[Sticky] Web hosting – Any Recommendations?

http://www.surpasshosting.com is the best host I've ever had in the past 6 years of web design that I've had. They're cheap, good, and have GREAT packages! They're hardly ever down, and when they are, they get it back up as soon as possible

^ I second Surpass. I've been with them for about 4 years now. They have great plans already, but are constantly adding promos and giving you more for the money. Their support is wonderful - they've always been fast and helpful whenever I had a problem.

I was also going to ask if anyone was with a good host because my host sucks totally right now *fed up of them*

and so im planning on movin the domain somewhere else...but where is the good? and anyone know any uk-based webhosts? (though im still open to u-s recommendations)

I was also going to ask if anyone was with a good host because my host sucks totally right now *fed up of them*

and so im planning on movin the domain somewhere else...but where is the good? and anyone know any uk-based webhosts? (though im still open to u-s recommendations)

For UK I have friends (who don't live in the UK) who swear by 34sp:

http://www.34sp.com/

Well, you should try Luve-Me Hosting. I know the owner.  😀 There's more support given than from the larger hosts that don't have time for you.

thanx but those perticular hosts arent suitable for what I require, but thanks anyway

has anyone gone with hostnine? http://www.hostnine.com (or do you think the reseller hosting sounds too good to be true?)

i think i may also consider site5

*sighs* *has a webhosting headache right now*

Well, I can name a list of bad hosts that I have had problems with. If I think of the rest of them, I will edit my post.

1) GISOL also known as Global Internet Solutions, Was down all the time.

2) Psychz Networks - Who took a year to finally listen to me and cancel my account. They kept trying to charge me the entire year too! I sent like 20 or more cancellation support tickets!

3) 1 & 1, Server is slow, control panel is complicated and very slow too. Until Tammy's upgrade, it wouldn't even send out emails at all.

4) Supreme Network - Stupid staff, boasts lots of space, but server is down all the time.

5) Phantom Hosting - This was several years ago, perhaps they have improved.

I have recently found a url that gives uptime for servers/hosts. http://www.webhosting.info/

Here's a few things to ask any potenial hosting company that will help you gauge if they are likely to provide a reasonable service:

1. Ask if they have their own "AS Number". If they do, it means they own their network infrastruture and are directly responsible for resolving any network issues your server may have connecting to the internet. If they don't then they most likely rent a few servers from a bigger hosting company so if your site has a problem they have to then call tech support from the other company and everything takes longer. You can also tell by entering their IP address into http://www.lerfjhax.com/internet/search and check if it lists them or another company as the IP address owner.

2. Ask what Operating System it is hosted on - the specific version and distrubtion of linux/bsd. Then goto to http://distrowatch.com/ and see if it is up to date or not. Do not host on Fedora Core as they only produce security fixes for that OS for 6 months. CentOS / Debian / FreeBSD are popular and good choices. Do not host on Windows - if the host is paying out licence fees to Microsoft for windows (This usually adds $30 a month to the price of a dedicated server) they must be cutting corners somewhere else to remain competitive, and efiction works best on unix anyway.

3. Ask them for a link to a speed test file. As well as having you and your friends do the speed test, run a traceroute and check the file is on their server not someone elses.

4. Visit www.traceroute.org to run a traceroute to their servers from various places around the world to test their ping time.

5. Visit http://www.lerfjhax.com/internet/search to see how good their peering is - the more networks in the list in the bottom right corner the better.

6. Insist on php 5.2.1 and mysql 5.x.x (preferably 5.0.27 or newer). Many SQL inject attacks that worked in older versions of mysql are blocked by mysql 5 and it is much faster than the older versions. New software is generally a good sign that the machine itself is fairly new and hence fairly fast.

7. If you are sharing a machine with other users, ask if they "suexec" your php scripts. This means that your PHP scripts run under your individual user account rather than having everyone on the machine run under the same "nobody" account, and prevents other users with accounts on the machine from hacking your site.  However, suexec consumes more resources on the server so cheaper providers don't often do it.

8. Ask if their apache configuration includes mod_security and mod_evasive. These two apache extensions reduce the chances of being hacked.

9. If you can afford it consider getting a managed VPS server account rather than shared hosting - you are far less likely to get problems with your hosting provider saying your server is too busy and affecting their other customers and you have far more control over how your server is configured. E.g. you can choose which apache modules are included, which version of mysql/php to have installed.

10. Visit the advertising forums at http://www.webhostingtalk.com - there are a lot of providers competing for business there and they do a lot of special promotions

Thanx to everyone who suggested webhosts, I've fixed one up now and  will be relaunching my site in a few days!

Hi

I need a virtual dedicated hosting, because the database connections of my site are too high. I actually use more than 126,000 database connections per hour, so I think I need more than a shared server.

I looked some providers and found www.godaddy.com

I am not sure about moving, and I'd like to know other hostings. If you know some other, please tell me.

Ayesha

Web hosting talk has a lot of providers advertising offers on their forums. As there are all in one place they tend to offer better deals there than on their own web site, and its a good place to start looking:

VPS offers are in: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=104

120,000 conections an hour sounds high even for a busy site - how many page views is generating that?

I looked some providers and found www.godaddy.com

I am not sure about moving, and I'd like to know other hostings. If you know some other, please tell me.

Ayesha

I have heard some pretty bad things about godaddy such as their servers being down quite a lot so myself from what I've read would not consider them

but i also think you should look at the webhostingtalk forums like jrabbit suggested I myself did quite a lot of research before I found my new host as I had a hosting nightmare before I moved to my new host so its worth taking the time to check out the various hosts 😉

Hi

I need a virtual dedicated hosting, because the database connections of my site are too high. I actually use more than 126,000 database connections per hour, so I think I need more than a shared server.

I looked some providers and found www.godaddy.com

I am not sure about moving, and I'd like to know other hostings. If you know some other, please tell me.

Ayesha

Godaddy is definitely not a place you would want to go when it comes to hosting, they're a widely commercialized company but that does not make them reliable. There are plenty of other places to go for good shared  and dedicated hosting.

I have to agree with Becca about GoDaddy.

I was just able to test them out with someone's account. I have never used a more difficult host. It took forever to find the control panel in a sea of more offers, and renewals, and when we finally did, we couldn't find the ftp info, just a java upload applet for one file at a time. I just gave up. And I normally don't do that, but it was just hard to figure anything out. We couldn't even figure out how to get the stuff showing up online, and the relative paths because all we had to go on, was the little java applet listing the files and folders.  😮 We e-mailed them for the info, and waited, but finally gave up.

Freehostia is MUCH more user friendly (and free!), but in the last couple of weeks I've tried them, they were down half the time so I can't say I'd recommend them either. But they were supposed to have been hacked or something...

I've used Imhosted and they seen alright. The permissions for actually viewing the site seem to get reset every month or so though, and no one can visit the site until you e-mail them and tell them to fix it, which they do pretty quickly, even at 4 am. Good support. Other than that they seem pretty good for eFiction, not any timeouts recently, but we don't have a big strain.