The importance of a quality web host
You’ve been visiting in record numbers and my web host hasn’t been able to cope (what’s a web host?). I’m in the process of improving my site’s server capacity so please bear with me and accept my apologies if you’ve received an error message.
Yesterday one of my articles, “How NOT to use Powerpoint“, was given over 4,000 nods and made it to the front page of Digg, bringing my site 80,000 page views within the space of a few hours.
Here’s what happens when you get on the front page of Digg (take my article with a humorous pinch of salt).
My good friend Dawud Miracle recently asked, “Who is your web host?” which holds a great conversation if you’re looking for host provider options.
He’s not the only one looking around. Check out, “I Hate My Web Host” from WordPress guru, Lorelle.
My apologies
I actually recommended my current host provider to Dawud. Knowing what a great conversational publisher Dawud is, and thinking about the growth his site will achieve, I’d like to retract my sentiments. Sorry about that. I’m currently with a good web host and I can’t fault their customer relations. They’ve served me well for the past two years or so. However, I’m not providing you, my readers, with a good enough service, and I apologise for all the “500 server errors” you’ve probably been seeing.
Of course I don’t expect to make the front page of Digg again. I’m not that big-headed, even though the degredation of Digg’s front page is a common topic of conversation.
When choosing your own web host, don’t get sucked into over-the-top marketing speal. A useful article about just this is, “Secret Taboo Topics in Web Hosting“, from Mitch at The Web Hosting Show.
Are you happy with your web host?
UPDATE: 04 July 2008
I’m still with the same web hosting company, ICDSoft, and they’ve served me very well since Digg brought my site down. I’d recommend them for cost-effective hosting with great customer service.
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40 spot-on reader comments to “The importance of a quality web host”
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It does seem that all webhosts are great until you get more than 3 visitors.
Traffic is not a problem for my webhost, they fall over long before you get any. I’m with ANHosting & I won’t be next year.
Name & shame David! ;-)
I think there are quite a few of us looking to change. Who do you think you’ll go with next year?
I’ve just changed providers actually - from UKHOST4U (fast, but rubbish reliability) to… Um, well me actually!
I’m in the process of setting up my second hosting company - QubeServ.com - so if you can’t find somebody suitable, and want a great package with 99.98% uptime - then let me know! ;)
What’s your first company called? Do you have a website?
Two top host providers in the UK are fasthosts and rackspace. We use Rackspace for one of our clients and the customer services is excellent.
Of course 1 & 1 offer great value and range of hosting services.
I was speaking to the guys from Scotland Online at the Internet World. They have offices in Edinburgh and Dundee and look like heavy duty hosting providers.
Most providers 99.9% uptime so this isn’t anything new.
Jamie
Right now I have three different hosts for three different sites. One of those is Media Temple, which is not bad, I haven’t had any issues with them.
I’ve had GoDaddy for about 4 years, and they have been great, and have the best service I’ve come across for a host.
The third is SiteGround, which isn’t bad either, and definitely gives you the bang for your buck in terms of features that you get.
I’ve gone through more hosts than I’ve had hot dinners, and most of them have been awful.
Because I’m a cheapskate I usually use US-based hosts, and I go for the good value deals… which probably explains why I’ve had such bad luck.
As with all things in life, you get what you pay for.
My latests host is Lunarpages, and actually they’re pretty good - the best I’ve used. However, I’ve never been Dugg and had to handle 80k hits in an hour. If I did I wouldn’t be comfortable of pulling through it.
Hey David,
I still get Error 500 when I click your about page.. or check your archive.
I think you need to move to blogger ;)
Thanks for your advice. I’ll check out those options.
Aaron,
I’ve been hearing some good things about Lunarpages from elsewhere. Another one I know, with top notch management, is Crucial webhosting.
Ilker,
Sorry about that. An article of mine is still on Digg’s frontpage, and my web host is restricting the amount of processes my site can run until the traffic dies down.
