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Chances are that you have almost certainly heard of the recent and very tragic earthquake that has nearly devastated the Caribbean nation of Haiti. In the wake of such a sudden and severe tragedy, it can be hard to see hope. The American Red Cross, along with thousands of other support and aid organizations, has been making a huge effort to get things as close to normal for people in Haiti. To support that relief effort, HostGator is making a $100,000 donation to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development fund. The press release announcing the donation is below: ... [Link] [Cache]

It looks like GeoCities, the Free Web Hosting service owned by Yahoo!, is officially ending service to website owners today. I’m sure many of you have used their service at one point or another, so it’s kind of sad to see them go down with all of the web sites they hosted. My first web site was on GeoCities, complete with a looping, low-quality instrumental midi file, and animated graphics. Many other free web hosting services like GeoCities have risen and fallen over the years because the free hosting business model just doesn’t seem sustainable. It’s amazing how many web ... [Link] [Cache]

HostGator recently reached 200,000 active customers and we are on pace to break 300,000 within a year. I remember when I’d be out celebrating if HostGator managed to get two signups in a week. Now, we’re seeing thousands of signups a week. Back in the day, my celebrating consisted of nothing more than dropping the Ramen noodles or the tuna can I had in my hands and grabbing some sushi for an hour before scrambling back to work. At the time, I was a poor college student who invested every penny I had back into the business I was building. ... [Link] [Cache]

Inc. Magazine just ranked HostGator #239 overall on their prestigious Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing privately owned companies in America. Here’s how the companies that make Inc’s list are ranked: The Inc. 500|5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2005 through 2008. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by the first week of 2005, and therefore able to show four full calendar years of sales. Additionally, they have to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent — not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies — as of December 31, 2008 a ... [Link] [Cache]

Wednesday, August 5, 2009 started out as a normal day at HostGator’s Houston headquarters. Around 4:00 PM CT, a major power surge that occurred as the result of a transformer near our office blowing up made the day anything but ordinary. Lights flickered, battery backups beeped, fire alarms went off, and Internet signals all died down almost immediately. People began to wait for the building’s $200,000 hurricane-ready generator to start up, but it didn’t. In the mean time, one of the three major “legs” of power that feeds the building with the power it needs to function was out because ... [Link] [Cache]

**CONTEST HAS EXPIRED** Follow us on twitter @hostgator for future contests. HostGator has teamed up with one of our customers, BlogertizeWorld.com, to give away 30 free iPhone 3GS’s in the form of a Twitter contest. The rules are simple and this contest is open to everyone. Click here to re-tweet the details with the hashtag #HGBW, and get entered for a chance to win. There’s no limit on the number of tweets you can submit with this hashtag, so the more submissions, the better your odds. Don’t forget to follow @hostgator on Twitter! [Link] [Cache]

Update: Thanks to all of those who participated! Our second Open Session was a success. A recording of the session is available on this page. Due to the success of the first Open Session we hosted a couple of weeks ago, we’re hosting another one soon. This Open Session will be held on Wednesday, July 29 at 8 PM CT. Just like last time, this Open Session will be a chance for both potential and existing HostGator customers to come into a live chat with other customers and HostGator employees and get tips, information, and have a chance to ask ... [Link] [Cache]

Update: This took place and was a big success. HostGator employees answered a ton of questions about backups, VPS solutions, Windows hosting, affiliates, and more. We appreciate people taking the time to come by and ask questions. This upcoming Thursday July 2, 2009 at 5 PM CT Houston-time , HostGator is going to be hosting an Open Session where potential and existing customers alike can come chat with HostGator employees and each other. The Open Session is going to be pretty informal, but for some context, some things we do want to do include: Question and answer session with HostGator ... [Link] [Cache]

It seems like no matter what business industry you’re looking at, there’s always room for shady activities. Web hosting and the domain industry are no exceptions. However, most people are totally unaware of one such practice known as domain tasting. Domain Tasting is essentially when a someone buys a domain name for the sole purpose of seeing whether or not it can generate ad income. The domain registrant puts ads on the domain, and if the ads don’t make any money, the registrant has five days to request a refund. There have been many big companies involved with Domain Tasting, ... [Link] [Cache]

I’m going to share some quick facts about our business with you. HostGator currently spends: More than $30,000 per month advertising with Google Adwords More than $350,000 per month on affiliate commissions And $100,000’s more per year on random advertising. When you spend as much as we do on advertising, you start to run out of places to advertise online. This has left us with no other choice but to become a lot more creative and a lot crazier with our choice of advertising venues and locations. I present to you Billy the Billboard. Billy proudly wears the first ever ... [Link] [Cache]

