What is free web hosting?

Free web hosting simply means web server space that’s available to you at no cost. Free hosting comes in many format but usually your website will be hosted on a subdomain – something like xyz.freehost.com.

Advantages and disadvantages of free web hosting

Free web hosting poses both pros and cons. The best part of free web hosting is, well, F-R-E-E. Unlike old times, free hosting nowadays come with loads of advance features (PHP, CGI, MySQL, and even unlimited email forwarding) – which is more than enough for standard websites. If you are looking for a zero-cost hosting solutions then a free web host is your choice. Free hosting services are often used for personal, non-profit organization, newbies and students’ websites. If you aren’t planning to make money from your web site, free hosting is the perfect solution.

On the other hand, most (but not all) free web hosting providers will clutter your websites with advertisements. Also, free web host is not a long term solution for those who are serious with their website as the turnover rate in this business is very fast. Also, it’s unbelievable to get 24/7 customer support when it comes to free hosting (the supports, after all, comes free).

What about paid hosting?

The option with paid hosting is not bad at all. Although you’ll need to pay for the hosting, the hosting price is not that high when compare with the features you are getting. Take Bluehost for example, users get unlimited disk storage, bandwidth, 24/7 live chat supports, as well as addon domain capacity for just $6.95/mo. Also, paid hosting allows you to get features (like Fantastico, multi domain hosting, and stats reporting) that you can’t get with free web hosting.

Free or paid hosting?

Before you decide between free or paid web hosting, you must be very clear with the basic requirements.

What type of website are you hosting? Is server reliability an important issue to you? Do you have enough budget for a paid shared hosting? Do you need extra guidance in webmastering? Will you need a lot of technical supports when it comes to web hosting? Do you need detail web statistics reporting system at your web host? Do you need extra scripts supports like ASP.net, MySQL, Java scripts, TomCat, or Ruby on Rails? It will be easier for you to decide which type of hosting is more suitable for you once these basic questions are answered.

In case you are wondering – yes, Bluehost does allow CGI script usage in their shared hosting account. As long as the scripts are not harmful to the web servers (scripts used for spamming, buggy codes that eat up server resources), Bluehost implement no limitation at all on their users CGI scripts.

Introducing CGI

CGI is the short form of Common Gateway Interface (CGI). It refers to a standard protocol that’s used for connecting external application software with computer servers (more often, a web server).

In most of the time, a CGI folder is created at the root folder of all hosting account. This folder is used to hold executable CGI applications. Essentially, CGI is the interface between a form on a web page and the web server.

A CGI application normally works in real time and is often used to output dynamic web information.

Why use CGI?

What’s good about CGI is that it ensure your program is run from the server side. Unlike usual browser based scripting like Java, JavaScripts, and ActiveX, a program using CGI ensures all users are able to use your program.

In case you wish to learn more about CGI, read Common Gateway Interface at W3.org.

Bluehost offers one set of hosting features and you have five options for the payment terms – 3, 6, 12, 24, and the new 36 months payment terms. All hosting accounts are required to be paid upfront. For 3 and 6 months hosting plan, a one-time setup fees of $30 are charged; whereas setup fees for 12, 24, and 36 months are waived.

To order Bluehost, click here (special promo: $6.95/mo)!

Refunds at Bluehost

Bluehost’s trial period is set as 30 days. All Bluehost hosting account can be fully refund in the first 30 days without questions. The setup fees and domain registration, however, is non refundable. An extra $10 will be charged on the free domain you get from Bluehost; while in case you’re buying the 3/6 months hosting plan, the $30 setup fees are not refundable.

Refunds after the first 30 days trial period

One thing that impressed me is that Bluehost is willing to refund their customers even it’s after the trial period. From what I’ve learn with their Helpdesk, all Bluehost accounts canceled after 30 Days of service qualify for a prorated refund at the monthly rate.

Example of prorated refund

Two Year 24 Month Account is $7.95 a Month x 24 months = $190.80 paid at sign up. If you cancel two months into it then you would be reimbursed at the $7.95 a month rate for a period of 22 months. Your prorated refund would be $7.95 x 22 = $174.90.

Take advantage of Bluehost refund policy!

Don’t be foolish by those who advise you to try for one or two months before getting long term with your hosting company. The advice simply sounds ridiculous with Bluehost and I’ll show you why.

