us by quantifying web site traffic. We can measure visits to our web site from inside the server, if we own it.

First, let's look at web server logs. Apache has two sets, access logs and error logs. Both require root privileges to view. As root, it is possible to see information about each access attempt. Here is a line from the access log, showing the originating IP, date, time, requested page, browser, and OS.

195.2.114.20 - - [29/Mar/2008:14:20:37 -0600] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 937 "http://forum.words2u.net/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7"

Here is an example of an error log - I get quite a few requests for favicon.ico. I just created it, so there should be less of these errors from now on.

[Mon Mar 31 14:30:24 2008] [error] [client 81.207.89.42] File does not exist: /home/words2u/favicon.ico

This is quite a mouthful, hard to read, analyze or visualize, so I moved to the next option - traffic monitoring software, or log analyzers. I installed webalizer, which gives wonderfully colorful reports on the web. Unfortunately, the data I see is pretty meaningless, or at least it seems so to me - it keeps telling me I had 2 visitors, one from Poland the other from Russia. I guess I should read the manual. I also installed awstats (apt-get install awstat, not hard to do), but could not even tell where to look for the analysis. So, at least for now, this is not really working for me.

There is is a slew of log analysis tools, both free and commercial, which extract information from the log, draw nice graphs, and provide auxiliary information, such as geographic location of the visitor, and so on. The main disadvantage is that someone has to install these programs, then figure out how to use them.

Here is a short list of log analyzers for Linux, thanks to Danny from FLUX:

 analog http://www.analog.cx
 awstats http://awstats.sourceforge.net/
 webalizer http://webalizer.org/
 webtrax http://www.multicians.org/thvv/webtrax-help.html
 http-analyze  http://http-analyze.org/
 awffull http://www.stedee.id.au/awffull
 sawmill http://www.sawmill.net/ Commercial
 summary http://www.summary.net/ Commercial
 visitors http://www.hping.org/visitors/
 webtrends http://www.webtrends.com/ Commercial
hitbox http://www.hitbox.com/ - now forwarding to another commercial site

If you want to check out progress on my web site, go to my Costa Rica GPS wiki (gps.words2u.net) or blog (blog.words2u.net) - and leave a message on this site, telling me what I am doing right or wrong.

Hello again. It’s been a long while since I've posted here and I apologize for my absence. I'll be posting regularly from now on.

In my last post I talked a bit about the different strategies - tactics - one could use in an online campaign. Today I'm going to walk you through how to actually decide which strategies to use.

First, come up with a budget. Pay-per-click, banners, etc. are more expensive than article marketing or even a search engine optimized (SEO) news release campaign. You can allocate your funds across different tactics, both online and off. For example, SEO, pay-per-click, affiliate programs, blogging, some media buying can work very well with some offline stratgies such as trade shows, advertising in industry journals, participating in your local chamber's events, perhaps even some direct mail.

If you've had success with certain tactics in the past, focus on those; less so the new - at least at first. You do not want to spread your tactics - or your budget - too thinly. In fact, you could find lose focus and thus weakening your results. Few of us have exceptionally deep marketing pockets. Focus is key.

It’s a sad day when someone spends a good amount of money on marketing but has little budget for the follow through that’s necessary as your tactics bring results. You will need to have systems and processes in place to respond to queries and - happy day! - sales. You’ll also need to track each marketing tactic’s effectiveness. No need to keep paying for pay-per-click if you find most of your results are coming from article marketing - but you need to keep track of each part of your campaign to see which is bringing you the best results and adjust your budget allocation accordingly.

As promised, here's a look at what some of the exhibitors and attendees thought of this year's Webhosting Day 2008 and the value they see in attending this annual event.

In the next few days, we'll be bringing you a one-on-one with Michael Korbacher, the director of Web and application, Hosting Communications Sector, Microsoft International as he gives us some insight into Microsoft's role at Webhosting Day 2008 as well as what kind of excitement Windows Server 2008 has been stirring up across the pond.

