Web Hosting Issues Archives by Mark Murnahan

Remember Who Your Friends Are … And What They Do, Too!

Everybody Needs Friends: Treat Them Right!

Do you remember who your friends are? If you care about them and respect them, why not consider how they earn a living? Times are hard for a lot of businesses, and it may mean more to them than you think. More than that, you may eventually regret going elsewhere … where they will appreciate you less.

I am reminded of a story of two friends, John and Mike. I introduced them many years ago. John was the number one real estate agent in town, and Mike was seeking to sell his house, and buy another. One day, Mike called John and asked him to evaluate his house for market, and make suggestions for improvements to increase the sale price.

John was glad for the call, and he offered his professional time and efforts to help Mike. A few days passed, and John discovered that Mike had listed the home for sale … but chose a different listing agent. As the top agent in town during a good time in real estate, John certainly did not need the commission, but was disappointed because he had wanted to assist our friend Mike in the sale, and subsequent purchase. Plus, he had been somewhat crudely taken advantage of professionally, by his friend.

John was a bit confused as to why his friend chose a different agent. He feared he had somehow offended Mike with the suggested listing price. No, Mike took his advice on the price. Was it the suggested improvements, the commission, the way he combed his hair? No, no, and no … the agent Mike listed with was a young sexy lady. Mike hoped he may have a chance with her, so he took all of John’s suggestions and listed the house elsewhere.

Once the house was sold and Mike was ready to buy his next house, he still overlooked John. He went with a different agent, again.

I really don’t think John ever felt the same about Mike after that. Whether it is right or wrong, I can understand how John could feel insulted. After all, he would have done the sale transaction and the purchase transaction for his friend, without a commission at all. Ironically, Mike had done a similar thing to me, years earlier, and he was on his way to building a reputation for it.

I am certainly not a fan of implied reciprocity (as you can see if you read that link), but you can probably imagine (or remember) how it feels when a friend overlooks you and buys from your competitor, right? It actually kind of stinks, and it is easy to take it as an insult. It also feels even worse when the friend is hurt by a competitor, when you know you could have saved them the trouble. No, it does not feel satisfying … is stinks!

Have you ever witnessed a friend go somewhere else when they needed something? I have heard speculation about the mindset, but I refuse to understand it or adopt it for my own use. I know that some people think you shouldn’t do business with friends, but I think that is largely a horrible attitude.

I will always try my best to give my business to a friend or acquaintance above a stranger. They may really appreciate that you thought of them, and they may really appreciate the business.

Now I’ll tell you what got me to thinking about this.

What Reminded Me of This?

I recently had a friend ask me if I knew a good option for web hosting. Now, when I say “friend”, I don’t mean just a random acquaintance on Twitter. She has sat at my bar for drinks, she co-chaired a school fundraiser with me, and we have celebrated kids birthdays together. She has sat in my office, and she has even seen and touched the corporate YourNew.com, Inc. Race Team Corvettes. She has also been my friend on Facebook for years. So, I know she knows I do something “Internetty”, and she knows I do it very well. She knows I know a lot about this Internet, so she asked me about web hosting.

The sad thing is that she didn’t really know much about what I actually do, or just how much I am able to help her. It bothered me, but mostly because of how I could benefit her, rather than that her business would pay me a dollar or two per month. That’s why I decided that I am going to start letting more people know.

I know that a lot of people who know me don’t really know or understand my work. I do more than a couple things here on this Internet, but I don’t really promote them very much. It’s mostly kind of an “obvious secret”, in a way, because the majority of my work is operating as “the geek behind the geeks”. I generally don’t promote my services to a retail market, or to friends.

You see, aside from my work as a marketing guy, I founded a company sometime over a decade ago, as a merger of two other companies. That company sells Internet services to wholesale clients … who often sell those same services to resellers, who sell them to the public. We’ve been very successful at that market segment, and retail sales are a minimal part of what we do.

We sell web hosting to web hosting companies. You knew it had to come from somewhere, right? In fact, if you have used the Internet very long, there is a very high probability that you have used services I have created or brokered. The company is still my full-time employer after all these years, and I work there as the CEO.

So, why don’t I promote that to my blog readers? It is mostly because I have enough search engine traffic and recognition in that specific area of the industry that it is just a distraction to what I do here at aWebGuy.com. In any case, if you are in need of any of the many Internet-related services we provide, I’m always happy to help … I am just not out to push those on you. In fact, you may even see Google ads for my competitors right here on my blog. It’s ironic, right? 😉

Let Me Show You Why I Have a Reputation

I want to show you why I have a good reputation in my industry. I’m going to start with this: If you have been a reader for a while, you probably have some sense of who I am. You may even know a good amount about my principles and my ethics. You can probably tell that this is not some big scam waiting to suck you in.

