News Articles

The Bhut Jolokia

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:25:00 -0600

Alright followers, readers, subscribers, whatever I call the rare few of you these days, it’s time for some nonsense before the winter blues put me down like a bear in hibernation.

Each fall, daylight savings casts a spell over my psyche. Down the rabbit hole I go as a traveler into the dark abyss, spiraling downward, inside a cerebral black hole. I pop vitamin D pills, buy special light bulbs, and abuse the treadmill religiously to no avail.

Let’s just say I have some flavor from southern borders boiling in my blood that the low, blinding sun, can not steep. So for me, the garden is perennial therapy. I self-prescribe mother nature to savor the harmony of chemical balance. I self-medicate old man winter to survive.

You might call me a green thumb. My first Foursquare check-in (and a dork) of all places was at the Douglas County Fairgrounds last April where I found myself rummaging through countless pepper seeds at the local exchange.

An older vagrant fellow motions to me. “You like’a-‘dem hot?” He whispers. “I do.” I reply. Looking around nervously the man reaches deep into his inner jacket pocket. Suspiciously, he slips me a small, resealable, plastic baggy. Paranoid, I play along. “No touch bare skin.” He murmurs. “Bhut Jolokia.” Like a native, he warns, “ghost pepper.” Then floats back into the crowd only to disappear himself.

The mysterious character not only hooks me up with my first heirloom in the manner of some twitchy amateur drug dealer, but shares heat from the fruity flesh of another hemisphere that may just keep my soul warm for the first time ever during the last solstice.

The Bhut Jolokia, or “ghost chili”, holds over one million Scoville Heat Units, approximately three times that of the Habanero. The pepper derives from Assum, India where scientists are waging chili warfare by way of a new stun grenade.

Here’s Adam Richman from The Travel Channel’s Man v. Food doing battle.

That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. So this is me, Owner Operator, Seth Christian Cole, signing off. See you on the the other side. Until then…

Green Web Hosting

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:05:00 -0500

Most people are not fully aware that, just by being online, they already have a negative effect on the Earth. Consider the resources being consumed by individual computers, most of all, by servers. Projections show that by 2020 the Internet will have contributed a significant quantity of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. In fact, early predictions indicate that this amount will surpass the impact of the entire airline industry over the same time frame. Even though studies have proven, on average, that a mere 6% of the total capacity of datacenters are necessary. The implementation of strategies to transform a traditional “dirty” web host into a “clean” green host is an advocacy worth supporting.

Here at ROCKHOST.COM we want to be the trailblazer for green web hosting. At present, we make up for our fossil fuel derived power dependence with carbon footprint offsetting. By using carbon offsets, or “green tags”, we support the development of renewable energy infrastructures that will sustain humanity for generations to come. If you would like to know more please visit the following url:

http://rockhost.com/why-green-web-hosting.php

$100 Fantasy Football Credit

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 08:23:00 -0500

“Are you ready for some footbaaaaaaaalll?!” - Hank Williams, Jr.

So, you want a shot at glory? The sweet taste of victory? No? How about a $100 credit on your ROCKHOST.COM account? Aaahhhhhh, now I have your attention. Yes sir, this season will be the first annual ROCKHOST.COM ESPN Fantasy Football draft and yours truly is footing the bill. That is unless, of course, I win! :^) Entry is free, but limited. So, if you’ve got the gumption open a support ticket for more details. If not, well, don’t. It’s all in fun.

I’m still hashing out the details but am considering a ten team auction league with several tweaks from the standard scoring system. The draft will be held on an evening soon as the first game of the NFL season is on Thursday, September 8th (New Orleans @ Green Bay).

Ten Year Anniversary

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 16:22:00 -0500

This month marks the 10 year anniversary of ROCKHOST.COM. Been a long time comin’, that’s for sure. Since our inception, the Internet has grown rampantly, expanding much like the universe. No literally, by about one zettabyte, or ten to the twenty first power, to be exact (NERD ALERT!). Datacenters now use 1/5 of the world’s energy. Humanity’s dependency on technology is an addiction stronger than foreign oil or the coffee at NASA. And I’m no better. I’m not gon’na lie. I sleep with my iPhone. On the rare occurance there is a server outage I receive a 911 SMS alert - a kind of pop culture pager for geek emergencies I suppose. Meanwhile, my teenage son is sending over 10,000 text messages a month. That’s a 16 year old male people. The times they are a-changin’.

