Credits

Last updated: 10 July 2008

Want to know what web hosts and blogging software I’ve used? Then read on my friend…

Web Hosting:

Many people never stay with the first web host they get. It’s part of the territory I guess. I suggest visiting 1-3 web hosting review sites (because there are a few companies that pay for positive testimonials so you can’t always trust what you read) for research.

Don’t forget to ask the owners of the web sites that you like to visit who their host is as well. Here are the web hosts that I’ve been through:

~2002-2004:
AddAction: I do not recommend them. In terms of shared hosting (I was using THE PLAN), HostGator & DreamHost offer more for your money.)

Their customer support was quick to suspend my account instead of telling me that the Gallery script was the one causing problems - which it shouldn’t have because I personally e-mailed the authors and they assured me that it would cause no problems whatsoever (especially with such a low-traffic website).

Nonetheless, all AddAction’s support could offer me was to either re-design my website from the ground up or take a refund.

Problems with their service that I had to open tickets to resolve included: Account being suspended several times, Billing department errors, MySQL errors, not upgrading cPanel to reflect paid upgrades, server downtimes, etc. Yes, their customer support responds very quickly (as you will read in their forums).

But the quick response is usually a message from some guy in India saying: “Thank you. We have fowarded your issue to the higher authority. Regards, Raji Support Team.” Then you have to wait several hours or days till you get a real resolution instead of some crap message.

~2004-2005:
hostgator banner

HostGator: I recommend them (but DreamHost is better). I actually could have still been with them if I did what I am doing now with the boomba, uploading them to SexUploader instead of hosting them on the server where the 50 GB of bandwidth quickly gets eaten up in a month.

I was with them for around half a year before the porn started going gazonka on me. Their website and logo has an amateur feel to it and it seems like their customer support only has like 3 people who know what they’re talking about, but during that short time everything was okay.

Who knows what could have happened if I stayed longer, but that was my experience.

~2006-present
dreamhost banner

DreamHost: I highly recommend them. This is who I am with currently. It took a lot of research to find DreamHost - I was kind of skeptical because they did not have the things I was accustomed to having with my previous 2 hosts - cPanel being one of them.

But I am glad I took out a plan with them (Level 1 Plan - Crazy Domain Insane!) because I don’t have to login all the damn time to make sure upgrades and services are reflected in the panel. I don’t know, it’s like being hosted by a friend (especially if you read their blog where they diss/rant about anything and everything.

If they are having problems - they explain exactly what is going on in detail to their customers - and not just in technical jarbon but in plain English so that someone like me who is not a tech head can understand. Just look at this post from their blog for example.) rather than a business wanting your money.

Besides that, for their price you get an insane amount of disk space and bandwidth to use - but obviously if you are using it all that means you are hosting something illegal like movies or porn (which they do not allow).

They are real cool about it though and they say that. In one of their newsletters they said, we noticed a lot of new signups are using a huge amount of disk space and bandwidth which is really odd for a shared hosting plan - let us remind you that our Terms of Service doesn’t allow illegal content such as blah blah blah… (I was one of the culprits :) )

Anyway, if you end up hosting with them, you can use my promo code I created:

  • Promo code EASYDOESIT to get $50.00 off their Level 1 Plan, Crazy Domain Insane! (yeah it sounds retarded).
  • Or if you are going to host with them, e-mail me first! I can give you a discount in the form of a promo code (DreamHost allows you to make promo codes with any $/% off to promote their service). The max I can do is around $90 since their referral fee they pay out is $97. You can read more about their Rewards program here.

Blogging Software:

You don’t think I go into NotePad or Word, type up a post, and upload it to the Internet do you? No way Jose!

FusionNews: I do not recommend using it. I stopped using it mainly because it was dying out. All you would see on their forums were requests for help and no answers. The main programmer disappeared from the Internet and so there were never any updates on new versions being done.

My tagger script that was also similiar to this was getting spammed by some mexicans in Texas and that’s when I also noticed there were security vulernabilities and other faults with the news script as well (like posts being randomly deleted - as Sanith can attest to).

So before a big threat could occur, I tried fixing up the code myself and simultaneously looking for a new blogging script. At the time, CuteNews was the most popular php news script being used and that whole Xanga craze.

wordpress 2.0 button

WordPress: I highly recommend using it. During my search for a new blogging news script I was actually looking for CMS’s (Content Management Systems) like PHP-Nuke.

But I knew it would never work - I for one hated to login just to see the content of a website, plus I knew no one would chat it up in a forum-style website.

So then I looked at MovableType and b2. MovableType didn’t have support for multiple authors at the time, so I started looking at b2. I came across WordPress when it was labeled as b2’s successor (since the b2 website always gave me a 404 error - don’t know what was going on at the time) and better than MovableType - and that is how I tried them out. Everything has been gravy since.

Programs/Software used:

  • SiteUptime - for monitoring purposes
  • Adobe Photoshop - anything to do with images
  • Notepad - open up code and edit it
  • Macromedia DreamWeaver - sometimes I use it because I like the color coding
  • WS FTP Pro - upload files
  • WinZip - compress large media files (like the boomba)
  • DivX Player - watch videos
  • Media Player Classic - to create thumbnails of videos
  • Mozilla Firefox - browse the Internet
  • Gmail - e-mail
  • Wordpress - blogging software used to create this website

Credits:

  • FamFamFam for the icons you see everywhere (like next to user comments, categories, etc.)
  • ckunte for the Plain Vanilla WordPress theme (modified) AKA the Elisha Cuthbert website theme

Advertising revenue:

If you have any other questions I’ll be happy to answer them the best I can - shoot me an e-mail.

E-mail Easy Does It University