Why Asking For A "test File" Is Not A Reliable Way To Shop For A Host
Jun 1, 2009
I did not put this under the tutorial section because it is not comprehensive enough. Its just a simple rant.
Those of you shopping for a host come to this forum, and are often given the advice to ask for a "test file" to download.
1) Hosts who offer test files will most likely put the file on their fastest server, not the server where your site will actually be hosted.
2) If they have servers in multiple data centers, they will use the one that is the most well-connected, not necessarily the one where your site is going to be.
3) Even if your account is assigned to the same server as the test file, what does your ability to download a static file actually prove? A test file does not show how well a server is going to perform, which is usually the biggest factor in page load times.
4) Barring all the above, and assuming your site is going to consist only of static files, most web site visitors are not all in the same area, so your results may differ from the rest of the people visiting your web site.
A test file can be helpful in rare circumstances, but as a potential customer you would have no way to really know whether your download is a true test of what you can expect, so it is best not to rely on something like that unless you are downloading it from your own hosting account with that host.
The only way to really know how a host is going to perform is to try it out. This is why hosts offer full money-back guarantees and free trials.
I have a VPS account now and I host a setup.exe file on my site, but about 10% of all downloads are incomplete and result in a corrupt setup file. I am guessing that maybe it's because too many people are trying to download the file at the same time? Whatever the reason, I need more reliable file hosting. Can anyone suggest a place to host just my files, which will provide speedy, reliable downloads? I'll still keep the VPS for my site, but need to put the files elsewhere. I don't want any free, ad supported sites, or ones that require the user to visit another site first.
Just got a letter from InMotion. They don't like I uploaded my backup files to them, which makes their hosting benefits totally pointless to me and I will be moving to some other cheaper hosting since I basically only use email.
So I need some place to store my backups... I need only about 5 Gb, and I don't care about bandwidth, as I don't plan to download them unless all my HDDs will burn or get stolen or something so I don't need bandwidth. And it should be no more than few bucks/mo.
if you can share a 100MB download link that I can use to test cogent's speed to my network. Hopefully plugged into a 100MBPS port at the switch to see if it will max out or not.
I usually host my sites on Bluehost but they are a bit expensive. A friend of mine who wants to host a very small site of his not expecting too many viewers, needs a web host which is cheap, reliable and fast..bandwidth is not an issue since he wont need much.
Please suggest some tested options. Which one of the cheaper options are time tested and reliable?
im in the market for a very reliable shared hosting windows host. It i s crucial for us to have maximum amount of uptime.
storage and bandwidth needed is not very much about 40-50 gigs maximum per month. It is also important that we are able to add "alias" domains or "pointer" domains to go to the same place.
Price is not really a concern.
I was looking at the 1and1 windows hosting package but im afraid i wont get any support if ever I have any problems.
Before we get any further I would ask that people not relentlessly spam this thread with this or that, telling me how great your web-host is. Im sure it is. I do want serious replies that address my concerns.
I am currently with a web host called bluehost.com -- with which I am becoming VERY dissatisfied with. They are now consistently having downtime which causes me a lot of frustration when I am in the middle of editing a file (or many files as I like to do). Frustration aside, what is this going to cost me when I am not just developing and rather depending on them to keep me alive and available? This is NOT why I pay $7 a month.
Further, I find it absolutely rude and unacceptable the way I am treated by their customer service representatives. In this regard I am uncertain what is worse, letting them know Ive troubleshooted the issue on my own and therefore know something, or acting as if I don't know anything at all about the problem. Either way I receive rude, snarky, condescending, and / or passive-aggressive irritation from aformentioned representative. They "guide" me through steps they probably read from a script and when they are done "diagnosing" the problem I feel as though I've been raped. Its quite an ugly scene. I do want to mention however that I have NEVER had even 'acceptable' customer service from any of the 4 or 5 web-hosts I have tried (by tried I mean more than 6 months of sticking it out).
I wish to find a web host company that is relatively large in size. This would imply a few things to me that:
A) They have the capacity to reduce or eliminate downtime to something approaching zero at worst and zero at best.
