Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Oscommerce - New Blog

I am starting a new blog about OScommerce which ia cool open source shopping cart program you can check it out here, it runs awesome on Hostmonster

http://oscommerce-shopping-cart.blogspot.com/

Regards

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Website Design

Just a quick post to say that a friend of mine started to build his site, he is a web designer and I told him to host with HostMonster which he did.

Gold Coast Website Designer

So I will see what he has to say about the HostMonster hosting company after he has been using them for a while

Monday, May 5, 2008

Current Rating of HostMonster

HostMonster Review Update & Plan Change.

Since I started using HostMonster over three years ago I have simply had the best service one could ask for.

I haven't had any downtime like I had at my previous website hosting companies.

When HostMonster suddenly increased their disk space and bandwidth I was pleasantly surprised.

They increased it to a whopping 1,500GB of disk space and 15,000Gb Bandwidth. Previously they had been offering 300GB disk space and 3000GB of bandwidth.

You can read a little bit more about Web Host Bandwidth / Data Transfers here.

I don't know many people that would out grow that amount of disk space and bandwidth anytime soon. In fact I would say 99% of websites would never use that much bandwidth or disk space.

Shopping Carts

A lot of people these days are in need of a shopping cart, thankfully HostMonster provides a variety of solutions. Personally I have always used OS commerce and I know the program back to front. I find the community exceptionally helpful and the application itself amazing.

I have written an article on HostMonster and Oscommerce here.

Another shopping cart solution that HostMonster offers is Agora Shopping Cart. This is another powerful open source shopping cart solution that I think will please a lot of people.

Again I have written a page about HostMonster and Agora Shopping Cart here

HostMonster servers

Many people ask about HostMonsters servers as they would like to know if they are leading the industry in what they are providing the community.

I am happy to announce the HostMonster are using quad processor Xeon Servers, rack mounted units with four Intel Xeon processing chips per server.

HostMonster Free domain name

HostMonster offer free domain names when you create an account. This is great news for businesses and I have written a little bit more about it here. Free domain names.

Host monster - website statistics

Website statistics is important to any business looking to increase traffic and see what their business is doing on the internet. I have written an article about Hostmonster Statistics here.

Hostmonster - Page Wizard

For most businesses looking to go online the cost of website development is a big issue. Thankfully HostMonster has a program to easily build you own website that any novice can use you can have a look at a brief overview here of Hostmonster and Page Wizard.

Host monster Support For Custom PHP.INI Files

If you don't know what a PHP.ini file is then this may be a little over your head, put simply servers have configuration files that set limits on what can and cannot be done. HostMonster allows you to modify your own PHP ini file so that you have complete control.

You can read a liitle bit more about HostMonster PHP ini files here.

HostMonster email accounts and spam

Big, big problem on the internet today is that pesky spam. HostMonster have a solutions in place so you are full equipped to handle those little monster emails.

Appropriately title SPAM ASSASSIN will help you win the war on spam.

Read more about Hostmonster and Spam here

Hostmonster SSL certificates and Unique IP's

If you want to take payments online you need an SSL certificate or security certificate. HostMonster provides them for you and excellent customer service to boot.

Read more about HostMonster and SSL certificates here.

Host Monster limit on emails

Most hosting companies these days are trying to win the war on spam and one tool they have is to limit the amount of spam emails anyone can send. By default HostMonster only allows you to send 50 emails but shoot them a quick email and they will increase it to 500.

Read a little bit more about HostMonster and Emails here.

HostMonster bonus features with all accounts

Everyone likes freebies and HostMonster offers some great ones.

Bulletin Board (Message Forum)

Form-mail Script

PHP Nuke

Guestbook


Web Blogs/Wordpress/b2evolution

Mailing Lists

Image Galleries/Coppermine

Poll and Survey Software


Moodle

Mambo and Joomla

phpForm Generator

You can read all about the freebies being offered by HostMonster here

Website Hosting Mailing List Software

Want to keep in touch with your website users. You need a mailing list. HostMonster has some of the best software to choose from.

