In case you are not aware, FatCow is running an awesome (they called it ‘moovelous’) sweepstake and the hosting company is giving some great, great prizes away! A few lucky winners will drive away a Smart ForTwo Coupe, a Vespa scooter, and one of four Shwinn bikes to its customers.

Free car for a $3.67/mo hosting?!

No joke! Buy a $3.67/mo hosting and you stand a chance to win a brand new Smart ForTwo.

Look at the picture below (ladies please, the car not the cute guy!). Deep breath. Close your eyes for 10 seconds. Imagine yourself sitting in the car and driving it around your neighborhood. Don’t you just feel G-R-E-A-T?

To enter FatCow Host Smart Drive Smart Giveaway

Okay I know you want this so here’s how you can get yourself in.

You will automatically receive one entry into the Sweepstakes for doing any one of these: signup for a new hosting account at FatCow now, refer a friend via its affiliate program, add a client to your FatCow reseller account, or be an active FatCow customer with a hosting account with no outstanding account (yes, this means if you are an existing customer you are in automatically).

UNFORTUNATELY, the sweepstake is only open to legal residents of the 50 United States (and D.C.) 18 years or older (rules, here). This means if you are living out of United States (like me ) then you are not included in this promotion. The sweepstake started on May 17, 2010 and ends at 11:59 pm ET on September 30, 2010.

Other things you might want to know

About the car

The Smart ForTwo is a funky urban ultra-compact car. The car is based on a platform developed jointly my Smart and Mitsubishi for space efficient cars. The small size and low weight make this trendy car also one of the most fuel efficient cars barring the hybrid duo from Honda and Toyota. It is also the least expensive one in this list. The prices of ForTwo start at $12,635 and it return 36 miles to a gallon of fuel… More at Smart Homepage.

Further action

In case you want to know more about FatCow and its giveaway.

Read my FatCow Review.
Signup FatCow now – Enter to win a brand new car.

In case you missed the announcement last year, this is the final reminder that in less than a month time, registration cost for .com and .net domains will increase for 10% at VeriSign.

VeriSign announced that as of July 1, 2010, the registry fee for .com domain names will increase from $6.86 to $7.34 and that the registry fee for .net domain names will increase, from $4.23 to $4.65.

Ref: https://investor.verisign.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=431292

What does this mean to you?

Basically the price-change doesn’t affect much on most webmasters unless you are holding over 1,000 domain names. If so the first thing you should do is, apparently, to renew your expiring domains before July.

The increase is approved by ICANN and in other words this will affect all domain registrars who offer .com and .net registration services. As profit margin is already ultra thin in this field, registrars like GoDaddy will most likely pass on the inflated cost to its end users (aka, you and me!).

Inflation happens all the time, get used to it!

I read quite some rants across several webmaster forums and honestly, I don’t understand why these guys cannot accept the fact that prices of everything will increase.

In fact I would be surprised if the .com and .net price stays stagnant in year 2009-10. After all the business is monopoly by VeriSign and moreover, according to a settlement in for lawsuit between Verisign and ICANN in 2006, the company is allowed to increase their prices on an annual basis with increases of up to 7% per year for .COM.

(Ask yourself, would you do the same if you are allowed, legally, to ask for more money? )

* Important Updates: Hostpapa promotion coupon code changes from time to time (eg. For March 2010 it’s AS89), please check my HostPapa review page for latest coupon code that works.

How this HostPapa coupon works?

First, click here to visit HostPapa online. Click ‘Get Started Now’ to make your order.

Next, assign the domain name to be hosted – Domain registration for new HostPapa customer is free; or alternatively you can transfer your existing domain in this page.

Moving on, you’ll have to select your hosting package and decide with your subscription period at HostPapa. Also, here’s where you apply the coupon code I mentioned earlier – Simply type in ‘WHSR36’ in the ‘Coupon’ section and press ‘Calculate Totals’.

There you go, a sweet $36 price cut from your bill!

