When it comes to hosting, I see things a bit differently.

Here’s why I like webhostingpad.com:

• $59/year for unlimited space/bandwidth/domains/databases
• has cPanel & Fantastico (super-quick WordPress setup)
• 24/7 support by phone or email
• Their mailservers work great, that is for anyone who’s not switching to google apps anyway

I’m not going to lie, I’ve had occasion to email them about slight downtime, and there have been some bigger crashes on their servers which have left me with hours and hours of downtime, but that is rare, and all around, I feel it’s the best value out there.

Whenever I have had an issue and am feeling grumpy about webhostingpad, I just look at other hosting providers … seems if it ain’t one thing it’s another

I would love it if someone can find me a hosting company that has 100% uptime for a reasonable price, great support, cPanel, etc.

Meanwhile, webhostingpad is still my pick!

I’ve been in this business in one capacity or another (and by “this business” I mean I.T.) for about a thousand years.

I’m oldschool.

I won’t bore you with stories of how excited I was about my fast, powerful new 386 in the early 90s, but anyway, suffice it to say, “we’ve come a long way, baby”.

Nowadays, it’s truly astonishing to me what GREAT VALUE I can offer my clientele by creating a WordPress website, starting with an AWESOME studiopress.com premium theme, and then customizing it to the point where it is exactly what the client wants.

I can offer this service for $400-$500 because I do it over and over again and I am FAST (now – LOL – not in the early days).

I do remember the heady days of the dot com bubble and it used to take a team of programmers/designers MONTHS of planning meetings, research, coding, thinking, troubleshooting, etc. etc., to come up with a really perfect relational database and a bulletproof CMS (content management system) back end.

This is what I can do for that very same $400!

The future is so bright, we have to wear shades, WordPress users!

I’m an evangelist – I’m here to help.

Use WordPress, learn it, get to know the plugins, tinker with it, and you will love it for its beautiful, intelligent self.

iWannaRock!

I was looking into some different ways to sell CDs and MP3 tracks online for a new client, my first musician website selling music online.
First of all, to my chagrin, I discovered that Apple iTunes controls the lion’s share of digitally downloaded music sales… 60-80+ percent, depending on whose information you want to believe.

I saw 85% somewhere, which just amazed me. It’s interesting that in this digital age with so many choices, there is a kind of a musical Walmart on the web.

But I digress.

I have lots of research to do on the various services that distribute to iTunes, but there are several, and it seems that if you are going to sell music online at all, you may as well get listed at iTunes.

My client came equipped with sage advice from other musicians about good services to use, and names that came up were TuneCore.com & CDBaby.com – which definitely distribute to iTunes and seem to have a great reputation all-round.

garagespin.com - 7 magic ways to sell your music on iTunes

Here is an article at garagespin.com with 7 ways to sell your music on iTunes. It is unclear if there are only 7 ways or if 7 is just a magical number, and if you can’t figure out one method out of 7, then… perhaps you should hire someone.

Another useful article was at ehow.com – it corroborated what I had heard about tunecore.com – the author of the article says he doesn’t work for them but does recommend them as a way to sell your music at the iTunes store.

Another website/service which keeps coming up is cdbaby – another route to the iTunes store.

I’m definitely going to have to do a Part 2 of this article, when I get going on this project, but here is my pick so far, not having used any of them, and as far as I know, not having any access to the iTunes store:

AudioLife.com - looks good!

AudioLife.com - I like their clear website, lots of videos to watch and pictures to click (as per DUMB IT DOWN, I do not like to read unless absolutely necessary).

Here is what I like about AudioLife.com:

free service, no upfront cost but they take a CHUNK OF COMMISSION (found more info here)

totally embeddable store – keep the traffic on your own website while shoppers browse CDs and tracks

sample clips player, so the shoppers can hear about 10-30 seconds of the track and decide whether or not to buy

OK, stay tuned for Part 2, where I do some testing!

When considering website layout, navigation, usability, pageviews, etc., it is important to remember one thing:

DUMB IT DOWN.

Yes, it’s true.

If you are actually reading this article, it’s because you are one of the few Internet users I’ve ever watched doing anything other than the following:

1) Typing URLs right into Google (LOL – I used to wonder about that on the analytics side, because I didn’t even realize that so many people use Google as the address bar), and

2) CLICKING PICTURES.

Why don’t you watch some regular users browsing the internet some time – and remember, if users can’t click the pictures on your website, then you’d better have some keen & enthusiastic readers visiting it!

With WordPress websites, you really don’t have an excuse not to use plenty of images, or videos if you prefer, because it is just so easy to add media in the CMS. Yes, I do refer to WordPress as a CMS.

In fact, I’m so lazy on both ends, I avoid reading when and where possible, and when blogging, I find it easier to embed youtube videos than images… just paste the embed code and boom (how do you like the Lupe Fiasco video? LOL!).

I’m not saying people can’t read, I’m saying they prefer to click the pictures.

I prefer to click pictures too… if I have to do too much reading, I feel like I’d better be charging hourly because it’s just soooo muchhhh worrrrkkkkk

Well, I ran into a glitch which had no easy resolution – after installing the plugin without a hitch, I received this error message when trying to access the plugin’s options in Settings:

“You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page“.

I did find an excellent, step-by step solution – THANKS ZALDS!

If you are having the same problem, check this out – it works like a charm to my amazement and delight:

“You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page” ERROR FIX

Once you get the plugin going, you might as well try this too:

Anyone who has had a website wiped out by hackers or a hosting company failure, without adequate backups knows that stinging regret.

The safe way to get a complete backup is in the backend via cPanel.  Once a week, or more frequently if you update frequently. The safest thing is to take a total backup each time you update. AND keep a couple of older ones too, just for good measure.

Here is an interesting concept: automated cPanel backups