Guest Writer or Guest Author

I am creating a new user in WordPress for guest articles and I'm torn between the above two names. As far as I am concern, the only subtle difference between an author and a writer is the former gets his work published and the latter does not.

I decide to check the number of search results in Google for both names:

"guest writer" : 5,010,000
"guest author" : 3,960,000

Intrigued, I decided to check on a few other terms as well:

"guest blogger" : 6,070,000
"guest post" : 14,000 000

Guest Blogger is definitely out as not everyone is a blogger. Guest writer is my pick.

800 FeedBurner subscribers

I reach the 800 figure mile stone today. It will be a tough struggle in the coming few weeks as I struggle to push further deeper into the 800 mark. Once that is achieve can I set my eyes on the magical 1,000.

Looking back, I didn't really do anything innovative just plain hard work - replying to interested guest writers and emailing my new new subscribers. Although not substantial, replying to all emails sent to you by interested parties does help to increase my readership by a little.

Lesson learn: don't neglect seemingly mundane and tedious tasks.

Drawing a divider line in WordPress

I was using a very tedious method of inserting an image of a divider line into my WordPress post until I found this site - http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/divider-lines/

Feeling really stupid but better late than never. I believe it should work for Blogger too. Try it out.

How to publish your google analaytics to public without plugins or third party apps?

I'm searching for a way to show my stats to potential advertisers and stake holders without the need for plugins or third party apps because I don't want to be at their mercy. Plugins and thrid party apps may require frequent updating if Goolge or Wordpress update their current version.

Gave up my search and decided to export my report in CSV format. Darn, the exported report doesn't show any charts and learning Google Chart Tools is too time consuming (another day perhaps). In the end, I took a screen  capture.

Do let me know how you can publish your Google analytics report without the need of plugins or third party apps.

Thanks.

Accumolo Wordpress Theme

Many moons ago before I engaged a design firm for my site, I was looking at various Wordpress aggregator themes. Accumolo was one of them and while reviewing my old notes, I took down some of the sites that was using the theme. It will be interesting to see how these sites are now.

1. MusicEdNews.com : This was the first site I want to learn from should I opt for the Accumolo theme. The webmaster has done a good job in improving it. With PR4, there could still be a thing or two to learn from.
2. pureitems.com : The site ceased to exist.
3. Grape Daily : PR0. I doubt there was any update on the site.
4. LakeMarySports.com: PR0. Like Grape Daily, there wasn't much updates.
5. Scrappy Marketing: PR2. I believe there was sporadic updates much like my site. 
6. IT Splat: PR1. Doesn't look at all like the usual Accumolo theme. Anyway, it has not been updated since last year.
7. Naijaweb: Doman name up for sale.
8. becomethemedia.com: Search results show becomethemedia.org and my browser warn that it is a malware site.
9. Thesis Buzz: Not sure why it is not using Thesis instead. Anyway, the site has ceased to exist.

Of the nine sites, only two are still being updated and they are still using the Accumolo theme, which speaks volume of its reliability.

Time to get the engine running...

I have been a bad boy. It's been over a month since I worked on my blog. In the Internet world, one month is a lot of time. I wonder how many missed opportunities have passed by me. Time to roll out.

Million Dollar Blog Project Update - 17 Oct 2011

It has been two weeks since I joined ThinkTraffic Million Dollar Blog Project and I did not see any increase in traffic. In fact, readership and earnings went down. I'm kind of surprised because I'm still updating my site regularly.

As you can see, readership has dropped by almost half - 900 per day to 450 per day. I may be on the first page of the Million Dollar Blog Project leaderboard but it counts as nothing.

My goal is to have a daily average of 1000 readers per day and just when it seems I am getting there. It's always the extra push that is the most difficult.

Sudden Drop in Feedburner Subscribers

There is no news from feedburner that there is a problem. On further investigation, I notice that my email subscribers seem to be omitted from the total number. Hopefully the problem will self resolve on its own.

Million Dollar Blog Project - TheFinance.sg

I already have a site TheFinance.sg that aggregates local finance and investing blogs and have been thinking of ways to increase my readership.

ThinkTraffic has launched a Million Dollar Blog Project. Its goal is to build a blog from scratch and earn $1M over its life.  Sounds kind of ambitious but also sound fun.

