HostMonster Web Hosting Package

It’s been a while since I started this blog and I guess it’s time for me to quote some of the Hostmonster customers’ feedback I got around the Internet (and in my inbox).

Positive feedbacks on Hostmonster

There are quite some good words I found on both hosting review websites and forums. Here’re some of them that I found useful and might be interesting to read. The first review is made by a guy named Michael from Canada. Michael rated Hostmonster 5 stars on hosting reliability and user-friendliness.

Michael: Hostmonster seems very good for now!

I have had this host for about a week and my first impressions are good.

I have not had any problems. Help desk is actually helpful. They called promptly to verify my account. I was not there so I called back. I waited approximately 10 seconds before I got to an operator and it was done in under a minute.

Customer support was friendly from what I’ve seen. Also, my website loads faster than with many hosts I had the occasion of working on when working on web dev. contracts. cPanel is nice and I see no major feature missing. Good impressions.

- Michael Fortin, Sept 03, 2008

Moving on, here’re some other positive feedbacks I found on WebHostingGeeks. Note that one of these comments are made by experienced webmaster, Jonathan, from AlreadyHosting.com.

Jonathan: I love Hostmonster

Like WebHostingGeeks I own a web hosting review site call alreadyhosting.com! Throughout the years I have experimented with many different web hosts and I have never been more happier with HostMonster. HostMonster’s staff is friendly and they have a great product, I give this host five stars!

- Jonathan @ AlreadyHosting.com, Sept 10, 2008

Jordan: Excellent Value, Excellent Service!

Over the last few years, I have tried a few of the top ten webhosting companies for various clients, and I have found that HOSTMONSTER has provided the best customer service, uptime and features overall. Now they offer unlimited domain hosting, and I have migrated all of my numerous accounts to Hostmonster. They are reliable and their customer service is top-notch.

- Jordan Ancel @ Tinkerstreet Creative Group, LLC from Los Angeles, Sept 26, 2008

Negative reviews on Hostmonster services

"Hostmonster sucks!"

Yeah, you’ll probably hear about this a lot when you’re searching reviews on Hostmonster. And yes, perhaps, Hostmonster really sucks! But hey, which web host doesn’t sucks? Try to search around for  negative reviews, you will notice that about every single web hosting service have complaints. From Lunarpages to Bluehost to Hostgator to 1 and 1 to…it’s not Hostmonster sucks, it’s EVERY HOSTING SUCKS!

Why am I telling you this?

When shopping for web host, you have to understand that Hostmonster, along with other host name mentioned, are big companies in hosting industry. For god’s sake they are hosting more than millions domain! Of course there are customers who are unpleased; of course they are customers who are pissed and release their hating words online.

The solution of all these is to test the host (that you are confidence in) by yourself. Watch out the hosting performance like a hawk at the first 30 days - if there’s anything fishy or something that you don’t like about, ask for a full refund and move on to others. Most reputable  hosting services have clearly-written refund policy - for example with Hostmonster, you get full-refund satisfaction guarantee for the first 30 days. Make use of your rights and find out the web host that suits you the best!

By the way, here’s a negative review on Hostmonster that I think it’s worth sharing.

Meg: Cheap Service - You Get What You Pay

HostMonster was cheap enough for me to use for my little hobby site. I was pleased by the thought of 24/7 support but in practice their tech support chat people were rude and not terribly helpful.

- Meg from USA, Sept 14, 2008.

Conclusion: Is Hostmonster good?

My opinion? Yes, Hostmonster is highly recommended! After all, I’m having all the good experience by hosting with them.

But why listen to me? I’m just another stranger on the street. What you should do is to try them out for yourself! Hostmonster runs a 30-day full refund policy - why not take advantage on that and test if Hostmonster is good or not? To order Hostmonster, click here..

Domain names is cheap. In fact, it’s too cheap that many webmasters bought too many of it and have no idea what to do with them. This is explains why I got questions on having multiple domains pointing to one single website.

So, back to the question: Can you have multiple domains pointing to the same website hosted at Hostmonster? The answer is yes, you can have multiple domains point to the same site or even to a same directory on your site.

How to have multiple domains pointing to the same website?

“But how?”, the next question follows.

Well first you have to make sure that all domains are pointing to the appropriate name servers, for example ns1.hostmonster.com and ns2.hostmonster.com for my website here. Allow sufficient time for the DNS to propogate across the Internet.

Next you’ll have to add your domains at Hostmonster - you’ll have two options for this in order to have multiple domain names pointing to the same site. Say abc.com is your main site; and you wish to have your other site, xyz.com, to point to your main site. What you can do it:

1. Redirect using parked domain

A Parked Domain is a domain name that points to the same directory as your main domain. Thus for our case, by adding xyz.com as your parked domain, the website will redirect users to abc.com everytime they come to the parked website.

To add a parked domain, you can login to HostMosnter cPanel, then go to Domain Manager > Parked Domain > Assign Domain > Choose ‘Parked Domain’ option and input all the necessary info. Click ‘Add Domain’ whenever you’re ready.

2. Website Redirect

Another way to redirect your users from xyz.com to abc.com is by setting up a redirect on the sub site. First, add your sub domain, xyz.com, as addon domain in your Hostmonster account. Next you can login to your Hostmonster cPanel account and go to “Redirect”. Key in xyz.com in the first column; and abc.com in the second column as the target of our redirect.

As reference, figure below shows the redirect setup page at Hostmonster. The setup page is actually an easy-installation on your .htaccess file.

You can setup the same operation without its help by modifying a file named ‘.htaccess’ in your server root folder. A simple code like below works the same in redirecting xyz.com to abc.com.

RewriteEngine On
rewritecond %{http_host} ^xyz.com
rewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.abc.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Alternatively, you can use a server side code to setup the redirection. A one line PHP code on top of the index file at xyz.com will work perfect.

<?php
header(”Location: http://abc.com”);
exit;
?>

As mentioned earlier, there are two script library available with Hostmonster services - Fantastico and SimpleScripts. While Fantastico is the better known automated script installer; SimpleScript turned out to be my favorite (just recently) as the installer works extremely simple and fast.

Details on Hostmonster SimpleScripts

As a followup post on my previous SimpleScript related entry, here’s the full list of scripts available in Hostmonster SimpleScripts Library.

With the help of SimpleScripts, installation of all these software is now ultra-easy and you can get it done within seconds!