I am in the middle of rebuilding a website for a large magazine. The site currently averages 2 million hits a month, and uses about 10 GB of bandwidth a month. The site has always been on a shared Windows hosting plan, however I feel it has outgrown the shared environment.
The company can't afford a dedicated server, so I am looking for a "middle ground". Now that the company is doing e-mail marketing to an opt-in list of over 50,000 people, and a shared environment simply can't handle that kind of mailing volume.
I am not picky about hosting platform, though I am more familiar with Linux, cPanel, etc. I also have no clue about server management, so I'd need a managed solution.
My question, is what is the difference between semi-dedicated and VPS, and which would you suggest for my needs? Also, can anyone suggest a reliable host that offers fully managed services for less than $100/month?
In a few months I will be searching for a semi-dedicated plan, I'm going to spend around $230 a year. I would go with my current host on semi-dedicated but their plan is about 2 to 3 times over my price.
My site is currently on a shared hosting plan is doing fairly well but I'm also looking to expand the site and therefore I will need a semi-dedicated plan.
I'm not familiar with semi-dedicated since I have always used shared hosting and have a few sites on different shared hosting plans. So any tips you can provide when searching for a semi-dedicated or questions I can ask would really be helpful.
Now I know there is a offers section here on WHT but I'm not looking for offers, I'm looking for recommendations from users who have used a semi-dedicated plan that's around my price range. I'm not looking for dedicated, nor VPS, just semi-dedicated. I will be purchasing a semi-dedicated plan around November of this year.
I'm no newb to shared hosting but I am new and unfamiliar with what to look for in semi-dedicated hosting plans.
I am currently using hostmonster.com and I've noticed that my service is starting to go downhill. The site is taking longer to load and I've read that in some cases they will terminate your account without notifications.
I am a photographer and my website will be growing in the future. I am looking for a site that I can host my high res images and maybe video streaming for my wedding events. Should I go with a semi-dedicated server?
What are some cheap reputable semi-dedicated hosting companies?
I just found out there is such a thing as semi dedicated hosting. I think this will work well for me. I was hoping that someone out there could recommend a company that is reliable and honest, has good support, does not oversell, and finally, a company that is reasonably priced. Even better, it would be great if the hosting company was one that could really work with me to determine my needs as I go along as I am extremely limited in any techincal knowledge. I really don't understand 99% of the verbage that is associated with all this stuff and if left to my own devices, I really would not be able to convey my needs or even know what my needs are. I feel lucky if I even know of 1 or 2 questions to ask.
I run an on-line forum on a shared hosting account, which I'm beginning to outgrow.
Last month's statistics shows an approximate average of 40 concurrent users, approximately 200 megabytes of used hard drive space, and approximately 15 gigabytes of used data traffic. I like my current web host, but their next step up is a dedicated server account. From what I understand, a dedicated server account requires extensive UNIX knowledge, which I lack.
I'm thinking what I would like is a semi-dedicated server, which from what I understand is basically a shared hosting account with larger accomodations. I'd like something that runs some varient of the UNIX operating system, and gives my on-line forum a decent amount of room to grow if necessary. Budget wise, I'm willing to pay up to $80 per month.
What are the advantages of a semi dedicated account over a shared account.
So far it just looks like a bigger shared account (though comparable when you compare it to an oversold shared account). It's more expensive though so does it relieve some of the load issues (and CPU/memory limits) placed in a shared account?
choosing an appropriate webhost solution. I'll be launching a site that will initially serve around 3000-4000 pageviews per day (say 2000-2500 uniques per day) but will go well over 10-15K eventually. Pretty small based on that metric. With just PHP (no dynamic content), my shared host has handled that fairly well for an existing site.
However, this site will need to track search queries...so, each page will do a simple MySQL lookup and either upgrade a count or do a small insert. Again, very simple stuff but not sure how this affect performance and CPU load. Still, I know my provider has pretty low thresholds on max db concurrent connections and they've loaded my server with lots of other sites recently. I'd rather not take a chance after launching.
Based on that simple operation, would you recommend moving to a managed VPS or possibly a semi-dedicated server? The traffic still sounds low but I'm just not sure of the mysql effect
If VPS, it seems like 512M memory should be the minimum for this setup or could I get away with something smaller, like 384M/256M?
I've read good things about MediaLayer's "application hosting" but it still sounds just like shared hosting.
For people who don't need the full power of a dedicated server yet wish to avoid shared hosting and VPS, it seems attractive to cost-share a dedicated server with others. Does anyone have any advice for how to find suitable partners?
In our case, we're leaving LayeredTech because our dedicated server rose from $75 to $111 via two recent price increases. We can get a much faster server for less money.
However, our CPU load is under 20% on our old Layered Tech Sempron 2600 server. This makes dedicated a bit overkill.
You may be thinking "become a reseller". However, I'd like to avoid getting into that business. So I'd appreciate any advice on how to find 1 or 2 people who would also like a semi-dedicated server.
From reading a good lot of posts here, I can see that HostGator seems to be a good company and that many have a good feedback to give about it. I've also been reading that you should avoid overselling, though understand that some companies, even though they offer "Unlimited space and bandwidth", they can manage it well. I guess HostGator falls in that category too. My questions here:
1) So what are the conditions under which it is okay to go for a company that offers unlimited space and bandwidth? (Expecting answers like 'if you just have a few blogs and don't require...')
I have read (here and elsewhere) that for most people's requirements, a shared web hosting would do. However, for someone a with a little more web baggage (individuals, not businesses), it is generally advised that they look at semi-dedicated hosting plans.
2) Based on the above quoted, objectively, what are the things that you should look at (like traffic per day etc) and what should be their values (for e.g. like 15000 uniques per day etc) while considering moving from sharing to semi-dedicated plans? I think some of them are the following, can you give me approximate values for these when I should consider the move?
a) Traffic b) Number of active websites c) Sites with heavy resource usage. (Can you give me some examples of this?) d)...
As you can see I have questions. Until I saw and read some posts on this forum I thought I had some answers...
I was looking into a VPS with 1and1.com Seemed to have good stats, and is a fairly large company. The plans were nice, was going to start off on their VPS 2 package with 20GB/2000GB, 245MB ram burstable to 512MB. All was well, since their packages seemed to offer the most for the least, if you know what I mean. I also liked the ability to upgrade the package without interrupting my service.
I read some posts here, and looked into a VPS even more, and now Im not so sure about 1and1.com or the thought of even having a VPS.
I have no experience with a VPS. So running it would be all new. Im not computer illiterate and I have taken many network and network operating classes. So I have some experience with command line linux. I have messed with some IIS, and a LAMP. On the other side, it scares me that I could f**k something up and bring down the site.
Now, for my needs. The site when launched has a predicted demand of a few thousand users over the course of a month. This is a business site, so downtime, and a shared environment don't seem to make sense. The site is very mysql intensive, at least by my standards. Most pages have 3-6 queries, main pages can have 10+, and most user actions include a few queries. The most load I could fathom would be all 1,000-4,000 users hitting the site hard for 3-4 days. This is now, next 'season' could be twice that load. In between seasons seasons we were going back to shared until the site starts making more money, and we fill in the off season with some other money making service.
The reason why I thought VPS was budget, and just we wouldnt want to be on a shared hosting plan, and somehow our demand was larger than expected and they shut down the site. So do yall think that a VPS is the right way to go? We have the budget to go VPS($40-$80) a month for 3 months, before going back to shared.
About 1and1.com: I read a few threads, some recent, that seem to say they oversell even a VPS. This doesnt make much sense since its supposed to gaurente those resources to me. The company is so big, but even these few posts and accusations are keeping me from commiting. My main concern is that between when we launch it and when our first spike of demand hits is only 2 months, so I dont want to learn that 1and1.com sucks firsthand.
Ive seen other hosts that this forum sponsers, so I assume there is *some* prefernce to use them, but like jaguarpc.com VPS plans seem to be a little more $ for a little less (storage and bandwidth) when comparing to other deals.
I have never worked with an adult oriented website before, so I really don't know a whole lot about the arena. I might be making a web site for an exotic dancer that may contain explicit photographs (no sex, topless images probably). This is more of a homepage, not a pay for membership adult site.
Anyways, whenever I have signed on with a host in the past they all seem to have the uniform user agreement that states no pornography, warez, etc. Would this type of thing be considered a pornographic web site? If so, are there any hosts that provide affordable shared web hosting that allow this, or would I be forced to get a dedicated server or something?
Just trying to get a feel for how much of a pain in the butt this could end up being, I might decide not to do it if this will require some expensive specialty hosting. Any advice would be appreciated.
I'm a (mostly SQL and Java) programmer by trade, I have an MSc. in Computer Engineering, and for almost 8 years I have done web and database programming on the side. I have a site (www.the-athenaeum.org) that has had its ups and downs. Sometimes I find lots of time to work on it, other times life intrudes and I neglect it. It gets a few hundred thousand hits and maybe 30,000 unique visitors per month (or so).
