Web Hosting

I'm considering signing up with a web hosting provider to serve as the download point for my MP3 files on the web, and also for selling t-shirts and posting photo galleries. That sort of thing. My ISP only lets me have a small amount of disk space, not enough to host MP3s and photos properly.

Anyone have suggestions? I was thinking of going with fatcow.com, but I dunno about their basic plan only allowing for 100 megs to start with. Maybe there's someone who allows more disk space and transfer amounts in a basic plan?

Hmmm. www.webhostxl.com seems to have a pretty good deal. Anyone got anything better?

$10/mo and I can set you up with 500mb of space, PHP, Perl, MySQL, (just about anything else you want). Anything over 500mb will be $1 / 50mb extra a month.

Damn, that's pretty good.

I need to change my rates...

How about $60/year for 1GB and everything else I mentioned above?

Sounds like a good deal, but who's providing the hardware and support? One of the things I like about going with a commercial hosting provider is having an 800 number I can call for tech support if there's a problem with the site.

Myself, and two others. The other two live in the same building where the equipment is. Together we currently host roughly 65 websites so far.

http://www.logjamming.com

that's run by me and a friend of mine, hosted through Rackspace. we probably can't provide the 800 number type support, but you certainly know how to get ahold of me if you need to. We host around 700 sites at the moment.


we can't beat http://www.webhostxl.com/ though. how the hell do they do that?

Hmm, tough choice. Offers from friends who I personally know and trust, versus a faceless company that has 800-number support. I know that one isn't necessarily going to be any more reliable than the other. Hmm.... It's about 6pm PST on Sunday, I'll give XL a call and see if they answer. If not, then their support isn't 24/7 and so at that point it doesn't matter to me anyway.

Hm. They had a voice-activated phone system where you're supposed to say "Customer Support" when prompted. The problem is, my voice is shot so I couldn't say it properly, and I think it took me to something else other than support where it asked me for a PIN. I tried to go to Sales, but they weren't in (I don't expect sales to work on weekends).

Ah. I called again and I realized that the problem is they're using an outsourced voicemail system by angel.com. So when I said "Customer Support", it was incorrectly configured and it tried to send me into the maintenance mode where you record an outgoing message, hence the PIN prompt.

Hm, so I suppose that having 800-number support isn't all it's cracked up to be.

So, Loren and Ricin, would either of you have a monthly bandwidth cap I needed to worry about? Not that I'd expect to exceed it by any stretch of the imagination, I was just wondering. All the other hosting providers seem to have very strict bandwidth caps, and that always gave me pause.

Also, what about domain registration? One of the things I liked about the initial setup page at the XL site is that they will do all the domain registration stuff for you, all I need to do is tell them the domain name I want.

www.ipowerweb.com is also one I'm looking at...

Hmm, www.parcom.net doesn't meter the bandwidth. They have a nice little page explaining about how you should be courteous to the other people on your shared host, but they don't restrict your bandwidth like the other hosting services do. Nice...

Whoa, www.mysitespace.com has a great deal going on. $40.00 a year for 250mb/6gb. And they claim 24/7 tech support...

Is anyone getting irritated that I keep replying to my own thread?

Edit: And www.edatarack.com is even cheaper... But I'd have to use someone like eisdomains.com to register the name cheaper than what they offer.

Personally, I use Wiserhosting for my host. They have been good to me, with very good online tech support. I'm not sure why you would need to call someone, but once when there was a bit of trouble with my site, they offered to call me (from England).

Anyway, they aren't as cheap as the places you've listed, though they have "unlimited" storage space.

However, I would probably suggest registering your domain name with a different company. And if you do, I'd definitely recommend DirectNIC. They make domain registration very easy, have lots of functionality in controlling your domain names, and make it easy to add domain names to your account (I signed up for 3 more the other day), and to manage them as well (I have a couple pointing to nameservers, and others redirecting to addresses).

Thanks for that information. They seem to have a pretty good deal. And thanks for the domain registrar information.

The reason I'd want telephone support is: If for some reason their data center is down, and I want to know why or get an estimate of when it'll be back up, then any online method for contacting them (email, web form, ICQ, etc) isn't going to work either. There's also the situation when I send a bunch of emails about a problem and I don't see a reply (or only see an autoresponder) in a reasonable amount of time. In that case I'd want the phone number handy.

