While the holiday season can traditionally be a somewhat slow time for web hosting signups at hosting providers, many bring out special offers at this time to encourage late season buying. This can mean a great opportunity to get your web hosting products and services at a discount. No matter what type of web hosting-related products you are looking for: domain names, shared hosting, VPS hosting, or dedicated servers - you can probably find a great deal this holiday season. Here are a few examples of offers out there right now.

Superb Hosting has been around since 1996 and sells domains, shared and dedicated hosting. As the company describes itself on the Superb website: ”SuperbHosting.Net is a wholly owned division of Superb Internet Corporation, a world-class, award-winning web hosting company founded in 1996. Since 1996, Superb Internet has been consistently rated as one of the very best web hosts by all web host rating agencies in all areas, especially customer support and reseller services.” You can get a ”holiday special” from the company right now and save a full 20 percent off dedicated servers. The promo code is 7390. That can add up to real money on a dedicated purchase.

Another dedicated server offer comes from managed dedicated hosting company NaviSite. If you order a server package that constitutes an order of 2000 dollars or more you get a free laptop. If you spend 500 dollars you get a free portable hard disk drive. Details on these offers can be seen here. NaviSite describes itself this way, ”Since 1997, NaviSite has been empowering many companies across diverse industries. We are constantly evolving and expanding our services, so that our customers stay ahead of the competition. Join the over 1,500 customers who have thousands of servers hosted and managed by NaviSite, your business depends on it.”

While it is not strictly speaking a holiday offer, you can still save 40 percent off a reseller account at AIT. This company has been awarded the FindMyHost Editors’ Choice Award for Managed Hosting. In order to qualify for the discount you must sign up for one year of the service. AIT describes itself this way on the AIT website: ”AIT is home to over 210,000 web sites to include Fortune 500 companies as well as home businesses. AIT was founded as a garage start up in North Carolina and has grown to a two-time INC 500, multimillion dollar web hosting and technology company.”

Another holiday offer is from UK VPS hosting company 34SP.com. The company is offering VPS hosting for just 1 penny for the first month with no setup fees or minimum commitment. According to the company’s website, this offer is for a limited time only so it’s best to check the website for details. 34SP.com built its reputation by providing great service and support for developers and designers - in other words, real website professionals.

The company says this about itself: ”34SP.com was established in the year 2000. The company was founded with the aim of bridging the gap between sophisticated hosting solutions and affordable prices. Leveraging the power and stability of open source software with a commitment to ethical business practices 34SP.com has become synonymous with reliability, professionalism and value for money.”

CrystalTech has a special offer running through the holiday season as well. The offer applies to those purchasing a dedicated server. According to the company’s website, ”Use promo code “RAM08″ and get double the included memory on all new dedicated purchases for the life of the server”. You can compare the dedicated server plans here. CrystalTech says this regarding the company on its website: ”CrystalTech began web hosting in 1997 and has since grown to become one of the largest web hosts to specialize in Windows hosting solutions, now providing reliable service to more than 100,000 domains for customers located worldwide”.

All the best to you in this holiday season - I hope that you find the right offer at the right price with these holiday special web hosting offers.

This content was written by Derek Vaughan exclusively for Host Discussion Blog.

As the year 2008 comes to a close, I have been reflecting back on what a monumental year it has been for the web hosting industry. We are all now aware of the great financial crises that has gripped the world, but at the start of this year optimism reigned. It was a time that saw several very bold investments in the web hosting space. Here are a few of the events that occurred in web hosting investment this year:

Rackspace Launches its Initial Public Offering - The most bold of the bold investment moves in web hosting in 2008 has to be the IPO of Rackspace. Ironically, the company had actually prepared to go public once before in the year 2000, but put off the plans due to the dot com bust. In August of 2008 Rackspace pulled the trigger on going public, and shares initially traded at around $10 per share. Unfortunately for the company, the global financial meltdown was bearing down on the stock price, almost from the launch. As of Friday, the stock was trading at around $6 per share - representing a decline of nearly 40%. The entire hosting industry hopes that the strong past performance of Rackspace will hold in the future and reward investors richly for their continued confidence in the managed hosting business model.

Slicehost Acquired by Rackspace - So then Rackspace turns around and acquires Slicehost, a virtual hosting provider. The company is described on their website: ”Slicehost brings the experiences, high expectations and support demands of business hosting to the consumer market. We aim to please developers – people who know their stuff. People who write software, build servers and get things done.” This $11+ investment (also used to acquire JungleDisk, an online backup company) puts Rackspace firmly in the VPS and cloud computing landscape.

