Looking For Reliable, Inexpensive Web Hosting

[Lopburi99]

I am looking to set up a website with minimal out of pocket costs. No store or credit card processing, this will just be an informative site. I plan on buying a building tool like CuteSiteBuilder (or whatever similar is available these days) to create and maintain my site.

I worry about unknown hosting companies though. Years ago I was with a company which turned out to be off-shore somewhere. Everything about their service was a nightmare, the worst being once they got my debit card number it took me forever to stop them from billing me.

Oh, I also will need two new domain registrations.

Thanks for any suggestions or ideas guys.

[fiddlehead]

Check out bluehost dot com

Not the cheapest but very reasonable.

They are reliable.

Their support is 24/7 and their online chat works wonders.

I use them for 3 of my websites now.

[anothertorres]

why not use GoDaddy. stay away from cutesitebuilder and use WordPress instead. a domain name at godaddy right now is $1.99 when you buy hosting, which is $5.69/month. wordpress is free and godaddy gives it to you as you wish along with just about any other CMS or Shopping Cart system, etc...

[Forkinhades]

1steuro.net

They also have several (quite a few in fact) programs that are very user friendly, including php, perl, frontpage, mysl etc etc

[opalhort]

My son is using chaiyohosting in Thailand and he is very happy with their service and reliablility.

Caiyo Hosting

opalhort

[harrry]

You could try www.brinkster.com

Just remember they will try to rebill but they have good contact services and give good value for each level of service they provide.

[bapak]

Give www.thaiwebhost.net a try.. In biz now for 11 years.

[konfuzed]

i second chaiyo hosting... avoid jaidee hosting.

[Lopburi99]

why not use GoDaddy. stay away from cutesitebuilder and use WordPress instead. a domain name at godaddy right now is $1.99 when you buy hosting, which is $5.69/month. wordpress is free and godaddy gives it to you as you wish along with just about any other CMS or Shopping Cart system, etc...

Anothertorres you are brilliant! - I owe you a beer or three.

Deluxe Hosting Package - 1 month: $6.99

New Domain Registration - 1 year: $2.17

Total: $9.16

Thanks a million!

(Thank you all for your suggestions!)

[Crushdepth]

Set up a free Google apps account and get your domain from them at the same time. Everything will be strapped to your domain automatically. $10.

Is that Go Daddy domain going to be same price when you renew it?

[fezzi]

You get what you pay for....

[elshaheen]

Just stay away from most of the Thai web hosting providers. No support, nothing works.

[harrry]

WIth godaddy you probably lose your domain when you leave. They will refuse to transfer it.

[siamect]

WIth godaddy you probably lose your domain when you leave. They will refuse to transfer it.

That is a very serious problem.

I always buy by domain names separately from any hosting. (http://www.verio.com/ is ok and http://domainbank.com/ too)

I also use a DNS service that is separate from host and domain registrar. That way I can move the domain to another web host in minutes.

I used zoneedit.com for a long time but they became increasingly unreliable so I now use http://freedns.afraid.org/ and they are very good so far. Both provide dynamic DNS services so you can host your web sites in your home and it works fine but you get a 10-15 minutes down time when your IP changes, depending on the DNS record needs to propagate...

For sites that require a little more reliability I have used 34sp.com. They are ok but I actually had better uptime on my own server located in my kitchen and that my daughter is using it as play station. The cats are sleeping on the keyboard... I'm not sure if the energy consumption of the server will be higher than the cost of a cheapo host if you add the extra cost of the aircon working harder, but for me it is worth it...

Other pages I have taken over has been on surftown.com and One.com... cannot recommend them... they don't have ssh access and not even scheduled cron jobs are possible so I had to make other arrangements to backup the databases... they are ok when it comes to uptime though.

Don't buy any webpage building software. The best ones are free anyway. I saw Wordpress mentioned and I will add Joomla and especially Drupal that I like lot.

OpenAtruim also fantastic and it is built on Drupal. These ones are easy to install and the development is very active.

Otherwise a little codingcan be fun too and you will learn a lot...

If you need help to setup your own server I can help you...

Martin

[Lopburi99]

Set up a free Google apps account and get your domain from them at the same time. Everything will be strapped to your domain automatically. $10.

Is that Go Daddy domain going to be same price when you renew it?

The domain renewal for year 2 is $10.69. Subsequent years not sure but probably the same.

I'll check out Google for the next site I will be building.

Harrry, years ago I transferred my hosting between several different services but continued to do domain renewals with Network Solutions, my original registrar. Not sure the reason for transferring registrars but Godaddy appears to allow that if I wanted to:

"These instructions explain how to accept or decline a transfer once it's authorized through your new registrar. We automatically transfer the domain name within 5 days after authorization, unless you decline the transfer. You might also speed up the transfer by accepting it."

[davee58]

I have used Namecheap for my own personal domain and hosting for several years.

Everything works well, seems a reliable company, decent reputation, and I get the feeling they are techies rather than marketing people.

Won't bore you with details, check their site for more.

[nitram]

I use 3 i x and have used them for 4 years with no problems.

Start off with $1 US per month. I use $3 per month and I get 150 Gig website space and unlimited bandwidth.

Payments can be made in Thai Baht using Bank Transfer to Phuket Office.

