Site owners have five days to file a counter-notice, but neither payment processors or ad networks have any obligation to respect it. Even worse, they are granted “immunity for choking off a site if they have a “reasonable belief” that some portion of the site enables infringement”.

I suggest you check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation, this post by Mythbuster Adam Savage and this nice infographic for additional information about SOPA.

The Internet can be a mighty weapon; the latest company to find out about this is GoDaddy, who support SOPA and Protect-IP.

A Reddit user suggested to move away domain names and hosting from GoDaddy to other providers to boycott the company for their pro SOPA stance. This got the ball rolling with regular users and companies moving domains away from GoDaddy at a rapid pace. It is not clear how many webmasters and companies have moved domain names and hosting from GoDaddy to other companies, but it is likely that the value is in the tens of thousands already.

Other hosting companies sized the opportunity with special offers for GoDaddy customers who move their domains and hosting (see blog posts on Name, Hostgator or Easy DNS for example.

Godaddy released a press release a day later, stating that the company “is no longer supported SOPA”, and that “Go Daddy will support it [again] when and if the Internet community supports it”.

And while it is nice to see that GoDaddy has changed their stance on SOPA, you’d still want to ask yourself if you want to continue working with a company who supported the bill in the first place.

You may also be interested in a list of companies and organizations who openly support SOPA. You find the list here.

But Godaddy is just one example where online shoppers can save big time. Think computer hardware for a moment, or clothes, entertainment related items or toys. Using a price comparison engine for those items is just the first step, as you may get a lower price at another merchant if you make use of coupons.

PriceBlink is a coupon search engine that powers both a Firefox add-on and a Chrome extension of the same name.

Both extensions work the same way. They search the service’s coupons database for every website you visit. A small bar at the top indicates that coupons have been found.

The first coupon in the list is highlighted in the row directly. All other coupons become available with a click on the View Coupons pulldown menu.

A click loads the PriceBlink website where all coupons are displayed on a page. The site itself groups coupons indicating if coupons are working, partially working or new.

It would obviously be more elegant if the coupon codes would be displayed directly on the same page, and not only after loading a page on the PriceBlink website. Regardless of that inconvenience, it is still worth the troubles in my opinion.

You can close the notification for the session or permanently, so that it won’t be displayed anymore on the current web page.

I have tested PriceBlink on a variety of sites. From Godaddy and BestBuy to Newegg, Gap, Dell and Barns and Noble. It worked on a lot of site. There are however sites where no results where displayed. Amazon is for instance is a prime example, probably due to the fact that Amazon coupon codes are rare.

Are you actively searching for coupons before you shop online? If so, do you search for coupons manually or use a browser extension instead?

I finally managed to get the email account working, and thought I’d share my findings with the world to make it easier for everyone who wants to use a Godaddy email account in an external email client. This will actually work with online email services that allow the configuration of external email clients as well. I think Gmail and Hotmail offer that feature, let me know if I’m wrong on this.

You need the following information to use a Godaddy email account in a desktop email software:

• Your email address
• The email password
• Incoming Server, Port and Authentication
• Outgoing Server, Port and Authentication

The biggest problem for most users is the fact that Godaddy uses different incoming and outgoing servers based on the location of the user in the world. Godaddy operates US, European and Asian servers and the user has to configure the right servers for the email to work.

First things first, the easy stuff:

The username and password of the email address should be fairly obvious. If you have forgotten your password you can change it in Godaddy’s interface (by logging in, then Domains > My Account > Email). There you can manage existing email accounts and create new ones if you have credits left.

The outgoing mail server and incoming mail server are only displayed in the email interface. You need to go to email.secureserver.net and log in with your email address and password. Once logged in you need to click on Help > Email Client Settings to retrieve the mail server information:

A small overlay window appears that lists the incoming (pop3) and outgoing (smtp) server.

The incoming and outgoing ports are the following:

• Incoming Port: Without SSL – 110 ; With SSL – 995
• Outgoing Port: Without SSL – one of the following 25, 80, 3535, 587 ; With SSL – 465

Now it is possible to add the Godaddy email address to an external email client so that emails can be received and composed in the software.

That back then did not turn out as well as well. Ghacks was suspended by Goddady back then after it made the Digg homepage, and Godaddy decided it was the most customer friendly way to simply suspend the website, without informing me prior to this. I did not receive an email, nor telephone call at that time and only found at because I visited my site several times a day.

I had to call the US for 30 minutes to resolve the situation, which basically meant that I ordered my first dedicated server at the German web hosting company Hetzner as Godaddy was not able to resolve the issue for me.

Took some time to move the domains and web files, I probably lost a couple hundred bucks and lots of potential readers in the process. That was a huge blow back then for the young site.

Fast forward to 2010. Imagine my surprise when I received an email send by the web hosting company Just Host telling me that my account has been suspended. It apparently used more server resources than it should. I test a few hosters here and there with smaller sites, first to diversify the hosting a bit but also to see if I can find a real gem amongst the web hosting companies.

Deja Vu one might think. I did receive an email this time but that’s it. No prior consultation, no phone call, nothing. When I open the site in the browser I get a suspended page. Not good for visitors, trust and everything else.

The email reads:

As you probably aware, here at Just Host we proactively monitor all our servers to ensure that our clients websites are loading as fast as possible at all times. During this routine monitoring we
have found that your account is utilizing an excessive amount of system resources, and we have been forced to suspend your site as per our terms and conditions ’10% CPU/MEM/MySQL Policy’.