In 1982 the Commodore 64 was introduced for $595 and held 320 kilobytes of data per floppy disk, which most notably had to be flipped like a record - 160 kilobytes per side. Oh, and the memory you ask? Take a wild guess (hint: 64 ???). Nowadays devices come with 1,000 times the storage if not more. Over the past decade web hosting standards have dramatically escalated as well, bringing us to what I can only describe as an excess amount of disk space at our disposal. So long story long, if you are an old school ROCKHOST.COM customer and would like to request an account review we may be more than willing to increase your disk quota and possibly your bandwidth limit free of charge. Please hit us up through the Client Portal by opening a new Support Ticket.

If you want to read more about our history please see our last Tumblr blog post or look for our feature in the new WHIR (Web Host Industry Review) magazine.

A Dot Com Decade

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 09:02:00 -0500

This summer marks the ten year anniversary of ROCKHOST.COM, which is an eternity in the web hosting industry, quite frankly. I am very proud and fortunate as well as a little lucky to get to do what I do. Of course nothing comes without its ups and downs. For example, having to reboot a server during the peak of my vacation in downtown Breckenridge last month, but hey, no complaints. I would do it all over again if I had the chance.

What I am trying to get at here is that I want to reward each and everyone of our past, present, and future clients by having a blow out sale this August. Think of me, Seth Cole, the owner operator of ROCKHOST.COM, as an oily used car salesman for a brief stint. Wait, ha ha, there are NO lemons here. Let’s go with new cars, a dealership. Whatever! Imagine a bad local commercial with me in a plaid suit, five gallon hat, and a lot full of cars (maybe a monkey too) shouting “Come on down to ROCKHOST.COM.” or “What do I have to do to put you in a new car today?” in a brash pushy manner.

Anyway, the point is you can take fifty percent off of any Shared Hosting or Shoutcast Streaming Server (Icecast too) package in our Shopping Cart with the promo code “tenyears” - offer expires 09/01/11. Thank you, as always, for your patronage.

Small Business Owner

Wed, 18 May 2011 11:49:00 -0500

Being a small business owner is tough, a labor of love. ROCKHOST.COM is like my child. But today, today is one of those days. The kind where I get to reward myself by sneaking away from society for just a little while to fly under the radar.

Everybody, friends and family included for the most part, seems to think that I have it easy, that I won the “work from home” lottery. Wah, I know. Frustrating as hell, but the reason they assume such tripe is because of these types of days. Even though they are rarer than one might think, damn they are nice. I’m not gon’na lie.

Today was finishing a 5k in the rain, and is now warm glowing tubes on an amplifier with a nice chai tea. Oh, and a blog post too, of course.

Now back to this…

Thanks for listening, well reading anyway.

Blue Collar Web Hosting

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 10:21:00 -0500

Hey Kids, sorry for not blogging in so long. The winter blues finally got me and I found myself with no fire, no pep, no machismo! BUT, I’m back, full throttle, spring is in bloom. You may have been wondering where I have been so I thought I would show you.

On a cold January morning, where the temperature was a paralyzing negative seven degrees (that ain’t wind chill folks), the heater on my truck hit the skids. As I was driving my teenager to school with my head out the window, no heat - no defrost, I thought to myself there had to be a better way.

The next thing I know the shop is quoting me a staggering $1409 for a blown head gasket on a vehicle that isn’t worth half that much. I quickly came to the realization that I, and only I, could save this heaping mass of American steel from extinction. So, just as I have done with everything else in life, I rolled up my sleeves and turned to my callus bare hands to wort off this demon task.

Soon I was troubleshooting an engine the same way I would an operating system or support ticket and found that if I was smart enough to be technical, I was smart enough to be mechanical. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time or help to pull off a “vlog” because this would of been one fun grease covered mess. Below is a pic of my four banger 2.2L. The combustion chambers are full of coolant. Not exactly the best environment for air and gas to explode.

