Spring Cleaning of your Hosting Account
As part of my weekly posts on Spring Cleaning your Niche Empire, today… I want to focus on your hosting account! Whether you are with HostGator or some other host, chances are pretty good that if you don’t clean it up regularly, it will eventually start filling up, running slower, and you will end up with plenty of unused content on in your hosting panel. I have mentioned many times that I have several Hostgator accounts for different purposes. I use a Hostgator reseller account ($24/mo) to list sites I may someday want to sell off, a “business” plan, with unlimited bandwidth for video storage, and several baby croc plans for quarantined sites, or different website ideas I tend to get! In addition to these, I also have 2 dedicated servers through different hosting companies for various other projects I maintain for others.
I want to preempt this post by saying I am not going to post ANY images within the hosting panels! There are several cPanels used with Hostgator and other hosting companies, and it adds to confusion when the screenshots are not the same from one to the other. The practices however, are the same.
Spring Cleanup of your Hosting Accounts
For myself, cleaning of my hosting account is a monthly function! Literally, I lose one day a month to browsing through all the different hosting accounts and eliminating items no longer in use! I try to use the same process each and every time, and even though I may miss something the first time through, I am bound to catch it the next time you revisit!
Why Should You Cleanup Your Hosting Account?
Your hosting account is no different than a neighborhood in any City! If you have sites that are deindexed in Google, sites you use for testing things, or a few very thin affiliate sites… guess what, search engines know the ip address of the host, the DNS of the host, as well as ALL information about YOU (Yes, even if you chose private registration) It is not hard for them to put 2+2 together and see the following:
IF {
This Person (You) owns These Thin Websites (Yours) Redirected through This DNS (Your Hostgator DNS) at This IP Address (Your Hosting Account)
} THEN {
the rest of the sites owned by This Person (You) on This IP (Yours) at This DNS (Your hosting account) might just be Thin Affiliate Sites
}
There was a time last year that I was curious about someone else’s niche empire who claimed none of their sites were deindexed by Google, and I must just be doing something crooked. It literally took me less than 15 minutes to find 25 other sites run by that same person, 18 of which were deindexed and brought to his attention quickly! Can you imagine how quick a search engine can do this?
Just like we cleaned our EPN Account yesterday, if you have websites that are delisted in search engines, do not run them side by side with your golden websites! Get yourself another $9/month HostGator account and put all your troubled sites on that single account, leaving your primary account for golden websites!
In addition to removing the garbage websites from your primary hosting account, you also want to make sure your file structure remains free of clutter and intact with the way it was originally setup by your hosting company. I have helped thousands of you now and one of the most common things I see are files and folders, completely out of place. Keeping track of these files and eliminating them will only save you many headaches in the future.
Visit EVERY site you are hosting on your account!
If the site is active and works as you expect it to… close the window and move on to the next domain in your account. Regardless of how many times I try to stay on top of errant domains, I usually find at least one every month, that I had either sold, closed down, or planned to do something different with. If the sites are doing nothing for for you and you truly cannot remember the last time you updated it, write it down on a list of “Things to do”, so you can make yourself turn it around, or eliminate it.
Move Your Deindexed or Low Quality Sites to a Single Account
If you find that some of your sites have been dropped from search, but still deliver good amounts of traffic in the other engines, set yourself an afternoon to learn how to move a site to a different host! You can literally move a site within 1 hour, using ftp software and a database backup. One or two file edits and your site is back up and running with no disruption in service to your visitors! (Hint: the last thing to change is your DNS at GoDaddy)
If you find you have several sites that need to be moved, setup your baby croc at HostGator and ask them to move them for you! Last time I needed this service, they did it for free!
Clean Out the Files Not Being Used
Every time I add a new site to my hosting account, I use a skeleton directory to automatically install every file, for every type of site I want to build. All the common WordPress themes, BANS themes, Plugins, etc etc… It saves tons of time on the setup side, but most often, I forget to delete the files I am not using and they do nothing but take up space!
