Liking WebHostingBuzz, and deals

Posted on February 12, 2012 at 6:04 pm UK

Just over a month ago, I started a relationship with a new web hosting service, WebHostingBuzz. The words you’re reading now are served up to your screen from a database in the cloud (well, from a dedicated Dell server physically located in a data center somewhere in the US).

As I noted in my first post about WebHostingBuzz, you now get content served to you a lot quicker and more reliably. If you look at the footer of this page (on the site itself), you’ll see a counter showing how quickly the page was served. Typically, it’s less than half a second. Page load speed is important to Google ranking.

I’m very pleased with the uptime record since I moved this site – 100%.

uptime

According to Hyperspin – a service that monitors this site and emails me daily reports – 100% uptime has been the state of things since I made the move to WebHostingBuzz. They promise 99.99% so I’m quite pleased with 100% over 30+ days!

So far, I’ve had nothing but a stellar experience with WHB. I’ve not had reason to connect with tech support yet (which is actually a good thing), but I’m pretty confident that when I do – and it’s inevitable that I’ll have to at some time – I’ll encounter the professionalism and great service that I did when the tech team helped me migrate things to their service.

In that first post I wrote last month, I mentioned what the deal is with WHB:

[...] in essence, they’ll host my web presence at no financial cost to me and I’ll talk about them from time to time, here and elsewhere, and give them a platform to occasionally tell their own story. We’re addressing our arrangement openly and transparently: there’s a little badge on this site that declares ‘hosted by WebHostingBuzz,’ for instance, as well as a similar phrase in the footer of each page.

Even if we didn’t have a sponsorship deal, I’d talk about them anyway. But rather than just talk about WHB, I asked them to give me something to offer readers of this blog.

They didn’t hesitate, and here’s the deal and how to get it:

On budget, reseller, business or VPS plans
On either the US or the UK WebHostingBuzz domain
Get 50% off your first purchase, for any purchase period
Your coupon code is: hostingdream
Enter that code in the coupons box when you get to the checkout

That’s a good deal – 50% off. (I get no commission, by the way, nor any other type of benefit if you take up WHB’s special offer. Just to be clear on that point.)

If you decide to join up with WebHostingBuzz, let me know how you get on.

A golden milestone to mark a decade

Posted on December 29, 2011 at 6:58 pm UK

The Golden Age of tech blogging is over, says Jeremiah Owyang in his post on December 27.

[...] Like the film industry, the Golden Era is the emergence period, when fresh innovation in a new medium is born. New techniques, revolutionary content, and different business models emerge as innovators pioneer a new medium.

He cites four trends to support his view:

Corporate acquisitions stymie innovation – reference in particular to AOL’s acquisition of TechCrunch in 2010, shoe-horning TechCrunch into Huffington Post control following AOL’s acquisition of that publisher earlier this year, and the nuclear fallout between them all in recent months.
Tech blogs are experiencing major talent turnover – reference to exoduses at ReadWriteWeb, Mashable and TechCrunch.
The audience needs have changed, they want: faster, smaller, and social – the attention crunch (as defined by Steve Rubel) combined with Ben Metcalfe‘s take (that resonates strongly with me): “There are just so many blogs/news websites/sources vying for your attention that you can’t read them all and build up the kind of relationship that you once could when the size of the universe was degrees of magnitude smaller.”
As space matures, business models solidify, giving room for new disruptors – the blogosphere continues to evolve.

Jeremiah’s fourth trend speaks specifically to his assertion of the passing of a moment: the Golden Age is over, a point he makes pretty clearly in the opening paragraphs in his post.

I agree with that assertion and the overall sentiment of Jeremiah’s post, considering it as defining a milestone period following the emergence of accessible technology tools in the early 2000s that enabled anyone with an opinion, a means to type, an internet connection to express that opinion and a public place on the web to publish it – you have Pyra Labs to thank for that kick start – which led to the Golden Age of which he speaks.

However, I would extend it way beyond tech blogging to embrace all blogging. Indeed, trends three and four unquestionably apply to other areas of online written expression in business and commerce as well as hint at new means of communicating and sharing opinion on the social web

So where does this milestone, this marker on the road, place us today a decade (roughly) on from that kick start I mentioned?

Some, like Brian Solis – Jeremiah’s colleague at Altimeter Group – think that what’s changing is the players, not the game. Marshall Kirkpatrick – one of the social web’s most authoritative voices – offers credible opinion on three things that could help make the new era of tech blogging even better than the last one. Bernie Goldbach speaks of a big distinction between the era of blogging and the era of social media.

These and others are all terrific opinions, offering great perspectives on disruptive change that continues and will evolve in ways we can’t accurately predict.

We’ve just passed one milestone, one marker. At the moment, it’s hard to tell where the next one is.

In the meantime, keep talking, articulating your opinions, sharing your content, good or bad (as perceived by others). You’ll be a key part of defining what comes next.

Related posts:

Top 20 UK tech blogs for August 2011

Posted on August 2, 2011 at 7:48 am UK

European search engine and news portal Wikio will be publishing its latest monthly ranking of the top 100 technology blogs in the UK shortly.

As usual, they’ve given me an advance look ahead of publication at the top 20 from the full list of the top 100 tech blogs.

Here are the top 20 for August 2011. Positions relative to last month are shown in parentheses:

TechCrunch Europe‘s ranking as the #1 technology blog in the UK looks impregnable with the site at this position during every month throughout the year so far. One new entry is Twittercism – now part of Mediabistro’s AllTwitter.com – at #19; a notable absence is the BBC’s dot.Rory which dropped out of the top 20 this month.

Both eWEEKeurope and Tech Blog rose four places compared to July while markboulton.co.uk and Coding Horror both fell six places. Other movements up and down are mostly a bit of jostling here and there with no dramatic shifts in positions compared to last month.

Check Wikio’s ranking methodology for details on how they arrive at the ranking each month. And, if you want to suggest others blogs for inclusion in Wikio’s tech list that aren’t there already, either let me know or apply on the Wikio website.

Top 20 UK tech blogs for July 2011

Posted on July 2, 2011 at 7:46 am UK

In a few days’ time, European search engine and news portal Wikio will be publishing their latest monthly ranking of the top 100 technology blogs in the UK.

As usual, they’ve given me a sneak peek ahead of publication at the top 20 from the full list of the top 100 tech blogs.

Here are the top 20 for July 2011. Positions relative to last month are shown in parentheses:

Quite a shuffling in the middle rankings this month. Biggest jumpers are Naked Security – Sophos, up 6 places to #4; and markboulton.co.uk, up 5 to #12. Notable dropper is dot.Rory, down 13 places to #19.

Keeping its hold on the top position, TechCrunch Europe maintains its supremacy as the Number One Tech Blog in the UK, the position it’s held during all of 2011 so far.

Top 20 UK tech blogs for June 2011

Posted on June 2, 2011 at 8:03 am UK

On June 5, European search engine and news portal Wikio will be publishing their latest monthly ranking of the top 100 technology blogs in the UK.

As usual, they’ve given me a sneak peek ahead of publication at the top 20 from the full list of the top 100 tech blogs.

Here are the top 20 for June 2011. Positions relative to last month are shown in parentheses:

For many months in a row, there’s been no change in the top five ranking, with TechCrunch Europe continuing to lead the pack as Wikio’s top tech blog of all in the UK. There are three new entries into the top 20 this month: Naked Security – Sophos at 10, Photography Blog at 18 and We Are Social at 20.