[TigertheCat]

Nitram,I also use 3iX,pay into Kasikorn Bank and you're away in a few hours,never had a problem with them so highly recommended

[losworld]

luckyregister.com - reliable and pretty good

[anothertorres]

WIth godaddy you probably lose your domain when you leave. They will refuse to transfer it.

what?

[roiethome]

I have been using malaysiahosting2u.com for two years and found they are 100% reliable, quick to respond with support and questions, and one of the least expensive hosting sites.

Well worth looking at,

cheers

[phpbangkok]

If the website is for business avoid thai webhosters who offer you servers in Thailand. Reason? Unclear maintenance, slow connections, server hardware not up to date, quality of support, response time,...

The international internet connection here is pretty lousy. So if anyone views your website from overseas they will see a very slow website.

If you target mainly customers in US or Germany then place the server there, so it has fastest connection to them.

Generally viewed from Thailand the best place would be USA as Thailand has a very fast connection to USA and not that fast one to Europe.

However there are thai companies who host in USA. e.g. http://www.netsol.co.th/hosting.html , have good experience with them.

[harrry]

WIth godaddy you probably lose your domain when you leave. They will refuse to transfer it.

what?

It did happen to someone I knew in the past. It applied to domains thaey had provided free initially even though it had been renewed.

I know there have been major changes in domain laws since that time but apparently they just now charge a fee to transfer

http://searchenginez.com/transferdomain.html

[Lopburi99]

<snip>

Don't buy any webpage building software. The best ones are free anyway. I saw Wordpress mentioned and I will add Joomla and especially Drupal that I like lot.

OpenAtruim also fantastic and it is built on Drupal. These ones are easy to install and the development is very active.

Otherwise a little codingcan be fun too and you will learn a lot...

If you need help to setup your own server I can help you...

Martin

Just gave up trying to install Joomla

Going to try OpenAtrium.

Years ago I used Trellix Site Builder. Not the most robust but simple. It creates a file which it publishes to your hosting site via automatic FTP. Simple. It is no longer available and I want to learn and use current software anyway so I'm kissing the Site Builder days goodbye. I realize Joomla is an interpretive language running on the host. Fine, I really don't care but the setup is a monster and I can't see Joe-on-the-street ever getting through it.

Hope OpenAtrium installs more easily. Most of us are spoiled by the auto-installers most software has, at least I have been.

[Lopburi99]

The OpenAtrium install is similar, and also way over my head. MySQL and all that happy crap. Websites are supposed to be easy to setup and maintain these days. I don't get it. Where did I make the wrong turn?

[Crushdepth]

My most despised domain registrar is Yahoo:

* First year is cheap. They have since increased that to $30!!!

* Which would be fine, except the control panel doesn't have a way to transfer your domain elsewhere.

* The underlying registrar is actually Melbourne IT, and it will take you 3 days of calls and being bounced back and forth between them and Yahoo to actually get them to move it. Pain!!!

My worst mistake was buying my first domain through a Thai reseller. Total lock in, no way to get out, use their service or lose it! Never again!

[JSixpack]

Just gave up trying to install Joomla

Did you go w/ godaddy? It offers a panel that pretty much automates the installation. If you just download joomla from joomla.org and try to install it, that's more complicated.

[Lopburi99]

Just gave up trying to install Joomla

Did you go w/ godaddy? It offers a panel that pretty much automates the installation. If you just download joomla from joomla.org and try to install it, that's more complicated.

Yes I went with GoDaddy, and yes I downloaded Joomla from the .org site. I guess that was my mistake. I am still waiting for my site to get initialized so I haven't been able to get into my control panel yet, probably tomorrow. Hope I'll be able to figure out how to do it via the panel thingy.

It's frustrating to see my brain cells drying up. In the old days I had written compilers and interrupt systems but now I seem so slow to get the picture about the new stuff.

BTW, GoDaddy has something called "Website Tonight" which is a templatized quicky website setup. No setup required, just select and modify templates. But it has strict limitations, like only 5 web pages, so it won't suffice for my needs. I will be going to classic car shows in the U.S. in July, uploading photos, videos, interviews, and selling goodies on my new site CarLoversJournal.com. I don't want my development to be restricted that's why I want a general development package like Joomla.

Thanks for your help.

[verygoodgirl]

re godaddy was a nitemare for me

i want to say

i was not happpy with godaddy

they ended up trying to cheat me

its a very big scam as far as I can see

its a nitemare to stop the agreeement too and i dont suggest them at all

just my 2 baht

[siamect]

Sorry you found it difficult to setup the frameworks Joomla or OpenAtrium... but don't give up... It really is not that hard...

Basically the setup is the same for most frameworks. You download the framework from the website, decompress it and upload the files to your web host.

Some frameworks will need you to create the database first. Usually the web host have instructions how to do this from the panel or from some utility like phpMyAdmin.

After that you go to your website and there will be a web based setup program for you. I guess you made it this far?

It will ask you for the user name and password for your database, the name of the database and the host where the database is running. (localhost if it is running on the same server as the webserver).

You will also need to rename some config file and make it writable so that the settings can be written to it. You will also be asked to remove the write permissions afterward. There are also some temp folders, cache folders, and file upload folders, that need to be writable.

It will also ask you for thing like what is the URL to your website and the name of the user who is going to administrate the website.

Please try again... tell me where you get stuck.

Martin