I’m tempted towards www.powweb.com because 1) it’s cheap 2) one gets a tremendous amount of bandwidth and storage space…almost too much.
My main concerns with this are 1) a quick look through whose hosted through them doesn’t show any “Big” companies - I got the impression that these web sites were designed by freelancers who included hosting fees in their proposal and grossly inflated the cost, using this site as a way to undercut any competitors.
I did some preliminary research before and a friend of mine runs his own hosting service, but even their low cost packages were significantly higher than this site.
The site itself will be the for a magazine, straight html, nothing fancy like .php or .asp (although those may be added in the future). At some point in the future, there will be ecommerce. I may decide to add a couple of virtual domains or subdomains there for things like personal web pages, etc., but I can’t imagine myself coming anywhere near the 1 Gb size limit or the bandwidth requirement.
Does anyone have any familiarity with this host? Is there a “Consumer Reports” type guide to hosts? Does anyone have other hosts I should be looking at? Having maintained a web site before, but never having started one or having had to deal with a hosting service, I’m not quite sure what to expect.
Unforunately, I was hoping to have more time before this site needed to be up, but I think I’ve got a week’s deadline, so quick help would be appreciated…
I’ve used PowWeb before, including their PHP and MySQL features. I was extremely impressed with everything about them. They appear to be a company run by sincere, talented computer geeks committed to using free software to bring a valuable product to their customers at a decent price. Their tech support, on the rare occasion I needed it, was very helpful, too. And no, I have no affiliation with them other than being a past customer and I’m not getting paid to say any of this, I swear. I don’t currently host anything there (I have my own server on my company’s network on which I can host whatever I like for free) but I’m seriously considering going back to them for a web forum I’m planning.
Here’s an unrelated one: If I sign up for a domain, they’ll register it to a company and the address will appear on a whois search. Suppose I’m doing this from home and don’t necessarily want my home address popping up. Can I use a PO box, or is there another way that I won’t have my home address popping up?
I have been looking around too. I have been reading the WebHostingTalk Forums. They have a lot of information about various webhosts and domain registrars. I have been leaning toward using Lunarpages - taking your site higher, they have been highly rated on the Webhosting forum and they have good prices and tech support from what I can see.
Your question about your whois information, for my domain from GoDaddy.com, they offered an option for keeping address information private, but it cost extra. I don’t remember how much.
Yes, you can put whatever you like in there. Some people just plain make stuff up, judging from the various things I see in the whois database from time to time. A PO box is perfectly fine.
I play webmaster for a friend, and she has her PO box in the registration.
I’ll second the recommendation to check the WebHostingTalk forums. I’ve used them twice to find a host. (First Infodoma, which mysteriously caved in last summer, and then HostForWeb, which has always given me excellent support.)
I don’t currently host anything there (I have my own server on my company’s network on which I can host whatever I like for free) but I’m seriously considering going back to them for a web forum I’m planning.