B) They have the capacity to staff knowledgeable customer service representatives that are not snivelling, sexually challenged uber-geeks with a grudge against the universe.
I do realize this request is like expecting politicians to be honest or more specifically if the said host is large and resource laden, they probably did not get there by hiring the best and brightest to sit by the phone.
C) They offer SSH access to their customers. And other small details would include a list of basic and expected necessities such as: MySQL, PHP, FastCGI, Zend Optimizer, sub-domains, pop3 accounts / mail, a control panel for account settings, and of course error logs and the like.
So, if anyone knows of a host with these features, please let me know and / or please let me know of your experiences with this host. If you have had problems with Bluehost please keep in mind that they have treated me *relatively* well, with the exception of customer service not worth the goo between my toes.
Im currently with a unreliable host in the us with a lot of downtime and other issues, so am just after a good reliable reseller host with a server based in australia.
Every time I think im onto a good one i find a dozen reviews on how bad they are,
As the title says, I am going to be setting up a AbleCommerce website, and I need a high quality Windows VPS host. My main focus in on uptime, quality, reliability and speed. But at some point price will come into play as well.
The server requirements for AbleCommerce are as follows: Microsoft Windows 2000, preferably 2003 Server Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0 or 6.0 .NET Framework (Asp.Net 2.0) Microsoft AJAX Library 1.0 Microsoft Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 3.0 Microsoft SQL Server 2000, preferably 2005
Besides these requirements, as with most e-commerce software I'm pretty sure AbleCommerce will be pretty server intensive (Its a pretty large script). It should also be noted that I have no experience with Windows hosting, so I need a managed VPS with good support staff.
I have the hatchling plan on HostGator. Is there a PHP and MySQL open-source application where I can put up there to test its performance on running PHP and MySql applications? I want to see if there is any performance issue on this host before migrating a large ZenCart app to it.
What are people's experience on HostGator running PHP and MySQL?
I'm looking to move from Infrenion.com. The Infrenion VPS has been really great as far as speed and performance. However, Infrenion leaves the number of max diskinodes to 200,000. I've tried fighting with them to get it increased to where it should be (for a 20GB partition), 2 million nodes. I run a social networking site that uses Smarty templates and requires as much nodes as possible.
So, I'm looking for a VPS that has FFMPEG pre-installed, speed, 15 to 20GB of space, and is under $50/month.
Infrenion, if you're reading this, please reconsider your configurations of your servers.
I know there are a million "looking for cheap shared hosting" threads. Hopefully my particular values/interests justify a new one.
I'm a (mostly PHP/MySQL/CMS) web developer, using Dreamhost for years (perhaps DH was better back then) to host staging/development sites for clients (once I've developed a client site, I usually make them get their own host somewhere more reliable), as well as for low-traffic sites, transferring files, etc.
What I don't like about Dreamhost:
a) SLOW. my guess is this is 25% web server overselling, and 75% MySQL server overselling. My simple sites are tolerably slow - including lightweight php/mysql sites (textpattern CMS, etc.) - BUT my Drupal and Silverstripe and ZenCart experiments are intollerable (5+ second page loads).
b) funny ownership policies - I can't (easily) create a client FTP user that is restricted to one of my subfolders. Each user = exclusive file/folder ownership. c) not much else. I seem to get a-little-too-frequent DNS problems/outages, and used to get a-little-too-frequent server lock-ups... but I don't expect perfection from a cheap host. And of course I send my mail through google apps, I wouldn't trust a cheap host with my mail.
What I like about Dreamhost:
a) the control panel functionality. Yes, it's ugly, but god it does a lot of nice stuff that cPanel doesn't (and frankly, cPanel is usually ugly too).
b) the usual: a very low price for unlimited domains, unlimited mySQL, and huge storage.
