My birthday is coming on May 25th and Tech Conclave, my tech news show is doing great. In line with that, I decided to run a contest on Episode 5 which will be formally announced and commenced on May 15th and I will be giving away free Speedy web hosting and a domain name to five (5) lucky winners valid for 12 months! The prizes are sponsored by the nice folks at Top Hosting Center who gladly accepted my invitation.

What’s a web hosting and domain name and why do you want them?
A web hosting is what you need when you want to start a blog, a website, or anything Web-related. A web hosting must be partnered with a domain name. A domain name is the web address you want (for example, www.yourblogaddress.com, or anything)

How To Enter

So you might ask: how to enter the contest? Well, the steps are quite simple. The phrases I wrote in bold letters below means the important steps you must follow.

1. Register to Tech Conclave Community Forum if you are not a member.

2. Tell the forum community who you are, what you do, and why do you like technology at Introduce Yourself category in the forum.

3. Follow Tech Conclave’s official Twitter account at http://www.twitter.com/techconclave – if you don’t have a Twitter account, create one at www.twitter.com. Also, subscribe to Tech Conclave’s YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/techconclave

After completing the steps above, you will have one (1) valid entry and you now have a chance to win the prizes. There are five winners so chances are high since as I write this, there are not much entries / members yet on the forum: so don’t miss it. The winners will be drawn randomly and will be announced on Episode 6 which is slated for release on May 30, this month. For more information about the official rules and regulations of the contest, please follow this link.

Before I end this post, I have one little favor to ask you: could you follow me on Twitter as well and greet me on May 25th as I turn 22? That would make me the happiest person on that day. Thanks a lot!

My Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/anmjoven

Please spread the word about this contest and participate in my tech community! Everyone is welcome – geek or not!

If you want to know how I met Brad, well it happened last year when I was broadcasting at Justin dot Com and he stumbled on my video channel. You can read a brief story of how we met in my previous post where he ranked #8 as one of the top people of my life last year.

Being a tech enthusiast who honestly doesn’t know much yet about more technical things as I do, he aspires to become a figure similar to Chris Pirillo, Zane Savage and all other geeks-for-show personalities on the Web – of course, with his own style. Why not when, since last year, he has been gradually acquiring a lot of gadgets and computer things that made me drool so much. He started with a single laptop when I first knew him; now he owns several gadgets and equipped with dual-screened LCD monitors and stuffs that could expose him into greater learning through actual experience than me.

That being said, he is planning to start a podcast program every week and guess what? He wants me to host with him! LOL That’s quite a cool combination right there.

We’ve jointly setup Twitter and other social network accounts in preparation for this. He’s pretty good on marketing side and he was able to allure people to follow this podcast’s official Twitter account. The start of our Podcast appears to be rough this week as I am drowned with a lot of priority work to survive. We call our program Tech Webcast and hopefully it will be in good path soon. I will be talking about hosting stuffs and programming if I can so please participate check it out if you have time.

As far as I can remember, Philaahzophy.com is not new to me. I think I’ve seen and mentioned this site on this blog way before when I had a grand review about THC’s lifetime Rudolf hosting plan last February (which is now unavailable — unfortunately). He was still positive to THC that time — far different from his views now.

On Philaahzophy’s latest post as I checked it entitled "Top Hosting Center Can’t Keep Own Website Online!," I believe Aahz missed to read something from his H-Sphere control panel. I am not sure if he is on Rudolf hosting plan or Speedy (I didn’t have interest to research) but I know he is one of THC’s customers and claimed that he used to be a "big fan" of the web host. His post was a bomb to THC and considering that THC announced the event prior to their downtime, this blogger once again shooted blanks.

While it is true that the official homepage of Top Hosting Center was down as of this writing, I wasn’t surprised. I’ve read yesterday from the company’s H-Sphere control panel news section that they are going to change their IP address as they’ve always done in the past months (this is something Aahz missed to read). I’m not sure how many hours had it been in downtime status but I have asked some friends abroad and they told me that they can fully access the website (which makes me believe that DNS information propagation is complete on some places). I don’t know if other THC users noticed the advisory but for sure it is conspicuous enough to get noticed. Since I’m in the Philippines and THC servers are in North America, I guess I will have to wait for the site to go up. It is a good thing that this blog or any customer sites (and hosting functionality) was not affected by their downtime otherwise it would be real shitty.  

