Website Hosting

[crokett]

My wife is a personal trainer and is looking at setting up her own website. We will get it hosted. Right now I am looking at GoDaddy or Network Solutions. Anybody know pros/cons of either?

Network Solutions looks to be a slightly better deal plus it includes a WSIWYG design your own website offer so she can do some of the work.

Questions I have: Network Solutions offers MySQL and MSAccess database support. I am much more familiar with Access. GoDaddy does only MySQL. Do I design my own database locally then upload it to their server or do I use their web tools to design a database online?

[siliconbauhaus]

I would go with webstrikesolutions for hosting. Your first year is free.

I've been using them for 4 years and never had a problem.

[cgallery]

The Network Solutions Image Cafe designer is nice and fairly flexible.

Another option is Yahoo. They have a similar designer (maybe a little more simplistic but faster to setup and easier to change).

[Alex Franke]

I been with www.servergrid.net forever (it seems), and I've been very pleased. I also use www.cirtexhosting.com as my Linux host, but I haven't been with them as long.

You should be able to use an Access database in either case if it's Windows hosting and you set up your website to connect to the database on the fly (without a DSN). Just upload it to a safe place.

You might be better off, though, just taking the leap to MySQL. You can download the administrative tools on your local machine, connect to the remote database and design away. Or design locally, and create a script that you run on the remote DB to rebuild it. Or use web tools, but those can be a bit clunky.

Good luck -- let me know how it goes, or if you need any help.

[Black wallnut]

I presently use GoDaddy and am mostly happy with the service that I've received, happy enough that I just extended my contract for 2 years. As far as the data base I am not savvy enough to know the difference.

This summer or was it last spring that I was trying to place a blog on my site I tried several times to upload one and was not successful. Eric came to my rescue and found a solution. Perhaps a PM to him (or catch him in chat) might shed some light on what is possible with GoDaddy.

[dkerfoot]

I do a fair bit of professional web design.

I personally hate GoDaddy for a variety of reasons. The most serious being the lack of flexibility and transferability. This applies to most of the "website in a box" vendors. You don't realize the limitations and hidden costs until you have so much time invested that you can't afford the pain of switching. They deliberately use proprietary technology to keep you from moving to another host if you are not satisfied with them.

Looking at the GoDaddy Girl won't hurt, but once you start to give her money the trouble starts.

Currently, I recommend both siteground.com and brinkster.com Both offer great prices, very responsive customer service and none of the proprietary junk. They also offer free installation of some great free scripts including shopping carts, blogs, etc... And yes, they both offer free tools and templates to put together a pretty decent website on your own.

I'd give Brinkster a slight edge on customer service - you can choose the Live Chat function and be talking to a real person in a minute or two. Siteground is a bit cheaper.

[Alex Franke]

...just keep in mind the OS you want when you're shopping. Linux hosting is usually cheaper than Windows (for obvious reasons).

[Black wallnut]

I've read so many times in so many places that GoDaddy is a poor choice. I've also read that is not advisable to have the same company that registers your domain host it. I used to be with a smaller company that was purchased up by a larger one and ended up on the very short end of the stick. Spam increased, servers went down for days on end, plus support became nonexistant. I'm not saying that this will happen with the two hosts Doug recommends or that it is even likely. Dollar for dollar with comparable hosting Brinkster seems to offer twice the storage and twice the transfer as what I get from GoDaddy for about the same cost. Siteground does not appear to offer windows hosting so it simply would not work for my site. I use .asp.

I do not use any of GoDaddy's proprietary stuff that I know about. GoDaddy answers my calls at any time day or night and it appears that I speak with someone each time that english IS their native language and sometimes I have even heard answers that actually answered my questions. I have 2 domains hosted for the next 2 years for $100. If my old host would not have imploded I'd only have one doimain. Since GoDaddy is the biggest they are the biggest target, just like Microsoft. I would hazard a guess that since GoDaddy is the biggest you will find far more satisfied customers than you will find folks that do not like them. I'm not trying to discount what the detractors are saying and a smart consumer should do some research before the plunge. They may have valid points.

[dkerfoot]

Good points about Windows/Linux.

For what it is worth, Brinkster has been around since 1999 and outlasted pretty much every dot.com that I have seen advertise on TV.

I have used Brinkster for about 6 years now because I mostly script in ASP. They never used to offer Linux as an option. Because the best (free) shopping carts are PHP (Linux) based, I went looking for a Linux host a couple of years ago and settled on Siteground. Brinkster now offers Linux hosting, but I have continued to use Brinkster for ASP and SiteGround for Linux/PHP.

I currently host 3 or 4 sites on each.

I'd argue it is a good idea to register your site through your host, so long as they offer free renewal (so you don't "Doh!" forget) and you are able to transfer it if you choose.

There is an IT Firm in my town that spent over $10,000 on yellow page ads pointing to their website. Only problem was, they neglected to renew the registration and their domain was grabbed by a porn operator. Doh!

[crokett]

Thanks for the info.

Siteground is out. I tried several times over the last half hour to get to siteground.com and I can't get there.

Network Solutions is out. Their price point is way high for what you get.

Looks like it is either GoDaddy or Brinkster with Brinkster in the lead. I like Brinkster's base package. That plus the paid site builder gives me what I want I think and is cheaper than the bandwidth/disk space package from GoDaddy

[Alex Franke]

Doesn't look like Brinkster offers a any databases with their $4 package. Might want to see what the cost would be if you wanted to add a DB later. it might bump you up to one of their more expensive packages.

[crokett]

Dang. You know you are right. How'd I miss that?