Long ago, I decided (for reasons of security and some idea of the nobility of open source) to go with FreeBSD/PostgreSQL. I went from crappy no-name hosting to CanHost to LayeredTech, teaching myself the OS and db from scratch in little scraps of free time. In general I have always gone the cheap route by necessity. I'm determined to keep my site nonprofit, so I've never had banner ads or Google ads. Over time as I made more $ in my "real job" I could afford slightly better servers.
These days I could probably spare $200 per month out of my own pocket to subsidize my hobby. We have a new partner who may provide another $200 per month or so.
I have come to a point where my lack of knowledge is probably holding us back. It's a one-man operation from a web/db-programming standpoint, and I am finding myself using too much time on anti-hacker and server-optimization activities. The server runs slowly. People keep spamming my PunBB install. I am trying to keep the server up and responsive instead of adding new features and finding new users. My cheapness is biting me in the butt. I think if the server ran smoothly when people came, and if I could spend my time adding the cool features I dream of, we would double or triple our user base pretty easily.
I suppose you could sum up my operation by saying that I have a web site that "does cool stuff ... slowly."
I figure I have two possible routes:
1. Pay for a "semi-managed" server or a managed server: By this I mean having someone set up the OS to be very solid, someone who can look into why the server is so sluggish and fix it. Someone who can give me an SLA that deals with spamming/hacking. I don't care about admin. panels and the like, but I do need a solid, fast server, or at least one that performs up to its basic potential.
2. Have a "geek on retainer": Instead of that, pay for targeted services. Pay a FreeBSD guy to do the initial server setup. Pay an Apache/PostgreSQL guru(s) to get the basic infrastructure in place. Pay a PunBB mod developer to harden the forums. Bring them back in when specific problems come up.
I've learned a lot over the last few years, but I will never become the expert that is needed to fully grok the sys. admin. tasks.
Which route would you recommend, or is there a better way? How do I price out these services?
I have an account that is going from a shared hosting account to a dedicated with theplanet and I want to transfer it. Concerns I have is that the site is using an SSL. What things do I need to watch out for when transferring. Since I don't have root access I will have to do this transfer with the account function, correct?
This site has a database and SSL, so I thought it would hopefully be easier to use the cpanel account migration tool
I use shared web hosting service to get my website online. I'm wondering how many people use dedicated servers or virtual private servers instead and pay from $20 to several hundreds of dollars? Will I face any big problem with shared web hosting package which makes me choose dedicated servers?
What would you classify this as? Seems like it's the in-between for VPS and dedicated with completely reserved resources and much higher storage capacities than VPS can offer.
Personally, if it runs a hypervisor or container is a VPS but this sure does blur the lines a bit.
I am currently using a shared hosting but due to increasing traffic and server load my existing host is not able to provide reliable services and I am planning to upgrade my hosting service.
While I was searching for Dedicated Servers, I learnt about Virtual Dedicated Servers but I am not very sure about their reliability? Are Virtual Dedicated Servers useful? My website current serves over 2500-3000 visitors a day resulting in 30,000 pageviews and I am expecting the traffic to grow by atleast 2 folds in the next few months as I start some PPC campaigns and Email Marketing for my website. Can a Virtual Dedicated Server cater such needs assuming my website to be more of less dynamic website written in php?
I'm running a Joomla site with about 15,000 page views/day on JaguarPC at present. Its a mainly passive content - no message boards or applications. They disabled my site stating that CPU/Database use is too much. Should I move to a VPS or Dedicated server now ? Budget range $50-75/month.
I am tossing around the idea of moving from my dedicated server to a VPS server. This is due to my ever growing server needs.
Currently, I use a small percent of a $400 softlayer server, about 500gig disk space and 2tb bandwidth. Is this too big for a VPS? Is there anything special I need to take into consideration for the move?
I was also wondering if other VPS's on the same server would slow down mine or if I would just allocated a % witch would be reserved for me.
I have a master reseller account with a host and i ordered a dedicated IP address so i can install a SSL certificate, I have not done this before so just wanted some info.
Its been over 24 hours from when my host transfered my IP to my account and my website keeps showing some other website o my laptop and if i check it on 1 of my other computers it shows the WHM & cPanel success page...
i know i have to leave it to set the new DNS etc but should it be showing another website? and how long does it take to set the new IP fully as my email and website is all offline