Wachovia Capital Partners Acquires HostMySite Inc. - The former founders of Inflow orchestrated the acquisition of customer service focused web hosting gem HostMySite.com. According to information published by the company HostMySite at the time was characterized as follows, ”With over 250 employees, 4,000 servers and state of the art datacenter facilities, the founders have built a highly successful business with a strong service culture.” Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. One can only speculate on how the multiple paid would be re-calculated post-world financial crises meltdown.

iNET Interactive Acquires Web Hosting Talk Australia - This one is kind of a ”no brainer” for iNET. According to iNET investment guru and CEO Troy Augustine, ”We are pleased that we were able to make Web Hosting Talk Australia part of the iNET Interactive network of online communities. The acquisition reduces brand confusion in the marketplace, but it also adds a growing, well-moderated web hosting community to our network.”

HostingCon Sold to iNET Interactive - Another one of the back-to-back acquisitions. The industry’s premier tradeshow event and conference becomes the property of iNET. So why does iNET move into the trade show business? According to information published by the company, ”iNET Interactive operates multiple online communities for Internet professionals and technology enthusiasts, who utilize various media beyond the Web to gather, collaborate and learn. HostingCon – the world’s largest physical gathering of hosted services professionals – is a perfect complement to Web Hosting Talk – the largest online gathering of hosting services professionals.”

So the big unanswered question that arises from these investments is: Will the economic downturn adversely affect these businesses, and if so - how much. I turned to two industry experts to weigh in on what the downturn will mean for hosting. Lee Brant is an industry veteran and has run the sales function as Operations Manager at Web Host Directory for many years. Lee had this analysis, ”At present the (hosting) directory market conditions are very good. Given the current economic situation, we have actually seen an increase in advertisers month on month during 2008. Companies need to increase advertising to attract more customers during this period. I feel this is also down to the Internet being one of the few growing markets where in other industries there has been nothing but negative news. The Internet is still in its infancy, so is the first place people tend to look for new opportunities and business ventures.”

Daniel Foster with vps hosting firm, 34sp.com has been running a hosting company for the past decade and adds, ”The hosting solutions that we provide are at the budget end of the market. We’re not seeing any particular downturn from the current economic situation, indeed our product may be more attractive to potential customers then the expensive offerings of our competitors. Hosting is host one of those expenses that companies need to bear, like telephone or electricity bills. The only change that we expect to see in the current climate is customers searching for better value in their hosting purchases.”

This content was written by Derek Vaughan exclusively for Host Discussion Blog.

A friend and business acquaintance of mine, Mr. Brett Tabke, will be holding his webmaster conference next week in Las Vegas. The official title is, WebmasterWorld’s Search and Internet Marketing Conference, however, it is know by most attendees as PubCon. (This refers back to the earlier days of the conference when it actually took place in a pub.) The dates of this great event are November 11-14 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

PubCon is a conference that centers on what it takes to succeed as a webmaster. That drives the focus towards search engine optimization (pretty much every search engine and all the major search experts show up), search marketing, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, and how to gain traffic at a website and then monetize it.

The list of speakers is truly impressive. Brett has invited experts from web hosting to take part in the past several shows, and the audiences have been very accepting of our message. This year a web hosting panel will be part of PubCon and feature, Ben Fisher, Vice President with TechPad Agency, Amy Armitage, Director of Business Development with Lunarpages Web Hosting, and Curtis R. Curtis, Senior Vice President with Superb Internet.

Lunarpages and TechPad Agency will both have booths at the show. There are other hosting and hosting related companies that will participate as well, including: SmarterTools, an information technology (IT) management software company that builds applications to simplify and automate the day-to-day operations of hosting businesses. iNetU, a managed dedicated server company will have a display booth at PubCon, as will domain registrar and hosting provider, Register.com. Additionally, Affinity.com will participate in the show, featuring its customized monetization solutions for different types of publishers including search portals, toolbars, online directories, domain parking, blogs, URL errors, desktop applications and content websites. The Affinity.com brand is owned by hosting giant, Hostway.com.

