Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

You heard it! Host Solutions has been open since 2008 and has been a small web host company I have been running to provide quality hosting as little as $30 per year.

Throughout these past few years, I have worked with the technicians at HostGator to optimize my servers for WordPress and developers alike, mostly due to the fact I am a designer and developer myself. I got tired of crappy hosting and wanted to deliver a personalized hosting experience, not an automated one lacking the answers I required.

Recently Host Solutions had its Apache and PHP updated, and also, memcache was installed for our WordPress users. Memcache works great with W3 Total Cache, and it was a worthwhile and wise investment.

My close friends and clients alike keep poking at me to speak up about my hosting service, so here I am speaking about it.

What can Host Solutions offer?

Well, Host Solutions shared hosting services can offer you the same services that HostGator’s main clients can, but with extras that are only available for dedicated server clients to buy and request, like memcache, more memory, speedier customer service, cPanel with Fantastico Deluxe (has auto-install of WordPress), and much more.

My smallest package at Host Solutions is 5GB diskspace and 25GB bandwidth for $30 a year, and if you are a new client that has no domain, it includes your choice of a .com, .net, or .org package.

It is a great starter package and cPanel is easy to learn. You even get unlimited email, ftp, and parked domains. I do offer free account transfers as long as the account is under 5GB diskspace.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

I made a set of simple social network icons for my clients as a default method, but after some careful thought, I decided to release this set. Currently there are 30 icons available. I am sure I will be adding more, but this is only the beginning.

I will be colorizing this set into several colors for your use. I know I will have my own colorized set to match my own website and from past experience, I know others look for specific sets and colors to match their site too.

In making these, I wanted to be simplistic and use some of my pixelling skills, but all keep some of the integrity of the brands.

Icons available are:

• Blogger
• Yahoo! Buzz
• Delicious
• DeviantART
• Digg
• Email icon
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Foursquare
• Friendfeed
• Friendster
• Google
• Last.fm
• LinkedIn
• LiveJournal
• MySpace
• Meetup
• Plurk
• Posterous
• Reddit
• RSS feed icon
• Squidoo
• StumbleUpon
• Technorati
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• WordPress
• Yahoo!
• Youtube

Let me know any requests you all have. Please only request those that you actually do use.

I like Izea and the properties it holds, but unfortunately, the services have really just kind of hit rock bottom. I took a 30 day challenge for the PRO member account for Sponsored Tweets and… that was a wasted venture.

I had no opportunities offered and the only thing I could say was that I paid $1.99 for little blue icon that said PRO. It was very disappointing. And even though I kept my account for nearly half a month more in the PRO status, I still did not get any offers.

It may be $1.99, but it is not worth it.

Here are some of the reactions in the Sponsored Tweets Get Satisfaction forum from others.

Here is the update from Carri, a staff member of Izea.

While I am not telling you to not use Sponsored Tweets, I am recommending that you use it at your own risk. Based on my own experience and those of the community there, it is not a service that works well for those with little followers or even a decent followers with a decent true reach. You may be better off to offer sponsored tweet services from your own site or through Fiverr.

Have you taken the Sponsored Tweets PRO member challenge lately? What are you thoughts? If not, and you are a basic member of Sponsored Tweets, how has the service worked for you? (Please do leave your twitter ID so I can go and follow you on Twitter.)

So, I am half way through my 30 day challenge with Sponsored Tweets PRO, and you know… no opportunities. As promised, I went through some of the messages being said in the Sponsored Tweets forum about this and no surprise- even users with over 80,000 followers on the PRO membership are not getting opportunities.

Here are some of the responses found:

And when they ask why is this happening, especially when being a PRO member means the user is to get better exposure with the advertisers, the staff responds:

Another response around that time, by the same staff member was that basically that the paid tweet opportunities had been given to non-PRO members.

WHOA! Wait a minute here! Does this basically mean that people are paying for a service that basically is useless. If you are giving opportunities, they should be to the PRO members first, right? Hmmm… sounds funny to me. And then on top of that… in waves. I am not certain, but after Izea’s annual parties, becoming a public company with stock options, currently hiring, and even offering to sponsor Tweetups, Sponsored Tweets is doing pretty good getting advertisers.

By the way, someone commented on the post for the start of my challenge about finding more followers. I have a decent amount already, so that is not the issue. I had opportunities in the past (though they were few and far between) with Sponsored Tweets.

So far, I am leaning to Sponsored Tweets PRO = #Fail.

WordCampers were delighted to see Matt Mullenweg attend WordCamp St. Louis 201. He took attendees through an informal Town Hall question and answer session. However, before sharing the questions and answers, here were a couple facts Matt shared about WordPress: 1, WordPress passed 50 million sites and 2, WordCamp San Francisco 2011 surpassed selling 1000+ tickets.

Now on with questions:

What is Automattic?
Automattic is a company founded 5 and a half yrs ago. Matt said he felt like services were not being easily addressed and employed people to address those issues (spam, polls, comments, etc.)

Is there a roadmap to mobile for WordPress? How will it change?
Matt laughed and began with, “Ah, the internet in your pocket.”

Matt expressed that at first, mobile development for WordPress was a mistake and said that basically developers were cramming WordPress into phones that could not handle it – too many steps to do things and not very capatible.

