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looking for free hosting site (In: I Want to Sell My Website)
Hosting in different Country (In: General Search Engine Optimization)
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3603
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Posted: 2005-Nov-23 13:10
Well, I think I'm pulling the plug with GoDaddy - dumbasses can't even get me two seperate IP addy's with different c-blocks without a fight. Screw that. ...and the $35.00 I'm paying for a VDS.
Since I haven't made the switch yet, to actually putting the site onto the VDS, now's the time to bail.
Did some searching and read a positive on WestHost. I like their packages and prices.
I'm just waiting to hear back form them on the c-block item, but in the meantime:
What do you folks have to say about them?
(I did look at mediatemple.com, too, but it was WAY too much to pre-pay up front...and it's $90/month for a VDS if you don't pre-pay...ouch. Since I don't have a grand laying around...)
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Mark Wolk
Joined: Sep 19, 1999
# Posts: 660
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Posted: 2005-Nov-23 14:19
I was with Westhost for several years. No major problems, except the odd unavoidable downtime, and except dozens of emails from them regarding some server move which was about to happen for over a year, and never eventually happened.
For my personal need (static site, 50 pages, low bandwidth) I realized they were far overpriced. Support was so-so; it's a big faceless company.
I now prefer smaller hosts with personal service. I like to write to my host starting my email with i.e. "Dear Kevin". And the price is under half of what Westhost used to charge me.
PM me if you want a list of smaller hosts; I have several of them for several of my websites (as I do not like putting all my eggs in the same basket). Many of them have plans starting at $1 a month.
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dudibob
Joined: Oct 13, 2005
# Posts: 1473
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Posted: 2005-Nov-23 15:27
the best hosting company I've heard of is rackspace  I don't use them coz I'm skint and don't even own my own domain name  lol
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3603
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Posted: 2005-Nov-23 15:43
the best hosting company I've heard of is rackspace
They may be good, but since they don't even list prices on their website, start a chat pop-up immediately upon your visit, and generally try only to drive you to contact them, I'll stay away, thanks.
...and they've only been around since last year - no thanks. My gut tells me they are BS behind a slick website...*sorry*
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dudibob
Joined: Oct 13, 2005
# Posts: 1473
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Posted: 2005-Nov-23 15:54
lol, fair enough, like I said, from what I've heard there v good, but I've never been hosted with them :s
BTW whats BS stand for?
[ Message was edited by: dudibob 11/23/2005 09:20 am ]
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3603
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Posted: 2005-Nov-23 16:07
Update on WestHost - they cannot add a second IP address on your VDS - interesting.
...and I quote "You'll have to set up two accounts to do this and pay for them separately."...
Plus, as the IPs are "automatically generated", they cannot guarantee a different c-block between IPs...
Am I the only person in history who ever wanted to host two sites, with separate IPs, on the same VDS? LOL How unique am I?!...or am I just undereductaed on this stuff...?
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lizardz
Joined: Nov 12, 2004
# Posts: 1394
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Posted: 2005-Nov-23 19:50
sportsguy, why do you need a vds? What exactly are the requirements? I was researching this a while ago, you have to pay a decent amount, there are other options. Any virtual server should cost a decent amount or it's totally worthless, you're buying part of a total server.
When I say what are the requirements, I mean how many sites do you need on it, how much bandwidth, how many expected concurrent database connections [users per second on database driven sites as a rough equivalent], how much diskspace, and so on.
I wouldn't touch a virtual dedicated server that was cheap, why bother, running a real server isn't cheap, for quality hosting it costs around $200+ a month as a baseline.
I did find one, can't remember it, it was ok, I think maybe $60 to $80, running on freebsd, dynamic allocation of memory and cpu percentages, but you have to be very careful, companies will always be tempted to pop on too many accounts.
Personally, I'd much rather get a real dedicated server and split it between 4 people who I knew and trusted.
westhost outsources at least one of their data centes, they lost their main router and knocked webmasterworld out of business for about 4-5 days. NEVER USE OUTSOURCED DATA CENTERS. Most cheap vps solutions do not run their own data centers, read the fine print.
Rackspace has been around for way longer than 1 year, no idea where that claim comes from, it's one of the top hosters, I don't like that they don't quote prices, but I think it's because they are a serious top level hoster, their specs are stunningly good, but every site has such different requirements that they prefer to offer a individual quote. Basically 100% uptime.
