Hosting forum is needed

[phparion]

hi

your forum is full of SEARCH ENGINE areas even seperate section for GOOGLE but not a single SPECIAL forum for HOSTING. lots of webmasters want to ask many questions about HOSTING so please i request you make a special area where we can discuss HOSTING issues.

thanks u very much

[sem4u]

I believe that this has been considered before. Good idea in theory but unfortunatley it would be spammed to death by people dropping links to their own hosting companies.

[lawman]

That is correct.

[phparion]

well, every picture has two faces, people can also spam to death in GOOGLE forums by giving their links and i think thats more easy to do in SEO forums :D.. you have moderators who have the power to delete threads, block users too, let your moderators experience their power :)..

anyway, if you are not including the HOSTING forum only due to spamming fear then let me dare to say ITS UNFAIR ... HOSTING forums should be in webmasterworld as almost every webmaster is related to hosting one or other way and let me tell you, if you conduct a survey i am sure that only 50 % webmasters will know about SEO but over 90% will know about HOSTING therefore if SEO has got so much place here then HOSTING should get its share too....

[tedster]

I can add that our policy wasn't made in a vacuum -- we began with a more open policy and learned through experience that allowing talk about SPECIFIC hosts was a big problem. A lot of what you can find around the web in specific hosting discussions cannot be trusted, because the posters are not always who they seem to be -- and there's just no way to police that kind of thing.

Discussions about hosting that don't "name names" are still allowed -- and discussing hosting issues in a more generic way is valuable long-term. Specific hosting business change in quality, get purchased and consoldated, and so on. But the principles of what to look for are usually good for quite a while.

[phparion]

the reason why i asked for a proper hosting forum is that i own a web development company and now i want to start with hosting business too, i dont know how to start and where to start, specially should i go for resellers packages or should i buy my own Machines with UML.... i want to discuss this issue but i dont know really where to discuss it to get a fruitful result.....

anyway i can understand your opinion and i respect it too,

[oddsod]

Try WHT

[Brett_Tabke]

which is owned and invested in by who? A web hosting firm.

[oddsod]

Nobody said it wouldn't be biased ;)

[pmkpmk]

For many, many years we are running our own webservers on our own machines attached to our own network. It worked like a charm. Due to the recent developments in geotargeting and our geographical diversification, I am now forced to look into hosting issues for different countries.
I consider myself to have some sort of seniority when it comes to internet issues. I'm working on the internet since 1989 and been around a bit. However, in regard to running servers I have been living in a somewhat protected environment. Up to now, I never really knew what a big advantage it is to have your own servers 3 rooms away (or 15 minutes by bicycle on weekends or at night).

During the past years, WW was a very valuable ressource for me. Right now, as I am really looking into the different hosting aspects, I feel the gap in WW's thematic offerings very painfully. I can't rely on my usual ressource (WW) for this issue, and I feel "thrown to the lions" now that I have to research this issue "in the wild".

A hosting forum - maybe as strictly moderated as the Google News Forum - would be very welcome by msyelf!

[Webwork]

It gets down to the old adage that goes "teach a man to fish . . . . hand a man a fish".

Better you should have a discussion about criteria, what to look for, what to look out for, why, etc. than to have a dialogue with all manner of people posturing to get your business.

Yes, even in a "how to" dialogue people can slip in hints intended to favor their position, but then it's easy to say "No, that criteria is marginally relevant for this reason". The "name that company" approach tends to favor answers more along the lines of "No, that company really does suck".

Keeping out specific company mentions results in fewer flame wars and less unweildy threads, with people piling on for little more reason than to add their votes, etc.

You can discuss hosting without ever mentioning a single hosting company, just like you can discuss domain evaluation criteria without ever stacking up domains. I participate in other domain forums, and the ones that allow domain names to be mentioned are littered with detritus, sub-fora where no one of any experience wanders, god awful domains, people who snarl or argue when honest assessments about the domain are posted, etc.

I can cover more territory in a single thread about how to evaluate a domain than is covered in 1000 threads that start out "what do you think this is worth?".

The same applies for resolving "how do you pick a colo or dedicated server company".

Try it some day. (Just put it somewhere where I'll notice it. :)

Bottom line: A lot more signal, a lot less noise in a forum free of promotional energy. That's the reason why I chose to hang around this place and still do.

It's scary out there in the educational void, a/k/a the promotional abyss.

[Brett_Tabke]

Webmaster General is good for non specific hosting discussions (not actual brands or commercial services though)

[moishe]

I would think the webmaster hardware forum would be the place for hosting hardware questions...

[coopster]

It is, moishe, and you will see some good discussion come through regarding not only the hardware and difference in hardware but also impact and solutions for server load, performance, balancing, ... quite a range of topics that pertain to serving up sites.