Be my host - UPDATED
Friday, January 19th, 2007Update: I’m pushing this back up to the top as I’m keen to get this sorted as soon as I can.
My RBN filing was registered quicker than I had expected, so I’m pretty much ready to go, all I need is a suitable host.
Below is a quick rant on what I’m looking for - suggestions, recommendations or warnings are all greatly appreciated.
Development of the project is moving ahead quite well, and I’m pretty much ready to launch the initial site now.
And so, I’m looking to the issue of hosting. This site (adammaguire.com) is hosted by Godaddy, a company I chose because 1) they were dirt cheap and 2) I heard they were good value for money.
While this site has never caused too much demand on their servers anyway, I can say that I’ve had no problem with them at all, besides being limited in a few of my options. Despite this I’ve decided not to reside with them for the next project.
Why?
Well because I need to think ahead.
Perhaps it’s optimism, or an attitude of ‘better safe than sorry’, but should this project be in any way popular at any point I want to have a set up that won’t buckle at the first sign of traffic, and that’s easy to alter and upgrade should that be necessary.
I’ll need to have decent, reliable storage, plenty of bandwidth (later on in the year, although not right now) and I want to have as much freedom as possible in adding fancy features (not like I can design them… just the ones I find for free around the place!).
Also, I need to know that should the worst come to worst, I’ll be able to ring an Irish helpdesk and get it sorted quickly with the help of people who don’t sneer at you for not knowing javascript. One of the reasons I’m skipping Godaddy is because I can’t rely on US tech support that a call to costs twice as much as the hosting package did in the first place.
So, I’m looking for recommendations. I’m willing to pay that bit extra for hosting because I see the reliability of the next project as quite important. If adammaguire.com goes down for 24 hours, so be it, but I’d rather not see that happen to the new project and I appreciate that getting that guarantee costs a little extra.
(Just before the high, high end suggestions start coming in, I want reliability but I don’t need even close to the biggest package going, and probably never will. Most of the hosting companies I’ve seen seem to have adequate basic packages as far as space and bandwidth goes, at least for the time being, I’m looking for the one with the most options, most reliability and best support.)
Oh, and I’m planning on getting a .ie domain too, so a good price on them would be preferable (but again, I’ll pay the few quid extra if it means getting a solid hosting package too).
Blogs elsewhere
January 19th, 2007 at 12:22 am
I’m not sure who you should go with Adam but you might want to read http://www.tomrafteryit.net/blacknight-solutions-dont-tolerate-criticism/ before you make up your mind.
January 19th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Thanks for that Tom - trying to get as much feedback from customers (and, I guess, the companies) as I can before I make a decision.
Going to repost/update this as it’s a bit more urgent now.
January 20th, 2007 at 10:26 am
Ive never had any problem with blacknight, who have helped at every opportunity with irishelection.com.
November 1st, 2007 at 11:44 am
Thanks a lot for this article
January 18th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Adam, can you elaborate a litte bit on your requirements? Is your new project/site a blog or a similar site i.e. do you need a server running PHP?
If you want the package with “most options [and] most reliability” I’d suggest checking out some Virtual Private Server (VPS) solutions with someone like Slicehost.com - here you get to set up you’re own server and optimize it for exactly what you want it to do - the trade off here is that it takes a bit more effort to setup, but there’s lot of tutorials out there to help with this or you can just get a nerd to help.
I’ve just set up a VPS for a work project and will be setting another one up soon, so drop me a mail if you’ve any questions as I’ve got a lot of the details fresh in my mind. Best of luck with it.
January 18th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Whoops, why didn’t I see the date on this post. Been a long day