Just went through a major online disaster – my web hosting company damaged my blogs during a big upgrade of their shared hosting and database infrastructure. And they did it in such a way that I couldn’t recover using the blog and database backups I’d so carefully kept up!
Had to move out
The blog damage was so bad, and my blogs were so slow (even before the disaster) that I had to move to a new web site hosting service and re-build my blogs from scratch, by copying and pasting from the old ones.
Hosting search
Naturally, I did a careful review of the available web hosting services which offer “shared hosting”* on “UNIX”** type servers. When I read user comments on the truly outstanding 24/7 telephone support at BlueHost.com, I checked them out more thoroughly on the web hosting service review web sites. BlueHost.com was in the top 10 rank consistently, even #1 on one of the sites I reviewed - and in the top 3 on others. And I checked out those review sites to make sure they were not being paid for reviews or any such shenanigans.
I’ve been with BlueHost.com for 3 weeks now, and used their fantastic phone support and advanced control panel extensively to help me re-build my blogs (like the one you’re reading right now). I’m very impressed with everything at BlueHost.com – so much so that I decided to become their affiliate. This is not something I do lightly, but only for my very favorite products and services – the ones I recommend to my computer consulting clients and to my web marketing clients, to give them an edge over their competitors.
See the BlueHost.com reviews for yourself:
Upper Host – Review site
Web Hosting Top – Review site
Web hosting Geeks – Review site
Disclosure & Cost:
I get a small commission payment if you sign up for a shared hosting account at BlueHost.com, using one of the links on my blog, and if you pay for at least one year in front – which gets you a rate of $8.95 per month and an easy pro-rated refund if you’re unhappy. The best rate is $6.95 for a 3 year prepayment. Please click on the safe banner below for a no-obligation look at what BlueHost offers.
14 years of web hosting services
Since building my first web site in 1996, I’ve used many web hosting services, from one-person businesses to the giants of the industry. My experience is that the best services are eventually spoiled by their own success – usually after being bought by a larger corporation. That appears to be what happened to my last service. I sure hope BlueHost.com can avoid that fate.
Be that as it may, I recommend you always keep good local copies and backups of your web content, because you never how when you may have to pack up and move.
*About “Shared Hosting”
The inexpensive way to rent space for your web site or blog, on a professional web server, is via shared hosting – where you share a professionally maintained web server type computer with many other people. This is how (probably) 99% of people get their web sites or blogs onto the Internet. With typical monthly prices (when you pay for 1 year or more upfront) under $10 per month, this is much less expensive than renting your own exclusive “dedicated computer” from one of these services. And most web sites do not get enough traffic, or have other needs, to justify the expense of a dedicated server. And almost no one, except large corporations and a few hobbyists, runs their own web servers from their own offices.
**About UNIX web servers
Most web hosting services offer 2 flavors of web servers for you to rent space on. The best and most popular use server software written in the UNIX programming language. The Internet (and thus the web) were written in UNIX, so this makes sense. The Apache web server is by far the most popular UNIX server software. It works well and is your best bet.
A few people, usually because they were foolish enough to build their web sites using Microsoft’s “FrontPage” web editing software, require a web server that works with Microsoft Windows. So most hosting services offer either a true Windows server or a UNIX server which can run Windows web sites, or both. These usually cost a bit more, can have lower reliability and may have fewer features.
Web hosting features
There is not room here to go into all the available features you would like for your web or blog hosting. If you want to see a list of desirable web hosting features, just compare the list at BlueHost.com to any other services. They seem to have everything, and more of it for less money.
Until next time…
_jim coe
Tags: online marketing