Just Host offer unlimited hosting space and unlimited bandwidth, but as per our terms we will suspend any website which exceeds our 10% CPU/MEM/MySQL policy. We hope that you understand our position in
ensuring that we provide the best possible service. In order to continue to provide this high quality service, you will need to upgrade to a dedicated server, which will give you an abundance of
additional resources and speed up your website.

Sounded much like they wanted me to order a dedicated server instead, something that Godaddy requested back then as well. I probably would have thought about this if the domain was still up and running and if they would have contacted me to resolve the situation.

Even more puzzling was the fact that they disabled Cpanel and ftp accounts as well, so no option to create a backup or to move the domain to a new registrar.

The good news is that I was prepared this time. I had a dedicated server up and running and could use it to move the domain and hosting account to that server. I still had to convince Just Host to create a backup for me, let me access the DNS settings, and hand me the EPP code so that I could make the transfers.

It took them about 40 minutes to reply to my first ticket. That’s a long time if you are sitting on a suspended domain name. They did however do what I asked them to. The backup was linked in their response, as were the login information to change the nameserver information and the administrative email which is important for the domain transfers.

It is now two hours after their initial email. The nameservers are unfortunately still resolving the old suspended site. I was however able to restore the backup and verify that the site is 100% working on the new dedicated server.

The transfer is pending, still have to figure out how to accept the transfer without any login possibilities at Just Host at the moment. Have contacted their support again and am waiting for a response.

How to be prepared if your web hosting account gets suspended:

• Make sure you have access to recent backups or that you download the latest backup regularly to be able to restore them at another web hosting company or server if the account gets suspended. This can be problematic if the backup is very large (hundreds of Megabytes or even Gigabytes). Backups come in many forms, make sure that the backup created on the current site can be restored at the new hoster. Nothing’s worse than having to restore files and databases manually, takes a lot of time.
• Make sure the administrative emails are set correctly. They are needed for the domain transfers. It takes a while before they are updated.
• Have at least an account at a second respected web hosting company. You do not really need to have a hosting package there or anything, just make sure that they setup the hosting packages in less than an hour when needed. Having the account ready ensures that you do not have to create it first.
• Make sure you have the ftp / sftp / cpanel account information at hand. Nothing’s worse than having to request new login codes if time is pressing.
• You can test that the website is working correctly by changing the hosts file in the operating system so that it links the new IP to the domain name. Very helpful to test a site before DNS propagation. And since you are waiting for the DNS to propagate you can at least do something useful in the meantime. You can check if the nameservers have been set correctly at web services such as DNS stuff. A traceroute to the domain can also provide the information if the DNS has propagated already.
• Live chat or calling is often the faster option to resolve a situation. It is a good idea to have the links and phone numbers ready in case of emergency. Put them in a text file, notes or support folder so that they are directly accessible when needed.

Wishlist

Websites who exceed the allowed server resources require a change, I agree to that. What I do not understand at all on the other hand is the lack of willingness to find a solution with the customer. I have experienced the same suspension without initial warning or contact to resolve the issue twice in the last years. Both times websites who have seen a sudden increase in visitor numbers were affected.

A web hoster who would contact the customer first, or at least try to, before suspending the account would get all my money, I only have to find one first. I suspect that most web hosters have the necessary resources to cope with the traffic increase before it affects the whole network which means they should try to resolve the issue without suspending the site in the beginning.

They should also at the very least keep the hosting login account activated. The email that informs the customer of the suspension should contain a link to the latest backup to speed up the process of moving the site to a new hoster. They need to understand that time is essential in this process, and that they can part with a disgruntled customer or a customer who is happy that the transfer did not take down the site for a long period of time.

Have you experienced something similar in the past? Let us know in the comments.

Another option that speeds up the process quite a bit when working on the Internet is the Domain Lookup add-on for Mozilla Firefox. It does not automate the whole process but provides enough automatism to be a great asset for every webmaster or domain hunter.

Domain Lookup can send the marked text to a selected domain registrar checking if the domain name is still available. The query will be opened in a new tab. Spaces will automatically be removed from the query: “business news” would be stripped to “businessnews” since domain names cannot contain spaces.

The fastest way to check the domain is by using the shortcut key [CTRL SHIFT D] which can be edited in the options. It is furthermore possible to use the right-click context menu to start the domain search.

The default registrar Godaddy can be changed to numerous others depending on the user’s preference. The author explicitly states to let him know about missing registrars so that they can be added. The list is pretty extensive though.

It is also possible to select the domain extension or multiple extensions that should be checked. The default extension is .com but it is possible to add additional extensions including several country domain extensions.

Selecting multiple domain extensions can have the consequence that multiple tabs have to be opened to check the availability.

You might have some words that are synonyms of each other. You can drag these into groups which will have the result that only one word of that group is added to the combination. Another cool feature are the prefixes and suffixes that can be added to the domain name. What I really like is that you can pick the default ones but also create your own prefixes and suffixes which are then combined with the words that you have added.

Hovering the mouse over a word displays similar words that can be added as well to increase the possibility of finding a suitable domain name. Domains can be bought from a variety of domain registrars and it’s even possible to add hosting if you need that as well. The Godaddy price is awesome by the way. You pay only $6.95 for a domain name instead of $9.99 when you buy at Godaddy directly.

Bust a Name is a great help when I’m looking for a new domain name. I’m buying two or three domain names per week and it’s really helpful.