Hey all,

Was wondering if I could get some advice from you all.  I am looking
to get my first non-free web host, and I want to make sure I am
getting a good product and not some scam artist.  (I know this is off
topic, but I need some quality advice, and I trust this group, having
used it for a number of years now)

Here are my requirements: I want to be able to host more than one
website from the host (that is, have multiple domain names pointing to
different directories on the host).  Space is not a huge issue--
nothing I'll be putting up there will be terribly big.  I want the
ability to install things like Wordpress, Joomla, and other CMS's
easily.

This will be used for my own professional website, a blog or two, and
a website for my small business.

I would appreciate any advice you could give me!  You can't really
trust the results in google for "best web hosts" because they could
very well be owned by the one they call the best.  On that note, is
there somewhere out there a good independent site rating web hosts?

Thanks so much!

Rob

news:bd555631-3c1b-47df-838c-2a84f89d1757@c36g2000prc.googlegroups.com...

Rob,

We (brother-in-law and I) have just been down that road for a small
e-commerce site being made and there is not an easy answer.  The
present host for the site is one of the biggies and you would think
their service would be excellent.  Wrong. When there's a problem, they
don't know you and in each case this past year it has taken a minimum
of 3 days to a week to get the site back on the air when their server
went down. And this is a national brand provider...

What we ended up doing was contacting a number of local businesses to
see who they were using and what problems they were having - if any.
Found that the local host providers were simply reps for the biggies
and were middlemen only.  But if you do have a local host and they have
a decent reputation - I would go with them. They're being local means
you can get your hands around their throat if there's ever a problem.
Plus you're supporting a local business - always a good thing to do.

One suggestion we had was to call the credit card company (on-line
processor). It's the credit card company that gets the nasty calls from
the small business owners when orders are not making it through. They
track who provides good service.  That is an over-simplification
because they track many things but we found out who to stay away from -
which we already really knew but it provided a confirmation for us.

If you use the credit card processor services, they want you to be
happy and will share their knowledge - but not openly, such as in an
email.  A phone call to the sales dept along with a sharp pencil and
some good questions like "who would you recommend..." may get the
answer.

In the end, our final recommendation came from the small local firm
doing the web design. He provided a customer list, we made the calls
and one provider bubbled to the top.  Problem free - no but at least a
number of others said they were good to work with when there was a
problem.

The site is going live at the end of Oct so we have no real experience
with the host yet but my bil has signed the contract for a year.

Bob S.

En/na Rob ha escrit:
For normal webs I've used IxWebhosting for a couple of years and I'm
happy with them. OTOH if your web is "business critical" choose an ISP
on your own city who you can go to and talk to face to face. Even if
they are smaller you'll probably get a better service.

--
Toni

I had a crappy ISP called iPower.com for several
years and then switched to GoDaddy.com which is
far better. I have been with them for less than a
year
but I am very satisfied so far.