Web Hosting Blog

Videos.  Are.  Cool.

One of the best ways to promote yourself as a performer/artist online is by sharing videos of your music performances.  These days there are thousands of video tools and sharing sites that make posting videos easier and more affordable than ever before.   With so many options out there, we’ve decided to highlight some of the methods and techniques that make the most sense to us.

Where do I start?

The first obvious place to start is to have a good video file available.  The type and size of your video will be important in determining where you want to upload your show/event.  Sometimes your raw video file will need some adjustments to make it ready for the web.  You may need to convert the file to a type (.wmv, .mov, .mpg, etc. ) and/or the resolution of a video to make it compatible for web use.  Although internet connections are getting fast, you can’t stream movie-theater quality videos to your computer yet.  Furthermore, you should consider the potential web visitors who don’t have the fastest connections when encoding your video.

Here are some file size examples to give you an idea of how big these movie files are:

DVD’s are typically several gigs in size (4.6 GB per 1 sided disk).  2 hours of film on a highdefinition camera can often take up more space than this.  A 4-5 minute video on Youtube is about 7-10 MB on average, depending on the format of the video.  However, the file size limit for YouTube videos has slowly been increasing.   Because of this, that average has shot up closer to 50 MB.  Either way, there’s a huge size difference between DVD quality film and online videos.

So you can see, you’ll often need to shrink down your videos before posting them online.  Fortunately there’s a really cool tool we suggest using for fixing up your video.  Check out HandBrake, a FREE video encoding tool HERE.  Don’t worry, it works on Macs, PC’s, and even Linux computers.  It’s pretty simple to use and FREE!

Why post videos elsewhere?

Although you can simply upload your video file directly to your website, the benefits of posting your video to a video sharing site, like YouTube or Metacafe are many. First of all, videos posted to sharing sites like those below are accessible to a wider variety of web surfers. For example, if you upload a .mov file to your site, some people may not be able to see your video on your website if they do not have the proper plug-in installed on their browser. However, people who view videos at YouTube and the other video sharing sites usually can see everything posted regardless of their computer and browser because the videos are rendered in Flash.

Another compelling reason to post videos onto video sharing sites is that you can easily embed them onto your own website.  Doing this will also increase your score on web search engines. Embedding links onto your website for popular sites (like YouTube, FaceBook, MySpace, etc.) will increase the likelihood your site will appear higher up on search engine results lists.

Cool places to post your video

There are so many options out there for posting videos and it would take a book to describe them all.  Here are some of the more popular ones that people have used. And unless you wish to post really long videos or HD videos, these services are pretty much FREE!

YouTube

YouTube is an obvious choice, of course.  It’s the most popular video site in the world!  This is a great place to find new and potential fans and be exposed to as large of an audience as possible.  Having your videos on this site is a great start, and easy to do.  They have some pretty clear guidelines on what video type/size is alright to upload to their site.

Facebook

This is another great place to upload video as well, since many, many users around the country and the world have Facebook accounts.  Not only can you post videos here, but you can also tag friends and band members on your videos as well, much like tagging in images.  Facebook also claims to accept just about any video type out there, but they have some suggestions on what works best with their site.

MetaCafe

This is yet another really popular website for user-submitted videos.  The neat thing about this site is the integration with Facebook.  You log into your Facebook account from here, and you can share your videos as updates on your own profile, or your friend’s profile pages.  They do have a few more restrictions on their videos, particularly the length (they encourage 8 minute videos).  You can read more about their submission rules HERE.

Now how do I get the videos on MY site?!?

No problem!  These video sites will typically provide you with “embed code” or at least a way to link to your video from your own website.  Usually this code can be easily copied from a button or box located within or next to the video player itself.   For example, YouTube makes linking to your site really easy.

And, there you have it!  There’s nothing stopping you from getting your video content online for the world to see, so get uploading!

In order to have a website, you need a domain name so people can find you on the internet. For example, ours is Hostbaby.com.  Your domain name registration is totally separate from your monthly hosting fee. It’s an annual charge of about $10 or so, to maintain your domain registration.

You may have purchased your domain name through Hostbaby, or through Godaddy.com or Namecheap.com or any of the other registrars out there. Regardless of where you purchased the domain name, you do have to pay to renew it annually.

The problem: You may get an email or a snail mail telling you it is time to renew your domain name. It looks really official, festooned with flags and eagles. But is it real?

The emails often read something like this:
In order to avoid loss or cancellation of the domain name use the link below to renew the domain name. Click to renew your domainname: www.domainrenewal-online.org/blah blah blah
When we have received your payment we will start the renewal process instantly. You will receive a confirmation when the renewal process is completed.

