[SERIOUS] Web Hosting

[CodedFire]

Hi guys,

Ok im new to building websites in general but have a bit of experience so i wouldnt say im a complete beginner. Anway, The last site i had was from this crowd www.letshost.ie which i found really good. They use linux servers and mysql for databases.

Im currently working on a new personal site but would also like the ability to host applications etc that i make via asp.net 3.5. I know they need to be hosted on a windows server. But my question is can php sites etc be hosted on a windows server as well? Basicly im looking for the features listed from letshost.ie with the addition of being able to put applications and pages i make with asp.net up also.

Sorry if this sounds a bit retarded ive never used a windows host before. Any suggestions on hosts?

PS i would also like if they accepted paypal payment rather than straight of my credit card but thats not essential!

[mendhak]

Yes, PHP can run on Windows servers under IIS. They were nice enough to come out with a Win as well as a Lin version.

Jodohost offers ASP.NET + PHP. Netfirms. discountasp.net(? check their site), aspspider.com (? check their site).

[CodedFire]

Is this the sort of thing i need?

http://www.netfirms.com/enterprise-hosting/enterprise-hosting-one/

It seems very cheap for a "dedicated" server. Also it says it has 2.0 framework on it. Because its "my" server can i upgrade that to 3.5 framework? The idea is i could have my site a bit of forum software for support and some sample or full asp.net applications installed so people could use them. Kind of like a portfolio of sorts. I know i could just have them download the apps, but this will also help me learn about installation of asp applications and servers. would this package be overkill? What would you recommend. Thanks for the advice.

[mendhak]

Yes, cheap. Their tech support is awful, worst I've ever encountered. Features are good. I don't think you can upgrade it to 3.5, I don't believe they'll allow it.

I suggest, if you want your own server, you check out jodohost.

[kleinma]

netfirms is totally horrible. stay away...

I host 3 sites with discountasp.net, and I can tell you they are pretty reliable and are VERY focused on MS technologies, and they do offer PHP on their IIS servers. I really have no complaints about them.

orcsweb is probably the best hosting I have used, however its pretty expensive.

[RobDog888]

Basically, you get what you pay for. Services are competitive and you can get free services some places but you will probably suffer with their support when you need them. If its personal projects/sites then you can surive but I would never suggest running anything business like on one of those "free" sites.

[mendhak]

netfirms is totally horrible. stay away...

I host 3 sites with discountasp.net, and I can tell you they are pretty reliable and are VERY focused on MS technologies, and they do offer PHP on their IIS servers. I really have no complaints about them.

orcsweb is probably the best hosting I have used, however its pretty expensive.
How is discountasp.net's tech support? How often have you had to call them?

[kleinma]

I have never had to call them. I don't even know if they have a readily available 800 number to be honest.

The few times I have had any sort of issue, I have opened up a ticket from within the hosting control panel on their site, and have gotten a resonse within 30 minutes pretty much all of the time.

So they are quick to respond even via the email channels.

As for the actual issues I have had to contact them about, it was usually email related, however they have moved their mail system to new server software and its been good since that.

They also have a forum on their site for "outages and maintenance" and they post there whenever there is something going on, scheduled or not.

[mendhak]

I have never had to call them. I don't even know if they have a readily available 800 number to be honest.

The few times I have had any sort of issue, I have opened up a ticket from within the hosting control panel on their site, and have gotten a resonse within 30 minutes pretty much all of the time.

So they are quick to respond even via the email channels.

As for the actual issues I have had to contact them about, it was usually email related, however they have moved their mail system to new server software and its been good since that.

They also have a forum on their site for "outages and maintenance" and they post there whenever there is something going on, scheduled or not.
Wish I'd asked about it earlier. I ( :cry: ) chose Netfirms and have been regretting it ever since. Sure, it works on the most basic level as long as you don't attempt to do anything fancy.

