Web Hosting Reviews

Housekeeping Matters- Blog Improvements

Over the last several weeks I have embarked on mission to make serious improvements around this blog. I hopes to attract more reviews with a new rating widget, I am now acknowledging every one who took time to review their web hosting provider in a “thank you post” at the end of the week. But there were a few things that needed major updates, which partially where accomplished today.

About Page Updated

The update to “About” page was long over due, in the light of the fact that this blog is now three years old. The About page is not also includes disclosures as well as comments and privacy policies.

Advertising Page

On average, I receive about 10 emails each weeks from potential advertisers inquiring about advertising opportunities on this blog. While I am trying to respond to each email in attempt to find out each potential advertiser’s need, only 1 of every 20 emails is a serious requests. To save myself some time, I have created Advertise on Web Hosting Review Blog page, to which I will be referring most of the advertising request I receive in the e-mail.

Contact Page

Instead of publishing my e-mail as I did in the past, which resulted in being placed on hundreds of “lists” I have decided to streamline all attempts to contact me via contact page.

Link Us Up Page

Link us up is nothing but a shameless attempt to ask other webmasters to link to back to this blog. I am not looking for links on “fashion” websites and blogs. But if you write a blog related to web hosting and link to me chances are I will most certainly acknowledge your efforts in one of my posts.

Reaching Out To Publishers

While attempting to develop long lasting relationships with potential advertisers, I will also intensify advertising for this blog. While I am currently running several PPC campaigns for this blog I am looking to increase the “brand awareness” for this blog via direct advertising on potential publisher’s websites or blogs. If you think your visitors can benefit from information found on this blog, please drop me a line, I do not mind to support your blog as sponsor or advertiser.

Intensified Posting

One of the things that will definitely change on this blog in the coming days and weeks is the frequency of posting. Until now, the posts on this blog where some what sporadic. At times months had passed on and no post where published here. It is about to change. To start of I plan to post 2-4 posts per week, not including “thank you” posts to acknowledge your reviews. So if web hosting industry interests you, feel free to subscribe so you do not miss my future posts.

Hosts Reviewed This Week: Bluehost and Hosgator

This past week May 4-7 was some what slower comparing to the week before. However there were two reviews submitted by visitors to this blog. So I would would like to say thank you and a huge shout out to:

• Josh Spaulding of Internet Marketing with Josh Spaulding. Josh has reviewed Hostmoster and you can read his review here. Josh had also mentioned he now uses as he calls it “the best web host in the world” LiquidWeb as his host, unfortunately there is no Liquidweb’s profile on my blog, but I hope that Josh will come back to tells us about his experience. I have briefly mentioned on my blog Mark’s trouble with LiquidWeb, and it would be great to have more balanced picture as far as LiquidWeb is concerned.
• Brian W of Pennsylvania Backwoods. Brian offered his feedback on Bluehost, and you can read his review here.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for taking your time and providing great feedback and sharing your experience.

If you are just stopping by my blog for the first time, review your web hosting provider and I will link back to you next Saturday. Please refrain from one sentence only type for reviews and feedback. And no you do not have to be way to technical, just follow the example of Josh and Brian.

Hope every one has a great weekend.

Should You Upgrade Your WordPress?

It has been a while since the latest versions (2.5 and now 2.5.1) of WordPress were released. But did you upgrade your version yet? While installation of WordPress is on of the easiest out there. But after you begin toying around with your website, adding new plugins and maybe modifying some parts of your template, upgrading to the new version is not always an attractive idea. You don’t know whether or not your theme will work with the latest version, nor there is certainty your plugins will continue to work. So many of us make a painful decisions to hang on to outdated versions as long as we can. So today I would like to outline some benefits of why you should consider to keep your WordPress up to date. While this article is written in the light of the latest version (2.5.1) of WordPress, some of the points may still apply to no matter what version your are hanging onto.

1. Security Fixes. Generally WordPress updates patches the wholes as far a security of your website is concerned. If you don’t want to do it for yourself, you should consider your regular readers and visitors.
2. General Improvements. Since powering this blog by WordPress almost with every major upgrade, there was an improvement in WordPress functionatily.
3. WordPress 2.5.1 makes it easy to upgrade your plugins. So much so that you can perform them with just a single click without need of downloading and uploading the newest versions of plugins you use on your blog.



4. Media Files. WordPress 2.5.1 hd improved dramatically how you upload and manage your media files: pictures, video files and audio files.



5. WordPress 2.5.1 had dramatically improve the “behavior” of WYSIWYG editor, in a way that it is not screwing up your code ans it did in previous versions. For example if you needed to embed a video from YouTube, you had to turn the WYSIWYG editor off in your profile setting while working on the post containing the video. Now you it is enough to just switch to HTML editor right in post editing window.

While all these improvements are great, there are still plenty of challenges users of WordPress are faced with. Particularly if you have never upgraded your WordPress before or need to do it by uploading your own files via FTP protocol. While many web hosting providers offer Fatastico script to install and upgrade your word press, the only how that is keeping up with providing the latest upgrade via Fantastico is Lunarpages. Other web hosts seam to be a little behind on keeping up with the latest versions of scripts available through Fantastico. Of course few hosts, Bluehost, Hostmonster and Fastdomain, have implemented SimpleScripts, allowing users to upgrade to the newest version of WordPress within hours of the release of upgrades.