It is now almost two weeks since my last post. While quite a few people visited the blog and my site, no one made any suggestion regarding which design is better.

Truth be told, I am not happy with any of the proposed designs, but the closest one for me was the single table with everything in one page. So I am going to stick with a modification of it from now on.

If you are following the links from my last post, please note that the original index page can now be found at http://www.words2u.net/index.original.php - the rest of the links are unchanged for now.

So if you want to visit my new home page, check out this link

By the way, I am finding that 'twitter' style blogs are a lot easier to do than standard, long entries.  I can't promise to stick to the 140 characters length, but I will try as hard as I can.

See you soon!

While the WHIR's editor-in-chief Liam Eagle has provided us with some fantastic up-to-the minute coverage from Webhosting Day, which you can still catch on his blog here, WHIRtv was also on location gathering event footage and interviews with some key players in the European hosting market. (Let's also take a moment to note that as much as we try to describe the surreal atmosphere with the venue, there really is no better way to relay this to you than through images and video!)

To kick off our European coverage, here's an interview with the event organizer, Thomas Strohe, who discusses the event's rapid growth, some hot topics in the European hosting market and his overall vision for Webhosting Day.

In the following days and weeks we'll be posting feedback from exhibitors and attendees as well as interviews with Microsoft, Parallels and other key European players that were attending the event.

Why doesn’t Google rank me higher? Well, not me exactly. A website that I work on. I set up a site for a friend of mine and helped get it groomed to rank well for its search terms in Google.

Here are the basics that my friend and I have going for the site right now.

* It has been online for over 5 years at the same URL.

* The URL is a .com and has some of the keywords in it.

* The title tag has the keywords in it.

* The home page has the correct keyword density and keywords on it.

* Over the years we have been fortunate to get great links back – many with the exact keywords in the link.

So here is what is so frustrating to me:

2 days ago we ranked pretty well for one of our key search terms at Google (top 10 Google ranking). Today I checked, and we have dropped to page 5 for the same term. I could understand if we just didn’t fit the Google algorithm or criteria for the term and we hadn’t reached beyond page 5 yet. But how in the world does it make any sense whatsoever that we rank on page 1 two days ago and page 5 now? This term is simply not that competitive. Here is what I am thinking about regarding this ranking:

Theory #1: Google randomly “bounces sites around” in the rankings once in a while to introduce confusion into the optimization process, thereby discouraging “gaming”. This fits the circumstances, but it would yield poor search results and potentially randomly rank top sites poorly. This doesn’t fit the “relevancy” standard that Google surely has.

Theory #2: The site is being penalized for aggressive optimization techniques. This doesn’t make any sense to me either, as we haven’t done anything at all unusual for this particular website or search term. As I stated, it isn’t that competitive – so we began to rank well for it quite naturally. This was even before we groomed our site content and title tags (as I noted, the keywords are in the domain name).

Theory #3: All of a sudden, the landscape for this search term changed dramatically – with new players entering the rankings and pushing the legacy websites further down the list. Okay, no way. This term is not that competitive. Plus, there aren’t any really new players on the scene for this term.

Theory #4: A very authoritative website that was linking back to us dropped our link, or changed how they linked to us. I guess this could be the case. But we haven’t bought or even traded or asked for links back to this term. Also – I’m not sure that even if a site like that was linking back to us, would just one site, or one link matter that much to drop us like a rock in a couple of days?

Theory #5: Google changed something in how they calculate the rankings for this term in the last 2 days – while everything we offered on the site and all our inbound links remained the same. This is the only explanation I can think of that fits both the circumstances and common sense. We simply haven’t changed anything in the past 2 days. So I think that Google (or more correctly the Google algorithm) has changed somehow for this term – yielding lower search rankings for our site. Some sources are reporting that Google uses over 150 different pieces of data to rank, so even a minor tweak in one or two of these for our category / search term could have pushed us lower.

Whatever the exact reason that we have dropped in the search rankings - I just keep wondering, why doesn’t Google rank me higher?

If you have any ideas, I’d love to see them in the comments below.

