Who do you like for a webhost?

[davidrosso]

Ah yes, that all so popular question.... who's the best webhost??? Everybody has their own opinions,
and I'm not sure any of them are wrong! Me personally, my vote goes to IX WebHosting - I user their Expert Plan.

[Dave Koehler]

I have use these folks for the last few years. http://virtualempire.com/

I decided to come back and edit this a little.
Concerning the above host and my experience in getting started owning a web site.
There was no one to ask when I started a few years ago so I did all the searching and studying I could do.
One of my criteria at the time was that the host have an identifiable office and phone number and be in the US. They did and are.
I called all the ones that did. The Fellow at VE didn't flinch or evade any stupid question I had and even spent a little time giving me some idea of where I was probably headed.

I spent a winter working with WE getting the first version of my site done. I got my domain name (more on that later) and then signed up to take advantage of their 30 free days. Naturally I fought with forms and other things a newbie deals with. Forms are still a bitch but coffee cup and WE make that as simple as it is going to get. The issue is usually on the server end and the quirky code that is used. They did a decent job of holding my hand via email and phone when I couldn't put problems into printed words clearly enough.

I then bought in at a month at a time so I could see if like a lot of "good deals" the service degraded after the honeymoon was over. It didn't so I bought in 1 month at a time for a few months just to be sure. OH,yeah, one other reason I did the 1 month at a time was so that when I signed up for a years service the re-up would happen during the time of year that I make my most money. There is nothing worse than having a bill come due during the low income months, especially nowadays.

Plans
I am currently using their "extra" plan only because I have a private board for my clients. Otherwise the standard deal would be fine.
They got the BB setup for me and then I tweaked it via the admin panel. No issues there.

In review I see that they have some storage and bandwidth limits per plan. I have yet to come anywhere close with either the standard plan or the current extra plan. I bring this up because I see the word unlimited used a lot on host sites. Just not sure that's a big deal for a lot of us. I think I will email and see what my average use is.

Downtime
I have only had one unexpected downtime in the last 5 years when some construction cut the main lines to their building. Phones, power, everything went down. They managed to reroute everything within 30 hours and sent apologies. I might even have gotten some credit, I forget. I guess some heads rolled on that cut line deal as it knocked out all of downtown Milwaukee where some big time companies reside. The rest of the time they send out emails when they are doing an upgrade and it always takes place in the middle of the night.

Support
I have been well satisfied with support. Phone calls are not a problem and most times the queue is short or non existent. Emails are generally answered in a couple of hours to 24 hours.

They were a big help in getting domain names out from under the thumb of Network solutions. That should be easy but it was a nightmare. NS charges a lot more (I think it was 75 bucks at the time) and they dragged their feet and blocked me every chance they could from moving my domains out of their control. There were not all the choices for domain name registering and parking that we have now. Avoid NS at all costs.

Features;
Looks like they offer all the features, carts, php, etc that I see mentioned as must haves in posts.

Am I a VE cheerleader? Not at all. Thanks to our economy I have been studying all the other hosts, looking for "so and so sucks" sites. etc. Note that "sucks" posts must be studied closely and taken with a grain of salt because you almost never see "so an so rocks" sites.
People like to bitch but seldom praise.

I will switch in a heartbeat if the whole package makes me comfortable. Cheapest price is only 2nd or third on the list. 20-50 bucks cheaper difference a year will not make a big enough dent in the overall scheme of things.

Looks like I am going to stay hosted where I am based on my current studies and look for other expenses to cut.
BUT never say never.

Hope this helps with newbie decisions on whatever host one winds up with.

[highcountry]

Been a huge fan of Bluehost for years. The following screenshots may explain why...

[ncjames]

BlueHost looks pretty good, but I'm a big fan of GoDaddy.com. I've had nothing but positive experiences with them thus far, and it is pretty cheap....

[crispy]

Hi All,
I'm getting close to finishing my website and am ready to pick a host. I notice alot on here have their favorites for different reasons. My question is: what options/services/perks/etc. are must haves? In other words, i see alot of these saying they support Perl, MySQL, PHP, Ruby, etc. + a host of other things. I'm not familiar with what all these mean and not sure if any of them will be any of use to me right now but I want to make sure i pick a host that will have everything i need if in the future I get more proficient/adventurous at web building. The site i have now is a simple website with a form and picture gallery but eventually i may want to add e-commerce (cart), flash, etc. down the road. Would like some suggestions on what i definately need to have.
Ron

[VerbatimEB]

Hello.

If you are choosing hosting for one website, I'd go with one of the most used if they have cPanel
(not a sliced and diced panel) but the real cPanel. I know some folks who like Plesk also for system
administration.

I have two reseller accounts with national companies:
BigBlueHost.com
HostGator.com

I use these accounts for my clients web sites so I can control space and bandwidth usage as needed.

I'd suggest (for one website and my current experience) to use host gator or go daddy as I've not
heard any bad stuff from webmaster friends, nor had any bad experiences with them.

Just my humble OH-pinion. If you go with a nationally known company who has phone support you'll
be much happier, in the long run. You may pay a tad more (or even less) but that phone support
can be a life saver if you crash (and/or burn).

It's always nice to be able to pick up the phone and get a live person, especially when you are putting
out hundreds of dollars per year for hosting for yourself and clients as well.

Verb :B

[madison12]

just how much bandwidth do we really need?

A simple calculation should pretty much tells the story:

Bandwidth needed = Average Page Views x Average Page Size x Average Daily Visitors x Number of days in a month (30) x Redundant Factor

* Average Daily Visitors: The total number of monthly visitors/30.
* Average Page Size: The average size of your web page.
* Average Page Views: The average page viewed per visitors.
* Redundant Factor: A safety factor ranged from 1.3 – 1.8.

Work out on the numbers and you should come to a rough estimation on the bandwidth needed for your website.

dedicated linux server hosting

[Merlinclancy]

The steps to making your web site are pretty easy:

1. You learn HTML here at davesite.com.
2. You make your web site.
3. You upload (copy) your web site files to your web host.
4. Your web site is online for the whole world to see!


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