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On the Friday after Thanksgiving and the following Monday, Cool Handle is literally giving away a year of hosting for free. Click the banner below on the right day(s) and you’ll be good to go:

Simply Hosting

For a limited time, get 1 cent hosting from Simply Hosting:

Coupon Codes

From MyHosting.com

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Simply Hosting promotion. Seems to be a lot of these around these days–good enough deals that it makes sense to give it a go, creating your own little cyberspace home.

Simply Hosting is a solid choice for shared hosting and is intuitive enough for your average beginner. As usual, WordPress is available for easy installs, and [...]]]>

Simply Hosting promotion. Seems to be a lot of these around these days–good enough deals that it makes sense to give it a go, creating your own little cyberspace home.

Simply Hosting is a solid choice for shared hosting and is intuitive enough for your average beginner. As usual, WordPress is available for easy installs, and it’s hard to find something simpler than that.

Before I get into the review proper, I’d like to point [...]]]> Please Note: Initial reviews are for web host companies I either haven’t tested yet, but am preparing to begin testing; or for companies where testing has already begun, but I haven’t gotten enough data to feel comfortable enough to write a final review.

On Other Reviews:

Before I get into the review proper, I’d like to point out that all of the reviews I’ve seen elsewhere on West Host (I checked only a handful that came up first on Google) are hopelessly outdated. Best I can tell, no reviewer in the top positions has even reviewed the current products offered by West Host. Worse yet, most of what comes up first are totally useless “user review” sites. What I have gleaned from these reviews, however, is that West Host was considered by many to be the cream-of-the-crop for some time as far as shared hosting goes, and then they went through a brief, difficult transition period after merging with another hosting company, which is to be expected. Most of the reviews were either pre-transition reviews or, as expected from human nature, angry reviews that took place during the transition. User reviews are ALMOST ALWAYS suspect. The same angry folks go to each review site and fire away. In almost all of these cases, these people were trying to run sites that were inappropriate to the type of hosting they had purchased. As always, don’t just read reviews with your eyes. Use your brain as well. Whenever a review is written by someone with a fascinating name like “Tiger Pudgy” or claims to have lost thousands of dollars during a few hours of down time, simply move along. In fact, whenever possible, don’t read “user reviews” at all when it comes to something as complex as web hosting.

I’ve just determined I need to do a post on “user reviews.” I’ll get to that eventually. Now on to the preliminary review of West Host.

On Scalability:

If you have read any of my past reviews, you realize that one thing I look for in a hosting company is scalability. My principal concern here is that most people who create websites have big plans. That these “big plans” rarely come to fruition is of no importance; rather, the idea that some of these “big plans” are successful is the critical possibility to consider. If you succeed in your goals, you don’t want to be thwarted by incompetent hosting; neither do you want to be destroyed by your own incompetence in selecting a host that was never designed for your big ideas to begin with. So if you are one of these persons with “big plans,” you’ll want to consider scalability as of utmost importance, and this is just the area where I suspect that West Host may shine.

For starters, if you only need a personal web site and have no great expectations, shared hosting is always a good place to go, assuming you go with the right shared hosting company. Most websites are dynamic, or built-on-the-fly from databases, (think blog and ecommerce sites) these days, and some hosts are unable to handle even the simplest dynamic site. I don’t see any particular reason to suspect that West Host is one of these troubled hosting companies. Their technology architecture seems fully sufficient, and most of their shared hosting accounts seem distinctly under-promised, which is normally a good sign. Shared hosting comes in three flavors: personal, preferred and business.

Stepping up from shared hosting you have cloud hosting, reseller hosting, and both unmanaged and managed dedicated hosting. All, like the shared hosting, come with three levels to choose from.

All told, there should be just about enough scalability for anyone.

On Pricing:

Shared hosting plans aren’t the cheapest, but who wants the cheapest? Been there, done that, got intestinal problems. Plans start at $4 per month with no set-up fees if you purchase three years up-front. Other payment options are available, with the cheapest option to get started being $44 for three months ($8 per month plus a $20 set-up fee) plus purchasing your domain name ($12 for .com for 1 year).

Cloud hosting is very well priced. With West Host, you get a VPS set-up which would be similar to Media Temple’s GridContainer. Pricing for the cloud begins at $50 per month with no set-up fees.

Reseller hosting is priced the same as the cloud hosting and has some very nice features we’ll get into in a later post.

Dedicated servers are, as usual, ridiculously priced and completely unnecessary for most everyone.

