Linux hosting is often related to shared hosting packages with certain web hosting features included. This article provides an overview of Linux hosting as well as BlueHost Linux hosting options including LAMP, e-commerce feature, SimpleScript and more.
When people hear the term Linux hosting, several things may come to mind:
• inexpensive shared hosting featuring a large selection of free, open-source software applications including bulletin boards, blogs, forums, content management systems, photo albums, wikis, and more—without the proprietary charges associated with Windows servers and the MicroSoft products designed to run on them, hosting costs are significantly reduced and a wider variety of applications can be offered to web developers;
• reliability—Netcraft has reported that 69% of the 42 most reliable hosting providers used Linux servers in June 2010 and 91% of the top 500 supercomputer sites also relied on a Linux distribution;
• a continually updated software—due to its open-source nature, Linux doesn’t work in a standard development cycle, but is constantly under development with iterations released when they’re ready;
• the LAMP development environment—Many web developers prefer to have their websites hosted with Linux Operating Systems on an Apache web server and MySQL databases and a current version of at least on of the “P” web-scripting languages (PHP, PERL, and Python);
• Security—by comparing Linux and Windows alerts, patches, and vulnerabilities, research has shown Linux to be more inherently secure and suffer less serious issues when it does have issues.
For any, or all, of these reasons, people may find themselves seeking out Linux hosting. When they do, BlueHost may be worth their consideration for a number of reasons:
• BlueHost does have inexpensive Linux hosting plans, which—using the SimpleScripts one-click installation—gives customers quick, easy access to a wide range of well-regarded free, open-source software including Agora Cart, Zen Cart, OS Commerce, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla! Moodle, Coppermine, Tikiwiki, phpBB, and more.
For a low monthly cost, it also provides unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domain hosting, and unlimited email accounts, as well as free set-up, a free site builder with templates, and a free domain for a year.
• BlueHost guaranteed 99.99% uptime, and has implemented a system to provide VPS-like resource protection to shared hosting customers.
• Through SimpleScripts, BlueHost provides access to up-to-date software and users are immediately made aware of updates to applications they have installed. As of March 2011, BlueHost is running the latest stable version of the Apache HTTP Server and the latest version of cPanel, for example.
•BlueHost not only has the LAMP environment, but this is made clear in reading their features list—something not true of some web hosts offering comparable plans.
• BlueHost promotes site security by providing webmasters with a “Basic Site Security Checklist” as well as an article on “PCI Compliance” and 45 other articles related to security.