HostMonster signup

When you fist signup with HostMonster you will be asked whether you would like to transfer your domain or grab a free one.

If you have a domain name and wish to use it for anything like a shopping cart then I recommend that you transfer.

SSL certificates can only be applied to one domain per an account and you will want your main domain to be the secure domain so your business looks legitimate.

That's it for now, Cheers


HostMonster Pricing

HostMonster Pricing

HostMonster has ended the $4.95 offer but you still can get a free domain name with any hosting account and at $6.95, I mean we are still talking the cheapest and best website hosting compnay around.

You can sign up for HostMonster here.

Friday, May 2, 2008

Hostmonster - website statistics

HostMonster offers awstats as one of it's website statistics packages

Awstats has always been my personal favourite.

If you have multiple domain names you will have a link for each one and a separate statistics package.

Once you have selected the domain you wish to see the statistics for Awstats opens up and gives you a load of information.

Here is an overview of all the different statistics you can view

When they hit your HostMonster site:

Monthly history - Track to see your visitors are improving oer the months
Days of month - A break down of everyday of the month, see when your good times are
Days of week - What is the most popular day of the week for people to hit your site
Hours - What hours of the day or people viewing your site.

Who:
Countries - Which countries are hiting our site

Hosts
Last visit - Where are these people coming from, gives you specific domain information.

Authenticated users

Last visit - Who is logging into your website.

Robots/Spiders visitors
Last visit - What search engines are having a look at your website.

Navigation:
Visits duration - How long people are staying on your website.

Viewed
Full list - What are your most popular pages that people are checking out. Very handy information.
Entry - What is the most popular page to enter your website
Exit - What is the page people leave your website

Operating Systems
Versions - What kinds of operating systems are people looking at your website with.

Browsers
Versions - What browsers are they using, good to know which one to optimise for.

Referers:
Origin
Refering search engines - Which search engines are sending traffic your way
Refering sites - Whic websites are sending traffic your way

Search
Search Keyphrases - What phrases are people using to find your website
Search Keywords - what keywords are they using

Others:
HTTP Error codes
Pages not found - What errors are people finding while trying to access your website?

This is just one of the statisitc packages that HostMonster offers. As you can se it is very important to have this information so you can optimise your website for improved traffic. Get rid of all those errors people are finding and make sure it looks ok in the browser they are using.

If you are not using a stat package to see how to improve your website you will be missing information that could be the diference between success and failure.

I find the keyword tracker very important, I need to know what people are typing into the search engines when they are trying to find my website and adjust the website in response.

If you aren't using HostMonster I am amazed, check out their website here

Hostmonster - Page Wizard

HostMonster offers page wizard as a tool to build your own pages

Pagewizard's site builder pushes browser publishing to the limit offering, no install instant on web authoring software that excels where other builders fall short. Your Home simply can't afford not to offer Pagewizard to your customers!

Full Drag and Drop Engine
Completely Browser Based (No downloads!)
Many Quality Templates To Choose From
Publish Sites To Virtually Any Host (Via FTP)
Upload Your Own Images
Insert Your Own HTML Code
Includes All Aspects of Web Design

Unlimited Websites
Unlimted HTML Files
Multiple Sites at Once
Full Function FTP
User Friendly Interface
Work From Any Computer
Full Support

Not really a web developer but need an easy way to make your website. HostMonster allows you to use the tool Page Wizard.

It's located in your control panel once you get your HostMonster account.

Page Wizard helps you create your site from scratch

The first thing you do when you fire it up is to create a page name.

The ay this works may change at some point so be sure to check HostMonster help centre for the latest news on Page Wizard.

The first thing you do is to create a project to put your web page in.

This alows you to seperate things and possibly build a few diferent websites.

You can chose to start from a blank page or to use a template making it even easier to use.

There is a tutorial available to help you get the most from Page Wizard and have a great website up and running quickly.

You are presented with a very nice workspace that is easy to organise all the elements of your web page.

