For those of you who follow Google Page Rank, this has been a pretty exciting week. After an almost 6 month wait, Google has finally updated the rank value it assigns web sites (which then contributes to how well the sites rank in the search engine results).  The major change for this update has been in the way Google looks at “paid links”. For years, webmasters have used the google page rank of their site to trade, buy and sell links.

For example, if you were to start a new website, you would have a starting page rank (PR of 0). To reaise your PR you would have to get sites with a higher PR to link back to you. This would in effect put sites with high PR in a good amount of power. They could now sell links on their site, and the higher PR, the more money they could get for the links.

Google has obviously never been a fan of this. They want sites to link to you because you have quality content, not because you paid them off. In effect, you would be cheating the google algorithm and make google think you are a good site that deserves to be higher in rankings (while in reality, you just paid off some high PR sites).

After several months of speculation, Google has finally rolled out their “paid link penalization” page rank update. Although this in itself wasn’t surprising, the kind of sites that got hit is shocking. Forbes, New York Times, and many other notable web properties were hit the hardest. In fact, Forbes.com now has a measly page rank of 4, while our three new websites that were started just a month ago now rate at PR5!

On that note, although I don’t claim to be an SEO expert, I have been experimenting with some SEO for our new websites. Surprisingly, I must have figured out the correct formula because all 3 of our new sites were ranked at PR5 – something that is unheard of for a brand new website! Unfortunately, those rankings came at a cost of lowering T35.com from PR6 down to PR5. I am hoping that once the next PR update rolls around, the new sites will be considered *established* and will boost T35 to PR6-7 instead of dragging it down to 6.

 With Google now officially frowning on paid links, and even link exchanges, I wonder how this will impact the web development landscape? At the same time, more and more people are becoming frustrated with the vagueness of the Google page rank. It might be a good opportunity for another company to come out with their own site ranking tool. Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com are all good candidates.

I would love to hear some feedback from all of you guys. How was your site affected by the new page rank update? Do you plan to change the way you conduct business (link exchanges, etc..)?

For those of you who follow Google Page Rank, this has been a pretty exciting week. After an almost 6 month wait, Google has finally updated the rank value it assigns web sites (which then contributes to how well the sites rank in the search engine results).  The major change for this update has been [...]

Those of you who follow business week might have noticed that I was selected for the top 25 entrepreneurs under 25 years old around this time last year. They just did a follow up interview and article, so for those who are interested:

Then:
Over the years, Melen has batted away offers from big Internet companies looking to buy out his T35 Hosting service for fear that they would take away the offering that most distinguishes it from competitors: unlimited space and bandwidth hosted for free. Last year, Melen had set out three goals to expand his company in 2007: advertise more, offer domain name hosting for free, and boost features to its paid hosting offerings.

Now:
Melen says he met all three goals and increased his customer base to about 400,000, up from 300,000 a year ago. Still, one unforeseen competitor emerged: Google (GOOG), which launched free Web-hosting service Google Pages in February. Melen believes the search giant’s presence will help boost overall growth in the Web-hosting space, but in order to prevent losing market share, T35 will have to provide more unique offerings. Some of his strategies include starting a blog about Web hosting and adding social networking features to hosted pages.”

Here’s the link to the article:
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/10/1022_under25_finalists/source/17.htm

And here’s the actual “Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25″ from 2006:

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/10/bestunder25/index_01.htm

Those of you who follow business week might have noticed that I was selected for the top 25 entrepreneurs under 25 years old around this time last year. They just did a follow up interview and article, so for those who are interested: Then: Over the years, Melen has batted away offers from big Internet [...]

The wait is finally over! I have officially completed the long awaited free php web hosting comparison. To benchmark the different hosts I used a php script that timed itself while executing tens of thousands of math operations. This script was then run 10 times each day on 7 different days (for a consecutive week). The score signifies the average amount of seconds it took the script to execute over the 70 attempts.

For informational purposes I have included the php version and the max execution time for each individual host. If you want to know even more, I linked the version number of each host to a detailed php information file (hosted on that specific host).

On a more personal note, I am somewhat disappointed at T35 Hosting’s mediocre performance. Rest assured we will be taking steps in the next few weeks to improve our services! This comparison took almost 10 hours to complete, so comments and feedback is very appreciated.