Once in a while, they'll make changes to their servers without telling you about it. Tech support calls are pointless. I wait 45 minutes for someone to talk to (I call international as well, from the UK to Canada) and the person at the other end has no clue about "virtual directories", or "web.config"... anything at all.

I was about to go with discountasp.net, the only reason I didn't is their front page. Look at it (http://discountasp.net/)! I thought it was cluttered and that they may be trying to sell things they didn't necessarily have.

One more question - do they run in a medium trust environment or full trust?

[RobDog888]

30 minutes is sloooow but good for email response time. What if you had a critical issue? 30 minutes would be an eternity.

I call in for any issues and get to talk to tech support technicians in less then 1 minute. This includes ring time and eveerything.

[kleinma]

I agree about their page. It almost looks like you don't want to trust them because they have too much crap cluttering up the page.

The original reason I went with them, was simply because they supported payflowpro from verisign (now paypal) for credit card processing. We had a payflowpro account and needed to move hosts, so we needed to find out that supported this COM based API.

They really know their stuff with MS technologies and are one of the first hosts out there I see putting out new stuff when its available. They have offered free hosting for IIS6 and IIS7 when they were in beta to get your feet wet in production environments prior to their release.

There is a small amount of nickel and diming I would say compared to some other hosts, but I suppose you do get what you pay for

Like if you want SQL Server, its 10 bucks a month. If you want SSL, its 10 bucks a month (plus you buy the cert). However its 90 bucks for the 1st year of hosting, and 120 subsequent years, which is not a lot to pay for great hosting and email for an entire year.

However you do get more control over your stuff, which is really key.

Lots of hosts don't allow connections to the SQL Server from outside of "localhost". Godaddy is known for this. discountasp allows me to connect directly to the SQL Server from anywhere, so I can have winforms apps that interact with my web database with ease.

I can tell you the control panel for your site looks nothing like their front page, and is pretty intuitive and even has a freakin API if you want to write front ends to do stuff to your hosting account programmatically.

My only dealings with netfirms have been with customers who have hosting there and then want me to revamp their sites. I always try to move the host somewhere else, just to get more control over what is going on. Also as you said, the 2 times I contacted netfirms support, I wanted to hang myself.

[mendhak]

Brilliant, this is great information (sorry CodedFire). Also, about their trust settings... is it medium trust or full trust?

[kleinma]

30 minutes is sloooow but good for email response time. What if you had a critical issue? 30 minutes would be an eternity.

I call in for any issues and get to talk to tech support technicians in less then 1 minute. This includes ring time and eveerything.

Sometimes even not getting email to me is critical, and that happened one time to us. It took 30 minutes to get a response, but the response was "we are aware of this already and it is being resolved, no email is being lost at this time", and sure enough in about 15 more minutes I got all my mail from the past hour.

Generally if there is an issue, they are already aware of it, and issuing a ticket doesn't speed anything up. So now I always just check their forum first to see if there is already an entry on what is going on, and if not I will post a ticket.

All in all, between 3 sites, I have posted maybe 4 tickets in 3 years.

[RobDog888]

Well when I do call its more of an "How do I" rather then a "Its broken" type issue. :D

I may have to check it out for ASP.NET hosting though. :thumb:

[kleinma]

I know for IIS7 hosting, the default is medium trust, and you can override to full trust via web.config

[CodedFire]

Brilliant, this is great information (sorry CodedFire). Also, about their trust settings... is it medium trust or full trust?

Actually this is good information for me to. So it sounds like discount asp offer solutions at the right price with a bearable tech support. So let me get this straight. if i say wanted to build a website in asp host a vbulletin forum and install custom made applications i can do this from them?

[kleinma]

You could email them to find out, but I would say yes I think so.

You can certainly host an asp/asp.net website
You can host PHP pages and also MySQL which I believe is all vBulletin requires
As for "custom made applications" I am not sure what you mean by this. Unless you have a dedicated server with whatever host, there is generally little chance they will install anything that is global to the system for you (this being anything COM based that would need to be registered on the system etc..)

