Virtual Server or Standard Hosting

[AndyBorrett]

We have been with our hosts Titan Internet for several years and have been very happy with them.
In the past two weeks our site has been unavailable twice that we know of and trying to contact support seems impossible. Since Titan were taken over by Iomart (?) they have gone down hill rapidly.

It is obviously time to change hosts but we are wondering whether we should change to something like a virtual server rather than having separate hosting packages.

We currently have 5 sites - one busy and four not so popular. Is it possible to host all these Sellerdeck sites on one virtual server or is not how these things work?

Any help or pointers to further reading would be most appreciated.

[leehack]

Sounds like your own dedicated server housing all 5 would be a good idea to me.

[AndyBorrett]

Thanks for the quick relpy Lee.

When you have a virtual or dedicated server is it simply a case of creating a new folder then uploading to each one for each Actinic site?
Would they have their own CGI bin or would they all share the same one?

Sorry for the questions but this is new to us.

[Jan]

i believe that all you have to do to host several sites on the same server space is to specify the appropriate url details and set a unique cgi-bin script ID number in the network settings and then upload - they will all have their own top level and acatalog directories but will share the cgi-bin and so that is why you need to specify a unique cgi script id number.

Regards,

[AndyBorrett]

Thank very much for the info Jan.
I will try giving a few companies a ring tomorrow to see exactly what they have to offer. 1and1 seem to be used by quite a few on here so I will give them a ring first. Does anybody else use any of their server packages and do they find them ok? I know about the mail problems of a few months at but that seems to be sorted now.

[Duncan Rounding]

cgi-bin depends on the hosting. Some hosts allow only one cgi-bin directory which needs to be shared with different sites, other's such as 1and1 allow multiple cgi-bin directories so you can use one per site. The main factor is the amount of concurrent traffic you have on your sites and the speed of access required.

[Jan]

Which is better Duncan, or rather as you have said it depends on circumstance, when there is a choice, which do you prefer?

Regards,

[AndyBorrett]

I will give 1and1 a ring tomorrow as having seperate cgi bins sounds like a good idea to me. I am pretty sure I haven't hard coded any script numbers in, but you never know.

I can't get access to the website stats at the moment but according to google analytical we get around 500 visitors a day.

[malbro]

cgi-bin depends on the hosting. Some hosts allow only one cgi-bin directory which needs to be shared with different sites, other's such as 1and1 allow multiple cgi-bin directories so you can use one per site. The main factor is the amount of concurrent traffic you have on your sites and the speed of access required.

1and1 have different systems depending on the type of host. Shared hosting does allow different cgi-bin folders, but the dedicated host I have (Server L 4I) only allows one so you need to use different script numbers.

The Business version of shared hosting will host multiple SellerDeck sites.

[AndyBorrett]

Thanks for all the very valuable advice everyone.

We have ordered the Virtual Private Server XL package and it should be up and running in the next day or so.

I will report back on how we get on for future reference.

[AndyBorrett]

All ordered and now trying to set up the VPS.

I will start a new thread as I am having troubles trying to get the network test to complete.