“Two law firms, Beck & Lee from Miami and The Weston Firm in San Diego, have filed a class action lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court alleging unfair business practices by local business review and rating website operator Yelp.”

Read the full article from TechCrunch.com

If you have a PC (not a Mac):

1. Press the print screen key (PrtScn). This takes a screenshot and saves it.

2. Open a program that uses images (Word, Powerpoint)

3. Edit and Paste. This pastes the saved screenshot.

4. Save the document and email it.

If you have a Mac (not a PC):

1. Open your “Grab” application.

2. Select “Capture” and the method you’d like to use.

3. Save the image to your desktop (it will be a .tiff) and email it.

I often have people contact me who are in various stages of breaking up with their current web designers. Sometimes the termination is friendly, sometimes it’s not. Here’s what you should know BEFORE you attempt to fire, or otherwise end your working relationship with your web designer.

1. Domain Name Ownership – Make sure that you own your domain name, and the domain name registration is not in the name of the web designer.  You need to make very, very, very sure that you, and no one else, legally owns your domain name. Here’s article you can use to find out who owns your domain name. You’ll want to be 110% sure that the domain name is owned by you, and that your name is listed in the public records. Some domain registrars will hide the names, and display a proxy – but you should contact the domain registrar and make sure that you are the owner of record. If you are not the owner, you should ask your web developer to transfer the ownership to you. If they refuse to transfer it, you might want to hire an attorney.

2. Hosting Plan Ownership – You can use the same method listed above to see who your current hosting company is. It will generally be listed in the DNS (Domain Name Server) area of the WHOIS record. If your web designer is doing your hosting, then you might want to consider moving to a neutral company (like DreamHost). Unless your web developer has sent you recent copies of all your website files, they may only exist on your hosting company’s server and your developer’s computer. This means that if you make your web developer mad enough, they can simply delete them from the server and your website is GONE. Sound unbelievable? It’s actually happened to a client of mine.

Why are these two things important?

If you don’t own your domain name, it means whoever owns it can sell it to another person – even a competitor, at will. There’s no logical or ethical reason why a web developer needs to own another person’s domain name – would you let a graphic designer trademark YOUR logo? Of course not. So make sure you are the domain name owner – and if not, make this your #1 priority.

If you don’t have direct control of your website hosting server, your website files could be at risk if your relationship with your current developer goes bad. It just takes a few minutes to set up your own hosting account with a neutral company – so if you’re planning on leaving your web developer – get an account set up and get your website files moved. Most likely you will need help from your current developer to get this done, unless you have duplicate copies of your website files handy, or have FTP access to your website’s server.

Other Things To Consider

3. Stock Photography Licenses – if your developer has purchased stock photography on your behalf, get documentation to prove this so you can’t be held liable for copyright infringement.

4. Software Licenses – if your developer has purchased software on your behalf, get copies of that documentation so you can prove that you own all  the software used by your website.

5. Databases – If your website uses a database, transferring your website from one hosting server to another can be complicated. Be sure you understand the scope of your current website before attempting to relocate.

6. Server-Side Language – Know what languages are used on your website. For example, if your website is written in PHP, it might need to be hosted on a Linux or Unix server, and if your website is written in ASP, it might be need to be hosted on a Windows server. Know what server-side languages (and corresponding database languages) are used on your website because they may prohibit you from moving your website to certain servers.

7. Email - Generally speaking, email servers are with whoever is hosting your website, and whoever is hosting your website has the ability to read your website-based emails. If you change hosting companies, your email accounts will be lost, and you will need to set up new accounts on your new hosting company’s email system.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do – But It Shouldn’t Be Dangerous

While deciding to end your relationship with your web developer may be difficult, it should not put your website in jeopardy – if, and only if – you’ve taken steps to make sure that your website registration and hosting are independent from your web developer. If domain registration and hosting are under your direct control, you simply need to change the passwords on any accounts (control panels and FTP) to make sure your developer doesn’t have access, and you’re ready to start a new relationship with someone else.