Registration is pretty standard but I don’t like that I have to register for a clicky account. Seem like some marketing tie up here. Why can’t we use Google Analytics or any of your own tracking websites?

“We cannot currently accept any sites that receive more than 500,000 daily page views.”

I guess if you are a big time site, you are deemed over qualified for the Million Dollar project.

I don’t like to install additional plugins in WordPress for fear of slowing down my site. Hence, I decide to use the tracking code. Hmm… the tracking code consist of a image. There should have an option for hidden tracking.

There are two fields that can be a little bothersome – total revenue earned and Journal link. I don’t think the purpose is to expose this information to the public but rather to force you to really look closely at your stats and think of ways to improve it.

Off to do my Journal post.

Updates
Million Dollar Blog Project Update - 17 Oct 2011

Guest Posts

I will occasionally receive offers for guest posts on my site but I usually turn them down because credibility and quality issues. I recently received a guest post request from a large reputable company. However, it is still important to do some background checks and ask a few important questions.

1. Relevancy: Ask for a few samples and ensure the content is relevant for your site. The last thing you want are are guest articles on household appliances when your site is about finance.
2. Credibility: Is the author really who or where he claim to be be? Google his name - shouldn't be too hard if he is reputable. If he represents a company, check his email suffix. Go to the company website and cross check their email suffix with that author.
3. Copyright: Who owns the article? Do you have the right to reject or delete the article?
4. Uniqueness: I prefer articles that are unique to my site and not found in anywhere else.

If you have any other doubts, drop the author an email. It is not difficult to distinguish reputable authors. Their replies will always be detail and will be more than willing to provide more information on their portfolio and background.

Be it paid or unpaid, the aim of allowing guest posts in your site is to improve the overall quality of your site and to attract more readers.

FeedWordPress - Switching a corrupted feed URL

I have a particular feed that causes my VPS to hung and I want to change the feed URL. However, switching feed doesn't work as it will still try to check the feed first. My next best bet is to delete the feed and re-subscribing it. Here are the steps:

1. Under the feed >> Delete permanently
2. Delete this syndicated link, but keep posts that were syndicated from it (as if they were authored locally). *IMPORTANT: The default is to delete the syndicated link and ALL posts. Do not select this.
3. Unsubscribe from selected feeds
4. Add new feed.
5. Update the feed.
6. Check that the syndicated author is correct.
7. Check under all users that no new author is created. Sometimes FeedWordPress will create a new author with a similar name to the old one.
8. Check the post, author and syndication permalink is correct.

Improving Loading Speed - Part II

Installation of W3 Total Cache was pretty straight forward. Although the installation guide states that I have to change the folder permission for 'wp-content' folder, I left it as it is without any problems. There are really tons of settings and I am leaving everything as default. The only change I made is to enable Database Cache.

Without further ado, let's see if there is any improvement.

Google Page Speed Online: 87/100
WebPageTest: 11.642s

Hmm.. results ain't fantastic. I was expecting a Google Page Speed of >90 and less than 10s loading time. Hold on a minute. I see a notification:
The setting change(s) made either invalidate the cached data or modify the behavior of the site. Empty the page cache  now to provide a consistent user experience.


Google Page Speed Online: 88/100
WebPageTest: 9.405s

Cool, load speed has now drop to below 10s and a slight improvement in Google Page Speed.

Improving Loading Speed

Although I have upgraded my VPS RAM, I do not see a noticeable increase in loading time and there was only a minor improvement in FeedWordPress performance.

I used two tools to measure the performance of my site.
Page Speed Online - http://pagespeed.googlelabs.com/pagespeed/
WebPageTest - http://www.webpagetest.org/

Using Google Page Speed Online, I have the same score of 85/100 even after increasing my memory whereas WebPageTest show a slight improvement in first view speed from 14.932s to 13.093s.

There has been much discussion on the best caching plugin for WordPress especially on WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache. I have decided to go with W3 Total Cache primarily because uninstallation is simple. If things don't work out, I can easily uninstall for WPSC.

Analysing VPS memory usage

Sometimes cPanel may not give you an inaccurate measurement of your memory usage. However, there will be some tell tale signs which include; slow loading of your website, page cannot be displayed 404, internal server error 500 and the most obvious PHP out of memory allocation.

The most accurate measurement is via SSH using the 'top' command.

