[Klug-general] Webhosting

[Shish]

Two hosts I'm doing business with:


Context Shift (contextshift.co.uk, #contextshift on freenode):

Pros:
 * You get root, and can install anything you want on the server
 * 100% uptime for as long as I've been with them
 * If none of the standard plans fit your needs, getting a custom
   package is easy
 * Staff have a clue (you speak to the admins themselves, not
   helpdesk monkeys), and respond quickly

Cons:
 * Seeing as it's a VPS instead of shared hosting, you need someone with
   some unix skills to set the server up in the first place (they do
   have a shared hosting offer, but I've never used it)


Dreamhost (dreamhost.com, #dreamhost on freenode (unofficial, but
some staff go there anyway)):

Pros:
 * Practically infinite disk space & bandwidth (cheapest plan is
   200GB / 2TB, each of which increase as you stick with them)
 * lots of features already installed and configured (subversion,
   jabber, mail, as well as all the standard stuff like mysql and CGI;
   and a variety of PHP/MySQL webapps are one-click installable)
 * They tend to be quite up to date with things (PHP 5.2, MySQL 5,
   Ruby on Rails)
 * Nice control panel for pointy clicky people
 * Staff have a sense of humour, and are honest about any problems:
   http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/08/01/anatomy-of-an-ongoing-disaster/

Cons:
 * Massive overselling (1000+ users per server, 5000+ domains)
 * The control panel is often very slow or down completely, and there's
   no other way to do administrative things
 * Caps on CPU and RAM use (each user may only have 25 processes, even
   sleeping ones; they may only use 30 minutes of CPU time per day; and
   they may only use 100MB of ram in total (and shared memory is counted
   multiple times. And pages in swap space are counted too))
 * Being up to date has a down side -- things often break (I have yet
   to see them do a Ruby on Rails upgrade which hasn't broken at least
   75% of RoR based sites...), and they don't give warning of when
   things are being updated
 * Although they give a lot of features, if you want anything outside
   their standard, you're screwed (no postgres :( )
 * Sometimes takes several days to get tech support (Although this was
   for an issue I marked as "not time-sensetive", so eh)
 * They used to have massive reliability problems, they still have
   minor ones (ie, individual servers go down, rather than the entire
   network)


I'm currently using context shift for important things (eg. a moodle
install for the school I work at, which MUST be available during
school hours), and dreamhost for my personal sites (eg. blog and file
dump; neither of which do much, but use lots of bandwidth).

And a final bit of general advice -- before chosing *anything*
computer related, find the community (IRC, forums, etc), and hang out
with the customers for a couple of weeks; see what they have to say
about the services :)

    -- Shish