Web Host	Space/BW	PHP Info	Benchmark (Lower is better)
110mb	Space: 5 Gigs Bandwidth: 300 Gigs	Version: 5.1.6 Max Exec: 15 seconds	Average 44 ms Lowest 41 ms Highest 46 ms
x10Hosting	Space: 100 Megs Bandwidth: 3 Gigs	Version: 5.2.3 Max Exec: 10 seconds	Average 47 ms Lowest 38 ms Highest 52 ms
T35 Hosting	Space: Unlimited Bandwidth: Unlimited	Version: 5.2.0 Max Exec: 15 seconds	Average 57 ms Lowest 50 ms Highest 67 ms
FreeHostia	Space: 250 Megs Bandwidth: 5 Gigs	Version: 4.4.0 Max Exec: 30 seconds	Average 57 ms Lowest 53 ms Highest 62 ms
12gbFree	Space: 12 Gigs Bandwidth: 25 Gigs	Version: 5.1.6 Max Exec: 20 seconds	Average 61 ms Lowest 52 ms Highest 65 ms
100Webspace	Space: 100 Megs Bandwidth: 3 Gigs	Version: 4.4.0 Max Exec: 30 seconds	Average 77 ms Lowest 72 ms Highest 93 ms
lycos.tripod	Space: 1 Gigs Bandwidth: Unlimited	Version: 4.4.6 Max Exec: 10 seconds	Average 168 ms Lowest 136 ms Highest 227 ms
Freewebs	Space: 40 Megs Bandwidth: 500 Megs	No Longer offers PHP

The wait is finally over! I have officially completed the long awaited free php web hosting comparison. To benchmark the different hosts I used a php script that timed itself while executing tens of thousands of math operations. This script was then run 10 times each day on 7 different days (for a consecutive week). [...]

I was setting up another server for T35 Hosting yesterday and noticed something new in cpanel’s WHM (the administrative side of cpanel). They now seem to have a pretty comprehensive list of one-click-install scripts that can be offered to customers.

For those not so familiar with Fantastico, that has pretty much been their business model since they started a few years back. In fact, Fantastico has been so popular that it’s now a standard feature on most cPanel web hosts. Now that cPanel itself is offering the same service, has fantastico become obsolete? Why pay an extra $10/month per server and deal with the setup hassles when cpanel seems to offer many of the same one-click-install scripts? Granted cpanel’s list of add-on scripts isn’t as comprehensive as fantastico’s, they do seem to offer many of the most popular and the most used ones.

I’m curious to see how Fantastico responds to this new challenge from cPanel — especially when cPanel controls the software and interface that Fantastico’s scripts are built for.

I was setting up another server for T35 Hosting yesterday and noticed something new in cpanel’s WHM (the administrative side of cpanel). They now seem to have a pretty comprehensive list of one-click-install scripts that can be offered to customers. For those not so familiar with Fantastico, that has pretty much been their business model [...]

I just wanted to give you guys a quick update about the things going on with the site. First and foremost, I managed to spend some time playing around with the blog and I added a bunch of new features. You can now see “recent readers” in the right column, as well as avatars for people commenting on the posts. If anyone has any feedback or suggestions, please let me know!

I am also hard at work wrapping up the php free web hosting comparison that I promised. If anyone has any last minute suggestions of free web hosts they want me to test, please let me know asap! I’m also open to suggestions on future testing and comparisons I can do. I’m thinking it might be worthwhile to start keeping track of up-time and other stats on the major free hosts. What do you guys think?

On the T35 Hosting front I’ve been racking my brains trying to figure out why we come up #9 for “free web hosting” on yahoo, and barely break top 100 on google. Any SEO experts out there that want to help? On google, T35 Hosting isn’t even ranking high for its own company name of “T35 Hosting”!

I just wanted to give you guys a quick update about the things going on with the site. First and foremost, I managed to spend some time playing around with the blog and I added a bunch of new features. You can now see “recent readers” in the right column, as well as avatars for [...]

While browsing a web hosting forum yesterday I noticed an interesting phenomenon. Unlimited and unmetered hosting is becoming a big taboo in the hosting world. In fact, most web hosting and webmaster forums have begun banning all posts about such plans.

First a little background, including the difference between unlimited and un-metered.

