[Techtalk] New domains and webhosting

[Rasjid Wilcox]

On Saturday 14 February 2004 07:09, Sini Mäkelä wrote:
> I am thinking of buying one or two new domains. Does anybody have
> recommendations on a reliable company that preferably would be pro-open
> source?

How does which OS you run have any effect on purchasing domains?

> Another related question is about webhosting. I'd need to have these
> domains hosted somewhere. I currently have one domain hosted by a company
> I am resonably satisfied with, but I think there could be better deals out
> there. My requirements:
>
> - Uses Linux
> - PHP enabled
> - MySQL or Postgres
> - Access statistics
> - SSH shell access a big plus
> - min. 50 MB diskspace
> - min. 1GB traffic allowed without extra fee

I currently have my webhosting with Affordablehost.  
(http://www.affordablehost.com/).

For USD$5.95 per month, you can host up to 3 domains with 100MB disk space and 
up to 5GB traffic. Comes with PHP, MySQL and access statistics.  SSH access 
is available, and costs USD$10.00 to set up IIRC.  They have online chat-room 
support, as well as the standard 'submit a support request' ticketing system.  
I have always found their support to be very good.

Alternately, if you are comfortable being the sysadmin your own server, by the 
looks of it is you can't get better value than some of the User-Mode-Linux 
based hosting offers out there.

See 
http://usermodelinux.org/modules.php?name=News&file=categories&op=newindex&catid=12 
for a list of hosting providers offering this service.

Prices start from USD$5.00 per month (at http://www.redwoodvirtual.com/), 
although I am looking into the service offered by http://www.linode.com/, 
since their 'Linode Platform Manager' would seem to provide all the 
advantages of a server that you have physical access to.

With any of the UML plans, you get your own machine, so you can have an 
unlimited number of domains, users, databases etc etc.  Disk space generally 
starts from 1GB (although allow a bit for the distro itself of course - 
debian is good for having a small footprint) and bandwidth generally at least 
5GB per month.  Some plans have much more disk space and bandwidth than that.

The main downside that I can see is that it then becomes your responsibility 
to keep your server patched and secure.  (My guess is that this is the reason 
the UML plans are so cheap.)  If you don't want this responsibility, then you 
are probably better off with the more standard 'shared hosting' arrangement 
that Affordablehost and their like offer.

Unfortunately, I have not (yet) tried any of the UML plans - so there may be 
some 'gotchas' that I am unware of.  I am currently putting together a test 
system with UML on my box at home, and will need to plan the migration from 
the current hosting provider to whatever I end up with once I have sorted out 
all the packages I want.  I'm currently getting my head around running 
Postfix and Cyrus-imap authenticating against a MySQL database.

I wish I had found out about the UML hosting option a while ago, since it 
would have saved me a double move.  Oh well.

Cheers,

Rasjid.

-- 
Rasjid Wilcox
Canberra, Australia (UTC +11 hrs)
http://www.openminddev.net