Manipulative-Witch.com


Looking for hosting can be a pain in the rear, I know.. I was looking for hosting for a while before I found these guys. The only thing I was sure of was that I wanted one with the fantastico scripts as I really wanted to get a Menalto Gallery again and at that time didn't feel comfortable doing it all manually. I trawled around a lot of hosting reviews sites and plans before I came down to just 2 and what made me choose Bluehost was the customer service. The other company had really bad reviews about its Customer Service and since this was the first time in a long time I'd had to set up my own hosting I wasn't too keen to get caught with my pants down and no CS in sight. Normally my sites were hosted at wherever we were .. but when WE became divorced ... we's network and hosting admin went one way and I went another and so it came time for me to do it myself. I really haven't had any problem at all.. in fact I'm surprised it's all run as smoothly as it has. I expected a glitch here and there and I haven't had any. Customer Support have always been polite and helpful, with any questions I had. The online help is ok... nothing spectacular but hey.. every customer has different needs so covering them all online would be a big job. The pricing is great and although I am used to more disk space, I'm really not having an issue and am nowhere near even a quarter into my allowance ...and that's hosting a bunch of sites including this one with the gallery. I deliberately kept my gallery pictures smaller to conserve disk space as I know I have a lot more to add to these sites as time goes on, but still I was surprised how little impact its having on my disk space and bandwidth allowance. Still the sites are new so traffic is minimal for now... and if need be I'll be more than happy to buy more hosting with these guys. One thing I was impressed with was the excess charges; if you do go over your bandwidth allowance.. it's way cheaper than anyone else usually is so in the event I ever go over, I wont need a mortgage to pay my bill. And the cool thing is you can very easily see all of your statistics at a glance and if you check several times daily as I do, you don't have much chance of some idiot trying to run your bandwidth through the roof. I remember one guy who added an MP3 to his site and someone posted a link to it and he ended up with a bill for over $18,000 before he knew what was happening... DOH ! silly boy One of the other cool things about Bluehost is they actually run a decent referral system, so if you do think this is a good host and what you are looking for please A use my link banner to the right and B don't forget to sign up yourself. I'm pretty fussy about what is on my site; so other than a few things I personally use and recommend and Google ....most of the banners and stuff are not paid referral ones just stuff I think is cool and useful. So far no one who has signed up with Bluehost through me has had any complaints... and it's got some great features. I signed up for the year and got my free domain and I wasn't concerned at all about being in for the year... it's definitely got some of the best reviews out of everyone I looked at and it's proved to be a nice solid hosting package so far. I really like the amount of DB's they give you, this has proved very useful since I run more than one site. I'm not really a DB kind of person but the scripts they have for you in Fantastico make it pretty damned simple even for me. Hell I even installed a PHP script manually and surprised the heck out of myself when it worked... now customizing said script isn't so easy... but that's just because I want mine to do more and don't have much PHP experience.. but the basic installation etc was pretty easy. The only thing I missed with this host is I would have liked ASP too.. but that is only because the particular forum I like is ASP based and the other PHP one I like isn't free. But other than that.. so far I haven't found anything I need that this hosting package provides.. the opposite in fact.. it lets me do more than I even want or need to... which is cool as I might get to add in new ideas and try new stuff later as I progress. This hosting pretty much has it all.. no matter if you are new to hosting or an old hand. I even impressed a few of my techie mates with my choice of hosting so I know that is a good sign.. cos they are a bunch of fussy buggers who usually do their own. The other feature which I love is the stats packages they have .... I like to keep track of my stats to head off problems and keep track of what's popular or broken links, make sure my site design is ok for the most popular configurations etc. The choice of stats available with Bluehost run from basic to in-depth and I confess to using about 3 different stats on mine... Sitemeter which is not part of the hosting for the real basic at a glance stuff and the provided stats if I see something I think needs more investigation. Webalizer, Awestats, Latest visitor are just a few of the ones you can choose from on Bluehost and they separate all of the subdomain and addon domain stats so each one gets it's own reports. Very very useful :)
