The content of the site in question contains no videos/sound files. It's mostly text with a few images and most pages don't go over 100KB. Most of the users are also based around New York City. At what point would you guys recommend getting a dedicated server? Any recommendations on dedicated hosting service providers? Is it worth considering virtual dedicated hosting? Thanks in advance!
It depends on the amount of traffic and how big the site is. The more space and transfer the site uses the closer you get to being better off with dedicated server. Most sites do not need one but if site is popular and uses alot of space or transfer you should look at a dedicated server.
As you seem to have only smaller static content, I'm sure you can go to great lengths with shared hosting from a reputed company like HostGator. I'd recommend their baby plan. You can have a look at HostGator reviews and coupons in my sig. for more info.
You need a dedicated server: Once you get few warnings from your VPS provider for traffic and server load/memory usage etc Once you earn enough to pay for it Once you can manage it(or can hire someone to manage it) if its not managed by the provider. There are lots of facts to be considered.
Hostgator have upgraded their plans with more space and bandwidth so they might suit. Otherwise VPS hosting plans would be a good option. Andrew
I don't know. In the past month I have been getting internal server error messages with Hostgator shared hosting. Maybe I have outgrown the shared hosting. But Dedicated is not worthwhile. Is there something in that I can use besides shared and dedicated hosting, a trade-off?
You can go with a shared hosting package initially and upgrade to VPS or Dedicated Server as per your requirements. IMO, you dont need a VPS or Dedicated server right now with the requirements you have.
All oversellers have limited CPU resources, even less than non oversellers, so what you see is something which you cannot use ever. 1 TB comes to 30+ GB/day and it would cause enough load on the server so that host automatically suspends the account.
Well, shared hosting has to have some resource restriction else it becomes a dedicated in some way...isn't it? Even though I don't like HostGator's recent plan upgrade frenzy, their feedback and overall satisfaction levels seems to be superb. So, it might seem they are an overseller from their current offerings, but service has been good as usual.
IMO there is no need for you to think about dedicated hosting your site seems to be a normal site as the way you have describe it. Better try to get a reliable host who is with you for your help round the clock.
Spam blogs, sometimes referred to by the neologism splogs, are artificially created weblog sites which the author uses to promote affiliated websites or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites. The purpose of a splog can be to increase the PageRank or backlink portfolio of affiliate websites, to artificially inflate paid ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed. Spam blogs are usually a type of scraper site, where content is often either Inauthentic Text or merely stolen (see blog scraping) from other websites. These blogs usually contain a high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless websites. There is frequent confusion between the terms "splog" and "spam in blogs". Splogs are blogs where the articles are fake, and are only created for search engine spamming. To spam in blogs, conversely, is to include random comments on the blogs of innocent bystanders, in which spammers take advantage of a site's ability to allow visitors to post comments that may include links. This is used often in conjunction with other spamming techniques including Sping. Splogs have become a major problem on free blog hosts such as Google's Blogger service. By one estimate, about one in five blogs are spam blogs[1]. These fake blogs waste valuable disk space and bandwidth as well as pollute search engine results, ruining blog search engines and damaging bloggers community networking (e.g. Blogger's next blog link). Google's search engine uses PageRank, which is susceptible to link flooding, especially from highly weighted bloggers. One splog clearly states: "Google's run by people who can be bothered to post links on the internet." Splogs could become a detractor to people using, enjoying and finding value in the blogosphere. Splogs sometimes choose a name similar to a popular blog in order to benefit from the occasional incoming link from careless bloggers, who think they are linking to the popular site. Splog activity can cause problems for legitimate bloggers, if search engines respond to splog by blocking or treating as 'suspicious' all web addresses in a particular domain Several splog reporting services have been created for good willed users to report splog with plans of offering these splog URLs to search engines so that they can be excluded from search results. Splog Reporter was the first service of this kind. Then came SplogSpot which actually maintains a large database of splogs and makes it available to the public via APIs, and A2B which blocks web server IP addresses that splog URLs resolve to. There is Feed Copyrighter plugin (for WordPress) which allows you to automatically add copyright messages to feed, so splogs can be easily spotted and reported by visitors or through Google search. There is also TrustRank, which attempts to automatically find them. Blogger has implemented a system that can detect splogs and then force them to take a Captcha 'spell this word' test. Blogger deleted thousands of splogs in September 2005 [3] and even more in December.