But wait, there’s a catch-22 behind this promotion – This coupon code will be expired by end of February (Feb 28, 2010)! So make sure you don’t wait too long, ya~

About HostPapa Hosting

HostPapa is a privately-owned company operating from both United States and Canada. According to my record, the company is based in Niagara Falls, NY; while for Canada, it’s in Oakville and Ontario. The hosting company first started business in year 2006 and is hosting ten of thousands of domains at this time of writing. What’s interesting about HostPapa is that they are one of the earliest web host that went green (since 2006) by purchasing renewable (wind and solar-powered energy) energy unit to power our data centres, web servers, office computers, laptops and office space. These energy sources supply HostPapa’s entire equivalent energy consumption into the power-grid with certified 100% renewable green energy sources, such as .

To learn more, visit HostPapa online: www.HostPapa.com.

The promotion details

For a limited time frame, all InMotion Business Class Hosting customers will enjoy a $1/mo discount. Signup during this special offer period and you get to save extra $1 each month (or $24 for 2 years) for all Business Class Hosting (Launch, Power, and Pro) packages.

Visit InMotion Hosting online, click here: www.InMotionHosting.com

Quick Interview about this promotion: Q&A with Alyssa Hastings

When asked about the promotion, here’s what InMotion personnel Alyssa Hastings told me:” We decided to do this promotion over the holidays to help reduce cost when people need a little extra money in their pockets. We know that money is tight for a majority of people during this economic recession and decided it would be a great chance to help our customer’s wallets out.”

How will the recent price drop affects the quality of InMotion’s services?

Hastings also assures that the price-cut will not bring any negative impacts to InMotion hosting services:” The $1.00 off promotion will not in any way affects the quality of the service or support we offer. InMotion Hosting is and always will be dedicated to providing the best support and service possible. In the web hosting industry we know how important support is to our customers and that is why we offer 24×7 U.S. Based Support by phone, online chat or email.”

Is InMotion seeing its business coming back as the global economy recovers?

When asked about the global economy impact on InMotion’s business, Alyssa answered: “During this economic recession we have been fortunate to not have our sales effected too much. Web hosting is an industry that is fairly resistant to the market changes because the need to have an online presence is so critical.”

What I think about this InMotion promotion

If you are considering InMotion Hosting at this moment, don’t think too long and grab this discount before it’s too late. Frankly, I was a little surprise when I first heard about the news – as, you know, InMotion is sort of ‘premium web hosting’ and it is very unusual to see them doing such a price-cut offer.

For your reference, here are the updated pricing.

Other InMotion related readings

Do note that InMotion is my pick of Best Forum Hosting and you can always learn more about them via InMotion Interview: Q&A with Saxena and my InMotion Hosting Review.

Hostgator announced the soft launch of Linux VPS hosting packages in late October.

Only the first 200 clients were accepted for the soft launch and the VPS deal is now closed at this time of writing. Nevertheless according to the officials, the final release will be happening in a couple of weeks and I expect this to be something big.

Hostgator VPS Hosting Plan (with expected pricing details)

For your reference, listed below are VPS specs and expected price upon launching.

The VPS hosting plan will works as an ideal bridge for current Hostgator shared hosting users before crossing to dedicated hosting. The VPS hosting plan can be completely customized to match users’ specific needs and upgraded anytime as the websites grow.

Learn more about Hostgator VPS hosting – Hostgator.com/vps-hosting.

Meet Snappy – Hostgator Mascot

If you had been to the local Houston Astros game recently, you would have met Snappy the Gator, Hostgator Mascot. Snappy made his debut by throwing an opening pitch at local Houston Astros game a few weeks back (see picture on your right).

Pretty cool, huh?

Well I mean, you don’t see such publicity often with a hosting company and you credit has to be given for their creativity.

Hostgator hits 200,000!

Back in September 10th, Hostgator CEO Brent announced Hostgator’s new milestone of 200,000 active customers in his blogpost.

It’s amazing to see how they started small with just about 100 customers in 2003; and turned into such a successful company in such a short time. The article is an interesting read and I like what Brent said about the future of Hostgator:

The Future of HostGator:

I still haven’t reached my goal of HostGator becoming the world’s largest hosting company, but as one of the world’s largest and with how well things have been going, I can definitely see it happening within the next eight years. In order to achieve this, we’ll need to go more mainstream. This includes launching a brand to compete with GoDaddy, more billboards, starting TV commercials, and hiring many, many more high quality employees to continue supporting our customers.

