Cheap webhosting?

[ianforest]

I use "me"

[hammy]

Because of this I will give Alex a shout as he is local. Never used him in the past as i never felt comfortable having my domains in charge of a local competitor but this is a different thing. I can also go round his house is something goes wrong rather than wait in a call centre cue

Toby, i have been with Alex a little while now, I have had one problem which got sorted within 10 mins. He is a very hard person to get hold of via telephone so email through the hosting site as he is then pretty much on the ball, and you have complete control and loads of space.

[SoundONE]

If you host your domain names with www.123-reg.co.uk, for example, which is what I do so I can assure you it's a very reliable service and I have had domain names there now for over 10 years and best of all it's totally free, you can set your domains to auto renew and best of all you can change your nameservers to anywhere in seconds, a perfect solution for domain names.

You can then host your website anywhere with any other web host service, do not give any hosting provider your ISP tag, if they cause you problems your site could be down for weeks while you try and get it back and you may not even be able to, depending on who registered the domain.

What I would do with a new host that when you don't know how reliable they may be is, setup say something like a free account www.freeehosting.com, for example there are dozens and have a backup site sitting there, if you have any problems with any new webhost uptimes or problem with msql databases, hacking, infact anything that causing problems to your website site, you can simply either do webforwarding to the freehosting backup of your site so your websites are back online instantly and then change the nameservers to point to the free host, within a few hours it will be resolving properly and once your site is back up, you can start looking for another host without having to rush into any rash decissions because your site wont be offline.

Obviously freehosting probably wont be as good as some paying hosting services, which I why I suggest it as a backup, but it is also better than many that charge, either way it's a get out of jail free card, if you loose one customer from your website going down, and freehosting saves that customer during the switch over it's all good.

By having your domain names kept somewhere like 123-reg.co.uk then you have full control of your most valuable asset and you are not held over a barrel by any hosting service.

Although I have never used 123-reg web hosting packages, various people have told me they offer a very solid service at a very good rate, so worth looking into.

Most of us have backup equipment, backup transport, backup DJ's, I believe my website is as important as all of these. Which is why I also have backup website, although I have paid for another sever hosted on a different network and I do have another sitting on a free one just incase, even though I have not needed the 2nd paid hosting as of yet. But it's no different than the two backup amps we carry, one of which I have never need to use yet either.

never say never.

[Marc J]

If you host your domain names with www.123-reg.co.uk, for example, which is what I do so I can assure you it's a very reliable service and I have had domain names there now for over 10 years and best of all it's totally free, you can set your domains to auto renew and best of all you can change your nameservers to anywhere in seconds, a perfect solution for domain names.

You can then host your website anywhere with any other web host service, do not give any hosting provider your ISP tag, if they cause you problems your site could be down for weeks while you try and get it back and you may not even be able to, depending on who registered the domain.

What I would do with a new host that when you don't know how reliable they may be is, setup say something like a free account www.freeehosting.com, for example there are dozens and have a backup site sitting there, if you have any problems with any new webhost uptimes or problem with msql databases, hacking, infact anything that causing problems to your website site, you can simply either do webforwarding to the freehosting backup of your site so your websites are back online instantly and then change the nameservers to point to the free host, within a few hours it will be resolving properly and once your site is back up, you can start looking for another host without having to rush into any rash decissions because your site wont be offline.

Obviously freehosting probably wont be as good as some paying hosting services, which I why I suggest it as a backup, but it is also better than many that charge, either way it's a get out of jail free card, if you loose one customer from your website going down, and freehosting saves that customer during the switch over it's all good.

By having your domain names kept somewhere like 123-reg.co.uk then you have full control of your most valuable asset and you are not held over a barrel by any hosting service.

Most of us have backup equipment, backup transport, backup DJ's, I believe my website is as important as all of these. Which is why I also have backup website, although I have paid for another sever hosted on a different network and I do have another sitting on a free one just incase, even though I have not needed the 2nd paid hosting as of yet.

Not great advice, I'm afraid. And there are better ways of achieving the same kind of "backup"...

It's all well and good except that DNS changes can take up to 72 hours to propagate fully. I'd hope that any problems at your host would be resolved within 72 hours! During that 72 hours after you change your nameservers visitors to your domain could go to either your main server or your backup. Same with email based on the domain. Then it'll most likely be resolved within the 72 hour timeframe, you change your DNS back, and then that'll potentially take another 72 hours to fully propagate. Result: for up to 6 days you don't really know where web visitors and email are being directed. And you can't check because it all depends which DNS servers they're using.

So, you rush to change your DNS for what might be a 10 minute down-time on your main host, and the result is you've potentially overcomplicated things for at least the next 72 hours. Yes, there are ways around it (check both servers for email, etc.) but all a bit of a PITA

You could use a 3rd party DNS service like Cloudflare. Your domain name servers always point to theirs, and you can change the actual host in your Cloudflare control panel if you switch hosts, and it's more or less instant. There are, of course, the other benefits from using Cloudflare as well...

[discomobiledj]

123 were hacked the other day. Left people offline for hours with no cobtact about what was going on. No contingency plan. Not the best advert

[SoundONE]

But I'm not suggesting you go changing name servers willy nilly every 10mins, that would be senseless.

What I am saying you have FULL control of the domain name. So you can change to any other host should you need to and you have backup ready to go.

If the hosting company has control of your domain and there service is the reason you need to go elsewhere then more than likely your going to have similar problems having to beg them to do something and have the hassle of going through them to do something you could easily do yourself.

Obviously it's going to take time to propergate but your going to be able to change it yourself and get it propergated from when you need it too, not when some hosting company decides they have to or has get around to answering your ticket.

[SoundONE]

123 were hacked the other day. Left people offline for hours with no cobtact about what was going on. No contingency plan. Not the best advert

Andy you were told this by whom and believe this because?

[DazzyD]

Andy you were told this by whom and believe this because?

Erm, because it's all over the web on reliable news sites and even mentioned on 123reg's own site!!

Here's a link to one (of many!) new reports about the incident:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18179298

[SoundONE]

Fair enough but DDOS can happen to any site and has been for many years, and is very difficult to if almost impossible to stop.

Not exactly hacked either:

"The issue started at 11.06am and we had contained the primary attack within 15 minutes of it happening," said Thomas Vollrath.

[discomobiledj]

Fair enough but DDOS can happen to any site and has been for many years, and is very difficult to if almost impossible to stop.

Not exactly hacked either:

"The issue started at 11.06am and we had contained the primary attack within 15 minutes of it happening," said Thomas Vollrath.

Which is absolutely rubbish. Check out MoneySavingExpert forum (http://forum.moneysavingexpert.com/s...php?t=3977161)... little bit longer than 15 minutes!