Yes we kind of skipped over the December issue of our Newsletter because we had so much news to share with you all in January! That.. and I was frantically Christmas shopping and playing with my children’s gifts from Santa

In this month’s issue:

• LunarNews – January 2008

• Legal Mumbo Jumbo – Do you really need it?

• LunarYear’s Resolutions?

• Staff Interview – Danielle Wallace

• Most Confusing Terms in Web Hosting

• Creating the Perfect Logo

• Quick and Easy Hosting with LPQuicksite

• Get Going With Google Sitemaps

• Winning the Fight Against Comment Spam

• Want to Earn $180 the Easy Way??

• WordPress Design Contest – Vote for the best theme!

• The Top 10 Most Common SEO Mistakes

Enjoy!

Well, it’s been a really busy year for Lunarpages Web Hosting. We’ve done just about everything imaginable to keep our services top-notch and our customers happy. We’ve increased storage and bandwidth space, added extra domain hosting features, created an amazing template web design system, started a contest worth $1,000 and 5 Years Hosting, and even thrown a couple parties.

2007 was a great year, but it’s time to welcome in 2008! Here’s a recap of our biggest events of 2007 and our BIG NEWS so far in 2008!

Biggest Events of 2007

The first thing we did to really roll in the new year was a complete site redesign. If you remember the old look, it was actually pretty cool – we were going for a Star Trek theme with flashing lights and a dark blue design. The new, cleaner look was revealed January 2007.
Also in January, we rolled out upgrades to our Basic and Business Web Hosting high enough to blow the competition out of the water. Our Basic Hosting went from 35GB of storage to 350 and from 800GB bandwidth to 3500!! Our Business Hosting went from 50GB storage to Unlimited and from 1000GB bandwidth to 3500! We also added the ability to host 11 websites on 1 plan for either the Basic or the Business, giving you the chance to setup multiple sites all under the same web hosting roof – and all for free.

A bit later in 2007, we introduced PageMason, a Lunarpages-created web design and template system. Though still in Beta testing, PageMason offers our customers the chance to use preexisting templates and build a webpage with ease.

In late October, we introduced the Windows VPS Hosting Plan to our solutions and finally, in November, we launched the WordPress Theme Design Competition, where we’re giving away $1,000 and 5 Years Free Hosting to the winning theme designer. The contest is already in full swing, and the winner will be featured in the February 2008 edition of the LP Newsletter.

One of the best events of the year for me was finally launching the Lunarpages Web Hosting Newsletter. We had been planning it and trying to figure out the best time to promote it…and then it all just fell into place and everyone has been so responsive. Thanks everyone, for a great 07!

Lunarpages in 2008

In true Lunarpages fashion, what’s the first thing we did? Upgrade our plans! Our Basic Hosting Plan now comes with a phenomenal 1,500GB of storage space and 15,000GB bandwidth!!

Our Business Hosting was upgraded to include 15,000GB bandwidth as well!! It still comes with Unlimited storage.

We also announced our Lunarpages Quicksite Plan, which is designed to help you get your website up in 2 hours and with help from Lunarpages staff. For more information on this amazing new plan, see our Featured Article: Quick and Easy Hosting with LPQuicksite.

And finally (how much more can there be??), we added a new commission structure for our Dedicated Affiliate Sales! Now you can earn $180 per referral of any Dedicated Server to Lunarpages. Email affiliate@lunarpages.com for more information or see our Feature Article: Want to Earn $180 the Easy Way??.

The End of our CoffeeCup Promotion

As January of 2008 comes to a close so will our CoffeeCup promotion of $700 free software with any 12 or 24 month hosting plan purchase. The promotion will come to a close on January 15, 2008, but rest assured we have some other amazing offers in the works. Plus, you can now use our Quicksite Plan, which as mentioned earlier can get your website online in 2 hours!! With nothing to download and design assistance direct from Lunarpages, you’re set. Plus, PageMason is available for any 12 or 24 month hosting plan purchase, and that can also help you get your website online with the use of premade Lunarpages templates, designs, and layouts.

Holiday Discounts

We’ve decided to extend XMAS30 into February! So enter coupon code XMAS30 when you signup to save $30 off your purchase. Give someone the gift of Lunarpages Web Hosting this Christmas, and help them start a great website (or two!)