The problem is, this mail or email likely is NOT coming from your real registrar. Instead it’s an overly-aggressive marketing pitch designed to look like an official renewal notice. They want you to transfer your domain name to their registrar, so they can over-charge you to renew it annually.

So, the question is how do you find out who your actual registrar is? Go to this link:

http://hostbaby.com/whois.php

You’ll see a simple interface with just one input box. Enter your bare domain name in that box, for example:

hostbaby.com

(without the http://www.  part).

It will return a bunch of information, but the thing you are looking for says “Registration Service Provider:”. If you purchased your domain registration thru Hostbaby it will say this:

Registration Service Provider:
HostBaby, hostbaby@hostbaby.com
503-256-4450
http://www.hostbaby.com
This company may be contacted for domain login/passwords,
DNS/Nameserver changes, and general domain support questions.

If you have purchased your domain name thru Godaddy.com it will read like this:

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)

Now check out the notice you received – if it is not from your official registration service provider, then you can safely ignore it.

The main thing to know is that if you want confirmation or have questions about any of this stuff, you can contact Hostbaby 7 days a week and we’ll give you the straight scoop. You can always email hostbaby@hostbaby.com or call us at 1-888-448-6369 and we’ll check it out for you.

Lets say you have a concert in two weeks. How would you normally advertise such a thing? Word of mouth? Handbills? Posters on phone poles? Ads in newspapers? Text messages to your friends? Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter Posts? An email blast? Writing a blog post?

Self promotion can be a lot of work. Sometimes all we have time for is a few email reminders, a post on MySpace and a text message on the day of the show.

Given the limited time and energy you have to advertise for a gig, what’s the most effective way to spend your energy?

READ MORE…

The Power of Fan-Driven Sharing

There are many ways you can promote and share updates of your HostBaby website. You can use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, ListBaby, Digg and other services to update the online world with your musical comings and goings. These are all great things to do when you have time between gigs, but why not enable your fans to do some of this work for you? What if, with the click of a button, your fans could easily and quickly tell all their friends about the cool things they found while checking out your site!

Enter: the new “Share It” feature of the Hostbaby Wizard!

Now you can make your web pages shareable!  With a couple of mouse clicks, visitors can quickly share specific pages of your site with others.  The “Share IT” button allows visitors to make a Facebook post, share a bookmark through reddit.com, even tweet on Twitter without even leaving your website. Think about how easy it would be if your fans did your marketing for you? That’s the definition of “Viral Marketing” and that what the “Share It” button helps you do.  This is a great way to get your content spread far and wide across the internet – places you wouldn’t have the time and resources to reach alone.

How to do it!

Want to learn how?  We at HostBaby are happy to provide a tutorial:

CLICK HERE TO READ HOW TO SHARE YOUR PAGES!

Things to keep in mind

To share your page on different social networks, visitors will need to already be members of Facebook, Twitter, etc. Also, consider which pages you want to be sharing.  You may enable Share for all your pages or just a selection. Some people regularly update their home page, some their blogs; it really doesn’t matter which page you share. The key is to make your pages interesting enough that visitors to your site will want to share them with their friends.

We hope this help you help your site visitors spread the word about your website to their friends and neighbors. Happy sharing!

SPAM, the common term for unsolicited email is an annoying reality faced by any user of email. Given the ease and low cost to those who would send thousands or millions of SPAM messages, there is little hope that the problem of SPAM will go away anytime soon. So how can you reduce your exposure to SPAM?

1. Use more than one email address
Consider creating more than one email address. Use one for your legitimate email correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues. Use another for any online activity such as online shopping, posting to forums, leaving comments on blogs, and anything else which would possibly reveal your email address to people other than family, friends, and colleagues you email directly.

2. Use contact forms where possible
Rather than posting your email address on your website, consider using a contact form. This allows visitors to your site to send you email without having to open an email program, manually entering your address, etc. This has two advantages: First, visitors using public  internet terminals (e.g. public library, internet cafe, etc.) won’t have to log into their email program. Secondly, posting your email address on your website makes it easy for nefarious people and their special email-harvesting programs to capture your address and add it to their list of SPAM victims. One drawback is that you may want to make your email address easily available to the people you want to contact you. Some people compromise by posting their email address on their website slightly modified, but still understandable to human eyes (e.g. “Email me at hostbaby (at) hostbaby (dot) com”).

Hostbaby wizard account holders have access to a great online contact form to allow web visitors to send in email. It includes a security code to ensure humans are using the form, not SPAM program. Learn more about it here.

