Enkay Blog

How Good or Bad is 1&1 Hosting?

This isn’t a review as most of you would think. I know that I haven’t posted in a long time here on Enkay Blog but I think the time has come that I do start posting on here. I’ve missed the blog a lot and school has now come to a close and that means, more time for my blog. Interestingly enough, this comeback post is somewhat weird for me. I have been with 1&1 Hosting for about 4 years now and have never had any problems but I started to get concerned after I received this email from a reader who is also a member on a very popular hand-held PC forum. A forum where I have been a member for about 5 years.

The email is as follows – ” Figured I’d share my experiences with 1&1. I am glad you are having good luck with them, but honestly, I have no good words for them. The domain was stolen a few days before the last PocketPC Magazine hit the stands, in which my software won a major award, and I was receiving a lot of exposure with DVD Catalyst Free due to a LifeHacker article. They took over the domain at the time the domain was the most popular, and nearly killed my whole business in the process. Because of their thievery, I’ve been struggling ever since. Finally last November I got a lucky break, but take it from me, change your registrar company before you end up like me.”

The thing is that I have heard of PocketDVD and I think that this story does have a lot of truth to it and I strongly feel for this individual. I also understand what is going on. I even looked up what this person was talking about and its very true – this has happened to a lot of people. Now, I figured that I am a loyal customer so why shouldn’t my hosting company be loyal to me? right? well, I want to ask these questions directly to 1and1 so I hope that someone is willing to answer these questions for me.

So, if anyone 1and1.com representative comes across this or anyone has had experience with this issue or has heard others that have had this issue please write in the comment box below as I would love to hear from you. So lets see the comments! Also, do let me know if you’ve experienced such problems or even similar problems with other hosting companies.

Enkay’s 7 Step Upgrade to Wordpress 2.8.4!

There have been some rumors out there that you should upgrade to Wordpress 2.8.4 immediately because of the virus threat so I finally decided to bite the bullet and upgrade. To give you guys an idea of how nervous I am of updating the blog, I never even upgraded to 2.7. Not even 2.6. I was stuck in the 2.5 versions for the longest time and that meant that the upgrade process was a bit different for me.

The reason its different is because if you have a really old version of Wordpress, you can’t automatically upgrade it. You have to upgrade Wordpress manually. This is what made me really nervous about upgrading it. Also, the fact that I’d have to deal with a new design and new interface, kind of scared me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not technology prone, but I’m not used to change that I have a feeling I won’t like. To get things cleared up though, the new interface is AWESOME! So much more informative and well laid out.

Also, the idea that something will happen to the blog is scary but not too scary because I create weekly backups of my SQL database and I have a current backup of my Wordpress blog on my hard drive as well. So all the files and everything are always secure and up-to-date. The part that scares me is having an error occur and being offline for a day. I don’t want that to happen but either way, the upgrade process was easy. Wordpress has a great guide out there but maybe I can help with a more separated step process which makes my upgrade process, 7 steps. Here it is:

Step 1 : Create a backup of files on your FTP server – This includes all files in the main root that pertain to Wordpress as well as the wp-admin, wp-content and wp-includes folder

Step 2 : Create a backup of your MySQL database just in case something goes wrong. This is needed because you might need to update your database once you complete upgrading Wordpress. Dont worry, this won’t erase any of your posts, just needs to update table structure. Here is Wordpress specific tutorial as to how to backup your database. Depending on your webhosting company, you may or may not have PhpMyAdmin but the process will still be quite similar.

Step 3 : Download the latest version of Wordpress by clicking here and unpack it onto your desktop.

Step 4 : Delete your existing wp-admin and wp-includes folder. Copy over the new wp-admin and wp-includes folder as well as any files that would be in the root folder. Do not copy over the wo-content folder otherwise you risk losing essential data such as uploaded images, themes, etc.

Step 5 : Compare your old wp-config.php file to the wp-config-sample.php that is in the new Wordpress install. I recommend checking to see if theres any change in structure. If there is, copy over data from your existing wp-config file into the sample file provided and then rename the sample file and upload it to your root folder.

Step 6 : Browse over to www.yourblog.com/wp-admin and login. You might be ask to update your database which usually takes 2 seconds and then you will be logged in to the new upgraded version of Wordpress.

Step 7 : Sit back, relax and enjoy!

So, I hope you liked my post. I’m sorry if I might have named something wrong because I based the entire installation purely off of memory but I will re-check it again to make sure I got it right. I wonder how many of you have still not updated from the old version — a show of hands…or comments? Have a great rest of the week!

Why Promotional Items?

So yesterday I talked about the Personalized USB Drives and that made me think about companies that send out promotional items. All of us have received something or the other, whether its a t-shirt, a pen, notepads, or even ping pong balls from Clickbooth. The big question that comes in now is, is the investment really worth it? Well, I don’t know and maybe Market Leverage and Clickbooth can chime in and give us an idea, but I’m sure it does. Lets take a few reasons why promotional items are a good idea:

1) Easy Way To Get The Word Out – Promotional items such as pens and t-shirts are a very convenient way of getting the word out. They are usually items that most individuals would use on a daily basis such as pens, notepads, usb drives or they are things that can be worn such as an hat, watch, t-shirt. When people use these items, they don’t even realize that they are advertising for someone else because to them, its probably just a comfortable shirt or they like wearing it. The idea of getting something for free, is very appealing to everyone and that plays a big role for the promotional goodies as well.

