Posted: 9/13/2007 11:48:23 AM EDT
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I'm looking for a company to host a website so any recommendations on what to look for, what to avoid, reputatable companies? Misc |
| These guys have been hosting my website for the last 3 years. Contact them by phone if you have questions. Hosting |
I've been with Site5 for quite some time now and have been pleased enough to stay there. 
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Dreamhost. They host my site. Great rates with lots of features. The most important factor for me choosing them was both FTP and Shell access. |
Dreamhost has lots of unexpected downtime and has caused a lot of frustration on the part of people I know who depend on it. |
I have been with them for some time now and never had a problem. The other techs that I work with all use them as well and never mentioned unscheduled downtime. Maybe I am just lucky. But for the $6/yr I am paying them (thanks to my buddy's referral) I am not too worried. |
I just tried 1and1 for 3 weeks and got frustrated by it and am in the process of dumping them. Here is a list of my complaints: 1. My biggest gripe is their admin panel. They use their own custom control panel which IMHO is far inferior to cPanel X. If you have ever used WHM/cPanel X, their custom control panel is a huge step backward. 2. Usernames for your main account, FTP, SSH,, MySQL databases, and other services are automatically assigned and are all different. You get a cryptic username like, u46484568, that is different for each service and it can't be changed. 3. There is no web based file manager in their control panel. A BIG minus. I really like a file manager that lets me do simple tasks without using SSH. 4. When you change a password, it takes 30 minutes for it to take effect. 5. For your email pop and smtp settings you must use pop.1andone.com. You can't use pop.mydomain.com. 6. Could not find a easy way to do a site wide backup, or individual MySQL database backups. This is a fault of their custom control panel. If you are an expert in SSH or CRON job scripts, this is not a problem, but I prefer a simple "backup" button that puts (or schedules) the site backup in a single .tar file for quick and easy ftp download. 7. I got a lot of "access denied" replies when trying to execute SSH commands. 8. Instead of using Fantastico, they use their own "Click-n-Build" for installing common applications. They do not offer standard E-Commerce packages like osCommerce, Zencart, CubeCart, ect. Their offering of "Click-n-Build" applications is only half of other hosting companies that use Fantastico and many of them can be installed only once. |
Well the "server" is really a home PC on which you can install Apache or IIS on it (Web server software). You would also need a static IP (one that doesn't change at all) from your ISP. The real question is what do you want to host on your site. That will dictate what you use and why. -d |
There is a freeware application called XAMPP that installs a Apache server on your Windows XP PC. I have used it and it works well. However, I only use it for offline development when I'm not connected to the internet. Opening up my firewall on the PC to run XAMPP for internet traffic is just too big of a risk for me. I'll let the commercial server guys handle the problems with virus and hack attempts. For only $5.00 a month you can have a real shared server and let someone else handle all the headaches and details of maintaining a server with all the security updates. |
I'm trying to learn Linux - I'm not a complete newb but I'm no wizard either. The hosting package may be the ticket for now; I'll check with some of the guys at my church and see... Thanks |
Yes, I'm not interested in dealing with XP and web security either... |
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Whatever you do, stay away from M6.net. Trust me, they have TERRIBLE customer support. When our company had them, we talked to someone 2 times out of 100. They said, "Oh, we only have 1 phone line." What business only has 1 phone line? Also, every day they have to reset the servers on their end. |