XMAS30 doesn’t work on Quicksite Plans…so we’ve got a special offer for you folks instead: NewYear30 will save you $30 off your 12 or 24 month Quicksite Plan purchase! For more details or to sign up, follow this handy little link.

We receive inquiries quite often from prospective clients wanting “form” documents to use as Terms of Service to govern the use of their website or from webmasters inquiring whether or not a set of Terms drafted for one operator site (or worse, simply found on an unrelated website) can be used instead of having terms specifically drafted for their particular website. For purposes of this article, “Terms of Service” includes Terms of Service, Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policies, Acceptable Use Policies, Subpoena Policies, UDRP Policies, Child User’s Policies, Copyright Claim Policies, and any other policy or procedure that you have in place for users of your website or the operation of your online business.

While there is no law that requires a website operator to post Terms of Service (other than a Privacy Policy in some instances), your Terms give you the opportunity to set forth the conditions under which you allow the users of your website to purchase your products or services, post content, images, or videos, or use and depend upon the information and materials that you provide them. Your Terms are your opportunity to set the expectations of your users in order to avoid, as much as possible, any disagreement about your user’s rights to use your site, your user’s rights to depend upon the availability of your site, your user’s need to pay for your site, your user’s rights to post content to your site, and most importantly your right to remove content and the terms under which you offer any product or service for purchase from your site, among many other things.

A website without such Terms leaves the agreement between the operator and the user to be gleaned from the nature of the site or kind of transaction which may ultimately be determined to be significantly different than intended by the operator. Indeed, in general, posting such terms alone is insufficient. In many instances, securing some evidence of agreement by the user or customer to the Terms is required to successfully enforce them. This is often accomplished by a simple check box next to a statement of agreement to the Terms.

Another general rule is that the closer the user is to the actual text of the Terms, the greater the likelihood of enforceability. For example, if your user checks a box saying they agree to your Terms of Service but you do not provide a conspicuous, direct link to those terms, any enforcement of the best Terms could be difficult. Where agreement to certain terms is crucial to operations, some require not only a link to the terms but they require the user to scroll to the end of the terms before allowing them to indicate their agreement. Other operators require a user to type their “signature” to evidence their agreement to the terms. A signature in that instance can usually be any electronic representation, which intends to bind the user to the agreement but which typically takes the form of the user’s name surrounded by slash marks (eg: /User First and Last Name/). This makes it that much more unlikely that a user could argue that they did not understand that they are agreeing to Terms or to exactly which Terms they are agreeing.

For InternetLitigator Attorneys, the process of drafting a Terms of Service for any website involves four stages.

1. Interview
Preferably in person but often by telephone, we spend the time to get to know the personality of the operator and their attitude toward customers, users, privacy, returns, payment, and other issues relevant to the site.

2. Investigation
By this we mean a thorough investigation and examination of the Website, including any information collected from users or customers, eCommerce, user content, third party content, graphical content, video content, musical content, and all services provided. If there is a membership process, we actually register for the site and work through the entire membership script from beginning to end.

3. Drafting
The information obtained in the first two stages is brought together into one (or more) documents that reflect the specific business of the website, the philosophy of the operator, and the specifics of the day to day operations of the website and business.

4. Annual Review
The website policies are updated to reflect changes in policies or procedures as well as any applicable changes in the law.

Any process that fails to include each of these stages risks inappropriate, incomplete, inaccurate or outdated Terms of Service and consequences include (but are not limited to) customer complaints, returns and chargebacks, copyright infringement claims, and even lawsuits, customer complaints, and third party liability.

Some online services offer form agreements for sale and market them for use on any “website”; however, in our experience each such service is without fail careful to point out that they are not offering legal advice and cannot guarantee the applicability of any agreement of this nature to any particular situation. That ought to make you wonder exactly what value such an agreement provides.

InternetLitigators has written many different documents, such as Terms of Services, for our clients. About half of our assignments in this regard are from clients that already have Terms posted which are either written by the client or adapted from a collection of sources. The other half comes from clients that have no posted Terms at all. Either option is perfectly acceptable.

