I'm not necessarily asking for a recommendation for a web
host/registrar, more how to find reliable and authoritative  reviews!
The plethora  of weird and wonderful names ostensibly "reviewing and
recommending" providers (presumably those who pay the best) is not
comforting!

Is there a reliable, authoritative review site out there anywhere?

I'm looking for a host/registrar from a nascent charitable website
(the charity has been operating for a number of years but now needs to
develop).

I'd happily pay a bit extra for a "brand name" (well, not BT though)
although I normally eschew branding, these days I think robustness is
preferable to economy! 

Thanks for any input

wrote in message 
news:87hcq4pvbnc7g4pq9dm9vulstmt29t4lua@4ax.com...
> I'm not necessarily asking for a recommendation for a web
> host/registrar, more how to find reliable and authoritative  reviews!
> The plethora  of weird and wonderful names ostensibly "reviewing and
> recommending" providers (presumably those who pay the best) is not
> comforting!
>
> Is there a reliable, authoritative review site out there anywhere?
>
> I'm looking for a host/registrar from a nascent charitable website
> (the charity has been operating for a number of years but now needs to
> develop).
>
> I'd happily pay a bit extra for a "brand name" (well, not BT though)
> although I normally eschew branding, these days I think robustness is
> preferable to economy!
>
> Thanks for any input

I'm generally quite happy with 1&1. My next server I'm planning to rent will 
be in America as it's generally cheaper. I know a guy who runs with Wired 
Tree there and is very happy. Liquid Web and Joyent have good reputations 
too. From my own experience I would counsel against Streamline.

--
+mrcakey
www.everythingthatswrongwiththeworld.com

LR@home.com wrote:
> I'm not necessarily asking for a recommendation for a web
> host/registrar, more how to find reliable and authoritative  reviews!
> The plethora  of weird and wonderful names ostensibly "reviewing and
> recommending" providers (presumably those who pay the best) is not
> comforting!
> 
> Is there a reliable, authoritative review site out there anywhere?
> 
> I'm looking for a host/registrar from a nascent charitable website
> (the charity has been operating for a number of years but now needs to
> develop).
> 
> I'd happily pay a bit extra for a "brand name" (well, not BT though)
> although I normally eschew branding, these days I think robustness is
> preferable to economy! 
> 
> Thanks for any input

Can't help with a review site, but I'm more than happy with 
LiquidSix.com, in terms of facilities, value for money and above all, 
support.

Phil, London

On Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:36:05 +0000, LR@home.com put finger to keyboard
and typed:

>I'm not necessarily asking for a recommendation for a web
>host/registrar, more how to find reliable and authoritative  reviews!
>The plethora  of weird and wonderful names ostensibly "reviewing and
>recommending" providers (presumably those who pay the best) is not
>comforting!
>
>Is there a reliable, authoritative review site out there anywhere?

No. 

The best source of reliable recommendations is the personal experience
of other customers. The best place to find that is somewhere like this
group.

>I'm looking for a host/registrar from a nascent charitable website
>(the charity has been operating for a number of years but now needs to
>develop).
>
>I'd happily pay a bit extra for a "brand name" (well, not BT though)
>although I normally eschew branding, these days I think robustness is
>preferable to economy! 

A lot depends on what you want to do with the site, and what features
you need on the host. Hosting isn't rocket science; cheap and cheerful
can often be perfectly adequate. Big name providers, in fact, often
tend to be those which market themselves primarily to the
inexperienced, and therefore are actually less suitable for sites that
need more flexibility from a provider. You need to decide what
technical features you need (eg, PHP, Perl, ssh, sFTP, MySQL, etc) and
then look for a host which offers them, rather than looking for a
named provider and starting from there.

The other big question is whether you need to host in the UK, or
whether you'd be happy with a host based in Europe or the US. If
you're OK with the fact that the site will be a tad slower to UK
users, then it's often a lot cheaper to host in the US. Two of my
busiest sites are hosted in the US, and I've never had any complaints
from users about performance despite the fact that they're targetted
at a UK audience.

Mark 
--
Blog: http://mark.goodge.co.uk
Stuff: http://www.good-stuff.co.uk

On Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:36:05 +0000, LR@home.com wrote:

Thanks so far to +mrcakey, Philip Herlihy and Mark Goodge.



I think my MAIN issue is finding a host who is likely to be in
business for a while yet.  I don't want to leave the charity in  a
position where they find they quickly need to find a new host and
(like me right now) don't have a clue where to look.

I appreciate no-one has a crystal ball at any time, let alone these
days, but some of these weird and wonderful names DON'T inspire as
much confidence as, say, "Old Fart and Sons, Est 1992 Purveyors of
fine Bits and Bytes to the Wired Gentry".

On Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:58:52 +0000, Mark Goodge
 wrote:

>>Is there a reliable, authoritative review site out there anywhere?
>No. 
Hah!  A new business opportunity for someone with more wit than me,
then! 
>The best source of reliable recommendations is the personal experience
>of other customers. The best place to find that is somewhere like this
>group.
I'm glad I started in the right pace then: some of the other likely
groups appeared a little sparse.  I guess Usenet will eventually
wither and die under the relentless onslaught of fancy schmancy
interfaces :(  But I digress.  Often as it happens. I must do
something about it. Like returning to the point at hand.
>
> You need to decide what
>technical features you need (eg, PHP, Perl, ssh, sFTP, MySQL, etc) and
>then look for a host which offers them, rather than looking for a
>named provider and starting from there.
Point understood.  But I have no idea what technical features are or -
more to the point - will be needed, but I suspect few.  At the moment
it's a modest project with few demanding requirements that will anyway
have to be met by a package rather than by any attempt at coding
anything at all.    

I'm planning to pay for whatever package looks as if it will deliver
the best results for the enthusiastic amateur as part of my
contribution to the charity, and do the work of creating and
maintaining the site for them.  I'll probably pay for the hosting too
as it's a relatively modest cost.    I can buy whatever package is
best supported by most hosters.  Would it be right to assume that
Frontpage probably has the widest support?  (Horrible horrible
software - at least the 2003 version - completely counter intuitive). 
 Ease of maintenance and update are key right now, and the only
'features' needed would be webmail and a paypal "donate now" button
:).  No "forum" or anything like that envisaged.

>The other big question is whether you need to host in the UK, or
>whether you'd be happy with a host based in Europe or the US. If
>you're OK with the fact that the site will be a tad slower to UK
>users, then it's often a lot cheaper to host in the US. 

Speed is not an issue, I have no intention of the site being a bloated
'experience' and its users won't be terribly demanding.  I'm very old
fashioned too, inasmuch as I believe a that a website aimed at
delivering information should do just that, and not seek
simultaneously  to entertain or obscure the information  behind some
really kewl new tricks or have really clever ways to navigate using
things you'd never expect to click on if you were over 40.  You can
guess I am.  How lovely it once was when if you could hand-code HTML
at all then  you were as good as the next person  .... boy, are those
days long-gone .....

So, thanks chaps ... I shall continue the search .....

Lewis

I have been using Hostroute for several sites over the last two years. 
They have proved reliable and have all the features I've needed:

http://www.hostroute.co.uk/

Before that I used GN Hosting who were very poor (service interruptions, 
very slow support and expensive) so I would avoid them if they are still 
going.

Beware that if the domain name is not a .uk and you host it outside the 
UK Google and co. will not return it in UK search results. So there is 
more to overseas hosting than just the delays.
-- 
Dominic Sexton

On 26 Feb, 11:39, Dominic Sexton <{da-sep...@dscs.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Beware that if the domain name is not a .uk and you host it outside the
> UK Google and co. will not return it in UK search results. So there is
> more to overseas hosting than just the delays.

Thankyou!  Good point.  I imagine there'll be a few more I'll fall
over on the way ....

It's going to be an org.uk.  The .co.uk is  'parked' by some Turkish
entity it seems. Not a big deal as the proper place for a charity is
.org anyway.

Thanks

Lewis

On Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:28:50 +0000, LR@home.com put finger to keyboard
and typed:

>On Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:36:05 +0000, LR@home.com wrote:
>
>
>I'm planning to pay for whatever package looks as if it will deliver
>the best results for the enthusiastic amateur as part of my
>contribution to the charity, and do the work of creating and
>maintaining the site for them.  I'll probably pay for the hosting too
>as it's a relatively modest cost.    I can buy whatever package is
>best supported by most hosters.  Would it be right to assume that
>Frontpage probably has the widest support? 

No, absolutely not. Frontpage has very poor support on shared web
hosts, and with good reason - it's a nightmare to support and
generates a disproportionate amount of trouble for the customer
services team.

Unless you know that you need a feature that can only be provided by
hosting on Windows or some other less common hosting system (such as
Ruby on Rails), then there's absolutely no need to go for anything
other than the standard LAMP environment: Linux, Apache, PHP and
(optionally) MySQL. You can maintain that using pretty much any web
authoring system, ranging from coding your own in Notepad to WYSIWYG
systems like Dreamweaver, or run a CMS such as Joomla, Drupal or
Wordpress instead if ease of maintenance is paramount.

>Speed is not an issue, I have no intention of the site being a bloated
>'experience' and its users won't be terribly demanding.  

In which case, I'd recommend Dreamhost. That's where I host most of my
live sites, and it works fine for me. If you go to their site by
following this link: <http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?281831> and sign
up then I'll get a discount on my next renewal, but even if you don't
feel like using my referrer ID then I'd still recommend them!

