I’m known for quick and easy around the kitchen. I just don’t enjoy cooking. I found a recipe similar to this a while back and now I have my own version that is a staple in my house. Are you ready it’s so quick and easy you will be surprised! Are you ready for the secret ingredient?

That’s right Deli Meat!

Ingredients:
4 oz Chicken Deli Meat
2 T Mayonnaise
1 Stalk Celery Chopped
Fresh Cilantro (or another fresh herb you have on hand) chopped
Dried Herbs (rosemary, thyme, dill, anything you want to try)
1 T Lemon Juice

First take your deli meat and slice it up. You can do this roughly when you mix it all up it will break apart even more.

Now throw everything else in the bowl and mix with a fork.

Tada! you have quick and easy chicken salad. Now you can put this in some bread for a sandwich or if you want to go a little healthier you can place it on a bed of lettuce and pair it with some veggies like cucumber.

Do you have a recipe that is super quick and easy? Please share it in the comments, I’m always up for a quick and easy recipe!!

This summer I’m participating in a great project over at Mommy’s Piggy Tales. It is all about recording your youth in 15 posts or like me 15 vlogs. This is a big year for me I met someone very special.

This summer I’m participating in a great project over at Mommy’s Piggy Tales. It is all about recording your youth in 15 posts or like me 15 vlogs. This is a short one, I’m sure there are more interesting things in 10th grade, but after working three days straight and being up for over 14 hours this works. So now you get to learn why I was never a freshman and you get to meet someone from earlier in my story, a boy someone. Hope you enjoy.

Oh did I mention this is the boy that I knocked out his front tooth and so he loved to tease me about. LOL

One of the most important things while researching web hosts is to look at current and former users reviews. Look at what is happening for users that are currently using the host. Today I will be sharing with you how to find reviews for hosting companies and how to use this to help you compare hosts.

Finding Reviews

Don’t just look at the hosting company’s testimonials, they are only going to post what makes them look good.

Start by looking at review sites. Don’t look at the web site’s review itself I find these are sometimes old or just basically paid for ads. Find reviews of people who have used the host current users and former users. Here is just a few review sites you can find reviews:

• http://www.customerhostingreviews.com/
• http://www.webhostingjury.com/
• http://www.hostsearch.com/
• http://www.webhostingreviews.com/

Another great tool for finding more information about a host is twitter. If you do a search on twitter how many users do you see complaining about a problem? How many tweets do you see about people talking about how great their host is, but make sure they say why the host is great and make sure it’s not a sponsored ad.

Also check places like the Better Business Bureau for complaints about the company.

Things to consider when looking at the review:

Age of review
Hosts change their business plans, customer service, and prices all the time. You want to make sure you look at the age of the review and make sure you look at current ones. You can look at the past ones too because they are going to give you some insight on what has happened in the past for this host which may come up again. But see if they have changed their ways and improved since the problem.

Quantity of Reviews
How many good and bad reviews do they have? What is the percentage of good to bad? Do they have a lot of reviews? How long has the site been around? Do people feel that they are getting a service good enough to talk about? Or bad enough? I would usually recommend a host that has been around for a while. They obviously are doing pretty good business and know what they are doing. But if you can find an amazing deal try out a new company. I personally like my host and pay more for the fact I can email the owner and I have a relationship with them. I’m not just a number. Sometimes personal attention is just worth more.

Bad Review May Give You Insight
Looking at the bad reviews may give you insight on what to watch out with on this host. If the person was having troubles with customer services you know that if you have troubles getting a hold of customer service during your trial period that this may become a chronic problem. If they have complaint that they have a lot of downtime, watch out for your site going down. You can also ask the sales people do they have back up servers for when their is an issue? How do they handle this issue? Do they let you know if there is a problem and will contact you as soon as it is fixed?

This concludes our series about researching web hosts. I hope you learned some things that will help you in your search for a host. I personally have struggled with bad hosting companies and have enjoyed using my current host. I hope that you will find a host that you love and is the perfect fit for you.

