Website

After having this blog for what, 2 years now? And writing only 8 posts in the first two years, I've decided that I needed to actually start writing stuff here, not just any stuff, but good stuff, stuffy-stuff, you know what I mean? Well I have decided to actually put an effort into keeping this blog up-to-date with all the projects that I work on, and to share my code, so that everyone can benefit from my projects.

...The Big News

As part of this sort of New Years Resolution, I have decided to move away from a dedicated Blogger blog, and actually run my own website where I can have more then just a this very linear styled blog. Instead, now I will be able to post tutorials, and actually have dedicated pages for my code, implement nice syntax highlighting for the code I post, etc... So I'm very excited about this change. After nearly 6 months of working with Fatcow (a great web host IMO) on the www.spareourgreen.com project, I have figured out exactly what I do/don't want in a webhost, so now that I am getting a new website, I have been searching for the perfect host.

...A Perfect Fit

After hours of searching, reading review, visiting websites to look at every feature, and multiple talks with customer service reps, I was still unhappy with every option that I had found! I am being kind of picky, but I just knew that someone had to have everything I wanted (that also still has a reasonable price). On my list of need-to-haves were:

• Shell Access (SSH)
• Cron Jobs
• FTP
• Unlimited MySQL (but more preferably PostgreSQL)
• PHP
• Python
• Perl
• Ruby (would be nice, but can live without)
• Some sort of SSL
• IMAP & SMTP servers (or ability to change MX records to use Google Apps)
• Some kind of control-panel / file manager
• unlimited sub-domains
• custom error-pages (preferably the ability to edit .htaccess)
• And SSI would be cool, but not necessary

A pretty extensive list, nothing too arbitrary, but believe me its difficult to find all of that available in one package! Like I said, all my searching led me to nothing. Then after a weird Google search "php python perl postgre mx" or something like that, I came across yet another website that listed and compared web hosts, but this one was specific to finding good python hosts. I searched the page for "ssh" and found 6 instances, and clicked on all 6 of the links to the web host. The first 3 were dedicated python servers, then the 4th one I looked at had everything I wanted, and more! It has everything I listed above on my list, plus it has Git (and sub-version, but why use that if i have git) pre-installed, and they are already compatible with Magento!!! <3 This isn't all that important to me since I don't really plan on selling anything (at least not in the near future), but I just think this is really cool because about 2 or 3 years ago, I spent close to a week working on getting Magento installed on a home server with a bare-bone installation of PHP. It was such a pain in the ass, so that is why its just cool to see that they're pre-compliant with it. Now that you're all wondering who this amazingly awesome web host is, I won't be telling you!

Just kidding, the host I've been talking about it A2 Hosting. And all of this that I've mentioned above can be bought for as little as 4.77 a month is you are looking to commit for 36 months. I only chose the 6 month plan cuz I first have to prove to myself I'll actually use it, but if I can make it until the summer, then when I re-purchase the plan, I'll get the 36-month one.

...My New Website

Now I'm just waiting for the domain name to finish registration and be updated with the correct name-servers, and then I will start development of the site, and soon afterwards, I will be transferring this blog over to my site. The domain name is (just like this blog) bmbsquared.com. I look forward to developing this site, as I will try to include many new technologies, and make it very Web 2.0 ish. See you at the site.

- B-Squared