Liam Eagle: LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Last year I wrote that we were breaking new ground with the publishing of an
in-print directory of hosting service providers and services for hosting providers.
Obviously that is not the case with this, our second annual Hottest Hosts guide to
web hosting services.

I also wrote that last year’s guide was the first of what we intended to be an
annual undertaking. This, as you can see, is the case.

This year’s issue sees that plan carried out. Instead of breaking new ground, this
time the focus is on building upon the foundation established last year and refining
the project based on what we’ve learned in the last year.

Our directory presents us with some interesting challenges. In terms of
distribution, it’s our largest issue. We deliver it to the greatest number of
readers, over the longest period of time. In a sense its focus on web hosting
services makes it a departure from our traditional editorial aim. But in another
sense, we’re representing the WHIR’s larger network to a new audience of potential
participants.

Perhaps more significantly, we’re making the case for the web hosting business to
the IT arms of small businesses and enterprises that could potentially benefit from
an outsourcing relationship.

We take this guide to a lot of places we don’t go with any of our other issues. Part
of the premise of the guide is to distribute information about hosting providers
among people that wouldn’t regularly be readers of our content. We want to introduce
the hosting community, and hosting services, to an audience that may not be thinking
of itself necessarily as hosting customers – but that has the potential to benefit
from the hosting relationship. It’s the case that web hosts are making every day.

One of the products of that purpose is that it invites us to make the case for an
outsourced IT operation. This is a message in which our audience of web hosting
providers is well versed – for many of them, it’s their key message. It’s not
something we cover a lot, but it’s definitely something with which I’m familiar. It
comes up frequently in this business.

Possibly the most important issue to address in introducing this guide is the nature
of the content – a paid directory of service providers. The fact that the listings
are paid for presents an integrity issue, but one that is by all means navigable.

The recipe is basically this: paid listings mean a free guide. We make it completely
clear that this is a paid inclusion directory. At no point do we ever make any
effort to disguise advertising as editorial content. And by restricting the scope
and nature of the listings in certain ways we can ensure that there is a definite
value in the content we present here.

The downside of paid listings is that the guide is not completely exhaustive. But
the alternative simply isn’t possible in print. In the end, I’m more than confident
that what we’ve produced is a valuable collection of information.