I have used other website builders before but this was simply amazing to me.

You can upload images from your harddrive straight to your HostMonster account

This is another great reason to use HostMonster , check them out here

Hostmonster hosting only $4.95 a Month

Hurry!!!

HostMonster is offering hosting for only $4.95 a month.

If you sign up for 12 or 24 months you get a free domain name as well.

Go to HostMonster now to get your $4.95 hosting

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Hostmonster - Surpasses 300,000 Domains

In April this year HostMonster has surpassed 300,000 domains.

HostMonster has been hugely successful.

"When we brought Hostmonster to the market we wanted to make sure it dominated the competition with its offerings," says Matt Heaton, CEO and founder of Hostmonster. "By offering what we know our competitors could never provide we are confident that our service will quickly become one of the largest hosting platforms in the world."

They certainly have, nothing is more important to HostMonster then support.

HostMonster staff undergo vigorous training in its 22,000 square-foot Orem, Utah-based corporate headquarters before they begin helping customers.

In december 06 HostMonster had 40688 domains and this shows the amazing success this company is having.

I have rated the 5/5 stars for performance, service and reliabilty.

If you aren't using HostMonster, why the hell not!

Click here to check them out - HostMonster

"They are the best in the world. excellent value for money, fantastic features and no downtime to speak of. Their service is great and the technical staff are friendly and helpful. "

James Hopes - CA

"I have used hosting services from all the top 3 hosting providers available today. It didnt take me long to see that HM are setting the benchmark"

Bob Mckay - Canada

"This hosting is the best by a long way. Best support, - Just best everything. Their servers have never gone down for me, and have never had a complaint about them. Simply the best."

Sarah Mcdonald - Australia

HostMonster

Hostmonster - Ranked #1 Host Overall!

HostMonster ranked #1

Response from HostMonster

Hostmonster is proud of the high quality offering that we provide for our clients. Service is always priority #1 and it shows! Listed below are a few of the accolades that HostMonster has aquired over our time in the hosting industry.

Our review of HostMonster

HostMonster is the number 1 website hosting company on the planet.

They have been around since 1996, that's 12 years of great service and a proven track record.
They are well know for helping businesses and individuals alike get fantastic websites at an extremely great price.

They lead the hosting industry with an amazing array of features. Including massive amount of disk space. Crazy amount of traffic every month and the ability to have as many domains as you want.

Their customer service is second to none.

HostMonster also gives a free $50 google credit and a free $50 yahoo credit.

I have yet to meet someone who is disappointed with HostMonster

The HostMonster hosting solution is both extremely powerful and satisfyingly reliable. Both businesses and individuals alkie choose to use HostMonster based on their reputation as a market leader. The equipment they use is the best in the business and with the uptime guarantee you know you are in good hands.

The servers they use are High Performance Xeon Servers, these servers are monitored 24/7.

I have tested HostMonster on many occasions and use them for a lot of my own websites. I haven't experienced down time to date.

With HostMonster you will never feel like you are paying too much, it's simply the best hosting plan on the planet. People from all over the world rave about how good HostMonster 's hosting is. They simply blow the competition out of the water.

With the ability to Host UNLIMITED Domains combined with massive data allowance. Backed up by all the great features you know HostMonster offers the best web hosting plan in the industry

Other fantastic features are free domain name, free setup, unlimited e-mail accounts, 100 MySQL databases as well as an amazing free $50 google credit and a free $50 yahoo credit

They also offer Shopping carts, message boards and SSL security.

HostMonster uses CPanel, which is the best control panel. I have used other systems and am always glad to see the back of them. You can access your website statistics, manage your email accounts. Set up automated scripts with Cron jobs, Website security, install software at the click of a button and basically be in total control.

You will also find in your control panel Fantastico - Fantastico is a simply way of setting up scripts.

Customer service is the best bar none. I have yet to come across a customer support systme superior to HostMonster . They have 24/7 live phone support, 24/7 email tech support and live chat. Combined with the online ticket system you will never be left high and dry. They are professional and always helpful.