Prevention Is Worth A Pound of Cure

This means that if you haven’t yet hired a web developer and are in the interviewing process, you can ask them about domain registration and hosting. You can avoid folks who say they’ll do the domain registration on your behalf, as well as folks who insist on hosting the website themselves. There’s no reason why a developer would need to register your domain in their name. While it’s possible that your website is so special and complex it has to be hosted on a developer’s server – find out the details and ask lots of questions, especially if all you need is a simple small business website. Domain registration and website hosting are relatively inexpensive things ($10 a year and $10 a month, respectively) – yet depending on how they are structured, can make breaking up with your web developer a nightmare.

The article is called “Why running the White House Web site on Drupal is a political disaster waiting to happen.” It’s very well written and fairly entertaining – and it lists many of the issues that I have experienced with other complex content management tools like Joomla and Mambo. In fact, I’ve had such bad experiences with Joomla and Mambo, that I simply refuse to work with them, and now, after reading this article on Drupal, I’ll add that to my list of what content management systems to avoid.

The only content management tool that I do use, is called Web-Yep, and it’s a much simpler kind of content management application that keeps clients out of trouble and gives them just enough control over their content without the headaches. Sometimes, simpler is the way to go.

For the past month or so, I’ve been able to use live chat to communicate with the folks at DreamHost.com, my web hosting company. While their support ticket system has been excellent, they’ve now improved their support system by adding a live chat feature for some of their customers. I’ve used it several times, and didn’t want to write about it until they officially announced it – and today, they did!

If you’re a DreamHost customer, you can get access to this Live Chat, if you have PS (Private Server) or if you’ve signed up for Premium Support ($9.95 additional per month).

For me, it’s great, because I get to use Live Chat to ask questions and resolve issues on behalf of my website design clients. I still use the Support Ticket system frequently, but it’s nice to be able to use the Live Chat as well for those times when I need an answer quickly.

Here’s the announcement from DreamHost’s October Newsletter (note, their newsletters are written in a style that’s, well, quite funny and a bit sarcastic, so it’s not your typical newsletter, because they’re not a typical hosting company):

Live Chat Support!

Ah, that’s better! I finally feel comfortable and can just continue withthis newsletter, knowing that without even the least bit of effort each section will be clear, concise, and clever! They will practically write themselves from here on out. Soooooo good.

If only our tech support tickets wrote themselves! Like the time we tried that robot-sales-chat thing, oh yeah! That thing worked GREAT! Well, now we’re giving it another go around, except this time our chat responses write themselves _with the help of HUMANS_!

What I’m trying to say is, we’ve now got 24/7/365 Live Chat support available from our web panel (there’s a link at the top of each page near the “Help is on/off” button)!

With one small caveat… you need either a DreamHost PS or our Premium Support add-on! You can add a PS at any time from:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=vserver.provision

And you can add Premium Support ($9.95/mo) from:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=support.msg

(Just act as though you’re going to submit a ticket.. it’s there at the end.)

Sometimes too, generally when we’re super bored, we’ve been opening up the live chat to everybody. So if you happen to see the link at the top of our panel even when you’re not a PS user and haven’t signed up for Premium Support, PLEASE REMAIN CALM.

While most of my clients might never need to actually contact DreamHost, this Live Chat feature has been a fantastic tool for me, and is enabling me to do my job more effectively and efficiently. And perhaps best of all, the folks who are on the other end of Live Chat, are in California, and work directly for DreamHost, so I’m not chatting with folks in India or Russia, or some other country overseas. So when you are a DreamHost customer, you can rest assured that you’re helping the economy of the United States, while supporting a company that offsets it’s carbon emissions. What could be better?

This tidbit of information is so valuable, that I want to capture it here so that if the other person removes it, I’ll still have it. The article was found on the Cyberstarweb.com website, and is entitled: “How to position a page within an iframe using CSS“. Just a brilliant solution that uses an outerdiv (that controls the size of the iframe) and an inner div (that controls the positioning on the framed page):

#outerdiv
{
width:446px;
height:246px;
overflow:hidden;
position:relative;
}

#inneriframe
{
position:absolute;
top:-412px;
left:-318px;
width:1280px;
height:1200px;
}
<div id=’outerdiv’>
<iframe src=”http://www.websitethatisinsideframe.com/” id=’inneriframe’ scrolling=no></iframe>
</div>

This blog article is a personal one, and since I don’t have a personal blog, I’m writing it here, in the hopes that some of my readers are in Washington state and don’t know about Ref 71 that’s on this November’s ballot. For those of you outside Washington state who enjoy reading my blog, I’d appreciate you considering making a donation to help this referendum pass, as it directly impacts my family.

