Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with webhosting

Technical/legal questions about a site that will parody a trademarked brand

Riki tiki — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:59:14 -0800

I'm thinking of creating a political parody website that may step on some toes and/or trademarks. I have a few technical and legal questions about how best to go about this. So I had an idea for lambasting a prominent political party in the United States. I was shocked to find that a really obvious domain name for that party was available, but it may infringe upon a trademark for that party.

I know YANAL and YANML, but a little guidance as to the prudent first steps here would be appreciated. I would assume (but correct me if I'm wrong) that free-speech protections of satire and parody may protect me from some of the trademark issues. But I also sense that those lines may become fuzzier if I ever appear to draw a profit from the site. Is there anything I can do to reasonably ensure that my site is on firm legal ground without the cost of consulting an actual attorney?

On more of a technical level, does anyone know of a good hosting company that could be relied upon to keep the site running even if they got big scary letters on legal stationery from that political party?

This idea is still in the brainstorming stages, so I'm probably imagining a bigger future for it than will realistically happen... but I'd rather be overprepared than underprepared.

Help me choose a host

Iteki — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:47:58 -0800

Help me choose a webhost for my small business. Details on the inside. Drowning slightly in the choices available to me. I have a teeny tiny business "doing sites" and will be hosting my clients under my own package. The sites are tiny enough (online brochures in principle) that a reseller account would be over the top.

On the "need to have" end of things I guess that means:
- multiple domains on one account
- handling of hosting and mail for those domains
- handy WP integration
- cheap but established (really max $20 a month I think)

and "nice to have" would be:
- easy ecommerce solution
- environmentally friendly/carbon neutral
- free wp templates

I am probably leaning towards Dreamhost based on their being so well established and correctly priced. I just heard of GreenReseller hosting today, so I have no real opinion on them, anyone know of them or similar companies?

What are other need/nice to haves I should consider?
Which company do you recommend for the most bang for my buck?

Contemplating getting my own server

sindark — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:59:43 -0800

How would the new Mac Mini server compare to a cheap shared hosting account? At present, my website is hosted on GoDaddy.com's 'economy' shared Linux hosting plan. I noticed that Apple has now released a version of the Mac Mini designed to act as a server, costing about $1,000 Canadian.

Does anyone have any idea of how it would compare with GoDaddy, in terms of performance? I have found myself frustrated by how slowly content loads from their servers, especially anything that depends on MySQL databases, such as WordPress and MediaWiki.

$1,000 would be akin to about 10 years of shared hosting payments, but there might be secondary benefits to running my own server, rather than farming the task out to someone else. Any thoughts?

FatCow or NearlyFreeSpeech?

kitfreeman — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:44:17 -0800

Which I should choose to host my personal website: FatCow or NearlyFreeSpeech? I need a cheap but reliable host for my personal website (professional pages with some pdfs, two Wordpress blogs, family pages with photos, etc). I might want to monetize the blogs eventually but not now. I've narrowed down the choice to FatCow and NearlyFreeSpeech. Can anyone advise as to which I should choose, please?

How can I change to company Y for domain registration and hosting when I can't contact unreliable original company X?

Not Supplied — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:00:15 -0800

How can I change to company Y for domain registration and hosting when I can't contact unreliable original company X to do the change? In the UK. My friend has had domain hosting for a long time from this sketchy guy. He's never available to contact. I've been emailing him and phoning him for 2 weeks.

I am listed as the registrant and administrative contact for the domain names, but all the contact details are the dodgy hosting company.

Seems like he keeps his customers by just making it so bloody hard to switch to another company.

I've spoken to someone from godaddy.com about the process of switching both the domain name registration and the hosting to them. I'm not attached to using them but they seem cheap and ok for my friend.

Anyway they said I need to ask dodgy domain host guy to 1) unlock the domain 2) Change the administrative email to my address.

It seems fairly likely that this guy will stall and be uncooperative when I do finally get in touch so I'm not sure how to handle it. I'm thinking of writing a letter recorded delivery asking for the changes to be made. If I do this what articles of consumer law can I quote to back up our right to have him make the changes?

Is there another way of switching the domain registration and hosting without having to get the previous comanies approval?

How me get website?