So, who is my next low-cost host?
a) Interested in MySQL performance/protection - perhaps hosts that put MySQL [and mail] on separate servers, like DH, but don't overload them!?! Do I need to worry about this?
b) I wouldn't mind moving to a reseller account
c) I'd like a progressive control panel; I have clients on medialayer - who use directadmin (nice) - but their pricing structure is a bit tight on domains/db/storage. [As an aside, medialayer provides excellent shared hosting performance/value/support, if you don't need a lot of domains/db/storage]
d) I'd like to stay in the $10-20ish a month range
Friend of mine is starting up a business and is looking for a reliable and fast web host in the UK but also not too expensive around £100/year and maybe 100gb bandwidth not sure on that.
Looked over reviewcentre.com and picked out some high rated ones with more than 5 reviews, however every single one I have read horror stories about elsewhere (including ukfast which seemed so good looking at reviews).
Can someone recommend any decent ones to me who won't screw up payments or have much downtime, with maybe a year or more of being with them? All I need to start is a bit of bandwidth for pretty much one image to start with, uptime and email, already got the domain from domainmonster.
I have changed four hosts in less than two months, absolutely disastrous.
I need a VPS with: +700mb ram guaranteed (1gb preferable) 300-500 gb bandwidth (basically 300 for 1st month but if its reliable i will expand) 2gb space is enough. 100 mbit line. location doesn't matter. and a company that does not oversell DirectAdmin Adult content Allowed A server that can stay up three days in a row??
MAX 55$/month (or if it does not work out, what is the max you can offer for 55$?) Please help me find a reliable host, after months of suffering and instability.
Reason for changing hosts: host 1: too much for shared, noobish attacks causing downtime. (netflow.co.il) host 2 : scammed on directadmin. (peerlessmachines) host 3 : a reseller of host 4, vanished suddenly, and domain got parked free. (youhostme.com) host 4 : seemed perfect but recently a 5 days in a row downtime, blaming a faulty error and 'node 1 issues'. (highspechosting.info)
I've used many webhosts over the years and have run into various issues from which I've compiled my key wants:
Reliability - availability of mail & web are both just as important - I've had a few hosts who have great HTTP uptime, but mail can go down for hours and is not covered by any SLA. Prefer clustered solutions using a NAS, or at the least RAID-1 (or 10). I recognise downtime is inevitable, I care more about the impact of single component failure and recovery time.
Control Panel/Security - I'd prefer the host to have a custom control panel (i.e. not cPanel/WHM, Plesk/Parallels, DirectAdmin, H-Sphere etc). I really like DreamHost's panel, in particular their model of arbitrary combinations of shell users and domains underneath them. I like to use this to separate installs of untrusted software (such as MovableType, Wordpress, Gallery, Joomla) into their own user accounts so that if one gets compromised it doesn't hose everything. Need multiple domain hosting.
Disk - 2GB sufficient, 3-4GB preferable. Bandwidth - 10GB or more (I don't really use more than 2GB but prefer not to worry about overage) Price - I'm happy to pay US$20-30 for a premium service. Support - I'm technically savvy and only need for support to be responsive to technical questions & issues (i.e. reporting downtime).
To provide some background - I'm currently a customer of both DreamHost and Media Temple (gs). DH sucks because their uptime is completely unpredictable, I have kept it only because their user/domain model is convenient for toying with untrusted software. (mt) was to be the ideal host but reliability of their (gs) service is crap despite all the claims about superior architecture. Additionally they don't allow separation of users/domains and I don't want to host multiple 3rd party apps in the one account. To their credit (mt)'s support is extremely responsive and the company as a whole are very transparent about outages but they simply have too many technology issues.
My current host has gone the tubes as far as reliability so I'm looking for a new one. I need PHP/MySQL, CPanel, 1 GB of space should do for now and bandwidth will easily be met. I also want unlimited domains (add-on is fine).
I am a working on a website which will be more diverse but will work in the same way SWOOPO and many other auctions websites work with bids being placed etc.
I do not want to run the site on a hired dedicated server, I have a budget of around £5000 (around USD $8000) to buy a server. I was thinking of buying something from ebay, I am as of yet undecided exactly what to buy but I am leaning towards an affordable DELL 1855 blade chassis with the full 10x blades that is available. I have already made enquiries with datacentres in London about colocation costs, just waiting for an official quote.
