Review Hostgator

Hostgator Web Hosting http://hostgator.com - 99.9% Uptime Guarantee - Unlimited Storage, Bandwidth & Add On Domain - Free Site Builder - 24/7/365 VIP Support - CGI, PHP5, RoR, Perl - Unlimited Email, Database, FTP - No Contracts & 45 Day Money Back

Craving for discounted web hosting? Hostgator again gives out promotions to potential subscribers. By implementing a promo code you will be able to enjoy discount up to 20% on any Hostgator hosting plan from shared hosting, reseller hosting to dedicated hosting. Definitely it is a hosting bargain.

For shared hosting, the new charges will be:-

Although the price has been discounted, the hosting features are not discounted at all. With the amount of money, the hosting features you can get from Baby Plan will be:-

• Unlimited Storage, Bandwidth and Add-on Domains: this unlimited attribute allows you to host basically unlimited independent websites.
• cPanel Platform: user-friendly, window-like navigation and features rich hosting control panel.
• Fantastico: script library which contains more than over 50 free scripts and software which you can use on your website.
• Unlimited POP3 Email: you can create unlimited email accounts.
• And many more. Read the full hosting review for more detailed coverage.

So the next question is, what is the discount coupon? Here you go: LUCKY. For your information the promotions end 1st of April. Therefore make sure you grab it before it disappears.

If you would like to have a more detailed coverage on how to use the coupon, please go to Hostgator Winter Promotions. It is a post about their previous promotions where I have showed how to implement the coupon.

• Hostgator Shared Hosting Features
• Hostgator Reseller Hosting Features
• Hostgator Dedicated Hosting Features

Great news to Hostgator business hosting plan customers!

A few days back the Hostgator team has decided to include a toll-free number to their business hosting plan, at no additional cost! With the new service the business plan subscriber can point the toll-free number to any existing phone number in U.S and Canada and you can have your potential customers call you for free.

The service is connected through voice-over-IP and rest assured that the quality of calls is well taken care of by the Houston-based VOIP Company, VOIPo. Each toll free number includes 100 minutes of free usage per calendar month and additional minutes will be charges 4.9 cents per minute.

There are a few advantages of this new service:-

1. You can now offer a better and more personal service to your visitors.
2. With that you can establish a more professional image on your business.
3. And lastly a better sale conversion will be generated with the new service.

However, there are some drawbacks too. The toll free number can only point to phone number in U.S and Canada but not world wide. So subscribers out of the 2 countries have no way to enjoy the additional service. And even if you are able to enjoy the service, you will need to put extra effort on it as you will need somebody to attend to the calls. And you need night shift if you were to have 24/7 toll free support.

Anyhow, since it is an additional free service. Why not?

Related links:-

• Business Plan Hosting Features
• Hostgator Toll-Free Number Press Release

Hostgator hosting has their headquarters located at Texas. Their office is well equipped with facilities for the comfort of the staffs. There are even chiefs in the office to cook for the staff. Below is the physical address of Hostgator and a google map to there. If you happen to drop by, please snap a few photos and share with me. I wonder does the office has big fences to prevent any gator escape or not

Houston, Texas
11251 Northwest Freeway, Suite 400
Houston, TX 77092
United States of America

View Larger Map

If you are thinking of getting your blog a web hosting, you may want to consider Hostgator hosting. With more than 50 scripting in Fantastico, Hostgator has 3 types of blogging software and 12 types of content-management software that you can choose from. You can pick any of them to be your blogging platform.

Of cause the best platform to use is still any out of the 3 blogging software which are b2evolution, Nucleus and Wordpress. 3 of them are open source blog publishing application with PHP scripts and MySQL database as backbone. Rest assured that self hosted blog is the same like other free hosted blog where you do not need to deal with raw PHP/programming codes. 3 of them in fact are very user friendly. Easy posting and maintaining is always the core of their software developing.

Also the one click installation feature in Hostgator provides an easy approach in setting up your blog. What you need to do is to get a domain name for your blog, and choose the right directory to install it and you are ready to start posting.

Besides the readiness of software, the hosting plan from Hostgator is suitable for bloggers who run only 1 blog. You probably do not need unlimited add-on domains for your only blog. In fact just one domain for your account is sufficient and Hostgator has Hatchling hosting plan to cope with this.

