Hostgator Free Site Transfer

Hostgator is one of the very few web hosts that help clients to transfer their website for free. They will transfer the domainname , web files, MySQL database, and scripts on your behalf with no cost at all.

Hostgator Transfer Form

How does site transfer with Hostgator works?

All you need to do is to provide some basic contact info, your hosting accounts login details, some basic instructions for the technical crews at Hostgator, and keep the old hosting account until the DNS is sorted properly. However, note that neither free or paid transfer services carry any guarantees. Hostgator will only move up to one account with shared hosting free of charge within 30 days of signup. Extra domains are not included in the free service.

Sidenote: What is Fantastico?

Fantastico is an automatic script installer which automates the installation and maintenance of common web scripts such as forums, blogs, CMS scripts, and web gallery. Fantastico helps a lot (especially for the non-technical person) as it eliminates the tons tedious jobs involved in web scripts uploading, installation, and basic setups. The installer also helps with server configurations. For example, files/folders permission will be configured automitcally and necessary server configuration files such as .htaccess will be modified accordingly.

About RankSense

The SEO program – RankSense SEO Tools is developed and owned by NEMediaSoft. NEMediaSoft is founded in year 2002 by Hamlet Batista in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. RankSense application is designed to simplify and improve the SEO process for the small-to-mediun business website and personal websites/blogs.

According to recent Hostgator blog post, RankSense features include:

• Discover Website Rankings – See which keywords bring users to your website and see how many conversions they get for your site.
• Search Engine Coverage – Analyze your site’s search engine visibility.
• Detect Problem Pages – Detects, follows, and checks all links and shows broken links, dynamic pages, denials in robots.txt, and other errors that may be hurting your site.
• Sitemap Builder – Creates and submits an XML sitemap for search engines to discover.
• Keyword Selection – Identify and test potential keywords.
• Keyword Appraisals – See which keywords are better based on traffic, value, search volume, and conversions.
• Competitive Intelligence – Discover your top competitors for each and every keyword.
• Analyze Competitors – Analyze competitor web sites and learn what is working for the competition.
• Analyze My Site – Understand how search engines view the keywords on your site.
• On-Page Optimization Editor – Optimize your pages to maximize search engine leads.
• Link Structure Analysis – Learn from the structure of your competitors’ backlinks.
• My Link Structure Analysis – Understand the structure of your site’s backlinks.
• Link Text Analysis – See what anchor texts link to your competitors.
• My Link Text Analysis – Analyze the anchor texts linking to your site.
• Link Research – Find the URLs that to target for link exchange, sub-categorized by type (blog, directory, article, etc).
• Task Scheduler – Allows you to schedule and automate tasks.
• Search Analytics & SEO Progress Reports – Powerful, data rich reports providing detailed filtered report providing data on every aspect of your site’s optimization including search engines, rankings, landing pages, keywords, on-page metrics, off-page metrics, keyword, competitors and much, much more.
• Advanced Preferences –Identify preferred search engines, search the API, access market analysis keywords and competitor metrics, on-page keyword analysis metrics, common words, HMTL tags weight, keyword groups, human emulation filters, report header and footer and more.

Positive reviews on RankSense

In case you’re into reading some testimonials for RankSense…

“RankSense is truly by a long, long shot the coolest and most awesome SEO tool I’ve ever had the pleasure to encounter and work with! Hamlet Batista has made a marvelous job of concatenating just about all conceivably essential SEO factors into one smart, easy-to-use and deceptively simple (but actually extremely powerful) interface.” – Ralph Tegtmeier, aka Fantomaster world-renowned SEO expert.

“I like having all the SEO tools integrated into one program. Since doing SEO is in many respects, repetitive, this software makes tasks easily repeatable after you are setup and have completed your initial phases of SEO.” – Sean A. Golliguer, Editor in Chief of Search Engine Marketing Journal.

What I think about RankSense?

I had never used RankSense but I like what I see the features list. Text link research and link problems detection are always the two major headaches for me and I’m glad to see both issues can be done automatically with RankSense.