SebastianKnight — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:27:42 -0800

I'm thinking about making a website but it's years since I last did this, what are the best registrars, hosts, and insidey bits nowadays? I'm in the UK. I'm working on some creative projects at the moment (visual art, collaborative research - it's all very nebulous right now) and sooner or later they're going to need an online base. It's years since I last did any of this stuff and I'm completely out of touch - help me get up to speed.

The site structure needs to be flexible enough to house blog-like sections (serially updated content) and portfolio-like sections (non-Flash image galleries etc.), and I want to house several projects at one domain name like this www.domainname.com/project1 www.domainname.com/project2 and so forth. I'm not a techie person at all but I don't mind using an admin interface if it's straightforward. I really don't want to be fending off new exploits or spending days on setup and things like that though. Please ask specific questions if my thinking is too unclear.

I'd really appreciate some feedback from people who really know their stuff rather than from miscellaneous one-time satisfied customers. Keep in mind that I'm in UK, if that's at all relevant.

- Can you suggest any general resources for domain name ideas?

- Who should I register the domain name with? In the past I've used the godaddy service where they conceal your name and address from WHOIS queries. What do you think about that?

- Who should I buy hosting from? I'm not expecting much traffic and my budget is very tight but I would like to go with a company who've been proven over time. Easy setup is a plus. And I want to be able to do redirects easily (e.g. www.mydomainname.com/survey1 would redirect to something like Survey Monkey).

- When I have the name and the empty hole it points to, how should I put something in it? MTCreations recommended Wordpress to another poster here - do you agree with those comments? Would they fit my intentions?

I think that's it. My problem is that I want a good quality end product but that I don't have the knowledge or discernment to get there on my own, or the budget to buy someone else's.

Thanks everyone - you're saving me hours of reading in circles.

Multiple domains, one hosting package, same content. Why?

entropic — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:23:13 -0800

Why does the domain I just registered and added to my existing hosting account (with 1and1) contain the same files and folders as a domain that was already on that hosting package? When I registered the new domain, I connected via FTP and noticed that it contained exactly the same directory and file structure as a domain that was already setup on that hosting package. If I make any changes to the new domain via ftp, it affects the existing domain as well. Obviously I'd like to be able to have different content on this new domain, but I can't figure out how to make that happen!

How does web hosting actually work?

tomargue — Tue, 26 May 2009 00:08:51 -0800

How does web hosting actually work? I need to host a web application that I've made. I've had a look at a few forums, a few reviews, and now I'm more confused than ever. I've set up a web application using Netbeans on my home computer, then opened up the appropriate port. However, our connection often goes down. As an experiment, I recreated my web app on the Amazon Cloud by setting up one of their pre-defined Windows 2003 Servers, and installing everything exactly how I had it on my computer. I would log in using remote desktop and configure everything.

It works well, but Amazon Cloud is expensive. It's only a prototype right now that I'm showing my friends, colleagues and anyone else interested.

How does web hosting actually work? I mean, do most hosts give you a virtual computer in which you can log in to? Or do some give you a text-based login where you can upload and run programs? Or....?

These are my requirements:

* The ability to upload libraries such as GWT, javabib, javamail, htmlparser, apache-fileupload, amazon aws etc.
* The ability to run the GlassFish Server (although, I really could run it on any number of java web servers, eg Tomcat)
* Ability to persist user data via java serialization.
* Probably about 2 GB of disk space + an as yet unknown IO data limit.

Something that gives me an xterm screen and the ability to upload and run stuff would be sufficient. Is this how things work when it comes to hosting web applications? It's all very confusing!

Please advise me on my webhosting needs

kitfreeman — Tue, 05 May 2009 06:56:14 -0800

Please advise me on my webhosting needs (with apologies for yet another question on the topic). I know this is a very common topic on AskMefi, but since my needs are quite specific, I hope you'll forgive another question.

I'm an academic with some outside interests. So far, I've relied on my institution's IT services for hosting my professional and personal webpages, but now, for various reasons, I'd like to set up my own site. Here's what I'd like to host:

* Two WordPress blogs -- one on academic topics, one on travel.
* Academic homepages for me and my wife, with career information, cv, bibliography, online papers in pdf format, etc.
* Personal webpages for my children (with password protection).
* A personal homepage with details of my non-academic activities, including journalism, poetry, and fiction, with samples.
* A photography site, with a public section for art photos and a private section for family ones.

Ideally, I'd like to have all this under a single, personalized domain, though that's not absolutely essential.