As far as I know based on my working Cisco networking knowledge, changing an IP address does not take effect immediately and unfortunately domains undergoing IP changes will experience downtime. Changes that undergoes downtime include IP updates, IP transition from shared to dedicated IPs and vice versa, and name server changes.

To THC: Aahz May Be Right, But Not Completely Right

I do not say that Aahz is completely wrong. He was just shooting blanks on some ways; he may be right, but well, not completely right on his claims since I highly believe he missed the advisory. Plus, he could be on a shared hosting — and you can’t expect a dedicated server quality on a shared hosting plan!

Now this is for you THC: like what he said on his first post,  I agree that there have been quite a few times that THC had problems with their hosting services. Although they are fast in responding to support and delivering solutions to problems, complaints like from Aahz’s is a sign that THC needs to be consistent and make their impatient customers feel what a good host is. It doesn’t feel good to defend something that doesn’t deserve to be defended. Fortunately, THC isn’t as worse as Aahz described it based on my experience. He was a bit too extreme. Perhaps he needs to get a dedicated server. Believe me, you will never find a host that doesn’t experience downtimes especially on shared hosting.

Bottomline

If Top Hosting Center wasn’t good enough, as it never became a perfect web host, I would have flown to other web hosting companies. I’ve got lots of sponsorship offers for this blog from other web hosts yet I’ve denied them all because I like the way THC handles its hosting services. Plus, I don’t need to worry about a thing because they have backups accessible. An anonymous hacker tried to devastate this blog earlier this month and THC was very, very quick to restore my database. I’m sure other customers can have similar experience as THC’s support is just a matter of clicks away. In my case, I write to them via email but I can also use their live chat for basic issues and trouble ticket on my H-Sphere control panel as well.

This company does web hosting a very different way. It offers a wide range of Quality Web Hosting plans priced from $2.99 per to $11.99 per month. The main shared plans are Blogan (Blog hosting), Content (CMS hosting), Social Web (Social networking plan), Web Mall (E-Commerce hosting service) and Multi Site (Multi Domain hosting service for up to 30 small websites). Besides them you can use between other 24 hosting service plans. Each of them features different software application – from WordPress and b2Evolution Hosting plans, through MODx, Drupal and Joomla hosting services, to Social and SSL hosting plans.

Host Color also offers VPS Hosting plans powered by Virtuozzo, a leading virtualization solution. VPS plans cost from $19.95 (192 MB RAM, 10 GB HDD, 50 GB data transfer) to $69.95 for very powerful Virtual Private Server with 1024 MB RAM, 50 GG disc space and 350 GB data transfer. Anyone who needs to use fully Managed VPS can purchase it for low cost monthly flat fee of $49.95.

The company also offers Dedicated Hosting starts at $99 per month. These commercial information however is far less important than a few other things about Host Color. Besides my current host which is the Top Hosting Center, Host Color possess the following qualities:

1. This is the only hosting company I’ve seen to show their senior management to customers. You can see who runs Host color on its "Team" page.
2. This is the only web host that express its business principles and says "NO" to overselling on its website (Check their "About Us" and "Philosophy" sections)
3. This is the web hosting company that has implemented the probably the best customer service approach I’ve seen – to build an Online customer center (Host Color named it "pZone") to enable customers to manage their accounts and to communicate with its customer care specialists. This approach to customer service means that the web host id focused not just to sell, but to provide a high level customer care.

There are a few other things that make Host Color very open hosting company. It updates its new section and blog very often and launches promotional campaigns.

Powered with independent customer ratings system based on customer satisfaction, hosting plan affordability, uptime and support consistency, Web Hosting Rating is becoming the Web’s largest searchable web host directory that presents all the hosting information you need to come up with a decision in choosing a good host. Through them, you can also get exclusive promotional coupons that you can use to get discounts to certain web hosts. The reviews and web hosting rating they present on their website intelligently categorized for your convenience were written by real customers of today’s medium to large-scale web hosting companies, so they may be credible and trustworthy. I’ve been difficult to convince to get a hosting through a web hosting review site, as I’ve encountered before something that made them look unreliable. Fortunately, WebhostingRating.com is not one of them. However, continue to be wary and trust your gut.

One of the things I like besides the hosting ranking system is their rich and massive hosting articles library. It presents a lot of web hosting tutorials and web hosting guides related to web hosting such as multiple domain security, managed hosting management, setting up an e-commerce site, using a certain web language or payment gateways for your business website, among others. You’ll learn a lot of stuffs if you have time to browse this section that can easily be found on the site’s main menu.

