Over 800 people attended the conference in Orem, Utah, where Bluehost team members gave more than 12 presentations, many of which were standing room only. Bluehost also supplied conference volunteers, turned out in force to support Perl, MySQL, OpenStack, Women in Technology WordPress and Learning Python for Kids events, and sponsored dinners for the Utah PHP Users Group and the Utah Perl Mongers.

Bluehost presenters included:

• The How and Why of Hash Switches and Back Mapping - Jason Van Patten
• Selenium for Automation and Testing - Daniel Fackrell
• Using Software Collections to Install Newer Perls on EL5/EL6 - Doran Barton
• An intro to API development with Mojolicious - Matt Monsen
• Practical Slow Query Log Analysis using Perl - Rob Van Dam
• Linux on ARM — the next big thing? - Jared Smith
• Using OpenStack In A Traditional Hosting Environment - Jun Park, Mike Wilson
• Getting Started with Drupal - Jared Smith
• Using Shorewall For Robust Linux Firewall - Doran Barton
• The Current State of Gaming In Linux - Timothy Longwell
• A Brief History of Open Source - Doran Barton
• Child themes and post format support - Mike Hanseng

Click here for local press coverage about the conference: http://bluho.st/kStmI 

Since the beginning, Bluehost has been built with open source technology. You could say it’s in our blood. So to expand our products and to support our customers with the best hosting services possible, we have been pioneering implementation of new, cutting edge OpenStack technology.

Recently, several members of our admin team attended the 2013 OpenStack Summit in Portland. While there, two of our senior systems architects, Jun Park (Ph.D) and Mike Wilson, presented on how we’ve been pioneering the use of OpenStack to power and revolutionize our hosting platform. The presentation was a hit so we’ve uploaded the slides here for anyone interested in reviewing the information. We’ll upload a video recording of the presentation soon. Enjoy!

**UPDATE: The video of the presentation is now available! Check it out:

 http://www.slideshare.net/junparkearth/blue-host-openstacksummit2013

As they announced in February, Posterous has been acquired by Twitter and as of April 30, 2013, the platform will shut down. To accommodate Posterous users that are looking for a new place for their content, Bluehost’s expert WordPress developers have created an import tool for Posterous users to transfer all of their content from Posterous to WordPress on Bluehost without a hitch. And to make the transition even smoother, Bluehost is offering all previous Posterous users a special hosting price of $3.95/month if they transfer to Bluehost before April 30.

Using the Bluehost import tool is easy. Follow these steps and you’ll be ready to go on WordPress in no time.

Instructions for using the Posterous-to-Bluehost importer: 

1. Request your backup from posterous.com.

   

    

   

    

2. Install WordPress on your Bluehost account using Simple Scripts with the following steps:

3. - First register for a Bluehost account here for a special price of $3.95/month. 
   - Then using the credentials emailed to you from Bluehost, log into your control panel.
   - Find the icon under site builders that shows WordPress and click.
   - You will then be taken to a SimpleScripts page.
   - Find WordPress and click the icon.
   - When you reach the next screen select “Install” not import(you will need the plugin mentioned later for that).
   - You will then reach a screen with some options, select any of the options you would like.
   - check the terms and conditions checkbox
   - click “Complete”
   - You can then use the login credentials to your WordPress admin to login and install the importer.

4. Download the Posterous importer here.
5. Install the plugin using the upload method.
6. Activate the plugin.
7. Goto Tools-> Import and select Posterous from the list.
8. Select a user to assign the posts to. (If you need to create a new user do so first)
9. Select the .zip file you got from Posterous
10. Click Start Import.

Note: if your export from Posterous is too large you will need to follow the Advance import instructions.

Advanced Import Instructions:

1. Request your backup from posterous.com.
2. Install WordPress on your Bluehost account using Simple Scripts.
3. Download the Posterous importer here.
4. Install the plugin using the upload method.
5. Activate the plugin.
6. Goto Tools-> Import and select Posterous from the list.
7. Click “Goto Advanced Form”
8. Upload your UNZIPPED export from Posterous to the posterous folder in the current month (ex: wp-content/2013/04/posterous) using your FTP program.
9. Select a user to assign the posts to
10. Click Start Import.

Note: the “Start Import” button will be disabled unless the folder is detected.

And if you have any trouble, just give our support team a call at (888) 401-4678 any time 24/7 and we’ll be there to help you.

How do I backup my website?

One of the most important things you can do is make sure all of your data and content is regularly backed up. Websites take a lot of time, energy, and even money to develop, so you want to make sure your investment is protected. Most Bluehost customers seem to understand this, as they frequently call in asking how to best ensure a proper backup of their websites.

