Website hosting?

[capr]

Hey, we are currently using GoDaddy to manage our emails and domain name registration. I don't like GoDaddy and am trying to get our website to be hosted by someone else.

Can you recommend options? Please don't tell me to google, I would like to hear your personal experiences with different hosting solutions.

Our website would grow to be 30-40 pages maximum. I would like to be able to upload whatever code (php,css,xml...) to the website.

It's important for us to have good support. GoDaddy support keeps telling me they can't help and the only solution is to pay for some service.....

Thanks in advance for your advice.

[remixedcat]

Glad to help.... however I need to know the following to help you further:

• Budget
  
• Operating System (Windows,Linux,OSX Server)
  
• Control Panel preference (Cpanel,Plesk,Interworx,None)
  
• Hypervisor preference (VMWare,Xen,Hyper-V,OpenVZ,Virtuozzo,etc)
  
• Type of hosting (dedicated,virtual server, cloud server, shared, reseller cpanel)
  
• Compliance (HIPAA,PCI (Payment Card Industry,etc...)
  

Please answer and we will be glad to help.

[capr]

thanks for those questions, I wish I could answer them cause they seem very relevant.

unfortunately, I know nothing about this area and this decision needs to be made before we have a chance to hire the people who will have the expertise...

Budget is low for now but we only need 1 page for now.... we will want to be able to upgrade later.

Can you recommend some readings. maybe something that answers your questions and gives reasons for the answers. I am googling everything one by one to increase my understanding.

[remixedcat]

well how much money do you currently have to start?

do you got an existing site that can use to be moved as well?

I can recommend 3 hosts....

if you will have a smaller site I recommend namecheap for both domain registration and small site hosting I recommend namecheap as a registrar regardless of chosen host.

if you will have a medium sized site I recommend TMZVPS

if you have a larger site or are looking for enterprise grade hosting I recommend inetu

[+BudMan MVC]

"this decision needs to be made before we have a chance to hire the people who will have the expertise..."

This is clearly the wrong way to go about it.. If you don't know anything about how to run the site, or where it could be be hosted... you don't even know if it should be windows or linux based server for example.

I find it hard to understand how you don't have a general budget for what your willing to spend for said hosting. Hosting can run from a few dollars a months to 100's a month depending on what your needs are. Your talking the difference between spending 100 a year to 1000's a year. What do you pay godaddy now for your site(s)? How much traffic does the site get?

what I would suggest you do is HIRE the person or persons you plan on running/creating/supporting the site, etc have them explain to you why they need this specific method of hosting.

You mention 30-40 max website - is that dynamic or a static sort of page?? How many visitors do you expect? Would you be serving up any sort of large files or pictures/videos/etc.. off the site that would require large amounts of bandwidth? If not static type of page, what sort of data is going to be required in the back end for data - does this data reside at your company, or can such info be stored on a host?

Hire the Person(s) Then move your page from godaddy - that would be my suggestion.

[spudtrooper]

Use Microsoft azure, signup for "Sites" and you can host sites for free or cheap and MS support is great on azure.

[articuno1au]

Can't comment on website hosting because I only use dedicated hosting, but I would suggest Windows Live Domains for email.

It essentially gives you a hotmail account (with all the benefits) on your own domain, for free.

http://domains.live.com

For DNS definitely name cheap. They are outstanding.

Honestly, anyone but GoDaddy.

[capr]

BudMan have you ever had the opportunity to be a part of a start up? We don't have the money to hire that guy yet.... We need something temporary and we can always switch later. however, I am hoping to not have to switch later so I am here trying to ask some questions and get some opinions.

The website will be static for the most part. Just some information about our company with a few different deals that will not change on a regular basis. We may have promotional offers that will need to appear on the front page but that's it. This doesn't sound to me like it would be a very complicated thing to run. We are hiring 3rd party vendors to create the site for us and are mostly writing up the text and slapping it on the pages.

[Haggis Veteran]

i use www.one.com its about ?20 a year for 5gb

[+BudMan MVC]

That could be hosted anywhere - I mean anywhere! You could get any host you want for $1 a month and host a page like that.

