I have had hosting accounts with perhaps 7-8 different hosts over the past 4 years. Among all, my favorite always has been Hostgator. Slowly and slowly, over these years i have been moving my hosting accounts from all other web hosts to Hostgator. Before i knew it, i had 5 separate shared server hosting accounts, all at Hostgator.com

It was going all fine but soon i realized that keeping 5 accounts is not so tidy. And i was paying like $15 a month per account which makes it $75 a month. Surely i could have a lot better single server in that amount of monthly fees. So i decided to get a single bigger and much better server.  I looked throughout Hostgator but could find a thing. There are dedicated server but that would have been a little too much for me. Besides, the hosting fee would have been 300+ bucks with ease. It’s not that i couldn’t have afforded that price but it was just that i didn’t want to. Would have been sheer waste of money!

I have so much trust and faith and confidence in Hostgator’s service and support that i really wanted to stay on with them. But i guess that was not the case. I had to move on and so i searched for the best possibilities. I searched and searched among all the better hosts and finally after all analysis, i selected Servint Web Hosting. Now i have a Virtual Private Server (VPS) with Servint and it’s just in my range. Infact it comes out to be just nearabout the price that i was paying for the five accounts at Hostgator. Anyways, it took me a couple of days to get to know the VPS. It’s not same as share hosting. I used to have a CPanel in shared hosting and here i could actually make a CPanel account for a website as a whole. I can even be a web host myself. It’s so much fun having a VPS of my own. As for performance, it’s mean machine, bigger, better and more efficient. I am just loving the experience and the support staff is even better than previous hosts. So all this while, i have been very busy, moving my site from previous web hosts including Hostgator to Servint VPS. Probably that’s why i haven’t been onto my blog that often in the recent past. Anyways, funny story is that today i was moving my last site from the last account at Hostgator and would have canceled the hosting by evening, when i get this newsletter from Hostgator regarding their launch of VPS hosting. Arggggghhh! I remember the words that came up when i read the mail. I said  “Good morning Hostgator!!! Finally you came out of your hibernation”.

All in curiosity i did check the prices and what all they had to offer. As usual, they kept their promise of offering the best prices in the business with one of the best services in business. However they themselves admitted in the mail that they have been promising a VPS package forever and finally they are out. I guess from my point of view, the damage has already been done. I have moved to Servint with whom i am more than satisfied. There is now, no question of me moving back to Hostgator VPS. But for all of you my friends, who haven’t moved yet, i give you two options:

Servint VPS : Link to their website >> ServInt.

Fantastic servers. High speed and great reliability. Excellent staff with great knowledge and great turnaround time on answering your tickets.

Hostgator VPS : Link to their website >> Hostgator.

Excellent servers. Reliable. Best prices. Lot of hosting packages option. Good chat technicians. Good response from staff.

Having tried both i think i can give a good non-biased judgment on both. I really can’t compare their hosting services. Both seems to be doing excellent. As in hostgator, i have had little downtimes issues and very recently a server overloading issue that caused suspending a site of mine from hosting which caused me monetary loss as well. But they do offer better prices. On other hand ServInt has an excellent staff which really is dedicated in helping you all around. Instead of suspending my sites they would rather help me fix it as soon as possible. But they are little expensive compared to Hostgator. So it’s your call. You can either go for low costing VPS by Hostgator or you can go for all great service from ServInt VPS.

P.S. It seems that Hostgator has not updated their website with VPS Hosting plans. It’s a soft launch as on now where they intend to keep the slot open for first 200 clients a month and then disable it the next month and then again enable them some other time. They offer VPS packages starting at $19.95 (Yikes!!!!) where in they offer 384MB RAM, 10GB DiskSpace and 250GB Bandwidth. They have 9 such packages with the highest at $209.95 a month which includes 5.96 GHz CPU, 4435MB RAM, 231GB, 3150GB Bandwidth. I could give the link straight away but i guess if they have not updated their website with VPS hosting packages then there has to be some reason and i don’t want to play a bad boy giving out the link. But i guess you can go to >> Hostgator and ask the chat technicians for the VPS package options. Else you can go ahead and checkout ServInt VPS hosting.

