BlueHost Web Hosting Package

As mentioned in my previous post, Bluehost offers shared SSL certs in all hosting plans. Your secured pages, using shared SSL certificate, would appear something like this: https://secure.bluehost.com/~yourunixusername.

However if you wish to have a private SSL cert then you’ll need to pay extra for the private SSL purchase.

What are needed for a private SSL at Bluehost?

To run your website on a private SSL, your website will need a dedicated IP address and a private SSL certificate. BlueHost recommends and sells exclusively Rapid SSL Cert.’s. Rapid SSL Certificates use 128 bit encryption to secure and protect your websites data from hackers, where it’s best used for accepting credit card payments online.

From what I see, another good thing about Rapid SSL is that the certification offers $10,000 of warranty in cash. The cert is as well 99% browser recognition rate where major Internet browser like IE 5.01+, AOL 5+, Netscape 4.7+, Opera 7+, Safari, Mozilla 1+, and Firefox 1+ are well supported.

The price

Rapid SSL certificate cost $45 annually; while the dedicated IP address will cost you extra $30 per year.

How to purchase a SSL cert at Bluehost?

First, you’ll need to have a hosting account with Bluehost. (Purchase Bluehost, click here for special promo link)

Then, you’ll need to contact Bluehost support for the purchase/installation of dedicated IP and private SSL certificates. To expedite your order please be sure to have or include the cPanel password and last four digits of the credit card number on file as they are required for validation.

Bluehost has recently (on mid Sept) updated their pricing structure.

You used to get the $6.95 rate if you signed up for 24 months of hosting (and paid for it in advance). That rate is now available only if you pay for 36 months. Official pricing info available at here.

Bluehost Pricing

For the ease to review, I had compiled the detail pricing info for Bluehost hosting services. Note that setup fees are totally $0 for hosting plan longer than 12 months; while hosting plan for 6 and 3 months will cost you $30 extra on the setup fees. All price listed below is shared hosting packages and websites are hosted on a shared IP.

36 Month Account $6.95 a month

• 1 FREE Domain Registration good for the life of your hosting package.
• No set up fees [$30 Savings]
• Less than $0.23 (23 cents) a day!
• $250.20 Total due at sign-up; [36 month account x $6.95 mo.]

24 Month Account $7.95 a month

• 1 FREE Domain Registration good for the life of your hosting package.
• No set up fees [$30 Savings]
• Less than $0.27 (27 cents) a day!
• $190.80 Total due at sign-up; [24 month account x $7.95 mo.]

12 Month Account: $8.95 a month

• 1 FREE Domain Registration good for the life of your hosting package.
• No set up fee [$30 Savings]
• Less than $0.30 (30 cents) a day!
• $107.40 Total due at sign-up; [12 month account x $8.95 mo.]

6 Month Account: $99.70

• $9.95 A Month
• [+] $30 One Time Set Up Fee
• [+] $10 Annual Domain Registration Fee

* $99.70 Total due at sign-up [6 mo. x $9.95 mo.($59.70) + $30 Setup + $10 Registration]

3 Month Account: $69.85

• $9.95 A Month
• [+] $30 One Time Set Up Fee
• [+] $10 Annual Domain Registration Fee

* $69.85 Total due at sign-up [3 mo. x $9.95 mo.($29.85) + $30 Setup + $10 Registration]

Optional Features at Bluehost

After your Bluehost hosting account is registered, you’ll be given the choice of other optional features such as registering additional domain names, hosting your website on a dedeicated IP, registering a private SSL certificates, as well as Postini Mail Filtering (new).

Each of these features will be charged separately. Have a quick glance on these pricing below:

• Additional Domain Names = $10.00 each year
• Dedicated IP = $30.00 each year [$2.50 mo.]
• SSL Certificates = $45.00 each year
• Expired Account Reactivations = $30.00
• Postini Mail Filtering = $1.00/mo per e-mail address

Special pricing from ReviewBluehost.com

The good thing about shopping from ReviewBluehost.com is that you get to keep $6.95 as your 24 months hosting cost! The last time I checked, all order links from ReviewBluehost.com are still on the old pricing structures – thus this means you get to save $1/mo for 24 months hosting plan.

Anyhow, I wouldn’t stress too much about this as it’s not much different holding your account for 24 or 36 months with a good host. Further more, Bluehost allows pro-rated payback in their refund policy, this means you can signup with the 36 months hosting plan and simply cancel the services whenever you feels like stopping without losing much money.

