Cheap webhosting?

[yourdj]

Hi i am looking at some cheap webhosting for my wedding group in Hampshire.

I want a proper company with a good track record - not someone with a server in thier house :D

Thanks

[hammy]

Why dont you give Alex a ring, At £2.99 a month you cant go wrong.

[Mark Wild]

I use http://www.one.com/en/

[Larry B Entertainment]

I want a proper company with a good track record - not someone with a server in thier house :D


Nothing wrong with that. I have had several sites hosted in the past from peoples houses, often getting a much more better deal and service than from a bigger business.

[mattydinx]

www.falcoda.co.uk

[DazzyD]

I don't know if these guys are really cheap (in comparison) but I can't fault the level of service they provide:

http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/web-hosting/

[chrisj]

+1 for http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/web-hosting/

__________________

[Chris1984]

+2 for heart

[Jiggles]

Send me a pm and I can set you up. :)

[Cowlinn]

Securesignup.net

[discomobiledj]

You won't go wrong with Alex.

www.hostsphere.co.uk

[Daryll]

You won't go wrong with Alex.

www.hostsphere.co.uk

+1 for that

Daryll

[Gareth]

+1 for that

Daryll

+2 For Alex - I've got two packages.

Cheers
Gareth

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

Didn't Toby want a company not operating from their house though?

[Leicester Ben]

We have a web server in a proper data centre etc, drop us an email and we can sort something for you :)

[Andy Collins]

Hostgator.com

[DJRecardo]

1&1 have some cheap starter packages IIRC. Used them for years and never had any problems with downtime or their technical support

[hammy]

1&1 have some cheap starter packages IIRC. Used them for years and never had any problems with downtime or their technical support

Was with 1&1 for over a year and apart from too expensive they were good.

[DJRecardo]

They seem to have became a lot more reasonable for prices lately. £2.49 a month for a starter package sounds not too bad

[yourdj]

Thanks for your help. I need someone to look at the place it is now.

Its a place called wix and from what I can see they do not allow any FTP access or the ability to upload any external content (such as HTML files) and it takes 60 days to transfer which is ludicreous. The sites they host are all flash - even thier main site takes ages to load:

http://www.wix.com/

Says everything dosent it.

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 :D

[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 :D

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 :eek:

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/showthread.php?t=3977161)... little bit longer than 15 minutes!

[SoundONE]

Because they would have to have re-routed some of the traffic, what else could they do, or any other provider do against a mass DDoS ??? if it has enough attacking machines it's not quite that simple and I doubt they just targeted a single address.

Amazon, Sony, Microsoft, Yahoo, CNN and NASA are just few others who have been attacked with the same methods.

No provider is 100% safe from such attacks.

I have also just checked the logs for some of my sites it does infact show an outage on some of them, but not on all, 2 were certainly unaffected. So it does show that the whole system was not effected. by this attack.

[discomobiledj]

Never had the issue with Alex....

[Marc J]

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

Your post was written as to recommend a "backup website" as you would have a backup for everything else.

The purpose of a backup anything is to switch to it when the primary fails, for a short period, until the primary is backup or replaced.

I was just pointing out that making nameserver changes to switch to such a backup (as you suggested) is not a good idea. I gave the 10 minute example, but at what length of outage do you decide to make the switch?

[SoundONE]

I don't want to get involved in arguments I'm not here for that I would rather not post.

What I said was: keep control of your domain name and suggested where this can be done free, do not let any hosting service take the ISP tag away to there servers, unless you have some means of control for it obviously.

I then said:


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..... and gave another example of where this can be done for free. (I paid for an xbm life membership and use a server in ireland and have a backup on a virtual server which I rent from aceshells which they claim has DDoS protection, I also have a backup on freehosting, so far never needed.)

Both however were just examples of free services nothing more, but 123-reg must obviously be hightly regarded because why else would almost 25% of the uk be using them.

As I said it's a backup, if the new webhost is not what you thought, unexpected complications arrise, or whatever reason you may be unhappy you can simply pull out and don't have your hands tied that is all I was saying.

Regardless if any one listens or if anyone cares or even if anyone chooses 123-reg that got DDosed a few days ago or anywhere else that can be DDosed just as easily is up to them and this is really irellevent as this forum, on dedicated turobdns, or all of Webfusion Internet Solutions could just as easily be DDoseD and although my virtual server claimes to have protection with a big enough attack who knows.

You then ask: "but at what length of outage do you decide to make the switch?" but the reason may not be just outage it could be anything it's a new host you may find other problems that are not outage related.

[Marc J]

I don't want to get involved in arguments I'm not here for that I would rather not post.

And yet you go on....:rolleyes:

I'm not disagreeing with everything you're saying. You're right, any big players can be DDOS'd and even the smaller guys are mostly reselling or co-lo'd with them so would be affected as well - there are only so many datacentres after all. Switching because of a single DDOS attack would be silly, but if you were caught up in one you'd expect your supplier to act quickly to get it under control and also do all they could to stop it happening again. I obviously knew about 123-Reg's DDOS when I first posted but chose not to raise it as an issue for the very fact that it could happen to anyone...


