GoDaddy Web Hosting

GoDaddy web hosting (www.godaddy.com) delivers the essentials riding on the success of GoDaddy's domain name registration service. Along with their snappy name, the company has a host of awards to its credit, placing it securely in the leader's niche in domain name and domain management. This expertise makes it a no-brainer that GoDaddy should host customer web sites too. Here's your domain, sir, and here's the website to back it up.

Like BlueHost, GoDaddy's CEO posts on his own blog. The infamous Bob Parsons is definitely up to speed in the domain name business, and is a leader in addressing issues and abuses in the industry. Like Bob Parson's clear and no-nonsense approach to his writing, the GoDaddy shared web hosting offerings are simple and no-nonsense products. Extras can be paid for, like a blog engine and upgrades, and prices are clearly stated. The company offers a “sweet-spot” hosting solution with a best-value bundle, clearly marked if one browses around their site a little.

All the basic features are there--disk space, traffic, email accounts, with more databases under management than other hosted solutions--10 for the entry level product. Interestingly, web site statistics are an extra to be paid for, allowing the basic home user who just wants a site to be able to save a few dollars. A slight negative is their unconventional quoting of disk and traffic data sizes in MB rather than in GB, giving at first glance, an impression of more data than is actually supplied. Apart from this, the quotes and web site are also simple and clear. I enjoyed the access to information and the ease of use attention that has obviously been put in.

GoDaddy is a hosting provider targeting the low-cost portion of the market and their service offering does not disappoint, with a basic starting site cost of $3.99 per month. With 50 GB of disk space this is certainly a generous service offering!

GoDaddy has focused on its customer take on too – with a 24 by 7 account setup service. They also offer 24 by 7 telephonic support. GoDaddy provides a very different service level too: 24 by 7 support for billing queries. This makes their customer service channel one of the more complete support offerings available.

GoDaddy provides all the web hosting features offered by competitors, and they then crown this off by bringing their domain and deep internet technology savvy to the party. For technical peace-of-mind from a strong registrar, GoDaddy is the choice for many.

Visit GoDaddy

GoDaddy Review 2008

GoDaddy.com states that they offer world-class hosting as good as or better than most hosting companies offer, but we feel they are referring more to their state-of-the-art, World Class Data Center rather than to their actual web hosting products and customer service. A web host can have all the technological bells and whistles in the world backing them, but if a host service doesn't have solid customer support and a few key features, that host will fall short of the competition.
GoDaddy.com does offer some very attractive and affordable packages. But certain key features are missing with the GoDaddy solution, as compared to our higher ranked web hosting solutions.

Feature Set:

GoDaddy is not a bad value, but lacks a lot of features that competitors offer for virtually the same price. GoDaddy offers 5 GB of disk space storage, 500 email accounts, 250 GB monthly data transfer, and limited on languages/platform support. Many other web hosting providers offer more for less. All plans with GoDaddy include these features: World Class Data Center, online set-up and instant account activation, FrontPage Extensions, 24/7 FTP Access, best-of-breed routers, firewalls and servers; Web Site Statistics, free setup, daily backups, 24/7 monitoring, 24x7 email, telephone and web-based tech support, 24/7 physical security and secure SSL Certificates (an optional extra) GoDaddy places their emphasis more on technology than on customer support.

Customer Service:

Customer Service is what separates great hosts from the mediocre. GoDaddy offers an array of support options, such as Email Support, Telephone Support, an FAQ Section on their Web Site and access to various user guides. Unfortunately, there are a few items that are definite drawbacks with their Customer Service. If you use their Email Support, you will not get a response for 10 to 12 hours. Too long for most customers! GoDaddy even posts this right on their Web Site. I wouldn't be boasting about a 10 to 12 hour response time. If you don't want to wait for an email, there phone support is a little better. The average waiting period we experienced was 30 minutes. This is still too long of a wait and much longer than the wait we experienced with other web hosting companies that we reviewed. The tech I finally did speak with was not well-informed about the products or services offered and not eager to help. Unfortunately, Go Daddy does not offer live chat, a valuable customer service tool that allows you to receive instant help online.

