First, you have to love Apple products. They’re really pretty on the outside, but they run some sort of Unix type thing on the inside. Just like webmasters. We have to be comfortable using Photoshop one second and vi the next. Of course, if you don’t actually use a Mac to do your webmastering, you’ll have to balance things out by owning lots of iPods (they come in several “gotta catch’em all” sizes).

Next, you need to be super-organized. Webmastering can be very stressful, what with managing a co-located server running all the very latest versions of lots of Open Source software, editing standards-compliant XHTML Strict files by hand, and manipulating custom graphics pixel by pixel. To handle all of these high-tech tasks, you need a Moleskine. That’s right. Nothing says “I’m a cutting edge webmaster,” like a 200-year old notebook. Feeling a little Luddite? Balance it out with a Fisher Space Pen and you’ll be right as rain (which, incidentally, you could write during—the Space Pen can write underwater, upside down, and even in space!).

Finally, you’re going to want to drink a lot of coffee. This will do two things for you. One, it will give lots of energy to accomplish all of the unreasonable tasks that are constantly asked of you by your tech-ignorant staff. Second, it will make you jittery and paranoid so all tasks asked of you seem unreasonable and that you are vastly more intelligent than everyone else.

I’m sure I have other secrets that make me a smart webmaster. Some may have to do with findability, progressive disclosure, or the application of Zipf curves to traffic patterns, but they’re harder to grasp. Just stick with the basics (above) and you, too, can be a smart webmaster. Oh, and go vote for RAN in the Squidoo poll.

My old webhost had been great for years, but suddenly started flaking out about a month ago. They disabled my email account, saying I was “getting too much spam”, but turned it back on when I complained. Then I was only getting spam while friends’ emails bounced. Next the webserver started going up and down and random intervals. Finally, poor Sunshocked was down for the count. I kept waiting for it to come back up in 20 minutes. Nope. Maybe they were pissed at me or something.

It was definitely time to get a new webhost. So I did what any logical person would do in this situation, opened a terminal window and busted out dig.

% dig simplebits.com +nssearch
SOA ns1.dreamhost.com. hostmaster.dreamhost.com.

% dig subtraction.com +nssearch
SOA ns1.dreamhost.com. hostmaster.dreamhost.com.

% dig jasonsantamaria.com +nssearch
SOA ns1.dreamhost.com. hostmaster.dreamhost.com.

Interesting. Dan Cederholm (SimpleBits), Khoi Vinh (Subtraction), and Jason Santa Maria are People Who Know What They’re Doing^TM, so I thought maybe I should check out this “DreamHost”. Though to be honest, I also dug AListApart.com, 43Folders.com, Tantek.com, and Kottke.org and got four other webhosts…

Here are some amazingly great things about DreamHost.

Their basic plan, which they call “Crazy Domain Insane!” is only $7.95 a month for 200GB of space and 3TB of bandwidth! That is insane. And it goes up a little bit every week you host with them. In every category where other webhosts have numbers less than 10 (domains, database connections, ssh accounts, you name it), DreamHost lists “unlimited”. RubyOnRails? Standard. One-click WordPress? Standard. Quicktime streaming? Standard. WebDAV? Standard.

Even better, they are employee owned, not some huge faceless company. In fact, the faces are completely accessible on the employee profile page. Their blog, while not quite Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is entertaining and worth reading. Finally, they provide matching funds for donations to rotating charities (for Day Against DRM it was Defective By Design) where all you have to do is click a button in the account management panel as you pay your hosting bill.

I went ahead and paid far in advance for my hosting, because these folks seem unbeatable. Still, if I’m unhappy, the get-your-money-back period is a uncharacteristically prime 97 days.

No, I’m not getting paid to say any of this. I tend to get beat up and thrown around by webhosting companies so hopefully, I’m not just in the Honeymoon Phase of another bad relationship. Cross your fingers.