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[_grandpa_]

I have hosted 2 websites on www.startlogic.com servers.... one of them is my personal website, which has ~20photos in it's index.html page and the other is for a friend which has ~5 photos (of total 40kb I think) anyway the 5photo site wanted more time to load than my "loaded" personal site... so I used their on-line help-chat to ask them if there is a problem. The operator said there is no problem, okay then...compare the 2 sites I told him, okay e-mail our support then. . If you are having a problem admit it and just say that you are going to fix it soon. 0 StartLogic.com Vs Customer 2 sorry for my little rant, but since the topic is about web hosting...

[_grandpa_]

hm.... I found an anti-startlogic site here
and I almost agree with one of their comments

"... their servers are f****** slow as hell and their documentation is very vague and hardly helpful. plus their support people are really rude and don't really care about your problems. i think i'm gonna switch

I asked them again when are they planning to move to php5, soon they replied, The last time I asked you again and you said soon....it was 2 years ago, okay they said...you can request it and we will do the upgrade for you nice ....I almost believe them...time will tell

[yahooadam]

hm.... I found an anti-startlogic site here
and I almost agree with one of their comments

I asked them again when are they planning to move to php5, soon they replied, The last time I asked you again and you said soon....it was 2 years ago, okay they said...you can request it and we will do the upgrade for you nice ....I almost believe them...time will tell

http://www.surpasshosting.com/

when i used then (albeit a long time ago now) they were very good, and i have never found a better price - in like 5 years
Their accounts are superb - i was hosting like 5 peoples site on my $5 (it was $5 back then) account

[_grandpa_]

Thanks, it will be either that company or Bluehost.com, ....on August...

[_grandpa_]

StartLogic, they moved everything on a new host, as they are a virtual company and they don't own any servers or anything, anyway, they moved everything to their new host and they only informed me about it over e-mail while they were doing the relocation and when they completed it. Problems? Default IP to log-on on my site changed also, they didn't mention it anywhere, they moved only the files and not the database! How nice of them. Thankfully I don't have free time (except for COD4) to do web developing else I wouldn't be one of their customers.

[nat13]

I need some advice. I've got to set up a Moodle site for work. We have got a server but I haven't got a clue how to put the stuff in it and the building is due for major works/transformation so I expect some disruption at some stage. On top of that, I think it would be preferable to have it hosted somewhere where there's backup as there is no technician left in the building and I'm not prepared (nor do I have the time to learn). I tried it on my old pc a few years back (had to put apache something, upload files and tweak them and it seemed to work but I was a bit lost when it came to port things). however, they also want to have a blog on it and feeback option for tutors to give to learners (who submit work via the site) and as it's for the borough adult learning service I'm assuming that I'll need to take into consideration the amount of traffic. which is where I'm a bit lost. Also I need a server that allow cron service.

the other major issue is money. As the service has a rather large deficit in its budget, I'm on a shoestring. So what I need is:

a good hosting service which is cheap (what's cheap?)
how much space do I need?
is there anything else that's obvious and which I've missed?
How do I buy a domain name that's not for me?

Thanks.

[_grandpa_]

Well at work they use Intermedia.net (Windows hosting) and their website is down once a week. The reason given by the hosting company is "maintenance". That's what you get when you go cheap?
At first they were using easyCGI but their support was getting worse, and I think at the end they were bought from Startlogic.

From personal experience...well I've only used Startlogic. I think it has the cheapest fees, and it also has what you need, cron job, blog (WordPress), way too much space so you won't need to worry about it. BUT because it's cheap you might have other problems. For example, I had 2 websites on their server, registered in different accounts, and the one was loading way too slow, compared to the other, (and no I didn't "load" the page with "heavy" content) by the end of the day though they fixed it. A plus for them was when they upgraded their server I forgot to backup my database and I only noticed it a month after (yep I don't visit my website often) and they were able to restore it.