The point here, to tie this altogether, is that the troubleshooting and support skills at ROCKHOST.COM are unparalleled. If you have an issue, question, or concern please submit a ticket through the proper channel by visiting our Help Desk.

What’s that? You want to see the fix? Add us as a contact on Flickr.

Quicktime Streaming Servers

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 09:30:00 -0600

Work? Ha ha, well it is pretty hard to sit here and call a beautiful sunshine filled day on the lake catching fish and drinking beer work, buuuuuuuuuuut I suppose this technically counts too. Can I write off the gas the ol’ ‘87 Sea Sprite burnt on Lonestar? Yeah, probably.

Normally, work, for me, is a server crisis, hardware failure, or phishing complaint. [Editor’s note: insert terrible phishing/fishing pun here.] What you see YouTube’d below is my buddy Matt and I piddling with an iPhone 4 video camera to demonstrate what can be done with the QTSS (Quicktime Streaming Server) technology in between bull sessions. If you would like to view the actual .mov file or learn how to embed Quicktime videos please visit ROCKHOST.COM.

Boy it sure has been a lot of fun digitally filming these cheesy, corny, little promo videos this year.

Video Tutorials & FAQ

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 09:05:00 -0600

Is it corporate mandate to start the marketing campaign for Christmas the day after Halloween or WHAT!?!? While the department stores of the world, sorry not you Macy’s - love the parade, suck consumers dry, we here @rockhost (follow us on Twitter) have decided to give something back to our loyal customers and readers. Instead of lining you up at 4 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving like a bunch of overfed underslept holiday cattle, we are going to casually post brand new video tutorials and frequently asked questions everyday until Santa Claus comes to town. Absolutely FREE of charge, 100% off SALE!

Eww, and speaking of our friend from the North Pole, if you haven’t been a part of Santacon yet, you should really consider at least witnessing the craze. Sure is nice to see real people with Christmas spirit (and spirits; rum, gin) and goodwill towards men on earth even while the capitalistic vampires try to bleed us green over the holidays.

Halloween Giveaway Contest

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 08:31:42 -0500

Alright, yes, it is our favorite time of year. The leaves turn colors and fall to the ground while the frost breaks before the first freeze, ahhh Indian Summer, beautiful. Soon scantily clad ladies will be running around town half naked in 100% slut freedom. Finally for one night, one glorious night, the whole world turns into a strip club and I got a fat roll of singles baby! AMERICA!!!

Whoooooaaaa, easy, slow down there killer, ha ha, l better put the brakes on and get to the point. Halloween is coming, and so is our Halloween Giveaway Contest. To enter post a festive holiday picture/video on our Facebook page or “mention” @ROCKHOST on Twitter. Everything under the Halloween gamut is welcome; costumes, jack-o-lanterns, candy bribes, tomfoolery, whatever. The best entry will receive a free year of Web Hosting service, no questions asked. That is, unless YOU have a question, in that case please inquire through one of the social media channels above.

Downtime, it happens...

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:13:09 -0500

Here @ ROCKHOST.COM we take every precaution, expense, and IT resource available to prevent downtime, which unfortunately, still happens (much like “shit” I’m sorry to say). No matter how much redundancy a server has, or how many layers a network has, it is still inevitable. A ticking time bomb if you will. This fact is held evident by last year’s Google downtime and only recently the Facebook DNS outage.

So what is little ol’ independent Ma and Pa ROCKHOST.COM supposed to do if the giants can’t maintain 100% uptime? Panic, worry, stress? YEEEESSSS, all of the above at defcon nine, threat level midnight, code red, etc.!!! Words can not describe the mental and physical agony I am overcome with when receiving an email outage notification or text alert from our Panopta monitoring service. And I might add, nothing is as merciless as technology. I have been up all night on three separate holiday occasions (Easter, Thanksgiving, and Memorial Day) over my decade stint as a small business owner.

