In this, the first of our new series, Ask the Experts, our President and CEO, Adam Wills, tackles our first question:

How can I choose a dedicated service web hosting company?

Take it away, Adam…

1) Work with a reputable, real company.

It may sound obvious that you should  be looking for a reputable, real company, but the reality is that  many of the web hosting companies that claim to be, aren’t.  There are thousands upon thousands of web hosting companies in existence today, many of which claim to offer dedicated servers.  However, the shocking truth is that many of them are 1-man operations that lack infrastructure, support and a positive track-record. So, the first step in choosing a dedicated server host, it to research the company that offers it. Visit the Better Business Bureau website. Look for an independently verified reputation. Make sure there is an organization in place to back up promises like service-level guarantees.

2) Purchase directly from the company that owns the hardware (i.e. do business directly with the datacenter and carefully review any businesses that are middlemen or resellers).

Many clients come to us on the heels of devastating experiences with other hosting providers. Often their websites just disappeared along with the supposed company they were doing business with. Here at TurnKey Internet, we support resellers. There are a great many excellent reseller companies with pristine reputations and wonderful customer service who have been in business for years. However, like with any business, there are plenty of not-so-reputable resellers out there too. When a reseller doesn’t pay his hosting bill with his provider, his servers get shut down. If your website happens to be on one of those servers, your website gets shut down too. The best way to avoid this is by researching your reseller or, better yet, by going directly to the source– the web hosting company that owns their own infrastructure and datacenter. You will not only get the piece of mind an established, brick-and-mortar business provides, you will also get a better price by cutting out the middleman.

3) Work with companies that offer a large selection of the latest technology.

A wide variety of the latest server hardware and models is a sign of the health and longevity of a dedicated server provider. For instance, today the hot CPU chips for entry level and mid-range dervers are the Quad Core Intel i5 and i7. The high-end and enterprise-level CPUs are typically the multi-CPU configured, Quad Core Xeon E550x series. Make sure the company you choose has these products available.

4) Make sure the company you choose has a wide range of support and backup options.

Most web hosting companies will claim to have top-notch support. You should always try before you buy. Test phone numbers and live chat and note response times. Also, make sure the company offers a premium managed support and backup service option. If a company is not able to offer options like server hardening or firewall setup, it is a sign that company is not a full-fledged dedicated provider. While you might not need to take advantage of these services at the start, it is always good to know they are available, should you need to upgrade in the future.

Here at TurnKey Internet, we go out of our way to help potential clients feel comfortable. We always offer all the latest technology and we take time to explain who we are and why what we offer is unique.  We display our better business bureau A+ status and independent reviews right in the footer of all our web pages. We provide links to news organizations that have written stories about our company, and in general try to help potential clients understand the all that we offer. Whether you choose TurnKey Internet or another established web host (and we hope you choose us!) doing a little research can save you lots of heartache and ensure that you have a positive  hosting experience.

Adam Wills
President and CEO

Hi, I’m Abbey Connick, the new TurnKey Internet intern. My first project is to create a website, which I have never done before.

Here is the title of my first website: Save John Boyd Thacher State Park.

Living in Upstate New York one of my favorite things to do has always been to visit the state parks.  I remember family picnics, fun hikes, and wildlife excursions at Thacher Park.  Sadly, these may become distant memories. Governor Paterson is proposing to cut the parks budget which would cause Thacher Park to close (among others). This would be a huge loss to the Capital Region, as it serves as a wholesome destination for family and teen outings.

Needless to say, the public is completely outraged.  Thacher Park has been a great outlet for the Capital Region. With the economy in a shambles, it is a smack in the public’s face to close this free destination that so many people utilize. Also, unlike many of the other state parks that will stay open, Thacher was hugely popular with many low-income communities.  Nobody saw this coming as everyone was completely shocked when Paterson delivered the news this past weekend.

To compensate for their lack of input before the decision, the inhabitants of the Capital Region have a lot to say (if not yell) now. Tens of thousands of people are joining Facebook groups for this cause, protests are being organized, and petitions are being signed. Leading the troops, is my supervisor Anneke. She has been an avid Thacher hiker and is enraged that her favorite weekend activity might be canceled for good. She is doing everything she can to spread awareness and organize people to stop it.