When you buy a domain you will have to give some information, you will just enter the (new) owner's information during the registration.

If you don't like your hosting company you can move to another one, the domain does not belong to them and you will move it (by using a tool in your current hosting company) to you new hosting company

I've only used a hosting company service for my personal website so for your task/needs you might need something better, (better uptime, fast page loading etc). The guys & girls here know more things so lets wait for them to reply

This post has been edited by _grandpa_: Oct 25 2009, 21:00

[nat13]

thanks Gramps

I've looked on the Moodle site and they recommend PowWeb. It looks OK. I'll just have to check that work is OK paying in dollars!

You mean I can register the name as a representant for the company and if/when I leave I just transfer the ownership?

Anyway, I'm planning to sort that out by the end of the Xmas holidays as I'm too busy with teaching new courses next half-term but if it's easy (and it should be) I'll start working on it before that. It's just the database business in Moodle are a bit strange to me (I'll get my head around it).

[theMaster]

Buying in Dollars is dangerous as you're depending on the exchange rate. So, if I'd gone with GoDaddy (a US-based host), it would have been around £30 a year about a year ago ... and now it's £56 a year. Which isn't a lot each month, but if money's tight you have an additional layer of unpredictability.

Also bear in mind if you're collecting customer data, the site MUST be hosted within the EU to comply with the DPA.

Previous experience suggests not using UK2. They may be cheap, but they're hell to transfer a domain away from. 1&1, which hosts this site is largely automatic and reasonably priced. I've just started using Evohosting, who seem reasonable and cheap.

The issue you're going to have is the requirement to run cron jobs. If you need to have access to cron, you want Linux hosting, and it'll be a virtual or dedicated server you want with SSH access (that's secure shell, not SSL, which is https). That puts up the price considerably (using 1&1 as the example, a shared 'business' hosting plan is £8.99 a month; the base virtual server is £14.99 a month and the base dedicated server is £39.99 a month), so you may want to question why you think you need it.

[Dash Rendar]

Some good points there.

This site uses the 1&1 Business Pro package, which is shared Linux hosting and the minimum package 1&1 offer that supports cron jobs and SSH. These are a must if you want to automate your own database backups. Note that if you skim the package offerings by 1&1, they all claim to do daily backups for you. However, as I found out the hard way when I was once paying for the Business package, these backups are full server backups and are only provided for THEIR disaster recovery scenarios, should their entire server go pop. They will not restore individual corrupt databases. Seems a bit of a cheek that their databases corrupted my data, yet they wouldn't do a thing about it. So, to set up your own backups and be in control of your own data, you'll need to step it up to the Pro package. I'm presuming this is what Dave was referring to?

The other thing to look out for is the size of databases provided. I've no idea how much data a Moodle site requires. But consider... the 1&1 package I use offers 8 databases at 100MB each. That's fairly small. And they won't let me spread those 800 MB over fewer databases. So, this forum - for example - is completely limited to 100MB. As a result, the forum occasionally breaks when 1&1 realise I've bust my quota and revoke my access. I then have to clear all the search engine logs to free up space.

It's amazing how hosting companies will give you, say, 40GB hosting space, and then put such rediculous restrictions on database storage. Ho hum.

But if you do decide to go with 1&1, make sure you use this link: http://www.1and1.co.uk/?k_id=5676403. That way, I get a referral fee, which almost comes close to a single month's payment.

[nat13]

Will do. Just need to check with my quality assurance manager and service manager that they'll foot the bill.
thanks. I think they'll be quite happy for things to get started just now so that they can evidence that they're implementing their ILT strategies. I'll let you know when it's done and I'll use the link.

[davidjoshua11]

Usually, you won't want to have unrelated tables in the same database. So that's why you might want more than one database available to you. MySQL and PostgreSQL are just different database engines.

[nat13]

The project's been postponed as the building is being refurbished and I need to wait for the end of year budget! If all decisions take that long I've plenty of time to get upskilled