On Services:

Just some highlights:

60 day money back guarantee plus a “100% Lifetime Satisfaction Promise” which is as follows (from their website):
* We promise to work with you honestly and fairly.
* We promise to provide you with fast, helpful and friendly answers to your questions 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
* We promise to provide you with optimal uptime. Our hosting systems infrastructure will be constructed, maintained, and monitored to ensure 99.9% uptime.
* We promise to employ the highest skilled and trained support staff in the industry.
* We understand that from time to time problems may occur. We promise to address all issues promptly and courteously.
* We take our promises very seriously and will issue you an appropriate credit if we have failed to meet our end of the bargain.

24/7 U.S. based support and live chat.

Incredible flexibility with nearly unlimited scalability.

Excellent ease-of-use with cPanel with built-in FTP and one-click installs of just about any software you’d like to use. This is incredibly important if you are new to running a website.

I’m doing something wonderful right now; I’m updating this site from my iPhone. The point of this article is not to argue that this is an efficient method of updating and maintaining your website, but rather [...]]]> Note: This article assumes you are running your site with WordPress, though it likely applies to most popular platforms.

I’m doing something wonderful right now; I’m updating this site from my iPhone. The point of this article is not to argue that this is an efficient method of updating and maintaining your website, but rather that it is a convenient way to keep your site fresh during times when you are away from your computer. Depending upon the type of site you run, this could range from being an absolute necessity to simply being a good way to keep search engines happy.

Before getting into the available tools that make this task much easier, I should point out that fresh from the box with its native Safari browser, you can do nearly anything with your WordPress site, just depending on your level of sanity or desperation. Pulling up my admin page allows me access to everything but the stats table for the “wordpress.com stats” plugin. I can move widgets around, change the CSS, write new PHP, etc. It isn’t easy, but it can be done. Obviously, just because it can be done doesn’t mean it should be done, and I wouldn’t recommend experimentally crashing your site from your phone (wait till you get to your computer before you destroy your site). The best use of your smart phone as it relates to your site is general updates and, possibly, emergency maintenance.

Several tools are available in the app store that make site management from your iPhone easy. First and foremost would be the free WordPress app. With this app you can add new posts and pages, edit old posts and pages, approve or disapprove comments, and some other tasks like adding or adjusting tags and categories.

Writing on your iPhone can be done directly within the WordPress app or you may use one of any number of free or paid word processing apps. Some of these apps are made to enable faster typing, but I’ve found that, with a little practice, I’ve become quite proficient at iPhone typing, being only barely slower than on a regular keyboard. Apple’s new OS make this even easier by having a built-in spellcheck system.

Besides the WordPress and word processing apps, there are a whole array of apps you might find helpful, from photo-editing to FTP programs. Also, many web hosting companies have created their own apps that provide even more background control.

Bottom line? Being away from your computer doesn’t have to mean that you are away from your site, and that is a good thing. Just don’t let your boss catch you blogging on the football game.

NOTE: As I’ve said, the point of this site is honest help in an ocean of filled with sharks. I’m not in this to make money or friends. I call them as I see them for the benefit of my readers. All GoDaddy testing has reached a point where I confidently direct [...]]]>

NOTE: As I’ve said, the point of this site is honest help in an ocean of filled with sharks. I’m not in this to make money or friends. I call them as I see them for the benefit of my readers. All GoDaddy testing has reached a point where I confidently direct readers to look elsewhere regardless of their needs. I have not found anything, after more two years of testing, that GoDaddy does well other than marketing itself. Their Linux servers are a slow. Their “grid” is a ridiculous. Their customer service inadequate, incompetent and, especially with someone who knows what they are doing, rude. And their reseller accounts provide you with an opportunity to pay them good money to attempt to sell their inferior products. I cannot in good conscience continue to test this program for fear I might sell someone something.

So I’ve made a few posts about the GoDaddy WildWest (don’t ask me why) reseller program and intend to make some more as I start my new trial of the product, but it looks like most people just read the original review and don’t see the rest of the material that’s been provided (not that it is critical material in all cases, but it is updated); therefore I’ve decided to create sort of a centralized consolidation post. Newcomers probably still won’t see this, but for those who enjoy following the trials and tribulations of attempting to make money with the GoDaddy reseller program can bookmark this page and follow the updates from here.

The original review including some useful comments from readers: GoDaddy Reseller Review

This first update: GoDaddy Reseller Update

The second update: Reseller Update # 2

Most recent update: Reseller Trial Closed (Sort of)

I think that if there is one thing overall that I would have you know about this program it would be that you need to maintain a sense of sanity when thinking whether to try this or not. If you can’t afford to try it out but think you might make your money back quick, you better think again. This is not an easy way to make money. It takes time, trial and error, and patience; and still there is not guarantee that you will succeed. If you can throw out the money and think this would be fun to try, go for it. On the other hand, if this is your desperate attempt to get grocery money, you’d be just as well off buying 200 lottery tickets for all this will do for you in the short term unless you already have a clientele ready to go.

Basically, just use caution.