Mark
--
Blog: http://mark.goodge.co.uk
Stuff: http://www.good-stuff.co.uk

On Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:39:09 +0000, Dominic Sexton put finger to
keyboard and typed:
>
>Beware that if the domain name is not a .uk and you host it outside the 
>UK Google and co. will not return it in UK search results. So there is 
>more to overseas hosting than just the delays.

That's easy to fix, though, at least for Google (and it's pretty much
only Google that matters in this context), by signing up for a Google
Webmaster account. With that, you can set the target country of your
site and Google will treat it accordingly in the search results.

Mark
--
Blog: http://mark.goodge.co.uk
Stuff: http://www.good-stuff.co.uk

At 10:58:52 on Thu, 26 Feb 2009, Mark Goodge 
 wrote in 
:

>The other big question is whether you need to host in the UK, or
>whether you'd be happy with a host based in Europe or the US. If
>you're OK with the fact that the site will be a tad slower to UK
>users, then it's often a lot cheaper to host in the US. Two of my
>busiest sites are hosted in the US, and I've never had any complaints
>from users about performance despite the fact that they're targetted
>at a UK audience.

I host my American clients' sites in the US, but I host my UK clients' 
sites in the UK.  This is in fact very little to do with the nationality 
of the clients, but a great deal to do with the location of the target 
audience for the sites.  I don't want a hosting package where everything 
slows to a crawl around 9am GMT because the US host is doing overnight 
maintenance;  and I don't want Support that will not be active during 
the UK evening and night, for a site whose users only wake up around UK 
lunchtime.  So I do my best to ensure that the hours during which the 
target audience is likely to be using the site are also the hours during 
which it is likely to be up and running and Support are active in case 
of any problems.
-- 
Molly Mockford
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin
(My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)

On Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:07:40 +0000, Mark Goodge
 wrote:

> You can maintain that using pretty much any web
>authoring system, ranging from coding your own in Notepad to WYSIWYG
>systems like Dreamweaver, or run a CMS such as Joomla, Drupal or
>Wordpress instead if ease of maintenance is paramount.

I shall google Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress shortly.  Thank you :)

Mark Goodge wrote:

> (optionally) MySQL. You can maintain that using pretty much any web
> authoring system, ranging from coding your own in Notepad to WYSIWYG
> systems like Dreamweaver, or run a CMS such as Joomla, Drupal or
> Wordpress instead if ease of maintenance is paramount.

I've not played a lot with Joomla, but I still think Wordpress is 
significantly better than Drupal (just moved another site off Drupal and 
onto Wordpress myself).

Just as a post to express a preference, not suggesting they're not worth 
recommending.

-- 
Tony Evans
Saving trees and wasting electrons since 1993
blog -> http://perceptionistruth.com/
olmr -> http://www.onelinemoviereviews.co.uk/
[ anything below this line wasn't written by me ]

On Feb 26, 10:28 pm, L...@home.com wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:36:05 퍍, L...@home.com wrote:
>
> Thanks so far to 骷᪑, Philip Herlihy and Mark Goodge.
>
> I think my MAIN issue is finding a host who is likely to be in
> business for a while yet.  I don't want to leave the charity in  a
> position where they find they quickly need to find a new host and
> (like me right now) don't have a clue where to look.
>
> I appreciate no-one has a crystal ball at any time, let alone these
> days, but some of these weird and wonderful names DON'T inspire as
> much confidence as, say, "Old Fart and Sons, Est 1992 Purveyors of
> fine Bits and Bytes to the Wired Gentry".
>
> On Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:58:52 퍍, Mark Goodge
>
>  wrote:
> >>Is there a reliable, authoritative review site out there anywhere?
> >No.
>
> Hah!  A new business opportunity for someone with more wit than me,
> then!>The best source of reliable recommendations is the personal experience
> >of other customers. The best place to find that is somewhere like this
> >group.
>
> I'm glad I started in the right pace then: some of the other likely
> groups appeared a little sparse.  I guess Usenet will eventually
> wither and die under the relentless onslaught of fancy schmancy
> interfaces :(  But I digress.  Often as it happens. I must do
> something about it. Like returning to the point at hand.
>
> > You need to decide what
> >technical features you need (eg, PHP, Perl, ssh, sFTP, MySQL, etc) and
> >then look for a host which offers them, rather than looking for a
> >named provider and starting from there.
>
> Point understood.  But I have no idea what technical features are or -
> more to the point - will be needed, but I suspect few.  At the moment
> it's a modest project with few demanding requirements that will anyway
> have to be met by a package rather than by any attempt at coding
> anything at all.    
>
> I'm planning to pay for whatever package looks as if it will deliver
> the best results for the enthusiastic amateur as part of my
> contribution to the charity, and do the work of creating and
> maintaining the site for them.  I'll probably pay for the hosting too
> as it's a relatively modest cost.    I can buy whatever package is
> best supported by most hosters.  Would it be right to assume that
> Frontpage probably has the widest support?  (Horrible horrible
> software - at least the 2003 version - completely counter intuitive).
>  Ease of maintenance and update are key right now, and the only
> 'features' needed would be webmail and a paypal "donate now" button
> :).  No "forum" or anything like that envisaged.
>
I can actually now provide both web hosting and domain name
registration for not for profit organisations and community groups
(including charities).
This service is provided as an add-on service as a part of my Free Web
Design Online project, which has been in opperation since 2005.
The main aim of the project is to offer free website design services
for non profit and community organisations, however I have come to the
realisation that in order for the project to remain viable that it
needs to be self funded. All of the money that is recieved for the
hosting and domain name service will go back into funding the
project.


