If a host says that he provides blog hosting, and has a separate "blog hosting" plan along with "shared" and "reseller" plans, does it mean that there's a separate server where Wordpress is installed and then divided into smaller accounts?
See http://downtownhost.com/index.html plan02.

And if another providers offers a hundred of pre-installed scripts like cmss, forums scripts, guestbooks, etc I bet he can't have this hundred of servers, so these scripts are installed on each shared account?
Can anyone elaborate on this? Thanks in advance.

Scripts are installed on the server, but they don't have to be accessible by all accounts. For example, you can buy a shared hosting account, download the script, and install it yourself. When you install it, other accounts on the same server won't have it visible. However, what the host is doing, is saving you the hassle of finding the script, and installing it. The host would simply have a much easier process, where you enter all of your info ( for example your admin username and password) and it would just be created, without you having to create databases etc..

So, the host just has a library of these scripts, that are made easier to install. however you can always just install one yourself. The script however, would only be visible on YOUR account, and there could be hundreds of scripts running at the same time.

I hope this makes sense, it's early in the morning here .

Oh thanks Andrei, what are the advantages of having the whole server designed like hosts often say for one application, as it's blog hosting in my example?

Personally, I do not really see much of an advantage, the hosting is marketed towards bloggers, and may come pre-installed with blogging options, but honestly, unless there are restrictions that I am unaware of, you can pretty much use it as you please, just like any other shared hosting account.
If you don't want to worry about having to install the software and they provide a plan that comes with blogging software already setup for you, then by all means use it.

I think it MAY actually be a disadvantage in some cases.

With regular shared hosting, you could do what you want with it, including the installation of blogs. However, there may be some restrictions to what you're inquiring about.

It may also be one of those multi-blog scripts. Where all you get is a blog, with no hosting control panel. This would limit you a lot as to what you could do with your hosting.

In theory the server could be optimised in such a way as to improve the performance of certain applications. I'd look at blog hosting as a type of "application hosting", where the host knows that users will have relatively CPU hungry applications on the server, and provision the server accordingly.

Check out hosting providers that offer Cpanel, it is a great tool to install most of the scripts you will need.

While cPanel can have addons to make installing scripts easier, as Tim suggested, they really have nothing to do with each other. Essentially what you're looking for is a hos that provides "fantastico de luxe"

Originally Posted by andrei155

It may also be one of those multi-blog scripts. Where all you get is a blog, with no hosting control panel. This would limit you a lot as to what you could do with your hosting.

I checked, Downtownhost.com says that there's

Advanced Control Panel

in the plan.

Well, as I see it's worth going for this plan if you have lotsof blogs ( they actually allow 999 blogs to be hosted within one account).

I believe that web hosting offers with preinstalled scripts are the ones which can be named specific ones. Having all popular scripts preinstalled for all shared accounts sometimes is not needed but it uses some of server sources.

Basically you need to check out whether or not the desired hosting plan allows you to install own CGI scripts (Perl, PHP, whatever). Then it should be no big deal to get an own content management system, blog software, shopping cart or any other CGI installed - the ones you like, not the ones your hoster provides :-)

I think that if you have only blogs, it's a good idea to get a blog hosting plan from downtownhost.com, if you have other sites like forums or anything else, go for a shared plan with unlimited domain name hosting.

If you are running only few blogs so then I can't get the idea to look for the unlimited domains web hosting...

Terms like "blog hosting" are more of an attempt to get non technical bloggers to sign up. If you have a shared account which uses capanel(and fantastico script installer) within a few clicks, you can install almost all free scripts around.

Simply use the 1-click installer in your CPanel. Look for an icon called "Fantastico", which can provide you more than 50 different kinds of scripts. Good luck.