Web hosting!

[silky]

Hi, again. Sick of me yet?

Right site is as ready as it will be need to so some more stuff to it but i need you guys wonderful help with that so I shall tinker with it while online.

Anyhoo, I am researching hosts, and confused what's the best one for actinic? Which ones do you use?.

They all offer price based on the sixe of the site how can i find out how large (or small) mine is?
Will be using actinic and also paypal as payment provider (for the moment at least)

Any help would be greatfully apreciated

[wjcampbe]

If you have kept your page sizes reasonable, then mutiplying the number of pages by 30k should come close.

My 1 & 1 Linux Business account gives me 2.5Gb of space and an allowance of 700,000 files - I am just scratching the surface. I believe it's good value and did not have a hard time setting up.

[newshopbloke]

Cant really advise on which one, but make sure you ask all the questions first and try to get the answers in writing or by email. Many hosts will say "actinic, yeah no probs" when they actually haven't got a single clue what your on about. There is a handy file from actinic somewhere that asks all the right questions, you can email it to them and its very handy for scaring off the 'garden shed' hosts who claim to be huge companies.

[paul g]

Go 4 surehosting.co.uk

There is one hosting company to go for when you want to put actinic on a server and thats 4surehosting.com.
I have nothing to do with them and there has been alot of bad things said about them in the past because they had a couple of attacks on their servers and they were down for a while but over the past 12 months they have been up and when you are struggling at 2am in the morning to congiure actinic they reply..sad..I know but they do...I can host 20 seperate domains for 35 quid a month as I said I have got nothing to do with them

[Coggy]

I totally agree with Bill, 1&1 provide a great service. I too have the Linux business account, which IMHO offers excellent value for money, some really useful additional features (i.e software and site features that can be easily integrated) and an easy to use control panel.

Chris

[SusanF]

I'd agree with Bill and Chris too. I've been with 1&1 for a year now with no problems at all. They are always pretty quick at replying to any customer support questions too. And most importantly it was easy to set up an Actinic store with this Host.

[Highlander]

Caveat 1&1

As someone with sevaral sites on Claranet, 4sure and 1&1 I can give a very clear cut answer based on two years painful experience.

I think that there are several points to consider with 1&1.

The first is that they are very cheap - and you get what you pay for. They will not notify you of any impending service changes. For instance migrating from IIS5 to IIS6 rendered all our database connections inoperative. It took them over four weeks to resolve the problem. To be fair it would appear that 1&1 is appalling on its windows side - but rather better on the linux side. However, I would suggest that if no linux problems have oocurred then that is not 1&1's fault(!) My gripe is that they do not inform you in advance of any changes so that you can carry out an impact assessment and prevent problems occurring.

The second is that if you have a dot com hosted in Germany Google will not consider it a UK site. A co uk site in Germany will be included.

I therefore keep 1&1 for hobby sites which are not going to upset me unduly if they are down.

For serious sites I use 4sure and am in the process of moving my last site away from Clarahost who are neither cheap or good.

Hope this helps.

[RuralWeb]

I have many sites hosted with WebFusion and have had very few problems. Actinic configures easily on the Linux accounts. 24/7 help desk and prompt replies to emails even at weekends.

They have recently upgraded all thier servers and they are all in UK.

[silky]

Thanks very much for all you replies, very helpful. I have even spoken to a couple of designers and hosts listed on the actinic website and they have all recommended 1&1 Though with the linux package as that is what they use! Hmmm so on the point of common concesus, 1&1 it is going to be, on a linux package.

Thanks again

[SusanF]

Good luck Richard - let us know the url when you are up and running. Don't forget to create the /cgi-bin folder before you upload - you can do this through Webspace Explorer in your 1and1 control panel.