It has been a while since I have talked about my love affair with the Canadian wireless industry, but it is time to praise WIND Mobile, yet again. In a previous post titled New Wireless – WIND Mobile, I discussed how Globalive is using the WIND brand to change the wireless industry in Canada – a great relief for many of us that are passionate about the industry.

Not only is WIND trying to change wireless, they are also changing the hiring process. A major new entity, such as WIND, must have a strong focus on quality recruiting in order to become successful in an already established industry. How are they doing this? The recruiting team has been using the power of social media to reach out to motivated and passionate job-seekers. Specifically WIND has employed the use of Facebook, Twitter and a community-focused website to establish amazing two-way communication.

Check them out!
WIND on Facebook
WIND on Twitter
WIND CEO, Ken Campbell, on Twitter
Globalive CEO, Tony Lacavera, on Twitter
WIND Careers on Twitter
WIND community site

Here is to hoping that WIND starts to hire for marketing/product/analysis roles soon!

I have received quite a number of questions regarding my move from shared hosting to a VPS, so I would like to take the time to go into a little more detail in how I justified the move and the overall process.

What is a VPS? Virtual private servers enable users to experience dedicated server-like performance, but at a discounted cost. Essentially, multiple VPS’s will exist on the same server hardware, but are each run independently thanks to operating system virtualization. For a more detailed explanation, hit up Wikipedia.

Why did I move to VPS? Cost efficiency and control were the two main reasons for the transition. On a monthly basis, I was paying $12.40 to Squarespace and a combined $11 for my two shared hosting accounts. While I am now paying over double that sum, I have a superior level of control and room to grow. When it comes to control, I am referring to the ability to install applications, enable features and reboot the server on my own. When my shared host of choice could not offer SSH, FFMPEG or Ruby, I knew that it was time to move on.

Read on for a list of things to consider when shopping around for a VPS!

Things to consider when shopping for a VPS

When you start your search for a VPS, you will most likely be overwhelmed by the differences in both resources and cost. Some VPS’s can be found at under $20, while others cost many hundreds, yet they claim to offer the same resources (bandwidth, RAM, processors, etc). The main difference between many VPS hosts is the level of service. This does not just mean responding to trouble tickets. For instance, is the VPS managed or unmanaged? How much do the little extras cost? How many IP addresses are included? Do they own the data centre themselves and where is it located? What SLA (service level agreement) is in place?

Okay, maybe that was a little too much too quickly, so let me break it down.

Managed vs unmanaged. Are you an expert when it comes to running a server from the command line? If not, then managed is the only way to go in my opinion. With a managed server, the hosts’ support staff will take care of software updates and security patching as well as help you install necessary software. Personally, I am very comfortable with the command line and have been using Linux for quite a while, but a managed host that would proactively care for my VPS was the only thing I considered. Managed hosting comes at an increased cost but, in my opinion, it is well worth it for most consumers.

Little extras. Does the hosting plan come with cPanel/WHM or Fantastico? If not, how much do the licenses cost? If you are not given more than one IP how much do additional IP’s cost? These are critical questions when pricing out the true monthly cost of a VPS. If you are looking to run your own name servers you should have at least two IP addresses. From my research, most reputable VPS hosts offer four+ dedicated IP’s with their VPS plans.

Another critical question is how overages are charged. How much is extra bandwidth? Is there “burstable” RAM available? Many hosts are fairly lenient when it comes to first-time bandwidth overages, but ask if you will be warned when you approach your cap and what happens when you do reach the top. Is the service simply disabled or does the tab start running?

Data centre. If you are looking at signing on with a major hosting company chances are that they own the data centres (location where servers are run) themselves, while smaller hosts will lease servers within large data centres. There are benefits to both – for example, a smaller host can generally offer cheaper hosting as they do not experience the overhead involved in maintaining the facility. The benefit of host-owned data centres is generally speed and support – no middlemen are required when it comes to replacing hardware.

Additionally, where is the data centre located? If most of your site visitors are from North America, it is useful to have your server located in a US or Canadian-based facility. If you are serving Europe, consider a server either in Europe or the North American East Coast. Likewise, with Asia and the West Coast.

Service level agreement (SLA). Servers do go down and hardware does fail, but how does the hosting company deal with such issues? You will see hosts brag about 99.99% up-time guarantees, but do they back up their claims? Be sure to read their SLA to see what compensation they provided to downed servers. Some hosts will offer a free month of hosting if your server is down for more than thirty minutes, while others will require the server to be down for a day before compensation kicks in. Once you narrow your decision to a few hosts, read and compare their SLA’s.