# top

// to sort by memory instead of CPU (default)

// Inside the top command, press “Shift + F”, then press ‘n’ to order by memory

During normal browsing of my Wordpress site, I am already using 66% of my RAM. My Wordpress site is set to pull feeds of several websites every four hours. I found out that each website that is pulled takes up to 50MB RAM. If I pulled three or more feeds, I sometimes found myself with zero free RAM. Although increasing RAM is the obvious solution, I have more than 40 feeds to pull, multiply it by 50MB, I will need about 2GB RAM!

The estimate may be on the high side but if my site was to grow to include more feeds, I will need more RAM. Cost is an issue and I have not taken into consideration the CPU usage.

1) I will be increasing my VPS memory by another 512MB (smallest denominator available)
2) Going to ask my web host is Spam Assassin is configured correctly because it is using almost 20% available memory.
3) Configure PHP to use 512MB, 640MB and 768MB RAM to check on the performance. I will ask the web host to configure 768MB RAM in php.ini in case another problem pop up.
4) Check and configure optimal settings for eAccelerator.

Migration Log

After weeks of preparation, I am ready to migrate my site to the new host. I am logging each step taken so that in the event things go wrong, I can easily pin point the cause.

* Monitor your website traffic and choose a day where traffic is the lowest. Fortunately for me, Friday night is when my traffic is at the lowest and it is also at the end of my work week.

Friday, 9 September, 2011

2030 hrs
- Start of site migration.
- Create new cPanel account.
- Check that anonymous FTP is disabled.

2035
- Scan through the files in the old host to ensure no abnormally large files e.g. error_log
- Download files via cPanel backup manager.

2040
- took 5mins to download 185MB into tar.gz format
- Extract the files via winRAR but encountered error.
- Extract only the specific folder instead of all files and folders – successful.

2045
- create new mySQL database, user ID, password and assign full privilege to the database

2050
- Check .htaccess file.
- Change the path name because my old host use a sub domain.

2055
- Use Filezilla to upload all the files to my new host.
- Have to use root account because I have not updated my domain registrar to the new host name servers.

2215
- Filezilla uploaded completed. I heave a sign of relief as no files fail to be transferred over.
- Going to wait till 2300 to take the last mySQL backup

Saturday, 10 September, 2011

0031 hrs
- 1.5hrs overdue. Was preoccupied with other stuff. I did mention that Friday was my rest day ya.
- Exported the database in gzipped format.

0042
- Import SQL database

0054
- SQL error. Duplicate entry 502.
- Deleted, re-create and export the database but error still persist.
- I check through wp_posts and wp_comments and the number of records tally with that on the old host.
- The size of the database in the new host is larger than the old host.
- Decided to ignore the error.

0115
- Updated the name servers of my domain registrar to that of my new web hosts.
- Have to wait up to 48hrs.
- Ping my domain and still resolving to my old host IP.
- Going to bed and hopefully my site will be up when I wake up.

0600
- Ping my domain name and still resolving to my old host IP.

1020
- Ping now resolved to my new host IP. However, when I log in, it still showing the old WordPress version of my old host. Weird.
- It’s Saturday and I have a gathering later. Got to leave it till Sunday. Fortunately my site is still running.

Sunday, 11 September, 2011

0930 hrs
- Half awake hoping my site will work.
- Bam, internal server error 500.
- After some research, I think the problem lies with the permission of my .htaccess and/or probably all my files and folders.
- Was it my mistake to use root to upload my files as normal users/groups may not have the permission?
- It will take too much time to identify the permissions for each file.
- Good news that my domain registrar is resolving to my new host.
- I deleted the entire cPanel account and re-do from scratch. This time using my account (non-root) credentials since my domain has been resolved.

1300
- Finished all the steps but now it is pointing to cgi-default page. It can resolved to http://mydomain.com/. (with a dot at the end though).
- Raise a support ticket with my web host.

Monday, 12 September, 2011

0000 hrs
- Another day has passed and suddenly I can resolved to http://mydomain.com/ (without the dot). My web host did not reveal what the solution was and I was too tired to ask.
- Tested my site and found out the site is loading very slowly with insufficient memory allocation.