I imagine the blogs would get a moderate amount of traffic. My existing institutionally hosted ones have a small but dedicated band of followers. (I don’t know the figures.) If the travel blog got a lot of traffic I might consider monetizing it. I don't know much about the tech side of webhosting and webpage creation, though I'm not scared of it and am willing to learn. I am based in Southern Europe, though I imagine a large proportion of my traffic would come from the US.

My basic question is this: Is it worth me paying for webhosting rather than using the various free services available? If the former, which company would you recommend? Bluehost looked good, but it I've seen reports that its service has got worse recently. If the latter, which free services would best? (I definitely don't want any ISP-imposed ads.)

Thank you for your time.

webhosting blues

ninazer0 — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:35:34 -0800

I need a web-hosting company and I know bugger-all about what to look for. Bonus: I'll need to re-register my domain soon. Can someone please hold my hand and gently point me in the right direction? I am in Australia. I run a small business from home. My current provider isn't working out for me - and, being overseas - they are impossible to contact if there's an emergency (which there is ATM), so I'd prefer one in Australia.

I have a small-ish site (minimal pages, but a fair number of images) and would get only a couple of hundred visitors per day and I don't need anything fancy. I need a few email addresses and that's about it. I have full backups of everything on my site so I just need to migrate to a new host. I think.

I tried Googling but I'm completely overwhelmed by the number of results and I realise that I know bugger all about this business. Even if you can't recommend a specific company, I'd appreciate advice about what to look for and what/who to avoid.

The restore did more damage than the crash...

GJSchaller — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 06:30:04 -0800

Looking to automate the backup and download of mySQL tables on a cPanel webhost to an external FTP site. I have an account with a web hosting provider that is running cPanel. I also have a local FTP server in my home (an old G4 Mac running Fedora) that works nicely. I already have a PHP script in place that runs via CRON job, and once a week, it backs up the ENTIRE cPanel account and FTPs it down to my server here, so I have an offsite copy no more than a week old at all times.

Recently, an issue on the server with another user's website spilled over and caused mySQL to crash hard, and corrupted one of my databases. Of course, this happened the night before the backup was due to kick off, so restoring would have rolled us back a week, and the forums on my website would have lost a LOT of important posts that were made in that time. My provider was able to restore the DB from 24 hours before the crash, but in doing so, they also restored all of my other DBs, causing a minor loss of data (again, at a critical time).

Is there a way to script a command, such as using PHP, that will dump, gzip, and FTP down a specified database when run, which I can then set up via CRON job to run daily? Backing up the site daily is not an option, it's almost 2 Gigs in size due to photo content. Or, is there another solution to back up the DBs automatically that I am missing? The applications are Joomla 1.0.15, SMF 1.1.8, and Gallery2.3 if that helps.

UK Web Hosting for Indexhibit?

doobiedoo — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:32:21 -0800

Can anyone recommend UK webhosting/domain registration for indexhibit? Hi I'm a total webhosting newbie trying to get an indexhibit portfolio going, I've done a quick search of previously recommended web hosts (this seems like useful advice) but am not sure if servers are location sensitive - I'm based in London, UK - or if there's a typical web hosting set up that people have found works well for indexhibit. I'm only looking to spend around £50/year and have left things to the last minute (interim show's on monday!) so advice is really appreciated.

Looking for web hosting with no email throttling for a mailing list

dithered — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:59:37 -0800

A non-profit organization runs a time-sensitive email-based service and we are looking for web hosting which provides no email throttling. We have about 2000 subscribers and need emails to these subscribers to go out on a timely basis - within an hour for each email and preferable instantaneously. There can be up to 20 emails per week with a peak volume of 10 emails a day (maximum). The website and the email list are pretty closely tied together so it would be best if one place can do both. Web traffic is minimal - 1G a month. We would probably rely on a pre-build email admin tool like Mailman but will need root access in order to make custom modifications. Any suggestions on hosting companies to go with? 1and1 has been mentioned as having no email throttling but we don't have any experience with them. And as a non-profit, we have limited money so would prefer a package that would cost less than $30US/month.

The 1000 Photos of Dr. M

Madamina — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 09:57:59 -0800

Need a replacement, Mac-and-amateur-friendly service for Flickr Pro to host my 1000 photos. I have a Flickr Pro account with about 1000 images arranged very nicely in nesting sets/collections. Unfortunately, AT&T has decided to end the practice of giving customers a Flickr Pro account, so it'll end in February.