Rackspace and Pair I'd put at the very top of US hosting. Liquid hosting I've heard good things about too.
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3603
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Posted: 2005-Nov-23 22:18
sportsguy, why do you need a vds? What exactly are the requirements?
Honestly, I can't say - the main site it's for is still small but growing - right now the package I have offers 500,000 MB of storage - and I MIGHT be at about 16% of that. Bandwidth used so far for November = 23,163,536kb. Nothing huge as you can see. My "need" for another hosting solution isn't space...
The main reasons for the need to switch are:
1 - I'm in a Windows environment, and the host does not support any way to redirect my non-www domain to my www.domain.
Worse, all shared accounts are in a Windows environment...but on a VDS, I can go to Linux/Apache.
2 - I cannot get a separate c-block IP address from them for the second site I'm putting up (there's only the two for now, so that's not a big deal) - they also tell me that IP addresses are virtually meanless to SEO work - the SE's don't care what the IPs are any more. If this is in fact true, I just learned something new.
I wouldn't touch a virtual dedicated server that was cheap, why bother, running a real server isn't cheap, for quality hosting it costs around $200+ a month as a baseline.
I did find one, can't remember it, it was ok, I think maybe $60 to $80, running on freebsd, dynamic allocation of memory and cpu percentages, but you have to be very careful, companies will always be tempted to pop on too many accounts.
I agree, but the bottom line is I cannot do some of the things I consider basic for SEO work with my current site - so I'm looking for another. The current host is Godaddy, and their customer service is BS.
Personally, I'd much rather get a real dedicated server and split it between 4 people who I knew and trusted.
I share a private road with three other neighbors - it's reinforced why NOT to get involved with others... 
westhost outsources at least one of their data centes, they lost their main router and knocked webmasterworld out of business for about 4-5 days. NEVER USE OUTSOURCED DATA CENTERS. Most cheap vps solutions do not run their own data centers, read the fine print.
I read this today in my research - that was enough right there.
Rackspace has been around for way longer than 1 year, no idea where that claim comes from, it's one of the top hosters, I don't like that they don't quote prices, but I think it's because they are a serious top level hoster, their specs are stunningly good, but every site has such different requirements that they prefer to offer a individual quote. Basically 100% uptime.
The one year reference is from noticing on their website the Copyright tag listing "2004 - 2005" - I simply must be interpreting this incorrectly.
Rackspace and Pair I'd put at the very top of US hosting. Liquid hosting I've heard good things about too.
There is zero possibility I'm large enough for them, then.
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lizardz
Joined: Nov 12, 2004
# Posts: 1394
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Posted: 2005-Nov-23 22:36
Oh, I see, you don't need a vds at all. Did I read it correctly, you are using 23 gigabytes of bandwidth? That sounds wrong, or your site is more big than small, or it's radically unoptimized. How many unique users and how many page views a month is that?
No one hosts fewer shared sites per server than Pair as far as I know, last I counted it's about 130 per dual processor server. They have different A addresses, no guarantee, but I've found that if you wait a few weeks between adding sites to your primary account the odds are good that you end up with a different A address altogether. Check them out, you don't need VDS, you just need high end shared hosting, especially if you aren't doing heavy database stuff.
I hear you on the shared box problem, that could be an issue, that's for sure. The real midrange thing you're looking for is VPS, not VDS if I remember my terms right, there are real companies out there that do it, but it's hard I think, not many can offer reliable services like that, there's a few though, comes in at fraction of price of having entire server, and gives you full root access to box, or your virtual version of it, which wouldn't do you any good if you're just starting out with *nix stuff.
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3603
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Posted: 2005-Nov-24 00:00
OK, it could be the site design stinks, but here are the details:
Page Views: 14,025 ( )
Visits: 3,784 ( )
Those numbers are month-to-date for November. The site has roughly 140 pages, and yesterdays stats show the average # of pages per visitor just shy of 4 each.
I do have some vids (10 or 12) which seem popular, but shouldn't be hauling THAT much BW. I have a gallery on the site, too.