We’ve been with Powweb for about 5 years and are pretty happy with the service and price thereof. There have been a few spotty periods when they were experiencing some growing pains, but overall, good stuff.
I have 2 different hosting packages - my blog is hosted on 1and1 - they have terrible support (you can’t get an answer to a simple question) steer clear. I also have hosting with EUKHOST.com I can’t vouch for their uptime etc as I haven’t been with them for long enough, but the technical support is good so far.
mmm I will be moving off from Dreamhost soon my blog goes down frequently for now .. I am deciding between “A Small Orange” “Blue Host” and “Media Temple” anyone has any suggestions
I absolutely love my host and have been with them for over 5 years. They are Jumpline.com. I found them by analyzing Netcraft and finding the host with the least client turnover and least downtime. They were number one.
I’m also an affiliate of theirs now. If you’d like, you can subscribe to my RSS feed and there’s an advertisement for 1 year of free hosting. Trust me, you won’t regret it!
Doug
Very interesting. I haven’t run into that problem yet, but hopefully I’ll get that kind of traffic at some point. It’s good to know more about the server side of the site ’cause it’s something I haven’t bothered with yet.
I definitely am not feeling my host… I want to move to Media Temple, but I realize I like them for their looks; much like you would like a hot babe with a low cut shirt. I don’t know much about them, yet I want them…
Rather than moving to another shared host David, I suggest you either go dedicated, or try out the grid server provided by MT and one or two others.
Having said, ask around, Google for reviews, and question the companies. I can’t imagine you’ve had your last experience with Digg’s front page!
Dang it Chris, I thought AN hosting was good in your eyes, so I went with them too. Now I see they are the “outage” AN hosting people. Sheesh!
Oh well, live and learn. I am stuck for now David. Good to read the comments here about what does and doesn’t work, and why.
I’ve been using iPower for my host for the last three years. So far so good, but I don’t get nearly as many hits on my website as you do. I also haven’t been promoting my website as much as I should. Here’s a good resource for web hosts… http://www.10-cheapwebhosting.com/top10hosts.php
I was about to switch over to Dreamhost as I’ve heard some great things about them. That was until Dawud let me know that they are the reason for him publishing his article asking for alternatives (linked to in my post above).
Armen,
I’ve thought about a dedicated server, and will definitely check out MT’s grid server (I’m not familiar with that).
Sorry Webduck, I didn’t think my post came across that way :shock: ANHosting are great when they’re working…
David, I’ve heard good things about Bluefur, not just from John Chow, but also from other Canadian bloggers who use them. I don’t know though, I just feel like all hosts lie through their teeth-perhaps I’ll turn my old PC into a server & host myself ;-)
I rent a dedicated server through Media Temple and I am very happy with it. There have been a few times where I’ve had to restart, but since I’ve upgraded and everything has been splendid.
I’ll take a look at Bluefur, thanks.
Nate,
Good of you to let me know. Armen suggests MT’s grid server which looks a lot better than shared hosting. Not sure I want to go dedicated just yet, but MT do look like a good choice. I’ve contacted them to see how quickly they respond.
Hello David
A very timely post. I’ve been busy moving hosts - I have a lot of domains, so it’s a pretty big job.
After some considerable deliberation I’ve gone with Media Temple. And I would already recommend them to anyone looking for a new host. Great support docs, PLESK, and everything else imaginable.
Once I’ve got all my domains transferred over, I’ll be back to blogging.
Also the Dedicated Virtual Server is a cinch to administer (you can just let MT do all the upgrades - if you choose) - depends how many domains you have - if just the one, then no point going for Dedicated unless you’re a root access freak ;)
I’ve used a large number of hosts in the past, and have been disappointed with most of them - which is why I decided to do it myself!
From my personal experience: Rackspace are great but pricey, 1&1 have *terrible* customer service, GoDaddy no longer care about the fact that there’s a person behind an account number, Media Temple are awesome for dedicated - but the Grid’s still (unfortunately) flakey.