0030
- Updated php.ini to allow 500MB memory and restarted Apache service.
- Basic test OK.
- Email to support to install two missing PHP modules required for one of my application.
-  Finally going to get some sleep and do a full test later.
0900
- Internal Server Error again!
- I tried uploading an empty htaccess file but the error persist. How can it suddenly go down when it was working earlier?
- Has my site been hacked? Even my test domain is facing the same problem.
- Log a ticket with support. Hope it can be resolve quickly.

Update on 14 September 2011
- Internal server error solved.
- According to support, the internal server error was caused by php memory being set to 'maximum'. They have changed it to 256MB.
- Still facing several problems but at least normal viewing of the site is fine.

Migrating WordPress to a new server or host checklist

The purpose of the checklist is to ensure that I adopt a systematic approach and do not miss out any steps during the migration. There may be several methods to achieve each step but I want to keep it short and precise. I may discuss on the method used in a separate post.

As I am using a VPS, my checklist may be longer than those with a shared web host but most of the steps should be similar.

1. Add my existing domain to my new web host control panel.

2. Create a new cPanel account in my new host (use WHM).

3. Do a quick scan on the WordPress files and folders in my old host.
(I found out that I have a 300MB error log generated by my old host that can be excluded. This will save me time during download.)

4. Download ‘all’ files and folders from your old web host.
(Exclude any files not related to WordPress e.g. error logs as mention above)

5. Export MySQL database from my old host.

6. Create a new database in my new host.

7. Create a new database user with full privileges on my new host.

8. Assign that user to have full access to the new database.

9. Check the downloaded .htaccess file and edit if necessary.
Reference: http://digwp.com/2011/01/new-htaccess-permalink-rules/

10. Edit the downloaded wp-config.php with the new database name, user ID and password

11. Upload the download files and folders to my new host.

12. Import MySQL into the new database(new host).

13. Check the number of records in the new database(new host) is the same as the old database(old host).

14. In my new database, go to wp1_options and check/change the domain/path name:

-         Option ID 1: site URL

-         Option ID 39: home

-         Option ID 60: upload_path

Source: http://blog.triphp.com/how-to/how-to-move-wordpress-to-a-new-server-or-host.html

15. Update the name server(s) in my domain registrar

16. Wait in intervals of 4hours and refresh my local computer DNS.

17. Ping my domain name to check if it resolves to my new host's IP.

18. Once successful resolve to my new host, login to WordPress and cPanel.

19.  Do a quick check as a normal reader

-         Click on the post title

-         Click the "Read More" link.

-         Check the "Read the full article ->" correctly redirect to the author’s page

20. Configure cronjob in cPanel.

The last two steps are specific to my site only. Different owners will have their own quick checks. Also, a quick check is different from a comprehensive or full check where you check all your plugins, widgets, email etc. As long as my site is able to perform up to its basic function, it will give me enough time for a full/comprehensive test.

A final word of caution. I wrote this for migrating my personal site and I am not a full time blogger. Although you can still use this checklist for important/critical sites, I strongly recommend that you do not follow my list blindly and to add in your own points if necessary.

Stretching my dollar - a new domain registrar

My current registrar has served me well for the past 4yrs but I am looking if I could stretch my dollar more. A quick search on the web shows that my registrar is not in any of the top five domain registrars which is pretty odd. Surprising GoDaddy is one of the recommended registrars although I have heard many horror stories about it. I suppose the more popular you are, the more feedback you will have and there is a tendency that only disastisfied customers will give their feedback.

It didn't take long for me to find myself a new domain registrar - Namecheap.com

Here are the main reasons:

1) Voted best domain registrar 2010 by Lifehacker
2) Free Whois protector for one year or $2.88/yr thereafer for one website. My current registrar charges $9.99/yr

Do I need a seperate domain name?

I currently have two domain names. The first is my website and the second is used as a re-seller account that was shared with a few friends. Although I am now on my own, I have decided to retain the second domain name for the following reasons:

1) In my environment, all ports except 80 and 443 are blocked. This means I will not be able to access:

Port 2082 -> Cpanel default port
Port 2083 -> Cpanel over SSL
Port 2086 -> Cpanel Webhost Manager (default)
Port 2087 -> Cpanel Webhost Manager (with https)
Port 2095 -> Cpanel Webmail
Port 2096 -> Cpanel secure webmail over SSL

WHM has now included a feature to access the above using port 80.

