New Hosting Needed!

[DeeBye]

edited

[the Langolier]

no text

[Bolty]

K, thanks Dee and those who followed up; I'll be giving 1&1 a call this coming week and try to get the ball rolling. I looked over their site again and tried to find what fine print I read that made me think it was a shared server, but I couldn't find it. Maybe I was on the wrong page or something.

-Bolty

[Guest]

I don't know all the particular numbers and stuff, but I only pay $5 a month for my site... www.fuitadnet.com Where do you find out all those particulars?

[LochnarITB]

I'll be giving 1&1 a call this coming week and try to get the ball rolling.

Once you get things rolling, could you post a bit on your impressions of their service? I had them bookmarked when the link to their offer was posted here some time ago. I looked them over and kept telling myself that they sound too good to be true. They claimed to be offering great deals (3 years free - can't get any better than that) to the little guys because they were making all the money they needed off of their big clients. They didn't see much overhead in handling a bunch of little sites and hoped to grow some into the large customers they fund themselves with. That is the way I would want to run such a business but you rarely actually see it happen. I didn't pull the trigger and now I regret it.

[TPJ]

We moved Toontown Central over to Rackshack (now EV1 Servers) about a year ago.  We've been pretty happy with them.  The cost of a dedicated server there may be more than you care for (US$99/month, setup $1), but they are pretty generous with bandwidth and storage.

The Amazon Basin's host is EV1Servers.net as well. We haven't had much to gripe about for the last couple of years. I believe you can get what you're looking for by spending $99 or so a month.

[Bolty]

The Amazon Basin's host is EV1Servers.net as well.

Lately I've been perusing the wonderful forums at http://www.webhostingtalk.com, which is a huge source of information about hosting plans. EV1 has gotten good reviews there. 1&1 has NOT. I no longer consider 1&1 an option.

Currently I'm looking at ServInit's VPS Plans. Like EV1, they get rave reviews by many at Web Hosting Talk. I really don't think the LL needs a full lone dedicated server; plus, the $40 less a month would be a nice boon to my strapped bottom line. A VPS would fit in well here. The site's too big for any kind of shared plan, and too small for a full dedicated machine. We're not Diabloii.Net, and we don't have the forum activity of a huge guild site like the Basin. The only time the LL would need a full dedicated server would be when we get Slashdotted, which hopefully will never happen again. Even so, I may just take steps on the new host to ban all access from Slashdot.org links.

Everything I read there shows that ServInit is one of the top hosting providers in the industry. 80-90% of the comments about 1&1 are negative, however.

I still wonder how Globat thinks they can charge $159/month with the crappy hardware this server's on. That's a joke. Anyway...

Note: EV1 has an even cheaper VPS Plan. However, the servers are completely unmanaged. I am not familiar enough with Linux to be sure of setting up a fully protected box to prevent DDos and hack attempts. ServInit will take care of that, and yet still give me the power to install programs I want and have root access.

-Bolty

[Griselda]

If too many different community sites have EV1, what are we going to do during the downtime? :P

[Bolty]

If too many different community sites have EV1, what are we going to do during the downtime? :P

Haha, true! We need cross-hosting capability so Basiners and Loungers can hang out on each others' sites when things go bad. Good call, Gris!

-Bolty

[Bob]

Even so, I may just take steps on the new host to ban all access from Slashdot.org links.

All they have to do is click in the address bar and hit enter and presto! they're in, since it's no longer a referral.

A better (if more complex solution) would be to detect when more that ~ 12 people get referred from slashdot.org in an hour (to allow for people looking through the archive) and block all access to IP addresses that haven't visited the site in the last 28 days. 24 hours later (when the story is off the front page) the restrictions would be lifted. Considering the rate of new people arriving here, it shouldn't stop too many new people from visiting.

Other solutions once a /.ing has been detected could be:
Changing the site into "text only" mode. to reduce bandwidth
Still block access but put up a short page to those blocked explaining why, which might stop new people from nver finding us, but might encourage the /.ers to come back the next day.

However, prevention is better than cure, and a better solution would probably be just making sure that everyone understands not to submit a story involving the LL to /.

-Bob

[Bolty]

Looks like we're going with ServInt. Hope I don't regret it!

-Bolty

[DeeBye]

Looks like we're going with ServInt.  Hope I don't regret it!

-Bolty

Which hosting plan did you go with?

[Bolty]

Which hosting plan did you go with?

The Essential VPS plan.

-Bolty