If you’re happy with shared, want to save some money, and want a repliable and fast host - then I can sort it for you. Alternatively, HostGator are used by several of my major clients - and I’ve never heard a bad word about them (apart from the fact that their main site design sucks!).
Just my tuppence ‘orth… Don’t flame me! ;)
Thanks for your review of Media Temple. Much appreciated. Are you on their $50 per month (dv) tariff?
Paul,
Likewise, thanks a lot for your take on the hosting debate. I was never going to go near GoDaddy for hosting, and will keep 1&1 for domain registry (I’ve a couple with them).
It’s a shame the grid service is letting MT down, because it reads like a great concept.
The Grid Computing concept isn’t new - but Media Temple have done it with real style. At this time though it’s just not solid enough to be used with high-traffic sites.
I set up a domain on MT - just to see if all the reports about their recent problems had been exagerated. I then ran a piece of software that pings various web services (including HTTP) at a set interval, and provides an overall ‘uptime’ score.
Over a seven-day period their score was 94%. This doesn’t sound too bad, until you do the calculations: 94% means 19.9 days of downtime a year!
I *really* hope that MT get their act together for the grid. Their support’s great, their control panel looks visually fantastic, and they seem like really nice guys - and the Grid is too good an idea not to work! ;)
Yes, David, 50 a month. I’ve already moved quite a few sites across - only about 40 to go! It’s been a painless experience thus far.
PS: with the dv you could also resell hosting and easily cover the cost.
[...] - David Airey, an Edinburgh graphic designer. He caught my eye after linking back to my story about taboo topics in hosting from last week’s [...]
It’s amazing how difficult it seems to be to find a good, reliable web host. I’m just asking for a fair package at a fair price with good customer service. But I can’t seem to find that. Odd, really.
Perhaps when companies start-up, then realise the vast amount of customers that are around, they end up biting off more than they can chew at the expense of their current clients.
I think the reason that so many people have varied experiences with web hosts is that none of the shared plans can really hanlde too much traffic. They are mostly limited by shared database server limitations as opposed to bandwidth.
I personally use ipowerweb for most of websites. On one of my blogs I had over 10,000 visitors in a day with no problem. However, one time I installed a plug-in that does a ton of queries every time the page loads. That plug-in brought down my blog, because I kept reaching the max limit of queries that ipowerweb let you do in an hour. You can fix that by upgrading to a VPS or dedicated server.
Hope that helps,
George
Thanks for your thoughts on the matter. Out of interest, what was the plugin you installed?
All the best.
It was the related posts plug-in. I think part of the problem is that because of the template I used at the time, the related posts showed up for each post that was displayed on my home page. This wouldn’t be the case with my current template. So the related posts plug-in was coming up with related posts for 15 posts every time someone visited my home page. This caused me to exceed the database maxconnections limit.
It is my understanding that with a VPS or dedicated server you can set the max database connections much higher, which means you can handle a lot more traffic.
All the best,
George
[...] - David Airey, an Edinburgh graphic designer. He caught my eye after linking back to my story about taboo topics in hosting from last week’s [...]
[...] - David Airey, an Edinburgh graphic designer. He caught my eye after linking back to my story about taboo topics in hosting from last week’s [...]
Hi David - just looking to change hosting of my blog - what hosting did you go for in the end?
Thanks
Oddly enough, I haven’t yet made that change. My current host company is able to cope with what I’m doing, and I still find their support to be very timely and helpful.
In saying that, once my contract nears an end (later next year) I’m thinking of moving to a UK based host provider.
I’m currenlty with ICDSoft.
Are you having issues with your current host? I don’t notice any everytime I visit.
Hi David,
My issue is with I and 1 (where my blog is hosted). They they give me plenty of databases, but each can be a max of 100MB (even though I have loads of webspace) and Wordpress is eating that up really fast.
ICDSoft have the option to buy up to 400GB of space, in quite a few increments.
I used 1&1 for domain registration in the past, but have since moved that to 123reg.co.uk, so I keep all my .com’s and .co.uk’s together.