I have had so much interest in a Web Hosting For Dummies book (that does not exist), I’ve introduced a new section looking at appropriate books in the field of web hosting.

Also, a couple of other updates:

• WordPress.com has clarified that it does allow some site monetization as log as it is ethical and incidental (my interpretation). I’ll review this in more detail just as soon as somebody asks me to.
• My installation wizard is on-hold. Now that Pods is here, there is a better way to manage it, but I have other Pods projects to complete first.

These people are Shrewdies.

They want to gain the benefits of web hosting without years of learning technology secrets.

How can Shrewdies get good quality web hosting at reasonable prices? Or free?

There is a good example at WordPress.com, but it is not for commercial gain. It’s necessary restrictions also limit it’s use for optimized not-for-profit projects.

My solution is to set-up my own WordPress.com equivalent, but with fewer restrictions and a closer community. Obviously smaller scale than WordPress.com. Small is beautiful.

I’ll continue to develop the WordPress Wizard for single user WordPress installations, but first a short diversion as I document and develop a WordPress Multi User installation.

Many webmasters fall into the trap of trying to build as many links as they can. A common way to do this is to search for links or add url, or similar, together with the keyword or keyphrase that you want a link from (or want to exchange links with).

I describe this as a trap because what you can easily end up with is a collection of inbound links that give you no traffic, no search engine value, and might even lower your search engine rankings.

Now this is not really a webmaster hosting issue, and I will cover it in more detail on my web management site, but webmasters do need to be aware of the potential risks.

Before I talk about those risks, I must explain why I am writing about hosting links today. The reasons are very important for any business web host.

Last week I described the simple process of installing HitTail code. Though there are many methods for tracking how visitors find your website (known as referrers), HitTail is the best. It automatically builds and analyzes a referrer database. Normally, you would have to maintain your own logs, compare them with your site content and produce a report of suggested topics for new articles (or new keywords that suit existing articles).

HitTail produces this list for you, saving you massive amounts of time. If you are working on your own site, just add more content around the suggested phrases, or amend existing content to add more keywords. If you are managing the site for a client or employer, just pass the list on, and earn yourself a raise.Hittail is no longer available as a free service, and the paid service is not worth the money – there are much better ways of discovering new keywords, and I cover these in my installation guide.

HitTail suggested I needed some content about hosting links. So here it is.

If you are building links through directories and similar sites, avoid the ones with low page rank. The easiest way to do this is to install SEO for Firefox, which shows the page rank for Google and Yahoo search engine results. If you are not using FireFox, I highly recommend that you use it. You can still use your existing browser after you install it.

The best way to add links is through forming relationships with other quality sites in a related subject. You should have a linking policy on your site, to guide people who want to link to you, and inform them how you link to other sites.

Do not build links pages – build quality content where external links add value by reinforcing, explaining, or extending the points you make.

If you want to know more about hosting links, add your comments below or email me using my Contact Page.

But communication is vital to a thriving web business, so how can I keep in touch with visitors.

The answer is my contact page. A vital early page for any website. Just a few details, and a form so you can get in touch with me.

I love to receive questions and opinions from all my readers. Standard WordPress allows comments by default, but sometimes you want to send me a private message. Now it’s easy by filling in the form on my Contact Page.

I activated another important plug-in for this – Dagon Design Form Mailer. Lots of features, but very simple in it’s basic form. Just add this code to any post or page…

<!-- ddfm1 -->

…And you get this:

Actually, it wasn’t quite that simple because when I tested the form I got a warning:

Warning: ini_restore() has been disabled for security reasons in

I edited dd-formmailer.php and changed ini_restore to @ini_restore and the warning message disappears

Please contact me if you have any questions about my web service hosting email policy, or any other aspect of business web hosting. I will never pass your email address on to anyone else – full privacy policy coming soon.

Most spam is automatically generated, and you can automatically stop it with WordPress hosting anti-spam plug-ins. A small amount, typically human generated, might creep through. But if you protect yourself against the worst excesses – leaving you time to edit or filter the odd bad comment.

More importantly, it leaves you free to interact with your genuine visitors.

Most importantly, it stops new visitors from ever seeing the, often offensive spam, leaving your reputation intact.

I prefer the belt and braces approach, and activate 3 plug-ins that help in different ways.

Akismet Plug-In

Akismet spam filter is packaged with standard WordPress. It uses a central database that all users contribute to. When you flag a comment as spam, Akismet keeps a record of this, and warns users throughout the world. You need to sign-up with WordPress.com to get a key. This only takes a few seconds, and once you have the key, you can, and should, use it on all your sites. WordPress.com is also useful for another reason, and I will talk about my free WordPress.com website(s) later.

Bad Behavior Plug-In

This WordPress hosting anti-spam plug-in monitors visitors behavior and, if it recognizes typical bad robot type spamming patterns, it blocks the site. Bad Behavior is very straightforward to use, but there must be lots going on under the hood. Great way to stop spam before it starts.

Spam Karma Plug-In

The Spam Karma plug-in has loads of options, but is usually perfectly OK without changing the defaults. You need to go to the Options page after activating to initialize the plug-in. It also makes sense to run the compatibility tests at the foot of the options page, now and whenever you change theme.

aLinks Plug-In

Not a spam plug-in, but it makes managing external links so easy, that I would not have wanted to write this without it. All you do is add regularly linked URL’s to the database, linked to a key phrase, and whenever you type that phrase in a post, aLinks automatically presents it as a link. Loads of options. Loads of extra features. I’ll probably write a full review of it later.

There are more plug-ins to activate and configure, but categories need sorting out before we do any more posts, and we need a contact page.