I rate HostMonster as the # 1 web host after years of reviewing and testing their features and customer service. There is nothing you will be left wanting for when you join HostMonster

HostMonster also offers a free web site builder.

The best main features of HostMonster are

Disk Storage 1,500 GB
Host UNLIMITED DOMAINS
Free Domain Name
Free Drag and Drop Site Builder
Support International Domain Names

SSL Secure Server
OS Commerce Shopping Cart
Free Generated Certificate
Password Protected Directories
Open PGP/GPG Encryption

Quad Processor Performance Servers
Customized Apache Web Server
UPS Power Back-up/ Back-up Generator
24/7 Monitoring
Courtesy Site Backups
OC-48 Backbone Connection

I rate then 5/5 Stars

Visit HostMonster today

G'day

Hostmonster support centre

HostMonster provides an excellent support centre

They provide you with:

A ticket system with history feature

A Knowledgebase

A very helpful telephone system.

I have personally never been required to use the phone support as the ticket system at HostMonster has always been so fast. My replies have always been answered very swiftly.

The team there must be well trained becuase they always get to the bottom of any questions I have extremely fast and with expert service.

Whenever I set up a new account I need several things done fast, namely, SSL certificate and Unique IP. This is up and running within hours.

I have used other hosts previous to HostMonster and it took days sometimes a week or two.

Thank goodness I don't have that stress any longer.

Check out HostMonster today

A small overview of Hostmonster

HostMonster have been around since 1996

HostMonster has been providing hosting solutions to thousands of business and personal web sites since 1996. Our internet hosting package helps businesses and individuals get high-powered service at a fraction of the cost.

With HostMonster you can depend on:
Highest customer service
Quality equipment
Maximum guaranteed uptime
Highly functional tools for adminstration
The leading feature set available
Secure and reliable backups
Solid and honest business practices

I highly recommend them, if you are looking for a hosting company look no further then HostMonster

Hostmonster - Free Domain Name

Not only is HostMonster a great hosting company with all the bells and whistles, excellent customer service and a support system to die for they are also handing out FREE DOMAIN NAMES.

With every hosting account HostMonster will give you a domain name.

That's right absolutely FREE.

They have .com, .net, .org, .info, .us and .biz.

You get to choose which name you want.

No hassle in finding a domain name separately, it's all there in the one package.

That's great news for companies and web developers alike.

Of course if you need to you can transfer your domain name, but with free domain names people have been snapping them up.

sign up with HostMonster today to secure your free domain name

Cheers

Hostmonster Support For Custom PHP.INI Files

HostMonster support custom PHP.INI files.

What is that exactly?

PHP is the scripting language that HostMonster support to write your cool liitle web applications with. Its the only language I have ever learnt and I think it is the best.

It apparently stands for Pretty Good Homepage.

HostMonster has version 5 of PHP running on their servers

PHP.ini allows you to customize a PHP ini file to change some of the settings of PHP. A php.ini file allows you to customize settings like global variables, default directory to upload files and the allowed size for uploaded files.

When PHP starts up, it behaves according to settings specified in the availabe php.ini file. The Web server will look for this file in the following locations and in the following order:


The directory from which the PHP script was called
The root of your Web directory (typically public_html)
The Web server's default php.ini

Life would be pretty difficult without this feature and you really need a webshost that allows you to. HostMonster does and the way they allow you to control your site is very important.

Overview of Select PHP SettingsOverviewed settings:

register_globals
upload_tmp_dir
session.save_path
display_errors and display_startup_errors
log_errors and error_log

I recently needed to increase the memory_limit, upload_max_filesize and post_max_size values to something higher than set by HostMonster 's default php.ini file.

You see HostMonster works with you. They set limits on accounts but allow you to override them if you wish . A lot of Website hosting companies don't do this.

