Review Hell Blog

Has this happened to you: your emails seem to be shooting off into the netherworld, never to be heard from again. That is, they’re not getting any responses. Days go by and you realize there’s a growing list of people you’re still waiting to hear back from…such a strange coincidence, they should all ignore you at once.

But come to find out you’ve been blacklisted! Rather, your email server has been blacklisted. It’s been identified as a vehicle for spam, and there you were sending your important business emails to important clients, none the wiser.

CloudFlare is a content delivery network (CDN) that has gained a lot of popularity because of their alleged ability to supercharge your website. A lot of so-called experts (and even some web hosts) claim that implementing CloudFlare can help your site can gain a dramatic amount of boost in terms of speed and security!

Sounds pretty awesome, right?

While that might have been a fact a few years ago, there’s no truth to all of that anymore. It’s all just bullshit now. To me, CloudFlare is nothing but a buzzword that helps hosts attract customers who want speedy websites (i.e., everyone).

The unfortunate experience of having your site blacklisted can cost you money, reputation and time spent finding and fixing the offending site behavior. When you’re blacklisted, potential visitors are alerted that your site has been blacklisted, and they’re advised to back out. No good for business.

You can also be blacklisted by having your emails get rejected. Same applies: bad for business.

If you’re innocent of malicious behavior but you’ve been blacklisted through no fault of your own, you probably got hacked. If you didn’t get hacked, it could be your web host’s email server.

No worries, it happens everyday and there’s a way out.

You may not think hackers are interested in you or your website. Sorry to burst your bubble but you are so wrong. They covet your site, actually, for its ability to spread malware and malicious code that does all sorts of evil things in the world.

Since 2011, the Federal Government has pushed an initiative to get all its departments to move to the Cloud. It’s one of President Obama’s pet projects, and the Feds are spending about a quarter of their annual IT budget on the move.

If it’s good enough for the Feds, who house arguably the most sensitive data in the world, why shouldn’t it be good enough for the rest of us?

Come on, admit it: you want to save the planet. Somewhere, deep inside all of us, there’s a tiny voice telling us that “going green” matters… that we can make a difference.

That’s what web hosting companies are counting on anyway.

So, you think you need a dedicated IP address? Well if you’re running an e-commerce site that may be true. But for the rest of you, what is it that you think you’re getting when you shell out the extra dough for SEO Hosting?

It never fails to surprise me how cavalier business owners are when it comes to backing up their websites. Of course it may simply be ignorance (“nobody ever told me!“) or it may be from misguided advice (“your web host keeps all that on file for you“) but sometimes it’s plain old negligence.

And that, of course, is inexcusable…

People shopping for web hosting have different requirements, but I noticed a trend amongst customers who are new to web hosting — they all want live chat support!

I can’t blame them though. The idea of being able to get a hold of your host whenever you need assistance seems great, especially when you know very little about how things work. But is live chat support something that could spell the difference between having a good or bad experience with a host? Not really.

There are many reasons why the lack of live chat support shouldn’t be a deal breaker and I’ve listed a few interesting ones below.

While some hosts add totally benign plugins to WordPress, like WP Super Cache or JetPack, a few are now inserting what look to be advertisements for “premium” features for your blog. Are some auto-installers now taking a dark, new direction?