Lunarpages Hosting Plans

Like it or not, the world of Internet is expanding fast.

Sooner or later, every business will need to have their own websites – just like phone and fax. In case you’re planning to start off a new website, here’re the consideration points to go thru before making any purchase.

1. Website Domain Name

First, you’ll need to pick the right domain name. A website domain name is crucial for your website/business branding. Also, a keyword-riched domain name helps a lot in term of search engines optimization (SEO).

2. Web Hosting

Trust me, you don’t want your visitors to get a blank page or a down site. Your website has to be live 24/7 thus you will need a good web server that offer great server uptime. As for my recommendation, Lunarpages is one of the top rated hosting company that offer stable web hosting with affordable price. They are currently having Fall Promotion thus it’s good for you to check them up.

More details about Lunarpages Fall Promotion.

3. Server OS

Basically your main choice with server operating system will be Windows or Linux. Most hosting companies offer both type of server hosting. However, unless you need to run Windoes applications on your website, it’s crazy to not go with Linux. Linux’s the open source OS and they offer a lot more plugin and web applications for free. Further more, the OS is much stable than Windows.

4. Web Platform/Structure

Another points to run thru would be the content structure on your web platform. Will your website runs on static web pages, or dynamic elements that requires database connection. MySQL is the usual database used for web database; while PHP, ASP, DHTML, AJAX are some of the programming languages used for coding dynamic websites. For the convenience to maintain, you might want to check out some of the CMS software like Joomla, WordPress, or Drupal.

5. eCommerce Features

You’ll need to consider more if you’re planning to process online transaction on your website. What are the necessary application needed for your website? Shopping cart systems? Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and secure sever certificates perhaps? As for Lunarpages, users get a shared secure certs for free but in case you need a private SSL, a dedicated IP and a private certifications are needed!

Wrapping things up

Well, that’s five main thing to consider before starting your website. It’s definitely not an easy job to deploy a web project. To be honest, unless you’re familiar with the technical issues, if not the learning curve down the road is pretty steep.

Fortunately, hosting nowadays are normally equipped with easy-installation scripts like Fantastico. With the help of Fantastico, you’ll get all the web features installed within seconds. Shopping cart, CMS system, photo gallery, wiki addon – it’s definitely the most convenient web tool ever implement online.

What’s a blog? Well you can have your answer here, here, here, and here. As a matter of fact, there’re way too many spoon-feeding guides and tutorials around on blogging and I’m not going to start another one here.

But if you really want to know what’s a blog and how does a blog work? This video is a must watch.

Don’t be surprise I am re-reviewing Lunarpages again for the Asia countries. Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and India are after all, among countries that searched the most for Lunarpages.

Regional Interest on Lunarpages

Have a look on the trend chart above.

US based hosting company, Lunarpages is most interested, not in the America regions, but the Asians. 6 out of top 10 countries that searched Lunarpages the most are in Asia (for year 2008)!

This explains clearly why the re-review is much needed.

Is Lunarpages recommended for Singaporean?

So, should you go with Lunarpages in case you’re from Singapore? The answer is yes, and I’ll tell you why.

There are good reasons why Lunarpages is much wanted in Singapore and other Asia countries. Based on my guesstimation, the major two factors that drive the trend are 1) the e-commerce environment in United States; 2) the pricing of local web hosting services.

e-Commerce: United States vs World

While many are talking about United States being decoupled from the world economy; I don’t see much of this trend in the online world. There’re indeed many online marketers/merchantes/bloggers popped out from all over the world despite US, but the big spenders on the Internet are still United States people (US online retail sales expected to be $329 billion in year 2010).

Also if you look at the major e-commerce network nowadays, it’s no doubt that US is still the dominant in the online business world where the country still hold the largest online advertising and affiliate network – CJ.com, Google Adsense, Click Bank, Yahoo Advertisers, Craig List, Business.com, Shopping.com, Buy.com, ShareASale, LinkShare, MSN Ads Center, AdBrite, Pay Per Post, BOTW, and the list goes on.

What does this means? This shows that if you want to make money online, the money that you made will be still, coming out from the United States.

The relation of this to Lunarpages? e-commerce website hosting! We all know website hosted at United States will response faster for users in United States; now suppose you’re going to start an e-commerce site and sell your stuffs (or affiliated stuffs) to the US market, where would you host your website? United States for sure!

This explains why not Lunarpages, but other reputable hosting companies like Bluehost and Hostgator are much wanted inside and outside United States.

Lunarpages Pricing

You’ll see how much bargain you are getting when you compare Lunarpages hosting packages with others. At Lunarpages, you get unlimited bandwidth, disk storage, addon domain for just $4.95/mo! Along with the package, you’ll get $775 worth promotional software for free!

