Posts Tagged ‘WordPress Web Hosting’

WordPress Web Hosting Secret Shopper Evaluation Report

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

WordPress is very popular. However, have you ever wondered which web hosting company provides the best hosting services for WordPress? Cheap web hosting isn’t hard to find, but finding quality web hosting is a  much different store. Becuase of this, I had the bright idea to secret shop four of the more popular web hosting companies and evaluate the overall level of customer services they provided to me. I secret shopped HostGator.com, BlueHost.com, LunarPages.com and iPowerWeb.com. The results of this report will indeed help you with making a decision on which web hosting company you should sign up for.

To give you a summary of the results here are the scores:

HostGator.com

(1 = Poor, 10 = Excellent)

  • Customer Service Rating: 6.0
  • Level of Knowledge: 7.5

BlueHost.com

(1 = Poor, 10 = Excellent)

  • Customer Service Rating: 10
  • Level of Knowledge: 10

LunarPages.com

(1 = Poor, 10 = Excellent)

  • Customer Service Rating: 0
  • Level of Knowledge: 0

iPowerWeb.com

(1 = Poor, 10 = Excellent)

  • Customer Service Rating: 3.0
  • Level of Knowledge: 1.5

Click Here to download the full report available on PDF.

Overall Summary:

I was absolutely amazed with the level of customer service provided by BlueHost.com. The name of the sales representative I spoke with was Lonny and he absolutely had me sold on “hello”. Lonny was extremely knowledgeable and knew BlueHost.com services like the back of his hand. He was very professional, enthusiastic and motivated to help fulfill my needs in web hosting and was very perceptive of my situation.

In all secret shopper calls made, I projected myself as being just a very casual individual who had a basic Blogger.com blog with the interest of setting up a web hosting account for the purpose of getting a Self-Hosted WordPress blog up and running while also having the need of assistance with transferring or migrating the existing blog over to the new one.

Based on my evaluation, BlueHost.com compared to HostGator.com, LunarPages.com and iPowerWeb.com is the best choice. Their level of customer service, technical support and overall eagerness to help the individual customer by far outranked their competitors.

Sad to say coming from a guy who has been hired by HostGator.com as a freelance writer. But don’t get me wrong, HostGator.com did well in this cold call evaluation. However, they did not win and I only hope that they view this evaluation and take corrective actions towards improving. Honestly, I like HostGator.com; however, I am extremely picky about who I do business with.

Many people think I am crazy for paying double the price for domain names with Godaddy.com compared to registering my domain names with companies who have a more affordable price. The reason is simple. I am all about receiving excellent customer service. When I pay money for a professional service, I want to be respected, valued and treated with class. I want a mint put on my pillow, I want my drink constantly refilled and I want to be catered to. BlueHost.com exceeded my expectations while HostGator.com simply only met them. LunarPages.com didn’t take my call and iPowerWeb.com failed to meet my basic needs.

- Download Full Report (PDF)

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HostGator.com Has Gone GREEN!

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

Did you know that HostGator.com is hosting over 1.3 million web sites? The average and typical web server I would estimate to have around a 450 Watt power source and HostGator.com has over 5000 servers. That is a lot of power that is being used.

Recognizing that their servers take up a lot of juice, HostGator.com has been actively trying to reduce the amount of power consumption. Over the last two years they have been chipping away at it and never was satisfied. That is up until recently…

Today, HostGator.com runs their servers off 130% wind power by purchasing certified Renewable Energy Credits which represent 130% of the electricity used to power their entire fleet of 5000+ servers.

You may be wondering how much of power this saves? Well, HostGator.com says that their efforts is the equivelent of removing 444 cars from the road for a full year, it’s the equivalent of powering 321 homes with clean energy for a full year, it saves 5654 barrels of oil and it protects over 550 acres of forests.

In celebration of their efforts, HostGator.com wants to cut you a break as well. HostGator.com want to offer you 20% off your initial order. So here’s the deal. Depending on what you purchase, you need to work this promotion correctly.

They have two promotions. One, is the one I have been pitching for awhile, which is getting one month web hosting free when you join their “Baby Plan”.

The Baby Plan cost $7.95 / month. When you use the coupon code: wordpress, you get the first month discounted down to a penny.

However, if you intend to NOT pay month to month, and perhaps choose to pay for six month in advanced or even the entire year up front, you can use coupon code: green and knock off 20% off your bill.

Also too, you might be interested in other services than just the Baby Plan. So, again depending on which services you decide to use, take a minute to do the math and either use coupon code: wordpress, or coupon code: green.

Also, as an added bonus, if you join HostGator.com through me, I will proivde you with one of the following:

  • Free WordPress Install and Free Basic SEO Service
  • Five Free Professionally Written Articles For Your Blog or Web Site.
  • Free One Hour Phone Consultation
  • Free 468×60 Banner Ad On My Blog For One Month

As you can see, there are many reasons why you should sign up with HostGator.com. If you already have hosting else where, no problem, they provide free transfer services and can help you make the switch.

After you sign up, be sure to contact me and let me know which of one of the free offers you would like.

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How To Install WordPress

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

So you want to learn how to install WordPress and start your own WordPress blog? Luckily for you, installing WordPress and learning how to use WordPress couldn’t be made any easier.

Back a few years ago when WordPress first launched, it was indeed pretty difficult to install and to learn how to use. Fortunately for you, WordPress can be installed with just a simple click of the mouse.

HostGator.com is a web hosting company that specializes in automatic WordPress installation. In fact, when you sign up for their $9.95 / month plan, you can get the first month for only a penny when you use the coupon code: wordpress.

Once you have WordPress installed, that leaves you with the chore of learning how to use WordPress. Again, years ago, discovering how to install and use WordPress was difficult. Fortunately for you, WordPress is very common and widely supported today. There are many different tutorials, books and training material available to help you. One particular item that has my interest is a WordPress training video created by Sarah McHarry. She is an experienced computer programmer and has developed a very nice WordPress Video Tutorial that can teach you everything you need to know about WordPress. (more…)

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