Special Pricing: $6.95/mo for 24 months plan! Order Bluehost now.

Well I’m not the only one that’s tracking on Bluehost server performance. Check out this server uptime report tracked by WebHostingGeeks, the server uptime achieved 99.8% for the past 7 days.

Bluehost Server Performance

I think this is a very sound result and would like to recommend Bluehost to anyone out there who’s looking for a shared hosting service.

Wonder how is Bluehost server performing?

Now there’s a better way than reading stranger’s blog about Bluehost’s servers – http://serverstatus.bluehost.com!

Bluehost Official Server Check

Bluehost currently run a server monitoring system that is designed to keep their customers informed of server outages. By simply typing in your domain name, you can check the web server (that you are hosting on) status and get updates about any planned or unplanned server maintenance work.

That’s a pretty cool feature that other hosting companies do not provide. Check out image below for the quick screen captured.

By the way, in case you’re not a Bluehost customer yet, you can learn more about Bluehost server performance on my previous post: Bluehost Server Status.

Are you planning to own more than one website? Here’s a cost efficient way to host multiple website: host multiple domains in one single hosting account.

Think the advice sounds too simple? Now I won’t be too sure for that! It’s true that most hosting companies nowadays enable webmasters to host multiple domain on one single hosting account; but still there’re quite some web hosts that don’t offer the same. Gate.com, for example, allows only one single domain in their standard hosting package.

Which web host offer good multiple domain hosting services?

For multiple domain hosting, Bluehost, Lunarpages, and Hostgator are some of the top well known names.

Take Bluehost for example, Bluehost users get to host unlimited addon domain in one single hosting account. The first registered domain with Bluehost is known as the main domain; and the following will be added as addon domain.

One thing to be clear is that an ‘addon domain’ is different from a ‘subdomain’. An ‘addon domain’ is a new domain that’s added on top of your main domain; on the other hand, a subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain. “mail.example.com” and “calendar.example.com”, for example, are subdomains of the “example.com”.

So how do you add an addon domain at Bluehost?

First, make sure your domain DNS is setup properly (example: NS1.BLUEHOST.COM; NS2.BLUEHOST.com). Then, login to Bluehost account control panel, go ‘Domain’ > ‘Addon Domains’ > ‘Domain Manager’.

Key in your domain name along with the desired root folder location. Note that you are given a choice of ‘Parked Domain’ and ‘Addon Domains’ in the setup page. A ‘Parked Domain’ simply means a redirect domain for another – users who visit a parked domain will be transferred to other (intended) domain; in our case, select the option ‘Addon Domains’.

Simply click ‘Add Domain’ once you are ready and you are now done. Pretty simple.

Bluehost upgraded their hosting plan since May 2008. That’s about 4 months ago and guess what, there’re still many who’re unclear about this latest offer.

Bluehost Upgraded Hosting Plan

Back then, Bluehost’s hosting offer was limited. I still can recall I was hosting on a 300/3,000 GB (storage/bandwidth) hosting capacity with a limited 5 addon domains for a single account.

Not now.

Starting May 2008, BlueHost is offering unlimited web storage space, bandwidth transfer, and unlimited addon domain capacity for all the shared hosting plan.

The offer is quite a shock in the industry as you can now stuffs all your web files into your hosting without worrying it exceeds your package limit.

And the best of all, it’s just $6.95/mo!

What can you do with Bluehost unlimited offer?

Well of course Bluehost is banking on the fact that webmasters will not be silly enough to move all their files to the web server. Rather, I suspect that they are expecting web owners to switch and to host all of their websites under one single hosting account.

In fact, that’s what can you do as well. We were used to host not more than 6 websites under one hosting account in the past; but for now, the limitation vanished.

Stop wasting extra money for the web host. With this “unlimited offer” by Bluehost, you are recommended to take the features for granted and host multiple domain under the same hosting account. Yeah, this means you can aave some green, dude!

One thing I like so much about Bluehost is their commitment to the customers. The recent installation of SimpleScripts is another prove of Bluehost’s determination to stay top in the web hosting industry.

Hey, what’s SimpleScripts?

SimpleScripts is pretty similar with the in-famous Fantastico; expect that it works faster and covers more web scripts in their library. It is a one-click installer of web applications for Blogs, Photo Albums, Online Stores, Forums, Wikis, and more.