This content provided by HostMySite.com.

New product ideas come from everywhere—customers, vendors, sales teams, competitive pressures, government regulations…you get the idea. Your product dreams are often bigger than your ability to productize and bring them to market. There is a proven way to see through the clutter and prioritize the winners: Listen to your customers.

At Intermedia, we help Web hosts, MSPs and other IT service providers bring their customers’ demands for better email, Web mail, wireless email and lightweight business applications to market. We prioritize new features and products based on real customer problems articulated to us. It sounds obvious, but too many companies launch new products and features that are not solving even a single problem for their customers. The product, and in some cases the company, are doomed to slow growth and failure since the market messaging never strikes a tone with a customer.

What drives Intermedia? Customer feedback about their business challenges. Two business problems we are asked to repeatedly assist with are productivity and security—primary issues that all businesses struggle with today. Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo and AIM are great tools for communicating with others. We all use them, but using them at the office is becoming an issue for many businesses. From productivity problems to security problems to intellectual property leaks, public IM access at work is a problem.

After listening to our customers’ frequent requests, we recently launched a secure instant messaging solution based on Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. This product idea was driven directly from our customers and is driving rapid adoption of this new service. In the end, this product will be successful because we are solving fundamental business problems with secure, business centric, instant messaging.

Laguna Niguel, CA -  Alentus Corporation acquired John Macleod’s AO Technologies’ Columbus Ohio Data Center. It is rumored that Alentus is picking up a company across the pond. AO provides high-end dedicated and streaming media services

Leeds, UK -  Masternaut Three X, acquired FibreCity for GBP 6 million ($12 million USD). Deal added 25,000 sq/ft data center.  The acquisition of FibreCity enables Masternaut Three X to provide more extended hosted back-office solutions.

Dallas, TX - Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (NYSE: ACS)announced an agreement to acquire sds business services GmbH, a Germany-based provider of data center, infrastructure services, and application-related solutions from Waterland Private Equity Investments. ACS will pay approximately $67 million (euro 46 million), including the assumption of liabilities, to purchase sds. The acquisition is expected to close in March 2008 following regulatory approval.

Charlotte, NC - TITAN Technology Partners, a provider of hosted and managed industry solutions, acquired Singapore based ESP Consulting.  ESP operations is and managed services provider focused on delivering SAP solutions.

Belfast, Ireland - IUTV Media plc today acquired of Tibus, a leading Ireland web development company from Anderson Spratt Group Holdings for GBP 5 million ($10 million USD).

Chevy Chase, MD - Opus8 Inc. affiliate, Clear Day Acquisition Corp., has acquired a controlling interest in Lore Internet Systems. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.  Lore services includes, managed datacenter hosting and co-location. The acquisition has approximately doubled Pro Net's size and it is now providing shared and dedicated hosting for over 100,000 domains.

Sao Paulo, Brazil  - Universo Online S.A. (UOL) acquired the "clients" of web hosting company Digiweb  UOL is now the third-largest provider of web-hosting services company in Brazil. See my March 6, 2008 blog for additional information and comment.

Rochester, NY - Layer 8 acquired the Web hosting and information technology support services branch of DigiNex. RACD

More about Tom:

New Commerce Communications

E-Mail Tom Direct

The maxim "You never get a second chance to make a first impression" (attributed to W. Triesthof), has been applied to the art of selling, to good posture, to well being, and, of course, to web design. Still, on the web, this adage is flat wrong. When trying to impress millions of individuals, two eyeballs at a time, there are millions of chances to make a first impression.

Which is why, several month into this blog, I am fixing my home page. It may be too late for the readers of this blog, but I probably still have a chance with the rest of humanity.

My original design had two pages - Home page, and About page. The Home page listed links to the main sections of the site. The About page added a little technical, personal and contact information, and a pitch for contributions.

This design has two problems. First, the home page is scrawny, making the page look empty and uninviting. Second, the contributions pitch, on the About page, is likely to be much less viewed, compared to the Home page. Considering the relative potential importance of contributions to the future development of the site, the pitch should be more visible.

