RobSymonds.com

I’ve been working with PHP and MySQL since the beginning of my career. I’ve hosted numerous customer sites and personal sites with a few different hosting providers over the years, including Pair.com, HostMySite.com and GoDaddy.com. All of those have been decent but seemed to have quirks that left me looking for something else. I’ve been using HostGator for about 5 years now and their Baby Croc service has met my needs in every way.

As you read the following, keep in mind that I have a long history with *nix/Apache/MySQL/PHP. Although you don’t need to get your hands too dirty with those things, it helps to have a good understanding and basic level of comfort with all of them. HostGator provides the venerable CPanel for you to administer your account with. This should cover most of what you will do.

Management - The CPanel control panel provides very easy control over my account. I can easily add hosted domains, FTP accounts, MySQL databases, database users, files, permissions and a great deal more.  I like the fact that I don’t have to open up a shell or create a support ticket to do a lot of tedious things. I can get it done myself whenever I want to without too much drudgery.

Domains - Unlimited hosted domains. This means I can try out new site ideas easily and cheaply. My only costs are for domains and effort to develop sites. Since I do a fair amount of this, unlimited hosted domains is an absolute requirement. HostGator makes it very easy to add and configure new domain hosting through the CPanel.

Bandwidth and Storage - Unlimited bandwidth and storage. I have heard stories of people hosting very high volume sites with HostGator having problems with support staff coming back to them to redefine what they mean by unlimited in these two areas. If you have a very high traffic site with large storage requirements (in the range of high GB and TB), you may want to call them first and discuss. For anything fairly ordinary (yes hard to define–I know) you should have plenty of breathing room.

Databases - Umlimited MySQL databases. This is good for the same reason the unlimited hosted domains are: I experiment with a lot of small sites and the unlimited MySQL databases keeps my investment low.

Cost - I pay $9.99 a month for the Baby Croc plan with a dedicated IP. I believe GoDaddy and others may have cheaper equivalent plans at the time I write this but things have been so solid with HostGator that I wouldn’t dream of switching just to save a few bucks a year.

Support - I have used their Knowledge Base and also browsed the forums for help on a few issues and found what I was looking for easily enough. I can only think of one time I needed to open a ticket. The response was quick and courteous. You really just want them to get the job done quickly without hassling you–which they did.

Email - There is not much I can say about HostGator’s email because I rarely use it. I can’t say how robust it is or how good the SPAM filtering is. I have used it on a few small sites and never had any problems. I’m not sure how it would stand up to a high traffic site that was targeted with a lot of SPAM. I know that you can set up Spam Assassin but I don’t know enough to comment on it.

Fantastico One-Click App Installs - HostGator also offers a lot of one-click install apps through the control panel. I’ve never been a fan of those. I’m not saying they are good are bad either way. I’ve simply never found a need to use them. Check out the Gator Forums.

As with all things, do your homework. Run some Google searches on HostGator. Check out their Support Knowledgebase and their Gator Forums.

Learn more about Reliable, cheap PHP and MySQL hosting with HostGator.

When I started this blog, I had two objectives in mind. The first was to have a technology journal to keep track of things I didn’t want to forget. The second was to have my name come up in any Google searches a potential employer, client or partner might make and to provide some information about me and what I do. These were both professional objectives and I’ve long been aware that the site is good mostly for the yawning it inspires.

When we meet, we always meet as people. Although there may be professional objectives we are working toward, we are people first and professionals second. I do business with people I like and trust. That is the foundation. If we don’t have it, there is little hope of building something of value. And it is difficult to get to know somebody and see if you like and trust them without relating to them on at least some personal level.

So now I have an additional objective in mind: to start a discussion with you as a person first, to start building that foundation.

With these things in mind, I’ve decided to open the site up to a broader range of topics. Originally I had planned to write mostly about SQL Server and related technologies. However I have much broader ranging interests in technology. And like you, I have many interests outside of technology. Sometimes it is interesting to explore the way these things tie together or influence each other on a personal level. It is often interesting to explore things that are entirely unrelated to professional life. These are the types of things I am going to start writing about here. In the next few weeks, I’m also going to transition content from other sites I’ve owned over the past few years. This will include topics such as online marketing, web development, philosophy and health.

It might make for a strange mix. And I’m sure it will take some time for me to find the right balance and get into a good groove. You’ll just have to check back here to see what happens.