[Lancaster] Web hosting company found!

[jonath]

I've gone with WebFaction in the end.

I gave GoDaddy a try, as their prices were kind of reasonable, but
they don't support rsync and I had to do my rsync-ing using a rsync
binary copied to my GoDaddy home account, which didn't work out too
well. The process kept mysteriously timing out.

WebFaction have provided 100GB of storage, support for SSH, SFTP and
rsync and the prices are, well . . . pretty much the same as GoDaddy,
but they offer a discount if your take out an extended contract (say,
5 years).

I've found the best way of working out which of the many web hosting
companies to go for is the following:

* Get independent recommendations from friends
* Ask potential web hosting companies technical queries and see how they respond
* Read reviews on-line (although take all of these with a pinch of salt!)
* Try out one or two web hosting providers (many provide money back
guarantees or a 1 month trial period)

Quite often the answer to what should be a simple question, "Do you
support rsync?" would send alarm bells ringing. However, Webfaction
just came back within a few minutes, "Yep. We have rsync running on
all our servers."

But now I found myself in an interesting situation: I have this
account with 100GB of storage allocated but currently only 20GB of
which is used. I can see about 30GB being used over the next few
years, but that leaves 70GB just sat around doing nothing.

So . . . here's the thing: I can create additional accounts, which
will be able to make use of this storage space I've been allocated,
all within an account completely separate to mine. I provide SFTP/SSH
details and you're away! So if anyone wants to split the costs
somehow, I would be happy to come to some arrangement and split the
storage allocated somehow, perhaps 50/50 or whatever. Anyone
interested?

jonath