How will the partnership affect Hostgator

Frankly I don’t think the partnership will bring any significant effects to Hostgator’s business. Customers get into a particular web host because of its hosting features, server performance and customer support quality. Incentive gifts such as RankSense is more like the topping on a cake to Hostgator – it’s not a must but everyone’s happy to get them. Nevertheless, this partnership do strengthen Hostgator’s offer in term of business hosting. Special discount on RankSense, along with free toll numbers and private SSL offer, Hostgator stands as my selection of Best Business Hosting and I don’t think any other shared hosting companies can come close to this. In case you are search for the right web host for your business website, Hostgator is undoubtedly your best choice!

For instance, here’s a forum post at Hostgator asking for help when it comes to moving a blog from the free platform.

I am sure this has been asked before but I was getting mixed messages from customer service so I wanted to double check before signing up.

Can HostGator transfer my wordpress.com hosted blog to a new domain of my own hosted here? I have seen the transfer form and just want to double check that they will go in and move it all for me even though it is a free wordpress blog. I understand I will have to set up wordpress etc but I am talking about the bare bones of transferring posts, comments, pictures etc.

Any help, tips or advice would be welcome. I have been trying to do it all with godaddy and it has been hell.

In case you are one of those with the same doubts as below – let me tell you this: you DO NOT need help from your web host to move your WordPress blog as it’s ultra easy moving it yourself.

One best thing about WordPress is that it allows blog exporting and importing in just a few clicks.

To move your blog from the free WordPress platform to Hostgator, all you need to do is to backup your current blog (Refer image on right: Tools > Export > Download the WordPress eXtended RSS file), install a new WordPress on your Hostgator hosting account, and import (upload) the XML file saved earlier. WordPress system is so powerful that you can get this all done in its web-based control panel (the dashboard).

Here’s the quick print screen for both Import and Export page of WordPress.

WordPress Export Screen

WordPress Import Screen

Note that not only you can restore and move your WordPress blog, you can also important your work from different platform to WordPress.

At this time of writing, WordPress’s ‘Import Feature’ support Blogger, Blogroll, Blogware, Bunny’s Technorati Tags, Categories and Tags Converter, DotClear, GreyMatter, Jerome’s Keywords, LiveJournal, Textpattern, Ultimate Tag Warrior, Movable Type, as well as TypePad! (that’s almost all the well-known blogging platform I knew!)

However I was wrong. In fact what I learned is that some shoppers are interested in knowing the company’s details before they order their hosting package. So for friends who asked me to cover more on Hostgator’s company details, here’s the information.

Hostgator Homepage

Who’s the boss behind Hostgator?

Brent Oxley is the founder and current CEO of Hostgator.

When Hostgator started off their business?

Hostgator started off their business back in year 2000. Hostgator’s current success is quite an amazing story as the company is actually an one-man-operation company based in Brent’s (the founder) university dorm room at Florida Atlantic University.

What is the size of Hostgator at current time?

Hostgator grew fast, very fast. They were first started with just 3 servers and are now running on over 5,000 servers. The company’s HQ recently moved into a new 20,000 square foot office building in Houston, Texas and has added more than 150 employees.

The success of the company is recognized when they were named one of the fastest growing private companies in United States (ranked 21st for nation and ranked 2nd in Texas) by Inc. Magazine.

How Hostgator achieved such level of success?

I’m not a professional business analyst thus have no accurate answer for the question. But in case you want my opinions, here’s it.

Features wised, Hostgator hosting solutions are very comprehensive. Generally, no matter what is your purpose of getting web hosting, they have the right solution for you. At the time of writing, Hostgator offer hosting services in three major categories: Shared Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, and Reseller Hosting packages. Each of these hosting package offers powerful features which include good storage and bandwidth as well as other supporting features.

Listed above are the tangibles features that can be compared and reviewed. However, from the user’s point of view, I think “treating the customers right” is what brought Hostgator to today’s success.

Hostgator are, by now, the best hosting companies in my list (yes, it outranked Bluehost by now) – the kind of attention I’m getting in term of customer supports and needs is abnormally high. Hostgator had been improving their users experience in the past and they are now still doing the same thing (in fact they recently just invested in cPanel upgrading and customer tickets system). Sure the price of Hostgator is a little higher than the rest – but the service quality is worth every penny of it.

Hostgator’s Web Hosting Features

I would like to pull in Hostgator’s hosting features as the end of the article. Readers who get interested in Hostgator are recommend to click here and place your orders. (Yup, that’s my affiliate link and please – that’s the only way I earn the income to support my writing and hosting fees for this blog. Why not do me a favor since it’s not costing you any extra.)

