Hi All, I am using yahoo hosting atm, I don’t have any problems with them except for the fact that they don’t offer .htaccess which I need for mod_rewrite. I need a web hosting service that is/has (all points should be at least close to or better than yahoo): 1. reliable. 2. scaleable (need little traffic atm, hopefully will need lots in near future. 3. fast 4. mysql 5. .htaccess ability 6. php. 7. ~ $10-$20 month I have tried to search via se's however there seem to be too many affiliates pushing hosting services that are not rated consistently on this site, therefore I can not make an informed decision. I am running around in circles atm so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. BTW, DRUPAL (Can't edit title)
Hello nobluff, It's good to see someone who knows what they want with a reasonable budget. Too many people want too much for too little nowadays. With that sort of budget you can get quite a large amount of bandwidth, probably more than you need to begin with. For $9.99/month we can offer our Deluxe plan, which comes with 5,000 MB space and 85,000 MB monthly bandwidth. If you think this is too much space or bandwidth, our plans start at $2.99/month for 1,000 MB space and 20,000 MB bandwidth. All of our plans are easy to upgrade when the time comes. You can view all our plans and what they include here: http://www.visagehosting.com/sharedhostingplans.php If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask
With your budget you shouldn't have a problem. How much disk space and monthly transfer are you after?
Nobluff - not only am I a user of Hostgator (have been one since mid-2005), but I have recently become an affiliate too. You will get a deal if you sign up through my link, but more on that later. I own many websites strewn over many hosting services - Hostgator, PowerVPS, MJZHosting, Hostland (stopped that one), Bluehost (stopped that one), Incognitonetworks (stopped that one - the worst of the lot IMO). From the list above, I strongly recommend either Hostgator.com or MJZhosting.net for anyone who's looking into hosting content sites - we're talking about static HTML sites built with Frontpage, or even better, any of the popular public domain CMS software out there - Wordpress (sample) (even the subdomain mode of Wordpress MU works beautifully on my Hostgator account - all that is needed is an email -> sample grey hat site done with TheBlogSolution), Joomla, CMS Made Simple (what an awesome CMS!) - sample CMSMS site, and what do you know - Drupal too. In fact, they come with a Fantastico feature that allows you to perform push-button installations of these popular software (but you're probably too advanced for that feature - I don't use it myself) MJZHosting.net is absolutely the best for those who don't need much space. We're looking at $19 per year for 500MB of disk space and 10GB a month bandwidth (details here). With close to 10 active Wordpress blogs on my $44.95 per month PowerVPS (virtual private server) hosting, I don't even reach anywhere near 10GB a month in bandwidth consumption (currently 2.16 GB for Jan 2007). Matthew, who's in charge of MJZHosting, is an awesome and friendly dude who enjoys chatting with his subscribers on forums and through emails. I once exceeded my monthly bandwidth, and he was kind enough to inform me via email about it and not charge me for it. For those seeking more space and bandwidth, Hostgator is my recommended solution (details here). Huge allocated disk space and bandwidth, the only restrictions are that one does not abuse the resources, ie no BitTorrent or peer-to-peer sites, etc (details here, point #7) - but for your CMS-run content sites, there's absolutely no issue with hosting them on Hostgator. While preparing this writeup, I installed a test Drupal environment using Fantastico, with admin and FTP access - you can check it out: Site: http://drupaltest.mediarator.com/ Drupal login: drupaltest / drupaltest FTP Login: ftp://drupaltest.mediarator.com, / drupaltest Go peek into the .htaccess file, settings.php, etc Login to the Drupal admin console, add content, etc - and see if the speed is up to your expectations. Different hosts serve up content at different speeds - Incognitonetworks is at the bottom of the pit when it comes to serving up content - their home page loads up fast, but your hosted sites won't. Not so with MJZHosting or Hostgator. Other hosts have all kinds of restrictions such as the number of add-on domains you can have, or the number of MySQL databases and what-not. Hostgator will crack down on you if you abuse their resources, even if you claim innocence. I once used Ranking Power to auto-generate hundreds of Made for Adsense sites on Hostgator. That software uses up a lot of CPU power to pull in content, and it commits the cardinal sin of creating thousands of folders and files with 777 permission and no owner - this meant that I was using up disk space way beyond my allocated