Website Designers and Webmasters

The purpose of XML sitemaps are to help tell the search engines about all of the pages on your website. It also helps to tell the search engines which pages you think are most important. (They won’t necessarily listen to you, but you can tell them.)

I recently found a great website that will create XML sitemaps for websites of up to 500 pages! And the best part is, it’s absolutely Free! You can by the program they made as well if your site has more pages, etc.

Check it out:

XML Sitemaps

-Ashton Sanders

Network Solutions continues to amaze me. I have a client who bought some very good domain names early in the domain rush, and she purchased them at Network Solutions for $35/year (as opposed to $9/year at godaddy.com or $6/year at 1and1.com).

Can Network Solutions Get Worse?

I wanted to forward one of her domains to 301 redirect to another domain, and after a couple clicks I found that it costs $20/year to forward a domain… and if you didn’t know… that is normally provided for free.

But Network Solutions Can’t get worse than that… Can they?

Yes they can. If you buy a domain at Godaddy, you get 100 email accounts free (or something ridiculous like that). If you want to get email with your Network Solutions domain, it costs $1.34/month for each email account… If you actually ended up using 100 email accounts with Network Solutions, they would charge you $134/month! That’s $1608/year for what you normally get for free at any other registrar…

-If you use network solutions, you obviously haven’t opened your eyes.
-Ashton Sanders

(P.S. If you are someone who actually likes Network Solutions, please shoot me a message with why that is. If you don’t exist, I wouldn’t be surprised.)

Today, I had a very funny email conversation that I felt obliged to share with you. The conversation was with a man named Steve who was transferring four domains to me.

If you are not familiar with the process of transferring domains, I will elaborate. It really is a very simple process:

1. You ask your current registrar to unlock the domain, and to send you the authorization codes.
2. When you go to your new registrar and try to transfer the domain, it asks for your authorization codes. You type in the Authorization code, and the transfer begins.
3. Most Domain registrars require one final step, and that is a confirmation email. Your new registrar sends the admin contact for the domain an email saying: “Are you sure you want to transfer this domain?”

So to put it simply:

1. Get Authorization Code
2. Use Authorization Code and begin transfer.
3. Answer Confirmation Email saying that you would like to transfer your domain.

I’ve already transferred a number of domains from Steve last month, and about a week ago, he emailed me saying that I still had 8 domains to transfer.

I emailed him and asked for the authentication codes, and he sent them. Then I started the domain transfer, and my registrar emailed him the confirmation emails.

I emailed him after a couple of days and said:

Thank you for these authentication codes. I requested the transfer for these four. Did you receive the Four Confirmation email yet?

Apparently that was too complicated and he responded with:

I sent you what I got. Which 4 are you talking about?

… Was my email that complicated? Maybe it was, so I tried to make it as simple as possible:

Hi Steve,

Yes, you sent me the four authentication codes. Thank you for that.

I requested the four domains to be transferred. When I do that, it sends an email to the admin contact (you) to confirm the transfer. The email should be titled: “Transfer of *DOMAIN*.com” or whatever the name of the domain is. Have you received any emails that start with ‘Transfer’ in the last 2 weeks or so?

Thanks for your help,
Ashton Sanders

This is what I got back:

Okay, here you go… I hope these are the ones. I already sent them Friday at 8/31/2007 1:02 PM. Did you not get that email?

Steve
Attached: Four Domain Authentication Codes

Wow! It would make it much easier if you would read my emails. When I write something in an email, I write it so you can read it and have a better understanding of what I need. To make it as simple as possible, I contacted my domain registrar and had them send the confirmation email again. I withheld my aggravation as best I could, and emailed him back saying:

Hi Steve,

I just had my domain registrar send the confirmation email again.

The only domain we actually need is:
*DOMAIN*.org

You should be getting that email soon,
Thanks,
Ashton Sanders

I guess that was too complicated… as he never responded.

-HaHaHaHa!
-Ashton Sanders