Paige already had a blog, but the theme got overwritten and she called AYS to lend a hand. Within a few hours, we had the blog back up and running and had integrated some new design elements that were lacking in the previous version of the theme. I just love the bold, crisp colors in this Wordpress theme.

Website Design Features: JQuery slideshow

Visit the website: www.paigeeden.com/blog/

The Compassion Road is a new non-profit based in Denver, CO but operating in Africa.  They needed a web site that would express their mission and encourage donations.

Visit the website: www.compassionroad.com

I decided to try FatCow next.  They had a funny name and a green policy, though I was leaning towards a 100% money back guarantee rather than a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.  I waited awhile on the phone for them and then hung up.  I chatted with their online chat rep and got a more prompt response.  I want a company I can pick up the phone and talk to a real person in a realistic amount of time.

I figured I’d try SuperGreenHosting.com and HostClear.com next. None stacked up to the prompt service on the phone and chat, environmental commitment, price, money-back guarantee, and product offerings as ipage.com.

I received the go-ahead from one my new clients to take a try with iPage.com hosting… with the guarantee, there’s not much to lose. As no company or business is perfect, I’m sure they will turn out to have their challenges as well; but I will let you know if they seem to outperform Bluehost in the long run.

Connecting to Agent…

You have been connected to Megan

Megan Says: Hey Wait! We would hate to see you go without seeing what’s made us Award Winning Web Hosts, so just this once we would like to offer you a 20% discount on our unlimited hosting plan. To take advantage of this last minute offer just CLICK HERE

Megan Says: When you are ready just say “Hi” and we can get started….

You: I was wondering what the difference is between the basic and premium plans

Megan Says: Here at Just Host with our unlimited hosting plan you receive unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email accounts and you can host unlimited domains.

Megan Says: We do also have a premium version of this you can checkout HERE,

Megan Says: For dedicated server solutions which you can customize to your own needs. Check these out CLICK HERE

You:Yes, I looked at those. However, the only difference I can see for the more expensive plan is the 3 free domains vs. the 1 free one with the basic. Is this the ONLY difference?

Megan Says: You can host unlimited domains on just one account.

You: why should I get the premium vs. the basic?

Megan Says: We have a premium package which you can view HERE, which also gives you unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth but with 2 more FREE domains!

As you can see, getting a different agent on a different day produced the same useless results. I could only see 1 difference between their basic plan and their premium plan – the number of free domain names. The basic plan offers 1 free domain per year. The premium offers 3 free – an annual savings of $10/yr/domain, so $20 savings per year over the basic account if you have 3 or more domains to host. HOWEVER, the plan COSTS $3.45/month ($41.40/year) and the premium plan costs $6.95/month ($83.40), so they are actually charging you MORE for those domains per year than if you just got the basic account and paid for the domains separately if that is the ONLY difference between those two accounts.

I couldn’t imagine justhost.com would so blatantly rip people off, so I tried to call customer service to ask about this discrepancy. I waited on hold for 5 minutes and 50 seconds and then hung up. I clicked their “chat” button, in hopes that it would route me to a different call center than the virtual agents. It seemed to route me to more specialized help where I had the following conversation with tech support, which was emailed to me in a transcript after the chat:

So, I didn’t want to waste any additional time on this hosting company. I am very disappointed that they are overcharging for their domains and then calling them “FREE”. Despite it’s great reviews, JustHost’s website and customer service were really concerning; if they can’t answer questions about their own products to win me over as a customer, how are they going to answer my technical questions if I have a problem with my website hosting? Are they going to try to pull one over on me like with their “Premium” plan?

Verdict on Justhost.com: I will not switch to JustHost.com or recommend them until their customer service improves.

…when I continue, I’ll discuss the other hosting companies I looked at…

http://www.upperhost.com
http://www.web-hosting-top.com/
http://www.top10webhosting.com/
http://www.findmyhosting.com/compare-hosting/ (very comprehensive comparison chart)
http://webhostinggeeks.com/
http://www.hostingsthatsuck.com/ (I wanted to get the alternative point of view)

After comparing from list-to-list, I really zeroed in on the companies that offer 100% money back guarantees. Since I am considering switching hosting, I don’t want to risk switching to a new company and then have it not be all that it’s cracked out to be. I want the assurance that I can back-pedal at any time. That seems like a policy held by a company with confidence!

So, I narrowed things down to:
http://JustHost.com
http://ipage.com/
http://SuperGreenHosting.com/
http://HostClear.com/

I also included http://fatcow.com on my list because they are green and I read many great reviews, despite their 30 day only guarantee.

