There are countless alternatives for the services GoDaddy offers, but many newbies are not too aware of them. After all, they don’t pour money into TV ads during the Superbowl.

Since I’m frequently asked for suggestions, I figured it would make for a good post.

Domains

It is usually prudent to register domain names with a separate company from the one that actually hosts your web site. That way, if you have cause to switch for one reason or other, you can simply edit the DNS to point it to your new host, and you don’t have to worry about transferring the name from one service to another.

There are many domain registrars, but a few that are frequently recommended are:

• Name.com — Name.com recently went above and beyond to help recover a domain that was hijacked from a web development blog. Even though the thief had transferred it away from GoDaddy and only moved it to Name.com temporarily before being shuffled over to 1and1, Name.com was the only company involved to step up and coordinate the recovery of the stolen name.
• Hover — Hover charges a premium, but their goal is simplicity and no BS. They won’t push extra services on you when you buy a domain or clutter your admin panel up with ads.
• Namecheap — A popular option, though I know less about them. A lot of the people moving away from GoDaddy during the SOPA boycotts went with Namecheap.
• 1and1 — I’ve been using 1and1 for my many domains for several years. (Since 2005 or so, maybe.) I haven’t had an issue with them so far, though some people have reported issues with their customer service department. They get a bit of flak, whether it’s warranted or not, but I have been happy with their service for about seven years.
• Gandi — Gandi’s motto is “no bullshit™.” They handle a large selection of TLDs, so they’re a good bet if you’re looking for something exotic, like a .it, .io, .ly, .me, or .fm domain. Their prices do vary depending on the extension, though, since country-level domains vary depending on their home nation’s policies.
• Moniker — I currently have one domain registered with Moniker, as I had acquired it after the previous owner allowed it to expire, and I never moved it away from Moniker. I haven’t had issue with them so far, and they’re an established name in the industry.

Shared Hosting

There are three major types of web hosting services: shared, VPS and dedicated. Shared hosting is the cheapest option, and is the easiest for beginners to get started with. Basically, you share a server with many other users. Its resources are allocated equally, and everything usually works fine so long as none of the website get too much traffic. Things get a little more complicated then, and the host may suspend the offending web site and ask them to upgrade to a pricier service.

Some hosts advertise “unlimited” bandwidth, but you shouldn’t take that claim too seriously. While they may not meter your bandwidth, they will still cut you off if serving your site takes up too much CPU time. (More traffic means more requests served simultaneously, which means greater processor usage. Obviously they don’t want to impact the other sites on the server, so they suspend the site.)

• A Small Orange — ASO aims to provide affordable and fair web hosting without overselling, a tactic that some hosts use to maximize profits, selling more accounts on a server than the hardware can handle, under the assumption that the majority of users won’t be fully utilizing what they pay for. A Small Orange is upfront about the limitations of each plan they offer. You can get a shared hosting account starting at $35/year ($2.91/month) and move up to higher plans as needed. Their $10/month plan with 5 gigabytes of storage space and 100GB of transfer is a pretty good deal, and more than enough for even a moderately popular blog. They also offer reseller, VPS and dedicated plans if you outgrow shared hosting. [Affiliate Link]
• Nearly Free Speech — What if you didn’t pay a flat monthly fee for basic web hosting? What if you only paid for what you used, and not a penny more? That’s how Nearly Free Speech works. Pricing can get a little complicated, but it can be very cheap as a result. You make a deposit, as little as $0.25, and pay as you go. Serving up static HTML isn’t going to cost much, depending entirely on how popular your site is and how much you’re storing on their servers. Dynamic sites, like WordPress blogs, start with that same baseline, but there is and additional $0.01/day dynamic site fee, and additional usage fees for your MySQL database.
• WP Web Host — This one is well-known in the WordPress community. They specialize in hosting services for WordPress. They’re up front about their policies on the maximum system resources that you can consume under a shared plan, as well. (15% CPU, 512MB of RAM)
• Media Temple — Media Temple’s “Grid Service” offering, though pricier than most shared hosting services, is known for being more reliable. They use redundant server clusters that can “burst” extra resources to handle spikes in traffic. You get a 100GB storage pool and up to one terabyte of monthly network transfer. Media Temple offers a custom control panel, and one-click installs of popular software packages, such as WordPress.

Virtual Private Servers

While a shared host puts many users’ sites in the same server environment, a Virtual Private Server (VPS) is more like having a dedicated server, though it is significantly cheaper. Using a technology known as virtualization, a server is partitioned into several virtual servers. Far less customers are put on one machine, so you have a much greater share of the hardware’s resources, and you also have full control over the server environment. In most cases you’re given remote access to the command line, and you can install your choice of operating system (Linux or Unix distributions, in most cases) and configure things however you want.

There are two varieties of service you’ll find when you purchase a VPS: managed and unmanaged. With a managed server, you give up some control in order to have the provider take care of the technical details for you, and maybe offer a friendly control panel like cPanel. With an unmanaged server, you’re given free reign over your virtual machine and little support (unless you pay extra to be rescued). If you’re familiar with Linux and don’t mind getting your hands dirty in order to retool things for your needs, an unmanaged VPS is awesome.