My partner and I are registered domestic partners in Washington. This gives us all kinds of rights that will generally only be needed if something bad happens, like one of us ends up in the hospital. If, heaven forbid, that happened, I would be treated as her “family”, and she as mine, and we would be able to get access and care for each other. There are many other “benefits”, all of which, honestly, I hope we never have the occasion to use, but knowing that we are registered gives me great comfort.

Bad things happen sometimes. Kate Fleming was a lesbian in a long term relationship in Seattle who was killed by a bizarre flood. Her surviving partner, Charlene Strong, was denied the ability to see her in the hospital as she lay dying. Yes, it’s dramatic, but it’s the kind of story that keeps gay and lesbian couples awake at  night.

With our current Domestic Partnership Law, I’d be allowed to see my partner under these circumstances. There are many folks who believe allowing domestic partnerships for gay and lesbian couples somehow impacts other marriages and perhaps civilization itself. I don’t see how this is rational. What I do know, is that this law impacts me, and my family in a very concrete way.

So if you’re in Washington, please vote FOR referendum 71, and if you’re outside Washington, any donation you can make would be appreciated.

I have an iPhone and I love it. But recently I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease which means I need to avoid any foods that have gluten (wheat, rye, barley). It’s tricky and very time consuming to navigate a grocery store now, with all of the hidden sources of gluten in processed foods. Did you know that “brown rice syrup” can contain wheat? But a company called MidLifeCrisisApps.com has come out with an iPhone app that makes my life much easier: Is That Gluten Free?

I’ve been using the “Is That Gluten Free?” iPhone app for a month now, and just upgraded to the latest version of 1.1.1. The developers are quick to answer emails with suggestions for adding new items.

Not only does it help you when you’re shopping in a grocery store, it can also help you avoid trouble when eating over at a friend’s house. Just this weekend, we were getting ready to eat dinner and the hostess asked us about some Parmesan cheese in a can. I looked at the ingredients on the can, but didn’t recognize some of the chemical names – so I just whipped out my iPhone and opened the “Is That Gluten Free?” app, and looked up the ingredients. They were fine, and the hostess was happy and the meal was stress free.

So today, I just wanted to say thanks to the folks at MidLife Crisis Apps for making this great iPhone gluten-free app that is making my life a lot easier and giving me yet another reason to love my iPhone.

As part of the process of giving folks a cost range for their website projects, they often mention that they want a newsletter. I wanted to review the different approaches that can be taken when trying to integrate a newsletter into a small business website.

There are many different ways to integrate a newsletter into your website and I’ll be covering some of the methods that my clients have used successfully with pros and cons of each approach. One of the things to understand about a newsletter, is that part of the process is creating the newsletter, while another part is sending it out. Another part is how to get folks to subscribe and how to manage that subscriber list. Each of these aspects needs to be taken into consideration when thinking about how best to implement a newsletter on your website.

Here are some of the ways my clients have implemented newsletters on their websites, in order of cost.

1. Using a subscription form and manually sending out emails.
Adding a standard HTML form on a website is easy and when someone fills out the HTML form, it simply sends the website owner an email. When the owner gets the email, they add the sender to their newsletter list, usually a distribution list in their mail application.
Pros: Very simple and low cost
Cons: Clients need to spend time manually managing their newsletter distribution lists. If  they send out too many emails, their accounts might be suspended. The formatting of the newsletters is done by clients’ mail applications.

2. Using a hosting company based “distribution list”.
Some web hosting companies (click here to see DreamHost’s) have a distribution list feature. This requires setting up a few pages on a website that incorporate subscription and un-subscription code. Newsletters are sent out via the hosting company’s control panel.
Pros: Fairly simple and low cost. Subscriptions are managed automatically.
Cons: Your hosting company has to offer this. There will be limits on the amount of messages you can send out in a given time unit. The formatting is controlled by the hosting company control panel.

