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Fellow blogger and internet marketer Josh Spaulding sounds off about his recent experiences with HostGator in this customer review.

OK, I know I told you I’d be reducing the number of rants that I publish on this blog. Well, since I’m about to start http://www.crackerjackseo.com/ (newly registered) I’ve decided to start ranting once again right here. So all my long, how-to’s etc. related to SEO will be published at crackerjackseo and all my other Internet marketing musings, including rants will reside here.

About 12 hours ago I ordered a dedicated server through HostGator. During the ordering process I chose PayPal as my payment option (I wasn’t asked for my PayPal email.

Order was complete, nothing was charged. A few minutes later I received a call from a HostGator rep telling me they need my PayPal email to get this going. No problem. I provided the email and was told my server would be up within 24 hours. I also replied to a ticket telling them my PayPal email just to be sure.

-PayPal email given to HostGator twice-

This morning I wake up and see an email from HostGator. I open it up and I see login details. The server is up and ready, right? Of course not.

They reinstated a reseller account I had over a year ago. Not that it matters, but that didn’t even work trying to login through the provided IP, UN and PW.

I call HostGator to see what’s up. I get some kid (sounded like he was about 16 y.o., who sounded mad at the world.) He very rudely said “You’ll just have to wait for your ticket to be replied to, Sir”

After hanging up I got a little P.O. and called back. This time I spoke with a helpful female agent, but after 15 minutes or so I was told I need to reorder the server because a PayPal email wasn’t sent. About that time I thought this was some kind of joke! I had given it to the guy who called me, I replied to the ticket with the PayPal email and I had given it to her. Yet, they were unable to charge me and fix this big mess.

-PayPal email given to HostGator for the 3rd time-

By the way, while I was on the phone with her I received another email from HostGator stating that I need to go to some URL to change my primary domain and I need to pay $5 for that to happen.

So, I figured I might as well just order and get this all over and done with (thinking they would take care of it right away.) I said “OK, I’ll just reorder.” She said OK, the people who set it up are gone right now, so they should get to this later today sometime. “When?” …”I don’t know”

Does HostGator even care whether they make a sale or not? I mean, I don’t care how much money I make, if I have a customer who is ready and willing to give me $200 EVERY MONTH I’m going to bend over backwards for them!

Now I’m in a predicament. It took me 2 weeks of looking at various dedicated server deals and nothing compared to what HostGator had to offer for the price. I don’t want to spend over 200/month for a server, but it looks like I’m going to have to.

The best deal in the world isn’t worth it if the support is the worst in the world!

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Filed under: Domains Articles, Hosting Reviews, Web Hosting Articles, Website Promotion

Recently over at the Cayman Host Blog we posted about a new RSS Feed Reader called FeedGhost and a pretty slick reader it is too.

The great news is that Stu Smith over at FeedGhost has given us three free licenses to give away to our lucky readers. If you’ve tried the Lite version already and want to use it for more than 20 feeds, or even if this is the first you’ve heard of it, keep reading. An annual license would normally cost you $20.00 but three of you are going to have a shot at grabbing a year’s use of the unrestricted FeedGhost Pro Version, free gratis and for nothing. Well, not quite nothing

In order to be eligible for this giveaway, what we are asking you to do is write us a short review of your current web hosting company. (Yes, sorry, if you don’t have your own domain and host you won’t be able to play) It doesn’t have to be a novel, just an honest appraisal of the company who host your blog at present. The three winners will be chosen by me based on these reviews.

So, why should you bother you’re thinking? Well, not only will you have a chance at winning the free license, you will also get a nice DoFollow link for your efforts and another mention of your blog in a separate post should you be one of the winners. A possible $20 for a short post/comment and link love from the Caribbean…pretty good value. Even if you don’t win you’ll still have the option of using the Lite version too!

How To Enter:- Simple, just go to our new web hosting customer reviews page, and use the comments field to leave a concise review of your host - (don’t forget to mention them by name). Basic information regarding positives/negatives, time as a customer etc. The aim of this is to share your experiences and help us kick start our customer reviews with some real user feedback. It doesn’t matter if your hosting company is listed on our pages or not, nor if someone else has already left a review, but no affiliate links for now please.

After a few weeks, depending on the response, I will announce the winners and send them their free license keys:-) Good Luck and thanks for joining in.

[tags]RSS, Feedghost, RSS readers, hosting, customer reviews[/tags]

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Filed under: Blogging, Free Services, Product/Software Reviews, Website Promotion

This brief article outlines the importance of using robots.txt files and good sitemaps to help search engines index your website or blog properly.

Having built your website you are probably waiting for that flood of visitors to start arriving but this won’t happen overnight. There is a great deal you can do to improve your chances of good search engine rankings but the whole field of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be very complicated and is rarely an exact science. The information is out there if you are prepared to do your research but for many people, time is the biggest limiting factor when it comes to SEO and there is a lot of information to wade through.

There are however a couple of very simple steps that anyone can take to help the Search engines find and index your site correctly. Both will take only a couple of minutes to implement and will repay you well if you take the trouble to complete them.

Firstly, you should ensure that you have a robots.txt file in the root of your domain (the place where your site’s homepage resides) and that it is valid and functioning correctly. The simplest way to do this is to go to one of the many online robots.txt generator and validator sites, where all you will have to do is type in your website address and a couple of options and they will generate the appropriate file for you. We recommend Yellowpipe Robots.txt Generator which will also enable you to choose to banish the robots you don’t want visiting your site, such as known email harvesting bots. There are plenty of other online services available if you search for them. This method ensures an error free robots.txt file which you can then upload to your server. It’s that simple and the search engine spiders will then be aware of exactly where to visit on your site.