HostGator has been a real blessing in my life and I couldn’t have gotten us to where we are today alone. I owe much of HostGator’s success to our customers as well as to each and every employee who has put their heart and sweat into this company. If it weren’t for all of you, I would most likely have to return to college. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

WebHostingSecretRevealed.com is now on Hostgator!

Here’s another updates that’s related to Hostgator indirectly, WebHostingSecretRevealed.com is now hosting on Hostgator! We were once on Hostmonster but there were some major issues with the hosting service (CPU throttling); and, I think it would be better if I just switch host.

Everything works perfectly well after the move and I am happy as ever with what I get at Hostgator. You can learn more about them in my interview with Douglas Hanna and my Hostgator review.

As for Hostmonster, they are still throttling my CPU usage on a daily basis – even I’m just hosting two dummy blogs with almost no visitors on them now (I guess that’s enough said).

What is CPU Throttling?

Depends on what kind of CPU you are talking about – the term “CPU throttling” is used to describe the process of reducing CPU usage to avoid the computer processor getting overheated and damaged. Such technique is also used by Intel chips to optimize energy consumption.

CPU throttling in hosting

However the term has a different meaning when it comes to web hosting. When your website on a shared server is pulling “too much” CPU resources at one time, the CPU will freeze (or slash down) your account CPU usage. At this particular time, your website will respond extremely slow and your jailed website will only be released when the staffs think it is okay. Such hosting feature was not seen before until Matt Heaton spent thousands of hours (according to himself) developing the system and introduced this so called Hosting Nirvana (One might argue DreamHost has been doing this for some time – but technically, it’s not the same at all).

Who is implementing CPU throttling now?

So far from what I know, BlueHost and HostMonster (they are under same management).

Is CPU throttling a good thing?

Well, apparently the web host will tell you that this feature is “for the good of all shared hosting users”.

But don’t you think this is such a convenient excuse for the web hosts to push away their responsibility; and blame their users for not using the server “properly”? Would the president of BlueHost (with over 1.5 million websites hosted on it!) spent thousands of hours developing this new system just because he wants to “change the hosting world for good”?

(Sorry to be such a cynic but things just look too fishy and I can’t help but keep doubting their real intention of doing so.)

WebHostingSecretRevealed.com is affected! Website loading extremely slow occasionally.

At this time of writing, this little blog is throttled about 30 minutes daily. According to reader Troy of alterego-of-pwi.info, my blog took up to 45 seconds to load (it normally takes less than 3 seconds in normal time)!

What has been done so far to handle this problem

FYI, I am now in the mid of discussion with the HostMonster supports to solve the issue. They’ve been very friendly and helpful so far but they just can’t explain some of my questions. For example they told me that the throttle could be caused by buggy scripts or heavy MySQL errors – but from my observation, my site still get throttled on the day where no error was logged! Is the site throttled because HostMonster couldn’t handle the amount of traffics I’m getting? Why are my other sites (with bigger databases and a lot more web applications) are working perfectly with Hostgator and FatCow but things look so screwed up with HostMonster?

Sorry for the slow load time!

Apologizes if you experienced slow load time with my blog recently. Please bear with me for this – I’m trying as fast as I can to investigate the matter and come out with the right solution. I’ll keep things posted here.

Big thanks to Troy T. Hall

To Troy who wrote me long emails explaining the situation – million thanks! And, I wish things are working smoothly with your site right now.

How to check if your hosting account is throttled or not?

Login to your BlueHost or HostMonster cPanel account, scroll down to the ‘Log’ session and click the ‘CPU throttling’ icon (see figure).

Click in and you can check your site status from the popped up page.

What’s about iPage?

iPage web services

Confession: I thought the new iPage is all about hosting when I first saw their ‘coming soon’ page. Apparently, I was wrong. iPage is a lot more than just a hosting service provider. The company provides everything you need to start a website – web hosting, website mangement, email hosting, domain registration, e-commerce services, website scripting, as well as web marketing are all supported by iPage.

iPage web hosting

Nevertheless, the core business of iPage is still web hosting. Like most web host nowadays, iPage provide unlimited shared hosting services. This means you get to host unlimited domains under one hosting account. At price of $5.25/mo, the standard package also comes with a free domain name and 15 products of ShopSite Shopping Cart (which is a huge plus).