3. Use less common email addresses
The most common email addresses are those that begin with “info”, “admin”, “webmin”, “contact”, and “me”. Because they are common, generators of SPAM will send email to those addresses since the probability is high they will work. You should consider avoiding creating email accounts with these names (ie. don’t use “info@yourdomain.com”, etc.).

4. Use SPAM filters
Preventing SPAM from even getting sent to you using the methods above is ideal, but eventually, SPAM will find its way to your email inbox. At that point, SPAM filters can offer relief.

Most email services include some sort of SPAM filters. These are services which inspect incoming email and make a judgment as to whether it is legitimate email or not. A good idea is to create a SPAM or Junk Mail folder and have suspected SPAM routed to that folder. You will want to inspect that folder occasionally as legitimate email may sometimes get improperly flagged as SPAM. Depending on your email system, you can tag such email as “Not Spam”, or add that email address to your white list. Conversely, if you seem to get a lot of SPAM from a particular site, you can restrict them by adding them to your black list. Many email clients (Outlook, Mac Mail, Thunderbird, etc.) also include their own SPAM filters and allow you to create “Rules” specific to the kind of spam you are receiving.

Hostbaby customers have access to Spam Assassin, which will allow you to configure how strict the filter will be, add address to your white list or black list, and to move suspicious email into a dedicated SPAM folder.

Have you ever made a change to your website, surfed back to see it, and the change disappeared? If you own a website it’s a good idea to install and use more than one browser on your computer. There are a couple reasons for this: First, by design, browsers will store content of websites visited. This locally-stored information is called the browser cache or temporary  internet files. When you return to a website you’ve recently visited, instead of pulling all the website information down from the Internet, the browser will read the cached information rather than pulling all the content from the Internet. In most cases this is a good thing as it can mean faster loading of web pages – especially if you have a limited speed internet connection. However, if you are making updates to your site your regular browser may not show you the correct, current content.  It may instead be showing you the cached info which may not be latest updates. That is one reason to double-check your website using a different browser. A different browser will help display what is really live for the internet world to see. One way to force your browser to download the most current web content is to purge any locally stored web content. Here is a web page which explains how to do this for various browsers. A second reason to have more than one browser installed is to see how your website may appear to different visitors. Skilled web developers will ensure websites they create will be both accessible and look consistent across multiple browsers. Some websites, however, require a specific browser to be viewed. You will want to verify that your site is both accessible and looks consistent across multiple browsers. Using more than one browser to inspect your site will help ensure this is true. Here is a list of browsers available for Windows:

• Internet Explorer (those on version 6.x should seriously consider upgrading)
• Mozilla Firefox
• Safari
• Google Chrome
• Opera

Here is a list of browsers available for Mac:

• Safari
• Mozilla Firefox
• Opera

Here are some additional articles you may find helpful:

• Clearing Browser Cache
• Clearing Browser Cookies
• US Government issues IE security warning

Mark Twain’s quote that “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” comes to mind as I compose this article.  Statistics is an elastic science and when approaching the stats for your website it’s hard to know how to interpret all the numbers and then use those numbers to inform your marketing efforts.

Let’s avoid an in-depth analysis of web stats and leave that to Wikipedia. What I do want to explain are some of the basics and clear up common confusion regarding the concept of a website ‘hit’.
READ MORE…

Stream your concerts to the world!

Getting out on the road to build an audience is a constant struggle for the average indie artist. Limitations on time, money, and resources are all huge hurdles to overcome. But what if you could take your show around the world without moving a single guitar amp or eating another drive-thru meal? Now you can!

Indie artists like Matthew Ebel have harnessed the power of online services like UStream to accomplish just that. Each week, Matthew performs live via UStream without leaving the comfort of his very own basement. Internet audience members congregate (in the virtual sense) from all points around the globe to watch his homespun concert broadcasts. In the full-length audio interview, Matthew goes into great detail concerning some of the technical aspects of how he produces a UStream show. If this piques your interest, you can listen to the episode in its entirety at http://cdbabypodcast.com or subscribe in the iTunes podcast directory. READ MORE…

Jimmy Fallon’s best role yet!

HostBaby has recently launched a new blog page feature in the HostBaby Wizard.  More on that here.

What better time to address how musicians can use a blog to advance their career then right now?

Most of you know that a blog (short for web log) is a web page that allows articles, videos, and pictures to be posted in a journal-like format. Blogs also typically allow users to leave comments and therefore are a great way to interact with fans.
READ MORE…