I could host a site like that off my $15 a year vps I use as a shell account ;)

Do search for cheap hosting - pick the cheapest one, there you go. If you really wanted and you got someone's home account that allows 80 inbound. You could host it off that as well.

Put it up somewhere, be it free hosting your ISP gives you would prob work as well. Then once you hire someone that might do something with the server have them pick your server. Looking for anything other than your run of the mill < $50 year for hosting a website is time wasted on some static html site that might get 3 visitors ;)

I have a $120 a year account with http://dreamhost.com/ that has hosted everything I could think of from custom php to ruby on rails, etc. etc. pretty much unlimited everything.. I could send you like a $50 off code for your first year if you want! Just let me know.

[Aergan]

Good service thus far from namecheap.com for hosting and name servers.

[primexx]

nearlyfreespeech.net is a good host for small websites.

hover is good for domain registration

That could be hosted anywhere - I mean anywhere! You could get any host you want for $1 a month and host a page like that.

I could host a site like that off my $15 a year vps I use as a shell account ;)

Do search for cheap hosting - pick the cheapest one, there you go. If you really wanted and you got someone's home account that allows 80 inbound. You could host it off that as well.

Put it up somewhere, be it free hosting your ISP gives you would prob work as well. Then once you hire someone that might do something with the server have them pick your server. Looking for anything other than your run of the mill < $50 year for hosting a website is time wasted on some static html site that might get 3 visitors ;)

I have a $120 a year account with http://dreamhost.com/ that has hosted everything I could think of from custom php to ruby on rails, etc. etc. pretty much unlimited everything.. I could send you like a $50 off code for your first year if you want! Just let me know.

where do you get $15/yr VPS?

[+BudMan MVC]

from http://buyvm.net/

For what I need can not beat the cost, running ubuntu 11.04 on it - setup openvpn so I can use it if needed to tunnel my traffic, say my home connection is down. I can shell to it whenever I need to do testing I might need.

One thing that ****ed me off a bit is they have nmap restricted in the kernel so you can not really run nmap as root, which you need to be able to do some tests with. If that was not the case I would prob get another in NY so I would have one on each coast to do testing from.

You can find lots of lowcost vps from here

http://www.lowendbox.com/

or here

http://lowendstock.com/

prob going to look at some some of the others that are at the same pricepoint that don't restrict nmap as root.

[+John Teacake MVC]

from http://buyvm.net/

For what I need can not beat the cost, running ubuntu 11.04 on it - setup openvpn so I can use it if needed to tunnel my traffic, say my home connection is down. I can shell to it whenever I need to do testing I might need.

One thing that ****ed me off a bit is they have nmap restricted in the kernel so you can not really run nmap as root, which you need to be able to do some tests with. If that was not the case I would prob get another in NY so I would have one on each coast to do testing from.

You can find lots of lowcost vps from here

http://www.lowendbox.com/

or here

http://lowendstock.com/

prob going to look at some some of the others that are at the same pricepoint that don't restrict nmap as root.

I found a UK one on lowendstock that was like ?7.50 a year, How the hell do they do it for that cheap. You could just set up a simple VPN on there and it would be fine! Thread Hijacking ...Woops!

Carry on as you were! ...

[Royalty]

For all hosting needs, go with Host Gator unless you're looking for a dedicated server, go with Rack Space.

[ZeroFearX]

http://www.funio.com/

I have a "shared hosting plan" with them for a couple of years now, when it was managed directly by iWeb, and I am very pleased with the up time, features and price.

I heard that they had some consumer services issues previously, but personally, I never had any issues.

[moloko]

A small orange is a great host!.

[Seahorsepip Veteran]

BudMan have you ever had the opportunity to be a part of a start up? We don't have the money to hire that guy yet.... We need something temporary and we can always switch later. however, I am hoping to not have to switch later so I am here trying to ask some questions and get some opinions.

The website will be static for the most part. Just some information about our company with a few different deals that will not change on a regular basis. We may have promotional offers that will need to appear on the front page but that's it. This doesn't sound to me like it would be a very complicated thing to run. We are hiring 3rd party vendors to create the site for us and are mostly writing up the text and slapping it on the pages.

Send me a message if you need help with the site, I build a static site in 10min :p