Ticket response and overall client support. As I said above, things do go wrong, but how quick is the support staff when it comes to fixing the issue? The speed at which an issue is fixed has become the main selling point for many hosts with most claiming response times of under half an hour. Is the support staff informative and friendly? For me, this is more important than response time. I have asked WiredTree a couple of questions that stemmed from general curiosity and they have been fantastic in their responses.

Before I conclude, I have had two requests to discuss how to setup a VPS. As I went with a managed solution, most of the setup was already done for me, but I do have a few pieces of advice. Updating the DNS can be a bit of a pain if you are not quite sure what you are doing. I was able to figure it out in the end, but this was the most difficult process I encountered. The host should have a control panel, outside of cPanel/WHM, that allows you do edit the DNS records for the IP’s assigned and they will most likely be able to guide you through the process. Remember that DNS updates take up to 48 hours to complete so try to not be as impatient as I was.

When it comes to maintaining your VPS, most work, assuming you are on a Linux-based VPS, is done through WebHost Manager (WHM). If you have used cPanel before you will feel right at home. I have very limited experience with WHM, but I have taken advantage of the various forums and Google Groups that discuss common WHM administration.

To those wanting to share their experiences or information and those with questions, please post your comments below.

Have a great weekend everyone!

As I mentioned in part one, Squarespace was an excellent full-service host and offered an online WYSIWYG editor that shames even some stand-alone software. The real value of the Squarespace service is handling traffic surges and scaling at no extra charge. If you are looking to host a highly-trafficked blog, I highly recommend checking out Squarespace. Okay, let’s get to a discussion on my experience moving from Squarespace to a VPS.

WordPress theme. Before I started the transition, I was well-aware of what I was going to need. First of all, I needed to find a WordPress theme that suited my brand. I was very happy with the design I came up with at Squarespace, so I largely wanted to replicate that, while making the content more of the focus. Thanks to ThemeForest, I found a phenomenally customizable theme called BigFeature that was ideal. The price was right and for $25 I had a brand-spanking new theme that I could adjust to my liking.

WordPress configuration. Before I changed the Rural Technocrat nameservers I wanted to be sure that the theme and content would perform as I wished so I set-up a test directory under another domain. Installing WordPress could not be easier, especially when using Fantastico. My first step, after installation, was to move over my Squarespace content. Luckily, Squarespace allows all posts and comments to be exported to a Movable Type file, which can then be imported into WordPress. This worked extremely well and within minutes my content was accessible.

Similarly, installing the purchased theme was a very easy task. The account panel at ThemeForest allows you to download the theme package whenever needed. A simple upload to the WordPress themes folder was all that it took to go from bland to grand! I must say that the developer of the BigFeature theme has made it extremely easy to fully-customize the look and feel of his theme.

Transition from test to deployed. At this point I had a fully-functioning WordPress installation with all of my Squarespace posts and comments as well as a beautiful new theme. Unfortunately, this was installed on a test domain, so it was time to transition it to the new Rural Technocrat account on my VPS. Overall, this process took a few hours, but that was largely due to my inability to differentiate between ‘wrdp’ and ‘wdrp’. Here are the steps that one should follow when replicating a WordPress installation.

1. Export the current MySQL database to a .SQL file. Use phpMyAdmin to do so.
2. Backup the entire contents of the test server (well, everything related to WordPress).
3. On the new server, create an empty MySQL database and then import the previous .SQL file using phpMyAdmin.
4. Move the backed-up contents to the new server.
5. Edit the wp-config.php to reflect the new database name/user/password.

Nameserver change. Assuming that you did not want to risk downtime, now is time to change the domain nameservers to that of your current host. Keep in mind that replication will take up to 24 hours and do not forget to add the MX records so that you don’t lose your email!

Issues. It may seem like everything went very smoothly for me, but there were a few minor hiccups. First, exporting to Movable Type format from Squarespace does not bring over the blogroll, images, or even tags. So far I have replaced the links, but it will be a drawn-out process to deal with the images and ad-formatting. Secondly, as I mentioned above, I thought I was transferring both the database and WordPress files incorrectly as I always had a database error. If only I knew that ‘wrdp’ is not the same as ‘wdrp’. Finally, I am generally an impatient person so waiting for DNS flushes and nameserver updates was a tedious task to handle.

Overall, I am very satisfied with the transition. By maintaining a VPS I can grow the number of websites that I can host so it just made sense to transition to WordPress for my personal blog. It has been about three years since I used WordPress last and let me tell you – it is AMAZING!

