Bluehost is excited to announce a BETA launch of our all-new Dedicated web hosting service! Starting now, BETA participants can sign up for a 30-day dedicated hosting trial for just $1!

We know you’ve been waiting for this for a while.  Our dedicated servers have been carefully designed and custom-built with only the best components and software. This allows us to offer several compelling features not found elsewhere, including:

• Instant Provisioning – Don’t wait hours or days for your server to come online. We’ve engineered our platform to be up and running in seconds.
• Root Access – Use the standard tools you know and love, or open the hood to CentOS and completely control your operating system and server itself.
• Single Sign-on – Manage your entire account, from server management tools to cPanel, all with one login.
• Dedicated Support – Call our exclusive line for Dedicated Server customers, getting you expedited help when you need it.

Learn more about our new Dedicated hosting services and participate in the BETA here. The limited-time BETA is invite-only. If you haven’t received your invite yet, simply call our sales team to get your exclusive access code.

In the meantime, here’s some of the things you can look forward to with your new and improved Bluehost account:

When you first log in to your redesigned Bluehost account, you’ll probably first notice a new menu. We’ve thrown out the old tabs and replaced them with a more simple navigation and a new submenu that links to all the tools you use most, such as email, FTP and databases. We think this makes a lot more sense and makes it easier to get to the tools you need. (P.S. We’ve kept your cPanel front and center.)

Domains are also easier to manage thanks to the new submenu. All the top navigation items are tied to a unique submenu of related tools and options.

You’ll also see that we’ve added some new features to your account section. “My Products” lets you see all your extra features at a glance. This makes it really easy to see what add-ons and products you’ve purchased, as well as when they are due to expire.

And we’ve also added a new feature that has been requested for a really long time. Now you have the option of creating several passwords for your account, each with different levels of access. So along with your master password, now make one just for billing and payment settings or one for cPanel access only. This comes in very handy for those wanting to give a web developer access to their account tools but not the billing information, or vice versa!

We hope you enjoy these new changes. We’re committed at Bluehost to not only giving our customers the best tools available, but also making those tools easier to use. These changes set the stage for many exciting new features we’re announcing in the coming months, so stay tuned. And enjoy your new and improved Bluehost account!

Here at Bluehost, we have big plans for 2013. We’re hitting the ground running and want to help you do the same! One of our big, ongoing projects is to bring our website to the next level. To help you do so as well, we’ve put together a few ideas that can serve as great New Year’s resolutions for your website.

If you already have a website, consider these tips on how to improve it for the new year. Remember, technology changes fast, so staying on top of these resolutions will help you have a more successful site!

1. Regularly ensure your website is optimized for search engines. This will make your site easier for people to find and increase  your overall traffic because it will be more likely to appear in search engines results. There’s a range of things to do with search engine optimization. A good first step is to watch our instructional videos on what SEO is and how it works, and how to grow your business with SEO.

2. Look into updating your website design to make it “responsive.” Responsive websites collapse, expand, and re-arrange to optimally fit the window/screen its in. This makes your site look great and be easy to use no matter where it’s viewed.Learn more by watching the Bluehost video about about responsive designs. Remember, more and more people are accessing the web from tablets, phones, and other mobile devices. Ensure your website is presented well in these formats.

3. Consider simplifying and cleaning up the overall design of your site.  Visitors should always be able to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. Several design elements that used to be common have since been found to distract visitors from finding what they need. Avoid using mixed fonts and instead use a readable, clean font throughout your website. Nix any flashing or moving gifs. Remove heavy drop shadows and gradients and instead consider cleaner, flat colors and objects. Overall, try to examine your website with a critical eye and make any change that enhances both its appearance and functionality.

4. Make your website is as secure and protected as possible. One effective way to do this is to verify that your scripts are always up-to-date. Outdated scripts make a site vulnerable to hackers who exploit vulnerabilities inherent in old software. If you have a Bluehost account, you will see notifications in your cPanel alerting you when core updates are available. Also examine any plugins or themes and ensure they are updated as well. We made a fun video about website security. Feel free to check it out for more tips.

