The more I read and research the more confused I get. Issue: Business #1 hosted on local ISP, no pressing need to move it. Business #2 started out selling (not ecommerce) a couple items related to business #1 so I created pages for them on B1 site. B1 is no longer active, B2 now has a lot of items for sale and needs to get it’s own site, eventually ecommerce, but not right away (not a lot of time right now). I own the name for B2 parked at Network Solutions & it’s up for renewal (in a few days). I can move the domain register & get a website on one of the bigger hosting sites for about the same cost as I’m now paying for a private registration at NS. Is it stupid to pay for private since the contact info is plastered all over the website anyway? Most of these hosts offer a free domain registration. Then I read that it’s better to have your domain registered somewhere other than the site host in case there is a dispute.
I’m thinking—move registration to GoDaddy now. Keep researching hosts. If I (ever) decide on one that offers free registration I can get another name to park on the main domain that is reg’ed with GoD? Or would the free domain automatically be considered the main domain at host where I’d have 1 c panel & add-ons?
I need to make sure I can add ecommerce to the site in the future.
I created the original site in Front Page 97 which is of course no longer supported, I no longer even have a fully working version that I can find since I upgraded to XP, but I have a front page editor & Cute FTP to update the B1 site. So I’m in the market for another simple site builder, I don’t write code. I also have a dial-up connection only, so I don’t think an on-line builder is a good option.
Oh, and I’m on a tight budget but not looking for a free hosting “service”. $10/ month maybe?
I didn’t even know anything about CPanels and add ons and sub domains until a couple days ago. Info overload,
I'm wondering is it possible to use RegisterFly's DNS server for my VPS. I only have 1 website on the VPS, but I want to increase the reliability of my site overall and thought if it were possible to give the DNS operations to my Registrar, who probabily really does have seperate DNS servers, this would be a good move. Since it would allow me to disable BIND (freeing up resources/memory), and put the DNS operations to quite possibly a more reliable set of servers (since my 2 DNS servers are actually just my 1 VPS)
What are the Pros/Cons of this type of arrangement?
So I need to know, can it technically be done, and what zones entries I need to create.
I've had a page hosted on pagesgarden.com for about 4 years now, they were fairly cheap and the service was decent. Now they seem to have vanished entirely and I'm looking to transfer my domain to another host, but I used pagesgarden as the registrar also so I'm not entirely sure of what I should do to reclaim my domain name.
What is the process for transferring a domain name after the registrar vanishes?
I'm interested in maybe moving all my reseller hosting and domain registration from United Hosting and Low Cost Names respectively... So I'm interested in hearing what you are using and why... I'm a freelancer who resells space, I live in the UK and am wanting the best companies to work it for me and my clients...
A few reasons why I want to change right now is that United Hosting just doesn't offer enough space for me, and I'm finding it more and more expensive for the value I'm getting. Though they are good as they allow me to edit php.ini files, have ImageMagick, and offer webmail to my clients etc. I do like Low Cost Names, but again I'm finding the lack of CNAME records a little disappointing.
So... what are your best reseller host and domain registrator to you and why?
I was able to finally set up a dedicated server, and now I'm finallly off to the easier stuff.
Two quick questions:
1) How do I make it so my domain name takes me to my server's address? You know, just like how shared hosts give you the nice little DNS addresses that make everything magically work.
I could just forward the domain to my server's IP, though that would not display the domain name in every page, the way it's supposed to be.
2) When I visit my server's IP, it gives me the apache welcome screen saying everything was successfully installed. That page is locaed under /var/www/apache2-default. I find that "var" directory a bit strange, is it supposed to be there? And more importantly, when I add the real stuff I want on my site, should it all go under the "apache2-default" directory? It seems to be set as the default home page dir, right?
I started up a brand new site just over a week ago and set the DNS settings to point the domain to my site. It's been that way ever since. Now I try to login today to update my site and see that every url with my domain goes back to the GoDaddy parking page. Is this more a problem with my host, or GoDaddy?
I don't know why but a domain is showing the green default cpanel page instead of its own homepage. The domain has been hosted on this box for a long time.
DNS is fine, ran udpateuserdomains without error. No dns changes have been made. IP it is set to pings fine. Tested via 3rd party proxy, shows green cpanel page still.
When a domain name is pointing to our server and the account is not setup yet, there's a default page that says:"
Quote:
Great Success! Apache is working on your cPanel® and WHM™ Server
If you can see this page, then the people who manage this server have installed cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM) which use the Apache Web server software and the Apache Interface to OpenSSL (mod_ssl) successfully. They now have to add content to this directory and replace this placeholder page, or else point the server at their real content.
How can I modify that page ONLY for ROOT accounts and not my resellers?