Unlimited space and bandwidth is something that has been around since the beginning of web hosting. A web host usually offers this as a way to attract customers, while at the same time hoping that nobody uses any significant amounts of space or bandwidth. Unfortunately, many hosts offered such a service with the intention of terminating accounts that used more than a few megabytes of space or bandwidth. Thus in the late 90’s there was a significant customer backlash to companies offering “unlimited plans”. As a result, many hosts started clarifying that they didn’t offer “unlimited plans” but instead were offering “un-metered” plans. The difference they claimed is that they just didn’t meter or keep tack of bandwidth usage on the servers.

The present day situation

Almost half a decade later, it now feels like we are experiencing a second coming of the unlimited/unmetered backlash. What’s interesting is there are companies, like T35 for example, that still offer unlimited plans without any intention of deleting accounts that use a lot of resources. In fact, many companies have found ways to offer these plans by placing restrictions on other features to keep everything balanced. At T35 Hosting for example, we limit file sizes to 512kb. That makes it hard for a customer to use tens of gigabytes of space for legitimate reasons (although we do have a few using over 10gb). Unfortunately, the hosts that have abused the unlimited/unmetered offerings seemed to have ruined it for everyone. We now find ourselves at a point where we can’t even advertise these kind of plans in some of the largest webmaster forums on the ‘net!

What now?

All of this reminds me of the automobile industry, where based on bad experiences in the 1980’s, Americans have come to associate hatchbacks with something very negative — making it very hard for any car company to successfully launch such a car. I wonder if the hosting industry has come to a point where we need to re-brand unlimited plans to something that would make them more marketable? Kind of like calling hatchbacks “sports wagons” (audi a3, etc..). What do you guys think? Are unlimited and un-metered plans still worth keeping around? Are the companies offering hundreads of gigabytes (or even Terabytes) of resources the new “unlimited” web hosts?

While browsing a web hosting forum yesterday I noticed an interesting phenomenon. Unlimited and unmetered hosting is becoming a big taboo in the hosting world. In fact, most web hosting and webmaster forums have begun banning all posts about such plans. First a little background, including the difference between unlimited and un-metered. Unlimited space and [...]

Since the last web host comparison was so well received, I decided we should have another one! This time I want to evaluate some of today’s largest free web hosts based on one of the most important features: PHP. For the test, I plan to use several popular scripts to test the load time, execution time, and reliability of each individual web host. To make it even more interesting, I am going to let the users recommend the hosts that should be tested. Want to know how your free host compares? Always wanted to know the reliability and speed of a web host? Do you run a web hosting company and want to submit your site for review? Just recommend it in the comments!

The only rules are that the host must have a free web hosting plan (no post-to-host or anything that requires you to do something in exchange for the hosting). I also ask that the host you recommend be rated in the top 100,000 sites on alexa. (otherwise we’ll get too many small hosts that nobody uses or knows about). Once I get enough submissions I’ll be performing a realizability test as well as the php test over the span of one week. Then I’ll average the scores and post it up here. To kick this off I’m going to self nominate T35 Hosting (just because I’m curious how well we will stack up against the competition). Oh, and don’t worry, this test will be completely un-biased. I am just as interested to see how everyone stacks up as you guys!

Since the last web host comparison was so well received, I decided we should have another one! This time I want to evaluate some of today’s largest free web hosts based on one of the most important features: PHP. For the test, I plan to use several popular scripts to test the load time, execution [...]

With T35 Hosting celebrating our 10 year anniversary this year, I was digging through some old boxes to find something cool to put on the site. To my surprise, I found the original web hosting business plan! Thumbing through it brought me to the largest section: “The Competition.” Quickly skimming down the list, I was shocked to see so many old names… names that weren’t around anymore. Partially for the benefit of the readers and partially for nostalgic reasons I decided to come up with a list of the biggest free web hosts of the late 90s and take a quick look at where they are today.

FortuneCity
Late 90s Alex Ranking: ~ #200 Free Hosting? 100mb	Today Alex Ranking: #1,660 Free Hosting? No
FortuneCity, founded in 1997, was one of the first free web hosting providers. They also grew to become one of the largest, consistently ranking in the top 200 web properties in the world. These days they have completely dropped their free web hosting plan (which used to be the only service they offered). Their new site looks sleek, but the paid hosting plans (and prices) are nothing to write home about.

