Here is a list of the 5 best webmaster forums that I continue to refer to when seeking information about websites, SEO, marketing, etc.; all of these forums are great communities! Be sure to bookmark them if you’re not doing so already!

The Top Webmaster Forums:

• DigitalPoint Forums
• SitePoint Forums
• V7 Network Webmaster Forums
• Webmaster-Talk Forums
• WebProWorld

If you have any other great ones you’d like to share, please do so below.

What webmaster resources do you use most?

I’ve had several clients of mine over the years host their websites with a company called Lunarpages. For the most part, their experience has been a good one . . . cheap hosting, reasonable uptime . . . the basics.

Unfortunately, I’ve been informed that Lunarpages has dropped the ball, bigtime!

According to my client, Charles Feldman of TheFeldmanBlog:

I had this once before where the site was down, remember, and I left messages on their 24 hour line but they never got back to me…same this time. And last time, when I called during the week to complain, I , of course, got a voicemail for the manager who also never returned the call.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but that’s not the type of service I’m looking for in a host. Sadly, it seems, reality doesn’t match up with the company’s promises. The following comes directly from the front page of the Lunarpages website:

There are thousands of web hosting services so why choose Lunarpages? When comparing web hosts it is important not only to consider a price difference of a dollar or two. Although we offer more data transfer and storage resources then you will likely ever utilize, we prefer to focus on something much more important, reliable web hosting and great customer service. Above all we take care of you personally and attentively with 24-7 award winning customer support. It’s all about making sure your website and email remain online and you are happy. It’s not just technical support to us; it’s about caring for people since 1998. Phone us any time and become part of the rapidly growing Lunarpages web hosting family. We are rated #1 in the world. Call us now and find out why.

Notice the text in bold (we bolded it to highlight) . . . doesn’t really match what I’m hearing from my client. The 24 hour customer support seems to be nothing but a voicemail system . . . WOW that’s revolutionary 24 hour support! I’ve called several times over the past 24 hours – particularly late night and early morning, and have not gotten a person on the phone. Isn’t that what 24-7 customer service means to you?

Hopefully someone at the company reads this and works to rectify the situation . . . either way, I thought it was important to let you all know so you can make an informed decision when considering this host.

Photo Credit: Control Panel by Tim Dorr

I’m always excited when a month comes to a close because it presents me with the opportunity to look back at what happened last month. This is especially important because I have the opportunity to see how I’m doing in attaining my goals for my sites. In particular, I’m most interested in traffic and financial trends.

Traffic Analysis
In looking at site traffic every month, I go immediately to my AWStats server software to learn how succcessful I’ve been. . .

• Did each of my sites see growth?
• What kind of growth was it?
• Did unique users increase or decrease?
• Did page views go up?
• Were there any major strains on my bandwidth (i.e. was anyone hotlinking to images on my sites)?
• What keywords were most successful in drawing traffic?
• Were there any keywords that fell in the rankings?
• How did the sites fare on the different search engines?
• Did I start to make progress on any one of them?
• Did I begin to lose ground on another?

I haven’t been especially active in tracking the number of sites linking in, the PR of my pages, or my Alexa rankings, because I don’t find them to be anything I can really control. Since I focus mainly on organic growth for my sites, I let the links come instead of undertaking a true link building program. With quality content, the links come in naturally. PR is really meaningless IMO, and Alexa rankings are extremely inaccurate. I have two different sites . . . one typically will rank on a daily basis similarly to another one, yet one of the sites gets between 10 and 20 times the traffic of the other. The one with less traffic that ranks well on Alexa is popular with webmasters and others online – people who likely have the Alexa toolbar or other tools installed on their browsers. It amazes me that this has become one of the standards for monitoring traffic because it is simply so innaccurate.

In terms of blogs, I’ll also look at numbers from places like Feedburner (# of subscribers to my feeds), Technorati (# of sites linking in), and MyBlogLog (number of people who have joined my community) in addition to the basic numbers.

May was a good month! I saw growth in all areas and by all metrics. I can’t really ask for anything else, especially considering I no longer run any keyword advertising programs. I’ll just say that I’m serving many millions of page views a month across the board!