If you don’t have a website, make one in 2013.

Pretty much everyone needs a website these days, whether for a business, to promote your personal brand, to blog, for a family headquarters, etc… If you still don’t have one, here’s s a quick to-do list to help you get started:

1. Set up a hosting account and choose a domain name for your website. Bluehost accounts include a free domain name and it’s easy to get started. And one of the best perks of Bluehost is that you can chat with a real life expert and ask all the questions you need, even before you sign up. Just give them a call at 888.401.4678 or visit bluehost.com to chat with them online. They’re there to help, so make sure to use them!

2. Visit the Bluehost YouTube Channel and watch our instructional videos. We’ve been working hard to build up these resources to help you and have big plans to expand these in 2013. We already have series on how to use WordPress and how to use Weebly. Both show you click-by-click, step-by-step, exactly how to build your very own website.

3. Try it out! Once you’ve watched some videos and done some research, dive in and start building your website. And if you need some help along the way, call us or live chat with us; our 24/7 support team will be there to answer any questions you may have.

These are a just a few things you can do to start the year off right with the help of Bluehost. Click here to learn more about Bluehost’s plans for 2013.

What do you think of our new logo? You’ll start to see our new branding first on our social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube. Visit our social pages to check it out! And as the year rolls on we’ll start using it in a lot of other important places. Stay tuned!

Click here to learn more about VPS and dedicated hosting with Bluehost and check out more things coming to Bluehost in 2013.

We’re excited to provide our customers who need a little more – or even their own – with VPS and dedicated hosting, coming in 2013! At Bluehost, we pride ourselves on doing what we do better and cheaper than anyone else. We plan to do the same with new VPS and dedicated hosting service – done the Bluehost way. And don’t worry – it’s easy and simple to upgrade to VPS or dedicated hosting from your existing account, so you can add more power to your websites without a lot of extra work.

We’re still a couple of months away from launching these services, but you can reserve your VPS or dedicated hosting account today and receive a special discount for when it goes live! Visit bluehost.com/comingsoon to learn more.

This Monday marked the launch of the i2coalition, a group of internet infrastructure providers dedicated to protecting the internet and fostering its growth. Bluehost, through our parent company Endurance International Group, is proud to support this coalition as a founding member.

The Internet Infrastructure coalition (or i2Coalition) got its start in 2011, when many of the founding members coalesced to defeat unwise and intrusive legislation such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Fortunately, through diligent campaigns designed to educate both the public and elected officials, these misguided initiatives were defeated. Now over 40 internet infrastructure providers are teaming up to form a permanent advocacy group designed to promote an open and growing internet.

These infrastructure providers, from web hosts to domain registrars to data centers, are the “nuts and bolts” of the internet. They know first hand how the internet only prospers when the rights of individual users are defended. As a unified voice for public policy and education for the internet industry, the new i2Coalition and its members will help promote and develop market-based standards to drive innovation and openness.

The just-launched i2Coalition website includes specific public policy information, as well as a video by co-founder and Board Chair Christian Dawson outlining the group’s policy priorities and mission. 

To learn more about our commitment here at Bluehost, read this post by our very own David Bryson,

Executive Vice President andGeneral Counsel of The Endurance International Group. Mr. Bryson serves on the i2Coalition board and is offering his expertise and guidance to ensure the i2Coalition’s success.

If you share our vision for a prosperous, open internet, show your support today! Like the i2Coalition Facebook page and follow i2Coalition on twitter. And if your company serves in the Internet infrastructure industry, please consider joining the i2Coalition at our membership page.

WordPress has just been upgraded to a new version—3.4. Every major update from WordPress has brought welcomed changes, but version 3.4 is definitely one worth noting. WordPress started off as just a simple tool to create blogs and has grown into a full flagship content management system for complete websites (and blogs).