The world has come to a funny point wherein some people will try to sell you anything. Literally anything. Even those things that you already own. Yes, i know it’s funny, but a recent incident from a premium domain name seller certainly proves my point.

It so happened that a so-called premium domain seller company recently sent me a mail regarding a domain “negar-khan.com”. At first my impression was, well that’s a nice domain, but two seconds later, i was shocked and realized that i am the actual owner of this domain, anyways. The domain is for an actress and a model called Negar Khan. I guess she needs a little introduction as she is pretty famous already, because of her film career, television appearances, modeling and modeling incidents. Anyways, the point is how can this domain company list my domain for sale, without any rights or without any kinda ownership. I am still wondering how will they go ahead with the transaction if someone actually does buy the domain from their website.

I ain’t pointing fingers at this hour. Maybe it’s a mistake, maybe they previously held the domain and somehow forgot renewing it, or maybe it could really be a scam. I really don’t know. I guess i really had to inform you all about this incident, maybe because if it wasn’t for this domain and if had been a mailed about some other domain like abcd.com, then i could have fallen for such thing. I could have paid the domain seller an amount of $200 as mentioned on the site. And really got nothing. So in true sense, a heads up for all of you who deal in domains market.

I stick the point again that i ain’t blaming this company as on now, until i know the facts clearly. But thinking about it, first of all this company sends me emails without my consent. I never asked for offers or signed in for any such promotions. So basically they are using my email address without my consent. Secondly they are offering my domain for sale without ownership and again without my consent. You know what, i think i am going to sue this company now. What do you say?

Just in case if i am asked for proof in the future if such thing actually happened, well here are some screenshots to hold my story:

(Click on thumbnails for full sized image)

As for tips, i guess it’s best to check who is records for the domain from DomainTools. Any suspicion or irregularities in the data is worth inquiring about. And it would be pretty cool if you do not buy a domain just for pagerank. Remember my words “Pagerank: Here today, Gone tomorrow”. I don’t know why i am mentioning Google pagerank here, but i guess i just had to bring it up someway or the other.

Last year, on 10th March i blogged something similar when my Ally Directory became an authority site, i.e. a website that Google shows up in search results with few Sitelinks.

Almost an year later, my personal blog SharatJaswal.com becomes an authority site as well.

As mentioned an year ago, the term that most webmaster refer to as “Authority” is actually a feature of Google search wherein there are few links shown below the normal search result which are solely meant for the user to browse thorugh the site in a more easy way. “Accordingly to Google, they have a system (algorithm) which analyzes the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users to quickly find the information that they are looking for on your site”. Ohh, i repeated the exact same line in the last year’s blog post as well so that’s some duplicate content for you! LOL. Sorry Google.

To all those who wonder if getting the so called “Authority” status and so many sitelinks…would this all matter with Google Pagerank in some way or other? Well, the answer is NO!!! Google Pagerank comes with original informative content and how useful your site is to the web as a whole. Sitelinks, Authority, Link Purchase, Advertising etc. on other hand, are all helpful in bringing more visitors to your site. Sooner or later, all webmaster will hopefully realize that Pagerank doesn’t mean much. Traffic is THE factor that you need to make a site successful.

Anyways, this blog post ain’t much informative to many. It’s just a new that i am breaking to everyone who visits here often and dunno about the sitelinks thing. I really don’t know if sitelinks will stay with my blog in future or not. So just for the reference, here is my site search result with sitelinks:

Sitelinks For SharatJaswal.com In Google

Unfortunately, even after getting sitelinks/authority… Google still asks the question : “Did you mean Sharad Jaiswal?”

