If you search Google for the word “GoDaddy Sucks” you’ll get a lot of responses, but you’d get just as many results (if not more) for “Any Host You Want” and the word “Sucks”. I can tell you having used GoDaddy for more than 7 years and worked on over 50 sites hosted there, the issue is not always GoDaddy. More often then not its a configuration error, either by the user or the script they are using.

Recently, we got reminded of this fact on this WordPress powered blog. We  upgraded one of our WordPress Plugins which changed some previous functionality. Using it  in an improper way lead us to have random 404 and 500 server page errors. It stumped us for  the last 2 days. We even thought the stories of : “How GoDaddy is a horrible host” had finally caught up to us. We began to draft an email to GoDaddy support to complain. Thankfully we found the plugin issue ourselves before we hit send. How did we discover it? We disabled every plugin we had ( which is over 30 and counting) and re-enabled each one by one until we were able to detect/replicate the issue. Now that it is fixed our site is running smooth again, and there was tinge of guilt for our blame on the host–the easy scape goat.

So remember, while everyone has horror stories, this is true with any service. People are always more likely to complain then to write about a positive experience (especially without an affiliate link). I can honestly say, having used several other hosts, (all the ones you can think of), GoDaddy is great and fine option. So before you bash a host, take it from us, it might not be the host but something as simple as an errant use of WordPress plugin.

Weird. All night we have seen TweetMeme up and down on our blog. But it seems its finally out for the count at around 10 PM. It’s dead at Mashable and Twitter has “Tweetmeme Down” as a trending topic. It also seems like they are also getting lots of Tweet spam sent to the @tweetmeme account. No major words form other blogs about what is going on. Thankfully we have enabled BackTypes Retweet WordPress Plugin, a very capable competitior to Tweetmeme. We suggest you give them a shot. In the meantime we will update this post as the news develops.

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Update #1

Tweetmeme finally has message to users:

The Tweetmeme status blog notes the following: “The main site is currently still down, but we have identified the issue and will be back and fully operational soon.”

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Update # 2

The Tweetmeme status blog now notes the following: “We’re currently in holding, which means buttons are temporarily paused and the site is unavailable – we’ll be back and running smoothly as soon as we can.”

Funny- main updates come from Tweetmeme at their blog, not via Twitter.

Update #3
Still no “major” blog reporting the Tweetmeme outage. We will update in the morning when we learn what happened or any other important updates. You can follow Tweetmeme status here until then. We wish the Tweetmeme team good luck on getting back up. Its a great tool and wish them a speedy recovery.

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Update# 4

Early this morning (February 6th) Tweetmeme came back online. The Tweetmeme status blog reports:

“We have identified the problem that caused the general outage on Friday 5th February and applied a fix. The buttons, API and site are now all fully functional again.

Button counts may still be lagged as we restore our data processing systems to full strength and process the back-log. No tweets have been lost, we expect they will be attributed to your buttons within several hours.

Just to clarify, this was a fault with our internal systems. There has been no security breach and no data has been lost or jeopardized.”

We’re glad to see Tweetmeme back up and running…

In Quebec, a province in Canada, there are strict rules about operating a website in the province. You must offer a bilingual site (French and English) to customers if you do business in the province or are resided in that province. Actually the website content must be in French, but English is optional, as French is the official language in the province of Quebec. Failing to comply with the rules, can run you afoul of Office Quebecoise de la language francaise and possible fines and sanctions.

So what do you do if you are a small business without the resource to create a French site? Thankfully Google offers you some solutions other then spending a small fortune in translation services. Below are the solutions and the scripts you need:

1- Translate all the pages

This is the more time consuming solution by if you visit Google Translate, you can enter your site text, visit your website url, or upload your documents/web pages. Instantly Google will translate your files into French. Of course this is a machine translation, but it will give you the ability to come pretty close. If you know someone who reads/writes French, this will quicken the turn around time in translating your site. We recommend you add your French pages to a subfolder on your sever (i.e http://www.yoursite.com/fr).

2- Offer Translation Tool on Index

A quick solution is offering Google’s translation tool on your pages. Just use the below code.

<div id="google_translate_element"></div><script>
function googleTranslateElementInit() {
  new google.translate.TranslateElement({
    pageLanguage: 'en',
    includedLanguages: 'en,fr'
  }, 'google_translate_element');
}
</script><script src="http://translate.google.com/translate_a/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit"></script>

3- Use .HTACCESS file to redirect based on browser language.
Using an .HTACCESS file, you can detect the language of the visitors browser. If a visitor has a French version of Firefox, Chrome or IE when coming to your site the site will be translated to French automatically using Google. If they come to with an English language browser, they will not notice a difference. All you need to do is replace “www.englishsite.com” in this code with your domain name. Sure to save file as .HTACCESS filetype.