There are some great features in the 3.4 release. Some updates are for plugin developers and theme designers, which generally means the available add-ons and templates will get better. But there are also some great new features for all WordPress users and we’ll highlight some of the key new features here.

Theme Customizer. This handy new tool will allow you to change quite a few aspects of your theme right from within WordPress. And the best part? You’ll often be able to see many of your changes in real time! Previous versions of WordPress, theme customization required either tools provided by the theme developer or would require you to mess with the themes CSS files, which is never very easy. The video below is from a developer on the WordPress team, demonstrating some of the things you will be able to change.

Embedding Tweets. For quite a while, WordPress has supported the ability to embed various kinds of rich media, such as a YouTube video, Flickr photo or Scribd document. This could be done in a very non-technical way with no special embed coding necessary. With this update, WordPress has added the ability to embed a tweet, so now users can Reply, Retweet, or Favorite your Tweet with one easy click.

HTML in Captions. In earlier versions of WordPress it was not possible to add a an HTML link within a caption for an image. Some photos require that you give a link to the photographer in order to use it. Thankfully this is now possible with WordPress 3.4.

Photo by Kyle McCluer and used under Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Internationalization (i18n). Over 40% of new WordPress installations are non-English. WordPress 3.4 continues to add more and more enhancements to properly support international languages. This includes things like specifying that your language is right-to-left; ability to translate configuration files; default links and dashboard widgets; specifying the start of the week and much more.

Developer Enhancements. Many of the WordPress 3.4 enhancements are “under the hood” and useful directly to developers and designers. But those enhancements usually end up helping everyone. Here’s a few of them:

• New touch support. WordPress now has tools built-in that allows WordPress plug-ins to support a touch interface, including support for drag-and-drop.
• An enhanced protocol that enhances mobile devices using the mobile WordPress app to talk with your WordPress site. This is supported in Apple (iOS) and Android mobile devices.
• Improved database query efficiency. This will allow WordPress to get results back much quicker resulting in a speedier website.
• Improved file organization and new custom header support for templates. While primarily only for template developers, but anything that helps template developers is good for all of us.

We hope you enjoy using WordPress 3.4. Your website will have more power and it will be much easier for you to manage. If you haven’t been updated to WordPress 3.4, simply log into your Bluehost control panel. SimpleScripts will notify you of the release if you haven’t already seen it and guide you through installation.

Sometimes the best way to learn a new technology is to see it in action, so we’re thrilled to now offer LIVE webinar training sessions for FREE to all Bluehost customers! Simply watch and listen as a real-life Bluehost expert shows you the ropes, click by click. And use the chat feature to ask questions! Each sessions runs approximately 30 minutes. Click here to sign up for a session!

Learn with a Pro

We’ve been testing these webinars for the last several weeks and are now offering it to all new customers. And our existing clients are invited to take advantage of this new resource as well! Attend any these great training sessions, designed to help anyone get started:

• Bluehost Orientation
We’ll introduce you to the various tools on your cPanel and show you how to use them. Learn how to create an email account, access your webmail, setup a desktop email client, install WordPress, and to create a two page website in Weebly.

• Build a Website with Weebly
Weebly is a powerful drag-and-drop web builder that’s super easy to use. We’ll walk you through its many features and demonstrate how to create a photo gallery, create a ‘contact us’ form, and even set up a blog.

• Building a Website with WordPress
WordPress is the world’s most popular open source website building tool. Use it to create a simple blogs or a full-featured, multi-page website. We’ll show you how to get started and teach you about installing plugins and templates, using widgets, adding a photo gallery, and more.

To attend any free online training webinar, simply visit this page, choose the session(s) you wish to view, and submit your information. You’ll receive an email with the date and time to participate along with a link taking you to the session.

Hope to see you there!

Jacob
Self-Help Specialist

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