Web hosting: Advice required
| Author | Topic: Web hosting: Advice required |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Monday, August 28 2006 11:43
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My year-long hosting purchase for ermarian.net is running out in November, and while I'm not dissatisfied with the current host, I want to take the opportunity to see if there's a better deal around before renewing the package. The problem with shopping around for hosts is that the number of suppliers is huge and the information they offer has ridiculous promises dotted with negating asterisks: "Free* hosting with up to 250 Terabyte* of webspace and enough traffic volume* for downloading the Human Genome Project a hundred times over...". The footnotes, of course, explain that "free" does not include the setup fee of an arm and a leg, the 250 TB are the maximum you can purchase at an additional 10$ per MB, etc. So you spend a lot of time browsing through these advertisements and cutting through bull (if you want to avoid getting ripped off). Or you ask for advice. :) The host I'm currently looking is siteground.com - does anyone here have any experience with them? (And by experience, I also mean having considered them and then decided against...) Their offer sounds suspiciously good (like "my unknown Nigerian uncle died and left me 40 million" good), and I'm trying to find out where I missed a decimal point in the specs (24 GB space, 800 GB traffic?) or a zero digit in the price (5$ a month?) My current web host offers a twentieth of that for a greater price, and I want to figure out the catch. In case you can suggest a few hosts yourself, here is what I'm looking for: PHP 5, MySQL 4 or above, at least 2 GB of space and at least 30 GB of monthly traffic, cron jobs and the ability to muck about with .htaccess and mod_rewrite and such. Support for Java Server Pages and SSH access to the server would be nice, but isn't required. The whole thing shouldn't be more expensive than 10$ a month. Upon realizing what the above sounds like, I have to add: It can't be pinku (pink), but it still has to be kawaii (cute) and have two kotoba (compartments). :P Thanks for your patience, and help if applicable. -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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...b10010b...
Member # 869
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written Monday, August 28 2006 12:41
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Djur has some spare bandwidth. He may be willing to exchange it for sexual favours. In all seriousness, I understand he's getting a pretty good deal on hosting. It'd probably be worth asking him what hosting service he's using, since I can't recall offhand. [ Monday, August 28, 2006 12:42: Message edited by: Thuryl ] -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Monday, August 28 2006 12:43
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I'd rather pay in money. :P (Plus, if I recall correctly, Djur cordially dislikes me, to put a nice term on it...) Edit: Djur uses TextDrive, according to the Whois. And unless he has a special deal with these people that isn't listed in the hosting plans, I have a better one with my current webhost (that's the space/bandwith and price, not the features - the SSH access is rather tempting). [ Monday, August 28, 2006 12:54: Message edited by: Drow ] -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Agent
Member # 3364
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written Monday, August 28 2006 13:03
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The only thing I can see with siteground is that you have to prepay a two year package to get the $5/month. But still, that's huge. It's the same price I'm paying at yahoo for 500MB disk space and 25,000MB data transfer, which is completely more then I need anyway. I'd switch if I thought I'd ever need more then that. I think they make their money on their 'other services', but loyal customers are a great asset. -------------------- "Even the worst Terror from Hell can be transformed to a testimony from Heaven!" - Rev. David Wood 6\23\05 "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can." - John Wesley Posts: 1001 | Registered: Tuesday, August 19 2003 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 5576
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written Monday, August 28 2006 13:09
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A friend of mine uses dreamhost (www.dreamhost.com) and has given me a subdomain off of his site. As best I can tell they seem to offer just about exactly what you want, (20GB space, 1TB bandwidth, php 5, crontab access, etc for 9.95 a month) but they charge a $50 one time set-up fee. Balancing that, though, is their system by which your storage and bandwidth increase gradually every month. My friend says he likes the deal a lot, and while i haven't done business with them directly, everything has always worked smoothly for me. So, you might like to take a look. -------------------- Überraschung des Dosenöffners! "On guard, you musty sofa!" Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Monday, August 28 2006 13:52
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Setup fees are usually waived if you pay a certain time in advance, and the monthly fee goes down too. Which I have no problem with, since I know that my site is going to be around for a while, so if I can be sure the web host is good, I take a cheap long-term offer. Dreamhost also waives the setup fee for 1-year purchases, and takes 20% off the price for 2 years. Dreamhost actually looks awesome, thanks. SiteGround's price and space are better, but I don't yet have a response from them regarding shell access and SFTP, which I'd like a lot. I'll see. So far, thanks for the tip. :) [ Monday, August 28, 2006 13:53: Message edited by: Drow ] -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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? Man, ? Amazing