Well, the move is complete! I have successfully installed and configured WordPress and moved existing Rural Technocrat data from Squarespace. Let me first say that I was extremely impressed with Squarespace throughout my tenure, but as my Web host requirements changed, I figured that it would be best to host my blog on a shiny new VPS (virtual private server)!

Finding the perfect VPS is no easy task. There are thousands of providers and filtering through the garbage takes time and work. Thanks to the power of Twitter, my short-list was narrowed very quickly – Liquid Web and WiredTree. I was looking for a reasonably priced and managed VPS in the $40 to $50 range. Liquid Web was on the upper end of this requirement and Wired Tree was on the lower. I decided to test the support staff at both organizations so I called their support line to get a feel for how long it would take to get through – both were phenomenal and picked up the phone within thirty seconds of my call.

When all was said and done, I decided to go with Wired Tree. I spent some time reading reviews on the Web Hosting Talk forum, where I found flawless discussions regarding Wired Tree, but a few negative posts when it came to Liquid Web. The negatives were largely related to rude support staff and, as Liquid Web is so large, it seems logical that they would have a few “bad eggs”. The real deal breaker for me was the Wired Tree CEO, Zac Cogswell. Zac routinely posts on forums and is a former director at Liquid Web. I honestly feel that my needs would have been met at either firm, but Wired Tree won my business.

Stay tuned for an upcoming post regarding the switch from the Squarespace platform to WordPress!

URL-shortening services such as Bit.ly, Is.gd, Ow.ly, the classic TinyURL and my personal favourite Tr.im have revolutionized the way Web links are shared across all forms of digital communication – particularly character-limited services such as Twitter. As demand grows, these services become expensive to host yet remain difficult to monetize. Ease is crucial, and as such, requiring a site visit, sponsored by ads, is often not feasible so how can money be made or costs, at least, covered?

In my opinion, the sale of extremely short, shortened URLs is the way to go. I realize that was probably a mouthful for some, so let me explain. Using Tr.im, http://ruraltechnocrat.com gets shortened to http://tr.im/A36R, but what if I could BUY http://tr.im/RT? It is something that I would definitely consider if the opportunity were posed. The pricing structure could be as simple as $100 for a single character, $25 for double character and $5 for three character (4-character+ would, of course, remain free). Assuming all single characters ($3600), all letter-only double characters ($16,900) and 25% triple letter-only ($21,970) URLs sold the company would have raised over $42,000. This is just an example of how it could play out as the prices and quantities sold would most likely be different.

Sure, the purpose of this is largely trivial and may appear to only remove a couple of characters from the end of a URL, but it also has potential to add to online branding with firms that routinely spread their Web presence using social media.

EDIT: It would also be cool to be able to have the right to the sub-folder URLs. This way all of my Rural Technocrat articles could be shortened to [URL shortener]/RT/[character][character]. As most URL shorteners are 4 to 6 characters, this would give me a 5 character shortener with 36+36*36 = 1332 custom short-URLS. It would also encourage me to login (*cough* ads *cough*) to create page-specific short-URLs.

In the past I have preached the benefits of using RSS to organize your daily Internet reading. A few months ago, Andrei Petrik wrote a great article titled “RSS Not Dead” and I was a strong supporter of his position. Oh how times have changed for me! I sit here staring at Google Reader for the first time in over a month with 5000+ items to read. Does this mean that I have missed the boat on many great articles? I am sure that I have, but as I get busier with work I have been using Twitter as a filter for my information intake.

Again, I am sure that I am missing quality articles, but I have found that the individuals and organizations that I follow on Twitter generally provide me with the cream of the crop. I have also found myself spending extended periods of time on new-to-me websites, masked by various URL-shorteners, that I would have previously passed aside.

Is RSS dead? Hardly. Has Twitter changed the way articles are shared? Absolutely!

After plenty of years of photography I finally decided to board the Flickr train – sure I am five years late to the game, but I thought I would write about my experience. In short, Flickr, in my humble opinion, is virtually flawless. Rather than ramble on I will organize my thoughts for you – read on for more!

Easy uploading. At the moment I am using a Mac with iPhoto and Aperture installed. I am well aware of Flickr plug-ins that are available for these two applications, but the Flickr Desktop Uploadr works brilliantly! You simply drag the photo from the respective application, or folder, and drop it on the uploader. From there you can edit tags, descriptions, add to a set, create sets and more. The photos are then automatically uploaded at the click of a button.