It is actually her passion that gave me my website idea. I have no website design experience (really, none!) and I was unsure of what to do at first.  I wanted to make a website that was both useful and interesting.  I finally decided that dedicating my website to the Thacher Park cause fit both of these requirements.  It will be teaching me about web design while helping to organize and promote action to keep Thacher Park open.

After I found my website idea, I needed to actually make the website. I had (and still have) no idea what I’m doing. I know, I know, this should be simple. I went to MIT for two years and I’m friends with about a few dozen start-up guys (and girls), yet I do not know the first thing about making a website. After Googling ‘how to start a website,’ I found a pretty good ‘how to’ guide.  The first thing they instructed me to do was to pick a domain name.  I registered the name, www.savethacherpark.com, with Turnkey Internet.  It was actually easier than I thought it would be. Next step: designing the website. This part might be a little harder than the first one. Consulting with my how-to guide, I found a really good web builder program – What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG). I have been using that so far and again, it is a lot easier than I expected.

I’m still on step two, but stay tuned for my progress.  I’ll keep you updated about my failures and triumphs as a web designer AND how you can keep Thacher Park open!

– Abbey

I tend to do a lot of Facebook and Google stalking.  Type in the name, see what he or she has been up to, and clear history.  It’s pretty harmless and who is going to find out anyway?  What, the FBI?  Really?  Yes, really. The FBI is pushing to have ISPs keep detailed records of what web sites customers have visited for up to two years.

FBI Director, Robert Mueller is asking Congress to make it mandatory that Internet providers store users’ “origin and destination information.”  Along with the FBI, this idea is popular with state computer crime investigators.  Both groups believe that logging user history would help with investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.

Since 1986, phone companies have been required to keep a record of “the name, address, and telephone number of the caller, telephone number called, date, time and length of the call” for a period of 18 months.  Greg Motta, chief of the FBI’s digital evidence section, is arguing that this new act is merely an extension of call logs and is necessary for the FBI to adapt to the newer technology.

The details of the proposal are still very vague.  It has not been decided whether Internet providers would need to log IP addresses, domains, host names, or actual URLs of the sites visited.  If the FBI insists on the fourth possibility, there could be serious legal implications.  Recording URLs visited would most likely be considered deep packet inspection, a violation of the Wiretap Act.

Another problem is practicability.  Eighteen million website page hits occur every hour.  Multiply this by 24 hours by 700 days and you have a ton of data.  Sorting through this would be very time consuming and might not be worth the possible advantages.

The Justice Department is currently weighing the positives and negatives of such a law and, as of the writing of this article, does not have an official position on data retention.

Abbey Connick
Intern

I don’t know about you but I’m getting kind of sick of SEO. Obviously it’s an incredibly important thing to know about when it comes to marketing. Getting your website to come up on searches is probably the single most important element for fiscal success. But how possible is it for one person to make that happen? Are SEO techniques really that helpful and, if so, why do they seem like such a mystery? And then, of course, there is the topic every discussion of SEO must inevitably broach: what of that slippery Google algorithm that seems to change every other week?

If I got paid for every clown who claims to have THAT figured out, I’d be a very rich woman.

Steeped in mystery, Google’s algorithms determine, based on nobody really knows what, which sites rise to the top of searches and which sites disappear into obscurity. And of course, just as they claim to understand the algorithm, thousands upon thousands of professionals claim to be able to help you “optimize your SEO” within it—to crack the enigma code anew, just for you, for $39.95. Surely there are plenty of legitimate professionals who really do have some idea of how to use this system. They are the real experts. You can find them wherever the big bucks are sold.

For the rest of us trying to make it, what do we do? Who do we trust? How can the individual marketer sift through the malarkey and find the real SEO tips and tricks that will improve page rank? Well, for a one-time payment of $39.95…

Just kidding.