First, some good news: At Bluehost, we perform complimentary backups of your entire account data on a monthly, weekly, and even daily basis! So you can rest assured your data is protected against loss. Should you ever need or want a prior version of your files, here’s how to access and restore these automated backups.

Access system backups with these simple steps:

1. Log into your Bluehost control panel.
2. Go to the “Files” section and select “Site Backup and Restore.”
3. Select from the list which aspect of your website you wish to backup or restore.
4. Choose which system backup or restore option you prefer, either a daily, weekly, or monthly version.
5. From the download window, select a format in which to save your backup and click “Start Archiving”.

These automated backups can serve as a great safety net against loss. But to truly protect your data, you should perform regular manual backups, particularly after any significant work has been done on your account. Fortunately creating a manual backup is simple. Here’s how to do it:

Create your own backup with these simple steps:

First, if you are using a CMS, blog, or eCommerce platform, make sure you create a backup of your database.

1. Log into your Bluehost control panel and open the phpMyAdmin tool.
2. Identify the relevant database on the left-hand side.
3. Select the “Export” tab.
4. Make sure the format is “SQL”
5. Click “Go.”
6. Once the download is complete, save your exported files in a safe place, such as an external hard drive or cloud storage solution.

Once you’ve backed up any important databases, the final step involves backing up any website content.

1. Create an FTP account from your Bluehost control panel if you don’t already have one.
2. Open your preferred FTP program (e.g. Filezilla or Cyberduck) and connect to your account with your FTP information.
3. Download all your website files.
4. Save your files in a safe place, perhaps along with your saved database files.

Backing up files is one of the most important aspects to building and maintaining a successful website. Unfortunately, not many people take a proactive role in this process. Because Bluehost makes automated backups regularly, this helps spare a lot of customers who didn’t know better a lot of grief. But just the same, now that you know how to create your own backups, make sure you do so!

And if you ever need help backing up your site, visit the Bluehost Help Center for detailed instructions, or just give our support team a call 24/7 at 888.401.4678. Stay tuned for our next post about how to speed up a slow website!

Here at Bluehost, we love WordPress. So we’re always looking great new tools and plugins that can help our clients better utilize their WordPress websites and blogs. One of the plugins we recommend is the Admin Menu Editor. This great tool allows users to customize the Dashboard menu. It gives users free reign to organize a their admin menu, hide menu items that may cause problems, add additional menu items, and more!

Organize menu items

With Admin Menu Editor, you can organize your menu items any way you like. With the drag and drop feature and an alphabetical sub-menu sort feature, it’s easy to to organize otherwise cramped “Settings” menus.

Edit existing menus and create new ones

It’s now easier than ever to edit menu titles, window titles, etc. Admin Menu Editor allows edits to top-level menus and icon URLs, CSS classes, and HTML ID. In addition, you can create new menu items from scratch and link them either to an admin page or an external URL.

Change menu access settings

By changing the required permissions associated with a menu, you can determine who is given access to that particular menu. For example, you can assign a menu to be accessible only to “administrators” so that no other user role can use it. (For a full list of roles and capabilities in the WordPress Codex visit: http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities)

Additional features

• Create new menu separators.
• “Partially hiding” a menu. Make menu invisible but keep it accessible by URL.
• Move sub-menu items to other menus.
• Copy and paste menu items.

Click here to learn more or to download Admin Menu Editor.

To learn how to install PrestaShop into a new or existing site, watch our new video tutorial!

Following the open source model, PrestaShop is a free solution designed to assist business owners in creating online stores and increasing sales with very little effort. PrestaShop already powers more than 125,000 active online stores globally and is available in 43 languages. It comes fully equipped with 300+ features including catalog management, product display tools, site management, client accounts, translations, advanced security options, and so much more!

By now we all know the importance of security when it comes to a website or blog. Attacks and viruses quickly cause visitors to question the legitimacy of your site, hurting your reputation and undoing much of your hard work. Here at Bluehost, our customers often ask us how to help increase security on their WordPress websites and blogs. While there are many great tools available, one great plugin we recommend is called Wordfence.

Available in both free and premium versions, Wordfence is a full-fledged security plugin. It dates back to the TimThumb vulnerability in 2011. After author Mark Maunder had his personal blog hacked via TimThumb, he wanted to find a way to help prevent other WordPress users from suffering his same fate. Maunder teamed up with TimThumb to close the security vulnerability and to create Wordfence to improve WordPress site security overall.

