The worst threat to your public internet website

Think the worst threat to your public internet website is hackers? From my experience, not necessarily. I've been working with websites on the public internet for about 10 years now, and I have had my sites hacked. The hackers setup backdoor pages on my site for blackhat SEO purposes. It did create problems and it did cause me to lose my page rank with Google until I cleaned it up and kept it clean for a period of time, but I've had worse problems with my sites and the source of the problems might surprise you. My own hosting companies! Yes you heard right. My own hosting companies have caused more downtime and loss of data on my sites than hackers ever did.

My first problems came 6 or 8 years back while hosting with ipower. This company had rated fairly high when I started using them and I had no problems at first. But over time service slipped, and every time I found my Real Estate Website down or having problems, it was because of changes that the folks at ipower had made to my site. The final straw came when ipower undertook a hardware upgrade project and all my site's went down. I did some online researching and found out that the company had been sold. Apparently the new management just didn't have the same focus on service and keeping sites up. That was the end of hosting with ipower. It was clear they weren't concerned about providing the level of reliability that I needed.

Next I took all my sites - including my Real Estate web site - over to Midphase to be hosted. Midphase was pretty good at first and helpful in getting me setup. Just recently, however, we began having more problems with site errors and outages. Service seemed fragmented. We had VPS hosting, but VPS would often tell us we needed to talk to shared hosting and vice versa. Then I received a somewhat abrupt email on a Thursday that said my vps hosting was being migrated to another company - Westhost. It said my new sites had already been set up and that I should test and then repoint my domains when satisfied. I tested the next day and nothing worked. I put in a ticket and received an answer that I needed to talk to my registrar. I let follow-up get away from me, and on Monday morning, just 4 days after I received the email, they pulled the plug on my live sites. I then spent 2 days on the phone wth 2 different hosting companies - Midphase and Westhost - and around 6 or 8 different people just trying to get my site domains rerouted to the correct place. They took the stance that it wasn't really thier problem since they weren't the registrar for my name server record, but they had happily taken on the duties as registrar for some of my other sites, never indicating to me that they really wouldn't be able to service them. After finally re-routing my sites, it was discovered that none of the files for my most important site were available. They finally produced a database that had been taken around 8 days before the site went down (as if that would have been satisactory anyway). After waiting another day or so for either Midphase or Westhost to produce my files, I relented and retored a copy of my own which was - unfortunately - significantly outdated.

To cut to the chase, the hosting companies didn't have the level of concern for the uptime or restore capabilities of the sites that I would have hoped, and it now seems to me that the possibility a hosted site going down or it's data being lost is much more likely from actions taken by the hosting company rather than by any hackers out there.

I also learned that when you sign up for hosting with a company, you might want to have a conversation with them about their hardware life cycle refresh plan. That seems to be when things start to get ugly.

Renewed Interest in Michigan Real Estate?

Could activity in the Real Estate market in Michigan have finally stopped falling? From lookiing at traffic on the remericasomersetrealty.com website, one might think so. After a couple of years of watching traffic decline - for a variety of reasons but undoubtably the Real Estate bust being one of them - I'm seeing some significant year over year increases in listing views from the first 4 months of 2010 to the first 4 months of 2011.

Getting your Real Estate Agents License in Michigan

I finally took the plunge and obtained my Michigan Real Estate Agent license. I mentioned it to a friend at work and he was interested in getting more information about what's involved, so I thought I'd put it out here because I figure there are other people that might also want background info on the step to obtaining their license.

The basic steps I went through for my agent's license were as follows:

- First, I completed a Real Estate Fundamentals Prelicensure course from Holloway's Real Estate Institute (www.hollowaysinstitute.com). They offer Real Estate classes all over the State, but I attended in Ann Arbor. The class was around $245 and is a full 40 hours of lecture so I was in class all week. There are other schools but I liked Holloway and my instructor, Bruce, was very good.

- Next, I submitted my applicaton for a Michigan Salesperson License at www.michigan.gov/icola. The fee for me was $62. I found that, since the state will only give your license to your broker, its best to have one already and you can then provide your brokers 10 digit ID when you fill out this application. Once you apply for the license you have one year to complete the process

- Third, I received authorization to take the Real Estate License test from the State of Michigan via email. This authorization included a 6 digit number (exam candidate MIRE) and examination registration instructions.

- I then went to www.psiexams.com and used the MIRE number provided by the state to register to take the Sate exam to receive my license. I knew I was getting close now.

- The last major step for me was to take and pass the exam. This was where, if I would have put down my broker 48 hours or more before taking the exam, I could have received a photo pocket license right at the exam when I completed it successfully. I had actually put down my broker, but he hadn't gone to the ICOLA site to approve me, so I couldn't get it.

- Finally, my wall and wallet licenses were mailed to my broker. I was in. Oh yea and besides getting my license I learned a lot too.

Problems with Craiglist Listings

I've been having problems putting listings into Craigs List lately. I noticed the issue some time ago and it still seems to be there. Essentially, when I put a listing in, it seems to go in, and looks fine when I go to the link directly, but it never seems to show up in the index for that city. The other day I put in one for some sizable Michigan acreage back home in south central MI (http://jxn.craigslist.org/reb/2344858717.html) and it didn't show up. Today, I did a Water Front Condo at Devils Lake (http://toledo.craigslist.org/reb/2349463953.html)and it's not also showing up. If anyone knows whats going on with that I'd love to hear it.

Major Acreage close to Detroit! A rarity

There's some beautiful coutryside that can can be seen from the little town that I grew up in. Rolling hills, farm land, and forest. Over the years it's been harder and harder to get tracts of any significant size, as they usually get divided up more and more and are just not available the closer you get to the Detroit area. So I was surprised to here from my mom that a large tract was available there. It's about 90 minutes from downtown Detroit. And some of the farmland is currently being leased for enough money to pay the taxes. Makes me wish I could come up with the cash for it.
http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/listings/386.html

Lakefront Homes as low as they will probably get

It looks like Lake front homes are at very nice prices for people looking to buy these days. While prices may stay low for another year or two, it's also possible that they won't, especially here in Michigan where the Auto industry may be poised for a comeback. So if you've been waiting for the right time to buy that special lakehouse, be carefull how long you wait. As we say where I grew up, "there's only so much lake front"