So I tried a second design, combining the two original pages. This time, I only needed one column in the table, the page size is more appealing (IMHO), and there is more room for the contribution pitch (so I can explain the purpose, instead of just asking). I also moved that part higher up in the page. I like this design much better.

However, I ran into yet another web site, and adapted it for my needs as well. This one uses two columns in a table to direct the viewer to accomplish various desired action. It's a bit sparse, but gets all the information across in an organized fashion. This last design looked even better!

So, I decided to try and duplicate the last design with the markup tools of PmWiki, with a little bit of color thrown in as well.  And here it is. When I figure out how to set the font family and font size, I will improve the page even more.

Finally, I copied the page into an existing group, with its headers and footers, here - which resulted in a repetitive visual, since the footer and side bar already include the 'Donate' button.

Sadly, I have to say that the PmWiki page looks a lot better than any of my 'adopt, extend and modify' ones. It may be an indication that professional tools are superior to hand coding, or a testament to my web design prowess. Either way, I will probably stick with it in one way or another. The only problem is that PmWiki's PHP processing takes a few miliseconds more, making the site a bit more sluggish.

You are invited to check out the different designs, opine on their relative merits or lack thereof, or offer better ones. Bear in mind, though, that the focus should be on the design, not necessarily the text.

Here are the links again:

Home and About

Combined

Table view 

Table by PmWiki

PmWiki Table with header and footer 

1. Windows Server 2008 Standard edition
2. Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7)
3. FTP 7 (including FTP over SSL)
4. PHP5
5. Trust Level Control
6. Microsoft IIS Manager access

• Firewall configuration and access
• Database access
• Data transmissions
• Data backup and recovery
• Application security
• Product development

• Provides a solid foundation for business workloads with technologies that simplify server management such as Server Manager, Windows PowerShell and Windows Deployment Services
• Protects servers from failure and unauthorized connections with security features such as Network Access Protection, enhanced Active Directory services, read-only domain controller and BitLocker drive encryption
• Hosts Web applications with Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS 7.0), a security-enhanced platform that offers greater flexibility and control through a componentized architecture
• Consolidates multiple server roles and runs several operating systems on a single physical machine with built-in virtualization technology.

• Windows Web Server 2008 enables businesses to rapidly deploy Web pages, sites, applications and services with IIS 7.0, ASP.NET and Microsoft .NET Framework
• Windows Server 2008 Standard features built-in Web and virtualization capabilities and enhanced security features
• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise delivers an enterprise-class platform with consolidated identity management features plus clustering and hot-add processor capabilities
• Windows Server 2008 Unauthenticated Version offers all the Web server power of the Enterprise edition without the ability to run Active Directory and related services.

• High levels of network capacity and speed to deliver peak performance
• Instant scalability to handle even the largest spikes in network traffic
• Parallel, redundant, multi-tiered network routing and switching architecture to assure reliability and stability
• Multiple layer network security that prevents Delayed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks from harming businesses
• Knowledgeable experts with a passion for excellence and a commitment to operate the best networks in the business

• Server and Operating System Consolidation - Parallels Virtuozzo Containers superior density enables customers to consolidate multiple physical servers to fewer servers that run multiple instances of the same operating system.
  
  
• Business Continuity - New features such as real-time backup and live migration enable cost-effective disaster recovery and high-availability configurations that ensure continuous business operations.
  
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) - Industry-leading density and performance make Parallels Virtuozzo Containers the best solution for deploying VDI enterprise-wide.
• Workload Management - The unique ability of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers to manage applications and allocate resources in real-time - in response to changing user needs - delivers maximum efficiency, productivity and uptime.
• Application Hosting for SaaS (Software as a Service) Deployments - Because each container is lightweight and can be deployed in seconds, Parallels Virtuozzo Containers is an ideal solution for businesses looking to capitalize on SaaS both internally and externally. Parallels has a robust ISV and partner community working on SaaS solutions and is spearheading the Application Packaging Standard, which drives rapid SaaS deployment of applications.