Setup time for my VPS account was about 3 hrs. You also get 2 private nameservers, so you can have nameservers like ns1.mysite.com and ns2.mysite.com. If you are a web hosting reseller, this makes your hosting company look more professional and hides the fact that you are actually a reseller.

My main purpose for using this KnownHost account was to transfer over one of my WordPress blogs. I did run into a few issues getting my account running smoothly, so I’m going to document some of the steps I had to take below. Fortunately, KnownHost support has been really good so far. I’ve sent 5 or 6 support tickets already, and they’ve all been answered within 15 minutes.

Getting Started with KnownHost

When your KnownHost account is setup, you should receive a welcome email with your Login information. You’ll get your private nameserver info, your cPanel WHM login info (if you added cPanel) and your Parallels Power Panel login info.

To get your cPanel working the first thing you should do is login to WHM. First create a package for yourself (Packages >> Add Packages). Then create a new account for yourself (Account Functions >> Create a New Account). In there, just put in your domain details, username, password, and the package you created.

For some reason, after doing this, I still had some problems logging into my cPanel. When I went to the url, I would get this message:


Internal Server Error

Could not fetch uid or gid for : root


It took me awhile to figure this out. It seems like my browser (Chrome) had cached something and was trying to login to cPanel as root. I eventually switched over to Firefox, and was able to login to my cPanel that way.

After getting my WordPress transferred over, I encountered one other issue. I was using the W3 Total Cache plugin on my site, and it was no longer working. Every time I tried to install it again, it would complain that it couldn’t create a folder it needed. I checked my permissions, and they looked fine.

I contacted KnownHost support about this issue. It turns out by default, PHP is running as a DSO on my server, and the WordPress plugins are running as the apache user. This is why they were having these permission issues. To resolve this issue, they had to enable suPHP on my server, which enables PHP scripts to run under the ownership of the account user. To check if suPHP is running on your server, you can login to WHM and go to Main >>> Service COnfiguration >> Configure PHP and SuExec >> PHP 5 Handler.

Anyway, I’m not sure that these are KnownHost specific issues, so I hope this info will help others. It was a good opportunity to test out the KnownHost support response times, and I have to say I’m pretty happy with them so far. I just switched over from another web hosting company where support requests were answered in hours, if not days. So sub 15 minute response times is pretty good.

KnownHost homepage

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How would you like to speed up your site performance as well as protect your site from spammers and attackers? Oh, and do it for free too. Although this probably sounds too good to be true, a new service called CloudFlare claims to do all this an more. According to CloudFlare, on average, a website using their service will load 30% faster, use 60% less bandwidth as well as being way more secure. All you need to do is make a simple change to the DNS settings on your registrar, and you can start experiencing these benefits right away.

Getting Setup With CloudFlare

Does CloudFlare work? Well I decided to test it for myself on this very site.

Signing up for an account is very simple. Just enter in your email, username and password.

You then need to go through a 4-step wizard.

Step 1 instructs you to enter in your domain name.

CloudFlare will then scan your current DNS setup. This takes about 60 seconds, and during this time, you get a nice introduction to how CloudFlare works. Steps 2 and 3 then allow you to edit the settings that it has found and Step 3, allows you to configure your CloudFlare settings.

Finally Step 4 tells you to to update your name servers. For most people, this is probably the only step you have to worry about.

Since my domain is registered over at Namecheap, I had to go over there to change the name server settings from their control panel. So instead of pointing to my existing web host’s name servers, they now point to the CloudFlare name server instead.

That’s pretty much it, your website will then be added to your CloudFlare account.

From your CloudFlare account, you will now be able to see real time analytics for your site. While this is not really a replacement for Google Analytics or similar service, it is interesting in the fact that it shows what threats have been blocked and what resources have been saved while using CloudFlare.

Keep in mind though, it can take up to 24 hours for CloudFlare to start speeding up and protecting your site as it takes time for your name server settings to propagate.

Lastly, if you are using WordPress like this blog is, make sure to install the CloudFlare WordPress plugin. This will restore your original visitor IP addresses to your WordPress logs (instead of showing CloudFlare’s proxy IPs). It also optimizes your server database and ensures that everything is running smoothly.