Hatchling with low pricing and sufficient features are meant to serve bloggers and other webmaster who run only 1 website. Basically the hosting features are the same with other advance hosting plans like business plan except for the amount of allowed domains. Hatchling plan allows only 1 domain while business plan allows unlimited domain, and for both plan the price difference is $8/month.

With these 2 reasons Hostgator does understand what most bloggers need. They do provide conveniences and low budget service to bloggers. For your information, this website you are reading is Hostgator hosted Wordpress blog. It does allows me easy blogging.

More related post:

• Hostgator Web Hosting
• How to install Wordpress on Hostgator
• How to back up your blog from Hostgator

When you are redirecting your website to a new web hosting, you will need to modify the Domain Name Server (DNS) of your domain name. This is to set a new place where your domain name points to. In web hosting, DNS management is important because it maps the domains to the correct IP so that your website works properly.

In Hostgator, every subscriber does not necessary has the same DNS, it depends on the location of your server. However worry not as upon your hosting activation Hostgator will include all the necessary information in the welcome email. From there you will know your DNS. So what you need to do after that is to modify the DNS of your domain name with your domain registrant.

There are a few DNS in Hostgator, among them are:-

• NS1.HOSTGATOR.COM
• NS2.HOSTGATOR.COM
• NS459.HOSTGATOR.COM
• NS460.HOSTGATOR.COM
• NS543.HOSTGATOR.COM
• NS544.HOSTGATOR.COM

The above DNS are for example purposes. Your own DNS is contained in your welcome email. If you failed to locate it, please contact Hostgator support to retrieve it. Also if you are confused on how to modify the DNS, you can either watch these tutorial videos or request Hostgator support to help you up.


Hostgator related post:-

• Why is Hostgator recommended?
• Hostgator winter promotions
• Hostgator web hosting

Now that you know how to install Wordpress but knowing how to back up is equally important in managing a blog. It is a good practice to back it up from time to time to avoid any unwanted interruption for example accident deletion (Ouchh!), restoring your file amendment and etc. It’s better to back up rather than feeling sorry later.

Wordpress and Hostgator are meant to give conveniences to their users. Therefore backing up is not difficult at all. For your information, blog is formed by 2 things; one is database, where all your posts, comments and etc are stored. The other is the theme and image files where you do your user interface customizations. With this we can do 2 kind of back up: – 1) Post & contents back up, 2) Blog complete back up.

Post and Content Back Up

This is the back up where you download all your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories and tags. This back up will be quick and simple. Perhaps this back up is suitable for those who want to redesign the whole blog or move the contents to another place where graphic customizations is no longer needed..

1. To do it is very simple. First log in to your blog admin area, (it depends on which version of Wordpress you are using as there are active upgrading recently from version 2.6 series to version 2.7, the interface will be a bit different however the concept remains the same)
   • if your blog version is 2.7, you will see a sidebar at your left hand side upon your log in. Navigate to Tools, then Export.
   • If you blog version is older than 2.7, then your blog navigation will be slightly different where the navigation bar is on top of the dashboard. Go to Manage, then Export.
2. There are clear explanations on the export function. It is your options to choose which author’s post to export. Since we are doing blog back up here I will download all the post. Click the “Download Export File” and a window pop up to store a XML file. Store it in a secured place and that file is your content back up file. Once you have saved it, you can import the file again to any Wordpress blog you want.
3. It is worth nothing that downloading the XML file does not back up your image files. If you need to download those images you will need to use a FTP connecting to your image folder and download them.

This back up is quick and is meant to save the words. If you need to save the whole blog, including the appearance then you will need:-

Blog Complete Back Up

To have you blog completely backed up you need to do 2 things, one is to download all the files from your blog directory, two will be downloading you database.

1. First connect to your blog directory using FTP software and then download all the files under your blog directory. Based on the previous example, my blog directory is at reviewhostgator.org/blog. So I will download the whole “blog” folder from the web hosting to my computer. With that you have downloaded all your image files and customized themes.
2. Then you will need to download your database now. Log into your Hostgator cPanel and look for the category “Files”. There is a “Backups” under the category. This is where you save your database. In fact there is where you do your Hostgator hosting account back up too.
3. You will see a list of available MySQL database there. (Do you know which database is associated with your Blog?)
   
