Need wiki host
August 28, 2006 1:26 PM   Subscribe

What's the best host to run my wiki created using MediaWiki?

Using MediaWiki and a LAMP server, I want to play around with creating my own wiki site. All hosts are not created equal which is why I need one that will host my site that plays nicely with MediaWiki, is relatively inexpensive, is reputable, and is relatively user-friendly. Any suggestions?
posted by deeman to Technology (8 answers total)
 
I seriously have to recommend dreamhost, mainly because I read their blog and they inspire tremendous confidence through it.

I don't actually host with them (as I have a friend who hosts my 4-hits-a-month site for $2 cheaper) but I would host with them if I had a site with traffic that I'd rate as even "miniscule".
posted by Imperfect at 2:00 PM on August 28, 2006


Just about any webhost on the planet will support PHP and MySQL which is all you really need for mediawiki, so I don't think there's anything MW-specific you need to worry about. Look in the advertising forums of webhostingtalk.com for some leads.

My advice would be to avoid shared hosting (cough) like the plague. The reason is that even though they promise you incredible amounts of bandwidth and space, you are sharing a server with thousands of other people. This means they are oversold, and they can't possibly ever deliver the resources advertised to everyone, so they just assume that not everyone will be able to use their allotment. In fact they turn to tricks like disabling your account if you use too much CPU time, to such ridiculous levels that even running a moderately small forum will trip their "too much" sensors. This essentially means that the enormous amounts they promise you are impossible to achieve.

These days the cost of VPS/VDS hosting has come down to the point where it's very affordable. With a virtual server you get a partition of a larger server (so you are still sharing resources) but the portioning is at the operating system/kernel level rather than the webserver level. This means you essentially have your own dedicated machine, and it's not possible for you to use too much RAM or CPU. You get complete control over what can be installed, so you can run any software in the world without having to ask. The downside is that if you are not into administering your own system it can be a little daunting.

Also, if you are just messing around, don't discount the plan of running the server on your own PC. You can install LAMP on just about any OS -- certainly linux, Windows, and OS X -- and from there you can run your site just as if it was hosted, only it will be local and you can control every aspect of it. This is best if you are in the experimentation stage and don't care about having it publically accessible.
posted by Rhomboid at 2:00 PM on August 28, 2006


Dreamhost offers MediaWiki as one of their (ridiculously easy) "one-button installation" software packages. Hell, I've set up four or five wikis there just because I could, even though only one is "for real."

DH has had some performance issues recently and some people have sworn off them completely, but my experience has been very good.
posted by arco at 2:08 PM on August 28, 2006


Code 'METAFILTER' gets you $95 off signing up at Dreamhost.

And puts two dollars in my pocket. Thanks!
posted by dmd at 2:18 PM on August 28, 2006


Wikia is a host specifically for MediaWiki-run sites, for free. The only minor catch are the Google ads on the right.

Wikia has been of trememdous help in keeping Memory Alpha alive. Wikia is hosting our site for free, while paying for the bandwith would've (and almost did) costed us a fortune. So I heartily recommend them.
posted by Harry at 3:22 PM on August 28, 2006


In my experiance Dreamhost has been less than forthright about what they offer and will not explain direct questions about their pricing policy and CPU time constraints.

Plus, Dreamhost is expensive unless you sign up for 2 years. So if you try them out for a month and don't like it, bye bye $$. I also recomend reading up on hosts at webhostingtalk.com
posted by maxpower at 4:10 PM on August 28, 2006


I use Dreamhost to host blogs for myself and a handful of friends and family. Using one of the many $90+ off codes abound, I was able to prepay 1 year of hosting for about $30. It breaks down to $10 a month or so, which is very reasonable in my opinion. I have been lucky and not suffered the outages and problems that others have had in their recent network disaster.

Someone suggested virtual server hosting as opposed to shared hosting. If you can find someone reliable to do it cost effectively, go for it. But, for my needs (ie: not revenue generating), Dreamhost works out well.
posted by jeversol at 5:53 PM on August 28, 2006


Send me an e-mail and I'd be happy to host your wiki for you, deeman.
posted by yellowbkpk at 6:58 PM on August 28, 2006


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