HostMonster Web Hosting Package

Shared hosting is the most common way of hosting a website. In general, a shared web hosting is a server shared by multiple users and websites. Hostmonster, for example, is a shared hosting providers. Shared web hosting is also known as virtual hosting sometimes. However, it shouldn’t be confused with virtual private server (VPS) as they are two totally different things.

How shared web hosting works?

As said, shared web hosting simply means multiple website hosted together on a same computer servers. The resources of the server – RAM, hard disk, processor, and Internet gateway – are all shared by the websites hosted on it. The number of websites hosted on a shared web host is basically unlimited. In most of the case, website on a shared hosting are sharing the server box with hundreds of other websites.

The logic behind shared hosting is simple – to minimize the cost of hosting a website without jeopardizing its performance.

What’s good about shared hosting?

Shared hosting is cheaper than all other hosting options. As the server resources are shared, the cost of maintaining the server are shared among websites owners as well.

Also, running website on a shared hosting requires less technical knowledge. The server is shared, thus all hosting accounts using it has no access to the server root folder. Shared hosting website owners simply spend less time and effort in maintaining their web server as the jobs are done by the hosting provider.

Disadvantages of shared hosting

Unfortunately, shared hosting does come with certain disadvantages. Some key cons with this type of hosting services are:

• For certain web host, shared hosting means limited disk space and bandwidth.
• Shared hosting = shared IP, you have little control to avoid your website IP from being blacklisted as spam.
• Root access is normally not available with shared hosting accounts.

Bottom line: Should you go with shared hosting?

Shared hosting is always the best options for starters and newbies in webmastering or blogging. A good shared hosting are reliable, affordable, and never short of hosting features that add values for their client’s websites. In case you are looking for an affordable shared hosting service, check out Hostmonster – they might not be the best but I think their price is reasonable and worth trying.

XOOPS actually stands for eXtensible Object Oriented Portal System. It is a web content management system (CMS) powered by PHP. The CMS is an open source software released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is free to use, modify and redistribute. The light weigth system is an ideal tool for developing small to large dynamic community websites, intra company portals, corporate portals, weblogs and much more.

Some key features of XOOPS according to the officials are:

Database-driven XOOPS uses a relational database (currently MySQL) to store data required for running a web-based content management system.

Fully Modularized Modules can be installed/uninstalled/ativated/deactivated with a click using the XOOPS module administration system.

Personalization Registered users can edit their profiles, select site themes, upload custom avatars, and much more!

User Management The ability to search for users by various criteria, send email and private messages to users through a template-based messaging system.

XSupported World-wide OOPS was created and is maintained by a team of several hard-working volunteers working from all over the world. The XOOPS community has more than dozen official support sites around the world for support of non-English speaking users.

Multi-byte Language Support Fully supports multi-byte languages, including Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Korean, etc.

Versatile Group Permissions System Powerful and user-friendly permissions system which enables administrators to set permissions by group.

Theme-based skinnable interface XOOPS is driven by a powerful theme system. Both admins and users can change the look of the entire web site with just a click of a mouse. There are also over 60 themes available for download!!

XOOPS at HostMonster

XOOPS is supported by HostMonster via Fantastico. The latest version available with the hosting service is 2.3.1. Installing XOOPS at Hostmonster is pretty easy – you’ll be asked to input some basic info such as admin access data, site name and slogan, installation path, email address and that’s all. Once click ‘Install’, the system will automatically install XOOPS and configure the necessary on a new database.

Attached above is the installation page of XOOPS at Fantastico.

HostMonster is one of the very few hosting companies that support Fantastico and SimpleScripts for auto script installation. This makes HostMonster stands out from the other hosting companies as they support a wide range of web application and scripts.

Applications supported by Fantastico

Here’s the list of scripts supported by Fantastico at Hostmonster. With the help of Fantastico, these scripts can be installed in just a few minutes. All you need to do is to input some basic configuration info (such as installation path, naming, users password, etc) and the system will helps you to setup everything including script installation and database configuration.

Applications supported by Simple Scripts

On the other hand, here’re what you can get from Simple Scripts.

Everything’s working alright with my website operation but I’m seeing MySQL failed in my server status – See mysql (5.0.75-community-log) failed at figure below. Wrote an e-mail to the supports but there’s no response back yet. I’ll contact the online chat staffs if this goes on. Besides the database errors, I’m not seeing any major issues with Hostmonster server, here’s the print screen of my server status with HM.

It’s been nearly one year since I first signed up with Hostmonster. I’m not very happy with their customer supports due to the scam alert thing and several incidents where the customer supports are not telling the truth but besides that, everything has been good with the hosting company. I remained positive with the web host. In case you are looking for a cheap yet reliable hosting and are okay with moderate customer supports (well, nothing’s perfect, right?) then you should check out Hostmonster.

In case you are new to website hosting, you’ll first need to understand what are the types of hosting services available online.

In general, you’ll see ‘shared web hosting’, ‘reseller web hosting’, ‘dedicated web hosting’, as well as ‘virtual private servers’ (VPS) in most hosting providers’ offers.

Shared Web Hosting

Shared hosting is the most common hosting ever used by individual webmasters and bloggers. A website on a shared hosting is hosted on a server that’s shared along with many other websites. Users pay a small amount of rental fees (hosting fees) to the server owners (shared hosting providers) and get to use the hardware owned by the providers. Such type of web hosting is always the cheapest and most practical for light weight websites.

Hostmonster, for example, is a shared hosting provider.

Dedicated Web Hosting

A dedicated hosting refers to the kind of server that’s used by one single website. You can either buy your own hardware (servers, network switch, etc) or rent an entire server from a web hosting company for dedicated web hosting. All computing powers and resources on a dedicated server are used by one website, this enables the website to work faster and more stable. It’s also worth noting that dedicated hosting is more secure when compare to shared hosting.

Hostmonster do not offers any dedicated hosting plan at the moment. In case you are looking for one, I suggest you to go with Hostgator as they are cheap, reliable, and have been operating for quite a while in dedicated hosting business. In brief, here are the pricing details for Hostgator dedicated hosting.

To learn more, visit Hostgator online.

Reseller Web Hosting

Reseller hosting refers to web hosting companies that allow you to resell their hosting capacity. Generally, reseller hosting allows you create your own brand name and run your own hosting business by reselling what’s the company had been offering. A reseller hosting customers get, for example, 1,000GB storage and 1,000,000GB bandwidth for a certain price. These hosting capacity is then divided into smaller part and offered to the other end users – say 100GB disk storage with 10,000GB bandwidth.

Reseller hosting service is the perfect hosting plan for those who are looking forward to start their very own hosting company. It allows you to start small without the cost of computer hardware.

Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

Virtual Private Server works like a virtual dedicated servers, where users get their own dedicated machine that’s sharing the same physical server with other websites. A VPS is the type of hosting that stands in between of dedicated and shared hosting. Websites running on VPS gets to run on its own operating system and is much stable than a shared hosting. Although it’s sharing the same resources with other VPS account, the private server can be boot and reboot independently.