What we can do, and do do (“doo doo”? is there an underlying “shit” theme in this blog post or WHAT!?) is plan for the worst, even expect it. Currently we have an outlined three step disaster recovery map in place - identify | troubleshoot | report - which you can follow by connecting with us on Twitter. After all, if a server is down, there is a good chance we need to rely on an outside source for communication.

Please follow us on Twitter for all the latest ROCKHOST.COM news, promotions, and network status.

Flash Media Servers

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:17:00 -0500

Finally! After months in the making our Flash Streaming Media Servers have arrived. In the .flv streaming video below (uploaded to YouTube.com for sharing purposes) we sit down with Seth Cole, the Owner Operator of ROCKHOST.COM. And by we, I mean me - Seth Cole! :) Whew, I found out one thing during this process, I am NO actor and will never be sitting in the director’s chair. But, if anything, I hope you enjoy the swank testosterone-fueled den amenities; 007 style martinis (shaken, not stirred), vintage furbishing, and eclectic leg lamp decor. Yes, that’s just how we roll here @ ROCKHOST.COM.

Now the video quality may be a little lacking, but I assure you it is due to the tools we we were recording with and NOT the Adobe Media Servers. Apparently an HP laptop webcam and dim lighting encoded @ 384 Kbps don’t exactly equal Blue Ray 1080p, but I think you can see the fun and possibilities behind our new service.

VPS 101

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:47:00 -0500

There are over a hundred million websites on the Internet today, most of which are buried deep within the search engines; static, old, boring, and ugly. However there are always a few shining stars, websites that are popular and relevant in society.

Traffic intensive sites that inform or entertain users, readers, and followers require far more resources than the average web hosting service. VPS is a perfect fit for a site that has out grown the shared hosting environment, yet isn’t quite ready to expand into a dedicated server. This is both cost effective and energy efficient to the customer / business relationship.

The technology behind Virtual Private Servers enables entire bare metal machines to be divided into blocks or containers, if you will. It is common practice to split up a single dedicated server, known as a VPS node, into four or six Parallels Virtuozzo Containers. Ordinarily VPS nodes are super servers jam packed with RAM, RAID disk space, and Quad Core processors.

All ROCKHOST.COM VPS nodes come with a minimum of 8 GB RAM, RAID 10 disk arrays, and Intel Quad Core processors letting customers upgrade on the fly in the event of a viral emergency or overnight success story. :)

Prices start @ $34.99 per month: VPS Hosting

Xeon Dedicated Servers

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:03:00 -0500

ROCKHOST.COM is proud to announce the launch of our brand new premium dedicated hosting service. We are happy to welcome the whole Intel Xeon family to our server product line. Currently we are offering Xeon Wolfgate, Yorkshire, and Nehalem processors.

Each of our high end dedicated servers feature a Dual or Quad Core processor, 500 GB SATA disk drive, and a mind blowing 10,000 GB of data transfer throughput on a 100 Mbit connection. AND, that doesn’t even include the FREE perks. Every new dedicated server comes with the following:

» Choice of WHM/cPanel or Plesk control panels
» Free GlobalSign 5 Year Wild Card SSL Certificate
» $75 Yahoo / MySpace Advertising Credit
» R1Soft CDP Agent ($1.50 per GB)
» 5 IP (Internet Protocol) Addresses
» Linux Cent OS, Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE
» Mission Control w/ Remote Reboot
» Server Bailout Mode Rescue Boot System
» Daily/Monthly/Yearly Bandwidth Graphs
» 100 Mbps Uplink Port

To order or learn more please visit: Xeon Dedicated Servers

Authorize.net Payment Gateway

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 08:27:00 -0500

It is pretty rough having the “Man” constantly in your back pocket as a vendor or merchant of any kind. Yet, the fees increase dramatically for Internet businesses who don’t use terminals and never see the actual plastic. Sure, it is true, the risks are higher, but when I see that debit post on the first of each month in our DBA account flames of fire shoot across my forehead and cheeks.

Depending on the gross volume of transactions you process each month, the payment gateway you choose can cost or save you money. Oh, and the paper statements you receive? Most of them look like some type of hybrid calculus. The big companies purposely do their best to hide what they take. Why? Because it does feel like they are a little dirty, taking a small businesses hard earned cash.