Web Hosting Rating completes a good web hosting ratings and review site with their web hosting awards directory. Trust me, this is very useful in identifying a good web host . I’ve been hosted by Top Hosting Center for over a year now and I already enjoyed their hosting plan. I never regret that I trusted the awards they got that are presented on their site. Same would be the case with Web Hosting Rating.

Finally, if you reach a point that you think you’ve found the ideal web host for your blogging or business website through Web Hosting Rating, my personal advice is that you contact the live chat support of that web host and investigate further. Don’t even get a hosting to a web host that doesn’t have a live chat, it sounds untrustworthy to me.

Overall, the good thing with Web Hosting Rating is that you don’t have to research further on Google about a web hosting company as they already present most of the details you need to come up with a good decision. Good luck.

Speedy hosting plan Windows boasts almost identical features with its Linux counterpart, except of course the support for Microsoft-based web languages and software sits on top of it such as ASP and ASP.net 2. The rest is almost the same with Speedy hosting plan for Linux — 1000 GB disk space, lifetime domain name, a gigantic 33 000 GB monthly bandwidth (tantamount to having unlimited bandwidth),  a dedicated IP address, the pricing at $6.75, among other features. I would love to get this plan if I am an ASP programmer — however, I feel better with PHP so I’ll stick with their Linux hosting plan!

If you want to know how THC’s Speedy hosting plan feels like, you can read my extensive review on this post. I really loved that my domain is running with a dedicated IP from Speedy hosting plan as it boosted my traffic a lot.

THC has announced that they are giving 10% discount if you order Speedy hosting plan under a 24-month billing cycle. To get the discount code, all you need is to talk with their live chat representatives and they will give you the coupon code.

Based on my experience, the best thing about Top Hosting Center is their outstanding web hosting support. It’s the greatest bonus you can get aside from their competitive, beefed up hosting features. Keep it up THC!

If your web hosting plan uses H-Sphere control panel, and you run WordPress 2.5 from it, most likely you will get an "HTTP error" when you attempt to upload an image or anything to your WordPress 2.5 media gallery.

Here are the steps THC told me on how they solved the WordPress problem:

1. Right-click and save (download) this no-flash-uploader PHP file and upload it to your WordPress 2.5 plugin folder.
2. Activate the no-flash-uploader plugin in your WordPress control panel.
3. Be sure that your WordPress upload folder is writable (chmod to 777 to be sure).
4. Download this zip file, uncompress it to your local hard drive, and upload the folders to your WordPress installation directory. Make sure that the folders you upload follow the same directory structure of your WordPress installation.
5. Login to your WordPress control panel, and try uploading an image. WordPress 2.5 image upload should work during this step.

Just take note that the notorious WordPress image upload error is not exclusive to H-Sphere control panel. It also occurs to other control panels like CPanel and Plesk — and the solution approach is different.

If you find the solution above ineffective for your H-Sphere web hosting plan, please let me know and I would be fully happy to assist you.

Speedy Versus Rudolf

The hosting features of Speedy plan can be emphasized by putting it side by side with the infamous Rudolf plan which I believed to be one of the greatest hosting plans the Web has ever seen during its time.

As you can see above, Speedy is distinguishable by its enormous disk space and monthly bandwidth. Plus it comes with free dedicated IP address and a domain name, along with other hosting features Rudolf has. Perhaps one of the things you would care is that Speedy is regular hosting plan priced at $6.75 per month for 24-month subscription, unlike Rudolf which was introduced as lifetime hosting plan for only $95.

Like what I expressed in the post when I first experienced Speedy, honestly I was very excited for its features. My previous Rudolf plan felt great as is, considering that I don’t have to pay for its monthly fees and enjoy hosting for life. However, I wanted to have the best for this blog. So, when THC unleashed its Speedy hosting plan, I was one of the early people who were able to taste its glory.

The Glory of Dedicated IP

Other than the great bump of its figures in terms of disk space and bandwidth, it is the dedicated IP address that makes Speedy hosting plan rather distinctive compared to its competitors. THC is proud that Speedy is the best hosting plan with its level as shown in their comparison page.

