Green web hosts, Part 2 of 4

As promised, here are more details on the various green web hosts listed in my post from last week. After researching all of these, I found a list which contained 2-3 more. I decided NOT to look any further into these, as I felt I had enough to sort through without any more confusion.

This list may look overwhelming (it is!), but I have placed them in order from lowest to highest monthly cost. The details listed for each describe the range of features (summarized here):

• The amount of Storage describes how much space your site can take up on their servers (similar to the space on your own computer's hard drive).
  
• Monthly Bandwidth limits describe the amount of data transfer to or from the website or server that will be allowed per month. (Important for sites that receive lots of traffic or might have spikes in traffic which result from having content published on large sites like Yahoo! Buzz and similar.)
• Some plans include Domain registration free with their hosting plans. Others can register a Domain for you for a fee. Finally, some will require you to bring your own Domain from another Domain registrar. When Web hosts offer Domain registration, you can still purchase your Domain name from any registrar you wish (and save money in some cases). (The Domain is your website's name, such as www.7gens.com.)
  
• When you register a Domain, your personal contact information, including your name, physical address, phone number and e-mail address are listed in a public "WHOIS" database. When a Domain registrar offers Domain Privacy, they will provide their alternate contact information in place of yours and notify you if they receive something that they believe would be important to you. This is especially important for your e-mail address, since "bots" can grab your e-mail address and send unsolicited e-mail almost automatically. Some hosts may provide limited (i.e. e-mail only) privacy or full privacy, but where I could find no mention of this on their website I noted that below.
• Finally, if I had any information on available Discounts or coupon codes, I have noted this at the end of each listing. Where available, codes are listed in single quotation marks. Enter these codes without the quotes.
  
  
  

www.HostPapa.com
$5.95-$7.95/month (1-3 year prepayment plans)
Unlimited Storage
Unlimited Bandwidth
One free Domain registration included ($24.95 additional Domains)
Domain Privacy included with registration
3 Months free coupons sometimes available online (Google for current codes)

www.DreamHost.com
$5.95-$10.95/month (monthly or with 1, 2, 3, 5 or 10 years prepaid)
+ $49.95 setup for monthly payment plan
500 GB Storage to start, increases by 2 GB/wk
5 TB (5000 GB!) Bandwidth to start, increases by 40 GB/wk
1 Domain name free, $9.95/yr additional Domains (can host unlimited Domains)
Domain Privacy included with registration
$50 Discount with promo code '7gens'

www.ThinkHost.com
$7.95-$19.95/month (monthly or with 1 or 2 years prepaid)
100 GB Storage
1 TB (1000 GB!) Bandwidth
Bring your own Domain
Can apply for 6% Discount for nonprofit organizations and "progressive businesses"
$20 Discount with promo code 'THINKHOST20'

www.AcornHost.com
$7.95-$24.95/month
2 GB-10 GB Storage
50 GB-250 GB Bandwidth
Bring your own Domain
50% Discount for nonprofit organizations

www.PlanetMind.net
$9.99-$19.99/month
1 GB-50 GB Storage
5 GB-100 GB Bandwidth
Domain registration $25 (included on mid- and high-level plans)
No Domain privacy option mentioned
Free Domain with 1-year paid hosting

www.EthicalHost.ca
Ethical Web Hosting (Canada)
$7-$25 (Canadian dollars)/month + $10-$20 Setup fee (waived for largest plan)
250 MB-1.1. GB Storage
2 GB-6 GB Bandwidth
Domain registration $18 (Canadian dollars)
No Domain privacy option mentioned
15% Discount with promo code 'coop15'

www.GoGreenHosting.com
$10-$30/month
1 GB-3 GB Storage
20 GB-100 GB Bandwidth
Bring your own Domain
10% Discount on annual payment plans

www.SustainableWebsites.com
$10-$30/month
1 GB-3 GB Storage
10 GB-30 GB Bandwidth
Domain registration $6.95 and up
Domain Privacy $8.95

www.SolarEnergyHost.com
$9.95-$28.95/month + $24.95 Setup fee (waived on annual payment plans)
500 MB-3 GB Storage
3 GB-10 GB Bandwidth
Domain registration included
No Domain privacy option mentioned