• A Small Orange — (See the above entry under Shared Hosting.) A Small Orange also offers VPS plans, as well as dedicated servers. Their servers are fully managed, and include a cPanel license. So they’re a good bet if you don’t want to make the leap to managing a server and editing configuration files from the command line.
• VPS.net — My hosting provider of choice. They offer a few different services, their “cloud servers” offering being what I use. You get a scalable VPS (you can add or subtract “nodes” of resources and deploy them with a quick reboot) and unfettered access over SSH. It’s unmanaged unless you purchase optional “managed services” or one-time “do it for me” support tickets. It’s very reliable, and there are datacenters across several continents. A single-node VPS with 376MB of RAM, 10GB of disk space and 1TB of network transfer will run you $20/month. [Affiliate Link]
• Linode — Linode is a well-liked option along similar lines to VPS.net. Their offerings provide good bang for the buck (a 512MB system with 20GB of storage and 200GB of transfer will cost you $19.95/month) and they’re known for their support. They also have a nice collection of tutorials, which I have referred to in the past, even though I’m not a customer.
• Media Temple — MT also offers virtual servers, several variations of that theme in fact. They have their VE, GS and Nitro plans, which all have their different pluses and minuses. I don’t have any personal experience with Media Temple, though they have a good reputation and I had considered them at one point.
• Rackspace — Rackspace is a big player in the cloud server arena. They provide numerous services for varying needs. They host many web apps, like Amazon.
• Amazon Web Services — Few names are more well known in cloud services than Amazon. Their EC2 service powers a lot of big-name web apps and social networking sites, though it is just as viable for smaller sites. They also have S3, which is good for storing and serving static files, CloudFront, their CDN, and others.

Those are just a few suggestions. Whatever your needs are, there are many options out there. Be sure to shop around and look for reviews before comitting to a service.

A good resource for asking for advice is the Web Hosting Talk forum.

I found a good article on the subject, How to Snatch an Expiring Domain, from which I refreshed my memory on how the crazy business known as “Drop Catching” works. When a domain expires, it is marked as expired in VeriSign’s database. It remains in that deactivated state for forty days, unless the owner pays the usual fee to renew it. After that initial forty-day period is over, the owner still has a final chance to save the name before it is deleted, but they have to pay a $100 fee to do so. Seventy days after the expiration date, it’s status is changed to “locked” and it will be deleted from the ICANN database five days later during a three-hour window between 2:00pm and 5:00pm EST. As soon as it drops from the database, the name is available for registration.

Unfortunately, snatching a domain isn’t always a sure thing. Previously-owned domains are often snapped-up right away by squatters who hope to resell it. I didn’t want to risk that happening, so I decided to hire a Drop Catcher to snipe the domain as soon as it became available.

I went with SnapNames, who charges a minimum of $69 upon delivery. If you don’t get the name, you pay nothing. If SnapNames is able to acquire the domain after it drops, they schedule it for auction. Your $69 fee is the starting bid, and if anyone else joins the battle, you’re going to have to pay more. It uses a proxy bidding system like eBay, where it ups the current bid until either you’re the high bidder or you hit your maximum. SnapNames collects the money from the high bidder, and sends you login details for the domain’s registrar.

After days of impatient waiting, with much checking of my SnapNames account on the Saturday of the auction, I found that I had won while getting a mint milkshake at McDonalds. I only ended up having to pay the $69 minimum, as nobody else had bid on the unusual domain. SnapNames sent me the login details for a Moniker account that holds the domain, and that was the end of the hard part. All that was left was the usual boring wait for the DNS to update.

I finally am in possession of Harzewski.com, and have moved my much-neglected personal blog over to matt.harzewski.com. I intend to revive the blog, after a hiatus of more than two years, now that I have a fresh theme and a spiffy new URL.

Polis pointed out that SOPA and Smith’s amendment already excluded certain operators of sub-domains, such as GoDaddy.com, from being subject to shutdowns under SOPA.

Even with that lesser-publicized fact aside, GoDaddy’s support of SOPA has spurred a large boycott, which they have met with a cavalier attitude (“we have not seen any impact to our business”) and some fuzzy PR-speak leading people to believe that they no longer support the bill, while they still do.

If you are looking to leave GoDaddy, or someone you know is, there are plenty of alternatives.

Domains: Name.com, Moniker, Gandi.net, Hover (Tucows), 1and1

Shared Hosting: HostGator, Media Temple, Site5, WPWebHost, A Small Orange, Nearly Free Speech

VPS Hosting: VPS.net, Linode, Media Temple, Rackspace

About one day later, the same thing happened to Chris Coyier’s CSS-Tricks.com. Someone gained access to his GMail and GoDaddy accounts and moved the domain to PlanetDomain. From his detailed chronicle of the events, it’s a possibility that he may have a keylogger on his computer, as the miscreant has been able to get around password resets of the GMail account, and may have even accessed the Media Temple server CSS-Tricks is hosted on. Coyier also received the impeccably-penned threat “pay 2k to get ur domain back.”