The founder of PubCon, Brett Tabke, commented on this year’s keynote and charity events as well, ”I am really looking forward to this year’s kickoff keynote by Shawn Rorick. He is doing things with Cirque du Solieil marketing, that most of us haven’t even heard about yet. Remember when all the stories about the in video game advertising that presidential candidates were doing hit awhile ago? They talked about how progressive and leading edge it was? Rorick was doing that stuff two years ago already at Cirque. So the question we have to ask, ”is what is he doing THIS year” that we won’t know about until two years from now? We also have a charity casino this year in the middle of the networking lounge in the expo hall. After that, there is a party or cocktail reception every night of the conference. My advice would be to start working and get in shape now!”

Daniel Foster, a founder with website hosting company 34sp.com, commented on the importance of attending industry conferences such as PubCon, ”In the hosting industry - being that it is truly competitive, one needs to keep apprised of all the information and expertise available to succeed. PubCon offers a great opportunity to learn from search experts and the search engines themselves. The networking events at these types of conference also offer the opportunity to have a deeper discussion in an informal atmosphere.”

To learn more about PubCon or to sign up visit: www.PubCon.com. Be sure to look for PubCon London in July of 2009 as well. If you are involved in web hosting, websites or webmastery in Europe - it will be a must-attend event in 2009.

This content was written by Derek Vaughan exclusively for Host Discussion Blog.

I remember the heady days when Rackspace first went public. Think back to early August 2008 - before the market crash and all the bank failures. Rackspace had successfully launched its stock on the New York Stock Exchange. For those that may not know, here is how Rackspace described its business in its S-1 filing with the SEC:

”Rackspace Hosting is the world’s leader in hosting. We deliver websites, web-based IT systems, and computing as a service. Our rapid growth is the result of our commitment to serving our customers, known as Fanatical Support, and our exclusive focus on hosting. Our financial success is the result of responsible financial management and our disciplined, just-in-time approach to capital investment. During 2007, we had net revenue of $362.0 million. As of December 31, 2007, we served over 29,000 business customers of all sizes with more than 36,000 servers, over 700,000 business email accounts, and more than 32,000 cloud hosting domains. To deliver on our Fanatical Support Promise to our customers, we have created a culture that encourages passionate, engaged employees who we call “Rackers.” In 2008, Fortune magazine ranked Rackspace Hosting #32 on its list of ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’.”

Shortly after the IPO, on August 20 to be exact, I wrote an op ed piece asking the question, ”Is Rackspace Really Worth $1.2 Billion?”. The point of the piece was that even though Rackspace had lost 20 percent of its value, the price to earnings ratio was higher than Google, Microsoft or Yahoo. Remember that it is a bit hard to compare non hosting businesses to hosting businesses. Also Rackspace competes in the managed hosting space (IT hosting, they call it) - not the VPS or budget hosting space.

I went on to speculate that:
”It is possible that Rackspace justifies the current valuation and that the company will shock and surprise investors with incredible upside when they next report earnings. That’s just what Google did when it went public. However, if the first earnings reports are anything less than spectacular – it’s likely that Rackspace won’t be worth $1.2 billion anymore.”

Oh how times have changed. I took a look at the valuation of Rackspace since August 12, 2008 and compared it to the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average during the same period. Neither investment looks particularly good, as you might imagine. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 24.9 percent of its value. Ouch. Rackspace, however, lost twice as much declining an eye popping 50.8 percent. So if you had put your life savings into Rackspace on August 12, 2008 (just about 10 weeks ago) you would have lost half of your money.

So does that mean that now is a great time to buy Rackspace? The price to earnings ratio is way better now, having declined from around 60 times earnings to a more reasonable 30.8 times earnings as of the close of business on October 17, 2008. The key to this answer lies in your confidence that Rackspace will do exactly what they said that they would do when the stock was launched. Here is what the company stated it would accomplish:

”Our vision is to be recognized as one of the world’s great service companies. Our goal is to expand our leadership position in hosting around the world, and our strategy for accomplishing this goal includes the following key elements:

Add New Customers. We intend to continue our focus on aggressively acquiring profitable new customers.

Keep Existing Customers for Life and Sell Existing Customers More Services. When we serve customers well, they generally stay with us and buy more services. This means each customer has the potential to generate significant lifetime economic value.

Add New Services. Our goal is to add new services to meet our customers’ growing needs.

Expand Globally. We intend to expand further into continental Europe and to Asia.

Continue to Invest in Our Culture and Hire the Best People. We intend to continue our highly selective hiring process and maintain a work environment that encourages passionate, engaged Rackers.”

