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.

In web hosting, the usages of SSH are mostly meant for providing an encrypted mechanism to log into systems and transfer files – in layman’s term, a secure version of FTP connection.

Is the SSH functions available with Bluehost?

The answer is yes, Bluehost offers SSH function. However this function is not enabled by default. In order to activate shell access, you’ll need to fax or mail a copy of your driver’s license, passport or other photo id to customer service. Alternatively, you can upload the copy via Bluehost cPanel.

You’ll then need to generate or import your SSH keys in order to start using the SSH services. These SSH keys are used at Bluehost for security measure – as the private SSH key must be held to authenticate, it is virtually impossible to brute force. You can Import existing keys, generate new keys, as well as manage/delete keys.

Common SSH command

Listed below are the common command used in SSH/Secure Shell quoted from Bluehost Helpdesk.

ls : list files/directories in a directory, comparable to dir in windows/dos.
ls -al : shows all files (including ones that start with a period), directories, and details attributes for each file.

cd : change directory · · cd /usr/local/apache : go to /usr/local/apache/ directory
cd ~ : go to your home directory
cd – : go to the last directory you were in
cd .. : go up a directory

cat : print file contents to the screen
cat filename.txt : cat the contents of filename.txt to your screen

tail : like cat, but only reads the end of the file
tail /var/log/messages : see the last 20 (by default) lines of /var/log/messages
tail -f /var/log/messages : watch the file continuously, while it’s being updated
tail -200 /var/log/messages : print the last 200 lines of the file to the screen

more : like cat, but opens the file one screen at a time rather than all at once
more /etc/userdomains : browse through the userdomains file.
hit Space to go to the next page, q to quit

pico : friendly, easy to use file editor
pico /home/burst/public_html/index.html : edit the index page for the user’s website.

vi : another editor, tons of features, harder to use at first than pico
vi /home/burst/public_html/index.html : edit the index page for the user’s website.

grep : looks for patterns in files
grep root /etc/passwd : shows all matches of root in /etc/passwd
grep -v root /etc/passwd : shows all lines that do not match root

touch : create an empty file
touch /home/burst/public_html/404.html : create an empty file called 404.html in the directory /home/burst/public_html/

ln : create’s “links” between files and directories
ln -s /home/username/tmp/webalizer webstats: Now you can display http://www.yourdomain.com/webstats to show your webalizer stats online. You can delete the symlink (webstats) and it will not delete the original stats on the server.

rm : delete a file
rm filename.txt : deletes filename.txt, will more than likely ask if you really want to delete it
rm -f filename.txt : deletes filename.txt, will not ask for confirmation before deleting.
rm -rf tmp/ : recursively deletes the directory tmp, and all files in it, including subdirectories. BE VERY CAREFULL WITH THIS COMMAND!!!

last : shows who logged in and when
last -20 : shows only the last 20 logins
last -20 -a : shows last 20 logins, with the hostname in the last field

w : shows who is currently logged in and where they are logged in from.

netstat : shows all current network connections.
netstat -an : shows all connections to the server, the source and destination ips and ports.
netstat -rn : shows routing table for all ips bound to the server.

top : shows live system processes in a nice table, memory information, uptime and other useful info. This is excellent for managing your system processes, resources and ensure everything is working fine and your server isn’t bogged down.
top then type Shift + M to sort by memory usage or Shift + P to sort by CPU usage

ps: ps is short for process status, which is similar to the top command. It’s used to show currently running processes and their PID.
A process ID is a unique number that identifies a process, with that you can kill or terminate a running program on your server (see kill command).
ps U username : shows processes for a certain user
ps aux : shows all system processes
ps aux –forest : shows all system processes like the above but organizes in a hierarchy that’s very useful!

file : attempts to guess what type of file a file is by looking at it’s content.
file * : prints out a list of all files/directories in a directory

du : shows disk usage.
du -sh : shows a summary, in human-readble form, of total disk space used in the current directory, including subdirectories.
du -sh * : same thing, but for each file and directory. helpful when finding large files taking up space.

wc : word count
wc -l filename.txt : tells how many lines are in filename.txt

cp : copy a file
cp filename filename.backup : copies filename to filename.backup
cp -a /home/burst/new_design/* /home/burst/public_html/ : copies all files, retaining permissions form one directory to another.
find * -type d|xargs -i cp –verbose php.ini {} : copies your php.ini file into all directories recursively.

kill: terminate a system process
kill -9 PID EG: kill -9 431
kill PID EG: kill 10550
Use top or ps ux to get system PIDs (Process IDs)

EG:

PID TTY TIME COMMAND
10550 pts/3 0:01 /bin/csh
10574 pts/4 0:02 /bin/csh
10590 pts/4 0:09 APP

Each line represents one process, with a process being loosely defined as a running instance of a program. The column headed PID (process ID) shows the assigned process numbers of the processes. The heading COMMAND shows the location of the executed process.

Putting commands together
Often you will find you need to use different commands on the same line. Here are some examples. Note that the | character is called a pipe, it takes date from one program and pipes it to another.
> means create a new file, overwriting any content already there.
>> means tp append data to a file, creating a newone if it doesn not already exist.
< send input from a file back into a command.

grep User /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf |more
This will dump all lines that match User from the httpd.conf, then print the results to your screen one page at a time.

last -a > /root/lastlogins.tmp
This will print all the current login history to a file called lastlogins.tmp in /root/

tail -10000 /var/log/exim_mainlog |grep domain.com |more
This will grab the last 10,000 lines from /var/log/exim_mainlog, find all occurances of domain.com (the period represents ‘anything’,
– comment it out with a so it will be interpretted literally), then send it to your screen page by page.

netstat -an |grep :80 |wc -l
Show how many active connections there are to apache (httpd runs on port 80)

mysqladmin processlist |wc -l
Show how many current open connections there are to mysql

mysqldump -u username -p dbname > file.sql
MySQL Dump

tar -zxvf file.tar.gz
UnTAR file

mysql -u username -p database_name Importing MySQL database

which [perl]
Finding path to [perl]

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.

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.