WHM includes a feature that lets your customers access the following from behind a firewall, using port 80:

•cpanel.example.com — The customer's cPanel account.
•whm.example.com — The customer's WHM account.
•webdisk.example.com — The customer's Web Disk account.
•webmail.example.com — The customer's webmail account.
(In these examples, example.com stands for the customer's domain.)

You can enable this feature by selecting On for the follwing Tweak Settings options in WHM:

•Proxy subdomains
•Proxy subdomain creation
You can learn more about these options by viewing our Tweak Settings documentation.

Or, if you prefer, you can use /scripts/proxydomains to reconfigure the DNS entries manually.

Source: http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/AllDocumentation/AllFAQ/WHMsFAQ#Is there a way to access webmail

Hence, a domain name is essential.

2) I cannot use my acutal website domain name because my current site is already live. If I were to use that to configure my WHM and cPanel, there might be a lengthy downtime. Changing the name servers alone may already take up to 48hrs! I also intend to update my wordpress and plugins and this will take up more time and increase the chance of errors.

3) An additional domain name is useful for testing purposes. Although I can create subdomains later on, I would prefer to create them under a seperate domain. By testing on a seperate domain, there will be no chnace of corrupting any files in my live site.
There are some considerations when getting a separate domain name:

1) Cost: pretty obvious but fortunately the cost of a domain name is relatively inexpensive.

2) Privacy: ICANN requires that every domain registrar maintain a publicly viewable "WHOIS" database that displays personal contact information (including home addresses and phone numbers) for every domain registered. Most domain registrars now offer WHOIS privacy at an affordable rate.

3) Vulnerability: An additional domain name means another avenue for an attack. Therefore it is important to find a realiable domain registrar. Some even provide additional security measures but at a cost.

Having another domain name is useful for people like me who are not very knowledgable in web hosting technoglogy, require as little downtime as possible or as an added insurance (testing). If you are on VPS, I believe you take your site seriously and having a seperate domain name will come in very handy.

VPS control panels in a nutshell

Gosh, I didn’t know that there can be so many ‘control panels’ link to a single VPS account. This is made worse as each control panel has a different port and login credentials. Hence, I am summarizing all of them for future reference and maybe someone else might benefit from it.

Although the names below are reference to myhosting.com, it should be very similar to most VPS web-host.

manage.myhosting.com

This is the probably the first control panel that you will receive prior to the completion of your VPS account. It usually contains your particulars, the general information of your VPS server and status, the services/applications purchased, billing, latest news etc.  It will also contain the links, IDs and passwords to your other control panels. Once you have taken down all the relevant information, you probably won’t look at it again unless during renewal, upgrade or cancellation of your subscription.

VZPP - Virtuozzo Power Panel

VZPP is a powerful web-based VPS recovery and management tool. With VZPP you can easily do the following:

• VPS Start/Stop/Reboot
• VPS Services Management
• VPS Resource monitoring
• VPS Backup/Restore
• VPS Repair
• VPS Re-install
• VPS Actions Log audit

Source: http://support.lunarpages.com/knowledge_bases/article/408

Most VPS web host will offer this panel free of charge which I believe is due to licensing. Unless you are a geek, this panel will be sufficient for managing your VPS.

Root Access

For the more technical inclined, root access give you the ability to take full control of your server. This may be important for those who run special applications and tweaking is required. For Linux-based VPS host, SSH connection is required. I am using Windows 7 and installed a Putty (Link). I also have a similar program ConnectBot installed on my Android phone.

However, it seems that not all web-host will grant you full root access. Chances are if your login name is root, you will have full access to your VPS.

A quick way to check is to enter this command:

whoami

It will show you the user name that you are using.

For the geeks, you can type:

cat /etc/passwd

Look for the line with the word “root” at the front and verify that the third value is zero.

Example:

Root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bish

This is the UID and zero is reserved for root giving the account unrestricted/unlimited access.

For more details:

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/understanding-etcpasswd-file-format/

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-more-on-user-id-password-and-group-management.html

cPanel and WHM

The cPanel is one that most website owners will be familiar with especially if you are on a shared hosting. Unfortunately this control panel is not free. Some VPS web-hosts offer this as free but they would have already factor this into their pricing. I believe a single license will give you both cPanel and WHM. There is no way to just take one or the either.

