Wow, web hosting is something else!  I’ve been going around in circles this week.

Because I’m creating a lot of niche affiliate sites, I have hosting with a number of different companies.  I prefer to spread the sites around a little bit for the sake of inter-linking and in the event a server goes down for awhile.  That way, just some of my sites will be offline but not all of them.

Just after the winter holidays, Dreamhost came out with a great promotion, 2 years of hosting for around $20.  I jumped on it.  Later I realized that Dreamhost does not provide cPanel access.  They have their own system that is absolutely nothing like cPanel, including displaying traffic stats.

I figured it would be no big deal and I created a number of sites on Dreamhost, learning their system along the way.  But as I have gone along, I’ve come across more and more programs that will only work with cPanel.  Like WPManagerDX which mass installs wordpress in a flash.  I use wordpress for all my sites now and this saves a ton of time.  I’ve become aware of  other programs that only work with cPanel as well.  So I decided to move all those sites and to get another hosting account with unlimited domains allowed.

In the mean time, I have an account with another company that provides 5 unique IPs with your account to use for link building.  I have little good to say about this group so I’ll just refer to them as “NS”.  My experience has been that with 4 of the IPs the sites are either down or I can’t log into cPanel or I can’t connect via ftp.  If it isn’t one problem it’s another and it’s constant.  They’ll fix it and something else quits working.  I sort of feel sorry for them!

The person who created the hosting packages appears to be a really good guy and to have good integrity.  So, I hold out some hope that they’ll get past this phase, and turn into a valuable, reliable asset.  I had a total of 3 money sites on those servers and I moved them today, to avoid any further rollercoaster rides with them.

I did get some new hosting today, too.  I did lots of research and decided on FatCow.com.  Good price and good reviews.  I logged in and found they did not offer cPanel.  They advertised having a cpanel, and I clearly assumed they meant the same cPanel most other hosting companies have.  But, no.  Good thing they have a 30 day money back guarantee.

I ended up getting another Hostgator account.  I have had great service and uptime with them over many years and just decided to go with what I know, instead of being surprised by what some other company offers.  I can recommend Hostgator without reservation.  Boy do they have a lot of servers!

These are my current criteria for shared hosting:

1. They provide cPanel.
2. They provide a 24 hour telephone number for support.
3. They allow unlimited addon domains.
4. They allow unlimited MYSQL databases.

When I could finally get onto the NS servers last night, I notice huge files labeled “CORE” in all of my blogs.  After panicking about being hacked, I did some digging and learned the core files are created when an unstable plugin is being used on a blog and the junk it creates is being “dumped”, or the servers are unstable.  I’ve never seen that kind of file before and I have a ton of wordpress blogs, all using very similar plugins.  So plugins are not the problem here, unstable servers are.  I was very glad to learn I could just delete these files but was not surprised at the cause.

I apologize that this has gotten kind of long and probably boring.  I learned of another method for selecting niches and domains recently and I’ll talk more about that soon.

Until then, have a good one!

P.S.  One last point!  I have gotten VERY good at moving wordpress blogs from one server to another, so if anyone needs any help with this, contact me and we’ll see how I can help.  I can also set up and customize blogs very well too.  The first 5 people to contact me looking for help with a blog will be totally free.

Boomtown is the new name for Jaime Mintun’s consultancy program. Her intention is to provide participants with everything they need to create and sustain businesses as Internet consultants. She promises to hold one’s hand until they are making thousands each month.

I joined last year when it was called Turbo Charged Consulting. It was a bit slow getting off the ground at the time and, to be honest, my intention was to use it as a back up only if my efforts to create streams of Internet income fizzled. So it was way on the back burner.

I’m currently really enjoying my projects and activities as a marketer, and my income is increasing, but it’s time anyway to revisit the prospect of being a consultant. I envision myself working with local business people, coordinating their efforts to create a presence on the Internet and increasing their success in marketing and selling their services online.

Right now Jaime has a WSO going (a Warrior Special Offer on the Warrior Forum) that offers a blueprint for a weekend seminar teaching “local business people” the ins and outs of marketing on the web. The sales copy is fabulous and really psyched me up. Then I learned I get access to this as a member of Boomtown. Cool!

So tomorrow I am going to put my other activities on hold and devote the day to Boomtown, checking it all out and getting my feet wet again. I may really enjoy niche research, site building and seo, but if I intend to truly create a living for myself, I believe it will be as a consultant. I know I’ll need some hand holding, but I’m finally convinced that’s the way to go.

I’ll keep you updated…

Today I finally finished reconfiguring my eBay affiliate sites from Commission Junction links to eBay Partner Network links. What a process! I only have about 6 sites promoting the eBay affiliate program. I really feel for the people who have thousands of pages! What a job for them.

Now comes the question of reporting by the EPN. Folks on the E1KaDay forum are reporting inconsistencies and errors in EPN’s stats. I have to admit I haven’t gotten into checking out the reports yet. But, it will be important to watch how this plays out. I expect they’ll have some growing pains, but will hopefully work them out quickly.

My eBay sites are all on WordPress blogs. I have used 1 specific theme for a number of them and it really works well. Would it be a problem (footprint) if I used the same theme for all of the sites? Probably not with such a small number, but I’ll have to check into this. The Prosense theme is the one I like. It puts so much more blog content above the fold, and that’s what is drawing me to change all of the blogs.

My task today was very tedious. Glad I’m done. On to more creative projects.

Have a good one!