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.

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:

Here is a video response to Mark’s video. Enjoy!

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. UPDATE: BlueHost has recently introduced SimpleScripts, which similarly to Fantastico allows you to install scripts on your website, however with SimpleScripts Blue Host now offers updates to the latest versions within minutes of the releases.
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.