Recently it seems that those wonderful individuals who take the time to make plugins for WordPress (and even Blogger) must be on summer vacation (or skiing if it’s winter where you live). Whatever the reason, I’ve had a heck of a time finding a plugin (other than WordPress’ own – which is third party and not at all accurate if you self-host).

But today I’m making the rounds of the blogs in the network, updating each with the latest, working one called SlimStat.

A simple but powerful real-time web analytics plugin for WordPress. It doesn’t require any subscription to external statistic services: all metrics are kept on your local server, private and accessible to your eyes only. Features the famous one-click install-and-go. Results are shown in real-time! (Description courtesy of WordPress)

It’s new, so I’ll have to see how long it lasts. But it’s “light weight” and even if you haven’t gone to the 3.0 level yet (we haven’t and for a reason), it works like a charm.

So if you’re a stats nut, and really want to know who, what, where, when and how, give it a whirl

Predictions are always fun (almost always), so when I received this email from my great friend, Janet Giacoma, over at BabyBoomersBlueprint (just one of her blogs), I thought I’d pass it along to you.

Let’s see if these 2010 predictions come true… or not

The original comes from Michelle MacPhearson on her blog.

More often than I’d like (okay I really enjoy it but you have to be careful), taking a trip around the root directory of one’s host and/or the admin areas of wordpress blogs (or any type of database-driven “website) means finding ways to cut back on the use of resources.

Recently, and forgive me but I cannot remember where I was or who said it, but they quoted Yanik Silver as saying if you are running more than (more…)

I don’t know about you, but in the past 10 years or so being online, I don’t know how many times I’ve changed hosting companies. It really has gotten so out of hand, that I cannot count on one hand the number of times I’ve moved websites.

I wish I’d known about the reviews you can find over at webhosting geeks.

Visiting their website today I was astounded at the number of hosting companies – not only out there – but listed in an easy-to-use directory. Yep, they’ve taken most of the work out of finding a decent one and posted it all there in black and white (and other cool colors) so you can select a hosting company just right for you.

A visit to just their front page immediately shows you:

o  The top 10 highest rated hosting companies

o  Features like how much space you get, how much traffic you can have without it impacting your bandwidth, and the price

o  Bonus features! Every hosting companies offers something extra (okay maybe not every one, but those listed in the top 10 certainly do) like a free domain forever, and marketing bonuses to get you headed on the right track for doing business online.

You also can easily click on any link for even more information.

But it doesn’t end there!

Down the left hand sidebar you’ll be astounded at even more ratings, the awards these “geeks” have won since 2004 (I love a website with longevity, that says a ton), along with links out to the Web Hosting Geeks’ Blog.

Loving blogs, of course I had to click.

Their most recent post (at the time of the writing of this post) is their April 14th, called Is Your Business Website Secure?.

Excellent advice to read, especially with the increase in attacks and hackers apparently with a ton of time on their hands. Why be sitting on hosting that does nothing to protect your hard-earned, hard worked asset – your online domain!

Here’s another post I found, that I think you’ll also find fascinating. It’s called Fantastico: cPanel’s Best Kept Secret.

Of course you’ll find even more information and stay up to date just by bookmarking the webhostinggeeks blog

If you’ve chosen the “lazy man’s (or woman’s) way” of creating a website, you might find your current hosting company short on this amazing feature. Fantastico is a wealth of ready-made, one click installations of a large variety of extra goodies for your website:

o  Forums
o  Shopping carts
o  Blog installations
o   Drupal (community building)
o  Wikis
o  and a whole lot more.

The great thing is you don’t have to know how to install a single thing, if your hosting includes Fantastico!

Frankly, I could spend hours looking around Webhosting Geeks at all the tools, resources, suggestions, and recommendation the folks over at webhosting geeks provide (and you should, too!)

Never, ever rush into choosing a hosting service. Always do your homework. And again, their website is the perfect stop to begin to make sure you choose the best hosting for your needs.

Enjoy!