By sagar ramgade on

hi,

I am planning to host a site, and very curios about certain things.They mentioned as below :

1.If i take unlimited bandwidth and space plans on shared server, is it good for really high traffic which may have 5000 users online at a time and millions of page views.
2.My site will also contain gallery feature like images, videos, audios, comments, ratings.I really can't afford to have a dedicated or virtual sever because they are really expensive. My budget will be maximum $15/month.
3.After a lot of research i found few web hosting companies like
AN hosting
Hostgater
hostmonster
Dreamhosting
Bluehosting

4. If i chose one of those companies do they give access to system files like php.ini or my.cnf so that i can tweak them according to my needs.
5.I needed a gist regarding this shared hosting, whats the maximum pageviews and visitors/ month one can have if there site is residing on share hosting without slow surfing experience.
6.Are their servers secured, reliable, or they kick you off if your site has lot of traffic and can handle it.
7.Hows the customer support.
Can anyone help me regarding this.

Cheers
Sagar

Comments

Bobby1290’s picture

Bobby1290 commented

Answers

1. NO

2.OK, I don't get this, 5000 users online and your budget is $15!? are these users real or is this just what you've calculated?

3. Personally I use bluehost for low traffic sites on a shared hosting environment (notice the "low traffic").
If you use something like boost or another caching system (that caches html) you can scale up quite high, but then we are talking mostly 'anonimous' users.

4. php.ini; yes some do. my.cnf;most don't, but you can configure your virtual host in some sort of 'control panel'.

5. depends on what you are doing, some drupal modules will get you over your limit with one user, html or cached html could do quite well.

6. I would not store credit card numbers on them, and if you go over your timeslice allotment they will suspend your site/account temporarily.

7. I have great experiences with bluehost, but then again I do most things myself.

If you are starting out a site, I would say go shared.
Once you have some growth, you can alwas go mosso or rackspace.

If you are migrating a site with 5000 users online simultaneously, then I would start looking in reverse order, because then I suppose you would have some sort of revenue (even the simplest adsense could work wonders with those numbers)

Hope this helps, and good luck.

sagar ramgade’s picture

sagar ramgade commented

i will be starting a new site that's why low on budget, those 5000 users are my calculation.I am really skeptical about the hosting companies because my firm has one dedicated server from softlayer and platinum manages the server, we have lot of issues, its a quadcore, 4gb ram, and we have some 1000 visitors a day and 6k pageviews/day. The server doesnt respond every 7-8 hrs when we check whm panel it shows our mysql has 16% cpu usage and 2.7 memory usage, is there any misconfiguration or we need to optimise drupal.
I truly have a dream of getting a website which has 5000 visitors a day.I have decided to first host on shared server and once it starts generating good revenue i can think of dedicated.

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Bobby1290’s picture

Bobby1290 commented

Check out Server tuning considerations and there is also Brief Drupal Optimization Tips.

I also use http://www.nagios.org/ for monitoring and there is a module for it.

Good Luck.

Bobby1290’s picture

Bobby1290 commented

double post

ajsloan’s picture

ajsloan commented

I used Bluehost for 5 years and just left because of bad service and my site being offline because of issues on their side.

Bobby1290’s picture

Bobby1290 commented

@ajsloan;
In no way am I a bluehost fanboy but.... as shared hosts go they aren't the worst. Looking at the whole thread about bluehost that you started at http://drupal.org/node/360773 I get the feeling that some people just expect too much from shared hosts (see my previous answers to the o.p.).

And you state that "I've been with Bluehost since they began in 2003 and until recently have received pretty good service."

If you search the web, there are similar threads for all shared hosting companies, reality is that a shared hosting account can not act as a replacement for dedicated hosting needs.

I repeat; my general attitude towards all shared hosts is to move to a dedicated or cloud solution when you start hitting their limits, they are very useful for LOW CPU USAGE sites (and of course, stay well within their terms of use, or go elsewhere).

@Sagar Ramgade;
You are most welcome, and I think "I have decided to first host on shared server and once it starts generating good revenue i can think of dedicated." is a good starting point.
Don't forget "boost module" or any other html caching.

Kaumil’s picture

Kaumil commented

I believe you should re-consider the options that you have mentioned there. The reason is simple, they are oversellers and restrict heavy usage, which Drupal can have sometimes.

Bobby1290’s picture

Bobby1290 commented

Don't think so, but I might use your cloud hosting for an upcomming non-critical project, the proof is in the pudding, and your price is good.

But lets leave the marketing behind and back to the topic. (Massive amounts of concurrent users on shared hosting)

With drupal on bluehost I have seen diggs and not gone under, just optimize your drupal (do away with monster query modules, and lower your block count),
then (with boost/aggressive caching/throttle) essentially just turn all your traffic into anonymous users for the duration of the DoS... erm ... digg.

If you got dugg and weren't prepared just use lynx, or wget and grab a static version of the page and put it in place of the dynamic one (and do 'something' with the logged in users and the login page).

Diggs only last so long so this is warranted.
For consistent high traffic, shared hosting is unusable.

Just my 2 cents.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion of course.

tntfactory’s picture

tntfactory commented

I use Kwel Hosting http://www.kwelhosting.com for some time now, and have been more then satisfied with the performances. With low and reasonable prices and 99.99% of server uptime I managed to solve everlasting quest for good hosting provider. Also, they have one of the cheapest domain name prices on the web, together with many more interesting features. I suggest you all to try it guys! :)