Web hosting suggestions

Areeda

Areeda

Pattern Altitude
Joined
Aug 21, 2005
Messages
2,188
Location
Los Angeles, CA
Display Name
Areeda
Home Airfield
KEMT - El Monte, CA
I'm looking into getting rid of my DSL and fixed IP addresses.

I'd like:

  • Linux - Centos or RedHat are what I'm used to but probably could change.
  • Root access. I have quite a few software packages and programs of my own. (java, php, perl, awk, C++)
  • VNC for development
  • apache webserver, with php, may add tomcat or glassfish to work with jsp
  • sendmail and imap
  • cron
Transfers are a few GB/month. The big one is the NACO approach plates which are a 3GB download every 28 days, which is done after midnight.

I have no idea what such a service goes for or which providers are trustworthy.

I'd appreciate one or two places to check out.

Thanks
Joe
 
I've been using Go Daddy for some years and I'm more than happy with everything there.
 
djpacro said:
I've been using Go Daddy for some years and I'm more than happy with everything there.
Click to expand...
Go Daddy looks interesting but there doesn't seem to be root access (at least I couldn't find it) and the mysql databases are limited to 200mb.

At those prices I can probably deal with those issues. I may get an account just to try it out.

Joe
 
I'm not sure GoDaddy is going to give you root access except on a dedicated server.

I presently use a company called Bodhost that provides only VPS, Mirrored VPS, Dedicated, and Mirrored Dedicated servers (last I checked, anyway). I am on the Mirrored VPS plan right now, but will probably upgrade to Mirrored Dedicated within the next few months. I'm very satisfied with the company. I think they're based in England (judging by the accents when I call them on the phone). They use two datacenters: the excellent Hurricane Electric in Chicago, and a DC up in Montreal whose name I forget, but which was excellent when I was on the non-mirrored VPS. (The Mirrored VPS systems are housed at HE.)

Bodhost's rates for their various services are somewhat lower than average across the board, and they are pretty responsive and dependable. They also have phone support, but typically what happens when you call is that they bump your ticket up the ladder more quickly. They usually don't actually fix the problem while you're on the phone. They'll also do as little or as much management of your server as you like, from not touching it at all unless it's on fire, to fully-managed.

I have to warn you that if you are interested in the mirrored VPS, it uses a very quirky, home-grown system. It works well enough once you understand all the quirks, but it can be very frustrating to work with until you do.

But all in all, I'm happy with the company and have found them dependable.

-Rich
 
Areeda said:
Go Daddy looks interesting but there doesn't seem to be root access (at least I couldn't find it) and the mysql databases are limited to 200mb.

At those prices I can probably deal with those issues. I may get an account just to try it out.

Joe
Click to expand...

If you take a dedicated or virtual dedicated server w/godaddy you get root access to the dedicated/virtual system. On a virtual system, that means root to the virtual system (not the box itself).

I've used godaddy on a virtual dedicated server with relative success - a couple of issues in the last year: a semi-unresolved email outbound issue within my domain only (long story and appears to happens only when using the GoDaddy system as a relay/spam filter to the server at home - most folks won't see an issue at all), and a resolved issue where the system slowed and available disk space would shrink below the guaranteed minimums (probably due to another user on the same box that was sucking up shared disk space, but they never confirmed that).

There are a couple of other providers out there that can do much the same thing, but the price is right with GoDaddy.
 
Thank you all for the replies. There sure are a lot of choices and now I have to figure out what I can live with. My current html, image galleries, and mysql databases add up to about 25GB.

I'll probably sign up for a month of GoDaddy's $6.99 service to learn what I can and can't do with it. It has the most disk space (150 GB) and bandwidth (1,500GB) of what I'm looking at. Lacks root access and I'm not sure what Linux flavor it's based on and whether or not my compiled programs will work.

The dedicated virtual servers would allow me to pretty much copy and run as is for a lot more money. Being retired with part time flight instructing supplementing my income I seem to have more time than money right now.

bodhosting .com would put me in their Enteriprise tier to get 30GB of disk space, and 800GB transfer/mo for $59.99/mo. One issue is my virtual machine would only have 768MB RAM. Might be an issue for the pdf concatenation in the approach plate apps or the ImageMagick stuff the photo galleries do.

siteground.com would put me in their Professional VPS for 30GB disk and 1,500GB transfer for $149/mo. It's also 768MB RAM but clearly states it runs Centos 5 which is what I'm used to.

Thanks again for getting me started.

Joe
 
I use 1and1.com
The home version has 150Gb webspace, 2Gb email, a bazillion emails, unlimited transfer volume and two free domain names and access to the root. $60/year.
I'm not sure about all the details and capabilities since I don't use a lot of it but there's a lot of stuff on it. Business versions have more.
 
Areeda said:
Thank you all for the replies. There sure are a lot of choices and now I have to figure out what I can live with. My current html, image galleries, and mysql databases add up to about 25GB.

I'll probably sign up for a month of GoDaddy's $6.99 service to learn what I can and can't do with it. It has the most disk space (150 GB) and bandwidth (1,500GB) of what I'm looking at. Lacks root access and I'm not sure what Linux flavor it's based on and whether or not my compiled programs will work.

The dedicated virtual servers would allow me to pretty much copy and run as is for a lot more money. Being retired with part time flight instructing supplementing my income I seem to have more time than money right now.

bodhosting .com would put me in their Enteriprise tier to get 30GB of disk space, and 800GB transfer/mo for $59.99/mo. One issue is my virtual machine would only have 768MB RAM. Might be an issue for the pdf concatenation in the approach plate apps or the ImageMagick stuff the photo galleries do.

siteground.com would put me in their Professional VPS for 30GB disk and 1,500GB transfer for $149/mo. It's also 768MB RAM but clearly states it runs Centos 5 which is what I'm used to.