At this stage in the stock market cycle, I tend to become bullish on Rackspace. I believe that the company can execute well on the above-listed objectives. I think the company has done a great job of positioning itself as the leader in high end hosting and will add new customers at a steady rate. The global expansion seems to be going well. While I am not advocating putting your life savings into any one stock (have a well balanced portfolio to reduce risk) I think that Rackspace is a much more attractive investment at 50 percent off.

This content was written by Derek Vaughan exclusively for hostdiscussion.com.

As I surf through several cheap dedicated server host web sites, I see budget server after budget server. Competition is stiff and furious for the low-end Dedicated Server customer. I can only imagine the insane churn rates, low profit margins, and overall headaches caused by the low-end customer. What’s scary for the cheap dedicated server providers is; there’s already a better product on the playing field at more affordable prices.

Furthermore, this new player is easier to manage, easier to provision, uses less power, and will be commonplace by the end of 2009.

Even more damaging to your future is that this provider offers more computing power in one tiny sliver than your ancient low-cost dedicated server.

What will you do once the customers start to leave you for the new player? Lower your prices even more on ancient hardware? Probably.

Will it work? No chance

MEET YOUR NEW COMPETITOR: VIRTUALIZED DEDICATED.

Once a customer gets used to the automation, 20 second reboots, easy migrations, back-up / restoration tools a Virtual Server offers, they will not go back.

What’s even more cool is, a VE (Virtual Environment) on a high-powered Dedicated Server vastly out-performs these ancient pieces of hardware you are pawning off on people for $40/mo for the same price. This is not the VPS of two years ago. Processing power has gone up considerably and has now enabled cost efficient ’slicing’ of a single computer in to many usable computers. More efficient manufacturing methods have also led to competitive pricing on server hardware

The processing power increases now make sense for the end customer to consider VPS as a viable solution. It’s affordable and reliable now for mass market use.

In addition, the power consumption on your old beast servers are considerably higher than a newer more powerful machine capable of being virtualized. This saves you the Hosting company money.

As a dedicated server provider, you already have a data center, network, and the infrastructure in place to keep selling dedicateds. You just need to tweak your sales model to cater to virtualization hardware and software for end Resellers.

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If you missed it, the U.S. stock market (along with the rest of the world markets) has been dropping like a rock. To put a bit of perspective on the state of affairs consider this:

The venerable and respected investment bank known as Lehman Brothers which had been in existence for 158 years has gone bankrupt. The former CEO has been facing a Congressional hearing into whether or not the company misappropriated funds in the days leading up to the collapse.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell below 10,000 yesterday. How low is that? The first time the index crossed 10,000 was back in 1999. So if you had invested $1,000 in the Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks in 1999 and waited almost 10 years until today - you would have earned nothing.

If you need further detail on the abysmal state of the financial markets you can visit any major news outlet or financial website. The particular sector that interests me at this time are those companies involved in web hosting. In the publicly traded markets there are two firms that are pretty much web hosting ‘pure plays’. That is, their entire business is built around only web hosting-related business activities: Web.com (ticker symbol WWWW) and Rackspace (ticker symbol RAX).

So how have the web hosting companies been fairing over the past month? Terrible.

For comparison’s sake, let’s sat that you had a bunch of money to invest 1 month ago. Here is how much you would have lost in each of the following investments:

Microsoft - you would have lost 2.9 percent in the past month.

Dow Jones Industrial Average - lost you 11.3 percent.

Google - sorry, you lost 16.4 percent in the past month.

The Nasdaq - loser to the tune of 17.4 percent.

Which now brings us to the web hosting companies. If you had the inclination to invest in Web.com or Rackspace over the past month, here is how you faired:

Web.com - you would have lost a staggering 30 percent of your money.

Rackspace - are you sitting down? Good, because your investment has shrunk by one third. You lost 33 percent of your money in one month. Ouch.

Not to belabor the point, but consider the overall valuations of Web.com and Rackspace.

On September 5, 2008 Rackspace was worth around $1.2 billion. On October 6, 2008 it was worth $851 million. That’s a loss of over $400 million.

On September 5, 2008 Web.com was worth $167 million. On October 6, 2008 it was worth $117 million. That’s a loss of $50 million.

That makes me think of what I could do with $450 million. Let’s hope that the downturn on Wall Street and the blood bath in the web hosting sector let up soon. If they don’t, I’m not sure you’d want to invest in web hosting for the next month.