Today, I have decided to offer web hosting to my readers and friends at a rate of $10 per month, or $5 per month for ten or more websites. I was going to say free, but come on … having a guy to call who really knows his stuff has got to be worth something, right? I’m not just offering basic web hosting, either. I will include the same web hosting system that is used here at aWebGuy.com … which clearly exceeds an average demand when it comes to web hosting. I’ll even include all the bells and whistles like website builders, ecommerce tools, plenty of email, and support for about any technology you can dream up … just ask me.

Better yet, I will provide your web hosting technical support, myself. Sure, I will have my tech support folks waiting in the wings in case you encounter something really pressing and I am in the shower or otherwise cannot take your call … but I will be the live voice at the other end of the line if you need web hosting help. How many CEOs do you know who will do that? I’ll bet that “Daddy” guy won’t take your call on his way to pick the kids up at school.

In fact, to take me up on this offer, I want you to contact me directly, and I will personally help you to set up your account and walk you through the basics. Now that doesn’t sound like such a scary offer, does it?

The one caveat is that you subscribe to my blog and keep reading to learn more about how to use that web hosting to build your business. If you are a subscriber, just ring me up and introduce yourself. I’ll be delighted to help you.

If you need web hosting, or you need better web hosting, contact me. I’ve provided web hosting for over a decade, including many websites you know and trust. Maybe even your bank, your city, your hospital, or your university. It’s better to trust somebody you are familiar with than trusting a total stranger.

I also want to add that if you know somebody else in the industry … by all means, call them! I really do believe it is valuable to do business with people you know and trust. I think it is always important to know who your friends are, know what they do, and remember them when they can help.

Oh, and one more thing … this is just for new web hosting accounts. I can’t just give away the whole farm. If you are already paying me more, I’m confident there’s a good reason for it. 😀

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WWW or No WWW is Not the Same! Fix with Htaccess 301 Redirect

This is an extremely important and yet simple to implement SEO tip about those “w’s” you often see in a web address. This will seem basic to many people, but it is shocking how often it is misunderstood, handled incorrectly, or overlooked. If you do not have this handled correctly this could make a huge improvement in your SEO efforts.

This is not just about whether somebody can arrive at your website by typing either domain.com or www.domain.com. This is about how Google and other search engines may see it as duplicate content, because it is actually the same thing in two locations. It is also about how all of the links pointing to these duplicate versions of your website are treated, and their value split in two – thus diluted. It will not cause a penalty imposed by the search engines, but there is still a real penalty to it, all the same.

Either version of www or non-www is fine, but it is important to choose one version and funnel your efforts toward the chosen version. If your website has more high quality existing links pointing to one version, that is the right one to use! If you don’t know, be sure to check both versions with a tool like Open Site Explorer.

Don’t Let the Big “Canonicalization” Word Scare You

Relax! I will make this easy for you. The abbreviated Murnahan version is this: Canonicalization means there is just one outcome for multiple possible actions. In this case, it means telling search engines to favor the outcome of your choosing (“www.” or no “www.”).

That big and scary word, “canonicalization“, reminds me that everybody is not familiar with technical SEO (search engine optimization) issues. There are even fewer people who understand and enjoy things like web server architecture, DNS, htaccess, 301 response codes, and other geeky delights which make me excited to wake up in the morning. Yes, I truly enjoy the geeky details of how this Internet works. I hope to make this easy enough that you will enjoy it, too! Well, I will at least make it easy, and I’m even going to provide a simple tool so you can check what your website is saying to the search engines.

WWW. is a Different Domain

When you go to a website, you will find that some of them use “www.” in front of the domain name (example: www.awebguy.com), and some of them do not. It is very common that both options will take you to the same place on the Internet, or at least the same information. That still does not mean search engines see it the same way as humans.

You can skip right to the bottom of this article to read the fix for this, but I think you will benefit by first understanding what is wrong, and why you should fix it.

Note: Even if both versions of www or without www show the same content (web page, video, image, etc.), the problem is not solved. It is common for web hosts to direct both versions to the same place using DNS (domain name service), but that is not the same as a 301 redirect telling search engines which version is the authoritative domain where the content should be indexed.

It is important to know that the domain name (example: awebguy.com) is the “root domain”. Anything coming before the awebguy.com, such as ftp.awebguy.com, pop.awebguy.com, smtp.awebguy.com and etcetera denotes a SUBdomain. Yes, of course, this includes www.awebguy.com, because it is a subdomain, too! An easy way to drive this home is to go to mail.google.com or to www.google.com … they are clearly different.

Now that we understand this point, let’s think of the www and non-www versions as two completely different domains. If somebody links to your website (and let’s hope they will) which one should they be linking to? Using a 301 redirect will actually reflect the correct address in the browser address bar, making it more likely that they will choose the right version when they want to link to your website. That is because before your web server even sent the page to the person visiting your website, it knew which version to send. In the event that somebody gets it wrong, a 301 redirect will tell search engines that the content they linked to is actually at the other location where it should be indexed.

Note: In order to know for certain what your web server is telling people, you must check your server’s HTTP response headers. Don’t worry, I made you a handy little tool to check your website.

