Donhost no good for Actinic??

[Mark H]

We want to transfer one of our .co.uk shops from 1&1 (with whom I should say we are very happy) to a company whose servers are based in the UK to see if there really is a difference in terms of results on Google in the UK, plus we don't want all our eggs in one basket.

I have just spoken to a nice chap at Donhost who insisted that Actinic can't be run on their reseller package - I would need to have a dedicated server - I find this difficult to believe - does anyone have any views on this

Also, I know this is a perennial topic, but are any other UK based hosts particularly good at the moment?

[wjcampbe]

UK based Actinic hosting?

Pinbrook

TechnoWeb

Artisan Internet

You'll find posts here from all three - these people not only host Actinic, they use it themselves.

[RuralWeb]

webfusion are very good and worth a look, prices have dropped recently.

[Mark H]

Thanks Bill - I've already had a look at Pinbrook (of course!) - I'll have a look a the others. Mark

[jont]

I looked at the DONHOST reseller package a few years back and reached the conclusion not suitable for Actinic (although can't remember exactly why now)

[Mark H]

I think he mentioned that "Actinic required complex HTACCESS" or similar on their reseller package.

Webfusion reseller is looking favourite at the moment

[RuralWeb]

Actinic required complex HTACCESS

I think this may be correct - I had someone a couple of years back who came to me about an Actinic site with them and it never worked correctly.

[jont]

Actinic does not require any htaccess control (does it?) ... it may be the servers are Windows based not *nix which it tends to prefer (although Windows can be made to work with a little effort)

[Mark H]

I'm getting a bit weary already - Webfusion look great but have told me that Actinic will not run on their reseller package either ("Donhost is our sister company.........."), and that their shared hosting packages will only support one domain name each ( have I been spoilt by 1&1?), which leaves their Virtual Private Servers. These sound great but I have no experience of this approach to hosting - does Actinic work? Are VPSs difficult to manage, and in particular multiple domains/sites/email/Actinic shops (they have a Plesk control panel)?

[pinbrook]

send me an email Mark with your requirment - let me quote....

I need to know the number of domains and total bandwidth required.

[Mark H]

Thanks for the offer Jo, but I have kept it cheap and simple and gone for a Webfusion shared hosting plan.

I took about an hour to go through an online Plesk demo to see how I would get on, was very pleased and really looking forward to getting my own VPS for about £20 per month from Webfusion ("Host British!" goes their latest advert, complete with Union Jack) - phoned them up - after a 20 minute conversation I said I was looking forward to seeing if being on a UK server made any difference.

"Ah - our VPS servers are based in GERMANY"

Which is pretty ironic given the reason I started this thread. Hey Ho

PS do you think they're using 1&1...........

[pinbrook]

No worries....

as a result of this thread i am going to add a unionjack to the pb website to denote UK hosting.

We are also looking to roll out VPS and Exchange hosting in the next few months as new services...see my sig for progress

[Mark H]

Good idea - I'm sure that there is an issue here.

We have the .co.uk and .com variants of a new company web site with 1&1 - let's call them www.companysales.co.uk and www.companysales.com.

A search for either "company sales" or "companysales" in Google worldwide returns the .com variant at number 1, the .co.uk variant doesn't appear at all.

A search for either "company sales" or "companysales" in Google UK only doesn't show either the .com or .co.uk variants at all - this is "not good".

Mark