If you have never upgraded your WordPress before, there is a good resource just for that for that on WordPress.org.

Thank You For Your Reviews

Since announcing new rating system following web hosting providers where reviewed by the visitors to this blog: Lunarpages, Omins and Aplollo Web Hosting. The total of six visitors have reviewed these web hosting providers, so I would like say thank you to every one of them:

Mark Taslimi of Esh.net
Lonnie of China on TV
Jeff Miller of Closing Videos
Mimi Sidwell of Jxranch.com
Chris Atkins of Linguesmex.com
Dawna Avery of Visual Testaments

Your feedback is what makes this website of mine great. There is very little value in what I provide on this website, which just basic information about web hosting providers. Your reviews and feedback is far more valuable. So I thank you for taking time and reviewing your web hosts and wish you much success in your respective businesses.

If you would like to to be thanked in the similar way all you need to do is to review your web hosting provider, if of course it is featured on this website. If your web host is not on your list, I will be happy to add it to the list. If you have previously reviewed your web hosting provider on this website, feel free to review it again as things may have changed. It may be that your had a poor impression of your web host initially, yet over the time they have improved their services. Or it may be all around.

To be featured in one of “thank you” posts, your review should contain more than just “I love this provider” or “This provider sucks”. While both positive and negative reviews are welcomed here, I will look suspiciously at shallow comments made just in attempt to gain a link to your website.

Thanks again to the most recent reviewers!

Help To Spread The Word About New Rating System

In order to serve the visitors better by providing more value several changes were implemented to this website. But before I begin to write about these changes, I would like to take this opportunity to thank every one without whom this website couldn’t exist. Who are they? Every one whose curiosity ever lead to this website. Subscribers. And most importantly those who have commented on this website, leaving invaluable feedback about web hosting providers.

New Rating System

In order to provide visitors to this blog with a more effective way to leave their feedback about web hosting providers, Review Plugin was installed and hacked in such a way that it will allow to rate any of the web hosting providers listed in the side bar. This rating will be collected on 1 through 10 scale. If you decide to give a particular web hosting provider it would mean that you had received absolutely best service. The rating widgets are just about the comment text box.

The votes will be displayed in the post next to the thumbnail of the web hosting provider’s website:

Rate Your Web Host And Receive A Link To Your Website Or Blog

I always have been always strong proponent of No-Nofollow movement among bloggers. For a long time I had a plugin on my blog that removed “nofollow” attributes from links in the comments but lately I became some what antisocial, as far as this blog is concerned. The amount of spam this blog is receiving lately is mind boggling. I felt that I had no choice but to re-introduce “nofollow” to my blog.

I will however continue to reward readers of this blog, in particular those who leave feedback about their web hosting provider. I will link back to their blogs or websites once a week on my “end of the week thank you posts”. I reserve the freedom to choose the anchor text and the page on your website should I decide to reward you with a deep link. I do however have only one request- please use your first name.

Trying to game this blog with rich anchor text will only hurt your chances, from now on I will mar such comments as spam.

Spread The Word About This Post- Receive A Site Wide Link

It is my attempt to revive the community spirit around this blog and without you I can’t do it. Every one who links to this post will receive a site wide link from the sidebar of this blog. This offer is not valid for “splogs”, websites that promote pornography or anything illegal.

Feel free to use the comments to tell me about your link.

BlueHost Offers SimpleScripts

If you are BlueHost’s customer, by now you may have received an email informing you that a new way of installing variety of web applications is now available for you- Simple Scripts:

What is Simple Scripts? Think of Fantastico Installer, which allowed you to install scripts that ended up powering your websites in just few clicks and under five minutes. Simple Scripts, a brain child of BlueHost, allows you to do the same. The difference is that Simple Scripts has the most up to date installations for WordPress, Joomla and many other similar applications. Keeping up to date some of these scripts on your website is crucial. Take for example Technorati‘s recent raid against spam. For users who are not accustomed to upload the updates via FTP, generally meant waiting several weeks for the new version to be reflected in Fantastico. By that time a newer version of the script was already released. Now clients of BlueHost, Hostmonster and FastDomain web hosting providers can have the latest updates within hours instead of weeks.

Matt Heaton announcing the Simple Scripts several days ago, had mentioned that although application is originally launched on Blulehost it is a self hosted application and that any web hosting provider can license it and use it for the benefits of their users.

I have tried to install WordPres using Simple Scripts, and it worked faster and more efficient than Fantastico scripts. However, Simple Scripts doesn’t seem to recognize the (previous) installations made with Fantastico. I did not attempt any upgrades of such installation for the fear of deleted or damaging existing databases. It would be wise if creators of Simple Scripts would write a guide of how to make this transition for Fantastico to Simple Scripts.

The new solution looks very attractive and it will not be a big surprise if other web hosting providers do not jump at opportunity to provide their clients with the latest possible applications and scripts.