I recently did an interview with Googlebot, trying to understand how pages really do get ranked in Google.

Me: “Good morning Googlebot, how do you do?”

Googlebot: “BenCode jpg work coffee November box - Marlborough views bike Ben food.”

Me: “Really, that is fascinating. On my blog I talk about religion, biking, fitness, health, food, technology, etc. What topics interest you?”

Googlebot: “Church kids Graham RSS family God! Brand silverware biking, crap went funny Unitarian. Suck Explorer night October put bed. Post Santa sleep ride!”

Me: “Now wait, if I understand you correctly, you…”

Googlebot: “Bite crackers! Bleh fall Linux ouch. Store caffeine reserved thinking! Aplastic babel film fish grind.”

Me: “Geez, sorry, didn’t realize I offended…”

Googlebot: “Jesus knowledge Saturday wow! Anemia! Technology gallery generic, leaves says size brainwave copyright owner? Rights Windows fully headed, identical iRiver McAfee MDS podcast!“

Googlebot image found on Paul Ford’s story, “August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web“

Now that I’ve flashed the iRiver, and can mount it under Linux, I’ve produced my first all-linux podcast.

I went through all my normal steps, but instead of doing it them on my XP laptop, I did them on my Ubuntu desktop. Took a little configuring, but I was able to get all the sound settings correct, and was able to setup Audacity the same way I have it in XP. Also, my perl script for converting wav to MP3 with lame was almost a direct drag and drop from windows to linux. I also installed the linux version of ipodder, and was able to test the podcast feed. Read all about our podcast here.

Headphone wearing penguin borrowed from the Linux Australia Podcast Service

Okay, here is the low-down on my site move:

bencode.com: You are looking at the new bencode.

The old site was hosted on a windows server using old fashioned ASP. No database, essentially just html with SSI and a few little helper ASP functions. I had a lot of hidden files and folders, used it as a place to post quick galleries, zip files, etc.

The new site is wordpress powered, with integrations into gallery 2 (see bushelandapeck.com, later). When my host is up, this site is rockin! I’ve got a cron job checking email and putting up posts with pictures from my phone. I am also writing all these silly posts, and, wordpress just plain rocks.

fruitycats.com: A new blog for my wife, which she has yet to use.

Dreamhost gave me a free domain name when I signed up, so I got my wife fruitycats. I did the one-click install for wordpress, chose a nice template and… done. Took about 15 minutes total!

stevenpeck.com: My father’s resume site.

This was windows/asp, no database. I made a flattened html backup of the site, and restored it onto the linux/apache servers. The only real dynamic part of the site was the contact form, I replaced it with dreamhosts out of the box contact form processor. Took maybe an hour total to get the site back to where it was.

bushelandapeck.com: My image management

My first domain name. This was built from scratch with ASP and some access databases. The content loading mechanism was perl with imagemagick. It did almost everything I wanted, exactly the way I wanted. However, it was using technology that was old old old, and was so convoluted that I really couldn’t remember how it worked. I also don’t have time to manage my pictures the way I used to, and just need to get them posted with no fuss. On top of that, the old system could only be managed from one PC.

Now: set up on linux/apache with php and mysql - one click install of gallery 2. Played quite a bit to get used to it, adjusted the templates and wrote a user import script. All my users have been exported from the access database, and am in the process of loading pictures - from any computer. Gallery 2 just plain rocks! I’ve also integrated it with wordpress on bencode.com, so any album I want to show on that site can be “merged” in. Other people (my dad) can easily upload and help manage my pictures.

MarlboroughNewcomers.com: Marlborough Area Newcomers and Neighbors

This was running linux/apache/php/mysql/wordpress on the old host. I backed up the files and database and restored it over here, switched over the nameservers and it was back up and running. Moving over email addresses and configurations was a pain, but now we have a mailman powered distribution list - take that spammers!

ucmh.org Unitarian Church of Marlborough and Hudson

Same story as MarlboroughNewcomers.com, except I haven’t pulled the plug on the nameservers yet. I want to make sure that the new host stabilizes a bit before I move this. This site is my current “pet” and I want to make sure that it is happy with its new home. Running a pretty nice podcast out of here, so I don’t want to break the availability of it.

Other sites:
With this move I am getting out of the business of hosting at all. I’ve kicked my paying clients out - with a little help moving the boxes. Nuwisha.net and Osscast.com have followed me to Dreamhost, but with his own account. KenDesrochers.com has followed me to GoDaddy for domain registration, but will probably end up forwarding to either Google Picassa Web Albums or Yahoo Flickr.

Get $74 off Dreamhost L1: Crazy Domain Insane Hosting when you sign up for a year and use promo code BENCODE74. Sign up here.

For the past week I’ve been transitioning my sites from a small mom-and-pop provider to larger but-still-down-to-earth hosting provider, Dreamhost. Things have been shaky so far. The web server has gone down several times, and the mysql server completely crapped out for two days - they ended up replacing it. However, they were pretty shaky at my previous provider too. Dreamhost has much more streamlined support and reporting systems, so getting issues resolved and finding out what is going on is a lot easier.

My main reason for switching was that the old host stopped allowing me to alias emails to comcast addresses. About 1/4 of the users I support are on comcast, this was a big issue. Of course, after being set up for a while with dreamhost I realized they do the same thing, but with AOL instead of comcast. However, they do have mailman distribution listsoftware and other filter methods for getting around this, without furthering the spread of spam (which is the cause of these blocks).

Secondly, after doing some research, I realized that I was paying a lot more, and I wasn’t getting a lot more. I was paying around $40/mo. on the old host, with 7 web sites (mixed windows and linux), 3 gigs of storage and 50 gigs of bandwidth. Now, $10 per month for 200 gigs of storage and 2 TB of bandwidth - all linux (I’ve been waiting for an excuse to dump ASP/Access and use wordpress and gallery for my personal sites).

I’m not sure if there is a better host out there in my price range. Between $10 and $50 a month you really can’t expect much. You’d have to pay close to $100 at least for a reliable shared environment, and even higher if you want dedicated hosting. I think two of the sites I host are pretty high profile, but still - they don’t make money and my “clients” can’t afford better hosting. The only problem with site down time is that it goes against my reputation. Most people don’t know the difference between the artist and the framer.

I’ve been transistioning from the attitude that building everything from scratch is the way to go. The time it takes to create an application from scratch (although fun) doesn’t seem worth it anymore. Companies, small business and organizations don’t have the time and money to go through a full development lifecycle. They would just as soon go into their local store and buy some shrink wrap software and just use it. That is where I fit in. Because, actually going to the store, unwrapping the shrink wrap, performing the installation, and, gasp, configuring and customizing is not nearly as easy as you would think. So, now I believe the way to go is to become an expert in several software packages, and be ready to install, configure and customize, while leaving the core products untouched. Thinking outside the box about out of the box software.