   • If yes, what you need to do is to right click on the link and save target/link as into you computer.
   • If no, you can either refer back to your blog installation summary (page shown when you first install the blog) or you can look for a file with name “wp-config.php” under your blog directory (the folder which you have just downloaded just now). Open it and look for “MySQL database username” and you will find your database name there. Then go back to cPanel and download the database.
4. Done. You have completely back up your blog now. It may sound messy but after a few time of practice you will do it hands down.

If you are aware enough you may be questioning why I need to download the whole blog directory but not just the XML file and the image folders to do the full back up. Yes that will save time however my experience tells me that backing up this way will cause some problems when restore it. The paddling or margin and some customization will be run out of place. Unless you have no customizations at all with your theme otherwise it is better to save everything down. After all it is just a 10 minutes work.

I am sure you heard of Wordpress before. With the open source attribution Wordpress has developed into the best (at least to me) blogging software. With their rapid growth and subscribers needs, web hosting companies like Hostgator has included the script in Fantastico. This allows a very easy installation of Wordpress in your hosting.

Here is a step by step guide to install the blogging software:-

1. Firstly log into your Hostgator cPanel. As usual you will see many categories of features. Look for a category with the name Software/Services. You will find Fastastico De Luxe under this category. It’s the icon with a blue smiley face.
2. When you get into Fantastico, you will see all the available software scripts at the left sidebar. There are all scripts available to install into your web hosting. Under the Blogs category, which is the second category from top, click on Wordpress and it will lead you to the control center where you can remove and install Wordpress from your website.
3. Click on the New Installation blue link.
4. Here comes a form to fill in. The first drop down menu is for you to choose which domain you wish to install Wordpress. For example I have chosen reviewhostgator.org. (The number of domain choices in the drop down menu depends on how many domains you already have in the web hosting).
5. The next column will ask about which directory under the chosen domain you would like to install the blog. Think twice on this because this will be your blog permanent address. To illustrate it, if I leave the column blank, my blog address will be reviewhostgator.org; if I key in “blog” in the column, the blog address will be reviewhostgator.org/blog. (In this example “blog” will be used)
6. After that you need to choose a user name and password. These username and password will be the log in id to access your blog admin.
7. Lastly under base configuration, choose a nick name and key in an (existing) email address of yours. The email will serve as the communication medium between you and the blog. Anything happen to the blog for example somebody leave a comment in your post, the software will send a comment acknowledgement to that email address. Then you need to key in your blog name and descriptions. Make sure they describe your blog.
8. For the settings under Base Configuration (list 7), you can always modify them again later on in the blog admin settings.
9. Now click “Install Wordpress” and an installation summary will be shown. Check whether it is correct. Then finish the installation.
10. It’s done. Your blog is ready now and you can access it by visiting the address that you have chosen. (In this case http://reviewhostgator.org/blog/wp-admin/). Do remember your username and password as you will need them every time you want to access your blog.

Now that you are done installing the Wordpress blog in your Hostgator web hosting. The next thing you would perhaps like to do is to start redesigning your blog with different themes. There is one more thing that you need to remember which is to upgrade your Wordpress version regularly. This is to ensure a stronger and safer blogging environment, away from virus, hackers and other internet threats. For you information, upgrade can be easily done in Hostgator, (refer back to the second photo from top here) you will see there are a few links stated “Upgrade To 2.7″. What you need to do is to click it and the software will take care of the rest. It seems that I have a few blogs needed to be upgraded too.

Hostgator is the only web hosting company that gives out 45 day money back guarantee. Usually a 30 day is expected but Hostgator goes the extra miles for the 45 days. If by any mean a subscriber is not satisfied with their service within the 45 days, quit them and ask for a refund!

Of cause there are rules and policy to be followed here. Else the money back system will be abused. I have checked their Term of Service and found out these policies:-

1. The money back guarantee will be unconditional within 45 days.
2. After 45 days the refund will be done on prorated basis.
3. Money-back is only applied to managed-shared hosting and reseller solution. It is not applicable to dedicated server hosting.
4. As usual only the subscription fee for the web hosting can be refunded. The money spent on domain registrations, admin and set up fee is not refundable.
5. This money back guarantee is only eligible to first time subscribers. If you’ve had an account before and had cancelled it, you will not be eligible for refund for the second account. (I wonder how they trace this, by name? or by email account? Well you better don’t take your chance)
6. It is also worth noting that Hostgator will only refund the customer who paid with credit card or paypal. With that said, money paid by subscribers using bank wire transfers, western union payment, checks and money orders is NOT refundable. (Why is this so?)