HostGator has partnered with RankSense SEO Tools to give away a free 30-day trial for RankSense and a recurring 20% OFF discount, all with a 90-day money back guarantee. Use coupon code: hostgator and sign up now for the special offer. This offer is valid for all HostGator Web Hosting customers and blog readers. Search engine optimization SEO is all the rage these days. There’s a whole market that has developed around SEO services and tools and a lot of hype and fluff that tends to confuse and complicate things for the average web site owner. Simply put, SEO is ... [Link] [Cache]

If you’ve ever seen Office Space, you most likely know that all TPS reports that’s “Test Procedure Specification” for the uninformed require cover sheets. The painfully ridiculous incident in the movie has become both a critical fixture of anti-corporate culture and a quintessential example of the eccentricities of bureaucracies of corporate America. At HostGator, there are no TPS reports and cover sheets aren’t required to be put on anything. However, we do keep track of quite a few numbers and metrics and one of the metrics we do watch closely is chat volume. The graph below is an average of ... [Link] [Cache]

Ever run a Google search and notice the “sponsored listings” around the search results? Ever click one of those sponsored links? It’s likely that you have already visited a link that was advertised through the Google AdWords program and now HostGator is giving its shared web hosting customers the opportunity get started with Google AdWords by giving them $25 in free marketing credits*. HostGator has partnered up with the Google AdWords pay-per-click PPC advertising program and is now offering an AdWords Coupon voucher good for $25 in credit with all Hatchling, Baby, and Business shared web hosting plans. What is ... [Link] [Cache]

We may be calling it prematurely, but so far, this year is off to an amazing start for us ‘Gators. In January, we surpassed all of our previous sales records! We have a new record for sales on both a single day and for an entire month. I wish I could be more excited, but we are having one very serious problem. STAFFING. Or rather, the lack of it. Every day I wake up to read about thousands of Americans being laid off of work. Unemployment is hitting new highs in America and yet I’m being forced to, once again, ... [Link] [Cache]

In October of 2008, Google announced a new feature known as SearchWiki. SearchWiki allows anyone with a Google account to change the order of search results and make notes about each result in Google. Once logged into a Google account, you’ll notice that the search results have two small icons next to the listings that can be used to promote or remove a result. By promoting a result, you can bring the site above other results on the page. You can learn more about the SearchWiki by watching the Google SearchWiki team’s video. Now, this is hardly news to many ... [Link] [Cache]

I’ve known about Twitter for a relatively long time, but could never see myself using the service. I just couldn’t grasp the idea of saying something meaningful in 140 characters or less, but as I started working at HostGator and our social media outreach programs, I found myself thrown right into the Twittersphere if that isn’t a word already, I just made it up . A couple of months later, though, I’m happily Twittering from the web and from my ever trusty BlackBerry. A majority of our presence on Twitter is aimed at addressing customer concerns and feedback in what ... [Link] [Cache]

At HostGator, one of the most popular web sites created on our servers these days are blogs. People use blogs not just as a diary, but as a quick way to publish information and articles. The most popular blogging software is Wordpress, which happens to be the platform of choice for Gator Crossing this blog and can be installed with a couple clicks directly from the HostGator Control Panel. We had a custom HostGator inspired Wordpress theme drawn up recently and would like to make it available for free to our customers and non-customers alike. Below you can view and ... [Link] [Cache]

Many of us at HostGator were curious what the ‘nerd vote’ looked like so we went ahead and ran our own poll amongst employees. We limited the choices to either Mccain or Obama in order to keep the results realistic. Here’s a breakdown of the results: 98 Texas employees participated 55 nerds voted for Barack Hussein Obama II 34 nerds voted for John Sidney McCain The remaining 9 votes were disqualified for failing to follow the strict directions of selecting one candidate or the other. For the sake of being democratic, here are the results of the 9 votes that ... [Link] [Cache]

We have some very exciting, disturbing, shocking, and electrifying news for you! HostGator Web Hosting is now offering UNLIMITED DISK SPACE, UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH, and UNLIMITED DOMAINS for less than ten bucks a month. I should be telling you this is a limited time offer and to sign-up while supplies last, but I’m not going to. If you decide to wait a few months, the plan just might change to unlimited bazillion-trillion everything. If you happen to sign up before the unlimited bazillion-trillion plans are released, we’ll be happy to upgrade you free of charge. If you think this all sounds ... [Link] [Cache]

HostGator has a history and tradition of giving back. In the last year, we’ve donated over $125,000 to charity, actively worked towards offsetting and reversing our environmental impact, and given free or discounted web hosting to a countless number of web sites. Today, we’re moving forward with our commitment to the communities and the people we serve with the launch of the HostGator Technology Grant. Recipients of the HostGator Technology Grant will receive one year of completely free web hosting with our Swamp Plan, which offers 1,000 GB of space and unlimited bandwidth. If the Swamp plan does not fit ... [Link] [Cache]