Installation/updating of blog/CMS software like WordPress and Joomla used to be complicated but not with SimpleScripts anymore. With the smart installer function, SimpleSripts will automatically checks to make sure your web host is compatible upon installation; also, web software updates are done within seconds as SimpleScripts will take care of all the dirty work back scene.

List of web applications in SimpleScripts

Here’re the web applications SimpleScripts can help install at Bluehost:

BluehostReview.com is not the only website about Bluehost. In fact, there’s plenty of other websites/blogs that are eyeing on Bluehost hosting service like a hawk. One of the well-established Bluehost review websites is BluehostReview.org (yeah, it’s domain is pretty the same as mine~) and they have been tracking Bluehost server uptime for quite some time.

Listed below is the server uptime for BluehostReview.org at June which I believe is a very good reference for those who’re thinking of buying Bluehost.

Note that Bluehost server uptime achieved 99.731% for June and the server response time is well below 0.3 seconds – which both are pretty good results.

It’s fundamental that website has to be backup regurlarly. Although backup work are kinda redundancy work but it’s crucial to avoid accidental data losses.

Backups at Bluehost

The backups features in Bluehost allow you to download a compressed zip files of either your entire website to your local PC. The ingredient of the zip files include your website home directory, databases, email forwarders configuration, as well as email filters configuration.

Sounds pretty easy huh? Yeah sure it is. However, note that the backup process mentioned here are not done automatically. You’ll need to work it out manually and I’m going to show you how here.

Whenever you’re logged into your Bluehost cPanel, scroll down and search for the icon named Backups. Click in and it’ll bring you to the backup main page.

At the backup main page, you’ll be given two main options: To perform a full backup of your website; or to perform a partial backup. A Full Backup function will allow you to create an archive of all the files and configurations on your website; while the Partial Backup function allows you to download individual directory, MySQL database, email forwarders, or email filter settings.

PrintScreen of the full backup page:

For partial backup, all you need to do is click on the file name you wish to backup; while for full backup, you’ll need to generate the full backup files (might take a few minutes) and save it to your local PC.

Bluehost Backup Wizards

Another option for backing up websites at Bluehost is to do it with the Bluehost Backup Wizards. The wizard system is built to ease your backup work and everything can be done by just one click.

At Bluehost, using the backups feature allows you to download (to your computer) a zipped copy of either you entire site (your home directory, databases, email forwarders configuration, email filters configuration) or one of the previously mentioned parts of your site. These are not automatically scheduled backups. Automatically scheduled backups need to be enabled by the server owner / administrator.

Backup at Bluehost: Getting started

Login to your Bluehost hosting account. Scroll down and look for the ‘Backups’ icon under category ‘file’.

If you think you need complicated coding work and tedious maintenance procedure to host a website then you’re wrong. As the open-source software development flourished, various version of Content Management System (CMS ) are available free for download and usage.

What’s a CMS?

There are lots of different definition for the CMS however in our case, a CMS simple means a computer application used to create, edit, manage, and publish web content in a consistently organized fashion. Generally CMS are very user friendly thus people who’re not familiar with web programming to publish and maintaining web content easily.

What are the CMS you can get at Bluehost?

At Bluehost, there are a long list of free CMS. These CMS are ready to be installed within a few clicks with the help of Fantastico and Simple Scripts.

For instant, here’s the list you’ll get from Fantastico in Bluehost.

• Drupal
• Geeklog
• Joomla
• Mambo Open Source
• PHP-Nuke
• phpWebSite
• phpWCMS
• Post-Nuke
• Siteframe
• WordPress
• Xoops

Bluehost hosting also support other cms content management, for example moodle or pligg social bookmark script, and more.

My personal preferences on Content Management System (CMS)?

I used to work long hours on Dreamweaver and Zend to create my websites before I tried WordPress. Not that I didn’t know about all the CMS available free online nor they are not good; but I am being really picky with the CMS features.

Well then again, WordPress came into the picture and everything’s just changed.

People who knew me well should know that I’m a big fans of WordPress. WordPress is often known as a blog scripts rather than a CMS. However this is a very wrong perception because WordPress nowadays had revolved into something more than just a blog scripts. In fact, the reason I picked WordPress as my favourites is because that the folks in WP had made the scripts more powerful ever than any CMS in the market. WordPress websites are extremely user-friendly, easy to SEO, convenient to be maintained, stable, and there are tons of free addons (plugin).