What's a good replacement service that will let me keep my organization, more or less? Will Picasa work? Should I just suck it up and pay for a hosting service (I'm a writer, so having a site and a place to host clips would probably be useful to some degree)? If so, what?

How should I move it all? UGH.

For reference, I'm a complete amateur who likes taking pics of travel and stuff. I don't know HTML aside from inserting links into blogs and the like. I use Macs almost exclusively at home and work (I have a MacBook Pro).

Thanks!

60 or less

scribbler — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:46:43 -0800

I need to register a domain name and get hosting services for $60 (or less)/year. Very specific details follow. So I need to register a domain and host a site for something like $60 (Canadian!) a year. I found this thread helpful but my situation is a little different.

This was originally supposed to be $50/year but I'm beginning to think that's impossible. In addition to the domain name, I need PHP, MySQL, webmail (at most, 10 addresses or so) and enough memory/storage to run the groupware we're using. The site is very low-traffic and we aren't storing much data or anything.

So far the only host I've found that comes close to meeting these requirements is 1&1 (mostly because of the free domain registration and maintenance). Recommendations?

Looking for web host that's hospitable.

aristan — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:18:10 -0800

I need an inexpensive ($20 or less a month) webhost that allows multiple domains and Movable Type installations and can handle OK & occasionally large traffic... I've gotten dugg 3 times! Any suggestions? I've had the same host for all my domains for several years now. I picked them because at the time they were cheap and offered better service than my previous host. But sadly, the service has gone down hill.

They revamped their help system about 2 years ago and I have never been able to log in. So, when I need help with anything, I have to submit thru their contact form and it gets flagged as "low priority". They've never been able to explain why it doesn't work nor have they ever bothered to fix it.

I had the previous experience where I found that my site and several others stored on the same server had been hacked and basically I had to repair it myself. No idea how long that had gone on. And now, I tried to log into movable type on a few of my domains and none of the installations work. I get 500 error codes for most of them, but on my main domain, I get "scgiwrap: Caller must be the nobody user" and I have no freaking clue what that means.

So, I'm finally tired of it all and I want a new webhost... but since it's been roughly 6 years since I've shopped for one... I don't know what is a good price or what I should be looking for... anyone want to help me out?

Here's what I want:

- Inexpensive, I currently pay $20 a month & want to keep there or lower
- Multiple Domains, I currently own 8 domains and host via a reseller account. I'd like to either get a reseller account (in case I want to rent out some hosting, as I have done before) or host all of them from one account (making it easier on my nerves!).
- The ability to install Movable Type, I currently host several blogs and have another one in the works. I enjoy movable type and would like to continue to use it. So I'll need to be able to install it... and have it work at least every once and awhile.
- The ability to install Vanilla. I use Vanilla for a forum site (ok... it's a WoW guild. I'm a nerd.)
- The ability to survive a Digg, a BoingBoing and a Mefi-ing all in one day. I have been dugg 3 times, boingboinged a couple, got a mention in the Advocate (from Elijah Wood no less) and one of these days I dream of getting a mention in the Blue... I can dream, can't I? I need a webhost who can survive it.
- Features at least similar to what I currently have: 2.5GB of storage, 45GB of monthly transfer, unlimited emails & ftp accounts, MySQL, PHP, etc etc. I'm looking for close, but I can survive with a bit less if need be.

What is the best cheap web host?

scose — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:12:20 -0800

Are there any dirt-cheap web hosts that stand out from the flock and offer multiple domains on one account? I'm looking for an inexpensive (no more than $5/month) web host to run my personal photography site, and more sites in the future. The main thing I'd like is the ability to host multiple domains that aren't subdomains, like foo.com and bar.com rather than bar.foo.com. Massive storage isn't an issue, but high bandwidth would be nice if the sites somehow get popular. I run simple php; SQL databases would be nice but not required. I'm a poor student, so cheaper=better.

Is there a tech primer on securing a website?

deeper red — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 09:28:15 -0800

Is there a handy primer on security for people who are new to website building but are experienced in Linux/Unix? I'm in the first steps of running a website via shared hosting (Dreamhost). I've never done anything like this before and have One Click Installed Pligg, PHPBB and WordPress. I have full SSH/SFTP access, so pretty much full control (not root, though, obviously).