Generally, a set of Terms for a website will take the same amount of time to draft from scratch as it will to prepare from a document created by the client. This is because re-writing is, in general, a slower process. Often, fixing problematic or internally inconstant, inapplicable, or ineffective language is more time consuming that simply drafting an agreement from the beginning.

In some instances, the setting and posting of certain terms are required by law. California, for example, requires any website collecting personally identifiable information from California residents to post a privacy policy containing at least the following information:

• An identification of the categories of personally identifiable information that the operator collects from consumers.
• An identification of the categories of third-party persons or entities with which the operator may share that personally identifiable information.
• A description of any process in place for consumers to review and make changes to the information collected.
• A description of the process by which the operator will notify users of any material changes to the policy.
• Identify the effective date of the policy.

Conclusion

The effect of any policy that you post can have significant consequences. The failure to post a policy can create significant ambiguities with Users and Customers and in some instances can even be a violation of law. The thought of buying an “off the shelf” policy or simply posting a policy without some legal review by an Internet Attorney is cause for concern and appears, based upon our experience, to be a strategy that is now seldom adopted for serious business websites.

About: Jeffrey A. Cohen is a partner in the El Segundo, California office of Cohen & Richardson, LLP. Mr. Cohen can be reached at JCohen [at] InternetLitigators.com. The reader is cautioned that the information contained herein is not legal advice and is not a substitute for legal advice. There is no attorney client relationship created by this information.

I’m not a big fan of resolutions, and it’s not because I think I will fail (ok.. maybe it is). Let’s just pretend that I’d rather set myself daily goals and do my best to achieve those. With the New Year just passing, I figured I’d hit up the LP Crew and ask them about previous and current resolutions, favorite geeky gadget of 2007 and most memorable event in 2007.

Name: Richard DuBois

Last Year’s Resolution: Stop Smoking

Did you stick to it? – Unfortunately I did not stick to it longer than 2 days. (It’s a long story)

2008 Resolution: I will stop smoking this year for sure if not by x-mas by new years for sure.

Most memorable event in 2007: Driving from Detroit Michigan to Las Vegas Nevada

Coolest Geeky Gadget of 2007: A lot of people say I-phone.. I am not a fan of apple so I say My Motorola Q.. (My Wife calls it a calculator)

Name: Titus Coleman

Last Year’s Resolution: Get a better job. And now im working for LP! 

2008 Resolution: Move out the house

Most memorable event in 2007: I snuck to the 4th row at a Lakers game.

Coolest Geeky Gadget of 2007: PS3

Name: Danielle Wallace

Last Year’s Resolution: I’ve failed at so many resolutions that I don’t even bother to make them anymore

2008 Resolution: If I were to make a resolution, I’d try to quit drinking mountain dew, but I know it’s not gonna happen

Most memorable event in 2007: Finding out that I like emo stuff and it doesn’t matter if other people make fun of it or not.

Coolest Geeky Gadget of 2007: The iPhone without a doubt. When I first held my new iPhone, I felt like I’d stepped forward in time and might be able to call Scotty on it to beam me up to the Enterprise.

Name: Steven Priest

Last Year’s Resolution: To make it to my one year wedding anniversary… alive

Did you stick to it? – Yup, Almost didn’t as I forgot the anniversary. Friend reminded me about 30 minutes before the wife got home

2008 Resolution: To get absolutely hammered new years eve night. I like to keep them small and attainable

Most memorable event in 2007: Purchased my first actual home, like the kind that sits on a plot of land

Coolest Geeky Gadget of 2007: I’ve slacked off in my geeky gadget pursuits, in favor of home improvements, so I have no idea. Geeky gadget budget has been diverted to power tools… which I think is an even trade. You can never have too many power tools

Name: Chris Hart

Last Year’s Resolution: I always resolve not to resolve for the new year

Did you stick to it? Of Course

2008 Resolution: To resolve or not to resolve, that is the question…

Most memorable event in 2007: The birth of my son, and of course starting at Lunar in June.

Coolest Geeky Gadget of 2007: I know everyone will say the iPhone here, but I have to go with the USB Missle Launcher, for all your Cubicle Warfare needs.

