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.

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.

In case you had installed WordPress at Hostmonster via Fantastico, be aware the version available is quite outdated (WP 2.6.5). It seems that folks at HM is not updating scripts at Fantastico as often as they do for SimpleScripts.

What to do if your WordPress is installed with Fantastico?

For those who had WordPress installed via Fantatico, the fastest way to keep your WP blog updated is by switching your installation from Fantastico to SimpleScripts. There are several ways to migrate your installation from Fantastico to SimpleScripts and the old methods used to be tedious and very risky.

However things are improved by now as SimpleScripts provide a one-click switching utility at their control page. To start switching, simply login to your Hostmonster cPanel and get to SimpleScripts control page. Click on ‘WordPress’ and scroll down once you reach at the installation page for WordPress. You’ll see a link under the title ‘Convert a Fantastico installation’.

Click in and select the WordPress you wish to convert. Click convert to proceed and everything should be done in seconds. By the time your WordPress installation is converted from Fantastico to SimpleScripts, login back to your WordPress installation page at SimpleScripts for the updates.

The switching process is pretty simple but it takes a few more steps than the usual for a standard WordPress updates. In case you need help, please do not hesitate to post your questions here. I’ll try my best to help.

Don’t be fooled by some unethical Hostmonster affiliates that tell you Hostmonster users are getting free web templates downloads. There are quite a lot of blogpost and articles promoting Hostmonster’s hosting services by listing ‘Free Web Templates by DreamTemplate‘ as one of the incentives for Hostmonster sign ups.

The truth about Hostmonster’s free web templates

However, that’s not the truth entirely.

When HM users sign into their cPanel, they’ll see a link pointing to DreamTemplate at the top of the page (refer figure below) under ‘Partners’ category.

From my understanding the link works as strategic partnership for Hostmonster with DreamTemplate, where HM users are referred to DreamTemplate for web templates download. It’s in fact good to have the link embedded in the cPanel interface as it provides a short cut for the users who are in need. Unfortunately, the smart (but unethical) HM affiliates create an ‘illusion’ that confuse consumers that this is a special promotional item.

So hey, if you’re signing up HM because you think there’re free templates to be grabbed – don’t. The offer with Dream Template doesn’t get any better for HM users. DreamTemplate users get the same package with the same price ($59.95) with or without a Hostmonster memberships.

About DreamTemplate

DreamTemplate offers unlimited downloads on various templates (Web, Flash, Word, PowerPoint, Clipart, and so on) with just one time payment. At the time of writing, there are over 3,000 web templates available in the company stock. You can visit DreamTemplate.com to learn more.

I had updated you guys on my Hostmonster server performance for the past few months. You can find the server performance report here , here , here , and here .

As I’m not the only one tracking on Hostmonster server status, here’s the Hostmonster server report by WebHosting-Analyse . Note that Hostmonster hit a record of 99.59% server uptime for the first week of October. The server performance seems excellent and it’s proportional with my record.

In case you wish to learn more about Hostmonster server performance and uptime review, why not check out Hostmonster yourself? After all, they have a very clear refund policy and you can refund on your order if you find anything improper with them.

Also, at the time of writing, Hostmonster is giving out *huge* promotion to win market segment in hosting industry – you’ll get unlimited bandwidth/disk storage/addon domains for all their customers with just $6.95 $5.95/mo (latest updates, on promo).