Tech Review

When I was stationed in Iraq, I began an email correspondence with a friend from back home. The emails consisted mostly of political arguments and, as soldiers never talk about politics, I found it to be a fun way to sate my thirst for political discussion. When I got back home, some friends joined in the email conversation. At one time, I think we would receive and answer about 20 emails a day. I remember that time fondly.

Because of the unmanageable email traffic and the quality of thought in the posts, I thought it would be best to move our discussions to the web (this was before I started blogging).

Eventually, A friend of mine started a free bulletin board (which eventually became Magnasquids on a service called Bravenet. I loved the conversations, but the software from Bravenet su**** (was really bad). The bulletin board couldn't divide the posts by subject and my fingers tired because of the constant need to click on advertising.

I took the initiative to pay for the advanced service. The advertising was gone, but the bulletin board was still very limited compared to products such as vBulletin, phpBB, and the one I currently use, Simple Machines Forum (I'll compare them at a later time). Their bulletin board still couldn't have categories, much less allow for the advanced features needed to handle board membership like member hierarchies, "karma," and restrictions/permissions. I also missed the template design options needed for appearance tweeks and customized advertising.

Installing alternative software wasn't an option for me as it required some high-level skills that were out of my reach at the time.

Lastly, Bravenet made it difficult to update the site and offered, instead, some kind of guided web design template thing which are always much harder to use than commonly available web creation software like Frontpage, Dreamweaver, or, heck, even pure HTML.

So, I asked for a refund, got about a third back, and commenced my search for a replacement. I decided to research my options this time and eventually happened upon Bluehost from which I've never looked back.

Here's the skinny of what Bluehost has to offer:

300 Gigabyte Hosting Space (NEW!)
web hostingHost UNLIMITED Domains!!!
2,500 POP/Imap Email Accounts
3,000 GIGS of Transfer (NEW!)
SSH (Secure Shell), SSL, FTP, Stats
CGI, Ruby (RoR), Perl, PHP, MySQL
2000/2002/2003 Front Page Extensions
Free Domain Forever!
Free Site Builder (NEW)
24/7 Superb/Responsive Sales/Support

My experience:

Service:

Excellent. The few problems I've had have been answered either by phone or email. You also have the option to use their active bulletin board.

Fantastico:

This thing is the stuff. Fantastico allows you to easily- and without having to know anything about PHP or other internet esotericisms - install forums like SMF; picture viewers like Gallery and Coppermine, content management systems (CMS) like Joomla and Mambo; chat clients; and, yes, blogging software like B2evolution which you're viewing now and which I'll discuss later. Fantasitco upgrades the software with the touch of a button. You can even try different programs and choose the one you like best.

Domain stuff:

You can have unlimited sub domains which you can use to point to your main one ("asymmetricblog.com" points to "nelsonguirado.com") or to make a distinct domain ("cubanmusicforum.com" is it's own domain although it's "within" "nelsonguirado.com").

Odds and ends:

Bluehost has a thorough selection of stats analysis(which show steady growth for Asymmetric). It offers email clients and some search engine optimization (SEO) products of dubious value. Finally, you get a bunch of e-commerce features like credit card acceptance software.

Future:

Bluehost has upped the amount of everything since I joined last October. I have confidence that they'll continue to grow and offer a state of the art internet hosting experience.

Bluehost control panel

This is one of the stats options on Bluehost's control panel.

Oh, my friends love the new bulletin board.