Carol shows us what she's working on in December 2009.
What are you working on?

For the first time, About.com's Computing Channel will be running a coordinated Reader's Choice Award program. During January 2010, you'll be able to nominate your favorite sites, services and innovations in categories ranging from the best IM client and email service to best Web design and Web browser. Then, in February, check back to see if your favorite nominees made the cut, and cast your vote. Winners will be announced March 1. There's no prize -- just the bragging rights that come with getting recognized by the readers of one of the biggest tech networks on the Web.

On the Web design site, we'll be voting in 15 categories for who has:

• Best Web Design (7 categories)
• Best Web Hosting Company (4 categories)
• Best Web Design Software (4 categories)

So, start thinking of the sites, software, and companies that you think are the best of the best. Nominations will open on January 1, 2010. The complete content time line is:

January 1 - 24: Accept nominations
February 1 - 24: Voting
March 1 Winners Announced

Other computing sites that are participating include:

• Web Browsers
• Desktop Publishing
• Email
• Family Computing
• Google
• IM
• JavaScript
• Macs
• Mobile Games
• Smart Phones
• Visual Basic
• VOIP
• Web Search
• PC Hardware and Reviews

When you're working on a website, it's easy to think that everything will always go well and nothing will go wrong. Even if you don't think that, it can be easy to get hung up on the day-to-day elements of building your site and not think about the maintenance and other minutia.

This can turn out to be a problem.

Last year, when I accidentally deleted my entire home directory (including most of three websites in development) I realized that I needed to get a better backup system in place on my server.

But then this year, when my server hard drive decided to completely die with no notice, I had backups but no easy way to restore them.

It's like it takes crashes to show me where the points of failure are. After this crash we chose to do two things:

1. Change hosting providers. We are now going with a virtualization host, rather than a true co-location. Yes, we won't have as much flexibility when it comes to the server hardware, but if the hard drive fails, it won't be our problem. We switched to Linode.
2. Change backup systems. Instead of just backing up the data, we are now going to backup all the configuration information as well. Plus, we're sending it to an offsite storage location - not just our house. We switched to Dropbox.

I am looking at this not as a catastrophe but as an opportunity. I had a lot of files on the server that I really didn't need, as well as a lot of other cruft all over our website. Instead of restoring it all, I'm going in to the site in order of priority - client sites are first (and restored exactly as they were), followed by my personal sites, and finally my testing sites.

I am looking forward to checking out this new hosting service and new backup system. I'll post reviews later on.

As we come to the end of the first decade of the 21st century, I wonder how many people still use tables for layout. One of my favorite Web design tools to come out of this decade is the use of CSS for defining the look of your website. So I wonder how many people still use tables to define the layout rather than the more flexible CSS. Do you use tables for your layouts? I strongly recommend you avoid tables for web page layout.