webrampage

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet. – Shakespeare

Seriously though what is in a name? Does such a small thing matter? Yes and no.

Look around. Its a very busy world. Ads all over. TV, radio, internet, newspaper, magazine and what not. What do they all have in common? Short, simple, catchy phrases. Do you know where I’m heading with this?

Now before we even start with having a little catchy tagline for your site or blog, we’ll have to deal with the name. So, yes names do matter (especially on the web) unless you would rather listen to the ancient playwright.

I personally have a hard time finding a decent name. I keep changing my mind more than I change gears while driving standard. A true fact. And I honestly know how hard it is when you finally find the perfect name only to find out the domain is taken.

Alright lets assume you have a domain and you’ve got a better one to work with. Now what? The fear of losing traffic and SEO. Well no worries. You can always do a 301 redirect using .htaccess.

Open up Notepad, paste the following and upload it to your root directory. It works like magic.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yournewdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Now its very important that you make sure that this file is named .htaccess (no extentions like .txt or anything). And lets just hope this time you’ve picked a better domain.

There are tons of ways to put your site under the spotlight. People come up with new ideas all the time. But, I just saw a really one. Its called “pissing-off-the-owner-of-a-huge-blog.”

I’m sure you all heard of Mashable. Its the 11th most popular blog on the web according to Technorati. They get over a million unique visitors per month (don’t worry, I did my research). And they have a shit load of subscribers. They’re almost as big as TechCrunch.

Well anyway, some smart ass made a social network for music and named it Moshable. They just jacked the name from Mashable. Well the folks at Mashable got pissed and they blogged about it. And guess what happened? Traffic wave! Nice one, Moshable.

Its a good idea, but it might not work all the time. You need to look for a blogger that would whine like a lil’ bitch. Some bloggers couldn’t care less. Like this guy made Live Crunch and TechCrunch didn’t give a shit (epic fail!). Or maybe the guy just lacks creativity.

So, do your research and find a good target. And don’t just do what the people at Moshable did. Find other (and better) ways to piss off A-list bloggers (without of course, doing anything that could get you in legal shit). Here’s a tip, try fucking with Darren Rowse the “ProBlogger”.

Yeah you gotta backup your sites and you have to do it properly. You need to do more than just saving it on your computer. I’ll tell you how I do it.

Making the backup

1. I download all the files and databases to your computer.
2. I zip everything and put a password on it. I use WinRAR to do this.
3. Name the .zip file to something like “wr_oct-5.zip”. (Make sure you have the date on it!)
4. I make sure that the .zip file isn’t corrupted by unzipping it and checking if everything is there.

Storing the backup

The biggest mistake I ever made was keeping all the backups on my laptop only and forgetting that someone could steal my laptop or my hard drive could crash. Please don’t do that or else you’ll get fucked! Trust me!

I started putting my backups on three different places. This way I’m safe if something goes wrong.

My server: Yes, my server itself. I make a folder where I just keep all the backups. Make sure you keep this folder at the root of your server where it can’t be accessed by the public.

On a CD: The old school way! I have a bunch of blank disks lying around, so why not burn the backups on it? Plus its not that expensive to buy blank CDs. Or if you want, you can just put them on a pen drive.

Online storage: I put one more copy on Windows Live SkyDrive. Don’t just trust any site with your precious little backups! Meaning don’t use shit like RapidShare and Megaupload.

How often do I backup?

The best way would be to backup everyday. But, that’s not possible. I’m just way too lazy to do that. I try to do it weekly. And sometimes randomly when I feel like doing it.

Some shared hosts back your stuff up daily, so consider yourself lucky if you’re on a shared hosting.

How about YOU?

Tell us how you do it! I wanna know how often you do it, where you store it and if you have any suggestions for us.