J wrote: > Well I guess it is about time I put some of my photos up a on web > page..What is the best hosting service and best price that anyone > knows about ? Thanks J > > I've had my ups and downs with them, but overall Apollohosting has worked out well for me. they are the third host I used and I've been with them for 4 or 5 years now. They have been reliable and responsive to my inquiries (and I make a lot of them). I had a security breach a month ago and have talked a bit with their security folks, and they seem to be doing a lot (belatedly in my case) to tighten up on security. They also taught me some good .htacess tricks that seem to have stopped the blog spammers and other tricksters.
IMO - things to check for when evaluating a host: Bandwidth: Photos gobble up a lot of bandwidth and if you have a cool photo up, you can get huge spikes. Most hosts these days offer a lot of bandwidth, but checkout what it costs if you go over the max. A few years ago I had a plan that offered 30 gigs of bandwidth (pretty good by 2003 standards) but I got some good PR and had two months of 60 and then 40 gigs of traffic. At $5 a gig for everything over the 30 gig limit - that stung! My current plan offers 150 gigs a month, and I typically use only 10% of that, so I figure there is an ample cushion. Disk Space: Figure out how much disk space you need and be sure to get a plan that will cover it. That's obvious - but then find out how your web host handles things like logs, email, etc. Logs can eat up tons of space, and if you opt for webmail, that will take up space as well. Server Stuff: If you want to run blog, photo database, etc, you will need PHP and mysql support. Probably more stuff that I don't know about. Unless you plan on plain HTML, check into what they offer. Control Panel: This is usually your gateway into managing the site. Check out what the host is using (they usually have demos) and see if you like it. Add ons: Check out what stats package (if any), blogging tools, and other add ons (even little things like FormMail) that the host offers. Can you install these yourself through the control panel, or do you need to pay to get them set up? Stats packages are particularly useful - I'm using both Urchin Analytics and Webalizer (both come with the service) and they provide a lot of good info. Personally - if I was starting fresh I'd probably just get a Flickr account, set up a blog, and roll. Forget about the static HTML site. I'd convert my site to a setup like that if I could ever figure out where all the links within it went... :-) HTH - - MCC -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mark Cassino Photography Kalamazoo, Michigan www.markcassino.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
