Website Hosting

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

Edited: a huge thank you to all of you who've responded. I am swimming in recommmendations and have much to choose from. Go fans!

I have been happy with the company that has been hosting my fannish website. However, as I need to store a large number of music vids, I need more space. The company charges $3/month for an extra 100MB - which means it is no longer cost effective to add more.

What I currently am getting: $40/month for 1.2GB and around 10BG bandwith.

I'd like to go up to 2GB for the same price (or cheaper). And be reliable (ie. if you go to their forums not filled with angry customers like a few lower cost ones I've seen).

The hosting company should also offer:

KEY
- subdomains
- FTP accounts
- anonymous FTP
- web control panel
- FrontPage extensions
- password protected directories
- not object to slash or vids

Nice to have
- 10-15 POP e-mail accounts
- e-mail forwarding
- autoresponders
- mailing list
- SSL capable
- raw access logs
- full website statistics

Comments

[konzatsu.livejournal.com]

i use http://www.1and1.com with their small business account. 5 domains (with tons o subdomains available), 4gb space, 10gb bandwidth, 5 virus protected emails and 100 (?) standard pop emails. $60 every 3 months. not too shabby, and i have more than decent up and down speeds and reliability.

[konzatsu.livejournal.com]

though i cannot remember if they have anonymous ftp....

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

I can check that out. thanks for the rec.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

Hi, what type of files are they hosting for you(slash/vids?) And how long have you been using them, what has your experience has been like (uptime, responsiveness to technical issues)?

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

thanks - I tried to find your website but kept ending up at a placeholder site instead. I'd lvoe to see your vids.

[entropic.livejournal.com]

I use Dreamhost (http://www.dreamhost.com/) and have been thrilled with their service. The cheapest plan is $9.95 a month for over 4.5 GB of space and 120 GB of bandwidth. Everything on both the "key" and "nice to have" lists is available on the cheapest plan except the anonymous FTP, and the $39.95 a month plan does include that (along with a lot of disk space and bandwidth.) There's also a 20% discount if you pay for two years in advance.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

Hi, I went looking for your vids to see what dreamhost can offer but could not locate the site? Have your vids ever gone over their bandwith and how did dreamhost react (I have heard of some companies canceling your account if that happens, while others just shut down your site until you pay for more bandwith).

[entropic.livejournal.com]

I haven't actually used my site for vids yet - I'm still a very beginner vidder, and haven't produced anything that I've felt isn't utter crap :). I have used it to host some AVIs of TV shows for friends to download and wasn't contacted by Dreamhost in any way, but I highly doubt it was even anything they noticed.

I haven't had any issues with going over bandwidth, because they give me such a crazy amount. I've noticed downtime maybe twice (for only short periods of time) in the 9 months or so I've been using Dreamhost, and I haven't had any technical issues that I've needed to contact them about, so I'm afraid I can't be much help with that either.

And I know you didn't ask about this, but I've been very happy with the upload and download speeds I've gotten - it took 45 seconds to upload a 25MB file and a bit over a minute to download it, over a broadband connection.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

thanks!

[cyanne]

I've got clients on both Verio (verio.com) and SimplyHosting (http://www.simplyhosting.net/) and so far am happy with both. Been with Verio for about 3 yrs and simplyhosting for about 3 months. I can tell you to avoid a company called Page Zone (page-zone.com), had some very bad experiences with them over the past year or so. They are probably too small to show up on your radar screen but I feel obligated to warn you anyway.

You probably already know this, but take a good look at the company's TOS and the fine print. Some are pickier than others when it comes to certain material, and even though they might accept "adult content" take a look at the section on copyrighted materials. No one's going to come right out and say it's okay but some are a lot looser than others. That's one of the reasons I went with simplyhosting.

You might also want to take a look at the forums at http://www.webhostingtalk.com, I found that to be a big help.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

thanks for your rec - the reason I asked for referrals from fans who are posting both slash and/or vids is simply because most TOS prohibit adult and/or copyrighted material. A real rec from a fellow fan who has been posting both with no problem is what I am looking for.

The same may limit my ability to use recs from forums - these issues are key to vidders and not usually discussed among casual & business users.

[cyanne]

If you've got time, and I can understand if you don't, you might want to take a quick look at the webhostingtalk forums just in case because the issue of adult content did come up several times. And I know it's not the same as vidding/slash content but it still might give you an idea of something that's a bit more fan friendly.

I've got some fannish stuff up on the simplyhosting server, but no vids so that's not as much of a real world test as you need. Wish I had something more concrete to give you. Good luck.

[rebdomine.livejournal.com]

http://dreamhost.com is the best! LOL I can see two others already promoted dreamhost but oh well :P If you decided dreamhost, please put 'rebdomine' as referral but honestly, you can't get any better than dreamhost.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

Hi, can you provide me a link to your website and what type of files (slash/vids?) And perhaps some more info - how long have you been using them, what your experience has been like?