Wordfence includes the following features:

• WordPress core file integrity verification and repair.
• Malware, virus, and backdoor scanning.
• Scanning for known malware URL’s in all your files, comments, pages and posts.
• A firewall that includes rate limiting, blocking fake Google crawlers, IP whitelisting and IP blocking.
• Real-time traffic that includes Google Crawlers, RSS feed readers and all other crawlers and bots. (Google Analytics does not include this data.)
• Commercial grade geolocation for your real-time traffic.
• Email alerts of warnings and critical problems.
• Brute force hacking protection.
• Active support forum and email support for paid customers.
• Many other features, such as WordPress version hiding, password strength verification, comment impersonation protection.

To keep your site running quickly, Wordfence will offload CPU and memory intensive tasks to the Wordfence cloud scanning servers, powered by Feedjit Inc. For example, rather than store large data structures in memory, Wordfence sends data in secure compressed packets to it’s scanning servers as your security scans run. This reduces your memory usage and keeps your site running fast and secure.

Click here to learn more about Wordfence and how to install it. And stay tuned for more recommendations about how to increase security on your WordPress website!

Cashie Commerce works with any website or blog, and is available through WordPress via plugin, making it easy to install and add to WordPress site. Learn more about Cashie and how easy it is to install to a new or existing site in our video tutorial below!

Bluehost is committed to open source. From our data center to the programs our customers rely on every day, our business is built on it. So we’re always looking for ways to give back. This year we were privileged to be a diamond sponsor of the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), one of the world’s largest and most significant open source conferences.

We had a great week in Portland. We met a lot of great developers, learned a ton, and made a few BIG announcements. Here are some highlights!

Best Booth Ever

We wanted everyone at OSCON to know just how seriously we take our commitment to open source, so we built a massive Bluehost lounge front & center in the exhibit hall, complete with a comfy couch, super padded carpet, an awesome display showcasing live traffic to our website, and of course… a world-class Ping Pong table.

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Lots of people had a blast playing against our robot. Tim O’Reilly stopped by a few times to take on Alfred. Check out who won!

Awesome Prizes

Nexus 7 Raffle
The latest tablet, up for grabs. With hundreds of entries submitted, we held our raffle on Thursday at 4pm. The lucky winner? Fred T. Congrats Fred!

Ping Pong Tournament
We held a 16-person single-elimination tournament at 1pm on Thursday. The competition was fierce. Who knew so many OSCON attendees would be so good at Ping Pong? At the end of the day Martin pulled out the win. He walked away with the flat screen TV, significant bragging rights, and a title to defend.

Play Bluehost to Win
Conference participants were invited to stop by our lounge for a chance to win a free year of web hosting. All they had to do was beat a Bluehost player. Not many were able to equal our CEO Dan Handy or Affiliate Manager Alfred Najem, so we gave contestants a few point head start.

Ping Pong Table Giveaway
Instead of bringing our Ping Pong table back with us to Provo, we offered it as a prize in the OSCON raffle. Participants had to collect all the required trading cards to enter the drawing.

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Announcements

O’Reilly Radar Report
At Bluehost we work closely with both small businesses and open source developers, and we’ve noticed that all too often these two communities seem unaware of the impact they have on one another. To help bridge this gap we sponsored an O’Reilly report that examines the impact of open source on small business. We provided anonymous customers usage data and performed a survey to explore how open source helps small businesses. The paper made some startling discoveries. For example, it turns out the economic benefit of open source software to Bluehost customers alone amounts to over $12 billion dollars!

Watch the roundtable discussion with Tim O’Reilly, Bluehost CEO Dan Handy, EIG VP Technology John Mone, O’Reilly Media Director of Market Research Roger Magoulas, and O’Reilly AuthorMike Hendrickson.

BOSS
Bluehost has long supported open source. After all, we and our customers rely on great open source tools every day. To do even more we’ve launched the Bluehost Open Source Solutions program, or BOSS. It’s designed to make leveraging Bluehost resources in support of open source development easier than ever. Headed by our Director of Open Source Outreach, BOSS offers open source developers unprecedented resources to help them succeed. Learn more at bluehost.com/BOSS.

Bluehost.com/OpenSource
Bluehost is committed to open source, and now we have a centralized hub from which to base our efforts. From here we’ll make announcements, promote new initiatives and open source developments, share resources, communicate ways we can help, etc…

Keynote Address

John Mone, EVP Technology for our parent company (Endurance International Group), gave a keynote address highlighting the impact of open source on small business and the economy. Check it out!

Sponsored Sessions

Jared Smith, our Director of Open Source Outreach, spoke on Asterisk, a leading open source telecommunications platform. We weren’t able to get video, but people loved it. Bluehost Senior Developer Jason Hall expounded on the role of open source in supporting enterprise-level billing systems. We did manage to record his presentation and we uploaded it to our YouTube channel.

O’Reilly also posted several great videos on their channel, so check them out. OSCON 2012 was a blast. And make sure to save the date for next summer!