I have a customer who is having trouble with his account and would like to help him out. He has a VPS from a totally different provider and his Bandwidth usage is 20x normal. In his awstats, the internal page views is showing a huge number of views to totally different domain names such as Yahoo.com etc
Has anyone ever dealt with this before or have any experience with what it is and how to stop it?
i have a domain registered within PLESK having the same name as the server itself. After a short period of time the domain shows up the PLESK default page instead of the original content located in the vhost httpdocs directory.
To restore the content it's possible to deactivate and re-activate the domain from the customers control panel. But after an amount of time the default page comes back.I first recognized the error after the update to PLESK 12.
My company is about to start a project and need about 100 servers within 3 months. I am looking for a list of afordable and reliable unamanaged server providers from Europe. Can you suggest some? Which datacenter should I contact for such a project?
This review is based on my subjective experience with this service provider. Please take into consideration that each customer experience is unique in nature and can be heavily influenced by circumstances and cultural differences. My reviews are more prone to usability aspects rather than mips and milliseconds.
This review has not been financially influenced by the provider in question.
SOFTLAYER from the European perspective
Background:
I work for a value-added reseller hosting company in the Northern Europe and take care of server provisioning, offer request and service definition for our company needs.
We have used this company for the business hosting needs for over a year - we do yearly offer rounds and move our services should the need arise. Currently we are not hosting with Softlayer.
Experience is based on one dedicated server AMD Opteron 1216 with 4GB, 2x500GB RAID1 and Plesk 100 - location Dallas and Washinton DC facility. Reviewed services; control panel, private networking, help desk, sales support
Overview:
Softlayer has been in business for a while. They offer wide range of servers from single processor multicore to quad processor multicore servers. They have 3 different facilities in U.S; Seattle, Dallas and Washington DC. There are no Softlayer facilities available in Europe, but they do offer services to European customers as well. ( which is not the case with all the U.S based providers ) They offer fully automated services, an integrated control panel, developer API and wide range of software solutions for their server range plus number of other services that we have no experience with.
Privacy Policy:
Standard privacy policy with one side note; Softlayer follows the EU privacy protection laws and participates in the EU Safe Harbor program. This is more important for us Europeans; we are obliged to treat customer data in a specific way. (It's a long story, I'm going to spare you from the details)
Contract terms:
Monthly contract with server cancellation, at the latest 3 days prior the monthly anniversary. The cancellation can be done with the customer control panel. No questions asked - you do get a sales rep email and confirmation enquiry surely, for your own protection.
Installation
The server provisioning was really fast - in a few hours we had fully functioning server available with the specs as ordered and tested. This was a great service, we've had experiences with 10 day provisioning times.
Control Panel ( Customer Portal):
Softlayer customer portal is a comprehensive one. You can handle everything related to your server with a click of a button; reboots, OS reloads, reconfigurations, support requests and sales orders. One of the notable features was the ability to test firewall settings with external scanning provided by SL; easily done with a novice understandable report and suggestions.
You can give different access rights, access levels to users and share the control panel with the system administrators and support people. Overall usability of the control panel is good, navigation is simple, the screen is calm and there are no distractive elements. Softlayer has done a rather good job in handling comprehensive set of features in customer control panel.
For a beginner, the control panel can be a bit overwhelming though - it has been designed for the professional administrators with tens/hundreads of servers and whilst supporting this purpose well, a novice user would feel more confident with more narrow set of features. My preference for the novice user would be the server-centric usability focus; choose the server you manage and then the tasks related to that specific server. Help could be more easily available; there is a comprehensive knowledge base, but task oriented help is not necessarily available where the task is at the control panel.
Out of 10 points, Softlayer deservers 8,5 to the customer portal
Private Network
This is one of the brand marks of the Softlayer. They offer an excellent private network with PPTP & SSL access. The bandwidth is unlimited between you and your servers and even between your servers. You can truly shut down the external traffic to your server and still manage it from the background. The access is granted using PPTP (1 user) or SSL browser access with (Java plugin?). I used the PPTP, so the experience with SSL is limited.
This feature is free, which is exceptional. The true value comes when you have several servers with Softlayer and you interchange data between server. For single server owner this is of a less benefit, but surely a secure feature to access your server. The setup for private networking is seamless, easy to understand for a novice and wins my vote hands down
Out of 10 points, Softlayer deserves 9 for their private networking.
Network
Softlayer network is well connected, a connection to Northern Europe is around 80 - 100 ms from the WDC data center, it is barely noticeable for standard web user. During the year with SL, we did not experience any problems with their network connections. Some minor issues with private networking side ( nothing to do with SL )
Out of 10 points, Softlayer deserves 8 for their network connections to Europe
Help desk
Support ticket system; the response times are adequate, but you can sense that there is a night in the U.S and day in Europe. The response time improves at our night time and the tone tends to get more cheerful in the evenings. The responses were always professional though, and we never had a problem that wasn't resolved in a matter of an hour. The hardware was replaced and problems solved efficiently.
