I am tottaly lost here. I am attempting to find a final solution for my move off my college's web servers.

At one point I was nice and comfy on my college server. I even had a simple message board which didn't have seperate forums, but was free.

Then you jerks here introduced me to the Gallery software. DAMN YOU! Obviously, a school is going to be paranoid about what's going on on their servers, and telnet and permission changing was not in the cards. Then the message board went down inexplicably.

So I want to move off. I tried hosting from Infopop (trust me, I know it's a bad idea now). They offer a free UBB.x message board with the hosting service, which wasn't too costly compared to other plans offering the same stuff. However, they were equally paranoid and I couldn't use Gallery with it. That sucks.

So now I'm left looking for another host. Here is what I require:

-A good amount of space. at least 100MB
-good bandwidth
-PHP4 (and if possible, make sure it isn't in safe mode)
-FTP, Telnet and SSH logins (all 3)
-a database (preferably mysql)

That's it. On the new host I'll probably be using phpbb, so I'm gathering I'll need a database. It appears using a mysql database will be the easiest. The problem is I know nothing about how to use the database.

Last time I asked this question everyone suggested [url=http://pair.com/pair/shared/]pair.com,[url]. Unfortunately, the first option that has a database built in costs $30 a month. That's a bit expensive.

I found what appears to be a good option with a company with WiserHosting.com. Tell me if that looks like a good option. The only downside (for me, at least, no offense to the Brits) is that it seems to be located in Great Britain. Would that slow the speed of connection for me in the US?

I'll take any other suggestions you might have. I really want to get this all sorted and up and running well.

If you look in the back of any computer magazine, you can see hundreds of ads for hosting companies which meet those requirements. Dunno how to tell which one is the best. All I can say is don't go with Earthlink.

http://www.coastlandtech.com

$35USD... _a year_

I use them for a couple of sites and have been quite happy with it.

You get:
50 MB of disk space
1 POP3 Mail account
FTP Access
Unlimited aliasing
Unlimited autoresponders
2 GB of data transfer per month
SSI ( Server Side Include )
SSL ( Secure Sockets Layer )
CGI-Bin
Mailing Lists
PostgreSQL
MySql
Perl / Python
PHP 4

FrontPage 2000 extensions
Wusage Performance Monitor
Access to System Log and Error Log files.
Control Panel access


He will give you shell access to set stuff up but it isn't left enabled all of the time. I havn't had any trouble getting him to turn it on when I needed it. If you need more space you can sign up for two accounts and have them combined (you get double the monthly transfer limit and storage). Also, if you just ask nice he generally jacks your storage up for nothing if it is reasonable.

Also, you only get one pop3 login but it receives email to anything at your domain. You can setup fetchmail or something on your local machine to split it out into seperate mail boxes if you want/need to.

-Geoff

Dizzamn. I don't know if i can beat that.... but check out the little side hosting company a friend and i do...

http://www.logjamming.com

After being exposed to your issues first-hand this week , I have to advise you to get better broadband access. Why? Host it yourself. More on that later in this post...

If you absolutely cannot host yourself, finding a cheap host offering shell access (telnet, SSH) is difficult. You're paying $22/month now. I found these guys offering what you want for $20 (1GB of space and 10GB of trans/month). I cannot speak for them, but their price is right.

Now, on to "rolling your own." I first did this a couple years ago on my residential DSL line. At first, it was a project simply to hone my Linux skills. After getting a Caldera OpenLinux 1.2 and RedHat 5 box up and running, I realized the power I had commanded. No longer bound to local ISP's ~username webpages, I was free to host what I please and there was no limits. I soon transfered my "fake business's" domain name to point to my DSL IP. I have never looked back.

There are some things you have to watch for when putting a server on the net. These things would normally be handled by a web hosting company, but you benefit from my mistakes. For one thing, you have to secure the thing as best you can. I've been used as a spam relay a couple times before I learned about pop-before-smtp.

IIRC you have a cable ISP that blocks port 80 (bastards). DSL is the answer. Particularly Telocity (now DirecTV DSL). They don't come out and say it, but they don't care if you run a web server/email server on a residential line. Plus you have a static IP. The only thing to take into consideration is your CLEC (maybe ILEC, I get the two confused). Say your local Bell company is Verizon. Telocity almost exclusively runs their service over the local Bell's service. So, you will have a Verizon line with Telocity "features" such as static IP and no PPPoE. But, you are bound by Verizon's speeds. The typical Verizon line is 768/128 meaning 768k download and 128 upload. Anyone accessing your website is going to get it at no faster than 128k. Yeah, that kind-of sucks, but I think it's good enough for your application.

If you decide to host yourself, you have this BBS at your fingertips for help. I am also on your AIM buddylist. Heck, if we could get a DC meet going, I could come down and get you started. It really isn't that hard (especially with RH 7). My opinion is you should try doing your own before cancelling your service with infopop. Once you get that going, you will be so proud of yourself and finally feel in control. I guarantee you will give infopop the boot.

Hey, thanks for the great posts! Yeah, Rob, that would be ideal. Didn't we say that there were problems in getting a machine on an internal network to work as a web server? If not, then I guess I'm golden. Of course, I can also use the machine that's connected to my cable modem and is sharing my connection to the other machines on the network. That might work.

I had forgotten about coastlandtech.com. It has great options, but there is suprisingly little space and bandwidth offered even for that price.

Oh, and Rob, at the very least I'd hope that there would be a meet in DC sometme. That would be sooo sweet. Especially if we got more than 4 people like last time Unfortunately, the server would go in my place in Williamsburg, so I'm not sure how much we'd get done here. Although we have cable here too.

I also don't see me getting rid of cable. I will, however, be willing to get one of those dynamic IP services. although that kind of defeats the purpose of a free account... hmmm. I'll have to think about this...

Yup, it's possible to host it on your own internet connection that you're sharing with other computers. Just tell your firewall/router/linux-box what port you want port 80 (the web server port) to be delivered to, and all will be well. It's actually much more secure that way.

As to your orginal post, you should be explicitly looking for someplace that only allows ssh and not telnet. Telnet is a security risk for all involved, and a competent place will have gotten rid of it years ago.

Matthew

Well then, this reply from that WiserHosting company should be a good indication:
________________________

Thank you for your interest in WiserHosting.com.

To answer your queries:

1)We will allow SSH at agreed times, and we would need to be informed of the
purpose of your SSH access.

2) PHP is currently not runnig in safe mode, however we are aware of certain
security drawbacks with this, and if we detect any abuse by any local PHP
scripts or other external PHP access atempts, we will probably revert to
safe mode.

If you have any further queries do not hesitate to contact us again.

Regards
Colin Taylor
[email protected]
http://www.wiserhosting.com

Not that I have their service, but the folks over at SpeakEasy explicitly do say you can run web servers, etc off of your line, and they give you a static (or multiple static) IP addresses, just as DirecTVDSL/Telocity does.

Thanks for everyone's help! I think I'm going with WiserHosting. 70 something dollars for the year, and they don't even have price penalties for overtures listed anywhere. That's not too expensive, they have everything I need, and they only allow SSH, which you guys have said is good. I think they'll be good for me. We'll see.