Once you buy a Speedy plan and you gain access to THC’s H-Sphere control panel, you will get one dedicated IP address that you can use to any of your domains. Unfortunately, a dedicated IP address can only be used by one domain, so if you need more, you have to pay add-on for $24 per static IP address per year. Once again, THC offers the cheapest rate with this optional upgrade for your domains. If you don’t have any idea about the importance of a dedicated IP address, this post is a good reference for you.

Now, knowing that this blog run with Speedy’s dedicated IP address for over a month now – was it able to make any difference at all? My answer is a resounding yes. Other than extended FTP functionality, one thing I noticed is that this blog got better traffic from search engines. It was scarce before when I was still under Rudolf’s shared IP. Another thing I noticed is that my domain’s emails received less spams. As you know, having a dedicated IP address protects you from being affected by other abusing users on a shared hosting environment. Chances of getting unsolicited emails and damaging your growing business reputation resulting from shared IP being blacklisted are greatly avoided.

The Speedy Hosting Experience

At first, I was greatly thrilled of the abundance brought about by Speedy. With four times disk space capacity (1,000 GB) and ten times monthly bandwidth (33,000 GB) allocation than that of Speedy hosting plan, dreams and daydreams of having dozens of sites having large contents are definitely possible. More sites, more money – that is what I thought.

Later on, I realized that it is quite hard to take advantage the enormous disk space and bandwidth (well, for my case). Adding quality contents to each of your sites and managing them are more challenging than merely getting large margins of hosting resources. However for web entrepreneurs and webmasters who have multiple existing domains and rapidly-growing websites, Speedy’s resources are sure-fire advantage.

Adding quality contents to each of your sites and managing them are more challenging than merely getting large margins of hosting resources

The hosting experience in general is rather identical to that of Rudolf hosting plan except worries of having deficient disk space and limited bandwidth are eliminated – which is good, less stress.

Speedy is only available on Linux platform. THC found out in their previous hosting plan experience that customers favor Linux platform than Windows. This is seconded by them because Linux is more stable, faster, and secure. If you need a Windows plan, however, ask THC’s live chat representatives for a Rudolf Windows plan (I heard Rudolf is still available on demand despite being out of the spotlight).

As usual, Top Hosting Center still excels in the area of customer support – which plays a vital role of having a pleasant hosting experience with them. Their chat support representatives are responsive and well-informed. They immediately act when they get aware that a problem has struck to any of their customer’s websites. Same goes with their trouble ticket system – responses and solutions arrive in timely fashion.

Little Shortcomings

Shortly after Speedy hosting plan was introduced, THC announced the change of H-Sphere’s EasyApp collection. EasyApp is a set of one-click-install PHP applications similar to CPanel’s Fantastico. EasyApp applications include CMS, blog platforms, e-mail and chat applications, among others.

THC is not anymore relying on default EasyApp package from PSoft, the provider of their H-Sphere control panel and EasyApp. According to THC, PSoft failed to deliver updates on time when customers need them. So, they outsourced custom EasyApp packages from HSpherePlugins.com, a third-party developer for H-Sphere. Now, despite applications being up-to-date, the number of EasyApp applications kind of reduced. You don’t have to worry though; WordPress and other important applications are still there and would possibly expand in the future.

Another thing worth mentioning during my observation is that Speedy is not slowdown-free. My blog experienced several slowdowns sporadically within the month. It is good to know, however, that despite Speedy being so generous, it is still running on a shared hosting environment – a kind of hosting that is not totally free from hosting problems such as slowdowns and downtimes which is normal.

Related Articles From THC Speedy Customers

If you have tried THC’s Speedy hosting plan and you write a review, please inform me and I will add your review hereunder. So far, these are the customers who expressed their opinions regarding THC’s Speedy hosting plan.

• New Hosting For GrandmasterB.com

Conclusion: Is Speedy The Next Big Thing?

I remember THC calling Speedy “the biggest standard hosting plan” they’ve done to date when they unleashed it. By reviewing the page they made comparing Speedy versus the hosting plans from other big hosting companies, I would say Speedy is superb. It deserves the throne of Rudolf hosting plan, which however is still very good for thrifty and frugal online entrepreneurs.

Then again, I would like to emphasize the nature of shared hosting. Despite Speedy being so big and great, figures will not guarantee a problem-free and dedicated-hosting-like web hosting. However, its free dedicated IP is a consolation, and with THC’s quick-responding support department, you will get a pleasant hosting experience for you and your business.