Get and modify your custom php.ini file. It's probably best to use a php.ini file that is like the one you are already running on your server. You can probably find one at /usr/local/lib/php.ini or /usr/local/etc/php.ini and just copy it into your account's web folder (it may be called "public_html" or "www" or "htdocs" -- you know the one).

Check out HostMonster here

Hostmonster - Agora Shopping Cart

HostMonster offers Agora Shopping Cart

AgoraCart - The powerful "Free" Open Source ecommerce shopping cart software solution that offers a very wide range of "out-of-the-box" features that allow you to setup an online ecommerce solution ranging from a simple template based store to the integration of a complex visual design concept containing all the creative magic of your web designer.

HostMonster has a variety of options for you to choose from Agora Shopping Cart being one of them.

The server requirments are Perl 5.6.x or higher and HostMonster satisfy this requirement.

Agora Shopping Cart Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software with limitless flexibility in many areas including full design controls through Cascading Style Sheets (css), template systems, customizable layouts, custom individual product category layouts and templates, customization of nearly all cart features for the code hobbyist, modular "drop in and go" code as well as AgoraScript, our own scripting language inside parsed HTML pages, that experienced programmers can appreciate.

As with OS commerce this is ready for you to go when you get a HostMonster account. Yet another great reason to choose HostMonster as your hosting company of choice.

AgoraCart can be used by virtually anyone, from a novice and beginner to an experienced web designer or programmer.

With a massive feature list it's no wonder people like to use AgoraCart and HostMonster

Here are just some of the features:

CSS (cascading style sheets) controls over most aspects of the cart design.

Online CSS manager for the store where you can edit the store CSS file as well as for any templates selected.

Store-wide designs stored in main Header and Footer files.

Template system for installable templates.

Ability to design and add your own header and footer templates to the templates directory and/or manually install templates or button sets from 3rd party AgoraCart template providers.

Templates are HTML and regular text files called "includes" (.inc)

Online store template manager where installed buttonsets, templates, or custom templates can be selected.

Edit selected template headers and footers online in the template manager.

Dynamically generated product pages from store's database
Unlimited product options supported (size, color, wrapping, etc).
Volume based pricing awhich llows you to create different price breaks for quantities ordered (called variable options)
Optional simple option file builder available separately for "free".
Deactivate products items so that they do not show up in product displays or searches.
Supports an unlimited number of categories
Supports different display types for products by category
Each product can be related to numerous sub-categories
Product options can be of various types including textareas and textboxes (which allow customer input) and selection lists, radio buttons and checkboxes (which allow customer choices)

Checkout HostMonster and Agora Shopping Cart

Hostmonster and OS Commerce Shopping Cart

IF you have ever wanted to set up a shopping cart - HostMonster have a little surprise for you.

THEY INCLUDE IT FREE WITH YOUR HOSTING ACCOUNT

Simply push a button and it is installed.

If you have never experienced OS Commerce Shopping Cart then it is a treat.

Form the oscommerce website:

osCommerce has attracted a large growing e-commerce community that consists of over 176,100 store owners and developers who support each other and extend osCommerce Online Merchant with add-ons being contributed on a daily basis. To date there are over 4,700 add-ons that are available for free to customize osCommerce Online Merchant online stores and to help increase sales.

That's right free add-ons.

Its an amazing system that is supported by the development community.

HostMonster has embraced the OS commerce revolution and offers it and all the features you need to get running.

Your server needs to have PHP and Mysql as well as some other plug ins. HostMonster provide this for you and everything you need to get up and running.

Combine that with cheap hosting, exceptional service and a system that hasn't let me down yet and you have a very powerful combination.

If you are looking for a Shopping cart solution, get a HostMonster account and set up OS commerce. You won't regret it.

Everything you need to get started in selling physical and digital goods over the internet, from the Catalog frontend that is presented to your customers, to the Administration Tool backend that completely handles your products, customers, orders, and online store data.

The services provided to and from the community have guaranteed the success of osCommerce, which include the community forums, bug reporter, knowledge base, and development workboard.

Signing off

Blogger.