HostMonster Review

Oscommerce is the oldest shopping cart that allows you to run your own online store, sell products (both virtual and physical). It is free and licensed under GNU GPL license. Os commerce includes many features: compatibility with most browsers, internationational versions, several languages available, unlimited categories and products, easy and automatic installation, support for virtual (downloads after purchase) and physical products, currency support, backups, payment systems including paypal, authorize.net, netbilling.com, 2checkout and others. Oscommerces also supports modules where new features can be added. Currently there are over 6000 modules available for download in official module directory. Version 3 of the software includes mayor changes to the code, implementing object-oriented model, template system and lots of other features.

Hostmonster OScommerce

To run Oscommerce you need web server with PHP and MySQL installed. Hostmonster account is perfectly setup so you can run this software. One-click installation is available via Hostmonster Simple Scripts.

Hostmonster hosting company support SSL certificates. SSL certificates allow secure and encrypted connection between the client (the user who access the website) and the web server (site). This is very important for online stores, banks, or other sites where there is sensitive data (like passwords, credit cards etc), because standard http (hyper text transfer protocol) do not encrypts such data, SSL encrypts the data before sending it making it almost impossible for prying eyes to know what it is. The customer is more confident when he sees the seal and the https prefix in the browser. To order a certificate at Hostmonster, login in your control panel and from there access the SSL certificates tab. There you can order the certificate which will be:
* Instantly validated and Automatic Installed
* Domain Validated Certificate Issued by Comodo Web Security company
* Site Seal
* Trusted by all popular Browsers
* 128/256 bit encryption
* Unlimited Re-Issuance Policy

Please not that the certificate will be issued and valid only for your primary main domain name and it can not be used for addon domains, subdomains or parked domains.

Hostmonster Simple Scripts is cPanel tool for fast and simple installing of web applications. Web software included: wordpress, drupal, joomla, phpbb, b2evolution, mediawiki, moodle and lots of others. Simple scripts interface is not like Fantastico. Fantastico de luxe is integrated as cPanel tool and the interface is inside, while simplescripts tool is on their official site www.simplescripts.com. Don’t worry about securuty cause the connection is over SSL (secure sockets layer) (https://). The installer if configured can automatically create new database, set the folder or site where the script will be installed, setup random administrator password or password of your choice. Everything is setup by simplescripts including all files are placed, database tables setup and initial configuration is put. After the application is installed you can access it immediately and begin posting new content on your web site. Installation is very simple and consist of three easy step, it took around five minutes for the whole process. Overall it is excellent tool for installing apps.

When you want to open a websites you type in the domain name of the site in the browser and hit go. Once you click the button the browser ask the DNS nameservers for the IP address it should connect to and request the webpage in question.

With Hostmonster simple DNS zone editor you can do the following with your domain names:

Add/Delete an A Record:

A records maps IP address to subdomain or domain name. For example you may have example.example.com (replace example.com with your domain) to maps to other specific IP address rather then the IP address of your domain name.

Add/Delete a CNAME Record:

CNAME is short for canonical name record. This record creates an alias, allowing a querying server to continue the DNS lookup under the new name.

This is very useful tool because you it allows you to change the record directly inside your control panel.

phpBB

phpbb or php bulletin board is free internet forums software. It is the most popular open-source PHP forum script available. With phpbb you can create online community where users can talk to each other, create thread, posts, add attachments. User permission system is integrated into core features, acls, bans, captchas, administrators, moderators, categories and many others. Style manager is included, where you can easily change the design of your website. Lots of free themes are available on the net. If you want to extend your standard phpbb forum, you can use mods (modifications). They are separated from core code and are easy to install. There are also lots of free modifications available allowing webmaster to create forum fit for their needs. Hosting requirements for phpBB are PHP and MySQL (although other database systems are supported: oracle, ms sql, posgresql and others), MySQL is the most popular database system and is available on thousands of hosts.

Hostmonster phpBB Review

On hostmonster phpBB should run without any problems, because hostmonster have the LAMP setup (Linux Apache MySQL PHP). Installation can be done manually or via Fantastico one-click installer cPanel tool. I recommend Host Monster as as phpbb host.

