The Genealogist

Paul’s Weekly Ponderings

The exciting news this week is about The 1911 UK Census. You may (or there again may not!) remember that I set up a site for a Petition to get the 1911 UK Census released early some months ago.

Well………… I am not claiming that it is entirely down to the signatures we got but I heard the news that the information from the 1911 Census will now be available from January 2007 rather than the original date of January 2012. The aim is to have a fully searchable copy on the Internet by January 2009!

I must admit it’s given me a bit of a buzz! This for me is absolutely what we are about in terms of Marketing on The Internet - really adding value to the niches in which we operate.

If you are one of my subscribers then you will be aware that the last two weeks have been something of a challenge! This all resulted from a major outage by one of our hosting companies which lasted for some time and saw lots of data lost by them. It impacted about 50% of my business with some of our most significant sites going offline and the domain names being inaccessible to amend the DNS for!

So as you can imagine the last few weeks have seen quite a few long days getting things back up and running and I am pleased to say that of this morning almost every major site is now back on line and fully functional. It has also seen the creation of a number of new sites and the redeployment of other sites.

The good news for Genealogists is that our sites at The Amateur Genealogist, Free Genealogy Search Engine, Catholic Genealogy and Genealogy Articles are all now back online!

What have I learnt from the last few weeks? Well in summary here’s my top pieces of advice. Always make sure that you have your hosting spread around a number of major hosts so that you can always shift things around in the event of a problem; ensure that you back up your sites and any databases on a regular basis; ensure that your hosts also back up data on a regular basis. If you are serious about hosting then you need to look at getting a Reseller Account and one of the best that I hav come across is Hostgator who I have found to be excellent.

Finally in terms of my recommendations and this is a big one! Never ever, under any circumstances buy your domain names from your hosts! That way lies complete disaster if your host goes down and you then cannot access your account. If you cannot access your account with your host then you cannot amend the DNS an point your sites to an alternative host.

Now before all that happened I had been well on with my planning for 2007 and thought that I knew what we were going to do! However, the coincidence of the problems with one of our hosts and also reading an excellent report from Niche Mania’s BigMike called “Google Hiccup” set me thinking! If you haven’t taken a look at Niche Mania then you really want to - it’s one of the very few memberhips that I ever recommend for anyone interested in making money online.

The areas we will focus on in terms of our primary niches will remain as originally planned. However, our approach to those niches and the value we will be adding is going to be much mroe focussed.

One of the things that we are currently very focussed on is evolving the highly successful GenMates community and you can read more about that at GenMates Changes - this is a set of changes which is in response to the fedback from our members. I think this is going to be really exciting!

The other two major developments which have suffered a bit of a set back are my Internet Marketing Coaching Site and my Self Improvement Coaching Site - however with a few more days work on these they will be ready to go early in the new year! You can sign up for the heavy discount on the Internet Marketing one by going to Internet Business Creators!

Have a good week and if you are one of my subscribers watch out for a very useful Christmas Gift!

Weekly Newsletter!

That was The week That Was!

Well what a week or so it has been! As those of you who have read my post “The Worst Web Hosts Ever” will know we have been having a fraught time with 1and1.co.uk. This has been rumbling on now for nearly three weeks and there are four domains which they still seem to be incapable of transferring to HerosHosting who are my preferred Web Hosts.

I haave been fortunate that Jeffery Ash has excelled himself in terms of personal support in getting things sorted and hopefully in the next few days we will be able to bring this all to a conclusion! Jeffery really is an absolute superstar and what is more he offers my subscribers a very special deal! If you have been thinking of moving to a new host (especially if you are with 1and1.co.uk!) or have been thinking about setting up your own website then I cannot recommend Jeffery highly enough. Take a look at what he has to offer at Heroshosting.

New Domain Names

To get round the problems in the short term we have registered a few new domain names to cover some of our most popular domains so if you are looking for any of the following then click on the links and you will be taken there:

The Amateur Genealogist
Our Family Trees
Rose Gardening Success
Achieve Success Online

We have also taken the opportunity to register a few new domains for some of our inredibly popular Blogs. Two in particular that I know will be of interest at this time of year are:

The Genealogy Blog
The Landscaping Ideas Blog

Fame!

You know, I cannot pick up a Genealogy Magazine or indeed a few other magazines at the moment without finding my name in it! It’s okay it’s all very positive stuff! GenMates (our Genealogy MySpace Alternative) has really got people talking. We now have approaching 600 members since we launched about 6 weeks ago - which is not a bad achievement is it! Members are creating their own Groups and Forums, Blogging and sharing their interests and generally taking advantage of all the great features.

So if you haven’t logged in recently or heaven forbid haven’t joined us yet then you can pop along to GenMates once you have finished reading here!

Our Get the 1911 Census Online Petition is also about to be featured in several magazines! I am sure we shall see the current excellent 580 signatures exceeded very quickly.

Freebies!

If you haven’t already downloaded my Introduction to Scrapbooking eBook which is free of charge then just click on the link to be taken there!

I have always been a great exponent of Vision Planning and the benefits it brings. I have put together an overview of Vision Planning with some helpful tools within it which are essentially what I use - they are also what some companies have paid me handsomely to deliver as a training session

They are here for you to use and to share with your own subscribers and friends and not even an email address required! So just right click on Guide to Planning for 2007 to download your copy aand save it to your own hard drive!

Finally…

Would you like to hear my dulcid tones LOL Well, I am currently putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard more like) and writing the eBook that explains how we have created a successful Internet Business during the past twelve months. To get on the notification list for the launch of “Are Successful Internet Marketers Really from Pluto?” just click on the link.

Have a great week and thanks for reading! See you over at GenMates!

Web Hosting for Genealogists!

Sometimes I would forget my head or so I am told by my partner!

I was writing a short while ago about the Web Hosting Advice Site we have just launched and it reminded me that a short while ago I negotiated a special deal for both Visitors to my Blogs and Subscribers with my preferred Web Hosts HerosHosting - don’t you just love that name!

If you pay a visit to them by clicking on HerosHosting you will see what we have put together for you! I can recommend Jeffery and the team at HerosHosting because nothing is too much trouble for them and you get a very personal service which I know I for one definitely value.

If you are looking to put your own Family Tree Website online then Jeffery is the man to work with for your hosting!