My next priority was unlimited everything – pretty much, anyhow.  I looked for plenty of email addresses, storage space, transfer, and mysql databases.  I also looked for site statistics of some sort.  This was a standard for the most part, so I jumped to my 3rd priority: customer service.

I started with JustHost.com.  I went to their website and navigated between pages to compare plans.  When doing so, an obnoxious chat box poped up each time to entice me to puchase a plan immediately and “not leave the page” (despite me simply navigating BETWEEN pages of their site).  I figured, since I have an agent, I’ll just ask her the questions I was about to try to answer via their website.  She kept copying and pasting the same 3 discounts over and over no matter what I asked her.  She then admitted that she was a virtual agent and had no idea about their different plans.  I discontinued my chat and called their phone number to see if I received the same level of support from their phone.
…to be continued (I know, the suspense is killer!)…

Atom: Another popular feed format developed as an alternative to RSS.

Blogger.com, a free, popular blog hosting web site.

Blogroll: A list of links to other websites or blogs a blogger recommends.

Comments - when a blogger creates a new “post” or journal entry, site visitors have a chance to write a response, or comment, regarding that post or topic.

Comment spam:Like e-mail spam. Robot “spambots” flood a blog with advertising in the form of bogus comments. A serious problem that requires bloggers and blog platforms to have tools to exclude some users or ban some addresses in comments.

Feeds: see RSS Feeds.

Permalink: AKA. Permanent link. The unique URL of a single post. Use this when you want to link directly to a post somewhere instead of linking to your homepage

Pingback: The alert in the TrackBack system that notifies the original poster of a blog post when someone else writes an entry concerning the original post.

Plugin: AKA Plug-in or Plug in.  A module that extends or adds to the basic capabilities of the blog software.

Podcasting: Contraction of “iPod” and “broadcasting” (but not for iPods only). Posting audio and video material on a blog and its RSS feed, for digital players.

Post: An entry written and published to a blog.  Usually presented to the site visitor in reverse chronological order (newest entry first).

Post Slug: For blogs with common language URLs, the post slug is the portion of the URL that represents the post. Example: http://domain.com/2008/01/this-is-the-post-slug

RSS:Really Simple Syndication is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.

RSS aggregator:Software or online service allowing a blogger to read an RSS feed, especially the latest posts on their favourite blogs. Also called a reader, or feedreader.

RSS feed:The file containing a blog’s latest posts. It is read by an RSS aggregator/reader and shows at once when a blog has been updated. It may contain only the title of the post, the title plus the first few lines of a post, or the entire post.

Subscribe:The term used when a blogs feed is added to their RSS feed reader like Bloglines or Google. Some blogging platforms have internal subscriptions, this allows readers to receive notification when there are new posts in a blog.

Templates:Templates, used on the “back end” of a blog that work together to handle information and present it on a blog.

Theme:CSS based code that when applied to the templates will result in visual element changes to the blog. The theme, as a whole, is also referred to as a blog design.

TrackBack:A system that allows a blogger to see who has seen the original post and has written another entry concerning it. The system works by sending a ‘ping’ between the blogs, and therefore providing the alert.

Weblog: the unshortened version of ‘blog’.

Wordpress: a free, popular, customizable blog software; can be used as a content management system

So, let’s put this to rest.  Is the word website  supposed to be 1 word or 2?  According to Google, a search on “define: website” produces the following definition (note the third on the list):

• web site: a computer connected to the internet that maintains a series of web pages on the World Wide Web; “the Israeli web site was damaged by …
  wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• A website (or web site) is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed with a common domain name …
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website
• Alternative spelling of web site
  en.wiktionary.org/wiki/website

However, the revised 11th edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, published in July 2004, shows website as the standard form, and claims that future dictionaries will reflect this.  Additionally, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary,

We recommend capital initials for Internet, World Wide Web, the Web, but not for individual sites.

Website, web site, internet site… call it what you will.  Similarly, webpage and web page, and homepage and home page, are certainly frequently used and understood.  You’ll find throughout my site I prefer the one-word versions of these terms.

Okay, so should it be capitalized?

According to http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu,

There is considerable debate, still, about how to capitalize words associated with the Internet. Most dictionaries are capitalizing Internet, Web, and associated words such as World Wide Web (usually shortened to Web), Web page, Web site, etc., but the publications of some corporations, such as Microsoft, seem to be leaning away from such capitalization. The Yale Style Manual recommends capitalization. The words e-mail and online are not capitalized. The Guide to Grammar and Writing is a monument to inconsistency on this issue.

So, Web site or Web page is probably more correct than Website or Webpage.  Maybe I’ll make the switch to capitalization!

Next article, blog definitions!

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Seasons greetings and happy new year!