What you want to know is whether the header begins with a “HTTP/1.1 200 OK” response, or a different response such as “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”. Only one of the versions will return the 200 OK, while the alternate version may return something else … and perhaps even something unexpected. I made this really easy to check your server’s response headers here:

Enter a URL:

An easy way to see this in action is to type my web address into a browser with either version. If you type it in without the “www”, my web server will know what you meant, and it will deliver the document (web page) at the proper address at the www subdomain – with a “200 OK” status. This will also work similarly for every page on the domain / subdomain, because I use a 301 redirect that simply redirects everything at awebguy.com to its exact equivalent representation with the correct www address.

The SEO “WWW” Fix: HTACCESS and 301 Redirect

Since many people do not configure and manage their own web servers, this is the easiest fix for most websites. If you have access to your main server configuration, use that, but this is simply not the case for most website owners. This solution uses very simple “distributed configuration files” known as “htaccess” which allow you to configure functions on a directory level.

OK, now that I drove you out of your comfort zone with some big techie language, just breathe slowly and get your heart rate back to normal. I am not going to force feed you a bunch of web programming. The fix is actually quite easy, or at least it will be easy if you pay attention. If you own a website and any of this is just too complicated, it would be like owning a car and not knowing how to put gas in it. Should that person really be driving? This is not like rebuilding your car’s transmission … it is like filling it with gas.

The “htaccess” is just a simple little text file you can create and edit with a text editor such as Notepad, SimpleText, or Vi. If you already have an existing htaccess file, you may simply edit it to include additional functions at the bottom of the existing content. Don’t be afraid of it, because it is really not very tricky. It may sound tricky when you consider all the things it can do, but it is normally just a small file with a minimal amount of text in it.

Htaccess is a configuration file that tells your server certain things to do when people ask for your web pages or other website content. It can be used for functions such as password protecting a directory, blocking selected people from accessing your website, and much more. The file name does not look like a lot of them you may see, such as hello.txt or mynameisfred.html, but don’t let that scare you. The htaccess file will begin with a dot (yes, a dot … like this one .) and the full file name is actually “.htaccess“.

You can have multiple of these “.htaccess” files within your website, but the one we are talking about is in the “root directory”. Stop! Don’t get frustrated … that just means it is right there in the same place where your home page and other files are. For example, the file http://www.awebguy.com/murnahan.pdf is in my root directory, but if it was at http://www.awebguy.com/other-directory/murnahan.pdf it would be found in the “other-directory” directory.

If you do not already have any .htaccess files in your website, don’t worry. You can just create one from scratch with a text editor, save it to your computer as htaccess.txt, and then upload it to your website and rename it “.htaccess”.

Within this magical .htaccess file, it will look almost just like plain old English language, and should not be overwhelmingly technical. I will use my own domain name for the examples, but you would of course want to change that to your own. Well, unless you want to redirect your website visitors to my blog, and that is fine, too. There is a lot you can do with this, but I don’t want to explode any heads with all of this technical junk. Technical junk really is like using explosives, sometimes!

I mostly want to explain how to create a 301 Permanent Redirect from either your www to non-www or from non-www to www. In order to do this, all it takes is either editing your existing htaccess file and adding the selected version below into the file, or creating a new htaccess file with the same. You can change the domain to any domain you like, but you will probably want to change it from mine.

Remember to always create a backup copy of anything you edit. If you mess it up and you want me to play a sad tune on my violin, I get paid overtime for that! 🙂

Example of a 301 Permanent Redirect of WWW to Non-WWW

This is the code to use in your htaccess file for redirecting content to the non-www version of your website.

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond % ^www.awebguy.com [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://awebguy.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Example of a 301 Permanent Redirect of Non-WWW to WWW

This is the code to use in your htaccess file for redirecting content to the www version of your website.

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond % ^awebguy.com [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.awebguy.com/$1 [L,R=301]

There are many other handy things you can do with this, and some examples are below. Note that each of these should be created on a single line within the htaccess file.

Example of a 301 Permanent Redirect (note the local address then a space, and then the new URL)

RedirectPermanent /thispage2.html http://www.awebguy.com/thatpage2.php

Example of a 302 Temporary Redirect (this is the same format as 301, but without the “Permanent”)

Redirect /thispage.html http://www.awebguy.com/thatpage.php

Example of Custom 404 (page not found)

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.awebguy.com/404-file-name-here

Know Your Server’s Response Codes!
Even the difference in a slash at the end of an address makes the difference of a good “200 OK” response or a “301 Moved Permanently” or worse. You should be aware of the difference it makes.

I will reiterate … I made this really easy to see what your server is returning for any given web address. Check it here if you are not entirely sure:

Here are some additional resources about htaccess usage:

.htaccess on Wikipedia

Comprehensive guide to .htaccess

Well, there you have it … my answer to www vs. non-www and how to fix it easily with 301 redirect using htaccess. I told you I would make it simple. I welcome your feedback!