For your convenience, I’ve summarized iPage hosting features at table below.

iPage Blog Hosting

Beside standard hosting service, iPage acknowledges the needs of blogging newbies and offers a much cheaper blog hosting package. At this time of writing, iPage Blog Hosting charge $25 for 12 months where customers get a free domain name, multiple choices of blogging software, 10 email accounts, photo gallery software, and the best of all, a series of enchanced security features that provide spam/spyware/fraud protection.

More about iPage service soon!

Coming soon: iPage interview & my personal iPage review

Well, I was lucky enough to get in touch with the manager of iPage and got a free account for testing purpose (and I’m working on the iPage review). Attached here (open in new window) is a quick view on how it ‘feels’ inside iPage (vDeck control panel, everything’s pretty standard).

Also, I’ve arranged an online interview with Paul of iPage and hopefully I can publish the Q&A session by next week!

*Updates: I got a free account from Paul and had been tested iPage for about a month. You can read my reviews on iPage hosting here.

iPage Hosting Special Promotion (Save 30%)!

Meanwhile, in case you’re in the mood of testing the new iPage hosting, click here for the exclusive promo link – you’ll be directed to a special promotion page like below.

Exclusive discount: iPage web hosting – Only at $5.25 $3.75/mo!

(Take it as a little thank you for reading. Enjoy!)

FatCow. Twitter. What comes into your mind when I relate these two names?

Another hard-selling marketing campaign?

At least this was in my thought at first.

Apparently I was dead wrong. The Moo Crews are a lot smarter than this and instead of tweeting pushy advertising lines, they are now establishing two-way communications with customers on Twitter. I see Moo Crews answering pre-sell questions, supporting existing customers, interacting with bunch of other Twitters, and releasing meaningful company updates.

It’s good to see FatCow adapting itself well into the latest web trend. This (indirectly) shows the web host is ‘alive’ and dedicated to improve its user experience.

Tweets away at Twitter.com/FatCow.

FatCow’s Free Farm-Fresh Web Icons

Good news for lazy web developers looking for some free stuffs. FatCow is releasing a set of freshly designed web icons. The set of 1,000 icons comes in both 16 and 32 pixel versions in PNG format with transparent background (Gosh, I don’t need to search for free icons for a very long time after this).

And the best of all? It’s totally free! Check them out here.

Want to learn more about FatCow?

I’ve been testing FatCow services for a while and you can read my updated FatCow reviews here.

Then simply signup JustHost from this special page and you’ll get extra 20% discount.

Enjoy! (I hope JustHost folks don’t curse me for breaking the ‘Don’t give it out’ rule.)

iPage used to provide one-stop website design/development/hosting services. They were no longer active for quite some time but seems like something is cooking behind the curtain now. I’ll check if I can get more info about the ‘come-back’ for iPage.

Updates: Check out what’s about iPage here.

Nearly 900% Revenue Growth at Hostgator

From year 2005 to 2008, Hostgator achieve nearly 900% growth in revenue. This means more and more website owners are switching to, or getting a new hosting account at Hostgator. Also, despite job market shrinking across the United States, the company also created 100 positions for IT technicians and systems’ admin for the past one year.

Secret of Hostgator’s success

Recalling what we were told when asked about the secret of success last year (in Hostgator interview):

Web hosting industry is competitive and yet HostGator ranked #21 on Inc. 5000* fastest growing companies in America. What’s the secret of the company success?

If Brent, myself, or anyone else at HostGator could pinpoint what exactly led to HostGator’s success, I think we would be tempted to quit our jobs and start writing books.

In all seriousness, I think HostGator has been successful because it has innovated in the industry while at the same time keeping to its roots as an honest web hosting company that strives to deliver personal service. This seems paradoxical, but if you think about it, it makes sense.

We were one of the first companies to offer free billing systems, one of the earliest companies to offer free web templates, one of the first companies to offer unlimited addon domains with shared hosting accounts, and one of the first companies in the industry to offer free SSL certificates and toll-free numbers with select plans.

At the same time, though, HostGator has maintained a fanatical commitment to honesty and fairness, Brent continues to be available to customers that ask for his help, and the company as a whole continues to be committed to be providing the best service possible.