For the most part, though, it's 140 pages of 95% content (actual text), with a couple of small pics per page. I tried to keep the overall page sizes down in the 20K's where possible. All images have either been reduced in physical size, or reduced in quality to limit their sizes, too.
Here are some more stats on the top 10 requested pages this month:
Page Requests Time
/index.asp 1,310 1:30
/tech/tech_support.asp 493 00:30 (list)
/gallery/****_pics1.asp 484 0:44
/conceptcars/****-concepts.asp 470 00:35 (list)
/related_sites.asp 388 00:41
/****_diesel.asp 367 1:28
/jokes/****-jokes-list.asp 353 0:25
/videos/****-videos.asp 322 02:13 (list)
/robots.txt 304 00:20
/links/****_links.asp 287 01:17
That "videos" page is a list of the vids offered, so users are watching a couple at least. Folks are cruising through the site, a bit, but not staying too long...
One thing at a time, I keep telling myself...one thing at a time...
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lizardz
Joined: Nov 12, 2004
# Posts: 1394
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Posted: 2005-Nov-24 01:19
that's not much, unless the video bandwidth is a lot. By my calculations fairly clean pages delivered without heavy database stuff on pair, I'd expect to be able to run a site off a shared server up until I hit somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 a million page views per month, depending on various factors, less with heavy db activity.
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3603
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Posted: 2005-Nov-24 10:37
I can add - it's with zero db activity.
Thanks for your insights liz. I'll send some crickets...
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10465
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Posted: 2005-Nov-24 20:14
I hear good reports about WestHost (except for their partial outage last month - could happen to anyone though) and Rackspace are also very good. No complaints about Pair, and Verio.
Do avoid GoDaddy. For sure.
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lizardz
Joined: Nov 12, 2004
# Posts: 1394
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Posted: 2005-Nov-26 22:27
westhosts partial outage was not an accident, the outage occured in the outsourced data center, and the failure was directly due to cost cutting in that data center. They did not have fully redundant systems in place, and they did not have replacements on hand for the key routers/networking components. This is exactly the difference between high and cost cutting data centers, this wasn't the first failure on that data center by the way for wmw, it was the second, that's why brett moved the boards to rackspace, who do have fully redundant systems setup.
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10465
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Posted: 2005-Nov-26 23:30
One ISP/host keeps only two spare routers on hand per state -- and you can see why when they cost about USD 100 000 each.
That's a lot of capital (10 million) tied up doing absolutely nothing at any one time.
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lizardz
Joined: Nov 12, 2004
# Posts: 1394
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Posted: 2005-Nov-26 23:46
The quality hosters spend the money, it's why they cost more, and it's why I only use them for my sites. It's pretty simple, like you say, it's not cheap to be good. Large hosters also tend to only run one or two or maybe 3 on the outside datacenters, pair runs only one I think, rackspace 3 or 4.
You can get into what makes quality quality, but the bottom line is that you don't hear excuses from quality hosters about why your site went down because your site doesn't go down, you pay for that peace of mind. It's worth it. Obviously your site will go down at some point for some time, but the trick is to keep that to an absolute minimum. Maintaining that minimum level of service always is the difference you pay for, that's the redundant systems, the redundant power supplies, the skilled onsite tech support teams, none of it is cheap.
This is how you can always know what service level you are getting: price it, if it's too cheap it cannot be real no matter what they say, each component costs money.
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Curt
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 3747
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Posted: 2006-Apr-08 12:32
Getting different c-block IP's seems to be hard when going to new providers when you get them all at the same time. When I upgraded to a new server at Interland, I had to fight tooth and nail to get random IP's. I ended up getting my old IP's installed on my new server to keep the IP's non-consecutive.
I believe search engines do watch for cross-linking within domains on consecutive IP's. If you want to cross-link domains, ensure you have IP's on different c-blocks (example: 59.125.33.66 & 59.125.49.19)
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3603
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Posted: 2006-Apr-09 12:24
Agreed Curt.
I asked our Sysadmin about getting some new IPs at work, and we were told that unless we're using 80% of the capacity allocated to each IP we currently have, it's a no-go from the ISP.
Kind of a bummer as we only have one domain per IP and they typically float around 40% - 50% of their allocated bandwitdh per month...
Any interlinking we do is done for continuity and to spread traffic around our sites.
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