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.

If you have have purchased your web hosting plan with BlueHost before the PHP5 was introduced chances are that your websites are still on the service that offers support for PHP4 only. With increasing number of applications that require support for PHP5, you may consider upgrading to PHP5. Bluehost makes this upgrade a breeze. Here is a short guide for you what you need to do before requesting upgrade to PHP5.

1. Login into your Bluehosts cPanel. Then locate and click on “Backups” icon:

2. Click “Generate or Download Full Backup” button:

3. You will be given several options on how to create and where to store your backup file, if you are not familiar with any of the options the safest choice will be to select “Home Directory”

this will save the file on your server and you will be able to download it to your computer. After the backup is complete you will receive an e-mail notifying you that the file is ready for download.

4. Follow step 1 and 2 and- you will see the link to your backup file- click it to download it to your computer.

Above steps can save you a lot of trouble should something go wrong during the upgrade.

After you have safely saved your backup file create a support ticket at Bluehost Helpdesk requesting the upgrade to PHP5, to save you an extra step provide the password or last 4 digits of the credit card on file for your account. Bluehost will advise you that the upgrade may take somewhere from 24 to 48 hours to complete, in my case it took less than 4 hours during which my websites were partially down.

Have you had a chance to try Bluehost’s FascCGI acceleration for PHP? FastCGI was introduced recently, and you can enable this new feature right form your cPanel:

FastCGI for PHP makes all your PHP applications run through mod_fastcgi instead of mod_phpsusexec. This eliminates the overhead of loading the PHP interpretor on every hit. Since it is always in memory ready for the next hit, the responses will be generated faster. This is done without a need to modify to your existing PHP applications will be performed so you can easily enable and disable it at will.

FastCGI Benefits:

• PHP scripts will run faster. The PHP interpreter is loaded into memory rather than calling from storage for every hit, greatly improving performance of your scripted site.
• You will use less Server Resources. Since the server does not have load the PHP interpreter for each hit, you will be able to accommodate a higher traffic site without exceeding your CPU quota.
• NO modifications to your existing code are required. Everything you currently run will work with FastCGI for PHP.

Potential Problems with Fast CGI:

• You will only have one php.ini file available for all subdirectories (/home/USERNAME/public_html/php.ini). This is necessary to help optimize the website code as much as possible. If you need multiple php.ini files to accommodate different scripting needs, you can disable FastCGI for PHP on any of your subdirectories while leaving the rest of the account enabled for performance. Please contact support if you need to do this.
• There can be a few minute delay in any updates you make to your PHP environment (ie, php.ini changes). Since your php.ini is loaded into memory for greater speed, every hit does not re-read it from storage.

If you are currently hosting your websites or have hosted your websites with Bluehost, please review Bluehost here. All reviews (negative or positive are welcomed).