As many of you must be knowing, twitter is THE next best thing that happened to internet social networking. Other social networking sites like MySpace and Google Orkut, etc may simply are fading out slowly and will soon go down as memories. I do not mean to say that those networking sites weren’t good. They had their days but simply can’t keep up with the growing trend of networking. Facebook is still pretty good networking site but in my opinion, i still think Twitter is far better. Anyways……

I basically wrote this post for people who have already signed up with twitter or are really thinking of the same. I made an account a week back and am really enjoying my stay in there. I have followed some 900 people so far including likes of Lance Armstrong, Britney Spears, Barack Obama, CNN, John Chow, Shoemoney, Problogger, Gul Panag and many many others. I really don’t feel ashamed to follow many others randomly as it gives me a chance to know them better. And you know what, many people think on the same lines. Out of 900, around 455 tweeple (twitter people) have followed me back and that does include John Chow and ProBlogger. It feels good to be followed by so many people. It’s basically your social network or your fan following. So basically, everything is going in the right direction. Perhaps, this much information on twittering might interest some of you to join it right away. Am really hoping to motivate my good friend Nicole Price on to twitter.

Okay, so moving ahead. Joining twitter is one part of deal. How do you go to twitter plus stage?

Well, making your twitter profile look unique is one way to go. If you are keen on making an impact with your brand name, then probably a good designed profile is the best solution. And when it comes to twitter profile designing, there is one and only Hugh Briss from Twitter Images. He has already created twitter backgrounds for some of the Internet biggest bloggers like John Chow, ProBlogger, DesignerDepot and many others in all kind of niche business. He charges $100 for the twitter background design, which considering your brand is pretty reasonable amount. Either you can have a great “branded” design from Twitter Images or you can probably have the same backgrounds that million other twitter users are using. It’s all about the brand and about being professional.

So if you think your brand really matters to you, i would recommend you to at least visit Twitter Images and see the designs yourself. I am sure you will be fully satisfied with the design from Hugh Briss.

If you however cannot afford $100 for the design, you may want to checkout the other free but good looking backgrounds from Twitter Images.

Update: I actually had an affiliate link to Twitter Images.com, but if you have been keeping up with that site, you might be knowing that Hugh Briss has discontinued the affiliate system. Now i cannot delete this article for content issues, so i have removed my affiliate link and placed a direct link to his site. Thanks

Right back in February this year, i wrote something about my new web host “BlueHost“.  The experience has just been okay. I’m somehow not fully satisfied with BlueHost or HostMonster for that matter. Both seems to be owned by the same company. But really who cares about the owner!

So What Problem Am I Facing?

I’m not fully satisfied with the two webhosts i mentioned. I was lured into the deal by the prices they offer. Honestly, i prepaid for two years in advance. Saves me heck lot of amount and other things. But see the irony of it. Looks like i cannot get my money back even if i close them down. So i have to continue using them, just being careful about what sites i decide to put on them. But i am not very happy with them. Also, both of them are little on slower side and they are definitely not giving 99% uptime.

So I Talked To A Friend

I was chatting with a friend of mine, Stuart! He is the owner of Site-Sift.com directory along with many other popular websites to his name. I said i needed some change. A new web host. Someone which can offer me what i really want. So he just popped a site called “McKremie“. He didn’t say much. But at the first look at the site, i noticed that they have something i need. Two Hosting plans, dedicated IP’s, 99.9 percent uptime, and best of all, 100% moneyback guarantee! So if i am not satisfied with it, i have nothing to lose.

Later on, my friend, Stuart told me he owns this web host. Now that’s the reason he didn’t say anything about McKremie in first place. You see, all great businessman never brag about their sites. Or their benefits and stuff like that. He waited for me to give my true opinion first and then he told me about the ownership.

McKremie Web Hosting Solutions

So about McKremie. Well it has good prices/plans. I would call it easily affordable. If you go through the about us page, you will find the true reason why this web host was started. It’s because of frustrations from other web hosts that Stuart used in past. Understandable! It even does have Fantastico, which is the basic condition for me, whenever i look for a web host. The other major point, it does accept Paypal. A must must have option, as far as my requirements go.

So i think i have found my new web host. If you are looking for some new web host, then maybe you would like to consider “McKremie“.

P.S. If you are on McKremie’s website, try finding “Top Ten Signs You Need A New Web Host” article via Sitemap. Some point are really hilarious