Well, it seems their strategy of being honest and delivering personal service are working incredibly well. Congrats Gator folks, now go make it even better!

(Customers are greedy, aren’t we?)

How StartLogic is green?

Like most other green hosting companies, generating wind energy on site isn’t feasible for StartLogic.

What the hosting company did is to offset all of their electricity usagee with wind-generated Renewable Energy Certificates. According to the officials, such changes in operation prevent the release of 2,660 metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere each year – which can be translated to:

• Planting approximately 2,390 acres of trees; or,
• Not driving 6.1 million miles; or,
• Removing 510 cars from the road.

Going Green = Buzz = Better Business (most likely)

Well, as said earlier (in FatCow Goes Green), I’m glad to see web hosting companies are taking up their responsibility and putting effort in protecting our environment. Then again, I believe such ‘Going Green’ policy benefits more than just the environment. From business stand point, going green simply means buzz; which in turns equal to more sales most of the time. Agree?

To learn more about Startlogic’s green hosting plan, visit official website at: www.StartLogic.com.

HostingCon 2009 is happening right now in Gaylord National Hotel, Washington DC (how to get there). Today is the last day of the event and if you’re around – don’t miss this once-in-a-year big event of web hosting industry. Learn about the latest news, ideas and technology affecting web hosting and other related businesses. Whether you are showcasing your new services, or you are simply checking the pulse of the industry, this is T-H-E opportunity to meet and network with your business partners, in a fun and educational atmosphere.

Learn more about HostingCon 2009.

The exhibit hall is open today from 10:30am – 4:00pm. To get involved, you can register yourself at the registration desk within the Gaylord National Hotel and Conference facility.

• List of exhibitor for HostingCon 2009
• HostingCon 2009 Floor plan
• On-Site Show Schedule

FatCow fans now have more reasons to love their hosting company. Just one week ago FatCow announced that they are going green and they are offsetting 100% of their electricity consumption by purchasing wind-generated Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) from Community Energy Inc (CEI).

According to the press released, the company is buying 4,412,000 kilowatt hours (kWhs) per year of wind-generated power – which can be translated to planting about 2,390 acres of trees each year or saving 6.1 million miles of vehicle driving.

Here’s what FatCow manager Paul Bukhovko said in recent interview.

“We’re offsetting all of our electricity use by purchasing wind-generated Renewable Energy Certificates, providing our customers with an environmentally preferable Web hosting solution. Quite frankly, our employees and our customers were the driving factors behind our decision to go green. Our staff members encourage responsible environmental behavior inside the office and practice it outside the office. And, we know that many of our customers feel just as strongly. We wanted to give them an opportunity to reduce their own carbon footprint by hosting their sites on servers 100 percent powered by wind energy.”

Going green = Tripple-Win Strategy!

Not long ago I read Amenworld’s study of over 3,500 web servers that came out with some shocking results: On average, a single web server needlessly consumes 1,000 kWh on average, producing more than 630kg of CO2 annually. What’s more scary is that the number (CO2 emissions) is still growing exponentially and web hosting is estimated to be as polluting as the airline industry by year 2020.

To be honest, I am worry about the numbers. And I’m very glad to see more and more hosting companies take up their responsibility to our environment.

More over, I believe ‘Going Green’ is in fact a smart business strategy that creates win-win-win situation. First, you help preserve our mother earth by reducing the level of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere; second, you create a buzz around your business and improve your company brand image; and lastly, the customers get to reduce their carbon footprint without spending extra money.

New Lunarpages Price Tag

Table below indicates the new price tag for Lunarpages Basic Hosting Plan.

What I think about Lunarpages now

I feel sad to be negative with Lunarpages (I used to love them a lot!) but the 60 month plan promotion with 30 days of refund trial is just simply ridiculous.

I strongly advise you DO NOT get into such deal. Also, I heard rumors that they are testing and planning to switch from cPanel to that in-house control panel – which sounds like another bad move to me. The only good thing I see is that their server is still very reliable and their uptime record for me is nothing but superb.

Seeing the fact that Luanrpages do not provide live chat support and now offer a much higher price hosting plan, I do not think Lunarpages is giving the best. I’m lowering their rating (and de-listing them as my Best Multi Domain Hosting); in case you want a cheap reliable web host, I suggest you just go somewhere else.