Want to know when your site goes down? Use the free account setup at Pingdom and you will get a text message or email the instant your site goes down, and you can opt-in to get notified when it goes back up.

If you use Mozilla Firefox (supported on both Mac & PC), then there’s a free online FTP application called FireFTP, which is a plugin thats downloaded and attached to your Firefox browser. Once downloaded and installed, you just re-open your browser, and you’ll see a FireFTP icon on the top toolbar.

Just input your basic FTP information, and you will be using FTP online the quick and lite way!

Some quick features I grabbed from the official site..

• It’s free!
• Cross-platform: Works on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
• Secure: SSL/TLS/SFTP support, same encryption used with online banking and shopping
• Synchronization: Keep directories in sync while navigating
• Directory Comparison: Compare directory content (compares subdirectories too!)
• International: Available in over 20 languages
• Character Set Support: UTF8 and just about any other character encoding supported
• Automatic reconnect and resuming of tranfers
• Search/Filtering
• Integrity Checks of transfers (XMD5, XSHA1)
• Export/Import accounts
• Remote Editing
• File Hashing: Generate hashes of files (MD5, various SHA’s)
• Drag & Drop
• File Compression: Using MODE Z
• Timestamp Synchronization
• Proxy support
• FXP support
• Advanced properties (CHMOD, recursive CHMOD, thumbnails)
• Tutorials and help files available for support
• IPv6 support
• Open Source!
• Seamless integration with Mozilla Firefox
• …did we mention it’s free?

How can internet bandwidth affect your work? Well for one, if you are using FTP (File transfer protocol), a tool to help you edit and change files on your site server, you can experience extremely slow periods where the files are downloaded or uploaded extremely slowly.

The Doc’s #1 recommendation to check your internet bandwidth speed is to use speedtest.net. This is a great website to remember whenever you need to check to see if your internet is causing bandwidth issues, especially if you are not on an unlimited usage plan.

Hope that helps!

There are tools to help you monitor your site bandwidth usage, like the one I found on How-To Geek here.

One thing to remember about bandwidth..

Bandwidth is renewed every month on most to all hosting plans. So if you get 5gb monthly bandwidth, that’s not yearly! Your bandwidth is renewed monthly. Whether its on the first of the month or renewed from the date you signed up, you’ll have to check that out with your host.

Virtual Private Servers offer a great balance between total control (having root access privelage), while maintaining a tight budget. You can get cheap unlimited VPS starting at only $9.99 a month!

With a virtual private server, you can also have your own IP address, as most hosting companies provide this already in your package. If you’re moving from shared hosting to VPS hosting, things like memory and IP address become points to check off with different hosts. The starting amount of memory offered is usually 512mb. A typical VPS has about 50gb web storage and 500gb+ bandwidth.

If you own a photography company and you want to display your stunning portfolio online for new business, then you might want to look into professional web hosting with a large amount of storage space and high bandwidth.

Because your profession is in creating high-quality photos and videos, you will need large disk space to accommodate all of your portfolio, and large bandwidth allocation for your customers to be able to load any and all of the images/videos they want.

Our recommended web host for photography and videography website hosting is Zenfolio. They offer the best photography hosting and selling solution for professional photographers and enthusiasts.

Free 14-day Trial subscription provides access to all the Premium features including uploading full size photos, printing and selling. After your free trial, the first package starts at $25/year, making it extremely affordable for any photography studio!

Why shop around for domain names? Aren’t they all the same? Lets go over some details..

• Certain registrars maintain expired domains. For example GoDaddy has a huge auction database for expired and bidding domain names, whereas other registrars don’t. Keep this in mind if you intend on bidding on domain names, or could care less.
• Price is a factor of course. Bigger domain registrars can afford to offer a lower price for domain names whereas smaller companies who hold unique expired domain names charge a bit more to a lotttt more!
• Their policies are always different. Each company has their unique policy with domain names, and the Doc takes that into factor when choosing his favorite registrar.

So what are the top 3 domain registrar brands of 2012?

1. Netfirms

2. GoDaddy

3. NameCheap

This free domain name was registered by your hosting company and thus they have ownership of it, some companies will kindly help you get it transferred to your new account so you can then make the yearly payment yourself, most companies will not be so kind.

The Doc’s tip on Free Domain Name

Don’t get overwhelmed by the fact that you might not be able to transfer your domain name when you switch hosts. The Doc’s tip is to create a domain name that will either supplement your actual domain name or create a totally new domain name for another project.

Then, once you got this free domain name from the hosting company, go back to a domain registrar company, and create a separate account where you can purchase 100 domains in. The takeaway point is that you need to keep your domain account and hosting account separate, so use the “free domain name and hosting” incentive, and just create a new name or supplement your current project buy getting a .org or .net name to secure your brand.