I don't mind if the company prefers to do support online and discourages phone calls. I'd definitely be using that method most of the time. But for the times when the other methods don't work, nothing beats good old POTS.

For similar reasons, I'd also prefer a host that's physically based in the US.

Let me second DirectNIC. I use them to host my domain names and they are reasonable and easy to use.

Just wondering, did you get the idea for the name logjamming.com from The Big Lebowski? The porno that Bunny Lebowski starred in was called Logjammin', I thought that was such a funny scene. "I'm here to fix eine kabel" "Oh, that's my friend, she just came over to shower".

"You can imagine where it goes from here..."

"He fixes the cable?"

No monthly cap.

As for domain registration, I can do it, but I'd recommend just going through GoDaddy.com or DirectNIC as already suggested. If you had me do it, I'd just go through GoDaddy anyway.

It's also better to register your domain name yourself just in case you come into a dispute with your ISP, and they control your domain name registration. Some ISP's will register the domain name with their information, meaning they actually own the name.

Cushman, yep, that's where we got it. I wanted to get logjammin.com (no g) for authenticity, but Josh had already gotten logjamming.com. Ah well. It's supposed to go along with the whole "blog" thing too. blah.

Tony, yeah, we have monthly caps, but when you go over we just bill for the overage when your overages hit 1gb. it's $4/Gb. We can't offer 24/7 support though. We always get back withing 24 hours but that's the best we can do since it's just a little side project that got way more popular than we'd ever thought. =]

Tony, I run a small web hosting service. http://www.punched.us/

I can provide you bandwith and space for cheaper that I list there, if your interested e-mail me at damien at punched dot us.

edit: Actually I can give just about anyone a good deal. I do this a a hobby and don't really care about making money. I get bandwidth for super cheap. My box is a Dual Athlon MP 1900+, 200GB hard drive space, 100Mbit/s connection to Cogent (which isn't as bad as everyone thinks). Running FreeBSD 4.8-Release, Apache, PHP, MySQL, Perl, etc etc etc.

Well hell, with all the people here that offer hosting everyone on the board should know where to go for hosting in the future.

Oh, I should mention that we do co-location as well at $50/mo.

Ahaha no doubt about that!

Actually I can give just about anyone a good deal. I do this a a hobby and don't really care about making money.

Ditto. I originally started it to host a few sites for my friends, and it grew from there.

Acutally I haven't talked to you for a while, know you've been busy! Have you had any chance to work on the lrcdb?

Yeah, I originally got my own server for hosting my own web sites and a few friends, it grew from there. I host about 40 domains right now, including a few high traffic ones. If anything, it's given me a lot of real world experience in systems administration. About 7 months ago I got a second server and moved e-mail and other miscellaneous items onto that, leave my big server for web hosting.

Acutally I haven't talked to you for a while, know you've been busy! Have you had any chance to work on the lrcdb?

Very busy.

LRCdb: Yes and no. I've done some more backend work and restructured a few things, but the actual front-end code hasn't been touched. I feel bad that it's been so long since I announced I was going to have it up. I really want to get it done, as I think it will most definitely be a resource people will use. Especially when utilized by/integrated with Tony's tool(s).

I have a few co-workers working on how to get more than 24 hours in a day, I'll have to get back to you on that one.

I have a few co-workers working on how to get more than 24 hours in a day, I'll have to get back to you on that one.

You know, I'd be happy if someone could just find a way to get rid of the need for sleep. I'd get an instant 33 percent boost in overall productivity.

Donato, I'm going to ICQ you about details for buying hosting services. A gig of space with no bandwidth cap is too good a deal to pass up.

Everyone else: Thanks for the information and the offers!

We need sleep. I know I do. Ask Macbeth.

Is anyone getting irritated that I keep replying to my own thread?

Nah, we ain't catching your post count, anyway.

FWIW (for others, it sounds like you need more space) I am using RippleHost which gives me 100MB storage and 1GB/month, which is all I need, for $5/YEAR. I think they've since "raised" it to $10/year. Definitely not the "empeg" of hosting companies, but it is a subdivision of SplashHost, which is a very reputable hosting company. Only been using it for 2 months, but speed and features have been great for me.

Might wanna edit the extra P out of that URL if you haven't already.

Fixed, thanks.