Web Hosting Ideas?

Published on 16 January 2008 in , ,

Every now and then someone looking for web hosting asks me who I use. And I say it’s a great little host but you can’t use them. So get lost. Well okay I don’t say that last bit.

This site is hosted on a shared, private server. And it does the job nicely. It hosts my sites and Catherine’s site, The F-Word, amongst many others.

Trouble is, the latter is getting to be quite a big site – round about 8,000 page views a day recorded in Google Analytics and obviously there’s more in the form of traffic that Analytics doesn’t capture. The blog has about 110 subscribers in Bloglines alone so goodness knows where all those feeds are going.

In short it’s not the small site it once was, and it needs a new home. And as, when it comes to hosting, I’m a bit clueless (having never needed any) I thought I’d open the door to suggestions.

If you know someone good who can cope with the above and…

  • offers a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP) stack
  • will be able to run Movable Type on it
  • accepts that people want to do mad things with .htaccess files
  • offers at least 2Gb a month in bandwidth
  • preferably in the UK
  • don’t cost the earth
  • doesn’t fall over every five minutes
  • and has good customer service

then let me know. Shell access would also be nice as would crontabs and backup space but I can live without if needs be.

Anyway, any suggestions, the fire away on the comments form. All suggestions greatfully appreciated!

8 Comments

  • Matt says:

    I’ve used Heart Internet for the last couple of years for a number of sites and I believe they do everything you’re after. I’ve never had any complaints with them. Customer service (email) always responded to within a couple of hours.
    Matt

  • Martin Belam says:

    One word, Bytemark.

  • Ben says:

    Arachsys have a very friendly service, designed for people who know what they’re doing. It’s shell access, lightTPD rather than Apache, but might be worth a look. £200 a year for 2Gb/month.
    (no personal interest except giving them my custom)
    Ben

  • I would warn you off of GNHosting, formerly Ghoulnet as they are currently causing me greif for my mum’s B&B website.
    So I’ve jest moved her to UKWSD (UK Web Solutions Direct). They seem to be pretty good and fast atr setting things up for me. Very helpful. Can’t comment on uptime yet of course.
    I myself use 4U Hosting. Uptime is good and support has been good on the few rare occasions I’ve used it, and I would have used them for my mum’s site, except their sales team didn’t get back to me, so that was a bit off putting.

  • John Cletheroe says:

    You might like to check these out and see what you think of their various offers:
    http://www.bluehost.com
    http://www.godaddy.com
    http://www.heartinternet.co.uk
    http://www.westhost.com (seems the best IMHO)
    HTH, John

  • Andrew Bowden says:

    Thanks for the ideas everyone – some familar and not so familar names on the list, which can go with the ones I’ve heard from other sources!
    I actually must give a nod to Bytemark myself – we use them for Transdiffusion and I’ve always found them to be very helpful in the customer service department – even though the accounts not in my name too!
    Was contemplating them but had thought that a separate virtual server would be a bit overkill for this situation. But then, maybe not! It does give the ultimate flexibility.
    Hmm. Anyway, thinking caps to go on now 🙂

  • I’d recommend QiQ – http://www.qiq.co.uk – it’s a good package for sensible prices backed up by good customer support.

  • Paul Garrard says:

    I use CS New Media to host my real ale sites. They’ve been very good so far.