Is 3 hours downtime and a sleepless night acceptable when you pay $200 for a dedicated web hosting? I do not think so. Especially if the trust of the people who might use your service is on the line. I sure hope LiquidWeb gives Mark a good explanation. I will be following the story and will post soon if I hear anything new. For now enjoy the video below and think twice if you should trust LiquidWeb:

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From the very beginning of this website I have used WP-Polls plugin to collect the votes on web hosting providers featured on this site. After considerable amount of feedback I have decided to introduce a new way to let you cast your votes for your favorite or maybe not so favorite web hosting provider. So if you think you have the best ever web host give them 5 stars, if you think a web host is a ripoff 1 star should express your vote. Of course you are always welcomed to elaborate in the comments your on your web host. Ok here it is the new system to collect the votes:

Go ahead try it!

It simple and straightforward. Try it out and see for yourself. If you have cast your votes on this blog in the past, you can help me by voting again using the new system. I plan to take it down two weeks from now.

If you have any other ideas how I can improve this website feel free to sound them off in the comments.

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Bluehost has just recently modified (upgraded) their web hosting plan. The new plan increased the disk space increased to 1,500 GB while the monthly bandwidth was bumped to a whooping 15,000 BG. There are some other good updates.

But I am sure many of you have asked themselves well I bought my web hosting with blue host two months ago. Will these changes apply to my existing account? As far as Hosting Space and traffic are concerned, it appears that Bluehost generally offers these upgrades to the existing clients. This website was is hosted with Bluehost and I have seen several of such upgrades. Even though my website has never gone over the original bandwidth offered by Bluehost two years, every time Bluehost upgraded the amount of bandwidth and hosting space it was reflected in the cPanel of my account.

The only part that my account maybe out of date is the amount of domains that I can host. It appears that I am allowed to host only 5 additional domains with the Bluehost. I had not have a chance to test it whether or not that is true or some sort of cPanel glitch that still shows outdated information.

I presume at the time of renewal of this account I will have a better ground to stand on should I need to question the ability to host “unlimited” domains in my account. However since the renewal is due in 155 days, I have plenty of time to test the Bluehost’s willigness to work with their clients. So stay tunned for the updates by subscribing to my blog. If you have sued Bluehost in the past please leave your review here.

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The idea behind this website was very simple one. Offering just basic information about web hosting providers and leaving the reviews in the hands of the visitors looked very attractive. However when this website was born (in August of 2006) only negative reviews were “puring” in. It was hard to decide on whether or not keeping all of the bad reviews on this website or try to some how filter the valid complains from the comments by the people who have nothing better to do. It may ave been against my best judgment, but initially I have decided to leave all the reviews. There was no clear way telling apart valid complaints and rants by the dissatisfied customers from the rest of the negative review. However over the time I have discovered certain pattern in how these negative reviews were written. It appears that authors of negative reviews can be divided in following three groups:

1. Some times clients bad experience with a particular web hosting provider from the very beginning. This dissatisfaction is never a result of one particular thing. Generally it is a combination of things that transpire from time they have committed to a particular plan. It may not necessarily mean that a particular web hosting provider is terrible. Even the best web hosting providers are not without faults. However if you seen an overwhelming amount of complaints against one particular provider, it should serve as warning light to investigate further before committing your money.
2. More than often negative reviews would come from clients who in general were satisfied with the web hosting service they received. However they did not have the best experience when they have attempted to solve a problem with their web hosting provider. A company may offer a web hosting that is not reliable. But a company may as well be shooting itself in the foot, by offering bad customer service or by not offering one at all. More than one dissatisfied client will be very happy to hear that his web host is doing all that can be done to fix the problem.
3. Finally this website have seen plenty of “grasshoppers”. The leave both negative or positive reviews just because they have an opportunity to leave a link. Elsewhere these are called spammers, but my fancy prefers “grasshoppers”. These comments do not stand a chance from being deleted from this blog. While I am sure I have missed one or two, I hope the readers of this blog can recognize these “grasshoppers” point them out to me.

I know that the above list is very general, but I believe it provides some good insight into the negative reviews you find here on this blog, or on other websites that offer opportunity to every visitor to leave feedback.

So what should you make off the negative reviews? It is important to place them in the proper prospective. Some complaints may not be valid at all in your situation. For example, you can see more than one complain that certain web hosts have CPU usage issues on the websites that powered by PHP and MySQL. While some clients may see at as a problem, for some it may not be an issue since they will code their website in good old HTML.

Should you then ignore the negative reviews? Absolutely not, because you can benefit greatly from them. What you need to do is to write an itemized list of all the features you are looking for in your future web hosting provider. Having such a list you can look and see how many negative complains a particular web hosting provider received against each item in your list. Bad web hosting reviews can indeed prove to be very beneficial if you know how to use them.

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This post was inspired by an e-mail from a regular visitor to this blog. It was a simple question about a perticular web hosting provider that offer dedicated hosting. This list should not be look as an ultimate list of dedicated hosting but rather as a starting point in your search for the web hosting provider you think will suite you the best. As with any other service, you should research well before settling down on particular provider. If you are familiar with the web hosting companies in the list below, feel free to leave your feedback.

Go Daddy’s Dedicated Server Plan (Preconfigured Economy Plan $79.99/mo)

Quick Features:

• 1×120 GB disk drive 500GB bandwidth 1 GB RAM
• Celeron® 2.0GHz1 processor
• Linux: CentOS (4 or 5) or Red Hat Fedora Core 7
• Simple Control Panel

Click here to visit this provider.

Aplus.net Dedicated Server Plan ($99/mo)

Quick Features

• Setup fee $59.99
• Intel CeleronD 430 1.8 GHz CPU
• 1 GB DDR2-800 RAM
• 250 GB SATA hard drive
• 1000 GB Monthly Transfer included (Non-Cogent)

Click here to visit this provider.

