Ricky’s Online Business Blog

One year ago, a customer who had been hosting with me for a few years, decided to hire a new web designer.  The web design company was a reputable one and customer was very satisfied with their work.

However, this web design company insisted the customer use their web hosting service.  Web hosting was part of their web development package for the customer.  Not being a technical person and not having been briefed clearly, the customer unknowingly agreed to the deal.

Later the web design company called me up to get my “cooperation” to transfer hosting to their server.  I sought clarification from customer but he said he never wanted to switch hosting provider.  He still wanted to host with me.

But the web design company was very adamant that the customer must host with them.  They claimed that they had set up everything about customer’s web site and database on their own in-house server, and so it was very troublesome to move their work to my server.  They said it was “easier” for them to develop the web site by hosting on their server.

Luck was on my side, though.  Customer insisted to host with me and gave them official notification to the web design company to host their works on my server.  Long story cut short, the customer is still happily hosting with me until now.

By some discovery later on, I found out that the web design company was actually using hosting from third-party hosting provider.  So they had not been very honest by saying the customer must host on their own “in-house server”.

From my experience, it is generally not true that you must host your web site with your web design company.  No matter where you host, as long as they get hold of the details on how to log on to the server, they can do their work.

It is also generally not true that it’s “easier” for them to develop your web site on their server.  No matter where you host, they work on your web site using pretty much the same ways - uploading and downloading by FTP, web-based administration using cPanel and PhpMyAdmin, and so on.

But I know of some cases where a customer’s web site makes use of special features available only on the web designer’s server.  Then in such cases, you have no choice but host with them.  But these cases are rare.

Web design and web hosting are two different services.  These two services can be separated and provided by different providers. But a web design company often bundle web hosting in their service, and this is perfectly good strategy.  But it is not good when they are not being honest and transparent with you.

Not everyday is perfect day and problems can come up anytime. Sometimes I have to put up with a bad hair day too. So I wonder whether it would be better to turn bald when I get old so that I don’t have to worry about my hair any more!

Anyway, sometimes my hosting customers too can encounter problems in their Internet connection to our server.  I normally ask them to check their connection to server and send me report generated by a software called PingPlotter.  Customer support by phone and email is a full-time job.  So I might as well post here and refer them to this article.

So are you reading this because you can’t connect to our server, or any web site?  Download PingPlotter (free version) at http://www.pingplotter.com to find out what’s wrong. Install and run the program as usual.

As you can see above, there is a little text box at the top left.  Just type your server address there and hit Enter.  The server address depends on what you want to check.  It could be mail.yourdomain.com or pop.yourdomain.com for mail server, webmail.yourdomain.com for webmail, www.yourdomain.com or simply yourdomain.com for your web site.

A little graph will be generated on the right hand side every few seconds.  It shows what happened along the way from your PC to our server.  If the graph is mostly in green, you are having good connection.  If there is some yellow or red color, there might be some bottleneck or network problem somewhere halfway.

To churn out the report, click Edit menu, then Copy As Image.  You can then start and paste the copied image into your graphic software, such as Paint.  Then save the image and send to me at ricky [at] rickysoo.com.

Any question or comments? Welcome to comment below.

Perhaps you work in a company with offices in a few countries or a few branches.  Or perhaps your company has many staff with various departments.

Would you like to indicate your location or department in your email address?  You can use subdomain in your email address such as sales@malaysia.mycompany.com or ricky@hr.mycompanycom!

What is a subdomain anyway?  It is anything that goes before your domain name.  For example, in “singapore.mycompany.com”, “mycompany.com” is the domain name” and “singapore” is the subdomain.

It’s easy to create email address with your chosen subdomain.  Let’s create an email address called ricky@malaysia.mycompany.com.

1. Log into your web-based control panel cPanel.
2. In cPanel, go to the Domains section and click Subdomains.
3. Enter “malaysia” as subdomain, specify the location of the subdomain (such as /public_html/malaysia), and click Create button.
4. In cPanel, go to the Mails section and click Email Accounts.
5. Enter “ricky” as the email username, select “malaysia.mycompany.com” from the domain list, enter other details such as password, and click Create button.
6. Now set up your email software such as Outlook to start using your email account. Done!

By the way, if you have created a subdomain as above, you can also use it to have a different web site for your branch in Malaysia under your domain name with the address http://malaysia.mycompany.com!