Home Website Status

The status of my websites running on my home computer.  I try to keep this up to date with new changes in my home web sites configuration.

12/5/2005 Wow have things changed on the home website(s).

Actually not the site itself but the technology behind it.  First I've got ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line), a surprise out here in dairy farm country, and WOW what a difference.  Also I'm now running the open source Apache web server software and it is excellent.  None of the limitations of the Windows XP IIS implementation.  Apache is a very powerful web server.  One great thing is I was able to turn on GZIP compression reducing the size of webpages served from my home websites by about a factor of 4.  With DSL and compression speed is quite good, and home websites can become more of a reality.  My ISP says fine, as long as it's not commercial.  No selling of goods for example.

6/19/2004 Well I had to do it;

Epix.net and Microsoft's IIS 5.1 are just too unreliable.  Google is tough when web pages are not present just once, and even more so if not present twice.  If Google misses a page once the page remains in the index in limbo.

The page URL is known but there is no description or summary provided.  If Google misses the page twice you're out of the index for a month unless your site is scanned daily by Google, which some are.  So www.bobshowto.com is now hosted by IPowerWeb:Powerful Hosting - $7.95 - Free Setup.  Our home website, which I'm guilty of not maintaining much, is still running on my PC using dialup, usually connecting at 46.6 to Epix, although we may choose another ISP soon.  Take a look at www.windyhill.info our home website.

And even cheaper.  Dot5hosting.  Guess what?  I've learned through the Better Business Bureau that Dot5Hosting is really IPowerWeb in a different wrapper at a lower price.  I don't see much of a disadvantage though today, 8/3/2004, this site is still hosted at IPowerWeb.  Here is the BBB report.  It looks like IPowerWeb bought up Dot5Hosting.com and now is offering slightly altered IPowerWeb products at a discount.
Oops, looks like the BBB has revised the report yet again, The comment "also doing business as Dot5hosting.com" has been removed.  I talked to the BBB and they have have been told these are separate companies that are in the same building.  (Even in the same Suite!).  Bob 8/28/2004.