Control Panel:

GoDaddy is not too difficult to use, even without a technical background. Most functions within the Account Management tool are similar to other control panels, but GoDaddy.com's panel lacks certain features that competitors offer. On the plus side, with GoDaddy.com you can perform account management tasks, email management, web security, database setup and management, manage statistic tools and install FrontPage Extensions (without these supported by your host, you can't take advantage of all the perks FrontPage offers).

Summary:

Overall, GoDaddy has some catching up to do with the competition. With lackluster customer service and missing key features, look to other providers that offer more value for your money. If GoDaddy would invest in customer service improvements, they would be a more attractive contender.

GoDaddy Review 2008

Joomla review

Rating: 8/10

• Release version: 1.5 Beta
• License: GNU/GPL, Open Source
• Homepage: http://www.joomla.org
• OpenSourceCMS.com demo
• CMSMatrix.org listing

Although it is a beta version, I am reviewing Joomla 1.5 because it has many improvements over the 1.0.x versions and even though it may still have some bugs Joomla 1.5 is here to stay!

Ahh, Joomla - my first CMS! Well, it was actually Mambo but Joomla is a fork that is pretty close (at least in the 1.0.x versions), so...

When I started making sites I (like everybody else) coded them by hand and FTPed them to the server; after a while it started getting tedious and more than anything else, a nightmare to update. This is when I started looking for a CMS and eventually chose Mambo, mostly because I had the feeling that no matter what problem I would have the community would help me. And I was right!

There have been many improvements from the 1.0.x series, many of which are a breath of fresh air to Joomla users:

• built in SEF (search engine urls) support. Previously you could turn urls with variables into static urls, but those looked something like example.com/content/view/12/24; in 1.5 Joomla has the ablility to transform urls into example.com/index.php/products/widgets/green-widgets.
• better caching (really helps with heavy trafficed sites, in case of Digg or Slashdot).
• removed statistics - while it may seem to be a step back for many, that component ate resources like no tomorrow.
• general code improvements.
  

Joomla review

Go Daddy Review, User Reviews of Go Daddy

I have many domains hosted on a single account at GoDaddy. The hosting works great. It has been reliable, reasonably fast PHP and MySQL services. Reasonably easy to configure, etc. There are very serious hosting solutions out there that cost many times the GoDaddy price and are only a little better for web hosting.

Bottom line, hosting OK for the price.

Go Daddy Review, User Reviews of Go Daddy

JoomlaPack: open-source backup component

JoomlaPack is an open-source backup component for the Joomla! CMS, quite a bit different than its competition. Its mission is simple: create a site backup that can be restored on any Joomla!-capable server.

It creates a full backup of your site in a single ZIP archive. The archive contains all the files, a database snapshot and an installer derived from the standard Joomla! installer. The backup and restore process is AJAX powered to avoid server timeouts, even with huge sites.

Alternatively, you can make a backup of only your database. If you want a reliable, easy to use, open source backup solution for your Joomla! site, try it out.

JoomlaPack web resources

Official web site: http://www.joomlapack.net
Support forum: http://www.joomlapack.net/forum/
Project page (software and documentation downloads): http://www.joomlacode.org/gf/project/jpack
Developers' blog: http://joomlapack.blogspot.com


JoomlaPack

JCE - A Content Editor for Joomla!® : Home

Add a set of tools to your Joomla!® environment that give you the power to create the kind of content you want, without limitations, and without needing to know or learn HTML, XHTML, CSS...

THIS extension is just VITAL in making Joomla 1.5 user friendly for non-tech people!

• Office-like functions and familiar buttons make formatting simple
  
• Upload, rename, delete, cut/copy/paste images and insert them into your articles using an intuitive and familiar interface
• Create Links to other Sections, Categories, Articles, Weblinks and Contacts¹ in your site using a unique and practical Link Browser
• Take control of your code with syntax highlighting in the Advanced Code editor and advanced style and element attribute editing
• Integrated Spellchecking using Google™ Spellchecker (or PSpell and ASpell)

JCE - A Content Editor for Joomla!® : Home

Godaddy Gmail Authenticate - gdgmail

This is for Joomla users on Godaddy.com servers wanting to authenticate new or existing users using gmail. The plugin allows for authentication through gmail and auto account creation.

This is a replacement plugin for the included one that is standard with joomla. If you use Godaddy then you will be better served and not have problems by using this plugin instead.

Joomla! Extensions Directory - Godaddy Gmail Authenticate - gdgmail