In my experience, if you’re willing to put in the time, to experiment with all of the various techniques on all of the various blogs, it *is* possible to improve your rank. It won’t happen immediately. You won’t be number one on the Internet, but you WILL improve and that improvement can be significant. Here are the four tricks, courtesy of real live SEO expert Cal Hesson over on hostingdiscussion.com, that have helped me get TurnKey Internet higher up in the charts:

(1) Keyword Phrase Research and Analysis

Identify the keyword phrases that people are using to find your products and services. This can be done in several ways, many of which cost money. There are, however, lots of tools that are free or relatively inexpensive, that can fill you in on your analytics. Google Analytics is one that many swear by. Here at TurnKey we already had an analytics tool installed on our servers. I used that.

(2) Study the Competition

Pay close attention to who holds the top 10 positions for the keyword phrases you want to target. You need to look at your competitions On-Page SEO (the text and content of their pages) and their Off-page SEO (the inbound links, etc., that contribute to site ranking). Part of the Off-page SEO analysis is counting the back links to your competitor’s web sites. You’ll have to either get more or better back links than they have.

(3) Good On-Page SEO

You need to pay very close attention to the titles, keywords, descriptions, body content, etc., of your site. The search engines have to really understand what your web site is all about, and good, editorially sound content provides that. The good news is: you have complete control over this content.

(4) Back Links

As the title implies, for a good SEO profile, good back links are essential. There are myriad ways of getting back links, although understanding what good back links are has become more difficult as Google continually changes how they are valued.

There you have it: a quick and dirty set of simple tips for improving your site ranking. Sure, there are trade secrets to SEO and, if you really want them, I’m sure you can find someone who will take your money. Barring that, why not do what I do? Dedicate yourself to the process, take the time, follow these rules, read all you can and figure out those secrets for yourself. To your success!

On February 10th, the New York Times reported that India’s top bank regulator suspended some of PayPal’s services in the country. Many business people in India rely on PayPal to send and receive payments from overseas companies. PayPal allows them to bypass expensive international bank transactions and levels the playing field for international business. But now, with PayPal blocking the transactions of many Indian businesses, online commerce has ground to a halt.

In this technological age we have tools that afford us economic mobility regardless of our geographic location. Unfortunately, these tools are often subject to forces beyond our control—forces like government regulation, institutional policy and cyber attacks. This development in India shines the spotlight on our dependence on these kinds of services, and emphasizes the importance of diversifying our business practices. It also reminds us how important it is to continue to work to keep the marketplace as open and accessible as possible.

Of course, many business people around the world don’t have the luxury of diversifying things like international payment methods. But for those who do, making sure to have more than one way to send and receive payments is just smart business.

Alok Maheshwari, founder and chief executive officer of Harmony Infotech, a nine-employee web development company in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, learned that the hard way. “Like all the freelancing sites, we rely on PayPal. We used to get a check in our company name mailed to us instead, but we stopped because PayPal is very easy to use.” I wonder how Mr. Maheshwari feels about that decision now.

So, what is the moral of the story? If you have the option, never rely too heavily on any one technology or service. Your business will thank you for it.

We are excited to announce that we have just finalized the purchase of a former federal government building in Colonie, New York that will be the site of our brand new datacenter! Demand for our web hosting and colocation services has continued to grow as businesses look to control costs for web-enabled applications and IT services. Our new location will meet this growing demand, increasing our capacity by 12,000 servers. The new datacenter is slated to go live in the 3^rd quarter of 2010.

In the words of Adam Wills, our President and CEO: “We are very excited to continue to expand here in New York. New York has been a great location, providing access to the best qualified staff, reliable green-friendly power sources and high-speed fiber optic connectivity. It has provided us with the ideal centralized geographic location to meet the demands of our clients across the globe.”

The former federal government building will protect our infrastructure behind 1-foot-thick concrete walls, built to federal government specifications. The 10,000+ square-foot space will feature redundant, green-friendly electrical systems, multiple high-speed fiber optic connections, video surveillance, and state-of-the-art biometric security protocols. In addition to the 12,000 new TurnKey servers, the datacenter will also include fully-managed colocation suites for businesses looking for secure, reliable connectivity for their own servers and equipment.

With the purchase of the new building and multiple new hires in the past 60 days, we’ve seen record growth in 2010!

Our new tier 1 datacenter will be consistent with our industry-leading standards for power availability, environmental control, high-performance web application hosting and 100% network uptime.

Watch this space for updates!
Read the complete press release.