3. Installing your own newsletter software
You can also install your own newsletter software on your website. This will require the creation of a database to store your subscribers. Some online stores have this capability and will integrate a newsletter feature with the purchase process.
Pros: Moderate cost. Subscriptions managed automatically. No monthly fees.
Cons: Need to find appropriate software and someone to install it. Learning curve required for clients understand how to write and send newsletters. May still need to limit number of emails sent and received to avoid email server shutdown.

4. Using a third party newsletter or email marketing solution.
A good example this is Constant Contact or My Emma. You sign up for an account, pick a plan, and then add a little snippet of code to your website. Many of them have nice templates you can customize to make your newsletters appear professional. The email list lives within the third party’s database, and their email servers are used to send out your messages.
Pros: Easy to set up, automatically subscription management, no worries about having your own email account shut down, templates available.
Cons: Monthly fee.

Summary

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve got clients who use all four of these newsletter or email marketing strategies. From their feedback, the ones that seem to use #3 (using an online store integrated solution) and #4 (third party) are the ones that send out the most newsletters and get the most benefit. If you’re not too tech savvy, then I’d simply recommend using a third party newsletter or email marketing service. Although it requires a monthly fee, you don’t have to send out emails from your own email server, which is a big plus, meaning you are not limited in the number of emails you can send. They also manage subscriptions automatically, letting folks subscribe and unsubscribe directly, without your involvement. Happy newslettering!

The vast majority picked the contact form: 76% of potential customers contacted me via my contact form, while 24% contacted me via email. This data was collected over the month of July of 2009 and covers a total of 37 inquiries. It does not include folks who contacted me by phone, but typically this is less than 1 per week. This would indicate that potential customers are three times more likely to use my embedded contact form than they are to click on my email address. To see what my contact form looks like, click here.

Let’s example possible reasons why this might be happening.

Reasons why people might like contact forms better than email

1. Less Thinking Required

When you fill out my contact form, you fill in fields that I’ve set up for you to fill in. You fill in your name, your email, your phone, your contact preference, and your question/comments. Very little thinking is required. But when you send me an email, you have to create a subject, an introduction, a closing, and remember to add whatever contact information you want to put down.

2. Don’t Have To Leave The Page and Open Another Application

When you use my online contact form and hit “submit”, you’re done. You stay on my website and get a nice friendly thank you message.  But if you send me an email, you first have to actually have an email application installed and configured. If this is done, then it will open automatically when you click on my email address. However, if this isn’t set up, then you need to carefully copy and paste my email address from my website into your mail application. Too much work!

3. Faster

As long as I haven’t required folks to fill out a lengthy form, it’s much faster for them to fill in fields and hit submit. Contact forms should be kept as short as possible for ease of use.

Reasons why I prefer contact forms versus email

1. Spam prevention: My contact form has math captcha built in – meaning that I get zero automated spam via my contact form. Not so with my email address.

2. Field Validation: I require certain information to be sent – email addresses and phone numbers are required – so that I can actually contact people back. Not so with some of the emails I get.

3. IP Address: When folks fill out my contact form, I capture their IP addresses. This way I can find out what city they are in, and actually match their visit to my website traffic tracking system, and see where they went on my website before I contact them back. Knowing what they’ve already viewed on my website makes our conversation more efficient.

4. I get to say “Thanks” right away. When folks hit “submit” on my contact form, they are automatically redirected to a page were I say “thanks for contacting me” and offer them links to some helpful blog articles. If they send me email, they get nothing until I respond to their email.

So for all these reasons, I always put contact forms on the websites I develop, in addition to providing email addresses and phone numbers. For my business, this has proven to be the way prospective clients prefer to make their initial contact. It’s possible that your business may be different, but unless you put all three (contact form, email, phone) on your website, you may be missing out on giving prospective clients a way to contact you that’s easiest for them.

The name of this article is “On Horizontal CSS Centering using Absolute Positioning or how Relative Positioning can rock your css.”

In this case, I had a client’s website where they wanted these overlapping regions of content, so I had to use DIV’s to make this happen. I used the “z-index”, which worked just like it was supposed to, even in Internet Explorer.

