Sign Up For Cheap Hosting

I have been using HostMonster for years now. I've used several over the years and HostMonster consistently has, at least for me, the most reasonable rates and the best uptime.

I know choosing your host provider is impacted by man things. Many of those are subjective, some are objective. I can only tell you about my experience.

I'm running a dozen or so web sites from a single account. You get unlimited space and bandwidth with no extra fees. Now there are rules about this. You can't try to compete with youtube or dropbox and not expect to have to pay for it. However for most web sites, the storage and bandwidth is way more than enough.

The price is pretty awesome too. I think the standard price for a good package is $4.95 per month. That's what I originally signed up for. Once I was in, I found they often offer extremely good deals. I ended up paying for several years at once for, if I remember correctly, around $3 per month. That's pretty sweet.

You also get cPanel and SimpleScripts. That's kind of expected I know but I want to verify that for you.

Language-wise you get PHP, Perl, Ruby, and Python. You also get both MySQL and PostgreSQL. You don't get Java but almost none of the providers I know support Java. It's just too resource intensive.

You get multi-media support like shockwave, realmedia, flash and other video streaming support. Unlimited email and ftp accounts and a lot more. You really should check it out.

If you use my affiliate link, I'll get a few bucks so please think about doing that,.

Thanks.

Use Blogger or Install a Blog on Your Own Site?

I was recently asked this question:

Do you find that its beneficial to start a blog on the blogger platform versus installing it on your own site?

My opinion on this has changed in the last few months. I used to think that blogger or wordpress.com were "good enough". I now think you should host your own blog on your own domain. My only reason for this is the amount of control you have by doing so.

I have started several new blogs (on tech topics) on my own domains. I chose wordpress a my blog software. The number of plug ins that help me format and control my blogs is amazing. I don't want to spend a lot of time tweaking and with these plug ins, it's mostly install and move on.

NOTE: Don't confuse wordpress with wordpress.com. Wordpress is a blogging package (that you can get from wordpress.org). Wordpress.com is a hosting service that uses wordpress as it's blogging software. You can use wordpress the software on your own domain and if you chose wordpress.com as your blogging provider, you will be using wordpress the software (and can ONLY use wordpress the software).

From talking to family, friends, peers and co-workers, I don't think most people care about the domain being a custom domain or the blogspot domain. I have read some bloggers who feel that a custom domain gives you a certain amount of legitimacy that a blogspot or wordpress domain wouldn't. I don't agree.

So, the short answer is that if you want a very quick start up with no muss and no fuss, blogger (or one of the other hosted domains) is a perfectly fine choice. If however, you are like me and want the additional control, you should buy a domain and install your own blogging software. All of the major blogging packages are incredibly simple to install and most web hosters offer additional assistance in the option of cPanel and SimpleScripts.

LewisC

Technorati : blogger, blogspot, domain, hosting, wordpress