Geocities
Late 90s Alex Ranking: ~ #100 Free Hosting? 5mb	Today Alex Ranking: #70 Free Hosting? 15mb
Geocities is perhaps one of the most well known free hosts. So popular in fact, that it eventually got Yahoo’s attention and was purchased in early 2000. Re-branded as Yahoo! Geocities, it now caters towards paid business plans, although a 15mb free hosting plan is still offered.

Hypermart
Late 90s Alex Ranking: ~ #150 Free Hosting? 75mb	Today Alex Ranking: #18,931 Free Hosting? No
Although Hypermart was relatively late to the scene in 1999, it became a quick favorite by offering a whopping 75mb of space. Unfortunately it has since stopped providing its free web hosting plan. In a somewhat botched maneuver they attempted to force-convert their free members to paid accounts. Since the late 90s they have went from being in the top 150 web properties to barely making the top 20,000.

Xoom
Late 90s Alex Ranking: ~ #500 Free Hosting? 500mb	Today Alex Ranking: #26,384 Free Hosting? No
Xoom was also a fairly popular free web host that got a significant boost when it was purchased by NBC in 2000. Unfortunately the new management had very little experience in running a web host. The company soon failed and closed up shop. The domain itself was unused for years until recently when it was purchased by paypal-like company.

Crosswinds
Late 90s Alex Ranking: ~ #1000 Free Hosting? Unlimited	Today Alex Ranking: #161,001 Free Hosting? No
A medium-sized web host, Crosswinds eventually gave up on its free hosting offerings. Today it’s a regular paid hosting provider and its rankings have consequently dropped from 1,000 to not even cracking the top 100,000. There are rumors of the company bringing back its free hosting operation, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

T35 Hosting
Late 90s Alex Ranking: ~ #2,000 Free Hosting? 35mb	Today Alex Ranking: #5,000 Free Hosting? Unlimited
Although T35 Hosting was never as big as Fortunecities and never had the financial backing of NBC-Xoom, it has surprisingly survived where most others have failed.

A quick look at this list shows a very pessimistic view of the once flourishing free hosting industry. Some of the biggest names in the industry have closed up shop and have repositioned themselves as paid hosting providers. Even companies with deep financial pockets (like NBC-Xoom) have folded under the pressure. What do you guys think? Is there one common link that caused the downfall of so many of these companies? Is this really the end of the free web hosting era? What does it take to survive as a free web host in the 21st century?

With T35 Hosting celebrating our 10 year anniversary this year, I was digging through some old boxes to find something cool to put on the site. To my surprise, I found the original web hosting business plan! Thumbing through it brought me to the largest section: “The Competition.” Quickly skimming down the list, I was [...]

Now that the site is officially set up, I just wanted to introduce myself and let everyone know what to expect. First, a bit about myself.

My name is Alex and I founded a web hosting company (T35 Hosting) in 1997, moving it to the present day T35.com domain in march of 1999. For those of you wondering what “T35″ stands for (and i know you are!), the original concept was a top sites list — top 35. Hosting was only a side project and was run from hosting.t35.com. It didn’t take long for our hosting service to become so popular that we closed up the other sites and decided to focus on solely free web hosting. In fact, T35 Hosting quickly became one of the top 5,000 web properties in the world (as ranked by Alexa) and we have consistently maintained that ranking since then. It made sense to keep t35.com since members received “user.t35.com” URLs and t35.com allowed for shorter website addresses.

Since then, T35 Hosting has gone through many transformations and I have personally been involved not only with T35, but have worked on dozens of other projects along the way. These range from home-grown ideas like wisecounter.com (sold in 2006), to many other start-ups, spanning across several different industries.

With over 10 years of web hosting and web development experience under my belt, I decided this blog might be a good outlet to share some of my experiences. I am hoping that I can not only provide a helpful insight into the world of web hosting, but to share all the knowledge and information that I have learned in the last decade.

I hope to follow up this introductory post with some articles shortly. Expect something good in the next few days… definitely before the end of the weekend!

Now that the site is officially set up, I just wanted to introduce myself and let everyone know what to expect. First, a bit about myself. My name is Alex and I founded a web hosting company (T35 Hosting) in 1997, moving it to the present day T35.com domain in march of 1999. For those [...]