Each blade has:
2 x Intel Xeon 3.6Ghz/1Mb Processors Both Installed 4096MB ECC RAM 1 x 36GB U320 10k Hot-Swap SCSI Hard Drives PERC 4/iM RAID Controller
Further information in the advert:
Blade Centre Components:
1 x Digital KVM Module
1 x 10 Port Gigabit pass Through Module
1 x DRAC/MC Module (1 x Serial Port, 1 x 10/100 RJ45 Port for Remote Management)
3 x 1200Watt Power Supplies
7U Rackmount Chassis (No Rails Supplied)
All housed in PE1855, 7U Rackmount Blade Centre
Optional Gigabit Ethernet Daughter Cards Available @ £60.00 per Blade
This can give 72ghz of processing power with 40GB RAM and that is awesome. Does anyone know an approximate figure of how many customers/queries the server can handle at % rates? I know this depends on the size of the database and so on but I am just looking for estimates please.
I know I will need at least two cheap servers for a SWOOPO clone, one to run the website and the other for the SQL so rather than do that and get two servers I thought this route was better when weighing up the 7u size along with 72ghz processing power.
I am not looking for advice and tips on hiring a dedicated server but I really would appreciate some advice on what server to buy because the script is nearly 95% complete and we should be launching within 6-7 weeks after heavily testing it.
I switched to HostGator because they had PDO drivers enabled on shared hosting plans with PHP 5 & MySql 5. The problem is that every time they update PHP (4 times in 8 months now) they don’t include PDO in the build and its takes day to get past level 1 support and get it fixed.
So I’m looking for a “Reliable” host. I had a hard time when I switched to HG finding shared hosting plans with PDO enabled.
I have a site going that requires quite a large space/bandwidth host which allows hotlinking/streaming. Currently it's sucking up around 1.3gb space and 50gb/mo, maybe a tad less than that. My budget is low, I've currently been working off free hosts which has been a huge pain.
So basically I need a cheap host with moderate allowances, uptime with a decent speed. But because technically it's just a filehost which allows hotlinking/streaming (maybe even hotlinking protection), I don't need the other jazz to be working.
I saw Brinkster (which doesn't allow streaming, so good thing I didn't buy that) and webhostingpad, which both seem to get terrible reviews here.
I have been reading about Amazon S3's service at [url] and I was wondering if it would be wise to use their service for a file host (like rapidshare..) I may be starting?
How good is their bandwidth and what is their policy on copyrighted material?
Or should I buy my own servers from an unmetered provider, such as alphared?
I'm thinking about moving an account with one main domain and a bunch of addons from one cpanel host to another, using a whole site backup .tar.gz file. SSH does not appear to be an option at this point.
I just extracted the tar.gz to a local pc to get a look at what's in it. It has these 12 folders: bandwidth, cp, cron, dnszones, logs, meta, mysql, resellerconfig, userdata, va, vad, vf. Below these folders are also 14 unfoldered files, ranging from "addons" to "version."
So, will this work?
1. Does this mean the domains and all the addons will be set up with their original user names, passwords, and email accounts with all the same passwords, if I move everything to the right location? Will all the email accounts I've set up in my email client software work just as they do now with the current host?
2. How can I know where all these uploaded folders and files have to be moved once they're there?
3. Can I just upload the extracted contents to one location, or do I have to upload the unextracted tar.gz to a server, extract there, then move the contents wherever they need to be moved (but I don't know where things need to be moved now)?
I recently opened a shared hosting account with a new host.
Can someone advise on file/folder permissions I can set which will keep my shared host neighbors out?
While accessing my account via FTP I noticed I could freely view and download files from other users folders - their PHP, HTML, images, you name it!
I would like to be more private with my files which include PHP scripts, images, etc.
I already contacted the help desk with my host and the tech said shared access between accounts is normal (even FTP) and if I restricted permissions then my PHP wouldn't work for Internet users.
I'm not buying it. I should be able to set the permissions such that Internet users can execute the PHP and view images, without my account neighbors using FTP to download my files.