This has recently happened to a few other big-name sites in the same field, including Abduzeedo, Kirupa, Design Shack and InstantShift. Abduzeedo was able to catch the transfer and stop it, though. (Interestingly, it has been almost exactly four years since the same thing happened to logo designer David Airey.)

Just to be on the safe side, you might want to do a quick WHOIS search on your own domain and make sure it’s still on your registrar.

Update, Dec 5: Planetdomain is reversing the transfer, and moving the CSS-Tricks.com domain back to Chris Coyier’s GoDaddy account.

In their latest dubious management move, AOL corporate commandeered WoW Insider’s first-rate domain name — WoW.com — and used it to launch a Groupon clone.

WoW Insider now resides at wow.joystiq.com.

If you’ll pardon the pun, wow. I can hardly believe that anyone would think that a good move. It will hurt WoW Insider — in terms of possible search engine penalties, dead links, and confused users wondering why the domain stopped working with little or no warning — and there will be little advantage.

Someone at AOL obviously heard about the strange success of Groupon, and figured it would be easy to emulate it. Frankly, I’m surprised Groupon managed to do as well as they have been, monetarily. I highly doubt that, despite the simplicity of the service in itself, AOL will be able to replicate it. And it’s really dumb to re-purpose a domain like that. It reeks of bait-and-switch, like their plan to market the new Wow.com service is to trick a bunch of World of WarCraft fans into accidentally visiting it.

The Queue: Why did WoW Insider switch domains, again? [WoW Insider]

Normally I wouldn’t be too worried about the high pricing. After all, .FM (Federated States of Micronesia) domains run in the $70-$100 range. The problem with .CO is the cybersquatters.

How many people prematurely tap the Enter key when typing youtube.com, resulting in youtube.co, in one day alone? It’s a very common typo, and cybersquatters will start snapping up .CO domains for everything. People running moderately-sized websites will have to choose between dropping $30 every year for typo protection or letting domain vultures pick it up. Behemoths like YouTube and Yahoo will be okay, since $30 is nothing to them, but what about everyone else?

I highly doubt that .CO will be used legitimately for much other than name protection for a similar reason. It looks like a typo. If you see a business card with www.shawnspencersdiscountpineapples.co on it, is it really “.co” or did the designer make a mistake that somehow wasn’t caught? This is particularly bad when the masses still seem to expect everything to be a .COM.

The .CO push is going to make some people a lot of money, but it’s going to cause a lot of problems for everyone else.

Wordoid.com is a website that hopes to help you solve that problem. Enter a word, set the language, maximum length, and a few other options, and out comes a list of “wordoids.” Wordoids are, as the name suggests, made-up words that sound just like they could be real words. Words like underful, intendings, outwittery, or, conspiffy. It’s an easy way to find suggestions for a catchy domain name. (Outwittery sounds like it should be some sort of Twitter-connected word game…)

I wonder how they generate the words. My best guess is some sort of Markov text generator.

If the domain, created using Cyrillic scripts “raural.com” was registered, the way that Unicode-browsers will actually render that domain in latin is as “paypal.com.” In theory, phishers could pass around that link and set up a fake version of the PayPal site to harvest logins and credit card data.

It is impossible to tell the difference visually. It’s pretty scary. At least, I thought it was until I realized two things:

1. You shouldn’t click links in emails claiming to be from PayPal or your bank anyway. Just don’t. Type the address in manually.
2. Websites dealing with money, or other things that require a higher level of security, generally have an SSL certificate signed by a reputable third party.

So if you don’t click links in emails, and make sure that the SSL certificate checks-out, you’ll be safe.

It’s not that big a deal for those of us who have a good general knowledge of computer security, but it still is worrying that phishers are gaining this tool. I’m sure you know plenty of people who could easily fall into this kind of trap.

It was recently discovered that there’s a new subdomain of WP.com now, get.wp.com, that was put up to help dispel the awful confusion surrounding WordPress. (i.e. WordPress vs. WordPress.com) The new microsite helps newbies differentiate between the two, albeit with a strong bias for WordPress.com.

So this is the first thing that WP.com is being put to use for. Nothing major still. Let’s hope that Automattic finds something useful to use it for. It’s a nice domain.

According to a group of disgruntled registrars, the whole situation is an antitrust nightmare, one allegedly perpetuated by lobbyists, astroturfers, planted news stories, and “stacked” public meetings.

Ars Technica has the full story: Paying too much for .com domains? One group blames VeriSign.

I remember a few years ago, when control of the .com registry was handed to VeriSign, thinking it was a bad idea. I still maintain that it should be the responsibility of ICANN, and that it shouldn’t be thought of as a source of profit, but as an essential service that should be subsidized by the bare minimum fee required to keep the system afloat.