I've got several Domain Names "Parked" with Verio and Easily and it's time to decide on which one(s) to set up and which to throw back into the pond.

There's a shed load of Web Hosting companies out there - Verio are very expensive and Easily are cheaper but don't offer very much.

A Google search reveals 300,000+ sites but wading through them is out of the question. Some, like "London Internet", "Destiny" and "Ukhosting" look interesting. But how to choose?

Time to ask my Virtual Friends for any personal experience thay may have or any scuttlebutt thay may have picked up about a good Hoster. Also, just how much Web Space and Bandwidth etc do I need for a very small business/personal site with lots of piccies but no e-commerce?

I'd be grateful for your thoughts and recommendations.

Well, purely from personal experience, I have found nothing to complain about with Easyspace. I have Web Space, ASP Support and MY SQL Support - try it! (http://www.nicklocke.co.uk).

I really wanted MS SQL Server support, but that is in short supply and expensive (in essence because of licence costs and admin requirements). MY SQL works well, within its limitations. You can connect to it using an ODBC driver - so anything that can talk via ODBC (MS Access etc) can talk to the database, pretty oblivious to it being miles away on the web. That makes for easy data maintenance.

Did have some performance problems at the start but, following an e/mail from me, Easyspace moved my site to "a more powerful server" and all has been well since.

They respond well to e/mails and always seem helpful.

Their service allows you to add new features as you decide they are needed.

Hope that helps.

Find a local company, within shouting distance. one with 0845 tech support, and one thats established. E mail support is all well and good but you cant beat a good talk through on the phone. personaly I use www.magic-moments.com, (http://www.magic-moments.com,) and have done 4 3 years, and have nothing but praise 4 them.

Regards N Genfire

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Not if I can do it tomorrow.........

Thanks chaps; two good tips that give me food for thought. Any more?

Does it not all depend on more factors?
What are you going to do with the site?
How much bandwith do you need?
How much disc space do you need?
Do you need cgi bin?
Do you need sql or something similar?
Can you afford to be "offline" because the provider has "only" one T1 connection?
How good are you or the one who "plays" the webmaster?
Make a list and than put the prices in.....

I stay in the US because it is much cheaper, much faster and awesome reliable....

Thanks NR, those were indeed the questions that I posed together with the info in my post.

Personal/Small Business
Tell me, please
Tell me, please
Tell me, please
Almost certainly not
Yes; see Ans 1
On this subject, not very good otherwise I wouldn't have asked for help!

Who is your Hoster and would you recommend them? I suppose payment is easy through Credit Card. NG's recommendation about the company down the road has merit. I don't get around the world like you people any more.

Ok fobotsco,

a small business, is that with plenty of graphics / pictures?
....yes, in this case you need a fast server and more webspace
....no, in this case an "average" server will do

bandwith, the sum of uploads and downloads over a specified time period
....may be calculated per day or per month
....assume a website with a total of 10 MB, viewed by 20 customers, sums up to 200 MB, a 2 GB bandwith allocation means the site can be viewed 200 times in the given timeperiod
For a small business very unlikely, guess 1 or 2 MB will be your start and this gives you at least the chance for 2000 visitors

Discspace, hard to say from here, but even with pics it takes you some time to build more than 2 MB on your site, unless you implement music.
A simple MP3 adds easily 3 - 4 MB and people putting up a jukebox need very soon some 100 MB...naturally the bandwith question comes into focus again.

CGI-BIN, ah this nice gadget, do you need database, password protected area, credit card payment facility, adult verification systems etc?
....yes, than you need it and it is a question of what comes with it, mostly simple and readily available small scripts, plenty of solutions are available for free, search for them, but here the helpline may be required for assistance.
....no, makes life much easier and saves some money.

SQL, server query language. A lot of work can be done server side, this offloads pressure on the visitors machine, but needs programming in this language and a server which provides this feature.
....yes, in case of database or other features mentioned under cgi-bin
....no, again, saves time and money

The "big" providers are connected to the world with more than one "cable". You will hardly notice if one of their connections dropps. Think of the server as your home PC, on the hard drive you have several dictionaries, each allotted to one customer with it´s own space. Now one of the customers is a "high-bandwith-user", this does disturb all the others on the same server. If one of the customers experiences a webattack, the whole server goes down. Think of sharing 10 MB space on the same server PPRuNe is hosted on.....your site will never load as PPRuNe is busy like hell day and night....
....workaround is a dedicated server for you, mostly unaffordable-may be a couple of 100 quid per month...
....workaround is a high density bandwidth connection of the provider
....workaround is a provider who limits bandwidth on each machine (unless dedicated)

One more thing, often providers offer Frontpage extensions. Also Frontpage is a very handy and good programm to create pages, it needs some features on the server side to work with all it´s features. Mostly it is not possible to have these features AND other features you may want to use on your website.

Here is what I got:
Email system (SMTP and POP3)
FTP server / client
Static IP
FrontPage extensions
Telnet
CGI-BIN
200 MB webspace
10 GB bandwidth
all for 15 US$/month
and as said....very reliable and fast

http://cwihosting.com/services.htm

Thanks very much indeed for all that NR. Now for a rainy day to settle down and digest it.