According to the Netcraft’s September 2008 web server survey which managed the responses of over 180 million websites and takes the sample of 44.5 million, it shows three quarters of web server software was powered by Apache and 2.6 million sites was hosted via The Planet’s network.  However, these are mostly polish (.pl) link farms that can artificially inflate figures. A link’s a link I assume!

Resin, a lesser known open source web server, is found to be the choice of 343 thousands websites.  The software is owned by Caucho Technology and pitches the product be a high performance application server product based on JAVA and PHP technology.  This makes it the 12th most popular web server on the Internet.

Another interesting statistic was SmugSmug, a photo sharing and sales web service, that has now over 18 thousand (subdomain) websites.  The company uses F5 BIG-IP devices to handle the traffic and uses over half a petabyte of storage space using Amazon’s Simple Storage Server (S3). That is impressive but not surprising as it provides photo storage facilities including watermark protection for artists and photographer’s works.

I am very happy for SmugSmug’s success particularly as I read through its about us section and see it as a very family oriented business.

Recently, SAVVIS and Internap announced the renegotiation of its credit facilities so they can continue to operate in a slowing economy - the news was published on HBM. Given the state of some of US banks and its reluctance to lend, it was a victory of sorts.

More importantly, it’s comforting to know that network service and infrastructure operators (NSPs) have the confidence of banks as I think they should considered to be as safe as blue chips. Yes, they have high investment expenditure but so are utility companies. Even in a depressed economy, companies still need to connect to do business. From banks to manufacturers, particularly those with a global presence, rely on NSPs to condense time and space.

I believe we can lose sight of how important NSPs are to the circulatory system of the Internet, sometimes, the flow of information and data are just as important as money.

With my purchase of a network of shopping websites last year from the iFroggy, I finally took the time to redevelope and brand it under Wahoolia. The sites that I acquired are basically Amazon affiliate websites running a really simple and neat script straight from the company.

The really good thing about this is that I don’t have to manage payments, item returns or any logistics as Amazon is the supplier of goods to the customer.  Plus, when customers knows Amazon is the supplier behind you, it makes them trust you tat little bit more.  I mean, who hasn’t heard of Amazon??

The sites that I acquired are mawarehouse.com, buycheeses, buyblenders and camerablast.  Feel free to browse them and give me any feedback.  I love to keep improving websites as you would probably imagine and any feed back would be much appreciated.

I have finally done it! I have completed the revamp layout of the site after so many months delay!

As you can see, the layout has been widened and the navigational menu has been moved from the left hand side to the right.  This should give the site’s secondary page layout more expansion room and make it easier for readers to browse our website.

I have also made some decisions to remove some functionalities including for web hosting providers to input web hosting plans and services into our backend.  It was no longer feasible to maintain the thousands of plans and sometimes - too much - choice can be complicated.  As such, I have removed the search engines and specials section from the site. With regards to the reviews of webhosts, I have decided to also remove these and focus on a handful of hosts instead as I have personally have accounts with each and can provide a more independent review of them.  The reviews section was continously spammed and certains hosts were abusing the rating system even with the controls put into place.

You could say I am now strictly focusing on our core objectivity which is to provide information and commentry to readers regarding the hosting industry. I believe this consolidation will be a positive step as we move ahead.

If you feedback regarding the change, feel free to leave a comment.

I have finally decided to begin my first blog. I know I am little late on this train but better late than never they say. As you would of probably noticed, I have been a little slack on updating Host Byte lately but I have been traveling around Western Europe for the last two months or so with two childhood friends of mine.  To put it shortly, it was great.  I had the wonderful opportunity to travel through France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands and England.

I will be based in London for a while and have managed to find a apartment near Queens Park station which is in Zone 2 which is great.  Nice and modern place with a fantastic room mate.  Easy to get along with. As you would imagine in London, accomodation is expensive but I guess you get use to it and things get easier when you’re earning pounds rather than Aussie dollar!

Anyway I hope to keep you more up to date with the latest changes and hopefully you will give me some feedback on any site changes in the future.

Over and Out!