If you have found a host that you love please share it with me in the comments! I’m always happy to hear about a great host I can send my clients, friends and followers to!

With so many web hosts out there how do you even start to compare? I know one site that I visit to review hosting companies they have 403 pages of sites and 10 sites per page, that is 4,030 hosting companies and I know they don’t have them all there are a few I know not on the list. This week I want to give you some tools to help you start to compare the hosts you are looking at side by side.

This is part two in a three part series all about finding a good web host. Last week you learned some basics in the lingo used by hosting sites. Please make sure you didn’t miss it!

Comparing Side by Side

When you are going to compare hosting you are thrown a lot of freebies and extras, but this makes it even harder to tell what you are really going to need and what the important features are. I’m going to give you a spreadsheet you can use to write down each host and compare the options side by side. On this sheet you will find 10 items to use to compare each host.

Cost per Year
Make sure and find out what it will cost for just 1 year of service. I usually recommend when you are just starting or switching to a new host just do one year.  You may find that the host you chose isn’t right for you and you do not want to be stuck in a 3 year contract. Click through make sure the price they are advertising is only for one year.

Disk Space
Break this down to MB (if they offer 10GB that equals 10,000MB of Disk Space) if every site you are looking at is offering space calculated into GB you don’t have to convert this.

Data Transfer
It is best to have this converted into GB, most hosts you are looking at should have 1 GB of data transfer or more.

Domains
How many domains are you allowed on the Package you are looking at? How many domains do you really need? If they are offering a package with 10 domains and one with a 100 if you are only going to have 1 domain this really doesn’t make a difference for you.

Email Accounts
How many email accounts are you allowed? Same as domains how many emails do you really need? I recommend having at least one or two but do you think you would really use 100?

MySQL Databases
How many My SQL databases are you allowed? This is important if you are going to use a blogging software on your site or are going to use any scripts on your site. Even if you are going to just host a blog on your site you may still want more than 1 MySQL database because sometime in the future you may want to add a script or other software on your site. Really more is better but you will probably not need 100s of databases.

Easy to Use Control Panel
I put this on the spread sheet because this is really important for you or your web designer. If you can try a demo of the control panel the host uses that would be great. One control panel that I tend to like is Cpanel, but then this is the one I have been using for years.

PHP5
PHP is one of the most used specialty languages used in web design besides HTML, XHTML and CSS. You want PHP5 available to use for any kind of scripts or web software on your site you will need these. There are lots more languages that you may or may not want or need, but this one is very important. If you are going to be hiring a web designer ask them which languages they recommend your host having. I have not seen a host not have this option but it is always good to make sure.

FTP Access or Accounts
Make sure that you are allowed at least one FTP Account. This is used by your web designer or you once you are comfortable to update and edit your website.

Script Installer
This one will be a little harder to find the info on because each host may use a different program to install scripts. One of my favorites is Fantastico. You may just have to look through there features to find if they offer something to install WordPress or another script you are looking at. Or you can jump on the hosts live chat and ask them if they have a script installer (you can even say like fantastico). But most hosts also have this feature so don’t be in awe because they install WP for you, this is pretty normal.

View Comparing Hosts Spreadsheet

Now it’s time to use this spreadsheet I would find 5 hosts that fit what you need. Fill out their name and the package you are looking at and the details for each package. Now you can see who has the best price, but you don’t always want the best price you want the the best host for the price. This next step is crucial, but you will have join me next week as we talk about finding and using user reviews.

What are some of the things you are struggling with as you research hosting companies? Is there something more you would like to know more about? Please let me know in the comments!

This summer I’m participating in a great project over at Mommy’s Piggy Tales. It is all about recording your youth in 15 posts or like me 15 vlogs. This is about 9th grade, boys, more about youthgroup and I totally forgot about mentioning that I got baptized this year. Below the video you

This summer I’m participating in a great project over at Mommy’s Piggy Tales. It is all about recording your youth in 15 posts or like me 15 vlogs. So we are onto 8th grade and 8th grade was a big year for me. Next week I will have pictures to share too.