Name: Katrina

Last Year’s Resolution: Get it together, quit stalling, and hit the road to see America.

Did you stick to it? – Yes!

2008 Resolution: Stay on the road and keep working on my health.

Most memorable event in 2007: the falling of the freeway bridge in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota while I was camping nearby.

Coolest Geeky Gadget of 2007: GPS

Name: Randy Tarpley

Last Year’s Resolution: None

Did you stick to it? – Nothing ventured nothing gained (or lost) lol

2008 Resolution: To get a pay raise !

Most memorable event in 2007: My dad was diagnosed with throat cancer.

Coolest Geeky Gadget of 2007: MobileMate SD+ Memory Card Reader

Name: Matthew Boster

Last Year’s Resolution: Quit Smoking

Did you stick to it? - No, still smoking :/

2008 Resolution: Quit Smoking :p

Most memorable event in 2007: (this can be anything, war, celebrity, LP
moment) San Diego Trip

Coolest Geeky Gadget of 2007: Umm wife got an iPhone this year, hate to say it buts pretty cool..

Name: Florin Asavoaie

Last Year’s Resolution: One of the best years of my life ! I finished school, I started working for LP, I started my superior studies .

Did you stick to it? – I NEVER FAIL!

2008 Resolution: Um… Dunno, I’m currently flying on the wind… I do my job here, learn for school, spend time with my fiancee and my friends, I try to finish some personal projects that I’ve been working on for sooo long.. I always have something to do, I never loose time

Most memorable event in 2007: Well, it was a year full of memorable things. Let’s say that one of the most special ones was when me and one of my friends were driving on a winding road with around 90 miles an hour and a tire exploded when we were near a lake. We were LUCKY.

Coolest Geeky Gadget of 2007: USB kitchen range – it’s in Romanian… the point is you can cook near your computer… at least keep hot your tea)

Name: Bryan Carl

Last Year’s Resolution: To not make a resolution this year.

Did you stick to it? – yup :p

2008 Resolution: “see last years resolution” hehe

Most memorable event in 2007: My baby girl being born on August 4th !

Coolest Geeky Gadget of 2007: Hum, I thought about this for a long while, I’d have to say the toy submarine I’m building that runs off Wifi.

Name: Mike Reynolds

Last Year’s Resolution: None

Did you stick to it? – I did, because I didn’t make one

2008 Resolution: To have more fun.

Most memorable event in 2007: Virginia Tech shootings

Coolest Geeky Gadget of 2007: OLPC (One Laptop Per Child)

Name: AbbasKhan

Last Year’s Resolution: I set new motives, defined new horizons, but unfortunately failed again! Still, I kept on trying and working hard by stimulating the spirit of life and tried to live it up in as efficient way as I could, which actually brought the success I was looking for and helped me a lot in my long-term ambitions.

Did you stick to it? – Yes, for some time. Aborting these goals would have depressed me, while sticking to them helped somehow, as the truest valor is to dare to live your life.

2008 Resolution: The aims are the same but with new perspectives, which will carry my studies further in the New Year.

Most memorable event in 2007: It would be when I joined LP. I love working with Dani; though, I can’t express my gratitude to her, but, I guess these words will do. I am also impressed by Lee, Amy, and of course the inquisitive Vlad, whose heuristic skills always impress me!

Coolest Geeky Gadget of 2007: Motivation, and essentially, the prayers of my mom – the best source ever that God has created!

Tell us about your New Year’s Failures Resolutions!

Have you noticed that something is missing in our LP Staff Interviews? I mean, they’ve been utterly amazing so far, filled with really great LP personalities, and apparently everyone is in love with our previous interviewees, but still, I feel like something is just not as it should be. There’s an element to these staff interviews that has been lacking, and I just haven’t been able to put my finger on it till now…

We have yet to interview a girl!! *gasp, shock, zomg!*

It’s the truth, so it’s about time we remedied that. Meet Danielle Wallace, one of the busiest ladies at LP.

Hi Danielle! I’m so glad you’re our interviewee this month. Did you ever think you’d be the first girl we interviewed for the Lunarpages Newsletter? Hasn’t it always been your dream?

