DEVTRENCH: Web Development from the Front Lines

Have you ever wondered who your neighbors are on your shared host? I wondered this for quite some time before I found this useful site that will tell you all of the host names that are on your server.

By using the Whois and Reverse IP service offered at whois.webhosting.info, you can find this out. Simply enter your domain name into the search box and click ‘Go’. On the page that follows, either click on your ip address, or the link in the line that says “IP hosts n domains”. This brings up an alphabetized and paginated list of domain names on your server. Some things to remember when using this resource:

It is not complete considering that it won’t list domains on your server that have different IPs than yours. This would be any accounts that have been assigned a dedicated IP address.

It appears that it is not updated regularly. If you look at two domains that I own – ehlydesign.com and devtrench.com, you’ll see that ehlydesign.com is listed under 75.126.144.70, and devtrench.com is listed under 69.56.171.57. Both IPs are actually wrong. Ehlydesign.com has since been assigned a static IP address, and the IP address that devtrench.com is listed under is old — 2 months old.

So, while this might not be the most up-to-date picture of your current neighbors, it does paint a picture of who is/was on your server. I’ve spent hours on this site finding out interesting things about other famous sites. Just think of the sites that you frequent often…it can be pretty interesting to find out what other sites are on the same server as those.

Now if you can’t tell already by reading this, I’m no DNS expert, but I get by in the trenches with what I can. If you are going to be a good web developer then a working knowledge of DNS is really helpful. I’ve found out most of what I know from the forums at Dathorn and Digital Point and just by doing tons of Google Searches. If you don’t ask questions you’ll never find out what you need to know (and that’s the real secret).

It’s time for another round of links. I found some really cool design sites this week…

Photoshop Tutorials from psdtuts.com
This is a great Photoshop tutorial site and just a cool site all around. First of all, the tutorials are written really well, and secondly, if you want to write a tutorial they’ll pay you for it (if it’s any good). They also look like they are monetizing the site well. It’s just really worth it to check this site out since they are doing so many things right.

Photoshop Text Effects Round-Up: 51 Text Effect Tutorials Every Designer Should See
This is a great list of photoshop text effect tutorials from around the web. Some of the highlights are: how to make realistic fire text, Matrix text, Apple text, Astro turf text, Metal text, etc etc. Cool stuff.

…and I used this site last week to help me figure out PHP’s error handling.

Error Handling and Logging from I Love Jack Daniels
This is a good post that explains each directive in the PHP error handling section of the php.ini file.

This is the first month where traffic didn’t increase on this blog. It’s amazing how getting banned from StumbleUpon can affect your traffic I was banned at the end of last month and can no longer submit my own stuff. I know I can probably just sign up with another user (against TOS) and drive more traffic here, but seriously, what’s the point of having a big traffic spike if its just going to go down the next day? After I was banned last month I decided to do minimal marketing on this blog just to see what would a happen. All I’ve done marketing wise for September is post in forums like Digital Point, MODx, and Dathorn, and continue to write almost every day. So here’s how it went down…

If you download the report and take a look, it’s pretty obvious where I was using StumbleUpon. The big traffic spike in the middle of the blog is where I got cut off. I used a stumble exchange on DP forums to get that much traffic, and SU apparently said that was enough for me. After doing the SU thing for a while, it kind of seems ridiculous, especially in light of the fact that I took Adsense off this blog. I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I want real readers on this blog, not just numbers. In fact, I’ve gotten to know some of the people that read here and that is what is keeping me motivated now So thanks to all of the real readers out there!

If you’ve enjoyed this blog for the past 4 months, then why not sign up for the RSS feed? Everybody’s doin’ it!!!