I've got the sites up and running but frankly have no idea about how to secure it all, both in terms of stopping prying eyes seeing data, and also against malicious interests. Is there a primer that explains (a) how websites work, from a Linux/Unix perspective, and (b) explains how to secure them? For example, I understand that apache works by creating a "web" user, and that security comes from controlling permissions for this user, but that's as far as I've got.

If I google for "web security", I just get stuff about adding SSL certificates, or about enacting firewalls, or about configuring Apache/IIS web servers. I don't have control over that, and I don't need a certificate. Just basic instructions on how web hosting works and how to secure it.

Share your IT infrastructure, hosting and version control thoughts for web development firms?

twiggy — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:47:38 -0800

I work for a small web development company. As we are growing, I have been tasked with looking at a few pieces of our business: - Version Control (Currently we don’t do it. We’re starting to use Subversion at my recommendation) - Development Environments (We don’t exactly have formalized dev/stage/production right now, more like just dev/production…) - Hosting (How we host our different clients varies… too much… we need a good solution) - Infrastructure (i.e. how we host our own email, how we back up our data) I already have some thoughts and recommendations, but they’re based on my personal experiences, so I thought I’d see what other experiences are out there and find out what other people/companies are doing… A few notes:
- We’re a small shop – a little less than 25 people. We’ve been growing quickly and won’t have a dedicated IT person for probably another year. As a result, we’ve currently just got an Outlook server (as in.. not full blown Microsoft Exchange) and the inability to do things like share calendars, etc, is causing some pain. Any recommendations for Exchange hosting or alternatives would be welcome.
- We do both Windows (ASP) and Linux (PHP) based web stuff, so as far as dev/stage/prod environment suggestions go – we basically need to do double that. Most of our projects have involved only one or two developers at a time, so version control and loose environments haven’t really caused any huge problems [yet?]. I feel pretty strongly that we should take preventive measures anyway, but I’d love to hear your thoughts/experiences.
- Since we don’t have an IT person here, we’re hosting stuff for our clients on sort of a seat-of-our-pants basis. We’d been partnering with a hosting company to an extent, but they’ve proven extremely unreliable. I’d definitely be interested in hearing what other web shops do as far as hosting things for their clients. I like the idea of finding a solid provider to partner with, rather than trying to bring it all in house… but what do you do?
- Finally, I’m pretty impressed with our backup practices, for the most part. Machines are backed up daily to both a RAID and alternating sets of tapes that are taken offsite. However, network-based backup would probably be much better. Problem is, our network connection stinks (a single T1) – but we’re looking at moving to business class Cable, which these days is much faster (and cheaper). Any thoughts on this move would be appreciated.

Webhosting reviews

mr. creosote — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:43:09 -0800

How do you find good shared web hosting, aside from word-of-mouth? Is there a "Consumer Reports" (or Ars Technica?) of the hosting world? I've found word-of-mouth from a handful of people to not be entirely reliable, so I'm wondering if there are some websites that actively review and rank web hosting providers in terms of uptime and reliability. Barring that, are there any good forums for discussing this topic?

The one forum I'm aware of offhand is WebmasterWorld, but their forum is atomized into a lot of other subjects and overall it's pretty much unsearchable.

Basically I have been on Dreamhost for a couple of years now but it seems like the wheels are starting to fall off. The downtime on mail, mysql, web, and panel is gradually increasing and I'm now seeing problems on a daily basis. I think it's time to pack my bags.

If you want to make recommendations for shared/dedicated hosting, that's fine, but resources and forums dedicated to webhost shopping are preferred.

HostingFilter: Help me move my web presence(s)

micawber — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:13:43 -0800

HostingFilter: I need to move two web properties, two active domains, and some parked domains, and I'd like to it to be as economical as possible. I'm on Dreamhost, and besides the billing debacle (for me the issue wasn't that there was a debacle, it's the attitude - it's just not what I consider to be acceptable), there have been other issues - and it isn't the presence of issues I have a problem with, it's the attitude and tone of the response to the issues I can't accept.

I have two sites
Two domains with active email
Four domains that are parked or redirects
and a partridge in a pear tree.

One of the sites is Expression Engine and that's moving to Engine Hosting, because the Ellis Labs folks were completely stand-up when I had a problem with the site and DH was pointing fingers at my CMS. But it's going to mean I incur a more significant cost than just moving it to Whatever Webhost. I'm fine with that because of the support and the importance of this site to my career.

