Archive for 'Bluehost'

Changing Web Hosting

Friday, April 1st, 2011 at 2:41 pm  
Comments (4)

If you have noticed some changes in the site's performance over the past few weeks, it is because I outgrew my old web host, Bluehost. I was on a shared server, which meant that I was sharing a single server with hundreds of other websites.

Normally, this is okay. But when you have as much data as I had, things get a little tricky.

So I've made the switch to Host Gator. I'm slowly (very slowly, I'm afraid) moving each of my websites over. Host Gator support thus far has been out of this world. They're good. I could–if I wanted–even have them move my stuff over for me. But I like to do a lot of this stuff myself plus I'm getting a feel for how it all works.

I got a VPS hosting account, which means that I pretty much control my server. While it's not a dedicated server ($$$), it is pretty close.

Plus, I can now resell hosting to my clients, which makes things a lot nicer. And my clients can have their own cPanel and do their own thing–if they want.

The nice thing for my customers is that if they have a webhosting issue, they call me. I know to a lot of you that sounds like a major headache waiting to happen, and it could be.

But in all honesty, I'd rather take care of my customers than let somebody else try. And like I said, support at Host Gator is beyond reproach. However, I like talking with my customers and helping them solve problems.

So I'm okay with them calling me. Plus, if I get stumped, I know I can call Host Gator and get the situation resolved quickly and easily.

Look for some announcements in the coming weeks about new service offerings and my experiences with the new host.

Quick How-To Set Up a WordPress Blog

Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 1:11 pm  
Comments (1)

Lynn Terry, one of the top affiliate marketers that I follow, just wrote up a post on how to set up a WordPress blog. It's solid advice.

Read it and then come back here to read my specific tweaks to her set up.

Here are my specific tweaks:

  1. I use NameCheap for my domain name registrar. I usually find a slightly better price on .com names here than at GoDaddy. I do have some legacy Godaddy-registered domain names, but all my new ones are coming through NameCheap. They also have monthly coupons that give you a little discount (usually about $1 off the current $9.69 price).

    I will say that I've never had problems with either of them.

  2. For web hosting, I use BlueHost. They're very similar to HostGator.
  3. Support is very quick and updating name servers between either GoDaddy or NameCheap and BlueHost is extremely quick (minutes not hours). Again, I've never had a problem with these folks.
  4. For installing WP, I used to use Fantastico, until I tried SimpleScripts. It's a part of my cPanel on BlueHost. I'm not sure if HostGator uses SimpleScripts, but if they do, I highly recommend them.
  5. I have used many themes over my blogging lifetime and I have to say that I really like the free Eximius theme. I'm not using it here (I'm using FlexSqueeze, which is totally awesome but not free). Eximius works out of the box and hasn't presented any issues thus far with any of the plugins I use.
  6. Keyword research is the most important thing you can do when building a brand, site, and especially a niche site. Check out Market Samurai. It totally rocks.
  7. WP customization. The most important thing I do here is install some really effective plugins, the most important of which is Jeff Johnson's Traffic Getting SEO PluginTM 2.0 – Free Version. You will have to sign up to his mailing list to get the plugin, but I highly suggest you do it; besides, Jeff is a traffic and SEO master. You'll love his how-to videos.

    Jeff's plugin actually incorporates quite a few plugins (it's kind of like a meta-plugin) and then tweaks them to perform optimally together.

That's about it! Now, get out and do it!!!