Compare this to other local hosting companies in Asia (we’ll take Singapore for example), Singapore based PozNet cost $9.5/mo (S$160/yr) for 350MB/35GB disk storage/bandwidth, Vodien cost $17/mo (S$24/mo) for 10GB/unlimited disk storage space/bandwidth, CyberSite cost $10.5/mo (S$15/mo) for 200MB/unlimited disk storage/bandwidth, and HostSG cost $8.5 (S$12/mo) for 2GB/20GB disk storage/bandwidth.

You’re paying a lot more for the local host for a lot less hosting features! Isn’t sucks? I am not surprise that Singaporean go for hosting companies other than the local one – com’on, everyone loves bargain!

Lunarpages Latest Fall Promotion

Now, I know you don’t want to be left out.

Check out Lunarpages latest promotion for Fall Season. They are now offering unbelievably-great bargain to their customers. You’ll get unlimited bandwidth, disk storage, addon domain for just $4.95/mo! Plus, you’ll get web software including full registered versions of Parallels Workstation 2.2 for Windows & Linux, WinSettings, Photo TurboBackup… – all worth $775 for free!

Should Singaporean take up Lunarpages hosting service? Should Indonesian take up Lunarpages hosting service?

Should ANYONE take up Lunarpages hosting service? You bet!

Lunarpages is strongly recommended and I urge you to check them out yourself in case you’re looking for the right web host.

A web hosting server status can be checked externally via an uptime-tracking software; or it can be checked internally via your cPanel control interface.

Let’s see how’s Lunarpages server doing today!

Out of random curiosity, I run a quick check on Lunarpages server service status today and here’s the result.

From the diagram, you can see the server load is operating in a healthy level (1.91/4 cpus). Disk storage capacity seems loaded up but not overloaded – nothing much to worry about.

Well, it seems there’s nothing much worth mentioning from this thus that’s all for the quick update. In case you have an account with Lunarpages as well, you can do the same by login into cPanel and navigate to this page by clicking on the ‘Server Service Status’ on the left bar.

Tired of having your blog on other websites? Frustrated when you discover how little control you have when your blog is hosted on a third party platform? You bet the long URL of your blog that ends with ‘blogspot.com’ or ‘typepad.com’ looks ugly!

Here’s the solution that ends all these frustration: start your blog on your own domain!

There are waaaaaay too many benefits running your blog independently online and guess what? Hosting your blog on an independent domain isn’t expensive at all! I mean, it’s dead cheap!

And also the best of all, hosting your blog on your own domain is very simple. All you have to do is a one time simple setup and you can start publishing blogpost as you were doing it in Blogspot, Typepad, or Friendster.

What you need to start a blog with your own domain?

A domain name, a web hosting service installed with desired blog software, and lots of heart (and time!) to write some good blogposts.

You will need to register your own unique domain name. There are a few reputable domain registering agents around WWW, I would recommend GoDaddy as they are one of the cheapest. Many hosting companies offer free domain registration for their first time customers. Thus in case you have not purchase any web hosting services, save your money and get your free domain names with these web hosting company.

Lunarpages for example, offers free domain name to their customers. Other web hosts that provide such offers are like Bluehost and Hostgator.

Installing a blog at your web host

The next thing to do is to purchase a web host and install related blogging software on it. For those who’re starting for the first time, I would recommend Lunarpages as you can get special offer here (cheapest among all, only $4.95/mo).

How to install WordPress in Lunarpages?

With the help of Fantastico, web application can be installed at your hosting within clicks. I’ll show you how to install your WordPress blog in Lunarpages.

First, login to cPanel and go to ‘Fantastico’. The Fantastico icon looks like a smiley face and it’s normally listed at the bottom of the page.

Click WordPress once you’re in Fantastico main page. Here, you’ll have all the basic details about WordPress in your Lunarpages account. Check out the screen cap below for example, you’ll see the number of WordPress installed in your hosting account, WordPress version, required disk storage size, as well as the link for WordPress quick installation.

Click “New Installation” to install your WordPress blog. You will come to a page where you need to input all the necessary info for your blog. Insert related info such as blog name, blog location (the folder where you wish to locate your blog, leave blank if you want it at root), blog administrator login, email, and blog descriptions.

Click “Install WordPress” at the bottom once you’re ready. You’ll then see a few lines of the installation details and there, you’re done installing your blog at Lunarpages. Upon completion, you can have your installation and login details filed and sent to your inbox. Just keyin your email and press ’send’, the details will be in your inbox within seconds. To start posting or to edit your blog design, login to your WordPress blog for the first time, go to http://yourdomain.com/blogfolder/wp-admin.

Wrapping things up

Well as said, the whole process of setting up your blog on an independent domain is really simple and it makes no sense to have your blog hosted on other platform. After all, you’re the one writing the blog, why let others have control on your blog.