quota, because the system couldn't initially peg these no-owner files to my account. After a few emails back and forth between Brent (Hostgator owner) and me, the issue was resolved - access to my account was reinstated, and I was given a grace period for removing those files, which I did. I don't use Ranking Power anymore, but that software was a good test for hosting capacity - it consistently ran very quickly on the MJZHosting.net and Hostgator servers. Even RSS2Blog ran better on those accounts. Oops - I kinda gave away my Grey Hatter past - that's long gone. But the point remains, for the money, I cannot find a better combination of capacity and performance and service and reliability level. Conclusion? It's your call, Nobluff. There's no affiliate program for MJZHosting.net, and they offer the best bang for $19 / year. In my experience, Hostgator is the ultimate for heavy duty ("non-abusive") resource use on a shared server. Since I've been with them for close to 2 years and am very satisfied with their service, I've recently registered to become their affiliate, I thought - where's the harm in that? And if you decide to sign up through my link, there's a $20.01 rebate waiting for you - details here. I'm walking the talk, and am in the process of transferring my sites from my PowerVPS account to Hostgator (I just wrote a little tutorial on this) in order to cut down on monthly bills. The PowerVPS service was purchased for grey hat stuff, but now that I'm out of that game, paying USD44.95 a month doesn't make sense anymore. Hope this has helped, and all the best in your web hosting search. PS: I found out about mjzhosting and hostgator through the forums at webhostingtalk.com. In mid-2005, there was a lot of buzz about both services, but I don't see them being talked about much now.
Thank you all for the replies and dlcm for the information overflow, I will need to read that again and let it sink in, thanks. My main criteria are for the CMS recommended setups, which I believe is php, mysql and .htaccess for search engine friendly url's, Yahoo has 2 out of 3 (missing .htaccess) and I want all 3 (CMS software doesn’t need the .htaccess, however it is useful from what I have read). I also want a hosting service that is able to currently handle the sites that they currently host and then some. I am wary of some of the hosting services that are pushing their services very hard, e.g. Siteground (Siteground is currently no1 or no2 under Google for "+drupal +web +hosting" or "+joomla +web +hosting"). I have no experience with Siteground and was really considering them until I came across some inconsistent reviews, hence this thread as I would like a safe bet instead of a web hosting service that ranks well in serps. I also need the web hosting provider that wont slow down my site due to inefficient, old, overcrowded equipment. I don’t need that much space or bandwidth at the moment, however I don’t want to change providers when I need the space and bandwidth so there has to be an ability to change to a high hosting plan.
I would't want to push our services but we can accommodate a wide range of CMS systems, with the specified requirements you have. If you are interested I can PM you some sites that we currently host (Joomla/WP/Mambo/Drupal 5.0 etc) so you can make your own conclusions.
You can checkout our linux hosting packages at http://www.eukhost.com/packages.php We do provide .htaccess for mod rewrite on our shared packages with PHP5 and MySQL (5.0.24) We offer 24/7 support as well as 99.9% Guaranteed uptime on all our packages. We also offer easy plan upgrades so you can upgrade your existing plan at anytime when the need arises. Feel free to PM if you have any queries regarding our plans or our service. Thanks.
I don't have a web site but I'd be happy to make room on my servers for your site. I run several drupal installations with mod-rewrite and lots of added features. PM me if you want details but I can give you say 10Gigs of space and 75-100 gigs of bandwidth for around $8-$10 a month. Let me know if you're interested and like I said, I'm not a hosting guy but I do like to support open-source based applications and I've got plenty of room.
Thanks everyone, I appreciate the responces. I have chosen Hostgator for my webhosting needs and from the search function here it seems like everyone is happy with them (sure there will be one or two that are not.) I have contacted them twice via live chat and have had my questions answered within 5 mins each time, very impressed so far.
Sure Markowe. Actually, I had neglected to mention that in terms of speed, Bluehost was as good as MJZHosting and Hostgator. The only reason I pulled out was because they only allow a limited number of add-on domains - looks like the current number is 5 add-ons on 1 account (details here) They're another excellent option for hosting if you don't need huge numbers of add-on domains. Hope this helps.