Bluehost: A User-Friendly, Economical Web Host Provider

For the past two years, I have maintained my own Web site - a customized domain name free of corporate logos, pages full of content (including images and text) and even that technological show of hospitality, the online guest book. With an enormous selection of Web site providers vying for my attention (simply type "Web site" into a search engine and you'll see what I mean), choosing the best one was difficult for this technologically challenged individual. I eventually decided on Bluehost as a result of reading positive reviews ... and not cringing quite as much when tablulating the hit that my bank account would endure. Two smooth and satisfactory years later, I am renewing my contract.

As an artist, I realize that self-promotion, a tricky concept for a normally quiet person to embrace, is a necessary evil. And as a human being conscious of the world around me, I recognize that the Internet is a huge self-promotion tool. Not wanting to miss an obvious opportunity, I joined the website bandwagon.

I originally signed on with a freebie Tripod account - a way for any "dummy" who can click a mouse to construct a Web site. Opting for a freebie site, at least as a trial run, is a good idea - no monetary investment, and it's an opportunity to familiarize yourself with the complementary "Web-building" tools - in other words, customizable templates. Freebie sites typically offer an assortment of such templates, some geared toward the business entrepreneur trying to sell a product, others toward the family trying to piece together an online photo album. Simply choose a design, and inject it with your own personality. I did just that with my Tripod account, and for a time, the sheer excitement of having my content on the web was fulfilling enough. But after a while, the flashing fluorescent ads became a distraction, clashing with my artwork and consuming a high percentage of the visible page. Oh yes, and the X-rated guest book entries from X-rated sites were a little unsettling, too.

Bluehost became my solution. The site offers an easy-to-maneuver menu layout and easy-to-follow instructions for uploading material, even for those of us with little site building knowledge. I had taken a Computer Science course as an undergrad; being the panicked humanities major that I was, I saw the class as a way to bypass physics, biology, and chemistry, and at the very least, the class seemed to hold some practical applications beyond the final exam. Using my own tiny reservoir of Web knowledge and the simple HTML program that came with my computer (Dreamweaver remains but a dream) I constructed a simple page layout, and, with the click of a mouse, had my material on the web in minutes. The process of editing or changing information is equally easy on Bluehost. Other perks include statistical analyses (i.e. who is visiting your site) and up to 20 sub-domains.

The price comes out to roughly $80 dollars a year, for 300 GB of space. In my limited Web language, that's "a good amount of space" for the price. Sign up for the 24-month account, and domain name registration is free. I would recommend Bluehost to others looking for a reasonably priced way to gain online visibility.