> >The other big question is whether you need to host in the UK, or
> >whether you'd be happy with a host based in Europe or the US. If
> >you're OK with the fact that the site will be a tad slower to UK
> >users, then it's often a lot cheaper to host in the US.
>
> Speed is not an issue, I have no intention of the site being a bloated
> 'experience' and its users won't be terribly demanding.  I'm very old
> fashioned too, inasmuch as I believe a that a website aimed at
> delivering information should do just that, and not seek
> simultaneously  to entertain or obscure the information  behind some
> really kewl new tricks or have really clever ways to navigate using
> things you'd never expect to click on if you were over 40.  You can
> guess I am.  How lovely it once was when if you could hand-code HTML
> at all then  you were as good as the next person  .... boy, are those
> days long-gone .....
>
> So, thanks chaps ... I shall continue the search .....
>
> Lewis
Lewis, I totally agree with what you have said above, too many
websites use features that are just not good  for them to use. As I
wrote in an email the other day, things like JavaScript used in the
wrong way can actually damage the useibility and the accessibility of
a website.
--
Regards Chad. http://freewebdesignonline.org

Message-ID:  from
LR@home.com contained the following:

>I think my MAIN issue is finding a host who is likely to be in
>business for a while yet.  I don't want to leave the charity in  a
>position where they find they quickly need to find a new host and
>(like me right now) don't have a clue where to look.


There may be another consideration.  You can get a hosting deal quite
cheaply as has been pointed out but, as with everything, there is a
learning curve. I have a number of clients for whom I host sites as a
managed service, in other words they have minimal interaction with the
server and I do all the other stuff.

Additionally if the host goes out of business it is not a major concern
as long as the registrar is still ok. In this case moving to a new host
is a simple matter of changing the nameservers.
-- 
Geoff Berrow

http://4theweb.co.uk - Web design, development and hosting
http://slipperyhill.co.uk - Bluegrass, blues, barn dance

On Sat, 28 Feb 2009 13:45:25 +0000, Geoff Berrow
 wrote:

>
>Additionally if the host goes out of business it is not a major concern
>as long as the registrar is still ok. In this case moving to a new host
>is a simple matter of changing the nameservers.


THANK YOU!   That's answered one of my major concerns about selecting
a host.   The only trouble is I don't quite understand what ""changing
the nameservers" would entail.  (I sort of understand what a
nameserver does, that's not the issue). Would I do this?  The
registrar?    How?

Thanks very much for clarification on this point - which probably
seems so terribly obvious to them who knows.

Message-ID:  from me here
contained the following:

>THANK YOU!   That's answered one of my major concerns about selecting
>a host.   The only trouble is I don't quite understand what ""changing
>the nameservers" would entail.  (I sort of understand what a
>nameserver does, that's not the issue). Would I do this?  The
>registrar?    How?


When you register a domain with a registrar you are usually given a log
in and access to a control panel which will allow you to change the
nameservers.
-- 
Geoff Berrow  0110001001101100010000000110
001101101011011001000110111101100111001011
100110001101101111001011100111010101101011
http://slipperyhill.co.uk - http://4theweb.co.uk

On Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:29:49 +0000, Geoff Berrow
 wrote:

>Message-ID:  from me here
>contained the following:
>
>>THANK YOU!   That's answered one of my major concerns about selecting
>>a host.   The only trouble is I don't quite understand what ""changing
>>the nameservers" would entail.  (I sort of understand what a
>>nameserver does, that's not the issue). Would I do this?  The
>>registrar?    How?
>
>
>When you register a domain with a registrar you are usually given a log
>in and access to a control panel which will allow you to change the
>nameservers.

THANK YOU again.  I have seen that mentioned, but I didn't realise it
was the registrar who would provide that facility.  That clarifies
things hugely.  Thank you.