Rich Web app. Flickr goes far beyond allowing users to upload and display their photos. The organization tool behaves just like its desktop counterpart by allowing drag-and-drop, image sliders, collection creation and more. One major step forward is the integration of the Picnik online photo editor. The seamless Picnik integration gives users the ability to crop, enhance, adjust exposure, and apply cool effects all within the browser!

Pro account. As with most storage-heavy Web applications Flickr gives users the opportunity to upgrade from the free account, which should be more than enough for most users, to a Flickr Pro account. Flickr Pro offers unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, ad-free browsing, original file access, statistics and more for $24.95 per year. When I noticed that I would be closing in my 100MB monthly allowance it was a no-brainer to upgrade. The statistics that are offered fully satisfy my desire to collect and analyze data regarding everything I put on the Web.

Sure there are a few features I would like to see, watermarking and better quality control for example, but so far I am very impressed with what Flickr offers. I have already connected with a few people and it is great to finally be a contributor to the forerunner in online photography. I welcome any insight/recommendations that may make my experience even more rich!

Almost forgot! I encourage you to connect with my Flickr Photostream!

“What is going to be Web 3.0?” This is a question that I have been asked many times by a variety of people. My answer is generally a spiel about how I prefer to not label the generational Web in such a manner with tidbits on opening up protected information. As the methods of content creation changed around the millennium it was relatively easy to define the boundaries between a static Internet and one that allowed users to create a fully dynamic world. The splitting of content and style gave users the ability to publish anything at anytime using easily customizable, and rich-looking, visuals.

While getting intimate with my programming roots I came across, on Planet PHP, a great article by Ben Ramsey and his dividing of the Web into generations. Ben took an access-level approach in his definition resulting in Web 1.0 referring to read-only, 2.0 meaning read-write and 3.0 fulfilling the dream of read-write-execute. This is fine and dandy, but I would like to add some of my thoughts on the division.

Again, while I prefer not to toss around generational terms, the shift in technology allowed us to define the Web 1.0-to-2.0 shift with relative ease – something I do not see happening as we move forward. The proliferation of the Web and the technologies powering it have changed so much from early 2000′s that there have been many inter-generational jumps and, in my opinion, the executable Web has already been around for some time. One of the comments on the article is written by Bradley Holt who points out one such example of SaaS (software as a service) when he writes,

“You touch on one (of many) interesting points here: the emergence of the web as a platform. The most obvious example of this is Twitter where many of its users don’t directly use the twitter.com website but rather use it indirectly through its REST API.”

Now, Twitter is a relatively recent phenomenon, but Web API’s are nothing new. Websites like Amazon, YouTube, Facebook and many others have had open API’s that give 3rd party developers access to their data in a common format. The new Facebook design (which I love, by the way), looks so much like an operating system – right down to thetaskbar and application menu. For years now, my own word processing, spreadsheet creation and notetaking has all been moved to the Google Documents platform, something that is definitely considered executable.

Ben Ramsey’s article provides a glimpse into the generational Web and, while I may disagree on the transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, Ben writes “I suspect that, by 2015, we’ll have a clear idea of how this shift will play out”, something I believe is true. The line has been blurred and technology moves so quickly that it is becoming increasingly difficult to label the present and the future Web. Only in the future can we define what has happened in the past.

Twitter has grown dramatically over the last couple of months and, as such, many of the great people to follow have been lost in the shuffle. I follow quite a broad range of individuals, but here are a select few that I particularly enjoy.

@Stuartcfoster Pretty cool guy that slings PR and media jargon like it’s his business – wait, it is his business. Seriously, his commentary is awesome. Check out his kickass website, The Lost Jacket.

@SeanMoffitt Awesome guy that offers great value in his tweets. Toronto-based business guru. Check out his website, BuzzCanuck .

@andreipetrik Toronto-focused marketing wizard with a strong love for technology. Pretty cool to follow people that share interests with me.

@Recruiting101 (Dave Speiran) Toronto-based recruiter that really cares for and helps his followers. I just began following him and he promptly answers ANY recruiting questions I ask. Tremendous value for those living in Toronto!

@trent_reznor Leading man of Nine Inch Nails that tweets a couple of dozen times a day regarding contests, band information and just a sweet uncensored view of life and technology! Looking forward to his tweets when the NIN|JA tour begins.

@DentonPolice My guilty pleasure. Crime listings WITH mugshots from Denton, Texas.

These are just a handful of great people to follow if you are new to Twitter and have an interest in marketing, business, music and cool people. Oh, forgot the BEST one to follow, @colemason!