I searched the web hosting reviews and sent out a couple emails before I decided on bluehost.com. I was very pleased with the web functionality included, the cost, and the service. Of the features that separated this provider from the rest of the pack was the inclusion of CPanel and the Fantastico installer. Since I am a fan of several open source packages I was really pleased to use Fantastico to install phpWebSite and WordPress. I had previously battled with another host provider on relaxing the security enough that I could run phpWebSite. After multiple emails I finally figured out there was an easier way. You go to a provider who provides an installation script like Fantastico.
Several other features I have used and really like are:
- Awstats is included for analyzing web stats. Once again I am a fan of another open source package. They provide several packages to analyze web stats but this is the one I like the most. I used Webtrends on a different host provider and this is better and faster.
- Web FTP is included. They include several packages you can use to upload your files and synchronize your files. Web FTP is not any better than a separate FTP client but they are handy.
- A Filemanger is provided. I haven't seen this provided at other host providers but this is really handy. I have used this to uncompress files, move files, and edit files on the web server. I have even used this to upload a single file from my PC. This saves a lot of time when tweaking html, css, and php code.
- phpMyAdmin is provided to manage MySql. This is the standard for managing MySql. It was a little hard to find.
- A backup script is provided. This is a handy way to backup the entire site including the databases into a compressed file. It even sends you an email when the backup is complete. Wow!
- SpamAssassin is provided to filter out the spam. So far I have found no false positives and a lot of spam has been filtered.
Click here for more information or to signup for bluehostcom.