Web-site Host Needed

[finninuk]

Hi Forum....I am losing my web-site server/host soon, so I am looking for a small Joomla site with C=panel to host my site and web-mail. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Cheers. The price is not that important as long as it's not over the top.

Edited July 26, 2008 by finninuk

[Norrad]

I use HostGator, never had any problems with them.

[sniffdog]

Host Gator too. Recommended. See if you can pick up a coupon somewhere on the net (Google hostgator coupon), get the first month for US$0.01 (Baby Plan) and pay by paypal. See if you like it. Then it's US$9.95 per month.

Alternatively cancel your recurring payment and get the Hatchling Plan for US7.95 per month.

I have a resellers account.

[finninuk]

Host Gator too. Recommended. See if you can pick up a coupon somewhere on the net (Google hostgator coupon), get the first month for US$0.01 (Baby Plan) and pay by paypal. See if you like it. Then it's US$9.95 per month.

Alternatively cancel your recurring payment and get the Hatchling Plan for US7.95 per month.

I have a resellers account.

Does Host Gator meet my basic requirements?

[wxpwzrd]

Does Host Gator meet my basic requirements?

Your listed "requirements" are quite easy to fill via thousands of host providors. cPanel and webmail are easy (yes HG has). Joomla is simply PHP, MySQL (yes HG has). Maybe more important will be "where geographically you would like your site hosted" or "if it even matters?"

[youngkiwi]

Beware of the "mass market" hosts. They have a tendency to oversell their services and can be slow to respond to support requests due to the large number of clients they are supporting. As you are looking to host a Joomla content management site, be sure to go with a host who specialises in this type of hosting as their servers are better optimized for PHP and MySQL (which Joomla relies upon).

You mention that you need webmail services so make sure your host has redundant email systems including backup mail servers, and that they utilise RAID protected storage to prevent against hard drive failure, as well as regular remote backups to offsite locations to protect your data.

Many budget hosts also use SATA hard drives which are slower and less reliable than SCSI hard drives. SCSI drives make a big difference in disk access performance which is considerably important for sites using MySQL databases (such as Joomla). Eventhough SATA technology has gone a long way in terms of reliability in recent years, SCSI is still the preferred choice for mission critical and high availability systems.

My advice is to select a smaller provider who has invested wisely in the best redundancy features, and has a reputation for providing highly responsive support. If you need further advice, please send me a message and I'll be pleased to help.

Edited July 26, 2008 by youngkiwi

[sniffdog]

As one of the largest hosts in the US, I consider HG as a 'mass market' host, although I almost never experience problems with them. As I said, try for one month, if you don't like it .... leave!

Cpanel is not really a necessity, as you can install these scripts yourself. Not as easy as through Cpanel, but not required.