To give you a brief difference between the two : -

cPanel is used to administer one website where WHM is used to administer multiple websites and the hosting server itself. Users that register a domain will use cPanel to manage various aspects of their site. Resellers and web hosting companies will use WHM to administer multiple domains (create, modify, delete, etc.), but not to manage individual settings for each domain.

Source: http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/what-is-the-difference-between-cpanel-and-whm.html

I opted to have cPanel and WHM installed since I familiar with it and would make my site migration easier. Correct me if I am wrong but I don’t think VZPP can be use to manage a website(s).

Others

There are several other panels available e.g. Fantastico, RVSkin, RVSiteBuilder, Plesk  and WHMCS. All of course have to be paid for. For windows VPS, Plesk would be the obvious choice as WHM is built for Linux platform.

Reply from myhosting.com

I finally got a reply from myhosting.com after I demanded a refund.

Apologies for the delayed responses as the ticket was at another queue,...

Their explaination is kind of lame. I made it a point to send to two email addresses "vps@myhosting.com" and "virtual-server@myhosting.com" so what do they meant by another queue? It was only in my last email to "support@myhosting.com" did I get a reply.

In that case, why bother to send me this email:

Should you need any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us at virtual-server@myhosting.com.

I'm going to scrutinize their service and support for the next 20 days. If it is really bad, I will insist for a refund and pay for the more expensive option. Although I come from a IT background, VPS is still pretty foreign to me and I may need some help to migrate my site. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

myhosting.com

I am beginning to regret selecting myhosting.com. It's been almost 24hours and I have yet to receive a welcome email stating that my account is ready. It was stated that it would take approximately 5hours. I did manage to log into their portal and saw several applications failed to installed. I think they have a technical problem but still no excuse. Not keeping your promise is one thing. The lack of updates is equally frustrating. Customers hate being in the dark!

I have email to their support twice and got back to me after 4hours saying they will check and that's it. Even their automated acknowledgement email takes about an hour or so. Inmotion acknowledgement mail took just a few minutes!

I was given 48hrs by my existing host before they shut down my site. Time is of the essence.

Choosing a VPS Host

I was informed by my web host that my website is using a lot of resources and is affecting other websites. I was advised to move to a VPS and my site was suspended. It's not the first time that it happen and my web host is unable to pin point the cause or provide me with the details as to what is the resource I am hogging. If I were to move to a VPS, I would need this information to do the appropriate sizing.

My main concern in choosing a VPS host is cost. Mine is a personal website and the average VPS cost US$50 on their lowest plan. My second concern is on the resource allocation. Although I do not have the details on my site's usage, I do not believe that I am using an exceeding high amount of resource - I have about 1,000 visitors a day. Hence, I want to find a VPS that offers the minimum resources so as not to waste my money on unused resources. Finally, is scalability. For example if you are a small site owner like me, you would welcome the option to increase your storage by denominations of 1GB rather than in blocks of 5 or 10GB. Of course support and money back guarantee is important but so much choices available, these are now the norm rather than a value add.

After some research, I narrowed down to these:

1. Inmotion hosting: surprise surprise. This is actually my current web host. I do not deny that their service is pretty good but the lack of details is simply frustrating. As much as their technical support want to help me, I think they are bound by some secrecy act not to reveal the full details to me. Unfortunately, their VPS package is one of the most expensive around and I just couldn't afford it.
2. Myhosting.com: The cheapest around and this is what I choose. However, they are not without it's flaws which I will explain later.
3. HostGator: Price is very close to Inmtion and I would rather choose Inmotion at the same price.

*Tip: Check out for any discount code available - either from searching or asking their online sales team directly. You can find them in vpshostreviews.com

Prior to purchasing a VPS plan from Myhosting.com, I talked to their online sales. I would advice you to do the same to address your questions and also to get a feel of their 'support' structure. If you stay in the same country, pick up the phone and call them. Unfortunately I am staying thousands of kilometres away. I wonder why web hosts don't offer Skype support. Anyway, back to their online sales. I would agree with most of the recent comments I found on the Internet that their support is not really very knowledgeable - I asked how do I do a site migration and I was told that I can use the control panel to do it. When probe further, they point me to their knowledge base. I know they have a knowledge base, then what is their online support for? Even their command of their English is poor - I asked if there are any other information that I should know before I make a purchase. Their reply was thanking me for choosing myhosting.com. I was like duh. 

At US$13/mth for a VPS host (after discount code), the price is just impossible to beat.