2) Cost Effective – Most of the goodies that are sent our way probably don’t cost a whole lot. Now, don’t get me wrong, a lot of things that I have received have been on the more expensive side such as the Nike Bag and Polo shirt sent over by the good folks over at Market Leverage but for the most part, they are pretty cheap when compared to paying for advertising. All that means is that instead of spending $15 or $20 a month for a small 125×125 ad, the companies rather divert their money into putting together a swag bag of goodies that their customers can wear and show off!

3) Word Of Mouth Travels Fast – I cannot tell you how many times I have been asked about my ShoeMoney shirt or my Market Leverage branded Flip Mino or the orange Clickbooth clock. When people see something interesting, unique or different, they tend to inquire about it. This usually leads in me telling them which company sent it over to me. People find it interesting and their curiosity leads to them asking others how they can get the same goodies. This person usually converts into a customer for the company that sent out the merchandise in the first place and the cycle continues on. Its a pretty good method of advertising, isnt it?

Sorry guys, I think I did the time stamping wrong so this post didn’t get posted in time but I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know your thoughts and feedback regarding the post. How is your long weekend so far? Any big plans?

Your Blog Isn’t Being Noticed

Thats right! Not to be rude or anything, but a reader decides within 5-8 seconds whether they want to be on your blog or not. That’s a staggering statistic and that makes me think about how many people I am probably missing out on because of it. There are some things that just turn people off and I hope to discuss them here.

1) Ads – Okay, so I’m not going to knock on JohnChow or anything just because when you’re an established blogger, you can do whatever you want, and your readers will still be supportive. Your readers still have a lot to gain so they’re not going anywhere. What I’m talking about is people who have no business having ads on their blog anyway. These are people who believe in ad space SUPERmaximization. When theres not enough room and LOTS of ads. You can’t do that. You have to have a little white space to appear a bit more organized and clean.

2) Slow Website – Sometimes your website runs slow because of hosting issues and sometimes your blog is just graphic heavy. There are ways that you can help your blog perform better. You can optimize the graphics on your blog to load faster or even switch to a hosting provider that has better, faster servers. Sometimes there are widgets and javascripts running on your blog that also help slow it down. An example of a widget is the Entrecard widget. Tomorrow I will have a post that tests the speed of some of the most popular blogs in the blogosphere.

3) No Design/Customization – It takes a little effort but its good to have a blog that is customized. It helps the visitor know that you’ve spent some time on it and aside from that, even if youre a fairly new blog, it makes you look professional – as though you’ve been around longer. Having a default theme is so 2004. Readers now look for customized themes and eye-catching designs. As a marketing expert for product packaging would say, its not really what you sell, but how you sell it and thats what counts.

I have listed a few things that come to my mind when I wonder what would be the most obvious reasons why readers are turned away from your blog. These go hand in hand with how fast/slow your blog loads. In a few days, I will have a post about what you do in terms of the content you put out that turns away your readers. Hope you guys have a good weekend! Stay tuned for tomorrows post!

Can I Get My Rankings Back?

Before I decided to take a hiatus time and time again from blogging, my rankings were pretty high and I was doing quite well. Now that I am coming back to blogging, I want to see how long it takes for me to get my ratings back. I’m not sure what my exact rankings were but Technorati was in the 150’s or 200’s in terms of authority and Alexa was around 100,000.

Im not a newbie in the blogging industry and this gives me the advantage because last summer, I experienced a similar situation and I had to pretty much start back from scratch. In case, you don’t remember, Last year, I decided to finally purchase enkayblog.com and this meant starting back with no Alexa Rating, no Page Rank and no Technorati. I was able to build everything back up within 2 months.

This time, things will be harder. Why you ask? Well, things are a bit different. It seems as though the blogging industry has slowed down. A lot of old friends are now gone and so that support is missing. Furthermore, the economy has affected some of the bloggers and aside from that, some bloggers have decided to move away from blogging and onto other things. All this makes this time around a bit harder.

What Am I Getting At?
Well, basically what I am saying is what I have preached for several months now – you have to have goals. Setting this goal for myself means that I need to, and will, try harder and harder in order to be where I was, if not better, than I was when I decided to step away from blogging a few months ago.

Why are Goals Important?
Well, in simple terms, goals help motivate you to do better things. They help you to keep at it till you are able to be where you want to be. By having this goal of wanting to reach my previous status as a blog, I will do everything in my power of achieve it. It helps motivate me and remind me of what I want and then it is up to me to do all that I can to achieve that goal.

Can I Do It?
I hope that I am able to do it and this will be a process that I will document slowly as time goes on. I really think that if I am able to put out great content and get the link backs and audience support that I can achieve this goal. How long do you think it will take me? and if you’ve gone through such a hiatus before, how long did it take you?