But if you use this method, you run into an issue if you use “relative” positioning. You have to use negative “top” numbers to push up the overlapping divs, which naturally fall to the bottom. This leaves these big regions of emptiness at the bottom of the page, which looked terrible. So I changed to “absolute” positioning and was able to use normal, positive “top” values.

My next problem, is that my client wanted her website centered. But using “absolute” fixes things on the page, so that when you stretch your window wider, everything stays put. I needed it to move and recenter.

So this is where this lovely blog article written by “Candy by James” comes to my rescue. I’ll reprint the part that was most useful to me:

.wrapper {
position:relative;
margin:0 auto;
text-align:left;
width:whatever;
}

For good measure, you’ll need to apply the IE fix:
body { text-align:center; }

Then he uses this for the content:

.content {
position: absolute;
left: whatever;
top: whatever;

width: whatever;
}

Change the body tag, create wrapper, and then content inside it, and it will magically auto-center while letting you use absolute divs inside. I’ve tested this on PC (Firefox, IE7) and Mac (Safari, Firefox) and it works like a charm. Thank you James!

My question to Jefferson was regarding when and why a small business owner might want to trademark their domain name. Here was his answer:

It really depends on the domain name.  What you really want are domain names that match your trademarks.

Usually, if you have a trademark (Alderbaran Web Design), you want to also own the domain name the matches it (AlderbaranWebDesign.com).  This is a good thing when selling your business or if you are just creating a consistent brand message.  It also allows you to prevent Cybersquatting and other ills of the digital world.

I recommend to people that they make sure they can get a matching domain name for their product, service or business name BEFORE they decide on what to call themselves (or their products or services.)

If you have a trademark registration, then you can prevent anyone from offering competing goods or services thru a website with a similar name.  So, if you obtain a trademark registration for “Green Gopher” for a sustainability search engine and someone else pops up offering a search engine at www.1greengopher.com, you can use a quick (1-3 month) administrative process through the World Intellectual Property Organization to force the domain name to be transferred to you.  Or you can sue them in Federal court (much more costly and time consuming.)

I very much appreciate Jefferson letting me post his response on my blog. If you’re in need of a trademark attorney in Seattle, give Jefferson Coulter a call. He’s done work for me, and my partner’s business, and his work is excellent. Thanks Jefferson for helping to answer this prospective client’s question!

I found this wonderful article: How do I install Firefox without using Internet Explorer? and it worked perfectly. It let me install Firefox, which in turn, allowed me to download and reinstall a fresh version of Internet Explorer. It had a excellent step by step process. So I wanted to give this article a link and say thank you!

In hindsight, it might always be a good idea to have multiple browsers installed on your computer – so if you have Internet Explorer, maybe you should download and install Firefox just to be safe. I use Firefox as my main browser and love it.

Well, I’m no security expert, not by a longshot.

But I wanted to share a recent experience with a prospective client who was using an online database to store some of his business information and hopefully it might help you avoid some very unpleasant consequences. In this case, no harm was done and the sensitive information was destroyed – but it could have been much, much worse.

Often in the course of determining whether I’m a good fit for a client I get to look around websites that other developers have created. Sometimes I find things that really surprise me and this is one of those cases.

It is very important that you, as a small business website owner, really understand what your website is doing. As an example, I once discovered that a previous web designer had added code to copy himself on all of the emails submitted by a client’s website. Imagine, every single time someone fills out a contact form, the web designer would receive all of that information – for what purpose, I can’t imagine, but suffice to say it was sloppy at best, unethical at worst. But that’s the topic of another article…

Sometimes clients need a database added to their website. Often, this is because there is an application, like an online store, or a blog, that needs to be set up, and these applications use a database to store information.

But sometimes, clients want a custom database installed. It’s very important to understand what kind of information is reasonable to store, and what kind of  information is really not appropriate to store in an online database. As a rule, I won’t store any kind of information that if it were to be accessed by another person, would cause harm to anyone else or my own business. But different businesses have different rules.

Say you’re a plumber and you want your client information stored in a database. You want to store names, addresses, phone numbers and email. If someone gains access to that database, the worst that could happen is your clients get email or snail mail that might be spam. Not too bad.