Financial Analysis
The first of each month is also important because it allows me to reflect upon the financial status of my company over the past month. Between direct advertisers, ad networks, and affiliate programs, I draw income from various sources. In any typical month I spend a good amount of my time focused on how I can increase revenues from one or all of these sources. Because of this, I’ve been able to create a company that has seen steady growth financially since inception (with a few minor flat spots).

May was a good month and I’m looking forward to see what we can pull off in June! I guess we’ll find out next month!

I just wanted to remind everyone to periodically review all the links they keep on their site. Whether you are a blogger with a blogroll full of links or if you’re just another webmaster who shares resources with others like I do with BiggerPockets® Real Estate Investing Community, you should always do a periodic review of the links on your site.

I realize that this is just another obvious comment, but while the internet will go on “forever,” many websites don’t last even close to that long. I wish I had some cool stat on how often sites disappear, but it happens pretty often. A site you use daily this week may be gone next week.

Keeping dead links on your site does not bring confidence to your users. It shows them that you are not keeping up with your site. This is never a good sign for anyone. If your users believe that you do not care enough to maintain and keep to date your links, then they might just want to find another site that does.

Many times the obvious tip is one of the most important:

Get Rid of those Dead Links on Your Website Today!

One of the most frustrating thing back when I was a newbie at building websites was figuring out what that little icon was called next to a website’s URL. This little tidbit of information eluded me for the longest time, but I finally figured it out. Back in the day (wow I sound old!) there weren’t 1,000 tutorials to help with everything like that.

A Favicon is the Small Icon that Shows Up Next to Your Web Address in Your Browser

Favicons (a.k.a. favorites icons) help promote your brand and create an identity for your website. They help when you’ve got multiple tabs open on your browser and you can’t read the entire site title, and they are just great for adding a little something extra to your website’s identity.

How Do You Create a Favicon and What is Favicon.ico?

There are tons of online tools to help you create a favicon. My favorite is Dynamic Drive’s Free Favicon Generator. Here’s what you do to set up your website’s favicon:

1. Go to the Favicon Generator and upload a file from your computer that you want to become your favicon.
2. Press the “Create Icon” button and then the “Download Favicon” button.
3. The favicon will now be saved to your desktop with the filename favicon.ico
4. Using FTP or some other method of transferring files to your website, upload the favicon.ico file to the /public_html/ directory of your website’s server.
5. Check to be sure the file was properly uploaded by visiting in your browser http://www.your-site.com/favicon.ico (of course, your-site.com will be replaced with the name of your actual site name)
6. Finally, edit the main page of your site (the index.html file) and place in the head the following:
   

   <LINK REL=”SHORTCUT ICON” HREF=”favicon.ico”>

Your favicon will now be live. Sometimes it takes a little while to start seeing it, but don’t worry, it’s there!

Do Favicons Work in Subdomains?

They do! All you need to do is follow the steps above for the index.html file located in your subdomains and you’ll have a functional favicon for that subdomain.

I hope this helps some people figure out what to do. I know I would have been really happy to read this a decade ago!

Maybe it isn’t the first rule, but it is definitely important to remember:

Always Have a Contact Page or Some Other Method for Readers to Reach You!

Now, many of you are going to say how obvious this is, but it is clearly not too obvious. Imagine this – I’ve spent the past day or so trying to reach out to some real estate bloggers to get their feedback on a post I wrote on my real estate investing blog. What I discovered was actually pretty sad. Only somewhere around 1/3 of the blogs I visited on this list of 750 real estate blogs had some means of contacting the blogger. Of the ones who did, only a few had their information front and center, with an email link or phone number. I actually had to jump through hoops to find the contact info of some others.

This is particularly sad because the reason most of these people are blogging is to get business for themselves. How do they expect potential clients to reach them if they don’t have a contact page? You never know who is going to befriend you, and it just a good idea to make yourself available . . .

Without my contact page, I would not be in touch with several entrepreneurs who reached out to me.

Maybe it is not the first rule of blogging, but it an important one . . . if you haven’t done so already, get your contact page/info on your blog ASAP.