Maths for Bluehost 3 months plan refund

Imagine that you go with Bluehost 3 months hosting plan. The cost you pay will be $69.85 ($9.95/mo x 3 + $30 setup fees + $10 domain registration). Say that you’re unhappy with Bluehost and decide to ask for a refund within the first 30 days, the refund you’ll get back: a domain registered under your name and $9.95 x 3 = $29.85. Loses = $40 ($69.85 – $40).

If you refund after the trial period, say the day 31st, your refund amount will be $9.95 x 2 = $19.9. Loses = $49.95.

Maths for Bluehost 24 months plan refund

Now if you read my post and go for Bluehost’s 24 months plan. The dollars you pay upfront will be $190.80 (Official price $7.95 x 24, domain fees and setup fees waived). If you refund within the first 30 days, here’s what you will get: a domain registered under your name and $180.80 ($7.95 x 24 – $10 domain registration). Money lost = $10.

Now what if you refund your 24 months plan after trial period, say again, day 31st after your purchase? Here’s how much you can refund under Bluehost pro-rated refund policy: $172.85 (7.95 x 23 – $10 domain registration). Money lost = $17.95.

Conclusion: Go for Bluehost 24 months term!

Note that the money lost in 3 months hosting plan are 300% more than a 24 months hosting plan – regardless how long you waited before you cancel your Bluehost account. My advise to all of you is to take advantage of Bluehost pro rated refund policy.

Nowadays not only blogging are popular among individual Internet users.

With the help of cheap web hosting and open source, even forums owned by individual webmaster are getting more and more active.

Topics like computer, entertainment, science, technology, automobile and politics are brought into forum for open discussion among surfers and enthusiasts.

Are you interested in starting your own forum?

Hosting a successful forum is not as hard as it used to be – at least from the technical point of view, it’s very much achievable for individual webmaster to launch and maintain their own forums.

There are a lot of factors which making a forum to be well known and successful but we are here to focus on the key factor, which will be the web hosting.

This is why many web hosting companies were being set up to provide different services to people. It is a bit difficult for us to select which one will be the best in term of cost and features given. Details study and analysis on them are essential for make everything perfect!

Following are some of the key points which maybe helpful for you to make your choice:

Web Space

Web space is the storage capacity provided by web hosting company for you to store data in the internet. When we study on this point, of cause the bigger web space supplied, the more easier and flexible for us to manage and store our data.

Out of so many web hosting companies in the world, there are plenty of suppliers which can offering mass web space with affordable price. Bluehost, for example, provide unlimited hosting capacity (and bandwidth and addon domains) in their shared hosting plan. Such features allow website owners more flexibility in handling their forums.

Free web application software

Your choice with Bluehost allow you to host with adequate MySQL , DBs and phpMyAdmin. Further more, Bluehost latest featured on Simple Scripts allow webmasters to install forum software in just a few clicks. These are useful features as it minimize the technical knowledge requirement for hosting and managing a discussion board.

In fact, I believe that the reason behind forum hosting has turned much popular compare to before is because of the development of these open-sourced forum software.

Here’s a view on the forum scripts available at Bluehost.

Server uptime

It’s basic requirement for a web host to offer reliable hosting server. You do not want your forum member’s connection to the server cut off middle in a heated discussion, don’t you?

There are quite a log of web hosting companies claim that they are offering 99% uptime, but be careful – some of these are nothing more than marketing gimmic and they just can’t deliver such much of uptimeservice.

Server uptime, in fact, is the main reason why am I suggesting Bluehost. In case you followed my previous post about Bluehost server status, you should be aware that Bluehost provide respectable server uptime thru out the years I’m with them.

Support

Almost every web hosting company does come with supports or more know as after sales services. As similar to the point 5, this can checked through forums too.

The better the supports provided the fewer headaches you will face. Thus, you can spend more time to develop your forum.

So is Bluehost recommended for forum hosting?

Well, the straight and direct answer is yes.

Listed above are just some of the opinions which may help you to select a web hosting company – which I would recommend Bluehost based on the listed requirements.

Interested to learn more on what Bluehost has to offer? Check out my detail reviews on Bluehost hosting features.

If you think United States hosting company, Bluehost, is only known within the States then you’re wrong.

Singaporean searched BlueHost the most!

Recent analysis shows that the demand outside U.S. for Bluehost is much greater than in U.S. A quick check on Google Trends reassure the statement as Singapore, Vietnam, and Taiwan are well above United States in Bluehost related search.

