Forum Moderators: phranque
1. Fast reponse to email enquiries
2. They don't denigrate Open Source or Perl, are slow on giving you details on what Perl modules they have and how to call them, all in the hope you will pay for an expensive coomercial solution like ColdFusion ("beacuse its more stable and simple") which will cost you an extra $?? per month, just because they stupidly bought a license and have to justify the cost.
3. That you can do the maximum of work yourslef rather than pay them to do things server side becuase they dont have a system to allow access to the directories etc.
4. Great online documentation covering Perl directories, email server names, how to's. etc.
Also agree, Uptime is crucial, no way you want the server down when google comes a crawling, or a prospective cleint wnats to see your web page. More important than small differences on speed.
5. They tell you when theu reorganize the directory structure, so it dosent have to be you to find our that all your scripts are non-operative and your perl directory paths have changed 2 weeks ago! Loss of more eamil enquiries and leads, which is why you have a site after all!
Plus +
1) Multiple domain names on a single package - running differing content though.
= Many webmasters like to get demo or prototype sites going and don't want to shell out for multiple packages for the privilage.
2) Being able to move the domain names to new packages
= When/If the prototype becomes a success even a mild one being able to move it to a seperate package is crucial.
3) Good logging and access to all raw files - where's my error log :(
4) A range of packages and an upgrade path from a $5pcm Single site no frills to -> dedicated servers and guaranteed bandwidth.
5) user friendly control panels, suited to doing bulk tasks like creation of lots of mail accounts in one go.
6) Email enquiries -- junior support staff that recognise emails that aren't requests for a password reset and are something serious like a security problem being pointed out -- and forward it to someone with the brains to do something about it ;)
7) Good shell accounts - through ssh on unix ! Very key. Along with .htaccess files and php and mysql etc.
Well - that about concludes my list of gripes with my current hosting provider (1 & 7 are handled already very well). They've got the basics very right and are very cheap so I'm mostly happy :)
I always thought that access to the raw log file was guaranteed anyway, but obviously not. Coming to think about our provider were slow to give us this. They wanted to do it for us weekly using Webtrends for another fee per month. Weekly? Heh for SEO you need to have it real time! and custom solutions are so inflexible.
Sorry if this is a bit of a rant. I would rather pay more for a good control panel/info page on how to set up cgi/email etc and good answers to questions there OR fast email replies than being sold on extra subscription based inflexible proprietary systems all the time whenever we have a "can you install this perl module", or a "what is our perl path" question.
Still I think some of the problem is that it is a NT IIS server, which tends to not like open source and perl anyway, and server guys get sold on proprietary solutions just because using good old Perl has road blocks.
Good luck with setting up the service.
I want complete reports which will help me monitor a sites' progress and tell when and which bots have been crawling our files and which pages it crawls. I'd pay extra for that service but my host doesn't offer it. (grumble grumble)
I think part of the problem is that many of us here will be referred to as "power users" - talk to many hosting providers and they'll say "well we're aiming at the small businesses and home users not the power users"
What they don't realise is that many small businesses tend to outsource as much as possible to a webmaster - this guy is running maybe 10-20 sites. And most definetly a power user :)
I've experienced both sides - developed parts of a hosting package for a company (way too expensive for my use) and am now the webmaster guy.
Overall I'm pleased with my hosts and would reccomend them (for certain uses) - that has to be good for any hosting company - maybe even a goal - getting reccomendations from the existing users.