As you can see, CloudFlare is quite simple to setup and use. It’s completely free, so why not try it and speed up and protect your site?

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Hostgator is probably the most popular web hosting company in the shared hosting space today. Why? Customer service and reliability. These are the two most important criteria for choosing a good web host, and Hostgator really delivers. They’ve been in business since 2002 since they were based out of a dorm room in Boca Raton, FL, and they are now based in Texas with over 400,000 customers. Not only do they offer shared hosting services, but they also offer reseller, VPS and dedicated web hosting plans as well.

Shared Hosting Plan Features

All of Hostgator’s shared hosting plans include the following features:

• Unlimited Disk Space, Bandwidth
• Shared SSL Certificate
• Site Builder
• 24×7 Support
• Instant Backup of your cPanel account
• No contracts and no hidden fees
• 99.9% Uptime
• 45 Day Money Back Guarantee

There are three different Hostgator shared hosting plans: Hatchling, Baby, and Business. The Hatchling plan is for customers who only need to host a single web site. Hostgator’s Baby Plan is probably the most popular plan, and it offers you hosting for unlimited domains for $9.95 a month. This is the plan I usually recommend to most people.

All of shared hosting plans come with the industry standard cPanel to manage your web hosting account. From here, you can monitor all the resources that your web hosting plan is using, plus create email accounts, add domains, and set up MySQL databases. It also includes access to Fantastico, which lets you install popular scripts like WordPress, phpBB2, ZenCart and a host of other scripts.

Hostgator Experiences

I have 50+ websites hosted with Hostgator currently, and I’m constantly impressed by their stability over the past few years. Outages are few and far between, which I can’t say about many other web hosts that I have used. Support is fantastic via chat and email. Hostgator’s entire support staff is located in the US, so you don’t have to deal with the issues that outsourced support causes. Tickets are responded to in minutes, and not hours, and the staff is very well trained and has been able to solve all of the issues I have encountered.

Hostgator Discounts

At $9.95 a month for their Baby Plan, Hostgator is definitely not the cheapest web host around. However, there are plenty of Hostgator coupon codes you can apply to save some money. Use the coupon code: TOPWEBHOSTING2011 to save $9.94 off of your first month’s hosting. By using this code, you can get your first month’s hosting for a single penny! You can also check out this Hostgator coupon site for other discounts and coupon codes.

Conclusion

Choosing your next web host based on price is one of the worst mistakes prospective web host buyers can make. Instead focus on reliability and customer instead, and you will be much happier in the long run. This is what Hostgator offers, and I have no problems recommending them.

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Bluehost is one of the oldest web hosting companies around. They’ve been hosting websites since 1996, and have been growing ever since. They are well known for their combination of affordable web hosting and reliability. Unlike other web hosting companies which offer a variety of different plans, Bluehost only has a single shared hosting plan, which caters to small business owners and individuals.

BlueHost Plan Features

For $6.95 a month, the Bluehost shared hosting plan offers:

• Unlimited Disk Space and Bandwidth
• Unlimited Add-On Domains
• Free Domain Name
• cPanel Access
• SSH Access
• SimpleScripts script installer
• VPS Protection

While this feature-set is pretty common with other shared web hosts, BlueHost does offer a unique feature called Hosting Resource Protection. This is a technology that BlueHost has developed in-house, that provides resource protection for your shared hosting account.

With most shared hosting accounts, reliability can be lacking because you are sharing a server with other users. If someone else on your server starts using too much CPU, memory or other resources, it could cause your own sites to slow down, or even worse, go down. With BlueHost’s Hosting Resource Protection, you are shielded from this type of situation which means better reliability for your sites. Basically you get VPS level resource protection at a shared hosting price.

My BlueHost Experience

I setup a BlueHost account several months ago, and I currently have a couple of websites hosted with them. So far, the reliability seems great and I haven’t had any outages since I’ve joined. I haven’t had to deal with support much, so I don’t really have anything bad to say about them.

Conclusion

All in all, Bluehost is a reputable web hosting company that offers good web hosting service at an attractive price. If all you’re looking for is a reliable shared web hosting plan, then definitely give BlueHost a look.

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1. Hostgator Review