I wonder the reasons of item number 6 because that sounds a bit funny. After all money from those methods is still money right. Perhaps Hostgator is encouraging subscribers to spend with credit card and paypal for lesser admin work needed.

Finally, all the account cancellations and refund can be done by filling up this cancel form. Other kind of cancellation (example: cancel through email, telephone and etc) will not be entertained. However, I believe the customer support is always free to answer to your queries at billing@hostgator.com.

More related post:-

• Hostgator Hosting Review
• Hostgator Official Website
• Hostgator FAQ

Great news! Hostgator has started their Winter Promotions! Upon Christmas you will be able to have your Hostgator web hosting 20% discounted. The discounted price will be:-

Hosting Plan: Baby

The above price is calculated based on Baby hosting plan however the discount is applicable to all web hosting plan including Hatchling, Baby, Business and etc. What you need to do is to claim the promotion by using the coupon SNOWMAN.

How To Use SNOWMAN Coupon

1. First, go to Hostgator, choose the correct hosting plan or straight sign up baby plan. It will lead you to a page where you need to choose your domain name. You can either register a brand new domain name or get your old domain transferred here.
2. Continue and this is where you key in your promotion coupon, SNOWMAN. Make sure the subscription period is correct.
3. Then click calculate and a subscription summary will be shown. And yup, the coupon is working!

To continue here are some helpful links:-

• Hostgator Review
• Hostgator Web Hosting FAQ
• Hostgator Winter Promotions Link

If you are familiar with Hostgator web hosting features, you will know that Hostgator offers unlimited POP3 email account. With this feature you can create as many email accounts as possible and associate them with your local mail client in your own computer. So you could read and reply your mail straight from the client without signing in and out of the server.

Creating Email Account

To have your own email account is easy. With cPanel being used in Hostgator, email accounts could be created in 1 click. Below is a step by step guide to create your email account.

1. After logging into your cPanel, goto Email Accounts under the Mail. There is the place where you manage all your email accounts.
2. You will see a simple form with 4 columns to be filled in. What you need to do is to type in your designated email name, and choose the correct domain name. For example if you want your email as example@reviewhostgator.org, just type in “example” at the Email field and choose the “reviehostgator.org” domain at the drop down menu. Available domains depend on the domains hosted in your account.
3. Choose a password and confirm it again. It is advisable to have letters, numbers and symbols in your passwords.
4. The last thing to set is the Mailbox quota. This is to set your mailbox storage size. Default is 250MB. If you do not have any preference then default will be alright.
5. Click “create” and it is done. Your email account is created. You can access it by going back to the Email Accounts pages just now and access it. If you do not intend to associate the account with your local mail client, you could access your mail this way.

Associating Email Account With Local Mail Client

After you have done creating the email account, you can always associate the email account with local mail client.

1. At the account-created summary page, you will be asked whether you want to associate with local mail client, click yes and you will be brought to this email information page.
2. There are a few auto configure settings that you could download. It is a registry files that automatic configure your default mail client. You could choose the correct version of your mail client and follow the instructions given after click on it. Or you can choose to manually configure it. Notice the information at the bottom of the page. That information is for manual configuration uses.
3. Now open up your mail client (This guide will be based on Outlook 2003). Goto Tools > Email Accounts. A window pops up. Choose add a new email account and next you will be given a choice of email type. Choose POP3 and click next.
4. It will lead you to a page where there are fields to be filled in. You can fill in the blanks with the information just now.
5. Choose a name that you wish to let people see when they receive your emails. Email address in this case will be example@reviewhostgator.org. Under server Information, the incoming and outgoing server will be mail.reviewhostgator.org except otherwise specified by your Internet Service Provider.
6. Key in your user name and password which could be found at the email information page. After that click on “More Settings” and another small window pop up.
7. Under tab “Advanced”, change the outgoing server port number from 25 to 26 as show below. Click Okay and you are done.

You can now access your email from your local mail client. You can try sending emails from your other account to the new email and vise-versa to confirm its functioning first.

More related post:-

• Hostgator FAQ
• Hostgator Review
• Hostgator Official Website