You can check my previous post for Hostgator’s shared hosting plan; while here are the dedicated and reseller hosting plans for Hostgator.

Hostgator Dedicated Hosting Plan

Dedicated hosting is a kind of hosting service where you rent the whole server as your own. You can run multiple websites on a dedicated hosting but you’ll be the only client using that particular computer.

More details on Hostgator’s dedicated hosting.

Hostgator Reseller Hosting Plan

Clients who take up reseller hosting account can, well, resell their hosting capacity. You would be amazed how easy and cheap it is to become your very own web hosting company. Hostgator offer you all the tools and support needed to have you up and running in just a few minutes time. All of our reseller hosting plans allow you to create unlimited web sites under your own packages, prices, and brand.

More details on Hostgator’s reseller hosting.

Hostgator User Reviews

HostGator: You Had Me At ‘Hello!” – kevo777 @ 03-03-2009

After coming from such a bad experience at GoDaddy I had to post and share how really great HostGator has been just in the few days I’ve been a member.

I so very much appreciate the minimalist design with HostGator’s web presence, including the home page and cPanel. Anyone who has a domain or host account with GoDaddy knows how busy their site is! It’s a mess IMHO.

Maybe I’m just imagining it but I really think my site with HostGator is snappier. True, the account is only 3 days old and it wasn’t a site transfer; just a clean fresh WordPress install. But even when my site was fresh with GoDaddy there seem to be some lag. Perhaps they install more accounts per server on their shared hosting then HostGator does? At any rate, thank you HostGator!! WOOHOO!!!

Ref link: http://forums.hostgator.com/hostgator-you-had-me-hello-t46399.html

Completely awesome – logbert @ 14-03-2009

I used to host with GoDaddy and hated it. So awful. So I switched last year to HostGator. Even if you guys didn’t offer way more features and better support, you’re still like 9,000 times better because your administrative interface isn’t a confusing mess.

Anyway, I’ve been hosting here for about a year now and am really happy with it. I’ve seen virtually no downtime, support has been great, and as dumb as it seems, I’m most happy because I don’t have to pay extra to see totally normal things like raw Apache access and error logs and accessing a database remotely.

Thanks for the great service.

Ref link: http://forums.hostgator.com/completely-awesome-t46959.html

Very happy! – seaspiritnw @ 14-03-2009

I have been with HG for just one month but I have to say I am very pleased so far. There were a few questions and a couple of problems I had and chat support was great… they walked me through what I needed to do. My being new at using Joomla and not knowing what was wrong..they found one of the problems was actually with Joomla, and found a link to what I needed at Joomla to fix that issue. If not for them I would probably still be pulling my hair out..lol..

In my opinion they went beyond what I expected to help me out, and were patient with my crazy questions and very nice. My first regular payment just came out and it was so nice to see it went smoothly and was exactly what they said I would be billed…just as the first month was really only 1 penny!

Thank you HG for making my first paid hosting a nice experience!

Ref link: http://forums.hostgator.com/very-happy-t46941.html

Favorite Hostgator customer feedbacks

Of all the reviews I read at Hostgator’s forum, this forum post comes with the best detail and it’s especially helpful for those who wish to switch their current web host.

Host Gator Saved My Business! – marko1 @ 14-03-2009

A giant Thumbs Up to Host Gator…

About three weeks ago, I learned my existing host was being bought out by a larger company with a terrible reputation that planned to migrate all sites to their ‘advanced’ platform.

The old host was excellent – good service, good up-time, competitive prices, personal support and so on. The reviews on this new host are probably the worst on the web. My decision was easy that I had to find somewhere else to host my sites or I could find myself out of business very quickly. I had read stories online about this company loosing entire vps’, providing empty backups and having downtime measured in weeks.

I had almost 100 sites under a reseller plan with the previous host and searched the web to find either a new reseller plan, vps or dedicated server. I decided that the Windows Elite Dedicated Server from Host Gator was the way to go. It took less than 48 hours for Host Gator to prepare the server and I have spent the last two weeks, night and day transferring my web sites and preparing the server.

Even though I transferred my sites, I have not told that new company yet. I am watching as they attempt to migrate my sites and can see the errors and problems I would have to deal with if I stayed there. They even go as far as changing your code to work on their new platform – totally unacceptable!