Thanks again for getting me started.

Joe
Click to expand...

Just as a point of reference, if you commit longer-term to GoDaddy, the virtual dedicated servers can be had for less money. My virtual server is on Fedora, CentOS is supposedly available. You can "build a server" to meet your specs, price may vary.

http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/hosting/virtual-dedicated-server.asp?ci=9013&display=virtual
 
Areeda said:
Thank you all for the replies. There sure are a lot of choices and now I have to figure out what I can live with. My current html, image galleries, and mysql databases add up to about 25GB.

I'll probably sign up for a month of GoDaddy's $6.99 service to learn what I can and can't do with it. It has the most disk space (150 GB) and bandwidth (1,500GB) of what I'm looking at. Lacks root access and I'm not sure what Linux flavor it's based on and whether or not my compiled programs will work.

The dedicated virtual servers would allow me to pretty much copy and run as is for a lot more money. Being retired with part time flight instructing supplementing my income I seem to have more time than money right now.

bodhosting .com would put me in their Enteriprise tier to get 30GB of disk space, and 800GB transfer/mo for $59.99/mo. One issue is my virtual machine would only have 768MB RAM. Might be an issue for the pdf concatenation in the approach plate apps or the ImageMagick stuff the photo galleries do.

siteground.com would put me in their Professional VPS for 30GB disk and 1,500GB transfer for $149/mo. It's also 768MB RAM but clearly states it runs Centos 5 which is what I'm used to.

Thanks again for getting me started.

Joe
Click to expand...

Bodhost loads CentOS by default, but I'm pretty sure they'll put whatever you want on it if you ask them to. Some flavors may cost more money, though. They do a standard installation. You can then configure Apache (and whatever else you like) however your heart desires.

-Rich
 
I have been using HostGator for the past couple of years and have been happy with their service, uptime, and speed. Especially after switching from BlueHost which is horrible.

HostGator will give you SSH access on their shared accounts as well.
 
I use dreamhost for our sites. Plenty of space, plenty of bandwidth, comes with SSH and can setup cron jobs. They run Debian.

Though if I see Netriplex run another special like they did last month (48U cabinet, 20A@120V, 1Gbps unmetered and a /27 for 900/mo), I'd be tempted to buy it and offer cheap colo...
 
CJones said:
I have been using HostGator for the past couple of years and have been happy with their service, uptime, and speed. Especially after switching from BlueHost which is horrible.

HostGator will give you SSH access on their shared accounts as well.
Click to expand...
I inherited a BleHost site a couple years ago, and haven't done too much with it beyond a cosmetic makeover. What about it did you find horrible?
 
gprellwitz said:
I inherited a BleHost site a couple years ago, and haven't done too much with it beyond a cosmetic makeover. What about it did you find horrible?
Click to expand...

I had a similar experience a few years ago when someone called me to try to recover her site after it had been converted to a porn site. Long story, but basically the previous webmaster got arrested and sent to jail, and the client's site disappeared and was replaced by a soft-core porn site composed of pictures owned by another of his clients. He had been hosting the porn domain as an additional domain on my new client's hosting account. What exactly had gone wrong to cause the porn site to take over my new client's domain, I never did quite figure out.

Whatever the case, BlueHost was very helpful in terms of getting me control of the site (they called me -- as in, on the phone -- with the FTP login and password, within a minute of the client faxing her driver's license). They also dug up an old, pre-pornatization tarball that I was able to use as a starting point to rebuilding her site.

Their helpfulness was the reason the client still hosts with them, even though I include hosting as part of the maintenance agreement. Other than the occasional short outage, I really haven't had any problems with BlueHost. It's been pretty much a typical, garden-variety, shared hosting account. Nothing fancy or exciting, but certainly not horrible in my experience.

-Rich
 
gprellwitz said:
I inherited a BleHost site a couple years ago, and haven't done too much with it beyond a cosmetic makeover. What about it did you find horrible?
Click to expand...

Their CPU quota kept shutting my site down. I was running the same site you can see in my signature, but if I tried to upload more than 3 pics to my gallery, my entire site would get locked out due to a CPU usage quota. I thought that maybe I was just 'lucky' and got put on a crappy box but their support forum was full of complaints from multiple different boxes at the same time. Maybe they have upgraded their hardware since then, but at the time their CPU limits were insanely restrictive.

Since moving to Hostgator I have added a lot of photo sharing and resizing as well as adding my dad's domain to my account with no blips in service at all.
 
Check out Mosso.com; Rackspace's cloud environment. "Ease of install, full root access, $11/mo for basic server, console access, good range of Linux distros, dead simple upgrade and downgrade to different server sizes..."

I'm hosting with GoDaddy now, after many years of resistance while reading positive comments from this site's technical users.
 
CJones said:
Their CPU quota kept shutting my site down. I was running the same site you can see in my signature, but if I tried to upload more than 3 pics to my gallery, my entire site would get locked out due to a CPU usage quota. I thought that maybe I was just 'lucky' and got put on a crappy box but their support forum was full of complaints from multiple different boxes at the same time. Maybe they have upgraded their hardware since then, but at the time their CPU limits were insanely restrictive.

Since moving to Hostgator I have added a lot of photo sharing and resizing as well as adding my dad's domain to my account with no blips in service at all.
Click to expand...

Ah, okay. My client's site hosted at BlueHost is very simple and low resource, and wouldn't tax even the laziest CPU.

-Rich
 
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