[rebdomine.livejournal.com]

My website is http://intoxicated.kirameki-angel.net
I have school shooting related videos stored and one of them is slash related ... I think as long as your site is not completely porn or storing completely illegal copies of videos (like a whole movie), it should be ok

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

thanks!

[ascian3.livejournal.com]

My hosting company (of 3 years now) is Hurricane Electric (www.he.net). They have always done right by me, including the time when I accidentally used nearly 100GB of bandwidth in two days (over a thousand dollars' worth of extra above my 50GB plan, but I ended up paying about $150 for it). And they have all the goods (except, possibly, Frontpage extensions - they're a unix-based host, which was a prime criteria of mine). Also, they very explicitly don't care about what you host there, provided that nobody's laywers come knocking on their door. They go so far as to have a special hosting package for porn sites (high-bandwidth, high storage, dedicated server). I don't think they call it a porn plan (I think they call it "media hosting"), but various of their marketing stuff stresses the "no questions asked" aspect. They're commercial-grade, very reliable to date, and Bay Area local. Good stuff.

My current plan is $60/mo for 50GB of bandwidth and I think 5GB of disk space - except now I'm looking at it, their packages have grown since I last checked. $25/mo now for 5gb of disk and 100gb of traffic. (Yay - I can downgrade my plan!)

[http://users.livejournal.com/ari_/]

have you looked at http://www.slashcity.com/hosting.html?

The big plan would cost as much as you're paying now, and it has 2,5GB and 50GB bandwidth. They're explicitly slashfriendly, and have everything you list. They're also very friendly, and you can drop them an email with questions/problems anytime you like. They're essentially slashfans who're in the hosting business.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

thanks so much for the rec - was there a recent outage on their server and/or was this the company that accidently deleted a few sites? (or was that another server - I don't want to confuse them with someone else to their detriment). The fact that they are slash friendly is a plus.

[http://users.livejournal.com/ari_/]

they moved servers recently, but AFAIK, they had the sites up at both the old and the new server and thus the site was accessible for everyone, no matter how long it took their DNS entry to update.

I don't know anything about them having an outage or them deleting a few sites - however, if you email them and ask, they'll probably tell you. I just emailed you their email addresses to the yahoo address you have in your UserInfo (if you want me to send it somewhere else, let me know).

Oh, and I should note that if you don't need that much storage space/bandwidth, you can go with a smaller plan and just optionally add bits to it. They're generally flexible - they were rather accomodating when I had some special wishes.

[justacat.livejournal.com]

I've had very good luck with slashcity. I have the Pros Circuit Archive hosted there, and I have many vids - slash vids - archived. They are great to deal with - responsive, accomodating, etc. I wanted more bandwidth than I had but less than on the $40/month plan, and they cobbled two plans together for me; now I've got 30G bw (and 1G space) for about $21/month. It's not the rock-bottom cheapest, but I've found them reliable, friendly, and, of course, slash-friendly! And indeed, they are fellow slashers; you might have met them at Escapade.

In the more than two years I've had my site (which has no vids) and the Circuit Archive hosted with them (I also have the MfU archive hosted with them; I don't own it but I'm the webmaster), I think I've had about two hours of down time. They do everything in their power, in my experience, to let you know when things are going to change or when there's a problem and accomodate and help you however they can. And they have sufficient servers with sufficient space, so speed is generally great, unlike some of the other slash-friendly providers.

[lindi-of-rohan.livejournal.com]

The hosting service I use is IX Webhosting (http://www.ixwebhosting.com/) and you can get unlimited space for $20 a month. They've got really great prices and customer support. Plus I believe it was rated the best hosting site on the net or something. ^.~

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

Hi, are they hosting your slash and/or your vids? I popped over to your website and it looks like you''re using yahoo - someone on another mailing list recommended them - I had a yahoo mailing list once as well, but the side bar ads were annoying.

[lindi-of-rohan.livejournal.com]

Oh, I haven't changed my website yet for my vids - that's quite an old website! The one that IX hosts is here (http://viddinghappens.com). Sorry about that!

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

thanks.

[ender24]

Hi,

I have lots of friends in SV fandom, who are hosting their fics for free at http://www.populli.org/ and are very satisfied with this service. For you, since you are looking for a host for vids, I am not sure if the owner meets all your listed requirements, so maybe you can have a look:

http://www.populli.org/webhosting.shtml
for questions, it has also a LJ address:
http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=voxpopulli

[tallulah71.livejournal.com]

I use http://www.powweb.com for my vids. It's $7.77 a month for 5gb of storage and 300gb of tranfer per month. I'm unsure about the anonymous ftp or autoresponders, but everything else is available. I've been hosted by powweb for about 3 years and have never had any down time that I'm aware of. They do have the legal disclaimer of no copyrighted material, but I've never had any problem with my content, slash or otherwise. Good luck.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

thanks.

[jmtorres.livejournal.com]

You might be interested in looking into http://www.populli.org --it's specifically fannish.