Bluehost Unbiased Review
Bluehost had been in the business for quite some times and I am sure you had heard about them. In fact, I had knew them for long and have been hosting websites (including this one) on Bluehost. Of course, being well-known is different from being a good web host. The question to ask is Bluehost good? If you're hosting your website for the very first time, should you go with Bluehost?
Well to get stratight to the point, here's my takes on the question, based on my very own experience and personal preferences.
Update July 2011: This blog has been dormant for more than a year and frankly you won’t be seeing much updates here in future. I’m still monitoring Bluehost hosting closely and publish my reviews and updates at http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/web-hosting-review-bluehost/ – WHSR is a lively blog where I write about hosting reviews and various web development guides. In case you are looking for web hosting plan, you should check it out.
What's good about Bluehost?
As a long term customers with BlueHost (I’ve been using BlueHost web hosting services since year 2004), I think the top reason you should stick with BlueHost is because of their determination to stay top in their game. They are perfect in almost every aspect in my opinion - from pricing to customer support to hosting plan features, I just have no complaint on them. Needless to say, their recent promotion with unlimited disk storage/bandwidth/addon domains with just $6.95/mo is just great.
What's bad about Bluehost:
Basically none from what I see - there's nothing I can complain about Bluehost thru out the years with them. Some might worried about Bluehost being overselling due to its "unlimited" promotion but that did not bothers me so far. All my websites are doing just fine with Bluehost and I had never experience any unstable moment with their servers.
So, is Bluehost recommended?
Without doubt, YES! I had been recommending Bluehost to my friends and families for years and I'm gonna do it the same at here to you. Bluehost is recommended, regardless you're a first time or experienced webmaster; hosting a mom&pop or cooperation websites; running advance web application or just simple static HTML pages - their hosting plan just have the necessary features covered and it fits 90% of the web usages. Now in case you need more info, do check out my detail review on Bluehost hosting features at here.
Bluehost Promotion Link: $6.95/mo!
More readings on Bluehost:
10 Aug, 2008
According to the official website, Bluehost offers two versions of MySQL – MySQL 4 Servers and MySQL 5 Servers.
However, there are plenty of servers at Bluehost and these servers are sometimes, different. It’s either one of these MySQL version running on your host, but never both. You can check the version of your Bluehost account by scrolling down and checking on the left sidebar. For my case, the MySQL version running on my Bluehost account is the 5.0.45-community-log version.
How do you check the MySQL version at your server?
When you login to your Bluehost account, you will notice a sidebar at the left. Scroll down a little and you’ll get a line reads ‘MySQL Version’. That’s where you can check what version of MySQL is running on your web server.
For your references, here’s how I check mine:
6 Jul, 2008
Website backup is a must for every website, the backup process should be done regularly weekly, or monthly to avoid accidental data losses.
At Bluehost, using the backups feature allows you to download (to your computer) a zipped copy of either you entire site (your home directory, databases, email forwarders configuration, email filters configuration) or one of the previously mentioned parts of your site. These are not automatically scheduled backups. Automatically scheduled backups need to be enabled by the server owner / administrator.
Backup at Bluehost: Getting started
Login to your Bluehost hosting account. Scroll down and look for the ‘Backups’ icon under category ‘file’.
Click in ‘Backups’ and you’ll come to a page where you can back up the website of yours, or just the public_html and email filter.
Regardless of how many website you’re hosting at Bluehost, you can get them zip into a file and download it to your local PC – thus making the backup process fast and easy for all websites.
5 Jul, 2008
Yes, it’s very much possible to host a popular forum on Bluehost, even if you’re just using their shared hosting account. In fact, there’s no reason why you should go ‘dedicated’ (server) when you first start your forum.
Bluehost already have all the features you need for hosting a forum and I don’t see why, for a startup forum needs the whole server dedicated as its host. Instead, save some money for promotional expenses. You can have unlimited bandwidth and disk storage at Bluehost – so what’re you waiting for? Go flood your website with unlimited traffics.
Okay, back to Bluehost. Bluehost offers forum script like vbulletin or phbb2. Hosting a forum with these scipts is simple. The installation (via Fantastico or Simple Scripts) is almost instant, the forum maintenance can be all done with web application. In fact I used to have a forum running on Bluehost (using vBulletin) and everything goes so well, expect that I can get enough members to make the forum useful.
Installing a forum at Bluehost
So here’s how you can install a forum at your website.
Get to Fantastico or Simple Script based on your own preference. There’re two forum scripts with Fantastico, which is phpBB and SMF; and three forum scripts available with Simple Scripts, which isphpBB, PunBB, and BBPress.
Take phpBB on Fantastico as our example, to select installation for phpbb forum, simply click on the installation link and Fantastico will guide you through the installation process. Fill up a few details like Forum names and URL; the installation process should be completed within seconds.
Simple as that.
5 Jul, 2008
Awstats and Webalizer used to be an ‘auto-activated’ stats system for Bluehost cPanel.
Not anymore.
Now, if you wish to track your webstats with Awstats or Webalizer, you will need to select the log program in cPanel. Only then the stats system will start tracking and counting on your webstats.
Look for the icon named “Choose Log Program” inside cPanel.
This function allows you to choose what stats programs you will use when viewing site statistics. Take a look on the figure at your right. You’ll come to this table after you click into the ‘Choose Log Program’. You’ll have to select the kind of program you want for each website hosted at Bluehost and then press ‘Save Changes’. Expect 1 – 2 day before you can start checking your web stats.
In a glance, here’s what you can get in these stats system.
- All of the statistical reports are updated every 24 hours.
- All of the bandwidth information is updated every 6 hours.
- If you wish to compare data from each statistics program you should only compare data that is at least 36 hours old to ensure that it has been updated and is providing the correct information.
- Please note these times are estimates, and are subject to change based on the amount of traffic on the server, and that you must have stats enabled in the Stats Manager at least 24 hours before any stats will be compiled.
- Analog Stats have been deprecated. If you currently have Analog Stats enabled, they will still function, but you cannot enable them for additional domains.
1 Jul, 2008
As you guys already knew all my reviews are done according to my personal experience with BlueHost. From time to time, I like to check on the web hosting server status and occasionally I’ll printscreen the server status and share it here:
So there you go, here’s a quick view on BlueHost server status today:
To learn more about Bluehost features, visit here for my personal review; or you can check them up at Bluehost official website.
