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Because we've been in the "Web Business" for more than a decade, spanning the century mark technically, we need to maintain solid hosting for our own products, demonstrations, and tests, as well as provide the same for our clients who need a little extra help.

For more than 5 years we've been using a "Private Label" version of GoDaddy's products and services:
WildWest.MediaCarbon.com
It's called WildWest Domains but for all intents and purposes it's just GoDaddy's stuff with a "white label" skin.  We can set the prices and products we offer, and so on.

The main reason that we keep and maintain this association with GoDaddy/WildWest is because our clients can sign up for virtually anything they like:

• Domains (Virtually ANY TLD, even unusual ones like .MS, .MOBI, and so on)
• Hosting (Windows/UNIX/Common/VPS/Dedicated/Etc.)
• SSL Certificates (Best Deals Around, We Buy Own Own)
• Miscellaneous Domain Related Services

But more importantly, clients can assign MediaCarbon as an "Account Executive" either for their Registrar Control Panel where their domain names are maintained and/or for their hosting account.  Contact Us for our customer number and email address associated with the appropriate management account please.

By leveraging the Account Executive role in the WildWest system we are able to provide service that other practitioners can't or won't provide and all the while do it in a secure and orderly way.

Here's a group of articles about the Account Executive Role:

• Domain Name and Registrar Account Executive
• Hosting Account Account Executive

Over the years one of the most sure-fire solutions to customer support, especially on the higher technical end, has been a "remote assistance" application of some sort.  There are systems built into operating systems: Windows, Apple, Linux, and so on.  Some practitioners have a favorite and some use what their company provides.  At MediaCarbon we're lucky enough to be able to use anything we want.  
One of the most promising solutions we've encountered so far has been "Team Viewer".  It's nice because it's obviously designed for a professional, or even department to utilize on the back-end, and on the front-end (the customer being supported) there are options for them to install the software so that the support partner can always access their machine and administer tasks, or a "Quick Support" where the user needn't install anything, they simply run the executable file and it sets them up for a single support session.
Besides the UI design and philosophy some of the features we see in Team Viewer that look promising:

• Skinable Support Window
• Installable version for desktop and server support
• Administrator enhancements like "partner list"
• Extras and Add-Ons
• USB Stick Portable Version
• General Attitude of the Company!

We'll be passing the Quick Support module to customers via our LiveSupport installation of Crafty Syntax's great Live Chat program.  Who says you've got to use PHP or ASP.NET, the obvious pragmatic solution is to use both! ;-)

MediaCarbon, Inc. has just purchased a Windows Advanced Hosting Account with WebHost4Life.com in order to test our products on their windows platform:

• ContentSeed.com
• PHP.ContentSeed.com
• ASP.ContentSeed.com
• ASPX.ContentSeed.com

MediaCarbon, Inc. has just purchased a Windows Business Account with 1and1.com in order to test our products on their windows platform:

• PHPSeed.com
• ASPNETSeed.com
• ASPSeed.com
• ExpressionFormHandler.com

We are considering a UNIX hosting plan from 1and1 as well.  We're always interested in seeing how deployment will be for our customers using various hosts.

One of the most interesting things about supporting an application that gets deployed to common shared hosting providers is that we get to see how virtually everybody's hosting works.

We're obviously familiar with GoDaddy and 1&1, plus the other "big" providers, but every once in a while a client will need to host on a server or with a company that we haven't used yet.

Yesterday provided just such an opportunity.

The following information is particular to sites hosted at BizLand.com

The client deployed to the server and got a failure message.  Further examination showed it was due to a PHP version lower than the requirement (PHP 5 is required).  This fix was easy enough through BizLand's Control Panel.

Next, the installation refused to allow a log-in.  Intuition and experience told us that there was something wrong with how this server handled sessions.  It appears that at BizLand.com the user must set their own PHP Session Path in the PHP.ini file.

Once we added the PHP Session Path to the PHP.ini file all was well and PHPSeeds V4.5.1 ran like a top on the BizLand server.

Here's a BizLand help document that gave us some tips and pointers:

http://www.bizland.com/knowledgebase/beta/article.bml?ArticleID=1290&type=How%20To#Nugget_1374

Let us know if YOU need help with installation and deployment.  We LOVE a challenge.