In my ten years of experience as an Internet merchant I have found only a few payment gateways or credit card processing services (out of dozens) who shoot straight. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t exactly like seeing money go the wrong way out of our bank account. But then again, I know it is at a fair rate from a company that I can depend on. Whom, I have called before about an erroneous charge or fraud attempt. At the top of this list is a highly reputable company known as Authorize.net.

If you would like to see a few other trusted names please visit: ROCKHOST.COM | Merchant Payment Gateways

Custom Website Design

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:03:00 -0500

Starting today ROCKHOST.COM - web hosting for bands, businesses, and beyond - will be selling 100% custom website, logo, and banner designs to the public.

In the past we found this service a little tricky to navigate due to varying differences in customer and designer opinions, BUT with our new laid out service plan it is easy to know what to expect.

Our “Standard” packages offer only one design concept, while the “Advanced” offer multiple concepts to choose from. The same thing goes for revisions, if you don’t like something about the original mock up or artwork you can request small changes or tweaks to our work.

Transfer Domain Names Away From GoDaddy

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:19:00 -0500

In this short three minute video tutorial we briefly discuss how to transfer a domain name away from Go Daddy to another registrar such as ourselves, ROCKHOST.COM.

Geotrust / Verisign EV SSL Certificates

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:40:00 -0500

What is an SSL Certificate?

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificates implement endpoint authentication and communications privacy over the Internet using encryption. The standard that prevents anyone from intercepting and reading the data stream between the web surfer and the web server. Financial transactions processed through a website using SSL are extremely safe. By activating the browser’s “https” LOCK icon, SSL assures end users that confidential information and credentials can NOT be stolen by a third party.

Give your customers the confidence to make their purchases online with EV SSL Certificates. Extended Validation triggers the green address bar in web browsers.

Extended Validation SSL equips website visitors with a reliable way to establish trust online. Only SSL Certificates with Extended Validation (EV) display a green address bar showing the name of the organization and issuing Certificate Authority. The green bar represents company authentication according to the most rigorous industry standards. For higher sales conversions and added customer confidence, choose EV SSL Certificates.

The Google Monopoly

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:47:00 -0500

Does it bother anyone else that Google has such a strong choke hold on the Internet? Don’t get me wrong, at the same time I think Google is amazingly progressive, but I earn my living through e-commerce. My mortgage payment depends on a mathematical algorithm. It’s a little scary. Sure, I know the ins and outs of SEO, I even offer it is as a product, but there are NO guarantees.

I love my job. I wake up, start the tea pot, walk down to my office, and boom, I am at work – no commute, no fluorescent lights, no annoying co-workers or grind to fight. Is it a dream? Maybe, I seem to have found a loophole in the system, for now. The catch? Faith alone keeps me plugging away on a daily basis. I am NOT a laborer, I don’t produce something you can hold or touch.

Like most big companies Google is unreachable, godlike. Do I practice prayer in order to get a high organic ranking? :} AMEN! There is no public contact information of any kind to communicate with Google directly. Yet like a mouse through a maze I run through Google Webmaster Tools whenever I launch a new site. When I want to start a PPC (pay per click) Campaign I use Google AdWords and Google Analytics, when I want to order pizza I use Google Search, etc.

The fear is what Google giveth, Google will taketh away, but for now, I’ll just fly under the radar. After all, I’ve made it this far…ROCKHOST.COM – “Be Heard | Established 2001!”

Domain Registry of America

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:10:00 -0500

How many of you have ever received a letter in the mail from the Domain Name Registry of America (or Canada)? This is a company that solicits domain name transfers from other registrars in an attempt to steal legitimate business. From time to time we are asked by our clients, who are often in a state of panic, why they need to pay again or how our company could unknowingly let their domain name(s) expire without warning. Unfortunately this organization preys on the fear of domain name holders. When the rightful owner is frantic he or she may transfer away the .tld to a different registrar while completely over paying in the process. This shady practice is known as “domain slamming”.

Long story short, if you receive snail mail or electronic mail from this association please disregard, it is a hoax.