I’ve been dreaming of getting this opportunity since Andrew mentioned his own interview with you, Tiara. He told me all the special, rockstar-like treatment he received with the limo rides, champagne and constant flowers from adoring fans afterwards. Sadly, I won’t be giving a picture of myself singing in front of a mike, but I can guarantee all my future screaming fanboys that I’m well worth accolades. Just send the candy to Tiara to forward onto me.

[Hooray - I'm famous! ]

So tell us, what is your official job title here at LP?

Administrator Training Manager (in the System Administrator section of the IT area)

Danielle, I know you’re always incredibly busy, but fill us in on your day to day tasks.

I basically handle a slew of activities from emergencies where a server crashes to taking dedicated and VPS calls whenever the call queue is behind to answering questions from our system admins, support supervisors, other managers, and developers. I also assign most the IPs that can’t be automatically assigned and fix those assigned improperly. I help to send the company announcements for migrations and upgrades. There are a bunch of other daily tasks that arise all of the time that I have to handle. Currently, I hold the dedicated administrator meetings each week, although I used to do the escalation meetings and have left those notes for the JSA supervisors to begin doing instead. I train administrators and supervisors on tasks whenever the need arises as well.

Have you worked in any other departments at Lunarpages?

I started out in support area as a remote CSR (called RSR back then) in November 2003 with Amy Armitage as my manager, then transferred to the Admin area in October 2004. I celebrated my 4th year with LP in November 2007.

[Congrats on 4 awesome years!!]

What did you do before Lunarpages? What made you decide to join our Family?

I worked at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa before working for Lunarpages and after as well. Initially, I had both jobs full time from November 2003 to May 2004, when I decided to focus just on Lunarpages. Originally, I decided to start with Lunarpages because I was already hosting here for my gardening site (bestgarden.net) and was active on Lunarforums. Another person on the forum, Hush, mentioned getting hired here, so I decided to apply as well.

Do you host any websites with Lunarpages? If so, pimp them out here.

I have a bunch of websites actually. I own over 60 domains and have about 5 semi-active sites. My oldest site is my gardening one at bestgarden.net and has been in existence since May 2003. It’s ranked #1 on Google for the keywords best garden.

Next, I have my Ruby on Rails site called rubyasylum.com where I provide some tips and tutorials on installing Ruby on Rails applications onto accounts with Lunarpages. This one is more work-related than my others, but I’m a big, big fan for Ruby on Rails.

I have a writing site at anythingeverything.org where I post my poems, short stories and some of my vampire novella called “Damned for Eternity”. In conjunction with that forum, I also have a movie review site that I really need to update at ratingbar.com as I haven’t added a review to it for about 2 years.

Finally, I have my online, interactive fantasy narrative at endar.org about the Endar series of stories. Unfortunately, the narratives are nowhere near finished.

You’re even busy in your free time! What do you like to do in any other spare time you find?

I like to play World of Warcraft or be at my computer incessantly. If I do decide to step away from it, I usually have a book in my hand to read.

If you weren’t working here, where do you think you’d be?

I have no clue really. I have to be at a job where I’m using a computer, so it would have had to involve a computer whatever it might have been.

You work at our Las Vegas Datacenter, which is our second datacenter we added some time ago. Tell us the truth – how many slot machines do you have at your desk?

Really, I don’t play the slots, but can I have some of the guys from Thunder Down Under at my desk instead bringing me sodas or just standing there for my every beck and whim?

[LOL yes but only if Amy can visit them]

Can you share some information about the LV Datacenter?

I could, but then I’d have to kill you.

Actually, the LV Datacenter and office are great places to work. Here’s just a slice of how nice the office looks with the artwork prints we each got to hang up:

Also, we have some zany people working there, from Chris Hart, the cage technician, who could have a comedy act of his own:

to Richard Dubois and Mark Armstrong, both JSA, who if you ask them to wear a pink shirt or their military uniform to work so you can snap pictures of them will gladly do so:

Are you a dork? What makes you one?

I am a dork, which it’s funny that you are asking if I’m a dork rather than a geek. I’ve have discussions with people claiming all us techy people are geeks, and frankly I’m not sexy or exciting enough to be a techno-geek: I’m definitely a dork. My definition of what a dork would be goes along the lines of someone who is maladroit in social situations and prefers technology but isn’t fascinating or cool in any way, shape, or form.