[mendhak]

Actually this is good information for me to. So it sounds like discount asp offer solutions at the right price with a bearable tech support. So let me get this straight. if i say wanted to build a website in asp host a vbulletin forum and install custom made applications i can do this from them?
For most of your intents and purposes, yes you will be able to do that.

The best part is full trust. It means you can create and call web services, use Reflection and ASP.NET AJAX.

[CodedFire]

What i mean by custom made applications are. asp.net applications. They wont do anything functionally. They will demonstrate how an app would work for a company. bear in mind i don't know a lot about asp.net applications.

[kleinma]

DiscountASP.NET even lets you create user accounts on the windows server... That makes it easy to setup various permissions for webservices. You don't just get 1 master set of admin credentials to spew all over the place in your code.

So you can actually write a webservice to be consumed by lets say a winforms app, and then create a user account on the server (via site control panel) that only has credentials to interact with that webservice, and not to lets say, delete all the files in your FTP...

They have a demo of their control panel. Not sure if any functions are disabled, but you can see what they let you do with your account.
https://demo.discountasp.net/

[CodedFire]

does this mean if i had a web service i made that reports how im feeling today for example. i could host that on the site and consume it from any application that used it.

[kleinma]

What i mean by custom made applications are. asp.net applications. They wont do anything functionally. They will demonstrate how an app would work for a company. bear in mind i don't know a lot about asp.net applications.
Yes, they have a "web application utility" so you can select any directory in your directory tree and make it an application so you can host an ASP.NET app in that folder. I know some hosts only give you an application on the root, which can be very limited.

[kleinma]

does this mean if i had a web service i made that reports how im feeling today for example. i could host that on the site and consume it from any application that used it.
yes.

My commercial WinForm applications use a webservice to communicate with my SQL Server hosted with discountasp. This is how my WinForms apps do authentication and verify subscrptions.

[CodedFire]

Wow i think we have a winner so. PS, i think this topic belongs in General Developer (it also means i can deal out reps)

[CodedFire]

Thanks guys, reps away. looked at that orcs place $300 !!!! they must be using gold plated servers!

[mendhak]

Nice one kleinma, I've also decided to switch. You ought to become a marketing exec for that company. :D

[kleinma]

They do have a referral program. I didn't even mention it because I did not want you to think I was just suggesting it because of the program. If you do want, you can enter my referral ID which is KLEINMA. I will not feel bad if you don't though. I think its 50 bucks.

I do hope it works out for you. I have used at least 6 hosts, and so far, discountasp has been the easiest to work with, mostly because I never run in to the "you can't do that on our servers" situation. I am sure that situation does exist, it is just harder to find it versus some other hosts, where it crops up everytime you try to do something more than host static HTML.

[CodedFire]

Well i will be signing up with them shortly and will certainly put you down as the referal point. Its only fair. I wouldnt have pick them otherwise.

[Paul M]

I use, ReliableSite.Net (http://reliablesite.net/) very good. Never had any real problems so can't say much with tech support. Anyway their cheap and allows ASP.NET 3.5 :D

[CodedFire]

Do they allow full trust and php?

[CodedFire]

Well paul i went with your guys in the end because discount asp does not support mysql databases anymore. Have to say the control panel is pretty clean, just installing vbulletin now. Damn takes and age!

[CodedFire]

Had to get a refund from your guys paul. Couldn't get vBulletin installed because i couldnt elevate rights of my mysql database users. When i sent a ticket i got no response and know am having trouble logging into parts of their site. So all in all to much hassle.

Its an awful pity i cant get a mySQL database on discountasp.net. Anyone els any idea's?

[RudiVisser]

I'll host you on one of our servers and match whatever other shared provider you find if you can't find anyone else to do this.

[CodedFire]

Rudi i would like to take you up on that offer. Would you like me to pm what i currently need?

[RudiVisser]

I've replied to your PM.

If you're on MSN, you can find my address in my profile, it may be quicker to discuss there.