This content was written by Derek Vaughan and is provided courtesy of the VPS and dedicated hosting experts at HostMySite.com.

Now that we’ve discovered where we stand in relation to indexed pages, keyword rankings, and search engine coverage. We have a good idea of where Host Discussion now ranks and what it doesn’t rank on. Now that we know where we are - it’s time to find where we want to go.

Webmasters sometimes get lost in knowing what keywords to attempt to rank on. You may start with a random keyword list. You probably also don’t know if those keywords are well searched. You search what competitors of yours are ranked on for these random keywords. All time consuming and usually fruitless.

It would be nice to have a tool that makes keyword suggestions. It would be even nicer if that tool gave us a rough idea of how heavily that keyword was searched for. What if this tool also told us what keywords visitors were using to hit our competitors Websites?

That’s the beauty of RankSense and the true power of it. These kind of tools are readily available to you. If you know what keywords are heavily searched for, you erase the guessing game. Now you can focus on keywords you KNOW will bring traffic to your site. Using this tool you can discover obscure keywords that others may not even know visitors heavily search. It’s efficient and it’s easy.

Figuring out how humans search is part of the equation within RankSense and I love it. Now let’s see how these tools are used within RankSense.

Step 1 - Search Engine Selection

As most Webmasters know, a Website can rank differently between Google and Yahoo and other search engines. The Search Engine Selection tool helps you choose the search engine you wish to increase rankings for. For our review, I’ve picked Google, Yahoo!, and Live.com. Pretty basic here, obviously Google and Yahoo! are clearly the top two to pick here to reach the mass market for Host Discussion.

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The internet has become more than a tool used for research and simple entertainment. The world is using the net to connect with people from all over. It has turned into a daily routine, like drinking coffee and reading the morning paper for us. We can’t live without getting online and checking our email or scoping the world news. The list goes on and before we get to social networking. Social networking is the craze nowadays as contrasting social communities are uniting and expressing their individual interests.

Everyone has heard of MySpace, Facebook and Hi5, but have you heard of LinkedIn, MyChurch, or Passportstamp? If you haven’t, it goes to show how social networking, as does life, is evolving. The first three sites are dedicated to general social networking between anyone and everyone. LinkedIn is dedicated to bringing together business owners and entrepreneurs. As MySpace has “Friends” for you to add and chat with, LinkedIn’s users are called “Connections.” The way the site works is as follows: A contact network is built up consisting of their direct connections, the connections of each of their connections (termed second degree connections) moreover the connections of second degree connections (termed third degree connections). This can be used to gain an introduction to someone you wish to know through a mutual, trusted contact. Next, you can use the network to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by someone in anybody’s contact network. Employers can list jobs and even search for prospective employees. The job seeker can review the profiles of hiring managers and discover which of their existing contacts can introduce them. The next site, MyChurch, is a Christian social network site serving Christian churches that follow the Nicene Creed. In addition to the standard offerings of MySpace, MyChurch allows churches to post sermon podcasts, show event calendars and even collect tithes from members. Although, MyChurch is geared towards Christians, they encourage non-Christians to join. Lastly, Passportstamp is a social networking website for travelers to record their worldly travels and visits. It was even named one of the Top 50 Travel Websites of 2007 by the Times Newspaper. That just goes to show some of the strides social networking online has taken. Other social networking interests include: college life, knitting and crochet, books, music, social story writing, online artistic community, Gay and Lesbian communities, genealogy and biography, recreational sports, collaborative scientists, investing, jet-setting and social elitists, online gaming, African-Americans, fantasy and sci-fi and a site dedicated to adults looking for friends and sexual partners. The list is very, very long and ever growing. There are even sites dedicated to users to create their own social websites and networks.
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The direction I’ve seen Google take with business and consumers tools in recent years have been to make our lives easier.  So when I heard that Google released a web browser I had to check it out.

The download and setup of the new browser was quick and effortless and soon as I loaded up the browser I noticed a resemblance to Firefox but with some cool tricks and features.

Firstly, as an avid Google search user I often find myself installing the Google Toolbar or Search Box.  With Chrome they have combined the typical (IE/Firefox) URL form into a search box as well.  So now one form field can handle both my Google search’s plus direct typing of a website URL.  For example, a common search I do to see our website ranking is ‘web hosting reviews’ and our website I visit daily is www.findmyhost.com.  With the combined box, I can do both without having to switch between the search box and URL submit form, very handy.
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