I am extremely pleased with how smooth this migration went to Host Gator and will be purchasing a Linux Reseller plan this week for several of my Linux sites and as my business grows I can see another Windows Dedicated server in my future. I did encounter one problem on my new server which was answered within 20 minutes from a Host Gator tech through the ticket system.

Keep up the good work!

Ref link: http://forums.hostgator.com/host-gator-saved-my-business-t46935.html

In case you are still wondering about Hostgator hosting service, my only advice is ‘JUST DO IT!’ Hostgator provide 45 days money-back trial period. You can get full refund if you’re unhappy with them during this period.

The answer is NO.

Surprised? As a smart consumer, you should know that all unlimited hosting offers are actually limited. While storage capacity and bandwidth offered are unlimited, hosting companies often set limits in CPU processing power or number of files. Yes, it’s true that hosting companies are able to offer as much as hosting power their users want under normal circumstances; unlimited hosting offer in reality, however, is more like a marketing gimmick that’s used to attract shopper’s eyeballs. You might want to read further on the truth about unlimited hosting offer here but what we’ll discuss in this post is the file storage limitation in Hostgator account.

Inodes limitation in Hostgator

Yes, Hostgator limits number of files you can store in their hosting account. Or more accurately, Hostgator sets limits in inodes.

What’s inodes?

Inodes the data structure on a traditional Unix-style file system such as UFS. An inode stores basic information about a regular file, directory, or other file system object. In brief, inode is the count of files created or uploaded to a server. At the time of writing, the inodes quota in my Hostgator account is 250,000 – this means that I can only upload or create, by maximum, 250,000 files in my unlimited hosting account.

I feel cheated! They said they are offering unlimited hosting!

Don’t be. Folks at Hostgator had never hide anything about these fact about inodes quota and the inode usages are showed clearly in every account’s cPanel front page. Hostgator, in fact, is the very few hosting companies that is such transparent towards their shoppers.

Bluehost and Hostmonster mentioned about account suspension for overused CPU quota (but not inodes!) and Lunarpages talked about inodes count on their wikipage but nothing specific are mentioned. Not to say that these other hosting companies are bad, but at least you can see that unlimited hosting packages by others are not ‘unlimited’ after all.

So if inodes limitation is not cheating then what does inodes has to do with me?

Basically nothing – unless you plan to run your site on a buggy database scripts or use your Hostgator account for spamming purpose. 250,000 inodes indeed, is a huge number and it’s pretty hard to fill up the quota. I runs 5 websites on my Hostgator account and yet I used less than 3% of the inodes quota given.

3%!

So please, don’t misunderstand that I’m writing this blog post to complain Hostgator. Instead, I’m trying to make you stay informed with what you’re buying. Hostgator, is still, very much recommended and I introduce them to my friends and families every time I was asked.

For your inforamtion, here’s a quick view on Hostgator’s recent server status. Everything seems fine and I’m especially happy with its server load level.

But they are having hard time getting the right candidates (sggh, what’s bad economy?). So in case you are qualified Linux or Windows system administrator and unemployed, you know where to submit your resume.

Good luck!

Hostgator upgraded their Business Hosting Plan

According to official news released, the toll free service is connected via VoIP with the support of Houston-based VOIP Company, VOIPo. It doesn’t cost anything for Hostgator Business Plan users for the number. Further more, the free number comes with 100 minutes of free usage per calendar month. That’s $4.9/mo call time credit for a $12.95 hosting plans.

What I think about this?

In my opinion, this is amazing. As mentioned by Hostgator marketing directior, Chad Bean’s:

“It’s no mystery that having a toll-free number on your website can drastically improve conversion rates and further establish trust with your site’s visitors. By providing toll-free numbers for free, we’re adding another service to our growing roster of free add-ons and helping to give our web hosting customers the competitive edge in the increasingly competitive hosting market,” says Chad Bean, HostGator Marketing Director.

A toll free number offer is extremely attractive as it’s very valuable for business owners.

This latest deal definitely keep Hosgator one step ahead their competitors. They are, in fact, setting a new industry standard with this offer and I’m sure it will cause certain level of panic to other web hosting providers. Will other companies like Bluehost and Lunarpages follow this trend? I can’t be sure.