Member # 5755
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written Monday, August 28 2006 15:17
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I've looked around too, and so farthe best I've seem in aplus.net. I'll check out those others as well, but... -------------------- quote: Posts: 4114 | Registered: Monday, April 25 2005 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 8
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written Monday, August 28 2006 16:53
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quote:SUGOI >o< -------------------- "Names is for tombstones, baby." -Mr. Big Posts: 699 | Registered: Thursday, September 20 2001 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 154
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written Monday, August 28 2006 18:41
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quote:This is called overselling. It works based on the assumption that for every person who uses a large amount of the resources allocated to them, there will be many people who do not. You can either love this practice or hate it. Based on what you're asking for, you're probably going to be looking at overselling hosts. I don't really know any overselling hosts that except for DreamHost, which you probably want to look at. Other hosts include NearlyFreeSpeech, Textdrive and ASmallOrange, but none really meet your requirements. You might want to poke around "the" forum for these sorts of things: http://webhostingtalk.com/ -------------------- Apparently still annoying. Posts: 612 | Registered: Saturday, October 13 2001 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Monday, August 28 2006 18:53
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Overselling is the fault of the consumer, not the provider. It may also account in some part for the obesity epidemic. —Alorael, who sees no "cordially" in Djur's dislike. Djur does what he does very enthusiastically. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Monday, August 28 2006 21:13
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quote:No problem with that (airlines do the same, don't they? 20% of passengers don't turn up, so they sell more seats than there are and hope they won't run out). As long as they don't try to pull something when I actually do use as much space as they offer. :P quote:Technically, the space and bandwidth they offer is insane (over 100 GB) but they only have 3 MySQL databases (and with these deals you usually find that "each MySQL database is limited to 200 MB" or something), so they're overselling in the wrong category... Edit: I didn't doublepost. Move along. Edit2: Got my response from SiteGround quote:Looking at overall grammar, I see that the place they are saving money is in support and sales. Question 3 means they are behind Dreamhost on that regard, so, well... [ Monday, August 28, 2006 23:04: Message edited by: Drow ] -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Master
Member # 5977
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written Tuesday, August 29 2006 00:05
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I realize that this wueation may sound a little egocentric, and I don't want to stand in your way of movinf to another host, but the following line worried me: "We do not support SFTP on shared hosting as it requeres shell access. We do not offer Shell access on shared hosting due to security reasons." Does that mean that I can't upload files to my website, which you host for me, no longer? Or does it only mean that I can't use SFTP (which I'm not using anyway), but only FTP connections? -------------------- Play and rate my scenarios: Where the rivers meet View my upcoming scenario: The Nephil Search: Escape. Give us your drek! Posts: 3029 | Registered: Saturday, June 18 2005 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Tuesday, August 29 2006 00:34
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What it means is that I probably won't buy from them. I shudder whenever I use unprotected FTP - taking a class in packet-sniffing does that to you. SFTP stands for Secure FTP (actually, SSH FTP, but the first S in SSH stands for Secure), and it is encrypted. The encryption doesn't just allow privacy for what you upload, but also protects the username/password when you transmit it. You'll still be able to use FTP, by the way. Also, when I do move to a new host, I'll let you know in time and tell you the new way to upload files (if it changes). This is how I plan it: 1. I decide on a new host and open an account. 2. I put a notice here so anyone who has files can change/delete/add to them or back them up for, say, a week. 3. After a week, I'll take down the entire site. 4. I copy all files and databases to the new host. 5. I close the old hosting account. At some point in between, the domain name transfer is going to make things difficult. :rolleyes: I just hope they won't pull what Logalot's host did - ie claiming the name was never registered, then letting it expire and selling it to a domain grabber. -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Master
Member # 5977
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written Tuesday, August 29 2006 00:39
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Thanks, I much appreciate that. EDIT: Shouls i change the domain anmes and adresses of the files and just back them up, so I can transfer them myself, or will you do that? I didn't quite understand that part of the plan. [ Tuesday, August 29, 2006 00:41: Message edited by: Thralni ] -------------------- Play and rate my scenarios: Where the rivers meet View my upcoming scenario: The Nephil Search: Escape. Give us your drek! Posts: 3029 | Registered: Saturday, June 18 2005 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Tuesday, August 29 2006 00:49