Despite Speedy being so big and great, figures will not guarantee a problem-free and dedicated-hosting-like web hosting.

Now if you don’t bother paying monthly fees for your web hosting, and for the sake of abundance, better SEO and quality of hosting, Top Hosting Center successfully wipes off their hosting contenders with the striking features of their Speedy hosting plan – and that is a big thing.

So what I did is that I unzipped the files to my local disk and uploaded them to this WordPress-based blog. I logged in to my blog’s control panel and see how the theme looks. The theme is called “THC Alpha,” a two-column WordPress theme that looks good. I was impressed of the decency of the design which carries an air of formality.

Download the THC Alpha theme for WordPress here.

Here are the screen captures of THC Alpha WordPress theme:

My review for THC’s Speedy hosting plan is still being written and no matter how many WordPress themes they will send me, it will never influence my judgement to their Speedy plan. Anyway, THC made it clear that what they gave was just a token of appreciation – so there is no bad motive behind unless you think otherwise.

Visit official Speedy hosting plan page at THC.

I just added another item in the menu called “Resources.” That page will be populated with useful media (themes, e-books, among others) that you would like to check and download. It is pretty barren as of the moment though, but you will love that page eventually.

THC’s Speedy hosting plan presents a fresh and bountiful pool of resources for Web enthusiasts and entrepreneurs. At THC’s web hosting blog, a Speedy-related post mentioned that it was “the company’s greatest standard hosting plan offer they’ve done to date.” For me, it sounds exciting, but a little intriguing as well knowing that their previous Rudolf hosting plan was good enough.

Among its standard hosting features, here are outstanding figures that comprise THC’s Speedy hosting plan:

• FREE Dedicated IP Address – usually this is an add-on to other hosting companies, normally costs at least $2.50 per month. THC had it free for Speedy, which is really good.
• 33 000 GB Monthly Bandwidth – I remember THC offering only 3000 GB bandwidth with their previous hosting plans (including Rudolf).
• 1000 GB Disk Space – Self-explanatory, but great hands down. Previous hosting plans only featured 250 GB, which definitely was a history.
• Free Domain Name – it’s awful to know some hosts (not THC) don’t include a domain name in their hosting plans. They do it usually to look their plans cheaper against their competitors.
• Aggressive Pricing – At THC’s Speedy comparison page, the hosting plan costs as low as $6.75 / month. Commonly, the pricing is dependent to the billing cycle of the hosting plan. I found out that THC had Speedy aggressively-priced, beating all matching hosting packages from other hosting companies such as Host Monster, Dreamhost, Bluehost, Go Daddy and Host Gator. I checked their competitors’ sites and their price comparison was rather true. However, I will have to verify its features further. Sometimes, companies are biased to their own products. I will go find out the truthfulness of their page and whistle blow if I found something fishy.

According to their live chat representatives, their existing Rudolf customers can upgrade to Speedy hosting plan. Honestly, I don’t see so much point about that since Rudolf is already a lifetime plan with just one-time fee. However, I couldn’t blame seeing people moving towards Speedy from Rudolf since it comes with a free dedicated IP address, a terabyte disk space, a jaw-dropping 33,000 GB monthly bandwidth, and other features. Those figures are enough to convince them, as it did to me.

Yes, this blog now runs under Speedy hosting plan. I’m currently assessing the experience and I will write a comprehensive review soon whether it’s really hot or not. Initially I have a positive impression with it, especially knowing that this blog now runs over a dedicated IP address. If you are not aware, having a site running over a dedicated IP address will absolutely favor search engine optimization (SEO), plus it is very good in building legitimate business identity on the Internet, and certainly unleashes extra FTP functionality as well. I will explain in my future post why having a dedicated IP is important especially for online entrepreneurs.

It is very futuristic and has a very competitive lineup of hosting features that will break your worries on hosting.

I recommend that you check THC’s Speedy hosting plan. It is very futuristic and has a very competitive lineup of hosting features that will break your worries on hosting. By the way, if you sign-up for it, I recommend getting a 24-month plan for you to get huge discount – that’s what I got and it was very affordable for me. At least, the setup fee was waived, which would have cost me additional $25 if I got a one-month, 3-month, or 6-month plan.

So enough talk here, I will continue my observation in the back scene and assess this hosting plan for a week. I hope to bring good news from it.

By the way, if you have a product, service, or website related to this blog and you want it to be reviewed by me, check out this post. Let’s have some good time.