www.LunarMedia.net
$10-$40/month + $40 Setup fee (waived on some plans with prepayment)
300 MB-2 GB Storage
7 GB Bandwidth (all plans)
Bring your own Domain

www.aiso.net
Affordable Internet Services Online, Inc.
$9.95-$50/month + $20 Setup fee
500MB-1.25GB Storage
5 GB-25 GB Bandwidth
Domain registration $15/yr
No Domain privacy option mentioned

www.GreenestHost.com
$9.95-$79.95/month
500 MB-10 GB Storage
3 GB-25 GB Bandwidth
Bring your own Domain

www.TreeCentric.com
$17.95-$69.95/month
1 GB-4 GB Storage
50-75 GB Bandwidth
Domain registration $9.95
Domain Privacy included with registration

www.ecoSky.com
$19.95-$39.95/month + $25 Setup fee
500 MB-2 GB Storage
5 GB-20 GB Bandwidth
Bring your own Domain

If you believe none of the above plans will meet your needs, some providers also offer Dedicated servers. When you pay for a Dedicated server, your site (or other sites you may host in addition to your own site) reside exclusively on one server. You do not have to share the server with any other sites. Most websites will not need a Dedicated server, but if you regularly have large numbers of site visitors and data transfers exceeding capacity of shared servers, you may want to consider this option.

Providers which have Dedicated servers available and information listed on their websites:

www.aiso.net
$350 and up/month + $200 Setup fee
40+ GB Storage
200 GB Bandwidth

www.GreenestHost.com
$399.95/month
40 GB Storage
200 GB Bandwidth

www.TreeCentric.com
"Light Dedicated" - $149.95/month
18 GB Storage (minimum)
1-2 million web requests per day

"Dedicated" - $349.95/month
18 GB Storage (minimum)
Several million web requests per day

www.SustainableHosting.com
$300+/month + $100 Setup fee
80 GB+ Storage
900 GB+ Bandwidth

www.ecoSky.com
Contact for pricing and availability

www.webctel.com
Specializing in dedicated servers
Contact for pricing and availability

Hypermiling - Fuel-up #1 - Baseline - 6/27/08

Ok, so as promised I will start posting here my results as I start trying some hypermiling techniques. Since I wasn't keeping track of mileage up til now, I continued driving as normal through two fuel-ups. At the first I made sure to press the trip odometer to reset the mileage so I could start calculating MPG.

On Friday, 6/27/08, Fuel-up #1, Baseline:

• 10.34 gallons @ $3.88/gallon = $40.10 (Yay for 10 cents/gal discount at Safeway!)
• 267.8 miles from the previous fuel-up
  
• MPG for this tank of gas = 25.9 (267.8 miles / 10.34 gallons)
• 15 Cents per mile ($40.10 / 267.8 miles)
• First 1/2 highway miles; second 1/2 city driving (Rapid City, SD)

Also, some basic info about the car I am driving:

• 1999 Kia Sephia
• Relatively small 4-door sedan
  
• 4-cylinder engine (That is bound to help too, naturally!)
  
• From www.FuelEconomy.gov, the MPG averages (adjusted to be equivalent to new standards for 2008 and newer vehicles) are supposed to be 20 for city driving, 29 for highway driving and 23 for combined mileage. So I guess I'm getting about "as expected" results or slightly better.

Main techniques I am starting to use (since yesterday) include turning off the car when idling at red lights (already did normally at the drive-up bank teller or when stopped at a railroad crossing so, of course those will continue), avoiding left turns in heavy traffic as much as possible, driving the speed limit, and limiting acceleration and braking as much as I can.

Can't wait to see how much of a difference this makes with my next fuel up!

Green web hosts, Part 1 of 4

With the transparency of the Internet, it is no longer good enough to "say" you are committed to environmental causes. You need to make sure you do what you say you believe in. Actions do speak for themselves, after all, and words are cheap. Fortunately, this is becoming much easier to do.

