I bit the bullet last week and set up a host with godaddy. The price and features looked good and I had been pleased with godaddy's service. Then I tried to install phpwebsite. I could not get it to install and naturally they were of no help. I searched the web and did not find any help so I started to debug the php code. It took me awhile but I finally narrowed the problem down to the set_ini statement that godaddy had disabled for security reasons. The set_ini function is used by phpwebsite to modify the include path so that PHP can find the Pear library. After a few more emails to see if they would either modify the settings for my host to allow me to use set_ini or install the Pear library as a system library, I gave up and started searching for a new host provider. There were several "independent" reviews available out on the web so I scanned the lists and several of the top rated sites. I sent off a few emails to the sales departments inquiring about their PHP settings but ended up narrowing my list down to those top-rated sites that supplied the Fantastico application installer.
Fantastico is an amazing
CPanel/PHP based Web application that integrates with
CPanel and allows clients like me the ability to automagically install a variety of Open Source Applications including phpwebsite and wordpress. So I called bluehost.com and they encouraged me to try it out since there was a money back guarantee. Within about ten minutes I had created a website, installed both phpwebsite and wordpress, and completed my initial testing. Now that is slick! On top of that the CPanel application provides a slew of nice features such as ssh/script access and secure browser based file transfers. They did not skimp on hosting features either. You get 1GB of diskspace, 10 databases, perl/php, and slew of other features. This all comes at a very competitive price of $6.95 a month. Wow! I am impressed. I knew deep down that setting up a web site is not that hard. The hard part is selecting the right host provider.
Click here to checkout or signup for bluehost.com. 
