I was reviewing my website statistics and noticed a website was referring a lot of traffic, so I clicked on the link and saw it was a political website that looked like mine, and even included my own company logo! 

Obviously this needed to be stoped, but how?

If you use a company like HostGator with CPanel, your protection is built in, on other servers you may have to work a bit to protect yourself from these freeloadeers.

If you aren’t using HostGator or another webhost that uses CPanel, you may need to rename all your images, or simply the logo file names to protect yourself from these freeloaders impacting your reputation (on the other hand, you could simply sue, but the effort really isn’t worth it unless the offender has deep pockets).

Many web editors have find/replace functionaily and FrontPage/Expression Web will update all the links to your image files when you rename them.

If You are using Cpanel, you can do what we did. Go to your control panbel and turn on Hot Link Protection. See the screenshots below to see how easy this solution is (be certain to white list your own websites orshared images will dissapear just like in the screenshots below).

Sample of website ripping images with CPanel Hot Link Protection Off

Same site after Hot Link Protection was turned on

By Jason Saeler
Your-Propeller-head.com

Which hosting plan is right for you?

Choosing a hosting plan can be a daunting process for the beginner. With all of the options and hosting companies available, it often takes a Propeller-Head to figure out of the plan that best fits your needs.

The first step when looking for your hosting company is to consider the following points:

• What kind of support does the hosting company provide?
  • Does the hosting company provide telephone support?
  • Does the hosting company provide alternate methods of support such as e-mail, Instant messenger, or Live Chat?
  • Does the hosting company provide 24X7 year round support (including holidays)
• Does the hosting company use Windows, linux, or both types of servers?
• Does the hosting plan provide FrontPage Extensions?
• Does the hosting plan have stats?
• Can you setup or remove e-mail accounts on your own?
• How much control does the hosting company’s control panel give you over your own website?
• Have you searched the web for negative/positive commentary on the hosting company?

The Second step is to assess which type of hosting system your website needs. there are basically two types of servers; Windows or Unix/Linux (Linux is the more common, open source equivalent of Unix. For the purposes of this article, to avoid confusion, I will only be mentioning Linux from now on.).

The easiest ways to distinguish between the two are cost and programming languages. Windows servers tend to cost a bit more for hosting than Linux servers. If you have a new website or are creating a new website, go with a Linux server, because your options are still open.

If you have an existing website and are thinking about moving to another server, you must weigh several factors in making your decision:

• Is your site currently on a Linux or Windows server?
  • Do the addresses in your browsers URL bar end with PHP (Linux) or ASP (Windows)?
  • Do you have any interactive features that might need to be run on a particular type of server? these might be Tell-A-Friend scripts, User log-in pages, Polls, Quizzes, and so on…?
• Do you have a custom shopping cart, and if so which type of database did the developer use, MDB (Windows), SQL (windows) or MYSQL (Linux)?
• Do you have a MYSQL based Blog or Forum such as WordPress or PHPBB installed on your website?

You may or may not have additional considerations about your website. It’s easiest to ask your web developer which type of server your existing website must be setup on.

The Third Step is to consider the functionality & cost of the hosting plans offered and your specific needs.

• Will you be adding additional domains/websites to your plan?
• Do you want a Blog or Forum hosted in your own website?
• Are the hosting company’s rates reasonable
• Does the hosting plan your looking at provide a website control panel?

Finially the Last Step, read my recomendations:

Hostgator a Linux based Hosting company offers incredible rates, packages, and services. This is the company for you if you want multiple sites at one low cost. The control panel hostgator uses (CPanel) puts the control of your website in your own hands and they are very generous with features.

Hostgator provides three basic plans and several sub plans, so you will find one that meets your needs:

• Web Hosting - This option is ideal if you have a couple of domains, or want to setup a one page sales letter site. With the exception of their Hatchling plan, these account allow for an unlimited number of domains and MYSQL databases. One thing to bear in mind if you have a lot of domains you want to setup, is that these accounts nest the other sites inside of the primary domain; you can have unique e-mail addresses, but not stats, and if you accidentally damage the main domain, you could knock all of them offline.
• Resellers – If you have multiple domains and have been thinking about getting a dedicated server but can’t justify the cost, go with a reseller account. you get all of the benefits of a dedicated server without having to maintain the server itself. Another advantage to the Reseller plans is that each site is completely independant, with unique stats.
• Dedicated Servers – If you have a LOT of sites (Like Tom Antion), go with a dedicated server.

HostGator also offers 24X7 365 Telephone, e-mail and Online Chat Support.

What’s Cpanel?

CPanel is, in this humble Propeller-Head’s Opinion the best website hosting system available on the web (I’ve used quite a few systems over the years). Cpanel lets you take control of your website by allowing you to manage nearly every aspect of your website.

List of most Commonly used Features in Cpanel:

• Mail – Complete mail administration system for users, forwarders, spam filtering, and more.
• Web Mail – 3 interfaces to choose from
• Change password
• Park Domains – Same as a pointer
• Addon Domains – Nest additional websites inside of your main account
• FTP Manager – Manage FTP Users and Accounts
• File Manager – Upload/Maange the files in your website
• Disk Usage – How much space are you using?
• Backup – Quickly download compressed files containing website files, stats, and email or your MYSQL databases.
• Password Protect Directories
• Error pages – Setup a redirect for moved, or removed pages so visitors don’t see 404 errors
• Subdomains – Create a subdomain (subdomain.yoursite.com) complete with stats and e-mail
• MySQL Databases – Add, remove or manage databases
• Redirects – setup redirect for websites, pages, or directories in or outside of your domain.
• FrontPage Extensions – Install, repair, or remove FrontPage support
• Web/FTP Stats – Choose from several options, and programs
• Raw Access Logs – Propeller-head version of stats
• Raw Log Manager – Archive your stats to manage your disk space usage
• Error Log – See which errors your visitors are getting, so you can fix them
• Subdomain Stats – See usage for your subdomains.
• Hotlink protection – prevent other websites from linking to your images and steeling your bandwidth
• Fantastico – Quickly and easily add Free applications to your website (Blogs, Forums, Chat Rooms, Guest books, and more..)

Net10.Net a Windows based hosting company has been consistently reliable over the years. I setup my first site on their servers in in 2001 and in that period of time have experienced less than 5 hours of downtime. They offer two stats packages to choose from (Urchin or WebTrends) and have built in spam filters on the mail servers (there is even a downloadable tool for managing your spam quickly and easily). In addition to high marks on reliability, Net10.Net gets an A for Speed. At this time, net10 hasn’t implemented their control panel system, so you need to contact them for modifications to your account (which they always do quickly) such as password protected directories or setting up a database. You do however have a full control panel for your websites e-mail accounts and spam filtering.

By Jason Saeler
Your-Propeller-head.com

I listened to Tom Antion’s Blogging cd (you can read about it on his Blog) and decided to give them a shot. Initially, I tried BlogSpot.com, as it was free and I thought at the time the easiest way to go. Turns out I was wrong. Now don’t get me wrong, it was free and it was extremely easy to setup, but it wasn’t the easiest way to go.

I use a hosting system called CPanel on a number of my website solutions (when I want more control of the website, but don’t want to be calling the hosting company all the time). I was just browsing through my control panel options one day and discovered that it could install a blog for me in less than 3 minutes! It actually came with four different blogs, but I went with Word Press since Tom mentioned it on his CD. The installation script for my Blog, and a lot of other cool applications, was hidden in an option of the CPanel called Fantastico, and it is!

