Liam Eagle: LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Read the Digital Edition – We started putting together our Hottest Hosts web hosting services directory – now a sure-thing annual project here at the WHIR – back in 2008. Each year I’ve mentioned the fact that for us, this project isn’t about repetition, but ongoing evolution and refinement of the idea.

Last year, that refinement took us to the smaller-format book with the flat spine, emphasizing the notion that this is something you’ll want to put on the shelf and refer to over the course of the year.

Our Hottest Hosts directory is also the issue we print and distribute more than any other issue, with an emphasis on spreading information on the web hosting business to markets and environments well outside our regular readership of Internet services professionals.

This year, there were two major changes to the format. First, we put a lot more energy into developing the online companion to the printed publication, available at HottestHosts.com, which includes a streamlined process for creating listings – making it more accessible to hosting providers.

The second development in this year’s issue is an increased emphasis on what we’re calling the Web Host Essentials side of things – enough to separate it out into its own section. You’ll notice if you turn over the book that, rather than a back, there’s another cover for the Web Host Essentials section.

I’ve discussed this before, but one of the most interesting attributes of this guide is how it serves to illustrate a certain reality of the web hosting business, having to do specifically with advertising. Here, advertising has a truly valuable place next to more traditionally useful content.

And it’s a focused, useful exercise. We focus on the hosting business, where service providers are acutely aware – and enthusiastically accepting – of their role as a channel for the distribution of the products of other companies. It’s why, for instance, you’ll see a packed house at a hosting conference for a session in which a company is more or less pitching its products.

Our network of publications, including this one, is built around the notion of helping to facilitate the relationships that make up the links in the value chain, from the furthest upstream technology suppliers through the hosting providers and integrators that promote those services, all the way to the end users at whom the bulk of this publication is aimed.

If you fall anywhere in that chain, and I’d argue that you do, no matter who you are, our hope is that there’s something of real value to you here in this publication – and it just might be an ad.

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