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Once the transfer is finished, you'll have the exact same files as you did before (and the domain name will be the same). The "lock-down" is to ensure that nobody uploads something to the old space after I make the final transfer, which would then get lost. Waiting a week is just for advance warning - it can be annoying to absolutely have to check the encyclopedia for something or upload a new file and then find that the site has disappeared over night. The transfer should be unnoticable (apart from the downtime). Edit: By the way, I've never undertaken a domain name transfer, and the only two I've witnessed were catastrophic failures. How do you actually go about telling one registrar to drop the domain and giving it to another registrar? I understand there's a protocol for this, but I've never understood how it works. Has anyone done this? [ Tuesday, August 29, 2006 04:27: Message edited by: Drow ] -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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? Man, ? Amazing
Member # 5755
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written Wednesday, August 30 2006 07:53
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Originally scrawled by Aran: quote:So? Educate me. Why is 200Mb a small database? Why are only 3 of them a limitation? Under what circumstances? I realize you are running multiple off-shore shell companies in the hopes of disguising your long range world domination plans (Sorry Dintiradan), but I have far small dreams (domination of Canada, again, sorry Dintiradan). This deal seems pretty sweet for me, but your cruel jabs have rendered me leery. Explain yourself. -------------------- quote: Posts: 4114 | Registered: Monday, April 25 2005 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Wednesday, August 30 2006 22:12
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I'd be happy with only a single database that had, say, 400 MB, but things like the PPP won't really work as I wish they would work if the posts can't be stored in a database. Just a bit of flexibility, so a bit over 200 MB can still be in the same database. Spreading records that belong in a single table over two different databases is a pain to manage. -- Anyway, now that renewal time is coming closer, I'm quickly finding out all the problems with my current host. This time they switched off the IRC webclient (which is why you can't go to irc.ermarian.net anymore)... :rolleyes: -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 154
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written Thursday, August 31 2006 03:16
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quote:Hee hee hee. Whenever I see a host that says this, it always gives me the impression that they don't have a clue. I'm not saying it's necessarily true, but if it's so insecure, why do so many reputable hosts provide it? Seriously, I know a web host where you can open an account for like, $3, without any human intervention, and get shell access. Besides, it's not even strictly true that you need shell access; you can always use scponly. -------------------- Apparently still annoying. Posts: 612 | Registered: Saturday, October 13 2001 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Thursday, August 31 2006 05:42
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"for security reasons" = they lack the technical know-how, the initiative or the resources to make it secure. Given the language skill of their sales contact, this is unsurprising. Incidentally, I was able to get limited shell access on my current host (just about enough for copying files and making folders) by using something called PHP shell, and also by using cron jobs in ways they were hardly intended to be. Extracting .gz archives, for example - just scheduled it to happen in a minute or two, and waited. An inconvenience it would be nice to be rid of. -- By the way, would you name that web host you mentioned? I'm still looking around, after all... [ Thursday, August 31, 2006 05:44: Message edited by: Drow ] -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Guardian
Member # 6670
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written Friday, September 1 2006 16:42
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By Salmon: quote:Do not mock Canadians. Secure in our impenetrable land, we can act with impunity. Just try to invade us, and our border guards will... erm... well, actually, they'll run away. See, they aren't armed, and it's their policy to run away when they feel threatened. -------------------- (Shelves plans of world domination and begins whipping Canada into shape.) Posts: 1509 | Registered: Tuesday, January 10 2006 08:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 154
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written Monday, September 4 2006 06:07
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quote:The host is http://nearlyfreespeech.net/, they stand out for their pricing scheme, but with the figures you want it'd probably go up to $50/mo or something. 1GiB bandwidth = $1 1MiB storage = $0.01/mo Their PHP5 support is in beta. Also, you get an entire MySQL server process, as opposed to just a few databases, which is rather cool. [ Monday, September 04, 2006 06:08: Message edited by: UA ] -------------------- Apparently still annoying. Posts: 612 | Registered: Saturday, October 13 2001 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Monday, September 11 2006 03:27
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I've looked at a couple of offers and will go with Dreamhost. Now the thing is that they offer a referral reward (quite a substantial one too), and so I want to ask if anyone here is taking part in the rewards program so I can enter their code. Apparently, the promotion code system allows referrer and customer to share the 97$ commission (part of it counting as a discount for the new customer), and while I know there are many who give away the full 97$, I'd be quite happy with less if some Spiderwebber has already got a referral code. :) -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |