IXWebHosting Review – Reviews and Coupons of IX Web Hosting

Ix webhosting uptime have been good in February, though other hosts I have an account with are better. Out of 1321 checks only 16 failed, with total of 97.279% uptime for February 2010. The average response time (the time the web server needs to respond) was 0.571 seconds which is excellent. So far, the average uptime since December 2009 is 97.962% which is good. For monitoring the uptime of this review blog which is hosted at ixwebhosting.com, I have an account with serviceuptime.com. The check interval is 30 minutes. Click here to view the current uptime – live link of the monitoring report. Here is also screenshot:

Three months have passed since I signed up with ixwebhosting, and so far they have been great. I have not had any issues whatsoever.

To get the best discount on IXwebhosting follow this secret link and get 20% off of any hosting plan. You do not need to use any ixwebhosting coupon.

In my example below I choose the unlimited plan. You can choose the economy plan  or other plan and still get 20% with this link.

The price for one month is: $16.95 (with $30 setup), for three months is $11.95/monthly, 1 year is $8.95/monthly.

You will save this way the most because the monthly price is lower when you go for 3 years annually. The total savings will be $360(regular savings for choosing triennial billing cycle) + $57.24 (secret link) up to $417.24 in total savings!!

Screenshot:

The best ixwebhosting plan is the unlimited pro hosting plan and on this plan you will get the best discount possible. The plan comes with tons of features including 3 Free domain names. This ixwebhosting review blog is hosted by ixwebhosting.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sets the standard for transferring (uploading, downloading and other commands) files (text/binary) over the TCP/IP (The Internet as we all know it). To use ftp you will need ftp client and server. The server have access to the files and folders and manipulates them when commands are send from the client. Files or directories may be uploaded, deleted, modified, download from the server. The server can be configured to allow anonymous logins or can be configured to allow only authenticated users (and those users to have special permissions on what files/folders can they have access to, how much bandwidth or storage are they allowed etc, etc). The most popular FTP client is Filezilla – the free FTP solution, is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, or you can directly use your browser (firefox supports browsed based FTP) to access your FTP server.

IxWebhostingPad FTP test

Ixwebhosting FTP was excellent. Files and folder transferred fast with no lags or delays. You can have unlimited FTP accounts on Ixwebhosting, you can setup them so they have access to specific folder (domain), which is quite useful if you plan to give your friends access to specific parts of your web site.

PhpBB (short for php Bulletin Board) is forum software for creating online communities. It is free open-source, licensed under GNU GPL license. It offers many features found in paid ones of this kind. Some features are: powerful user/permissions setup with usergroups, moderators, administrators, access control lists, create forums, subforums, internationalization/localization, user registration with captcha validation(optional), bbcode and many others, check the official website: http://www.phpbb.com/about/features/ . Template and extension systems are also one of the features available. PHPBB is built with php (the best web programming language!) and uses mysql database as a storage. Several other database systems are also supported: postgresql, mssql, oracle, firebird, sqlite and others. Since its creation in 2000, it have become the most popular free internet forum software. There is large phpbb community of users, individuals and developers. So if you do not have money to buy software like vbulletin, phpbb or mybb is the choice for your next online community.

I have tested phpbb on Ix Web Hosting, and it runs great. Though I think that for serious website, you will need vbulletin. PHPbb can be installed manually or via the one-click installer control panel tool.

MySQL is free open-source relational database management systems (RDBMS) first created in 1994, licensed under GNU General Public License (only the community edition). It is powerful database server with many features. Databases, inserts, selects can be done with SQL (Structured Query Language). The Free version is the most popular database system on the internet. It is installed on millions of web servers in so called LAMP stack (Linux Apache MySQL PHP). Its popularity have grown in the last years due to the very popular web applications (WordPress – weblog software, Drupal – Content Management System/Script – CMS, Joomla – another also very popular CMS, phpbb – a forum/community software  that use MySQL as their backend – for storing user data, settings, permissions, and even binary files. Also very popular corporations and websites use MySQL (e.g Google, Facebook, Wikipedia and many others). Several tools have spawned to ease the adminstration of mysql databases. Such tool is phpmyadmin written in PHP. The latest version of MySQL is 5. Currently the company behind this database system was recently bought by Oracle corporation, a move that some people think that it will hurt its development.

Nowadays almost every web hosting company (if not all) comes with PHP and MySQL in bundle, including IXWebHosting. This wordpress blog is a test and it shows that MySQL and PHP are setup very nice on ix web hosting. Databases can be created via cPanel and users can be added also via cPanel (with permissions setup).

PHP (short for hypertext preprocessor, personal home page tools as named first) is the most popular web scripting programming language for creating dynamic pages. It can be embedded into html code, and preprocessed by the PHP interpreter. PHP often comes in bundle with MySQL (the relational database management system) for storing data. It is extremely flexible, simple language and there are many scripts both free and paid out there. This blog is powered by one of the most popular PHP scripts – wordpress, a weblog (blog) software that is installed on more than 20 million websites, including many popular like engadget.com, mtv news room, smashing magazine and many others.

If you are looking for PHP hosting then you have come to the right place – IX Web Hosting. IXwebhosting supports PHP (the hypertext preprocessor) and MySQL to run your favorite CMS (content management systems like drupal, joomla, wordpress etc.), galleries, weblogs, forums (phpbb, vbulletin etc). Currently the latest version of PHP is installed. You can further customize some settings with PHP.INI if you need to, or are required like the register_globals that must be off for drupal. There are other options that can be changed, more info at http://www.ixwebhosting.com/index.php/v2/pages.faq_php .

Drupal is free open-source content management system (cms for short) created by Dries Buytaert. It is advanced web software able to create various types of websites, ranging from small personal websites to complex social and corporate web sites. It supports template systems where design is separated from the code. There are severa systems that are supported by Drupal: phptemplate, smarty and others, phptemplate being the most used, and it comes as default in the official installation package which is available for download at drupal.org. There are many free and professional themes available on the Internet, users can also publish their own themes on drupal.org.  Drupal also supports powerful module system (extension system) which extends the functionality of this web software by adding new functions that are not available in the distribution package. You can find free modules at drupal.org/project/modules. Many popular websites use this software as their content management system, even some goverment sites like whitehouse.gov have migrated to Drupal. This is not suprising because drupal is in the top 5 most popular cmss offering great features and security, and a huge community.

Drupal IxWebHosting Review

Drupal can run on IXwebhosting. The installation went smooth and website loadtime is good. One-click installation is available via the quick-apps tool, or if you are advanced user you can install it manually.

Everybody webmaster or internet surfer have heard of Joomla – the content management system. It is free, open-source licensed under GNU General Public License, powered by PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor, web scripting language more info: php.net website) and a database backend (MySQL or other). The primary feature of Joomla content management: text, posts, static pages, media, photos, but Joomla is much more than that. It is portal web software with lots of features like:
* Template manager (easily change the look of your website, there are thousands free and professional templates available on the internet)
* Extension system (extend functionality by add new modules, add features, also many free and professional modules available)
* User Management (create social website with user registration, add, edit users, setup permissions and advanced options)
* Menu menager (create, edit menus, menu blocks and more)
* Web link management (add links to external sites, or internal pages, etc)
* Polss (find what users want)
* Search function
* Internationalization – available in many languages
* Contact Management
* Banner Management (add banners to different parts of your websites, counts impressions, clicks, data on user etc)

and much much more. There are thousands more features available thanks to the module system. You can setup forums, blogs, galleries all within Joomla. Together with Drupal (drupal.org) they are the top two cms in the world. More info on joomla can be found on their official website joomla.org where it can be downloaded.

IX Web Hosting Joomla Review

I tested Joomla and it runs without any problems on IxWebHosting. I installed it with hsphere quick apps tool – one click install of many popular scripts. Here is a screenshot of the website:

WordPress is “state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability”. Both great blog software and cms script with many extensions at the same time. It is free open source software powered by PHP and MySQL, licensed under the GPL license, meaning you can use it for your personal or commercial websites. WordPress was created by Matt Mullenweg in 2003.

Key features:
* Posts and Static Pages, Link List, Categories, tags, Media, Comments
* Templating system allowing you to use themes that separate design from programming code (there are thousands of wordpress themes available on the internet, both free and paid)
* Cross-blog communication tools – trackbacks and pings
* Users, authors, new registration with different and configurable permissions
* Extension systems (wordpress plugins allowing you to extend the functionality of wordpress and create more complex websites, there are thousands of pluings available with many features) I recommend wp-super-cache and akismet both are very useful.
and many many more features. Millions of people around the world are using wordpress as their personal blog publishing tool.

IXWebHosting WordPress review

This site uses currently uses wordpress. It runs great and without any problems on IX Web Hosting. I installed wordpress manually (an old habit), but there is a tool in ixwebhosting control panel called easyapps manager – one-click installer for many popular scripts (joomla, drupal, galleries, phpbb) including wordpress. So if you are not tech savvy you can use this tool to install wordpress. Happy Blogging.

IXWebHosting H-Sphere Control panel

When I first signed up with ixwebhost I thought their are offering cpanel but it turned out to be h-sphere. I was a bit surprised but pleasantly surprised. H-Sphere is web hosting control panel simular to cpanel. It has the tools to manage databases, has its own file manager explorer, ftp account manager. Besides standard features that are in almost every control panel out there, h-sphere is multi-lingual scalable control panel that satisfies customer needs. Management of files and databases and other stuff is very easy. Phpmyadmin was there for managing databases, besides the database/user wizard tool. Web options tool if you need to change some additional php settings required by some scripts like drupal or joomla, and other settings for your website like mime types, referrer logs, agent log, ssl support, indexes and many more. The Easyapp tool in h-sphere, (same functionality as Fantastico in Control Panel) allowing one-click install and upgrades of popular PHP scripts: drupal, joomla, wordpress, phpbb, galleries and many more. Other tool worth mentioning here are the domains tools for managing domains, add-on domains, subdomains and other dns(domains) related stuff. Overall the control panel is great, simple and easy to manage.

Here is a screenshot, this is one half only, there are more tools: