Finding a Good Hosting Company!

Posted by: FitR on August 27th, 2009 (1,023 views | No Comments) 1438

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Fish in the River was down

Few days ago Fish in the River was down due to the overloaded use of hosting resources. As the result the account has been suspended. This message below was from the hosting company

“[this account] consume more than it’s fair share of server CPU/Processor and Memory resources.”

It was a violation of the Acceptable Usage Policy using more resources than allocated that I couldn’t notice on time.

If you are are on Reseller Web Hosting plan, I strongly recommend you to check your usage of CPU and Memory resources. You may be able to check this status with your hosting company.

Fish in the River’s back but some altering was needed on Fish in the River. As you may noticed, two areas in the sidebar have been removed. “Recommended Books” and “Digg News”.

“Recommended Books”

Amazon has announced that “all Product Advertising API developers will be required to authenticate all calls to the Product Advertising API by August 15, 2009.”

However, I am still working on it to get it work as I’m so busy working on other areas plus new Fish in the River is coming in few months with more sections

The Recommended Books may be available on the next version of Fish in the River.

“Digg News”

I think this was the main problem causing the over usage of CPU. Recently the traffic of Fish in the River was skyrocketing (thanks a lot everyone!!) and
the script of Digg News would be over used. (But it’s still unsure). I will see if removing this script would solve the issue and find the other solution for this.

Looking for a New Hosting

Certainly I strongly feel that Fish in the River will need a new hosting (VPS or Dedicated) pretty soon to support the increasing traffic, and heavy scripts and resources.

So I have done some research of “which hosting I should choose” and today I would like to share my research with you guys.

Which plan to go?

First thing first, let’s have a look at which hosting plan you can go with. (I assume you already know what the hosting is. If not, please refer to here)
Generally there are 5 hosting plans. Shared, Cluster, Reseller, VPS and Dedicated.

Shared

In a shared hosting environment, many different clients share the same server and the same resources. While each client has their own limits on certain things (storage space, allowed email accounts, allowed bandwidth per month, allowed FTP accounts), the same Apache server, MySQL server, and even physical memory are shared.

Reseller Hosting

Reseller web hosting is a type of web-hosting where you buy bulk of space and can resell it to for profit. Shared and Reseller web hosting have many similarities, and many web hosts offer both shared and reseller hosting. The main difference between the two are in the names ‘shared’, you are sharing resources, which is the same for ‘reseller’ in a way but you can resell the server resources. You can create your own web hosting accounts and share your allocated server resources with your clients.

Here is a good website you can get a lot of helpful information about reseller hosting. http://www.resellerguide.com/

Cluster Hosting

This is a group of servers integrated together for one customer. Clusters are typically setup to meet one of the following design goals: increased performance or redundancy.

When a server fails, nothing is affected, as the other servers will take over the job.

VPS Hosting

VPS stands for virtual private server. It is sometimes also referred to as a virtual server or a virtual dedicated server. It takes one big server and partitions it off into several smaller servers. Each VPS hosting account can have its own operating system and can be rebooted without effecting the other accounts on the machine.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is a type of Internet hosting in which the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc.

You now have some general ideas of each hosting server. Next what we are going to look at is which operating system you are going with between Linux and Windows.

Oprating System Support, Linux vs Windows

There may be no definite answer for the question, which one is better. Each one has it’s one strength and weakness. There are several things we may need to look at.

One of the most important things to look at is which server language (and database) you are going to use. If you need a database driven web site, you can choose either PHP/MySQL combination under Linux or ASP/MS SQL combination under Windows®2000.

The reliability between Linux and Windows server are not much different, that being said Windows has more complaint than Linux on many forums.

Both of servers seems quite secure but it would be very depending on the hosting company, how often they remove unnecessary components and update software to ensure that platforms are secure.

Finanally regarding the price, as most of Linux software is open source (free), Linux server seems cheaper than Windows server.

More Features

You also need to consider other features for your needs such as Storage, RAM and Bandwidth. Depending on your needs, compare each features throughtout different hosting plans. Note that if you are going to choose the Reseller hosting, you also need to be aware of its “Acceptable Usage Policy” or similar policies and make sure to read the policy thoroughly and understand it.

Price Range

The prices are quite different depending on the plan, hosting company and any additional features.

Normally the price ranges between less than $5 per month for Shared Hosting and over $150 per month for Dedicated Server.

If you are planning to install a blog and not planning to have many scripts to load, then you can start with a cheap shared hosting server.

However please note that it’s quite painful job to change your hosting company once your site becomes bigger (many files, much information on your database and growing traffic).

So take enough time to research choosing the right hosting company and plan for you.

Which Hosting Company?

So which hosting company is reliable and favorable on the Internet. I have listed some of the hosting companies which are popular out there.

(mt) – Media Template (They don’t offer any shared hosting though)
WHB – WebHostingBuzz
FatCow (You will receive 10% off following this link)
Web Hosting Pad
HostGator

If you have any good experience with other hosting companies, please share with us!

Final Check, their support

Finally a lot of people are suffering from their hosting compaies horrible support. Before you purchase any hosting plan, send them an email asking many many questions. Usually the company will be back to you pretty quickly for the pre-sale inquiry. See how fast they are and giving you the good answers.

So what’s my choise?

My main concern with Fish in the River is the usage of the resources like CPU and RAM. The price would be no matter as long as it’s not hugely different within the similar plan. Regarding this, I would go with VPS or Dedicated hosting server on which Fish in the River could have enough resources to load the heavy scripts. (Many new sections are now under development

In this vein, with my research I have almost made a decision going with (mt) dedicated server.

I haven’t decided the exact date of the move as moving a hosting is quite painful job, but the move will happen within 2-3 months with the new launch of Fish in the River.