Note: This also applies for any other legitimate web-business. A phone number is okay, but an email address is imperative. If you don’t have contact info of some sort on your site, I’m not going to take you seriously, and I’m definitely not going to buy anything from your site.

Last week, I wrote an article about good customer service and used the example of how EzineArticles.com failed to live up to their promise to contact me about a situation. I am happy to report that I have finally been contacted by the company. The interesting thing is that the company broke another cardinal rule, research first and accuse later.

Don’t Assume You’ve got All The Facts Until You Do!

Here is the content of the email I received:

Hi Joshua,

Your account is suspended because your article “Hiring the Right
Property Manager for Your Rental/Income Property” has content that is
exactly the same as this piece:

http://www.wcrt.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1526

…and is not attributed to you. We require that all submitted
articles be either original articles written by you or articles to
which you have an exclusive right to. Please keep in mind that to
have an exclusive right to an article, only your name may be
associated with it. If you purchased this article as part of a pack
or received it from a distributor/affiliate site, so have others so
you do not have an exclusive right to it.

Can you please explain the above? What is the source of your article?

Abby

http://EzineArticles.com/

A few things . . . first, wouldn’t it make more sense if they had contacted me last year when I submitted the article with their inquiry? Instead, I was flatly banned WITH NO EXPLANATION. They assumed I was the one who was not the original author instead of doing 1 of 2 things: 1) contacting me asking me to prove I am the author or 2) doing 1 minute of research to see if I was the author. A google search of the first line of the article in question reveals the truth:

A little article I wrote back in October of 2005 called: Things to Consider when Interviewing Property Management Companies comes up immediately. It would be very clear to see that the duplicated article that they were talking about was written January 30, 2006, 3 months later.

In addition, the email assumes that I was the one committing the copyright infringement, when in fact it was someone from another site doing it. I was guilty until proven innovent! This is certainly not the way to run a service.

What Can Be Learned Here?

• Don’t assume that you have all the facts until you actually do.
• Choose your words wisely. In tone and content, it apears as though the people at EZineArticles are accusing me of stealing someone else’s articles. Accusing someone is not the way to make them happy customers/users.
• If you say you’re going to respond to someone in 24 hours, then do it.
• Don’t get on my bad side! (just kidding . . . kind of . . . )

Further Implications of The Situation
I am somewhat thankful for the whole controversy for one reason: I was able to discover that one of the users of my company, BiggerPockets’s forums was stealing our materials and posting them as his own. As a result, I emailed him asking him to immediately remove the article from his site, and warned him that I would contact his host if he failed to comply. We shall see what happens . . . back to my 7 Steps on How to Protect Your Website’s Copyright When Someone Steals Your Content.

What is going on with Alexa and DMOZ. Both have been having problems for weeks now.

Alexa simply does not load most of the time. Are they in the midst of a major update? I’m shocked that they have not addressed the problem publicly! So much for PR.

DMOZ has had problems with their submission engine for some time now. I’ve heard from editors over there that even they are unable to log in. I’m currently getting a “404 Not Found” error when visiting the site!

So . . . are two of the busiest websites in the world down for the count, or are they working on something really BIG? Either way, they are losing the respect of many people by not coming out and letting everyone know what’s happening.

Spin control anyone?

• Brian at SEOMoz tells us that meta-tags are making a comeback.
• Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have all agreed on a new xml sitemap protocol for their search engines. Visit Sitemaps.org for more info.
• Jaimie at SEO Egghead gives us 6 Questions To Weed Out Charlatan SEOs. I might add “What are social networks and how are they important?” to the list. If they don’t know that one, well . . . I’d also ask “how do I get more hits for my site?” — if they don’t go on to explain the difference between hits, uniques, page views, etc., I’d stay away!
• I guess independent blogger types and the corporate world just don’t mix. The big news today is that blogging Guru Jason Calcanis resigned from AOL

Internet people use measures of success that are somewhat different then those of common-folk. We’re not concerned about having the biggest house or the fanciest car in the neighborhood. We think about things like bandwidth, unique users, page views, reach, AdSense revenues, and other mundane things like number of servers we’ve got.

I’ve broken down web success into four phases. Where do you stand?

