We have a number of clients out of Toronto, Vancouver and Halifax. They require Canadian based web hosting plans or domain hosting. Our favorite reminder is none other than CanadianWebHosting.com: hosting, dedicated, VPS and of course reseller accounts. Some plans offer full root access, choice of operating system, configuration files such as the crucial httpd.conf or php.ini, remote rebooting, unlimited domain hosting.

Depending on your plan, you will have access to a variety of tools and programming systems such FTP, dedicated IP, SSL certificates for security purposes, Cpanel, content management systems, Php 5, MySQL, Python, CGI, SSI, Ruby on Rails … basically all the tools any self respecting Webmaster would want and need.

Other services such as Email Hosting, SEO, PCI Compliance, Google Adwords  Campaigns and Website Transfer services are available at competitive rates. Support also offers tutorials, a full fledged forum and an online ticket system for client specific questions.

The scalability provided by CanadianWebHosting.com is excellent and there is no project too big or too small you cannot host with this company with over 11 years experience.

With datacenters in Toronto and Vancouver, fast and reliable hosting and serious guarantees, our Canadian choice remains CanadianWebHosting.com

Firebug first off, is a Firefox plugin that provides a wealth of information about any website or page you are currently examining. This tool will provide information about HTML, CSS, Scripts, DOM, Network, Images, Flash etc.

While loading a page, Firebug will give you some valuable network activity item by item and will reveal errors within the compiled code or the various scripts you’ve installed.

YSlow is not another application, but an additional tool for Firebug you can install for even more information and valuable suggestions. YSlow is a Yahoo development tool that will letter grade your site’s HTTP requests, DNS lookups, Javascript, CSS and so much more.

Mainframe versus decentralized computing was the issue of the 80s and 90s. Increase in computing power ensured users had more and more software packages on their machines. But trends are changing again…

Issues with licensing, ranging from cost to upgrading time and heterogeneous systems throughout the enterprise have created a new push towards centralized computing. Another factor helping with this return to mainframe applications is the ubiquity of high speed Internet.

Providing a virtual hardware environment (pass-through software for USB, serial, parallel devices) over an network means running such application packages as VMware, Hyper-V or XenSource. This can be difficult for a small business, so what better solution is there to using Redapt.com’s virtualized servers? We say none!

So once again, when it comes to services, why run your own hardware when you can use a hosted automatic call distribution service? Seriously, it makes so much more sense to have such services hosted via a professional third party such as USAN.com.

Customizable software gives you the client the opportunity to manage your service management rules, your agent skill sets, service pools without the high costs and the hassle of bulky hardware.

USAN’s Automated Call Distribution provides the ability to unify administration and workflow, manage queuing, prioritization, auto-response and reporting. Using ACD means your business will improve customer satisfaction as well as service agent productivity and decrease call abandonment.

WebsiteForensics.com says: AWESOME TOOL!

Not all companies are equal, not all services are the same and before anybody go ahead with a hosting provider, and one should do as much research as possible before hand. What are the best Linux Hosting Plans, why should you use a VPS (virtual private server), what is dedicated hosting, who offers the best email hosting?

Fortunately WebHostingRating.com has done its homework and ranks and rates many hosting services by type, value and reliability. This invaluable resource should be your first stop when you plan your next web hosting deployment.

CMS Web Hosting is another specialized field that merits attention. Are you going to run your next web deployment with such CMS packages as Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal? If so you get to compare pricing, server space and traffic limits. This invaluable resource beats running through the advertisements of your trade and computer magazines. Seriously, would you pick your next hosting provider based on their word? Fact is, you should always seek the opinion of a third party.

WebHostingRating.com also maintains a number of excellent articles written over a year and half that offer some very good background information on the good and bad of cheap web hosting, security issues, shared hosting and many other topics.

And now the best part: if you’re a provider and you believe your services are on par with the websites top rankings, you can submit a full profile for review.

• Project IP – Detailed information about you and your computer. In addition to your IP address, Project IP lists just about everything a webserver can find out about your computer. Enjoy!
• Future pagerank – This tool will query Google’s various data centers to check for any changes in PageRank values for a given URL. Usually all data centers will output the same, but if queried during an update, you might get a glimpse of any upcoming changes in your chosen URL’s PageRank value.
• Page Strength – The tool is designed to satisfy the curiosity of webmasters, surfers and web marketing professionals seeking a better metric to quickly assess a site/page’s relative importance and visibility.
• Web page analyzer – The script calculates the size of individual elements and sums up each type of web page component. Based on these page characteristics the script then offers advice on how to improve page load time.
• WayBack Machine – Browse through 85 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago.
• Domain to IP – Enter domains or full URLs (one per line) to look up their IP addresses. You may enter up to 50 domains.
• Verify pagerank – Different websites offer them every day – those “Super-PageRank Domains”. But beware: More and more dubious providers try to sell completely worthless domains to you with bogus tricks. Use this chance to check if the displayed PageRank is real.
• Web Form Factory – Web Form Factory is an open source web form generator which automatically generates the necessary backend code to tie your form to a database.
• RFC Ref – Internet RFC/STD/FYI/BCP Archives
• Alexa – The Top 10 Sites moving up or moving down in the traffic rankings, as measured by the change in the number of users visiting the site.
• Google dance tool – Google Datacenter Watch Tool
• Visual pagerank – View the PageRank of links visually rather than in text.
• Rusty brick – This tool attempts to determine a future Google PageRank value of a particular site. In other words, we try to determine the PageRank value of the URL you enter below, as it would be after the next Google PageRank update. The tools does several calculations to come to this figure.

• Apache server – The Apache HTTP Server Project is an effort to develop and maintain an open-source HTTP server for modern operating systems including UNIX and Windows NT.
• Mod rewrite guide – This module provides a rule-based rewriting engine to rewrite requested URLs on the fly.
• .htaccess tutorial from Apache v2.0 – .htaccess files (or “distributed configuration files”) provide a way to make configuration changes on a per-directory basis.
• Apache Software foundation – The Apache Software Foundation provides support for the Apache community of open-source software projects.
• URL Rewriting – URL rewriting of this type will work ONLY if you are hosted with Apache Server.
• Disable Image Hotlinking – URL rewriting of this type will work ONLY if you are hosted with Apache Server. Create an .htaccess file to disable hotlinking graphics.