What I said was: keep control of your domain name and suggested where this can be done free, do not let any hosting service take the ISP tag away to there servers, unless you have some means of control for it obviously.

That's up to you, some people like to keep control of their domains and some like everything handled at the same place. I've had clients in the past who have chosen to handle their own domains and then phoned me asking why their site is down further down the line...I've then told them it's because they've let their domain expire. Usually this is because they've used their ISP issued email with their domain registrar account and then changed ISP, so missed the renewals. Even if on auto renew this only delays the problem until the credit card on file reaches expiry (usually within 2 years). It all depends how confident you are at handling them, renewing them, doing all the technical stuff etc. etc. and if you're comfortable with that and the consequences if anything lapses then by all means, handle your domains yourself.

The part of your original post I do have an issue with is: -


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.

[snip]

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.

This definitely reads like you're saying it's easy to quickly change your site with very little downtime ("within a few hours it will be resolving properly") from one host to another by changing the namservers. I was simply pointing out that this is not the case, nameserver propagation can take up to 72 hours, and if you wanted something you could switch quickly like that I recommended using a 3rd party DNS service like Cloudflare (which is free). There are others like ZoneEdit or DNSMadeEasy.


As I said it's a backup, if the new webhost is not what you thought, unexpected complications arrise, or whatever reason you may be unhappy you can simply pull out and don't have your hands tied that is all I was saying.

And I'm saying choosing to keep control of your domain, and thinking switching nameservers to quickly change hosting are 2 different things. That's all!

[SoundONE]

You said "and yet you go on" but you post ended with a ? asking for a reply which I gave.

You'll also notice I said a few hours and not "switching nameservers to quickly change hosting".

As you know uk domains require up to 24 hours not 72, check with nominet, they state is time to reach global DNS servers. But in most cases granted not all but most UK domains will always resolve much much quicker and as I suspect you also know usually under 12 hours, they used to update twice a day at 12 hour intervals and likely still do.

.com, .org, .biz, .info require 24 to 72 hours for wordwide propergation but were not interested in worldwide anyway since we DJ in the UK were not interested if our sites are resolving in the USA or Russia, the UK they will resolve much quicker, if they are hosted in the UK.

I'm basically quoting minimum times a few hours your quoting maximum times days, but at most it's going to be 24hrs UK domain names and if your fortunate and an update is done shortly after the change has been submitted it can be a matter of minutes, as I have witnessed many times.

But I really am done now, I will not respond again in this thread, I won't be drawn into an argument it's unproductive and as I said before it's not why I am here.

I wish you well.

[Marc J]

You said "and yet you go on" but you post ended with a ? asking for a reply which I gave.

..eventually :D


As you know uk domains require up to 24 hours not 72, check with nominet, they state is time to reach global DNS servers. But in most cases granted not all but most UK domains will always resolve much much quicker and as I suspect you also know usually under 12 hours, they used to update twice a day at 12 hour intervals and likely still do.

DNS propagation It has nothing to do with nominet. And not everyone is using UK domains.


.com, .org, .biz, .info require 24 to 72 hours for wordwide propergation but were not interested in worldwide anyway since we DJ in the UK were not interested if our sites are resolving in the USA or Russia, the UK they will resolve much quicker, if they are hosted in the UK.

Like your recommended FreeHosting (to save you looking it up - Atlanta, Georgia)?


I'm basically quoting minimum times a few hours your quoting maximum times days, but at most it's going to be 24hrs UK domain names and if your fortunate and an update is done shortly after the change has been submitted it can be a matter of minutes, as I have witnessed many times.

All I'm saying is people have to be aware of the nature of a nameserver change and how long that can potentially take. Yes, it'll be somewhere between instant and 72 hours. Usually within 24. You witnessing a matter of minutes means nothing, as that's just your ISP and the very definition of propagation (do remember to spell it correctly if you want to look it up) means not everyone is updated at the same time!


But I really am done now, I will not respond again in this thread, I won't be drawn into an argument it's unproductive and as I said before it's not why I am here.

I wish you well.

Thanks, you too.

[katman]

As you know uk domains require up to 24 hours not 72, check with nominet, they state is time to reach global DNS servers.

That means that within 24 hours the global DNS servers at the heart of the internet will be guaranteed to have the new details, it may happen much sooner but machines dont directly lookup from those servers.

Home users will use the DNS server provided by their ISP. If anyone using that ISP has already visited your site the server will have cached an entry for that domain and will pass on the old details until it refreshes its entry after a period of time.

If the DNS server hasnt been asked about that domain, it will pass the request "up the tree" and the same applies, you could get old information for a period of time.

If you are in a corporate environment then you could be using an internal DNS which again would have cached entries.

A little used website will probably propagate changes more quickly than a heavily used one as fewer DNS servers will have been asked for it so will have to pass the request higher up.

The attack on 123reg mentioned earlier was quite significant and affected the SIP hosting company that we use for our VOIP customers. We had to reconfigure their phone systems to use IP addresses rather than DNS names to give them service.