2) I have a MT site on its own domain. I got this domain years ago with the intention of it being 'my' domain, but with DH mail issues, I had to give that up. I'd like to reclaim that again.

However, I don't want to have to worry about care and feeding of the site, and care less about playing around with code to configure it like I used to. So I'd like it to live somewhere like Wordpress or Squarespace, but 1) with WP I can't have email*, and 2) with Squarespace I still have to find an email solution.

*I considered Google Apps for Your Domain to handle email but the horror stories and lack of support are a risk I consider to be unacceptable at this point.

I also need to get domains off GoDaddy.

To summarize:
1) Thoughts on hosting on WP or Squarespace with your own domain.
1a) I am platform agnostic, as long as I can import from MT with small loss of functionality, so any other platforms recommendations would be welcomed. That said, I haven't enjoyed MT and think TypePad is overpriced, and I Drupal and Mambo are NOT options because they will require too much work from me.

2) Email hosting options that are reputable and economical.

2a) Any thoughts on email hosting with Google Apps (not the free version, the commercial version).

3) I need to get my domains OFF GoDaddy and DH. Would like recommends on that, someone economical and reputable and whose control panel doesn't give you a migraine.

Thanks if you read through this and have anything to offer. Enjoy the day.

Looking for a good Mailman mailing list host

winston — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:21:48 -0800

Looking for a good web host that supports Mailman mailing lists. Really supports it, not just has it installed. In my experience, at most places that have it installed (e.g. as part of cpanel), it works poorly and they don't know how to fix it. Ability to assist in transfer of mailing lists (e.g. use the config files fromt he old host) is also good. The lists belong to two non-profit groups. One has a 750-member discussion list with 5 to 20 messages per day. The other has a 600-member newsletter list plus a number of small lists for its committees. These lists are all currently hosted under one of my domains, but ideally I'd like to move them to hostnames under each organizations domain name (e.g. lists.example.com) while leaving the organization's web sites hosted where they are (for now, at least).

The place they're currently hosted has been great but I think I'm the only Mailman customer left and it's not being maintained as well as it used to be.

Recommend a webspace reseller company!

Meagan — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 06:53:30 -0800

Recommend a reseller web hosting company! I'm with Fuitadnet right now on their month to month Emerald reseller plan, and their support/uptime has gone downhill basically since I've signed up. So I'm looking to change webhosts. However I'd rather go with personal recommendations opposed to a ranking website, because I just don't trust them, too many of them with conflicting reports from people.

My criteria: Obviously it must be a reseller package. cPanel, PHP/MySQL enabled with at least 10-15 databases, 2-5GB of storage space, not too concerned with bandwidth limits right now, something reasonable is fine. My main criteria is price: I'm paying $20USD/month for a 5GB storage and the above listed features; I'd rather not go over $30-$35. Another concern is the support level they provide, and overall server uptime after that.

If you've had good dealings with a reseller company, please share!

Hold my hand through the world of e-commerce.

infinityjinx — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 07:25:51 -0800

What inexpensive web hosting would you recommend for my super small business? Oh, and how does the shopping cart thing work anyway? So far I have: a product (for a very niche market); a domain name; most of my web site done using SiteSpinner. Now I need: hosting with a shopping cart and either PayPal or secure credit card payments (or both?). As far as I know I don't need anything complicated like a hundred email addresses and databases, but I don't really know anything about this aspect of the biz. How much can I expect to pay right off the bat? Per month? Who do you recommend; what else should I know?

Midphase seems to be the cheapest I can find, at $7.95/month, but they say I need a business checking account. Is that true? I'm not expecting to make a living off of this, just something to do as a creative outlet for fun and maybe make a little mad money.

What say ye, hive mind?? Thanks for your time!

Has anyone used knownhost.com's VPS service before?

friedbeef — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 05:37:08 -0800

Has anyone used knownhost.com's VPS service before? I'm going to sign up for knownhost.com's VPS service for hosting. I've looked 10 pages deep in google and no one has said a single bad thing about them.

I'm asking Metafilter as a final check before I take the plunge nad migrate my sites over.

http://www.knownhost.com/services/vps.html

Does anyone have first hand experience?

I put great trust in Meta-Filter users :)