Hostmonster Dedicated IP address is available for $30 a year, that is only $2.5 monthly. For example if the IP address is 10.1.1.1 then you will be able to access your site by typing http://10.1.1.1 in your browser. There are several reasons why you should buy dedicated IP address (buying dedi IP is not required in any way). First of all your site will have unique IP address that won’t be shared with any other websites. This is good for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If you need to have secure connection to your website – https:// (e.g you have online store) then you will need SSL certificate, and to use the SSL certificate on your site you will need dedicated IP address too. Other use can be if you need to have some specific port opened for example if you need it for specific service. To purchase dedicated IP address from Hostmonster login into your cPanel control panel account and click on the Dedicated IP tab at the top of the page. After reading the information about Dedicated IPs, click the button “Order Dedicated IP” to continue to the checkout.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is one of the oldest protocols for exchanging data over the Internet. For FTP a client and FTP server is need so data(files, folders) can be exchanged. It is the most popular way of exchanging files, but not the most secure way. FTPS (FTP Secure) for much better security for data transfer. With FTP you can upload and download files, create folders, delete , and if the client/server supports you can change permissions of files/directories. Popular FTP client is Filezilla (available for Linux, Windows and Mac computers). Modern browser (like Mozilla Firefox) do have FTP support, and you can access FTP servers by adding ftp:// prefix, followed by the server address, user name and password if required in the address bar.

Hostmonster FTP

With Hostmonster you can have unlimited FTP accounts on single account. Multiple connections when transferring files are allowed, for faster upload/download. FTP accounts can be created with cPanel control panel, where you can also setup permissions for the account and quotas (how much transfer can be made, how much storage is allowed and other). There you can also setup anonymous FTP access. If you do not want to use FTP, you can always use the File Manager for uploading/downloadin files.

Ruby on Rails (ROR) is an application framework for the Ruby programming language for creating websites. Uses the Model-View-Controller (MVS) platform for programming. It is less popular than PHP and other web programming languages like Perl, ASP or other, but many popular web sites use Ruby: twitter, whitepages.com, github and others. Rails needs webserver (Apache httpd) and module. Database management systems like MySQL is also supported by Ruby On Rails.

Hostmonster Ruby On Rails

Hostmonster supports ROR on their servers, but you need to configure your account before you can execute Rails application on your hostmonster account. First you need to enable SSH access on your account, setup folders and configure .htaccess to give requests to the ROR parser. It is not hard to setup if you are Rails developer, but for the average user it might be difficult if the user lacks linux knowledge. The complete step-by-step guide can be found here:

http://helpdesk.hostmonster.com/index.php/kb/article/207.

Fantastico de luxe is one of the features most web hosting providers offers. Fantastico is commercial addon to cPanel control panel that allows you to easily install popular open-source web applications: Wordpress (blogs), Drupal – Content Management system (CMS), Joomla – CMS, galleries, forums (phpbb, mybb), shopping carts like zencart or oscommerce and many other popular web scripts. Now it is the most popular one-click installer. When you install a script via fantastico everything is automatically setup so you can immediately begin using your website. Databases, tables, default settings, user name, passwords are automatically setup. Other than installation, any support is not provided by Fantastico for the scripts. Developers do not recommend installing via Fantastico De Luxe because the latest version of the software is not always available on this one-click installer. Manual installation may be time-consuming and hard for some people but you know that the latest version is installed with all bugs and features available. Hostmonster do not offer Fantastico to its customers but simplescripts. Simple scripts works pretty much the same way Fantastico does and supports many popular web applications. Installation of scripts is very simple.

Host Monster hosting company offers only one web hosting plan. This plan offers many features, some you might never need but it is always good know them. Almost any type of website can be hosted on Hostmonster account, including personal websites/blogs, corporate or social websites. The powerful Linux Apache MySQL PHP hosting platform gives you much flexibility. Linux operating system is fast, secure and stable system for  servers, because it is open-source, vulnerabilities are quickly discovered and fixed. Apache is the most popular open-source webserver. And MySQL a database system and PHP (web programming language) the most popular systems for creating websites with scripts like wordpress (blogs), drupal, joomla, galleries, phpbb (forums), shopping carts (zen cart, oscommerce etc) for ecommerce sites and others. You won’t run into problems like not enough space of bandwidth, because hostmonster offers unlimited space, bandwidth and you can host unlimited number of websites. You also get a free domain name with optional domain privacy, cpanel control panel to manage sites, FTP, cron jobs, shell access (ssh), site stats, perl, streaming audio/video and much much more. Click here for the complete list of features. Though many companies offer more hosting plans hostmonster offers everything in one hosting plan for the price of $6.95 monthly, $5.95 with the current promotion.