For the future, he hopes that mobile capabilities become more streamlined and even with version 3.3, making it more web responsive. He added that currently the Twenty Eleven theme does have responsive design and to try it out.

What can we do to support WordPress?

• Come to WordCamp
• Word of mouth- tell ur friend
• Support and share your WordPress knowledge with others
• Attend local WordPress meetup groups
• Help develop

There were talks in 2010 that WordPress might be acquired by Microsoft?
NO…pure rumor.

What are some plans for WordPress Foundation?
Matt briefly covered that the WordPress Foundation because a 501.3c non-profit organization. He also shared that both the intellectual property and trademark of WordPress were moved under the control of the WordPress Foundation.

He noted that some of the beginning tasks dealt with cleaning up sites that were misusing the trademark.

As for the future, Matt expressed that he Would like to see WordPress Foundation dabble in education and Women in Technology. Also, in terms of WordCamps, the WordPress Foundation would become a financial backup resource in case there were not enough sponsors found.

Are there any future WordPress multi-site plans???
Matt mentioned that currently plugins for multi-site are not that great, however, there are plans to do more network admin cleanups.

At WordCamp St. Louis, WordPress Lead Developer Peter Westwood (@westi) opened the floor for a question and answer session.

Here were some of the questions asked:

What does a WordPress core developer do?
WordPress core developers do triaging bugs and trac.

How can you contribute to the Core Handbook?
Contact Peter Westwood.

How do you centralize updates in core?
1. core.trac.wordpress.org
2. weekly meeting in dev irc 4P UTC on Thurs (List of IRC Channels on WordPress Codex)
3. wpdevel.wordpress.com
4. wp-hackers mailing list and testing mailing list

What is target version release goal for WordPress?
3 to 4 per year in order to try to get more focused releases instead of waiting so much longer for new features

What are some key features that may be expected in future?

• Media- improve uploader.
• Make it easier for plugins to integrate better
• Better theme options
• Better overall experience

Thoughts on WordPress and mobile???? (Peter’s thoughts)
Definitely an area to improve.

Is there any plans to improve backend search in WordPress? (hard to find a post based on keywords)
Right now, it is not something currently put to core at the moment.

Will WordPress drop IE7 support for 3.3?
A little too soon for future 3.3.

Standardization on custom fields?
Something that could be on the table maybe 3.4.

Where are unit tests?
Codex instructions for Unit Testing WordPress.

How features are prioritized?
Usually WordPress ideas forum (where users can submit idea and even vote.)

What are some upcoming updates to expect?

• WordPress.com- improving import and export process
• WordPress core- bringing HTML to email capabilities

So, I decided to try out about a week ago the Sponsored Tweets PRO membership to really see if it makes any difference in gaining more paid to tweet opportunities.

With the system, apparently my membership would put me closer to the advertiser and not so far down as the ‘low man on the totem pole.’ This idea for experimenting came about as I combed the Sponsored Tweets support forum and the majority of the comments about it was just disappointing.

While I get a free 30 day trial on the system, I am going to be gathering comments from other PRO users, reveal if I actually got a decent opportunity or two, and share my final thoughts.

I am glad Izea is making money on their properties, but I think with so many users in the program, the advertising programs they offer, and more, the system, seems to have deviated off its original path and only become useful to those with large follower accounts. These larger follower counts do not necessarily have a great “true” reach – meaning they might have 80,000 followers, but maybe a reach that is 5 to 10 percent of that number.

It makes me wonder if even the Klout system, also an Izea property, is as accurate as it should be or perhaps another faulty system.

So, follow me on my journey.

Izea, known for its properties such as SponsoredTweets, PayPerPost, and others, recently acquired Be-A-Magpie.com. Basically “Magpie” is a paid to tweet services, just like Izea’s property, Sponsored Tweets.

While I see this is great for Izea, is it really going to be good news for Sponsored Tweet publishers who are already complaining about the lack of decent opportunities available to them. On top of that, with the recent introduction of Sponsored Tweets PRO program, will there be more opportunities.

As an early on signup with Sponsored Tweets, I had hopes. In the beginning, I got decent opportunities and it has dwindled down to once every few months. I avoid the CPC opportunities because they are insultingly low. Some of the opportunities were even a bit risque for my tweet stream to handle. (I am picky when it comes to what I tweet, especially links and any sponsored tweets.)

I guess you can say, I had high hopes for this service, but there has been a lot more focus on nabbing celebrities as ad publishers. This is great, but I thought the point to be able to monetize tweet streams was similar to the paid to blog concept, trying to reach people by using others who may be able to reach where celebrities do not.

Not every celebrity is followed by every person on Twitter. Of course, there are a lot of great celebrities, but most of these people do not use Twitter specifically as a means for reaching out to people and influencing. Not all celebrities chat with people who respond to their tweets. In fact, this kind of ties in with my popularity versus influence post. Not all celebrities are influential, but they are popular.

I get more opportunities for sponsored tweets via Fiverr than Izea, mostly because I am sure the advertisers there are looking for cheaper ways to invest in specific people to advertise their sites or products. Twitter is not exactly growing too much these days, so advertisers are pretty choosy with whom they want endorsing their products and services. So, I am also sure this is a big factor on why I am not getting that many opportunities.

I will be watching Sponsored Tweets closely to see if there is any positive effect with the Magpie acquisition. Right now, I am a bit skeptical.