Holiday Giveaway From Lunarpages & First-Time-Mommy – Win Your Own Domain + Free Hosting For 12 Months (Now Closed

An 18 Year Search For A Great Hosting Company

I’ve been on the internet since what seems like the dawn of time. This was confirmed when not long ago I actually found a disk for AOL 1.0. Stupid me threw it away. Shortly after, I read  that someone supposedly got over 9k for one on ebay! but.. I digress (because if I don’t I might cry). We’re not here to talk about providers, we’re here to talk about hosting companies.

Back in those early days there were a ton of cookie cutter hosting companies. I tried them all. I had websites for my gaming clans as well as various other hobbies and interests that we won’t get into (I was young and stupid). I was constantly trying to find my niche so that I could get my piece of the pie. Oh yes I was going to come up with a brilliant site and make millions. Then, out of nowhere I lost myself on IRC. For years. Internet Relay Chat for those that aren’t in-the-know.

Skip forward some 18 years and here I am. I’ve gone from knowing everything about the internet and computers to maybe knowing more than most, but not as much as I should. Damn those chatrooms and the countless hours I wasted! My only solace is that in those years I did learn some scripting languages and I actually met my husband on IRC. I’ve since quit them of course (no not my husband silly!), along with all the other time wasting instant messaging programs. Why you ask? Well, I found my niche! I am a Mommy Blogger. I bet you never would have guessed that from the name of my site, am I right?

A Successful Website Needs A Reliable Host

Now that my site has become profitable I plan to fine tune it and finish what I have up my sleeve by the end of next year. What you wonder, does this have to do with hosting companies? Well, you can have the best site in the world but if your hosting company sucks, quite frankly so do you. If you have customers or readers who rely on your site being up but you have a hosting company that repeatedly fails you, do you think your customers are going to blame the hosting company? No of course not. They’ll blame you.

That’s where Lunarpages comes in. They’ve been hosting my site for almost 3 years now. Do you know how many problems I’ve had with them? None. Zip. Zilch. Hard to believe isn’t it? I’ve certainly dealt with my fair share of hosting companies over the years and believe me, about 95% of them had serious flaws.

3 years ago when I found Lunarpages I was skeptical simply because of all the problems I’d had in the past with companies simply shutting down, refusing to answer their phones, poor customer service and even companies that are owned by people that live in foreign countries you’ve never heard of! In fact I had a really bad experience setting up my husbands band site and having the domain name somehow locked right under my nose. I was then basically blackmailed in order to get it back, which I passed on. It took me quite some time to get over the anger from that situation alone.

One Click Installation

With Lunarpages I have been able to host my lovely little blog without any problems at all. Setting it up was even a cinch. I use WordPress and it just so happens to be an application that’s already provided for you and that you can set up with one click. It literally took me a day to have everything up and running and that’s only because I played around with everything in my cpanel and had a good look around the place.

Great Customer Service

I know there are a lot of you that would love to host your own blog with your own domain name or even your own website. Some of you probably have no idea what you’re even doing. Sort of like me with a lot of web related things these days.  Well Lunarpages have great customer support. They don’t outsource it either, which makes it more personal. Along with this they also have a presence on Twitter and Facebook which make it a lot easier to keep in contact with them.

The Verdict

Overall I have been extremely pleased with Lunarpages. My site has never been down, I don’t have to worry about bandwidth, or customer service that is never there. On top of all this they have tons of information available for you on their site if you need the help to get started, like I did and they have a premium restore service that costs very little, so if I make a big mistake I know my stuff is still there and they’ll help me retrieve it. Your experience may vary but I have definitely had a great one. I look forward to many years with Lunarpages.

The Giveaway

I’m excited to tell you that Lunarpages has offered to give one of my readers 12 months free Basic hosting + a domain name. That’s an ARV of $100+. And don’t let the “Basic” fool you. It’s what I use.  So..you want your own site? Why don’t you check out what the Basic plan has to offer by clicking the banner below and after your done come back and enter the giveaway. And remember if you don’t win make sure you “like” Lunarpages on Facebook. They regularly have contests.

(Now Closed)

Congrats to the winner – Kate Dunn

Thank you to everyone who entered!

Prize: 12 Months Free Basic Hosting + Your Own Domain Name

To Enter:  Please complete the required task. If the required task is not completed then none of your entries will count.  After that you have several other ways of getting extra entries.  Make sure that for each one you do you leave a separate comment. Each comment counts as one entry. Please leave your correct email addy.

Required: Tell me why you’d like to win

2 Extra Entries

* Follow me publicly on Google friend connect (look to the right in my sidebar)
* Follow me on Facebook
* Share this giveaway on your FB and tag my fan page if you know how
* Follow Lunarpages on Twitter @Lunarpages (leave your twitter name)
* “Like” Lunarpages on Facebook and tell them I sent you
* Grab my new button and put it on your site (if you’d like to exchange let me know)

5 Extra Entries

*Subscribe to my site by Email or RSS then check your mail to confirm it (See top left corner of blog sidebar) (leave 5 separate comments to count as your extra entries)

1 Extra Entry Per Day

* Follow me on Twitter @detroitmommy and

this post Leave me a comment with a link to your tweet.  You can come back each day and retweet for 1 extra entry per day. Just make sure to leave a comment each day you do it!

(Don’t know how to show me you RT’d? Just place your mouse directly under your tweet where it says “1 minute ago from web” and click to get the URL of your status update. Copy and Paste.)

Good Luck!

Giveaway is open to all, 18 yrs of age or older. Any posts not including the requested information will be deleted. This giveaway ends: Sunday, January 2, 2011 12am EST. Winner will be contacted immediately and announced Monday January 3, 2011. In the event the winner does not respond to email within 48 hours I will choose another random winner. I will be using random.org to do this

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Disclosure: I received 12 months free hosting, however this did not influence my opinion in any way, as I have been a  paying customer of the above company for 3 years. All opinions are my own. Your experience may differ.