web hosting and domain name registration

in answer to frequently asked questions from my students at college, here are my recommendations for web hosting and domain name registration:

web hosting

• cheap - but not too nasty

for low traffic sites and if you want the cheapest, decent hosting you can get, i recommend dreamhost. you get plenty of disc space, virtually limitless bandwidth, unlimited email addresses and unlimited domain names

• 500 GB disc storage [increases by 2GB every week]
• 5TB monthly bandwidth [increases by 40Gb every week]
• mySQL databases - unlimited
• email accounts - unlimited
• domain names - unlimited
• ...etc...

dreamhost do tend to oversell their server space a bit [which is presumably why they're so cheap]. this means that their servers aren't the fastest you'll find, but you're only likely to notice this if you're hosting a really high traffic site running lots of scripts on the server; for example a web forum getting a couple of thousand visitors a day. for an everyday website which disnae overtax the server, dreamhost are pretty hard to beat.

special offer! - sign up for a dreamhost account using the promotional code 'madrapromo' and get the following discounts:

when you sign up with dreamhost, dinnae forget to use the promo code 'madrapromo' in the sign-up form, to claim your discount.

click the dreamhost logo below to sign up:

• top of the range

if you want to take the next step up and rent some 'fast-as-fuck©' server space, which will handle almost anything you throw at it, i recommend a VPS [virtual private server] from slicehost.

with a VPS, you get yourself a partitioned off area on a server, onto which you can install what you want, how you want it - including the actual server software itself. be warned tho' that setting up a VPS is not for the uninitiated, or the faint-hearted. there's no control panel [unless you install one yourself!] all you get when you sign up for a VPS is an IP address and a login and password. it's then up to you to login via a terminal and install anything you want to run on that server - including [as i said above]the server operating system itself. if you dinnae know what any of that means, then a virtual server is not for you!

the advantage of running a VPS is that it really is like running your own server. you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want with it, as regards installing software, configuring things - even erasing the hard drive and starting again [when you cock everything up!] so it's a great way to learn about what goes on behind the scenes on a website. slicehost's prices are currently as follows:

click the slicehost logo below to sign up:

domain name registration

for domain name registration, i recommend namecheap. dinnae be put off by the name. the prices may be cheap but the buying process is quite slick and professional and on the couple of occasions i've had to email their customer support, i've got a reply back within a couple of hours. a lot of people recommend godaddy for domain name registration. i don't. i've recently switched all my domain names from godaddy to namecheap, because i got sick of godaddy's constant attempts to sell you add-ons - both online and via spam emails - every time you buy a domain. namecheap just sells you what you want and then fucks off, without continually hassling you to part with more cash.

there are a lot of companies out there, offering to register domains for ridiculous prices - 99p and the like. be very wary of offers like this. these companies are selling domain registration at less than it costs them [check out the wholesale prices for domains on enom's website]. if someone is selling you something for less than it costs them, you should ask yourself why. the answer, with most of these bargain bucket companies is that they register the domain with your name as the billing contact, but their own name as the admin contact. what this means is that, while you pay all the fees for renewing the domain each year, they effectively control it. so when you later try to move your domain elsewhere, they charge you a 'release' or 'admin' fee - generally around £70 - £90.

it's worth spending the extra couple of quid to register with a company like namecheap, where the domain remains completely under your control and registered completely in your name.

local shops for local people?

so why are all the companies i'm recommending based in the US? why am i not supporting my local economy?

well - two reasons, actually:

firstly, the whole point of the internet is that it's a global network. just because you or your business is based in the UK, disnae mean your webspace has to be. you can host a 'co.uk' website on a server in outer mongolia if you want. it makes no difference. so you might as well vote with your wallet and buy where you get the best prices and the best service. in my experience this *usually* means doing your server shopping in the US. much of the time you'll find that something that costs [for example] £50 over here will be available for around $50 in the US. why pay double, just for the sake of shopping locally?

secondly, the dollar is worth only slightly more than monopoly money at the moment and with recession biting in the US, it's likely to continue its downward spiral. this makes your £££s worth a lot more if you spend them in the US, rather than at home... at least until the british economy goes tits up in turn!

[disclaimer: like a lot of web-hosting companies, both dreamhost and slicehost have referral programmes, which means i receive a couple of sheckels for everyone who signs up, using the links on this page. while this might buy me a pint or two, it's not the reason i recommend these companies. madra.net is hosted on slicehost, as is my appletalker site, my blog and several client websites. i also have a dreamhost account, which i use for testing websites before they go live. so rest assured i'm only recommending the stuff i already use myself!]

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