Here is how it worked:

• Logged into control panel
• Clicked on Fantastico
• Selected Word Press from the menu on the left
• Clicked new installation
• Chose Username, Password, selected the directory to install to, and a few additional items
• Clicked Finish Setup

That was all she wrote, My CPanel built the database and installed the files into my website. It didn’t customize the blog for me, which is why it is green and not my typical Orange/Blue combo, but I have time to do that later.

Why would I want the Blog in my website instead of on Blog Spot?
This is a tricky one, as I can see a positive reason to use both WordPress on my website and BlogSpot hosted on the Blog Spot servers. The reason I decided to place the Blog on my website, is that I want my website to get credit for the content and not Blog Spot. If I had the blog hosted on the Blog Spot servers, the search engines would view the content as belonging to the Blog Spot domain name and not mine. On the other hand, if I used the Blog Spot servers, my blog would get established quicker, because of the Blog Spot domain and linking from other sources related to Blog Spot.

Here is a simple example:
Possible URL for Blog Spot - myblog.blogspot.com
Actual URL for my Website – your-propeller-head.com/seblog

Note how blog spot adds a sub-domain for your blog, but is still part of Blog Spot. Then look at the global Presence URL where the Blog is an actual directory.

In the finial evaluation, I decided it would be better in the long run to build traffic to the Blog manually, and let all that extra content add to the content of my own domain name and help my rankings in the search engines.

If you need a hosting company that supports CPanel, so that you can setup your own Blog as quickly and easily as I did, check out the following company. Hostgator is very offer plenty of bandwidth, unlimited number of domains, excellent storage capacity, unlimited number of databases, etc. Hostgator

By Jason Saeler
Your-Propeller-head.com

I listened to Tom Antion’s Blogging cd (you can read about it on his Blog) and decided to give them a shot. Initially, I tried BlogSpot.com, as it was free and I thought at the time the easiest way to go. Turns out I was wrong. Now don’t get me wrong, it was free and it was extremely easy to setup, but it wasn’t the easiest way to go.

I use a hosting system called CPanel on a number of my website solutions (when I want more control of the website, but don’t want to be calling the hosting company all the time). I was just browsing through my control panel options one day and discovered that it could install a blog for me in less than 3 minutes! It actually came with four different blogs, but I went with Word Press since Tom mentioned it on his CD. The installation script for my Blog, and a lot of other cool applications, was hidden in an option of the CPanel called Fantastico, and it is!

Here is how it worked:

• Logged into control panel
• Clicked on Fantastico
• Selected Word Press from the menu on the left
• Clicked new installation
• Chose Username, Password, selected the directory to install to, and a few additional items
• Clicked Finish Setup

That was all she wrote, My CPanel built the database and installed the files into my website. It didn’t customize the blog for me, which is why it is green and not my typical Orange/Blue combo, but I have time to do that later.

Why would I want the Blog in my website instead of on Blog Spot?
This is a tricky one, as I can see a positive reason to use both WordPress on my website and BlogSpot hosted on the Blog Spot servers. The reason I decided to place the Blog on my website, is that I want my website to get credit for the content and not Blog Spot. If I had the blog hosted on the Blog Spot servers, the search engines would view the content as belonging to the Blog Spot domain name and not mine. On the other hand, if I used the Blog Spot servers, my blog would get established quicker, because of the Blog Spot domain and linking from other sources related to Blog Spot.

Here is a simple example:
Possible URL for Blog Spot - myblog.blogspot.com
Actual URL for my Website – your-propeller-head.com/seblog

Note how blog spot adds a sub-domain for your blog, but is still part of Blog Spot. Then look at the global Presence URL where the Blog is an actual directory.

In the finial evaluation, I decided it would be better in the long run to build traffic to the Blog manually, and let all that extra content add to the content of my own domain name and help my rankings in the search engines.

If you need a hosting company that supports CPanel, so that you can setup your own Blog as quickly and easily as I did, check out the following company. Hostgator is very offer plenty of bandwidth, unlimited number of domains, excellent storage capacity, unlimited number of databases, etc. Hostgator