Out of 10 points, Softlayer deserves 8 for their helpdesk (If I were in U.S, I might give a 9)
Sales
Like with any service provider contact their sales before ordering; you might get lucky and get unlisted offers and pricing for your server. Softlayer has a good sales staff, but the service level is not consistent . If you are lucky, you might get a sales person not the "I just working here" - type. Their sales people are cheerful, genuine problem solvers and would like to find you the best alternative - the "I just work here" will read their price list and give you exactly what you asked; ie. they might have a great offer on AMD opteron 1216, but you asked for 1212. You'll get what you asked for - not the great offer available. Reason being, "you never asked".
Out of 10 points, I give 8 for the Softlayer sales.
Server pricing
Softlayer is not cheap and not even competitive always. The have a new outlet for bargain servers, but their pricing seems to start with USD119 what ever the case or name of the bargain is. Before signing-up with them, you should always do your own shopping around.
Out of 10 points, I give 7 for the Softlayer pricing
Conclusion
I would suggest Softlayer to any business owner with some experience and with several dedicated servers. For the novice user, with some reservations - maybe a smaller hosting provider would be better to start with. Their technical service is professional, coherent and they certainly know what they are doing.
Softlayer has an impressive service offering, especially with their private networking, but you need to be prepared to pay for it as well.
We use Tailormadeservers.com in the US and are looking for a similar flexible provider in the UK / Europe. Basically looking for a reliable provider who allows you to pay down the price of the server and also allows you to pay for RAM / RAID upgrade with one setup fee.
This post is the result of a frustrating 2 week search for a decent dedicated server provider in Europe.
My conclusion is: there isn't one. At least not without paying a heavy price, often double or triple of what you'd pay with a US provider. And even at that price, you often get a service that is far far bellow the quality of service you receive with many US providers.
I simply can't believe that things that are considered rather normal and expected in the US require you to pay a premium price with many EU hosting providers. I'll list just a few:
99% Network SLA Seriously? 99%? Most providers I see in the US have at least 99.9% if not 100%. Running a good network is essential for every hosting provider. Do they distrust their networks or are they simply incapable of managing a stable reliable network for their clients?
Hardware Replacement SLA This is a good one. Many hosts I found either have none, or they have insanely horribly... horrible ones! One example: 8 hours within office time. So what if your server goes down on Friday night? You'll be doomed until Monday, and even then it can take them all day to fix it as far as their SLA is concerned.
Others require you to pay a premium price to get a better SLA. I saw one host that wants something in the area of 150 euros for a 2 hour hardware replacement SLA. I could get another server for that.
Support This is really a gem. Trying to find any sort of fully managed provider is nothing short of impossible. Many advertise it, but if you contact them and ask specific questions the answer is mostly "Huh? You want what installed / configured?". I did manage to find some German ones that provided decent answers, but they were German only.
Price Last but not least, I simply cannot believe the price difference I see when comparing US to EU providers. I usually find the following combinations:
- Cheap server, expensive addons, expensive SLA options - Expensive server, cheap addons, expensive SLA options - Cheap server, expensive addons, horrible SLA with insane price to upgrade to a better SLA
I don't understand how the EU providers expect to receive double or triple of what you pay in the US for perhaps half or one third of service.
Reading LeaseWeb support horror stories and lately a lot of Ecatel ones too I really do wonder how those companies plan to operate in several years. I'm pretty sure that if it weren't for their larger clients they would seriously reconsider the way they operate.
I have been in the hosting market for roughly 6 years now. Started from shared to VPS to dedicated. All those 6 years, the service has improved with most companies I've had business with and service expectations have also risen quite high.
However, here in Euroland it seems providers live in some sort of relaxed state where after work hours, things are not really their problem anymore until next day.
So tell me, what am I missing here? Am I nuts, or is it really such a big difference? Why is there such a big difference and what do you think will happen in the future with many big European hosting providers?
And please don't take this personal if you live in Europe. I live in Europe myself and I really tried to find a service acceptable both in price and features, but so far this didn't work out at all.
We are looking for an affordable yet reliable colocation in northern Europe. We only need 1 or 2 U at this point and would be willing to lease the servers if the price was right. We are not dumb and are willing to spend money on reliable service but we do not need a full rack or anything like that as our European business is small (only 2 servers right now with the need for a 3rd) and we do not have any aggressive strategy to grow this.
We would be interested in any deals in terms of providing space or routing services in the US in exchange for some in Europe as we are looking to form a strong partnership with a host on the grow.