FEATURES INCLUDED / ALL ACCOUNTS INCLUDED Disk Storage (NOW EVEN MORE!) 10 GB Free Domain Name Support International Domain Names POP3/POP3 Secure Email Support 2,500 IMAP/Secure IMAP Email Support 2,500 3 Different Web Based Email Solutions 2500 Forwarding Email Accounts Unlimited Email Autoresponder Unlimited Gigs of Site Transfer (NOW EVEN MORE!) 250 GB/mo - more than enough for most people Add-on Domains 5 - perfect for people like me with more than one site Parked Domains 20 Subdomains 20 - subdomains are very easy to set up Additional FTP Accounts 1,000 MySQL Databases 50 PostgreSQL Databases 10 CGI-BIN CGI Library PHP Support Perl Support Server Side Includes Frontpage 2000/2002/2003 Extensions Account "Control Panel" - The control panel is great, very easy to use FTP Access Shell Access (SSH) Override .htaccess Support - stop root directory browsing :) Anonymous FTP Webmail (Browser Based Email) Log Files + Site Stats - Couldn't live without it, latest visitor, awestats,webalizer ++ Customizable Error Pages Web File Manager Custom Cronjobs Hotlink Protection -stop people linking to your content unless you allow specific sites Spam Assassin Protection State of the art drag and drop sitebuilder (Pagewizard) NEW !!!!!! Fantastico Script Support - FREE WEBSITE PLUG-IN SCRIPTS INCLUDED These scripts are pretty cool and simple to install and update. 50 databases lets you install them more than once if you have several domains hosted here. I've installed the gallery, guestbooks and blogs and forums on various domains .. all very nice and easy. Bulletin Board (Message Forum) -phpBBis the one I use, not my favorite but still good. Form-mail Script PHP Nuke Guestbook Chat Bloggers (Web Blogs) -There are a few options and I've installed on sites for others Mailing Lists Image Galleries -Menalto Gallery is the one I use here, others are available too Poll/Survey Web Auctions Help Center/Support Ticket Many, Many Others... E-COMMERCE FEATURES INCLUDED SSL Secure Server OS Commerce Shopping Cart Agora Shopping Cart Free Generated Certificate Password Protected Directories OpenPGP / GPG Encryption MULTIMEDIA FEATURES INCLUDED Supports Streaming Video Supports Streaming Audio Real Audio & Video Support Flash Support Macromedia Shockwave MIDI File Support Add Own MIME Types WORLD CLASS TECHNOLOGY INCLUDED High Performance Xeon Servers Customized Apache Web Server UPS Power Back-up, Diesel Back-up Generator 24/7 Network Monitoring Mirrored Storage Backups OC-48 Backbone Connection SITE PROMOTION INCLUDED Search Engine Submission FREE Search Keyword Analyzer FREE Search Engine Position Report FREE
Webmail options include Neomail, horde and squirrelmail
Fantastico scripts included - taking the hassle out of installing for the non techs
	Blogs b2evolution Nucleus pMachine Free WordPress Content Management Drupal Geeklog Mambo Open Source PHP-Nuke phpWCMS phpWebSite Post-Nuke Siteframe Typo3 Xoops Customer Relationship Crafty Syntax Live Help Help Center Live osTicket PHP Support Tickets Support Logic Helpdesk Support Services Manager Discussion Boards phpBB2 SMF E-Commerce CubeCart OS Commerce Zen Cart F.A.Q. FAQMasterFlex Guestbooks ViPER Guestbook Hosting Billing phpCOIN Image Galleries 4Images Gallery Coppermine Photo Gallery Gallery Mailing Lists PHPlist Polls and Surveys Advanced Poll phpESP PHPSurveyor Project Management dotProject PHProjekt Site Builders Soholaunch Pro Edition Templates Express Wiki TikiWiki PhpWiki Other Scripts Dew-NewPHPLinks Moodle Noahs Classifieds Open-Realty phpAdsNew PHPauction phpFormGenerator WebCalendar











As you can see they have so many scripts there is bound to be something to suit you, whether its for business or personal sites. Everything from real estate sales scripts, to photo gallery's and blogs. They even have a dummy control panel you can go and poke round in to see what all of the features are. They are pretty well organized when it comes to providing information about there hosting packages and what is included, which a lot of hosting sites could well do with following. Some hosts are abismal at telling you what you get for your money... If you have any questions about the packages the customer support are always helpful no matter how silly the questions get... so don't be afraid to ask. The only thing is the Fantastico scripts are not supported by Bluehost so if you need help with those they link to the developers sites and most of them have great info and support forums and people are always happy to help the new guys out. All in all if you need hosting this is the one I'd recommend to people... but it all depends on you and your needs... so go check them out.