[Little does Danielle know, being cool and fascinating is a prerequisite to working at Lunarpages ;P]

Speaking of dorkdom, I hear you like Harry Potter. It’s beyond my favorite thing in the world (even one of my kitties is named after a character in the books…and my license plate has a character name too). Who’s your favorite HP Character and why?

This question is pretty easy. Severus Snape is my favorite character in the books and in the films (how could he not be when the yummy Alan Rickman plays him eh?). I tend to find darkly brooding, complex men to be very interesting characters and Snape fits that profile to a tee. We never understand his motivations in whole until the end of the series.

OMG Snape! *flails* Okay, because I can’t help but discuss HP if the opportunity presents itself…what did you think of the Final Book?

When the final book was released, the moment was bittersweet as I’ve followed the series since around 2001, so I was sad to see it end. I was also thrilled to be given the chance to experience the last Barnes and Noble Harry Potter midnight book release. Overall, the last book is good, but not the best of the seven. I found the very end to be a bit of a let down for the final chapter despite it ending well in most part. I can’t really go into much depth, since I don’t want to be sent angry emails from people who haven’t read it yet.

[hehe Agreed.]

If you were offered one million dollars or the ability to have one superpower for the rest of your life, what would you choose and why?

I’d choose a superpower and that superpower would be immortality. I did mention I’m writing a vampire novel earlier, so you might see that being immortal sounds a neat idea to me. It would be great to not have to suck blood to be able to do that either. As for why, erm, not sure why I’d want to be immortal, but I think a lot of things closed off to me now that I worry about for money or safety reasons wouldn’t be obstacles if I didn’t have to worry about if I had no timelimit on my lifetime.

You work closely with all of our technology at the datacenter and get to see the behind-the-scenes of the equipment and machines we run. What do you see as the future of hosting technology in 2008 and beyond?

I think the future of hosting technology will be involved with security and security-related systems. I closely follow the progression of IBM in what areas it’s involved (IBM is my favorite technology company) and they are pushing into security in a big way by acquiring security related firms. As the internet continues to open up to more and more levels of people in more countries, securing our data and sites becomes a highly important concern.

Next, I believe Ruby on Rails will continue to grow as a framework for the Ruby language. As it does, we will have more customers asking to utilize it on our servers. We were already ahead of the trend on this by offering it over 2 years ago and providing training to our admins to learn to troubleshoot it.

Another interesting trend might be the ability for the younger generation to learn programming itself. One of the biggest proponents of Ruby, a guy called why the lucky stiff or _why for short, recently opened a site at HacketyHack that provides an easily installable, gui-based program to teach programming to anyone. You can read his Manifesto about the reasoning behind this project here.

And now for some usual LP Fun, what (or who) is your favorite and why…

Animal? Cats, because they are independent and don’t need us to be happy or be not happy

Superhero? If _why were a superhero, he’d be my favorite superhero, but since he isn’t, let’s just pretend he is anyway. His superpower would be creating chunky bacon and giving it out to people who learn to program Ruby.

Place to live? Books, because I can live anywhere when I read them. If I don’t like where I’m living in one particular book, I can put that book down and get another one.

Place to vacation? A cruise ship solving a murder mystery because that would be pretty dang cool. Maybe there’s been a bit too many Agatha Christie books for me in the past?

Season of the year? Autumn because it isn’t too hot, isn’t too cold and the trees are gorgeous. It also has a tinge of sadness because soon winter will arrive.

Website? Wikipedia, since I can find anything on there.

Book? Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Mikhail Dostoevsky, which is a brilliant book to understand human psychology for madness.

Movie? Strange Days with Ralph Fiennes: It has great acting and an intriguing plot along with technological geekiness that’s incredibly cool. Fiennes’ Lenny Nero character is a study on human imperfection, he’s shady and slick but still honorable and will do anything for a friend.

Celebrity? Kevin Spacey is my favorite actor. As for why, he’s been in about 4-5 of the top 100 movies listed on IMDb of all time, so I really shouldn’t have to explain how well he can act anyway.