The other option is this code which will create sub-folder for each language. English users will be taken to www.yoursite.com/en unless they are using a French browser. In this case they will be taken to www.yoursite.com/fr.

So there you go! Three quick solutions to get your site in French fast and keep your Quebec customer happy. Now you may ask why we did not offer an IP blocking solution. Unfortunately, its just not efficient. For example, you would need to keep an updated IP list for all users in Quebec. This is a major issue, because there are always new IP addresses. Furthermore how do you identify users in Quebec with ISP’s in Ontario or for that matter those visitors using a proxy?

The best solution in our view is to start with solution # 2 or 3 above, while you work on using solution #1. A we have mentioned earlier, sometimes you just have to spend the money on website design. Having a fully translated website is the best way to increase your revenue from a local market and the most professional way to present your site. Most of all, we hope the above solutions helps cash-strapped (small) businesses in Quebec (or elsewhere) facing issues in translation.

A while ago we spoke about the importance of having a website, but we should have added an important rule: Cheap website design can cheat you out of more business than having no website at all. Sure it’s important to get a website up for your company, but if you are serious about your business, you need to take your website design serious too. Using cardboard templates, wizards or testing your limited HTML skills is not the place for a professional website. At the same time, you are not required to pay a small fortune to get up and running.

I know I know, the question you now have becomes: “What is a fair price for a website?” But is that a question that makes sense? It’s all relative to how complex your website is, what features you want and how quick you need it. A good website designer will ask you these questions. You also need to ensure you have a plan for updating your content in the future. Nevertheless as a guideline, it is fair to be charged roughly $25-50/hour or about $250-500 for a basic site. We must caution you once again, this is price varies widely on what you need and the level of expertise of the designer.

Before you go to hire website design help, we suggest first you think about the elements you wish to have. The next step is to treat the process as anything else you would. Ask to see past work or see if you can talk to current/past clients. Don’t be afraid to shop around. Remember that building a website is not usually a set and forget job. Make sure you have someone you can call on for tweaks or a way to make changes yourself. We also recommend you select a company or person who will be around in a year or two. Most of all, make sure you are comfortable with who you select. They will be interpreting you and your company to all your internet visitors. You need to make sure you trust the person who will translate your vision.

Oh, and as bonus tip. If you don’t have a domain name, and the designer gets one for you, make sure the ownership is in your name and with your email address. If ever you decide to move to another host or web designer, you want to be able to do so without having to track them down or to negotiate to get what is rightly yours.

If you decide not to pay for website designer, we highly recommend you avoid the templates from hosts and ISP’s, and seriously think you should consider using WordPress as your website platform. Sure it will take a bit to learn how to do what you need, but the output will be 100 times more professional and unique then most of the templates out there. Remember, your website is a reflection of you and your business. If you want to be successful, look like you already are. If you put out a sloppy unprofessional website, people will have trouble taking you seriously. Unfortunately, this is the new norm. So don’t be quick and cheap. Put some thought (and money) into your website plans. Good luck!

If you have a tip to share, or have a question, leave it in the comments below…

A great tool in your arsenal to keep track of you competition is Google Reader. If you are not aware, Google Reader is an RSS reader that allows you to read RSS feeds. An RSS feed (also known as Really Simple Syndication) is an xml file format used by web publishers to advise their audience where frequently updated works are involved—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio or video. We even use it on our website. See our RSS feed here. You can easily subscribe to an RSS Feed at most major sites by looking for RSS feed Icon ( ) and clicking on it. But what are you to do if there is no RSS feed on the site you want to track changes on? Unfortunately, the only solution is the time consuming  practice of  checking a site every time you wanted to see if something changed.

Now Google has unveiled a game changer that makes Google Reader a lot more powerful. This new feature gives anyone the ability to monitor changes to Web sites that lack RSS feeds. What does this mean? In markets where RSS feeds are not standard for websites,  for example in the B2B market, you can put any competitor Web site into Google Reader and updates will appear anytime a change or addition is made to a particular web page.

Google will create a custom snippets showing page changes (like below-click image to enlarge) that will allow you to quickly decide if the information is of interest.

As you can see, this is a powerful tool for keeping tabs on your competition when they do not offer an RSS feed. However, because this tool is so powerful, Google has offered a way for web publishers to opt-out of tracking. Nevertheless if some of your competitors opt-out Google Reader is still a quick, easy way to stay on top of your industry and trends. And of course, we also hope you will add us to your list by subscribing to our feed found here.