Web site hosting providers

[etherial]

Hi all, there has been much discussion about dedicated photo hosting sites (free and paid) but I'm wondering about general web site hosting for all that extra stuff you might want or need on your site, ie your bio, your rates, events you're going to etc...

I'm looking for a friend and at this stage for something rather basic, that would be linked in probably with SmugMug for their galleries. Another option is to your their ISP hosting, but that is supposed to be for non-commercial use only and also can be a bit restrictive.

So I'm interested to hear if anyone has any tips or recommendations for web site hosting? I've googled it and found a few (below), some are very technical, some are more basic, and they all have a range of plans that appear comparable.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Some examples:
http://www.websitehostingaustralia.com.au/
http://www.ausweb.com.au/
http://www.hostingbay.com.au/
http://www.planetdomain.com/
http://www.aussiewebhost.com.au/
http://www.netregistry.com.au/

[Watchamacallit]

This topic can vary greatly, as there are a few key points to look at:

1. How space and bandwidth hungry are you expecting the site to be? (Future use too)
2. How flexible a hosting service do you want? (i.e. you can put your own servers on, or have to use theirs)
3. What level of support from the hosting company do you need?
4. Do you want domain(s) bundled too?

I can go into a lot more, but I think those ones kind of give an indication for packages/features you'd want from a hosting company.

For instance, I'm looking at a VPS from a USA company (rimuhosting) because of...

1. Cheaper storage/bandwidth than Australia
2. Completely customisable system (it's my box)
3. Easily upgradable plan/features

[etherial]

Hi Adam, I'm only looking at very basic at the moment. Use their servers, a basic domain name service with email forwarding or maybe an email account included. I see some offer unlimited bandwidth which I feel would be the way to go, no nasty surprises then!

I should have also mentioned, free web hosting is also an option, but I expect that will come with advertising and lots of limitation, so am fully expecting people to recommend a paid service, but we'd be happy to be surprised!

[Red]

Well according the rules and a stern PM I can't help you by linking directly so I will beat around the bush and say *removed - site rules breach - admin* is really cheap.

[ricktas]

Well according the rules and a stern PM I can't help you by linking directly so I will beat around the bush and say...

Obviously you did not heed my warning in the PM to read the site rules, after I deleted your post in this thread. You are now banned from Ausphotography..permanently!

[Watchamacallit]

I'm not too savvy on the more basic packages as I tend to tinker and like the flexibility. Here is one that has been recommended by a few people and seems quite affordable for what you get while still having a bit of flexibility too. Included the link to the plan.

http://www.aussiehq.com.au/web_and_email_hosting/

There's an absolute ton of hosting companies out there.

[WhoDo]

My suggestion is to look among our site sponsors for a hosting provider. If they support us/AP then we should support them/AP. Just my humble opinion.

[Kym]

This is not a simple problem.

Australian Hosting

• Faster (much) for Australia users
• More expensive (between 2 and 10 times typically), especially regarding bandwith
• Less options
• Support can vary

USA based hosting

• Slower to access due to distance and therefore ping times
• Usually very low cost
• Great support (24/7) due to volume of customers

Types of hosting

• Shared - cheapest but subject to variable performance depending who else is on the server,
  but usually a grunty server so on average gives good performance
  
  
• Virtual Private Server - can get expensive if your need good performance, the lower cost options are ok for light usage.
  These have a dedicated amount of CPU and memory for your virtual machine. You have complete control of the environment.
  You need better technical skills for this option.
  
  
• Dedicated Server - most expensive - you have a physical box of your own and control you own destiny.

You usually get two options for technical environment.
a) Windows Server with IIS, SQLerver and/or MySQL
b) LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/etc)

LAMP is often lower cost being Open Source. Both usually come with some form of Web control panel. We have a LAMP server with cPanel management.

The technical environment may limit which software you can deploy.
So be careful what you package together for your blog, gallery, forum or wiki etc.

Get good technical advice before buying a service, software or even your domain name.

[Watchamacallit]

What Kym said :P

And even then that's only the tip of it all.

[Kym]

Also: Be careful. Some Australian hosting providers (end in .au) actually host you overseas.

[peterking]

I went through this a couple of years ago and found a lot of information at a forum site called Whirlpool which I found via Google.
They do their own work as well as people putting in their own two cents worth.
My criteria was, it needed to be cheap, hosted in Australia and easy for me to do my own thing.
The people I eventually went with were the cheapest I could find and they host here in Perth and I've built my own site which I'm about to redesign. I deliberately avoided the Domain Name Registration mobs as they were just too difficult to deal with and in the long run ridiculously expensive.