But say you’re in the healthcare industry. Your client names are considered confidential. You fall under the rules of HIPPA. If you’re in an industry like this, you probably should not be storing any client information whatsoever in an online database – or if you want to, be sure you’re using an SSL certificate to send it securely and be sure to warn clients of the potential risk. Many healthcare professionals will warn clients that using email to communicate is not really secure – and if you’re using an online database to keep their info, even if just their names and email addresses – you should probably warn them in a similar fashion.

And in general, I would never store very sensitive information that is used for identity fraud, like social security numbers or credit card numbers in an online database. Perhaps you think this is obvious. I was shocked to find out that this prospective client had done exactly that using shared hosting, without giving any thought to security or identify fraud or confidentiality of his patients. He was asking clients for all kinds of medical information, names, addresses, insurance policy information…social security numbers…and sending it all completely unencrypted (he had not purchased or installed a SSL certificate – so the transmission was not secure)…to a shared hosting database. When I discovered this, I was appalled, and immediately told the client and pushed them hard to delete this database asap. The client agreed, thankfully.

Many of my small business owners are using shared hosting. This means your information is on a machine somewhere that many other people have access to, by definition of shared hosting. Hacking does occur. Also, every single tech support person at your hosting company has access to your database as well, for good reason.

In sum, depending on your industry, the kind of information that you are storing in an online database will vary – but you should be aware of the potential issues resulting from a breech of that data. If a breech isn’t hurting anyone, then you’re fine. But please think through the consequenes carefully – don’t just let your web developer create a database and store all kinds of personal information about your customers without giving it some thought.

You can read the whole Google blog article entitled “Supporting Equality” here. Here’s what they said:

“In September of last year, Google announced its opposition to California’s Proposition 8. While the campaign was emotionally charged and difficult for both sides, in the wake of the election many were concerned with the impact Proposition 8 could have on the personal lives of people they work with every day, and on California’s ability to attract and retain a diverse mix of employees from around the world.

That’s why we’ve signed an amicus brief (PDF file) in support of several cases currently challenging Proposition 8 in the California Supreme Court. Denying employees basic rights isn’t right, and it isn’t good for businesses. We are committed to preserving fundamental rights for every one of the people who work hard to make Google a success.

Please join us in continuing to fight for equality for all Californians.”

Posted by Kent Walker, General Counsel

Ok, so maybe I’m all excited about the next 4 years  after just returning from the inauguration and filled with visions of liberty and the pursuit of  happiness – generally my posts aren’t too political, but this news about Google was too good to pass up. Go Google!

Re-read my previous article and take a good look at the screen shot. See how the top two are the same company, and I’m in fourth place? Take a look at what I noticed today:

.

I can’t believe my eyes! Did Google actually read my blog article and fix this issue? Or was it because I posted the issue in their Google map spam forum? Or is it completely unrelated?

I guess I’ll never know for sure, but what I can say is that something changed, and if you see that there’s a company that’s spamming Google maps, you should report it in their forum and if you have a blog, write an article about. I do believe, now more than ever, that Google does try to give you the most relevant search results and tries to fight fraud and cheating whenever they can, so if you see something amiss, report it and maybe you’ll get lucky too!

My first step was to see how DreamHost obtained their claim of “green” and “carbon-neutral”. Their green webpage showed a certificate issued by “TheGreenOffice.com”. It had a bunch of impressive logos on it and looked super duper official, so I went over to TheGreenOffice.com to see what was there.

I used their carbon footprint calculator and found out how many carbon-offsets I needed to purchase and added them to my cart.  That’s when it became clear that it’s not Easy Being Green.

My experience with buying carbon offsets through their online store didn’t go so well. First off, my browser gave me a warning that the shopping cart was not secure. Then they tried to charge me shipping, even though nothing would be shipped. Then the 1-800 number didn’t work. I got cold feet and went in pursuit of other solutions for greening my business.

I Googled “carbon offset fraud” and found 269,000 results. Yikes. Although many were articles in blogs that were decidedly in the “man isn’t causing global warming and shouldn’t do anything to fix it” camp, a few were not. I found a good article on NPR called “Carbon Offsets: Government Warns of Fraud Risk“. It had this great quotation that really emphasized the need for conservation and development of clean energy sources:

“Some liken carbon offsetting to the now-defunct practice of buying indulgences for your sins from the Pope. It means paying someone else to reduce their carbon emissions so you don’t have to cut your own.”