After you have the account limited to the sites you plan to continue growing, go through each and every folder of the site and get rid of the stuff you forgot you ever even put there! If you don’t know what the file is for, leave it alone… it may be used by the system to run something you don’t know about!
If you are like me, you are bound to find many zip files you may have uploaded, extracted and then forgot to delete the source. You will find images that you intended to use, but never did! Theme folders you thought about trying out… but never did, etc etc.
Your hosting account is very similar to that drawer EVERYONE has in their kitchen! The one that is the catch-all for everything you don’t what to do with at that very moment… When its clean, you can open it up and find anything you were looking for within seconds. Fill that drawer up with clutter, bills, pens, keys, tools, junk, more junk etc, and the next time you go to it to find something… its going to take you ALOT longer!
If you clean up your hosting account every month, you will not only remember things you forgot about, your host account will run better and you will save yourself precious time every day when you need to find something!
What tips do you have for cleaning up your host account?
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Spring Cleaning your ePN Campaign Account List
- Spring Cleaning of your WordPress Sites
- Spring Cleaning Week at The Niche Store Builder!
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
Hi Mark,
On your re-seller hosting account, does each account share the same ip? I just started with hostgators re-seller account but not all the accounts are on the exact same ip. Is there any way to move an account or define a new account with a new ip?
Hi Mark
This is something I am currently trying to work on, a big tidy up. I’m trying to tidy up my hosting account as well as my computer files and organize things a little better. It’s amazing how much more efficiently you can work if you organize stuff.
Cheers
Ben
Uggggg.. i LOVE it when you do posts like this.. but i HATE it cause it makes me realize what i’m doing wrong.. AGAIN hahaha
My very first website, dummy me forgot to put all the files in one folder under the public_html folder… all the subdomains are but the first one is scattered about : ) I’m assuming that would require a bunch of redirects to clean it up and get it all into one folder huh?
I had already thought about needing to do a clean up but had forgotten, so thanks for the reminder..
Mark,
I actually didn’t make out too badly on this. From my cooking days I’ve maintained the “clean as you go” mentality which has served me well.
That said, it’s a great monthly habit to get into and I’ll be looking again real soon.
Should I remove domains I’m getting rid of from my hosting account and set the DNS servers back to my domain registrar?
Jeff
Mark – How should I determine if one of my sites is low quality and should be moved? At this time, none of my sites are deindexed, but I’m sure there may be one or two that is of lesser quality than the rest.
Rochelle
@ Neo –
The c-class is the same, even on the reseller plan. They do however have an seo hosting option.
@ Ben – Local system management is the hardest for me. I may create a logo today… name it logo, store is in the logo folder, and have the best intentions. Tomorrow, I will create another one and name it… header.jpg, and store it in the headers folder.
I think I confuse Me the most!
@ Jake… I’m with ya, I hate the cleanup!! If they are inside of the public_html directly, they may still be in use if your original domain is active.
@ Jeff – you are getting ahead… domain day is coming!
@ Rochelle – I look straight into the quick and easy… awstats, referral section.
I look for one simple thing…
If the other search engines are starting to send considerably more traffic than G and the site is not dropped from g’s index, the quality must have issues!
Its time to either get in there, work on the site, build better content and turn it around or move it to a different neighborhood.
Mark– I am confused. How does moving poor sites onto a different croc or other shared hosting plan help? If there are 500 – 1000 other domains also on that server, with different qualities — some thin, some good — from dozens or hundreds of owners around the world, how would any search engine be able to group them ALL into one label??
@ Freddie –
By moving them, hypothetically you are helping your quality sites live on their own merits.
Look at the if statement in the blockquote above…
If YOU own the site AND its a thin site or even deindexed, it would be only that much easier for anyone to find all your other sites on the same box, and assume they are thin also.
The other sites (not yours) on the same box may be thin also, but they are not registered to you, in your name, etc.
If I sent you 10 websites to look at, so you had an idea of the type of work may be related to my name… and the first 5 were completely deindexed, thin, and offered no use to the public… what would your impression of the second 5 be, before you ever even see them, if you do at all!?
Mark
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