Hobby? Writing is my favorite hobby and the one I need to work more at doing. Not sure why I enjoy writing, especially poems, but I do.

Video game? World of Warcraft is my current favorite video game. I was a bit addicted to it for awhile, but I’m getting better. I have cut down playing it to only once a week for a few hours nowadays. I wish I could do the same for Mt. Dew (my current and long-term major addiction).

Also, you might as well ask my favorite band, since you didn’t and I’m going to share it anyway Depeche Mode is my favorite music group. I love their songs from “Music for the Masses” and “Songs of Faith and Devotion” the most. If someone hasn’t heard of this group, youtube.com has a load of free to view videos of theirs, so go check them out

I love Depeche Mode as well, so you’re preaching to the choir! Thanks so much for the awesome interview, Danielle. Hopefully this will be the first of many women in technology interviews for us here at the Lunarpages Newsletter. I hope you all enjoyed!

It is no secret that when you get into web hosting, or even just hosting your own site there is an entire language of terms you must learn. From error code abbreviations to aggravating ASP acronyms there is a lot to learn. Here is your beginner’s course in hosting terminology 101.

SEO (search engine optimization)
Designing a Web site so that search engines easily find the pages and index them. The goal is to have your page be in the top 10 results of a search. Optimization includes the choice of words used in the text paragraphs and the placement of those words on the page, both visible and hidden inside meta tags. Search engines use different criteria for indexing your website, and those criteria often change. Thus, it becomes increasingly difficult to satisfy every one equally. Yahoo! and other directory-oriented search sites manually index a Web site, which may provide the best results for the end user.

A Record
A part of the DNS system that assigns an IP address to a domain name. This record indicates to which IP address a user would be sent when requesting a particular domain name.

WYSIWYG
(What You See Is What You Get) A graphical interface to a process which shows how the end-result will look as it is being produced, eg a WYSIWYG HTML editor generates HTML markup but displays the document as if viewed with a Web browser.

domain name
A name that identifies one or more IP addresses: i.e. yourwebsite.com

FrontPage extensions
The Server Extensions for the Microsoft FrontPage application. These are a set of server-side applications that allow you to incorporate advanced features without having to write the complex server-side programs typically required.

HTML (hypertext markup language)
Programming language used for the creation of web sites and other documents that contain text, graphics, and hyperlinks.

Parked domain
A parked domain is a domain that points to the primary domain of your account. For example, if your primary domain is example.com, you can point example.net to the same content by parking it. Anyone who visits your site using example.net will see the same content as example.com. However, the browser’s address bar will show example.net as the visitor navigates your site.

referrer
A referrer is the URL of the page from which a user accesses another page. For example, if you have two pages, example.com/page1.html and example.com/page2.html, and someone accesses example.com/page2.html from a link on example.com/page1.html, the referrer would be example.com/page1.html.

SSI
Server Side Includes are directives that are placed in HTML pages, and evaluated on the server while the pages are being served. They let you add dynamically generated content to an existing HTML page, without having to serve the entire page via a CGI program, or other dynamic technology. SSI page can be identified by .shtml file extension.

whois
Whois is a term referring to a domain name search or look-up feature for a database – typically for Top-Level Domain name registries. Information such as name availability can be found through a query or search using a whois protocol (standard). Most Top-Level Domain registries maintain their own whois database containing domain name contact information.

tracert
a TCP/IP utility which allows the user to determine the route packets take to reach a particular host. Trace route works by increasing the “time to live” value of each successive packet sent. The first packet has a TTL value of one, the second two, and so on. When a packet passes through a host, the host decrements the TTL value by one and forwards the packet to the next host. When a packet with a TTL of one reaches a host, the host discards the packet and sends an ICMP time exceeded. Customers are sometimes asked to perform this function to determine if there is a break in communications between themselves and a remote server such as Lunarpages’ servers.

Usability
Usability is the measure of how easy it is to use a website. A site would be considered usable if it meets certain criteria, which can include: having logical navigation, adherence to established conventions for the web, and providing an easy to use help section. Many other factors can come into play.

For more help with confusing jargon and terminology from the web hosting world, I would check out the Lunarpages Glossary. Here we have gone through the work of defining a lot of these troublesome terms for you.