Sorry for the long silence. There’s been a lot going on away from my keyboard, and I’ve been going through one of those phases where I’m reluctant to post. This is partly due to being involved in about five web projects at once, and trying to juggle them all is leaving me with little mental space to write here.
Additionally, I’m pretty fed up with my web hosting provider. ReadySetConnect seemed like a great deal when I started, but their only real advantage was the amount of storage space and bandwidth that I got for the price. It’s still a good deal, but I no longer need anywhere near the amount of transfer or space I’m paying for.
The other major factor is that RSC has atrocious tech support. They always have, and I’ve struggled with this from day one. They recently removed all phone numbers from their website and are doing tech support exclusively through web forms. This would be fine if they ever actually answered their support tickets, but I’ve yet to get any replies.
I’m hesitant to rock the boat by jumping to a new provider, but the last straw came this morning when I found out that they turned off my shell access with no notification or explanation provided. Appearently, I can send a support ticket to get access back, but this is just dumb. Assuming they actually answer the ticket, I’m still irritated that I have to ask them to re-enable a service I already had.
Right now the primary contenders for me are NearlyFreeSpeech.net, which is no-frills, ugly, and not user-friendly. But they offer everything you need, as long as you don’t mind the odd setup they have for administering it. No tech support that I can see, but their main advantage is price. I can get hosted there for just a few dollars a month (it’s a sliding scale based on bandwidth and disk space). The other appealing company is TextDrive.com, who offer the complete package, everything I need, but cost about the same as what I’m paying now, $12/month. I don’t mind continuing to pay that if that gets me better support and stability, so I’m talking to Miles now (who just got an account there) to see if they’re all they’re cracked up to be.
Oh, the other nice feature that TextDrive offers, which is certainly not required, but would be excellent, is IMAP email services. That would be EXCELLENT.
So what this means is that there might be some changes coming to my websites sooner than expected, if I move to a new server.
I use TextDrive, and the people that run it are friendly and helpful. It’s easy to talk to them directly in their forums. They’ll give you shell access if you specially apply for it (I guess they want to make sure you know what you’re doing before they do that.)
The only thing I don’t like about text drive is the filesystem setup.. You can host three domains with them, and one of them is considered the master domain. And you put all the files for that website into a certain folder, of course. Then the other two domains are in sub-folders of that one, which doesn’t make any sense to me. I’d rather have a directory structure like:
/site1
/site2
/site3
instead of
/site1
/site1/site2
/site1/site3
It’s also a bit tricky figuring out their online management tools, if you’re used to just using the command line and editing config files. But it works.
Hearing others talk about hosting issues, it makes me really happy that I don’t have to deal with it. What’s it cost to switch your current internet access to a static IP?
Well, most of us have a separate web host and ISP – if you want a static IP to run your own server, you need to talk to your ISP about that.
However, having done that, aside from the geeky fun of having your own server, I can safely say that it’s more of a pain in the ass than it’s worth. A professional web host costs around $10-$15/month and will give you everything you need for hosting any kind of site.
I was just curious if you’d checked that option, and if it was worth it to you.
I’m lucky in that my company doesn’t mind if I keep my personal web site (and Kat’s) on our web server. It’s nice having “shell access” I can actually comprehend. I’ve never gotten the hang of using a linux web server. I have one available for me to use as I will, but it’s too much effort for me to even use VI, let alone configure something.
Drag and drop, baby. My web server management is all about the drag and drop. (With some indiscriminate right-clicking thrown in there, too!)
Hey Scott, et all.
http://www.plantsix.com
This is a co-op box run by my Seattle friends. It is currently in the valley at he.net and will be moving to a SEA provider soon. It basically has EVERYTHING available, and it is not a company, it’s a bunch of ubergeeks who run it. It is a really good deal, and is super reliable.
If you are at all interested email me and I’ll get you in touch with kelp, the admin.
hope you are all well!
Sasha
I tooled around on the Nearlyfreespeech.net site, and it sounds intriguing. A nice benefit was that you could sink 30 bucks or so into it and test it out with no particular risk. I might look into that myself.
Re: running one’s own server, I’m a big fan, myself, but that’s mostly just because I run a lot of stuff besides just web services, and most of it is for the ‘geeky fun’ aspect.
I’m looking into webhosting, however, because I don’t want my site to go down when I’m off to TX all summer and no one is here to coddle the server. Also, it’d be nice to have more than 384k/sec. =) I’m even thinking about getting a real domain name, as much as I like working with dyndns.org.
SeanM: Actually, it’s even crazier than that. The setup you described is what my previous host did, and it sucked. Here’s what textdrive does:
/public_html/ (site1)
/domains/site2/public_html/
/domains/site3/public_html/
On the one hand, it’s nice that all three domains get their own pub_html dirs, it would be nice if all three were off the root directory, as you indicated.
Also, the auto-subdomain setup, while nice for someone who needs it, it actually inconvenient for me, since it’s causing havok with my wordpress mod_rewrite commands. I’d much rather have to set up my subdomains by hand using an admin interface than deal with the .htaccess stuff.
On the other hand, textdrive’s support has been fast and helpful, and their servers seem to be more stable than my last host, so I’m happy with the switch.
Sig: I’ve goofed around with NearlyFreeSpeech.net a little more, and there’s a couple of oddball things.
1. Your databases cannot be accessed via localhost – you have to specify the full server path, which is inconvenient, but not a deal-breaker.
2. Your account doesn’t automatically bill you. You have to deposit money into your account now and then to keep it active. Being a forgetful kind of guy, it’d be nice if they’d bill you automatically or at least drop you an email when your account balance is about to bottom out.
Aside from that, they seem pretty good. The tools are bad (some homebrewed setup that’s not WebMin or cPanel), but managable. And you certainly can’t top the price.
I’m probably going to keep a couple of my low-traffic domains on there, and maybe set some friends up with sites through them, now that I can only have 6 databases with textdrive.