Phase One: Shared Hosting – ROOKIE PUNK

Most webmasters start out by using a shared hosting plan. They have the joy of worrying if one of the other several hundred sites will have a traffic spike, causing their own sites to go down. You are probably asking other webmasters to link to you with some generic form email, and you want to know when you’re going to get out of that damn Google Sandbox. Most respectable webmasters don’t really take you too seriously, and don’t consider you a threat.

If you’re actually serious about building a money making website and are committed, you will likely feel the pain that shared-hosting plans cause. Good luck! If you can make it to the next phase, things get a lot easier.

Chances of Failure – Extremely High

Consider that there are millions of websites out there and most of them are useless failures. These sites for the most part, reside on shared servers. The person starting the site probably thought it would be a cinch to make some cash online, and is now realizing that retirement will not come as quickly as they thought. On the other hand, a select few will rise above the rest and will get past the shared hosting doldrums.

Phase Two: Dedicated Server – YOU’RE COOLER THEN YOUR NEIGHBOR NOW!

Once you’ve been told by your host that you are causing too many problems, or that your site is a drain on their servers, it is time to move on. Congrats! Not only have you pissed off your host, but you are now emerging as a serious webmaster. I’m guessing that you are now in the top 10th percentile of all websites.

This is always a big move, and usually marks the beginning of “web-success.” Doing so means that you’re operating a popular website or sites, and that you’re probably starting to make some decent money with that/those sites. You’ve probably started to gain some respect from others online, and webmasters in your niche will certainly take notice of you.

For the average guy, moving to a dedicated server can be very scary. You need to worry about things outside the scope of your site itself, like maintaining your server. You’ll quickly learn that it is not that big a deal. There is a certain freedom that comes with having your own box, and it should make you feel pretty good that you are officially cooler then your neighbor now!

Chances of Failure – Nominal

If you’ve made it this far, odds are that you will continue on your path to the top. Website mis-management, loss of focus/interest, or random acts of violence are your biggest threats. You can now officially show up at that high-school reunion and hold your head up high!

Phase Three: Upgraded Server – HARDCORE WEB GENIUS!

The next phase of web success is typically moving up to a better box with faster drives and more memory. Sites that are resource intensive will drain a slower machine and will start to drag when the load gets to be too great. You are now running a power box – you’re kicking ass and are taking names! Money is no longer an issue, and you’ve probably quit your job to run your web business full time. Other webmasters have begun to notice your prowess and regularly email you for advice. It is a rough ride getting to phase three, but the trials and tribulations you’ve gone through have shaped you into the hardcore web genius that you are today. There is only one direction you’re going, and that is to the very top!

Chances of Failure – If You Fail Now, Move to Siberia, Dummy!

Failure? There is no failure! You are as close to being a web-god as there is. Keep up the good work and you will soon find yourself among the internet elite.

Final Phase: Multiple Servers – WEB GURU!

The final phase in the lifespan of a website is the move to multiple servers. Your site is now a monster! Your traffic is likely as high as that of sites run by the top corporations. You are probably making a small or huge fortune with your website, and you now rank with the web elite. You are a god to the rest of the internet world and are now often called a visionary. Go back to your reunion now and laugh at that teacher who said you wouldn’t amount to anything! Offer him a job as your secretary’s secretary!

Chances of Failure – Only if an Asteroid Hits Earth or Nuclear War Breaks Out!

You are featured in magazines and have appeared for TV interviews. You are a regular panelist at web conferences, and can do no wrong.

Want to start a new site? There will be no four phases for you this time . . . Venture Capital people and Angel Investors are lined at your doorstep. Congrats. Yoda would be proud! Tell your friends like Mark Cuban, Jerry Yang, Darren Rouse, Sergei & Larry, Kevin Rose, Craig Newmark, or Bill & Melinda about the rough times over beers on their private islands.

If you’re a Phase 4 Success and are reading this, please drop me an email . . . I’d love to shoot the breeze!

I’ve always wanted to set up a Wiki, but was never brave enough. Today is that day. After comparing wikis, I’ve decided to use MediaWiki software as my platform. I’ll keep everyone posted with how things go.