The NPR article also had a link to “A consumer’s guide to retail carbon offset providers” – over 40 pages long! Apparently the Federal Trade Commission had a big workshop on “Eco in the Market – Carbon Offsets and Renewable Energy Credits.” Seems like even the FTC is concerned with carbon offset fraud in the booming eco-indulgence market.

While I found lots of information regarding the issues surrounding the carbon offset market, I didn’t find a current list of approved suppliers. So I turned to my own electric company, Seattle City Light. Turns out they have a program called “Green Up” and I signed up for it. This would mean that all of the electricity I used would be from renewable sources (by purchasing renewable energy certificates, or REC’s). Very inexpensive, only $12  per month, such a deal! More importantly, we also signed up for a free home energy audit to learn what we can to do conserve. So we’ll have less carbon to offset.

Next I dealt with the issue of my furnace oil. While we’re currently using a 30% bio blend, I’m still not sure whether switching to 100% is better or not – I found quite a bit of controversy. Regardless,  I needed to purchase carbon offsets for oil. So I did some more research on Seattle City Light’s website. I learned that there’s a company called “green-e.org” that certifies retail energy offset products. According to a Green-e press release on Feb 13, 2008:

“Green-e Climate is the nation’s first certification program for greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions (carbon offsets) sold to consumers on the retail market. This consumer-protection program strengthens the voluntary market by providing credible oversight of and transparency to retail offset products. Consumers purchasing Green-e Climate Certified offsets have clear information about the projects their GHG reductions are sourced from, and are guaranteed that offsets have not been double sold or double counted. The program verifies that a seller’s supply of offsets equals their sales, that GHG reductions are independently certified and verified, and that consumer disclosures are accurate.”

That sounded pretty good. And if Seattle City Light was touting Green-e, it was good enough for me. I  learned that one of the certified companies was Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF), based in Oregon, which is relatively close to Seattle. I could use BEF’s calculator and purchase the carbon-offsets I need for my oil usage and be finished! But I wanted a fancy certificate like DreamHost so I went back to looking at TheGreenOffice. (Note that in the end, I ended up buying carbon offsets from BEF and they provided me with a lovely green certificate in addition to a seal that I could use on my website. Very nice!)

Now, on TheGreenOffice.com’s website, they claim to purchase their REC/Carbon-offsets from BEF. Even DreamHost’s certificate showed the BEF logo. But when I contacted BEF and asked if TheGreenOffice was a client, they initially said no. But then they did some further investigation and found that TheGreenOffice.com said they purchase from another company called Sustainable Travel International and that company buys from BEF. Getting confused?

Here’s the theoretical carbon-offset food chain:

Renewable Energy -> BEF -> STI -> GreenOffice -> consumer

So there were two middlemen in between the actually  green-e certified company, BEF, and me, the consumer of the carbon offset. Wow. And remember they’re all involved in buying and selling, well, nothing, and the feds don’t regulate the new carbon offset / renewable energy certificate market even as well as they do the stock market or banking industry.

When you purchase a carbon-offset, you don’t actually get anything except peace of mind that you’re supporting renewable energy production, so the source is critical.

Now maybe this whole carbon-offset reselling and re-reselling and re-re-reselling is all legitimate, but an industry that is not selling anything tangible is just a sitting duck for fraud. How easy would it be to buy 10 offsets and sell 1000? Where’s the accountability? Remember TheGreenOffice didn’t even mention anywhere on its website it was actually purchasing from Sustainable Travel International – why? Maybe because STI isn’t green-e certified and BEF is. I don’t know for sure. And why was the TheGreenOffice going to charge me shipping? A representative told me “that’s just the way the store is setup”…Huh? So they’re fine charging shipping for carbon offsets? Talk about money for nothing!

