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Good web host?

C

calstars

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 13, 2007
7
0
Hi everybody,

I am looking to create an online presence to publish some of my writing and commentary. Can someone recommend a good host and service to do this? Looking for something kind of out of the box that I can use at first and possibly customize as I learn the technical side.

Thanks!
 
I personally use GoDaddy and I'm happy with it. It's mainly out of convenience because their website and tools are easy to use. However, I know many people like to go with smaller companies, so I will probably be hated...
 
Who's your ISP. Do they offer any basic hosting?

Do you have MobileMe?

You could also use something like sites.google.com for basic stuff.

B
 
Thanks for the responses guys. I'm happy enough to go with godaddy for now if the other members of the community also feel it's a good enough place to start...I can always transfer the site to some other hosting company, right?

I don't want to use my ISP or Google's offering as I don't want to be reliant on those companies in case I move or switch away from using Google in the future.
 
I've used Eleven2.com for years, and they've been great. Very good customer service, also. And they're cheap - so long as you register domains elsewhere.

If you want, I can give you a link and coupon code to get a 10% discount.
 
I don't recommend these free web hosts like:heliohost etc because their servers are unstable I recommend bluehost because their servers are stable and they offer VPS for free and because it has cPanel
 
have several customers whose sites i host/admin with 1&1 and would recommend them.

they have lots of options from basic to full on e-store stuff, and can expand if needed. in 6+ years, i've had about 3 days worth of down time, so no complaints here. best of luck.
 
obeygiant said:
ipowerweb.com
Click to expand...

I highly recommend NOT going with iPowerWeb. They used to be very dependable, years ago, but were bought out by a bigger company that doesn't care about service or customer care.

I once bought a domain with iPowerWeb. A few years later, I changed my email address on the admin account, and received the confirmation email and even started getting the iPowerWeb sales letters (thus, I knew the new email was updated correctly). The domain comes up for renewal, and I don't receive the notice. As I'm trying to work out with them why this is so, the registration expires and they tell me I have to give them $200 to reinstate it. They also flat-out refused to update the email address (the wrong one anyway, even though I had confirmed the new one) until I paid the $200 to get the domain reinstated. I went back and forth with them more, and a week or so later they sell it to a third party out from under my nose.

The domain had great established linkups too. It cost me a lot of money in reprinting all my business cards, letterheads, etc. Basically a whole box of beautiful watermarked stationary had to be thrown out because they were wrongly sending official emails to my old address, even after I confirmed the new one and was receiving all the upsell crap because they wanted more of my money.

/rant. I don't recommend using iPowerWeb unless you absolutely are sure you can fight them if something goes wrong. Dig around first... you'll find a lot of people have had trouble w them.
 
hey

i personally recommend ipage.com! they are a great web host and they have really handy tools to help you out. Also, they were quite cheap and great customer sevice!
 
Melrose said:
were bought out by a bigger company that doesn't care about service or customer care.
Click to expand...

That's always fun. Had an experience like that where my company's phone/'net/email/hosting company was acquired and the new bigger company (large major national company) couldn't even tell that we were a hosting customer or how or where our service (which was down at the time) was implemented.

We switched to a local ISP we could drive to and put our hands on the server if we chose to.

Fun times.

B
 
My site's hosted with Dreamhost.com. They're great, although their corporate communications (blogs, newsletters) feel like they're written by college students working at a small startup (which is likely not far from the truth). I find it refreshing and fun, but others might not appreciate the attitude/shtick. Regardless, the support is excellent and I have not had any issues with them. Which is more than I can say about some other web hosts.

Dreamhost often has some aggressive coupon codes to get you started.
 
I've had good experiences with Heart Internet in the past. No hosting is perfect, but if anything ever did go wrong, their support has always been pretty fast and reasonably useful.
 
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I Second Dreamhost

I've been with them for years and their support has been great even when I've had dumb questions. My initial deal was good and I get server space added each month for free so I now have a ridiculous amount of space. They keep adding installers and support for all sorts of stuff such as SVN. I agree they might seem a little low rent, rough around the edges, but it just means they are still operated by the enthusiastic founders rather than having sold out. Selling out is usually where you hear, "they used to good..."
 
davedev100 said:
I agree they might seem a little low rent, rough around the edges, but it just means they are still operated by the enthusiastic founders rather than having sold out. Selling out is usually where you hear, "they used to good..."
Click to expand...

Agreed. I like that they're honest about stuff. Like one time, apparently, they had some kind of data outage, and the guys wrote a big blog entry about exactly what happened. It was very informally worded, like "Yeah, I know. I screwed up. I totally made a huge mistake, and I'm sorry, guys." On the one hand, you might say that's awfully unprofessional corporate communications (imagine Steve Jobs talking like that?) On the other hand, I like companies that will be honest, up-front, and accountable.

On the other hand, some of their attempts at humor don't quite do it for me. Like they have this running joke that their monthly newsletters are always a month behind (e.g. The "January 2011" newsletter will be sent out in early February. That kind of shtick gets a bit old.

But on the whole, quirks aside, I've been with Dreamhost since 2007 and I've been very pleased.
 
Host gator

I run two sites. One is hosted at go daddy and the other is at host gator.

I like host gator a lot. Go daddy is also fine. But what sold me on host gator is the no extra fee for imap, as well as a ton of other 3rd party services.

Of course, they don't have any go daddy girls...;)
 
I use webhostingbuzz.com for all my sites. They have great pricing and are very helpful if you ever need support.
 
I started using HawkHost.com as of last year.. so far no issues, very happy with their service. I have also used ASmallOrange.com, no issues with them either. Both offer great customer service.

I recommend heading over to http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ and reading through a few forms.. there is a whole section where providers post deals, good place to do some research.
 
For shared hosting hostgator has the hatchling plan that will let you use one domain name wich is all you need if your planning on just creating one site for yourself, and you could always use subdomains. They also have the baby plan for about 3 dollars more a month with unlimited domains if you wanted to go that route. its really easy to set up a wordpress site if you are looking into cms systems which is really easy to get started with and if you dont know anything about web development could save you some money by doing it yourself. you will also need a domain and I would recommend namecheap.
just some suggestions.
 
Dreamhost is having a sale right now. An entire year of "unlimited" hosting for under $10.

Great way to check them out to see if you like the service. No huge loss if you don't!

Note: this is NOT an affiliate link, just a happy customer passing on a deal.

(Note 2 - sale ended, removed the link. Keep checking them though, they frequently have sales like this.)
 
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I just wanted to float in and give a vote against GoDaddy.

Someone above mentioned HostGator. They oversell (like every other cheap hosting solution) and they have some weird rules (such as getting bitchy when you use too many 'nodes'—have to many files on your server, which includes emails and other server rubbish) but they are far and ahead better than most other cheap hosts I've tried. If you want to step the game up a bit from them, go with MediaTemple. I've hosted many websites across many hosts for more than ten years now. Most suck badly, and that's something they only need to do once, such as during a server crash, for you to appreciate how much this can impact a site.

P.S. Dreamhost sucks too. But I guess one important thing needs to be considered for all hosts: if a person just wants web space and doesn't really care about some sporadic downtime, slowdowns, poor support, consistent backups, or other niceties (and there are plenty of hosting reasons why don't need to) then there are terrific deals like the one above which are worth considering. I would just give a few pointers: 1) they don't offer unlimited bandwidth even though they say they do—they'll kill you for using resources; 2) keep a backup of your files; 3) never buy your domain name through your host.
 
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