Apollo Dedicated Server Plan ($99.95/mo)
Quick Features

• CeleronD 2.8 GHz
• 512 MB RAM
• Red Hat Linux AS or Windows 2003 Server
• Plesk 30 Domain Licence
• 80 GB SATA Hard Drive
• 1000 GB Transfer

Click here to visit this provider.

Hostgator Dedicated Server Plan ($174/mo)
Quick Features:

• Pentium 4, 2.4Ghz processor
• DDR Memory- 1024MB
• Hard Drive- 80gb SATA
• Bandwidth 1,500 GB
• 5 IP Addresses
• Latest cPanel

Click here to visit this provider.

Inmotion Dedicated Server Plan ($199.95/mo)
Quick Features:

• Pentium 4, 2.8 Ghz Processor
• CPU Cache- 1 MB
• Memory- 1 GB
• Disc Space- 160 GB
• Bandwidth- 1500 GB

Click here to visit this provider.

Ipower Dedicated Server Plan ($129/mo)
Quick Features:

• Hewlett-Packard Quality Pre-built Server
• Intel Celeron D Processor (3.06GHz, 533MHz FSB, 256KB L2 cache)
• Choose from Windows 20031, FreeBSD, Linux (Fedora Core 4)
• 512MB Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
• 80GB SATA HD (NO RAID / 80GB Useable Space)
• 500GB Data Transfer
• Includes 1 IP Address

Click here to visit this provider.

LunarPages Dedicated Server Plan ($99/mo)
Quick Features:

• CPU- Intel® Celeron 2.0ghz
• RAM- 512 MB
• 80 GB Storage Included- additional storage can be purchased
• 1,000 GB Bandwidth Included- additional bandwidth can be purchased
• 2 IP Addresses included- additional IP Addresses can be purchased

Click here to visit this provider.

Server Pronto Dedicated Hosting Plan ($49.95)

• Pentium 4 3.0 GHz
• 256 MB DDR RAM
• 40 GB Hard Drive
• 200 GB Data Transfer
• 100Mbps Connection

Click here to visit this provider.

If you feel that there are other web hosting providers that should be included in this list please sound off in the comments. The list above will be adjusted accordignly.

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Today every web hosting provider that offers Fantastico Scripts gives you an opportunity to install WordPress among other content management systems. WordPress being one of the most popular blogging platform often draws a lot of criticism.

Today I came across a video made by Mark from 45n5 entitled WordPress Sucks. Needless to say I had to respond to Mark’s video. If you have never seen Marks blog before I highly recommend to subscribe to his blog. Mark never ceases to amuse, entertain and educate his readers.

Being an outstanding programmer many of the points in his video are quiet valid. However I would like to respond to his video and point out one feature that I have problems with TypePad. My beef with TypePad is about the way it handles trackbacks. One of the things that I came to appreciate blogging is the ability to contribute to conversation. Marks post had received over 50 comments. Although I have not commented on his blog, I feel I am contributing to the conversation nevertheless. Unfortunately visitors of to Mark’s post are not aware of my contribution. Who or what is at fault? I think TypePad and its ways to handle pingbacks/trackbacks.

I say TypePad sucks more than WordPress. What do you say?

Anyway here is Mark’s video:

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So you are ready to host your WordPress blog on your own domain and you are in search to find out whether or not Bluehost is the right web host for you? You have come to a right place. This review however is far from being unbiased since this very blog, which is powered by WordPress, is hosted with Bluehost. In this article I will review some important elements of setting your WordPress blog: installation, updates and performance.

1. Installing WordPress with Bluehost. Bluehost offers installation script called Fantastico Installer, which enables you to install quickly and easily wide verity of scripts, content management systems and blog and forum platforms. With Bluehost WordPress is among those scripts available for easy installation via Fantastico Installer. If you are advanced user and feel no need to use Fantasctico Installer to set up your WordPress blog, Bluehost allows you to do that also. Using Fatastico you can install your WordPress on Bluehost in well under 10 minutes.
2. Updating WordPress Installation with Bluehost. While Fantastico is an easy and probably the fastest way to install your WordPress, it is not true when it comes to updating to a newest version. As you may know, WordPress updates it’s versions quiet frequently, while providing some important security fixes and enhancing the platform in general. It takes few weeks for Bluehost to offer the update via Fantastico script. And if you are concerned about security risks or would like to get your hands on the newest version of WordPress as soon as it becomes available, you will need to install the updates by uploading the new files via FTP protocol to your server. Doing so, you need to read carefully the upgrade instructions and take the necessary steps to prevent the loss of your data.
3. WordPress performance on BlueHost. You should expect decent performance from “out of the box” WordPress installation. However some bloggers, including myself, reported CPU overload problems with WordPress that has number of plugins installed. Some of the plugins perform what can be called as a “heavy lifting” in order to accomplish certain things. Generally those plugins have to do with comments on your blog. For example, on this blog a plugin is installed that reverse the order in which comments are displayed- the newest comments are displayed first. Of course if there is only few comments on a particular post, it may not present a huge problem. The more comments, the more work plugin needs to perform- potentially increasing the CPU usage and event CPU overload. The good thing about BlueHost is that when CPU overload takes place, the access to your website is suspended only for a few minutes. Other hosting providers may suspend your account for a longer period of time or until the problem associated with CPU overload is fixed. Whenever you are installing additional plugins, widgets or third party scripts on your blog it is worth keeping an eye on your blog performance. And try to fix the problems as your detect them.

Bluehost is an excellent web host for your WordPress powered blog or website. However even the best web hosting providers do have some quirks. It would be in your own best interest to research well your potential web hosting provider before deciding on where to host your WordPress.

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