My conclusion: in order to be really certain that your carbon-offset money is actually going to promote renewable energy, purchase from a green-e certified company and no one else.  While it’s certainly possible that these middle companies are legitimate, I simply ran out of energy (no pun intended) trying to prove this to myself.  I decided to purchase directly from BEF and I feel good knowing that my purchase was real. With no faux shipping charge or security warnings!

(I should  note that I communicated all of this to DreamHost and they seem satisfied with TheGreenOffice’s validity, but they said they’d consider purchasing from a more direct source in the future.)

Next, I  wanted to see what kind of official certifications I could get for my business as a whole.

I phoned green-e.org and got a very nice fellow on the phone who explained the very intensive process for becoming certified by them. First off, there was a $750 fee that covered all of the rigorous administrative time it took to actually verify that your company was doing what it said it was. For a bigger company this would be no problem, but for my small business, it was too expensive to pursue.

I was delighted to find the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had a “Green Power Partnership” program that had no fee. I’ve filled out their partnership agreement and faxed it in. I should hear back within a few weeks and I’ll update the status here.

So in summary, here’s my advice to green your home or business:

1. See if your current energy supplier can “green up” your energy. Energy includes electricity, oil, natural gas, etc. Make sure their methodology is green-e certified.

2. For any energy use that can’t be “greened up”, purchase REC/Carbon-offsets from a green-e certified company like the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. Simply use their carbon calculator and buy the offsets. They’re even a non-profit so your purchase may be tax-deductible.

3. See if your utility company will give your home or company an energy audit to see if there are ways you can conserve and use less.

4. Seek out some kind of valid, official, widely recognized certification for your company’s green status.

Happy Greening!

Sometimes, web designers, and let me make it clear I think this is really unethical, will purchase domain names for their clients. Again, I think this is really, really, really bad. Since domains cost $10 per year, there is absolutely no excuse for business owners not to own their domain names.

How do you know for sure that you own your domain name?

Go to: http://whois.domaintools.com/ and enter your domain name.

Look under: Whois Record

You’ll see three names/email addresses listed: Registrant Contact, Administrative Contact, Technical Contact. The “owner” is the Registrant Contact.

Now, clever folks will hide their real names by making this information private. So you might see something like this (if you look up my own domain AldebaranWebDesign):

Registrant Contact:
aldebaranwebdesign.com Private Registrant

DreamHost Web Hosting
417 Associated Rd #324
Brea, CA 92821
US
+1.2139471032

See how it doesn’t say my name, but says “Private Registrant”? That’s because I have it set to be private with my domain registration hosting company DreamHost.com. To contact the owner, simply send an email to the email addresses listed. Many, folks don’t take advantage of the Privacy features – so you might see real names.

If on the awful chance you see the name of someone other than yourself – you have work ahead of you. If indeed you are the rightful owner, you need to get this person to transfer ownership of the domain name to you. If you are a small business with a website – make this your #1 priority. Until your name shows up in this field, it is possible that whoever owns it might just decide to sell your domain name to someone else…maybe someone really awful, like a competitor.

Remember, domain ownership is PUBLIC INFORMATION – anyone can see who owns a domain (unless it’s private) and when it expires. Make sure you own your domain and make sure that your domain registrar has your current email address and credit card so that when your domain name needs to be renewed, they are able to contact you.

True story: I had a fellow contact me who had his domain name stolen during a period of illness. The fellow became ill for several months, and it was during this time when his domain name expired. Apparently someone who didn’t like him had been monitoring the situation, and bought the domain name when it expired. The fellow contacted me for help, but there was nothing I could do.

So make sure YOU own your domain name and make sure you know when it expires and have made arrangements with your domain registrar to keep it owned by you.

Scroll down and look for “Registry Data”.

Take note of what’s listed in the “Name Server” fields.

More often than not, you can tell who is your website hosting company by simply looking at the name server fields. If you look up my domain (AldebaranWebDesign.com) you’ll see that my nameserver fields say:

NS1.DREAMHOST.COM
NS2.DREAMHOST.COM
NS3.DREAMHOST.COM

This is because DreamHost.com is my hosting company. If you don’t recognize the name, just look it up in Google or go directly to the “company.com” – leave out the “ns1.” part.

If your website is down, you’ll need to contact your hosting company, and hopefully this article will help you find out who that is, in the event you don’t recall.