Paragon Hosting
For the past few years I’ve been using Hurricane Electric for all my hosting. This includes not only my client projects but my personal site here. For those past couple years they’ve been amazing and I never had a problem suggesting their services to those in a search.
Lately (past couple months), they’ve been having problems with their servers being down randomly and the past week they were down a total of 4 times. Of course I notice exactly when they’re down (within 10 minutes) because I’m always online at work and my Entourage is checking my mail every 10 minutes. If my server goes down - my email icon begins to freak out and lets me know something is wrong and it’s not able to check mail somewhere.
Searching
So with all these server crashes as of late, it’s brought me back into the market of searching for another hosting company. I’ve been hunting around for the past week pretty intensely but haven’t been able to find exactly what I need. I usually end up having problems when I want the ability to create multiple MySQL databases or the ability to telnet and SSH into the server. On top of that - I also want the ability to have multiple domains and sub-domains on the same account.
Possible Options
A couple thoughts that I’ve come up with have been to, (1) make my own server. I could easily get pieces together or if worse came to worse, just buy a computer to do the job. The other option would be to (2) get a dedicated hosting package with another company and just have them take care of everything.
With my first option - I would love to do this but have doubts on my Linux administration. Right now I just know the basics and have trouble when trying to install various, needed items on Linux. I know I could just learn it but right now my time is really being spent on CSS, PHP & MySQL. I need to become a lot better in those things before I can justify the study time on Linux.
Of course there are people I can ask for help and this might just be an option. I could even pay someone to maintain the box for like couple bucks or something like that.
The other problem with this is the uptime. I would solely be responsible for the server being up and would need to work out a deal with my broadband provider in order to use my bandwidth for web hosting. So if I ever moved or if the power ever went out for a couple days (again), I would be pretty screwed.
My other option - Option two seems a little nicer and I might possible go that route. The price would be a little more a month than I’d like to spend but I could grab one or two other guys to help with the costs. With this option, I would have a whole box to myself and not have to worry about the above details.
However, as nice as it seems, there is the attraction of hosting my own website and being completely in charge of everything. I would have the ability to learn a lot more and it could only help in my computer self-education.
Now What???
So here I sit and don’t quite know what exactly to do. Both options are very attractive but one doesn’t seems to just yell - “DO THIS ONE!”.
I’ll be putting some specs together and comparing the two options side-be-side to see which system would be better. I’m definitely open to options but most of the people that read my website aren’t as tech savvy and would rather I talked on a more personal level - talking about what I did today and how I felt about those things. Possibly at a later time though, right now I have these things on my mind and it helps to write them out.
So if you have read this far and do have some suggestions or things I might have overlooked - let me know.
Update
Before I start getting to many emails and comments from various people. I should probably state what exactly I’m looking for. If you or your company can offer these things to me - I would love to hear from you.
What I need is:
- PHP
- Perl
- Python (not required)
- MySQL (ability to create multiple DBs)
- SSI
- Unix/Linux server (no windows crap)
- Full Shell Account
- Full Unix Development Environment
- crontab
- Apache
- 600MB or more
- Direct Access Via telnet
- Direct Access Via ssh
- 15+ email accounts
- Web-based email
- Control Panel (if possible)
- sub domains available
- multiple domains (if possible)
- ect - but you get the idea
Tom Shebest Says:
I’m currently working for a webhost redesigning their sites and internal applications. They have great support that is available 24/7/365 toll free. The owners of the company place customer service first. We don’t have voicemail and someone always answers the phone within 2 rings 99% of the time.
Our windows hosting business is http://www.hostmysite.com and our linux business is at http://www.smarterlinux.com
We build all of our dedicated servers to order, whatever harware configuration you need. We also have all kinds of management options available.
If you want to talk to a sales person call 1-877-215-4678 and ask to speak to a sales person.