Alright, so I’m in search of a hosting company to serve my web apps and these are the two that have grabbed my attention. I need a host because, unfortunately, my personal web server and broadband aren’t going to cut it for real world stuff. Therefore, my home server will become my development server and I’ll let the big dogs handle production and the insane amount of traffic my apps bring in ;). Does anyone have experience with either of these companies or with another company of preference?

I’m leaning towards DreamHost right now because they seem to offer much better access via FTP and SSH and higher bandwidth to boot. They also seem to have a superb reputation in many of the discussion forums I’ve read through. Having my own web server by my side and being accustomed to easy access, I might go into convulsions without SSH, so that’s a big one for me. GoDaddy offers less in terms of accessibility, disk space, and bandwidth. However, they also offer a lower price and no setup fee. Other than those items, they are pretty comparable. So, it breaks down like this, depending on which tier you look at:

DreamHost (Tier 1 of 4) = 200GB Disk Space + 2TB Bandwidth + SSH Access – $49.95 Setup Fee – $9.95/month

GoDaddy (Tier 2 of 3) = 100GB Disk Space + 1TB Bandwidth – $6.99/month

If I prepay for 1 year, the setup fee for DreamHost goes away and if I prepay for 2 years the monthly rate would drop to $7.95. They’re also offering the tier 3 plan (“Code Monster”) at half price. So I’m considering going that route as well.

Two of my favorite new albums are “Blue October – Foiled” and “The Fray – How To Save A Life”. Both kick ass the whole way through and are awesome to code to. Good music like this helps me get into the zone, forget about my surroundings, and bang out some great code.

Your results may vary!

Why must hotmail suck??? I’ve spent the last few hours trying to get them to accept emails from my application and am on the verge of mental breakdown! Sometimes it lets them through and other times it rejects them without any explanation. I can’t seem to find anything that resembles rational behavior what so ever. Seems to me they are using some sort of robot/algorithm on crack that scan’s subject/message/sender for god knows what and then just randomly selects who can pass. Gmail and Yahoo don’t seem to have a problem, so why you gotta be like this Hotmail? Is it because you suck? Is that why?

At this rate I may just have to deny Hotmail users all together and possibly even call them names while I’m at it. Just kidding, of course, but if you do use Hotmail, make the switch to Gmail or Yahoo today! Hotmail is slow, convoluted, ancient, and utter crap in my book. Take it from me, an ex-hotmail user, it sucks. These days I only use mine as a spam trap and even then I run into problems as some apps don’t accept Hotmail addresses when registering. Hmmm…wonder why? Switch to Gmail and you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. The sun will shine brighter, food will taste better, music will sound better, people will respect you more, it’s quite nice!

Plus, you’ll be able to use my appetizer worry free. If only everybody would make the switch right now, that would sure save me some time. But, as usual, the selfish world just won’t revolve around me, so I guess I’ll have to find a workaround.

Ug!

After researching the million different PHP frameworks that are available now, I’ve decided to use CakePHP for my app. This seems to be a relatively simple and powerful framework (similar to Ruby on Rails) that will help me write clean, manageable, and reusable code fairly quickly. I spent some time last weekend designing my database structure and the classes I think I’ll need, so it’s time to start writing some code.

This will be a bit trickier than usual because of what’s going on in my day job. I will be building a new web app at work using the Java programming language, which I haven’t used since my college days. This is my first major project at my “new” job and, hence, there is going to be a ton of learning to do in the upcoming weeks. At home, I will be using the PHP programming language (which I’m also a bit rusty in as I haven’t used it in a year or so) in a framework that is completely new to me. So I get to build two apps, side by side, in completely different environments. Hopefully I don’t start confusing the two and build mutants by mistake, which would then, naturally, destroy the earth.

My deadline for completing the rough draft of my appetizer is October 2nd. Now, assuming I am a magician on cocaine, this is certainly doable. I had planned on starting sooner but I keep getting sidetracked. There are so many business related things that are up in the air right now that it’s hard to stay focused. Attending the business fair last weekend only put more question marks in my head that won’t get the hell out. These are things I don’t need to worry about right now (office space, advertising, cash flow, etc.) because my main objective is to serve the appetizer. But the more I learn, the harder it is for me to stay focused. All this business knowledge is crowding my brain.

Needless to say I’ve been a tad overwhelmed this week. When starting a business for the first time, I think it’s tempting at the onset to think about all the things that must be done and analyze every single angle so you do everything just right…but be careful! You might just think yourself into calling it quits before you even get started. I think it’s better to try to focus on the 2 or 3 most pressing issues and forget the rest. I’m not saying develop tunnel vision completely, but it does you no good to overwhelm yourself by thinking about all 50 million things you have to get done and then losing focus and fumbling on the execution. Planning is good, obsessing is bad. I am definitely a good example of that this week.

So, where am I at with this thing? Well, I set up this blog for starters. And, I think that’s as far as I’m willing to go. I’m scared to death.

The End!

Actually, it’s moving along quite nicely. My “homework schedule” is now posted in the home “office”.

I feel like I’m back at college. One of the hardest thing has been cutting out TV, but I think I’ll be alright once the shakes subside. Oh crap, the SEASON FINALE of Hell’s Kitchen is on! Where’s the remote? This is not a drill people! To be continued…

Alright, where was I? Oh right, let me fill you in on what I’ve done as far as setting up this blog and beginning the marketing process. This blog serves as a marketing tool for my business, so let me briefly talk about how I set it up. First of all, it is a WordPress blog that I installed on my web server at home. Something Ventured is a title that I felt nicely embodied what it is I am doing. As always though, whenever I think I’m being original, there’s a million people out there thinking the same thing. When I tried to register the name at GoDaddy I discovered there’s already a “somethingventured.com” out there.

As I did a little more investigating, there are tons of sites out there using this phrase. Go figure. I’m unique and original just like everybody else, right? So I tried a few others and finally settled on someventure. I think it works, what do you think? It’s all in how you read it. If you have a half-full glass, it’s “wow, that’s SOME venture you got there!”. If your glass is half empty, it’s “neh, that’s just some venture, who cares”. Or maybe you happen to be drinking a quadruple shot latte or mixed drink and it’s “hey man…some [people] venture…think about it?”. However you read it, it’s a done deal, and I am now officially financially invested in this puppy. A whopping $9.20 too!

Now, the next order of business is how to market my marketing tool. For starters, I setup an RSS News Feed (top right, if you haven’t already subscribed) to run through the all powerful FeedBurner, so I can monitor usage and enhance/promote the feed. I then setup an account with Google Analytics to help me measure traffic to this site. And the first wave of marketing is underway. The search engines are probably crawling as we speak, as I submitted the domain to Open Directory, Google, Yahoo, and other free directories. I linked to it from a few others sites that I own as well as blog search engines Technorati, Weblogs, and BlogSearchEngine. It’s been added to my list of del.icio.us links and I’m hoping others will follow suit (wink). If you use Technorati and want to add this blog to your profile, I added a link in my sidebar just for you.

So, my plan from here is to start participating more in other peoples blogs and get the word out that way. I am also considering posting links in MySpace and other social networking sites. And if you’ve ever heard of the game SecondLife – I may do some advertising there as well. I’ll keep you updated on how my marketing efforts are paying off and new tools I find along the way. If you have any good tips, please comment.

My lovely and talented girlfriend Misty helped me out with the logo. Although she’ll probably never help me again because I was such a pain in the process, right Misty? Misty? Huh, that’s odd, there’s just a note where all her stuff used to be?