The next task on your list is to set up sitemaps, which have become steadily more important in recent times. You may well already have a Google sitemap on your site and if you do, it will probably be called sitemap.xml. Sitemaps also reside in the root of your domain and make it much easier for engines to find and index your content.

There are plenty of ways to set up a Google sitemap and it’s probably the most important one, but it won’t hurt you to have more sitemaps either. The easiest way for you to do this is to use the excellent services at AutoMapIt Automatic Sitemap Service who will not only create six sitemaps automatically for you, but upload them to your server too if you wish. If you prefer to upload the files yourself, you can do so. This is a free service, although you can upgrade at very reasonable cost and benefit from some even more valuable services. Setting up the free sitemap generation is simple and quick and will give you a far greater chance of being fully and properly indexed. Certainly worth a few minutes of your time.

As we said at the outset, these are very basic SEO steps, but nonetheless a good starting point for any webmaster.

Technorati Tags: Free sitemap generator , Sitemaps , Google sitemap , Robots.txt validator , Robots.txt generator , SEO , Building sitemaps , How to build sitemaps , Making a sitemap , Webmaster tools

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Filed under: Blogging, SEO, Web Design, Website Promotion

Before launching into this review it should be pointed out that Site Build It (or SBI ) and SiteSell.com , do not conform to the conventional notion of web hosting as most of the companies represented on these pages. Their services are aimed fairly and squarely at small business and internet marketers and indeed anyone looking to build quality static websites with the minimum of fuss and the maximum return on investment.

Site Build It and their web hosting company SiteSell.com are another Canadian company, the brainchild of CEO Ken Evoy, who have been in business since 1997 and in a nutshell, have grown their reputation by helping a great number of people turn their own ideas into very successful online businesses. The whole philosophy of Site Build It is really to enable people to get an online business set up as quickly and painlessly as possible without the need to know too much about all the technical barriers and "under the hood" workings of their sites and web hosting.

This makes them a very attractive proposition for those who want to concentrate on developing content rich sites but don’t want the distractions of having to learn too much about hosting, web design, marketing and promotion. As we pointed out in our opening paragraph, this is not your normal hosting review. So, let’s look at what this means for the end user in a little more detail.

SiteBuildIt is a controlled environment and this is a very important distinction. Unlike traditional hosting, you cannot upload anything you like to a server because you are working within a controlled FTP environment. There is no access to things like cgi-bin and php files, simply the facility to upload specific file types to certain folders designated for the purpose. Basically the SBI system handles all of the hosting aspects for you and also takes care of things like submissions to search engines and ongoing SEO. The company’s proud claim is that their methods and systems will ensure success and traffic and there are plenty of testimonials to support their claims.

Web hosting design and marketing made simple - Purists may well feel that SBI and SiteSell are therefore not for serious webmasters but this is strongly refuted in the company’s comprehensive onsite presentations and they do have a point. There is no denying that their customers have produced some top percentile websites (based on Alexa traffic rankings). The website presentation is detailed and if you have time to watch their 30 minute video it gives you a good idea of just what the systems can do, and indeed why so many people are attracted to the company. If you have no marketing or technical experience, which let’s face it, accounts for a large number of people, you would probably find SBI and SiteSell a good place to start as a fledgling website owner.

It is important to point out that despite the controlled hosting environment Site Build It is not a generic template type deal, very far from it. You choose your own domain name(s) just as you would with any other hosting service, and build your sites around them. You are the webmaster in control of the websites you build. You don’t need to know any HTML as their site building software does everything, but, if you are familiar with web authoring you can freely design/edit your own pages via any HTML editor and Photoshop. You will have the ability to blog, you will have RSS capability and E-Zine and Newsletter facilities and most of the tools you would normally expect to be using in building an online presence. You will also find things such as automated keyword research, autoresponders, mailing lists, link exchange tools and comprehensive traffic and stats reporting. The attraction is in the automation of many of the hard tasks associated with marketing and promoting a site, In short, if you have a great idea but are intimidated by technology this company could well be the answer to your problems. Even if you already have some website building experience but have had little success, you are also in the company’s target market.

In terms of cost, SBI is not really that much more expensive than a good quality shared hosting program, in fact it equates to about a dollar per day and you are getting a lot for your money. This is why we stated at the outset that this is more than just a hosting company and is probably the closest thing you will find to a "business in a box". You bring the idea and SBI enables you to convert that idea into an online business. This approach has certainly worked for many people, as to whether it is for you why not take a look at the company’s presentations to help you decide.

As a hosting company we could find very few complaints about reliability, nor customer and technical support although to be fair, we are not reviewing your regular host as we have made clear already. Users have access to a helpful forum area as well as normal company support via telephone and email. Ultimately, if you have been trying to decide on a hosting plan and have read this review, it may well change your thinking a little. There is no doubt that SBI and SiteSell , while certainly not a guarantee of success, do offer all the tools to get your own hosted website off the ground with a minimum of fuss.

In conclusion, if you want reliable hosting but also like the idea of a lot of automation of "the geek stuff" SBI is worth investigating further. As with all things, there are some limitations which will make the company a non starter for a few webmasters but these are probably in a minority. They ARE different but if you are just starting out in the online world or are frustrated by a lack of success, SBI could be just what the doctor ordered.

Technorati Tags: Site Build It Review , Web hosting review , Create a website , Web site design , Web site template , Web site marketing , SEO services , Web site builder , Increase web site traffic , Blogging , Hosting Reviews , Product Reviews , SEO , Web Design , Website Promotion

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Filed under: Blogging, Hosting Reviews, Product/Software Reviews, SEO, Web Design, Website Promotion