Usage of language

While Singapore/Vietnam/Taiwan are the top 3 countries that searched for Bluehost; English, however, remain as the dominant language on Bluehost related searches.

This is much understandable because the web hosting company’s running on an English-oriented websites. More over, most web marketers or bloggers affiliated to Bluehost are English speaking/writing.

These factors pretty much limit Bluehost to expand only in the English speaking/writing community.

However with Chinese and Spanish coming in second and third most used languages for Bluehost related searches, I suspect the hosting company will break the language barrel very soon.

Google Trends on Bluehost

More graphical trends for the nerds:

Point A:
BlueHost and HostMonster Surge Ahead with Q4 Growth Resulting in Over 700,000 Domains Hosted — FastDomain Announced

Point B:
BlueHost – Knocking on the Door of One-Million Domains

Point C:
BlueHost and HostMonster* – 1 Million Domains Hosted and Still Growing

*Do note that Hostmonster and Bluehost is run by the same management thus the stats are combined together during the press released.

What does this means to you as consumer?

Basically nothing except that the analysis shows Bluehost is trusted worldwide. And with million domains hosted with the company (Hostmonster and Bluehost), you can be assured that your web host is trusted by many other experienced webmasters from all around the world.

Thousands had chosen Bluehost, why shouldn’t you?

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.

“Is it okay to host a forum using shared hosting plan?”

People like to ask me questions when they knew that I’m in web business. The question like above is one of the most that I answered, and the answer is yes.

Do not get scared by the word ‘forum’. Although running a popular forum (imagine massive comment moderation plus spam issues plus user management plus…) can be a pretty tough job for a newbie; starting of a forum on your website, however is very easy.

With the help of Simple Script, installing a forum software at your hosting can be done in no time

Take example of PHPBB installation, all you need to is to click on the icon, key in the details for your forum (like title and admin logins) and the system will creates the database and install the forum software on your server for you. The process is pretty straight forward and direct.

More over, there’re more than just PHPBB to be installed.

You can get PHPBB, BB Press, and PUN BB using Simple Script; get SMF and PHP BB using Fantastico – all these are available when you subscribe to ANY BlueHost hosting plan.

Advantages with hosting forum at BlueHost

The good thing about hosting forum at BlueHost is that the company offers unlimited disk storage and bandwidth transfer on their shared hosting plan. That means you can run your forum without worrying about the traffic surge on your hosting. With just $6.95/mo, you’ll get all the resources you need for hosting a popular forum.

Needless to say, I am one of their happy customers.

In fact I am keen to talk about BlueHost, mainly because of the good experience I had with them as well as all the good things I heard about them from other customers.
If you’re looking for an affordable yet reliable web host with *real* quality customer support, then BlueHost is your choice. Quality customer support, minimum (nearly zero for all packages!) server downtime, reasonable pricing; they are quite perfect in my scoresheet..
My personal rating on BlueHost service

Consideration	Rating
Server uptime	Excellent
Server loadtime.	Excellent
User-friendly	Excellent
Customer support	Excellent
Security of order page	Excellent
Customer support	Excellent
Web hosting features	Excellent
Get BlueHost Promotion Now: $6.95/mo!

Further Details: Real Customers Feedback

I would like to offer you further details on BlueHost service but there’s already nothing much to talk about as I have so far, zero complaints on them. Thus I had found some other useful customer feedbacks on the hosting company for you here:

“Bluehost excels in customer service. In fact, their customer service alone makes them worthy of one’s business.They are also stable, reliable, offer very good pricing, and a great feature set. Highly recommended.” — May 23rd, 2007 by Sophia @ Web Hosting Jury.

“All and all, BlueHost seems like a good web host. The company certainly has their act together and by all means can be labelled as a top quality web host with great features and support.” — by Douglas Hanna @ Click Fire.

“My wife and I have recently subscribed to Bluehost, and as the individual working on the site etc etc all I can say is that Bluehost is a 15 out of 10 for service, space, bandwidth, ease of use, etc etc! No host compares….not even close!” — April 29th, 2007 by Dan Lirette @ Web Hosting Stuff.

Wrapping up…

I had been hosting websites with BlueHost for years and I’m still doing that by now. The reason behind this is simple: Because they are good.

So in case you’re thinking of ordering a BlueHost plan, don’t think – just do it. You won’t regret to have your website hosted with them.