Forum Moderators: phranque
EVen better would be opinions on whether it is better to find a local hosting company, or go with some place on the net.
Also, what do you consider the most important things to look for?
I have never gotten too heavily into this end of the business and am curious to hear what your best advice is.
Thanks!
But I'll sit back and listen ...
[edited by: rogerd at 3:58 pm (utc) on July 16, 2004]
[edit reason] No specifics, please... [/edit]
None were within a radius of a few hundred miles. Given the reasons for departing the first two hosts, being local wouldn't have precluded the departures.
That in mind, please disregard the initial part of my post--ie, recommendations for specific companies--and consider only the latter portion--what QUALITIES you advise looking for in a web host and whether or not you believe a local host is better than a remote one.
Again, I apologize for the Charter-breach.
location is not relevant at all, certainly in terms of international hosts, i have found us companies to represent the best value i think because bandwidth costs are less in the usa.
there is evidence that if you are targeting a local market hosting within that country may have an advantage from a SE perspective.
no unlimited anything, get fixed bandwidth/diskspace limits, because companies that offer unlimited stuff are still going to cut you off when you use too much, so it's best to have in writing what you are getting.
Unix servers, ideally dual processor, those are the most solid hosters I've come across, and also tend to be in the top in terms of server uptime. Linux just hasn't done it for me.
Keep in mind that these things are businesses and need to make money, so when somebody offers $4 a month hosting, a single tech support call is going to wipe out their whole profit margin, you get what you pay for, don't try to save the price of a movie each month, or a few pints, it's bad economics.
The ability to host multiple sites, each with a real IP address, none of this virtual hosting junk where multiple sites are hosted on the same IP. Again, you get what you pay for.
Daytime phone support, good techs, 24/7 email support.
Good amount of diskspace, the shared hosting I use gives 700mB for the package I have, 500mB a day bandwidth, that's real bandwidth, not pretend like many companies.
Full .htaccess, php, gd 2 support (for graphics stuff like jpg processing), dedicated mysql servers, full daily backups, good web stat software like analog5, with configuration options available to you, also ability to get stats on each site hosted on the server.
Reasonable overage penalties for bandwidth and diskspace, this can be a lifesaver.
I only found one hoster that could meet these requirements.
