Solving Server Administration (GoDaddy is evil in many ways)

In My Humble Opinion
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Long story very short: changed servers last year, went with Godaddy. Godaddy salespeople were deceptive,it became clear that this was policy; once I was in found myself stranded in terms of adminstration - anything requiring real skills would cost a whole lot more money.

Bait & Switch, fine, whatever, live and learn.

Fast forward to now: for reasons I don’t want to get into publicly, it has become necessary to do some much higher level stuff that I am simply not qualified to do and I have no intention of paying Godaddy to do (assuming we could…): upgrade core stuff like Apache, etc.

At the moment this becomes a critical issue, add the cake on the icing of the CEO being an elephant-murdering asswipe and leaving GOdaddy for something less stressful becomes Job #1.

Shopping for dedicated hosting is a nightmare…whom do you trust? Where is it affordable? Eek.

So I’m asking the Dopers Who Know… any recommendations, advice, etc?

My uncle told me he can do genuine server administration using something called Webmin, but he’s known for overstating his knowledge and qualifications, so I am not leaping into his arms. Unfortunately the nature of this work precludes hiring unknown freelancers, and I do not know anyone personally who I know for sure is both qualified and trustworthy to turn to, which leaves me having to find a reputable company to turn to.

So anything you can offer in the way of help and advice is very much welcome.

What I need is reasonably priced dedicated hosting with affordably available basic management of core functions, things like Apache, php, MySQL and so forth- that hardcore functional stuff requiring a level of comfort with Linux/Unix that I don’t have and don’t have time to acquire.

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And I have a question for people with a real understanding of server administration, if they know: is there anything about Mac OS servers that make them fundamentally flawed or problematic from the user’s perspective? I’m extremely comfortable with Mac and I assume, without having delved very deeply into it, that Mac Server provides all the same basic functionality that other modern servers do, just in a more Mac-like interface, and this would bypass a lot of my issues. But if running a Mac server would severely impair my ability to run common programs, such as popular CMS’, then it wouldn’t work for me.

So any pros or cons you can add regarding Mac server?

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Sorry I can’t recommend a good web host, but I can answer your second question, at least in an IMHO way.

An appropriately competent admin could use a Mac OS based server to do the things you’ve been doing on your Linux based web host. Macs are Unix machines deep down, with lots of stuff on top to make them the desktop platform you love. However, the deep down Unix parts are a bit twisted, and though completely functional are, IMHO, at about the point in ease of use that Linux distributions were at in 1998, from the point of view of somebody doing Unix administration.

Many of the tools distributed with the OS are horribly outdated and there is no built in package management system. There are addon things, like fink (and some others), but they still don’t bring things to the place a well integrated Linux distribution, such as Red Hat or Debian is at today. This is from the perspective of administering server stuff on the system, and has nothing to do with the desktop interface.

Also, though a Mac will run Apache and mysql, etc. just fine, there is no iApache or iWordpress from Apple which makes the running of them a slick graphical affair. Now you’re running Apache on Mac, but you still have to edit the config files, make sure php is installed right, etc., but now your doing it on a Mac instead of a Linux system. Not really any difference, except on the Mac you have to jump through hoops to get your preferred version of vi running, instead of just doing an apt-get install nvi.

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I’ve said this earlier, but I’m with Dreamhost, and wanted to move to Speedy Sparrow, but the latter couldn’t disentangle the singular byzantine structures Dreamhost created for a simple site, so I’m still with DH; however, I can’t praise Speedy Sparrow too much and would set up with them for anything else. The owner helped and explained every aspect. ( Plus, for shared hosting they, a small company, were slightly cheaper than DH, which is unusual — they do do dedicated plans etc… )
However, if you’re hosting a forum, we’re with URLJet, and they are excellent. They do shared or dedicated, of course.

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I’ll second this. Giraffeboards.com is hosted with URLjet, and we’ve had nothing but excellent performance and service from them.

As for the OP, it would help if you could give more details about what you want out of a web host. For the most part, are you simply publishing web pages using Dreamweaver/Frontpage/whatever? Is this “higher level stuff” you mention in your OP just trying to install something like a CMS that’s not currently supported by your existing server? Or are you finding yourself trying to do something like database management, where you need to get in and set permissions and query the database server and are unable to do it with your current web administration interface?

If you’re just doing basic web hosting, avoid anything where you have your own dedicated server or VPS – it’s going to take a lot more expertise on your part for little or negative gains. (A good web host will know how to configure Apache far better than you ever will.) Don’t let one bad experience with a bargain basement web host convince you that you need to do everything yourself – there are many hosts out there who cater to web professionals and will keep their servers fully up to date with all the latest CMS and web software.

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My buds: GeekNiche

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I’ll echo echoreply’s reply (see what I did there) and try to make the point a little more bluntly: Macs are great, but the stuff on a Mac that you like and are comfortable with has virtually no relevance to the stuff you have to do on a Mac to make it run a webserver. To make a ridiculous analogy, this is like saying you’ve always enjoyed the way Toyota laid out their dashboard, so if you had to choose a car whose transmission you’re going to work on, you think a Toyota would be good. When it turns out Toyota actually makes their transmissions kind of strangely and, as a result, they can be a bit harder to work on.

Running apache (for example) on a mac is at best exactly the same as running it on linux. For a dedicated remote machine in a rack somewhere whose purpose is to run your website, I seriously doubt you’d see any benefit at all from using a mac. And there are definite drawbacks, like the fact that it can be difficult to build some software on the mac and/or find binary packages of the latest versions of stuff you want to run.

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A few years ago I have also been with Godaddy but I was not satisfied with them so I decided to change and look for another web host. I compared different hosting packages and finally I have chosen IX webhosting and now I am very satisfied. there is really nothing to complain about.

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Reported as spam.