Take one example: If you have a website for your green business, social enterprise, or nonprofit organization--or even just your personal or family site--and consider yourself a socially conscious individual, you should know about several web hosting providers that are doing their part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

These website hosting providers fall into two basic categories: those that use pure green energy to power their servers and those who purchase "green energy credits."

Those who use green energy generally have solar panels installed in their facility to power their servers and other equipment necessary to host your website and have it accessible around the clock. You may consider this greener than the alternative green energy credits (read on to see what that means), but this also requires your hosting provider to maintain the infrastructure (panels and batteries, etc.) or hire someone to do so, since it is outside their expertise (presumably web hosting). This may not mean anything, as most probably have backup generators and/or a grid-tie system so they are never down due to problems with their solar power generation system. Just something to think about.

Green energy credits are generally purchased in order to produce future green energy, which could be wind, solar, biomass, hydro, biogas or geothermal. Such credits are generally certified by a third party to guarantee that they are indeed used to produce such future energy. While they are still burning "dirty" fuels today to produce the energy that powers their servers, they are said to "offset" this energy with future "clean" energy production. Does this just sound like a way to cheat the system or take the easy way out? Consider that some web hosting providers live in areas not conducive to installation of solar panels or construction of wind turbines. Or without the capital to purchase the infrastructure up front, they would be forced to price their services out of the market to cover their greater expense.

I found several web hosts that have installed solar panels into their facilities and listed them below:

1. www.aiso.net
2. www.GreenestHost.com
3. www.PlanetMind.net
4. www.ecoSky.com
5. www.SolarEnergyHost.com
6. www.webctel.com
   

These others purchase some form of green energy credits (usually wind/solar combinations). Some also offset more than they have calculated as their energy usage and/or plant trees on their customers' behalf for greater environmental benefit:

1. www.DreamHost.com
2. www.SustainableWebsites.com
3. www.AcornHost.com
4. www.EthicalHost.ca
5. www.ThinkHost.com
6. www.LunarMedia.net
7. www.TreeCentric.com
8. www.SustainableHosting.com
9. www.GoGreenHosting.com
10. www.HostPapa.com
    

I will provide more details on each of these host providers in Part 2.

Hypermiling - Extreme (and not-so-extreme) gas-saving tips

Within one day I saw two stories about Hypermiling (and my husband saw four!), leading me to believe this was possibly a "next big thing" and worth looking at further. What is Hypermiling? Well, essentially, it's a certain way of driving and maintaining your car to get the greatest fuel efficiency possible.

Take a look at the video from Yahoo that initially piqued my interest, if you would like to see a quick overview and a demonstration of some of the techniques. You can also take a look at the segment from Keloland TV, in which a driver in Sioux Falls, SD showed her skills and shared tips for saving gas.

If you just want a few quick tips, here are some ideas to get started:

• MPG monitoring: In order to know how much gas you're saving, you need to know how much you're using. You can monitor this "low-tech" by using your car's trip odometer each time you fill up the tank, or you can buy special MPG monitoring equipment.
• Maintenance: Increase tire air pressure to the maximum recommended, clean air filter or replace (when it's beyond cleaning) at oil changes, and follow routine maintenance as recommended by your auto manufacturer.
• Minimize mass: Drive a smaller car if possible. If you can't buy a new car, at least keep your car empty of as much clutter as you can to keep it lighter.
• Efficient driving: Tips in this category include driving at most efficient speeds, minimizing acceleration and braking, and coasting as much as possible. Much of this is done by keeping your eyes far ahead on the road and anticipating speed changes and stops as early as possible. Techniques in this category can also include parking considerations (like parking to enable forward driving out, rather than backing out).
  
• Killing the engine: Turning off the engine while stopped and waiting at railroad crossings, fast-food drive-through, stop-lights, bank ATM and drive-through tellers, car washes and similar stops.
  
• Advanced techniques: Some sites also include advanced techniques like killing the engine while the car is in motion on long downhills or before coming to a complete stop at the curb in front of their house, although these are generally not considered safe and not recommended for most drivers.
  

I am glad to have seen the info and am going to try some of these out. I will post my results here. I hope this will motivate some of you to give these techniques a try as well!