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I'm looking for webhost advice. Not so much about *which* webhost, although suggestions are welcome.
But which kind of account I should be aiming for and how much it should cost.
I'm building two school websites as a multisite set-up (two separate sites because we have two annexes). I'm currently developing the site on a shared business account, but I'm worried what will happen when I go live and have 30 - 100 users accessing the site simultaneously:
1)
The sites will be used daily by 30 staff and 600 students, with 1200 parents viewing less regularly as guests.
2)
The content will mostly be text, images and document uploads/downloads, with 1%-3% of the nodes containing short audio/video streams of uploaded swf/flv/mp3.
3)
I'm using most of the optional core modules, and about 10 additional small, light modules, plus the more usual heavy-weights, like i18n, CCK, IMCE, FCKEditor, SWFtools (or JqueryMedia), Webform, Hierarchical Select, Views2, Quicktabs, etc.
4)
Using the IMCE module, I am hoping to give teachers 100mb of file space each, and 10mb to each of the older students. I'd feel most comfortable having 10-15gb of disk space. I can go lower though, down to about 8gb.
5)
I am used to a cpanel-11 backend for things like cron, email, subdomains, file manager (which extracts archives and compresses directories; I find this indispensable), etc and would like to keep these features (as opposed to command-line). Also, I need a fully-managed host; I don't know enough to set it up myself.
5)
The 30 teachers need pop email if they request it, currently handled by cpanel.
So the question is, can a multi-site website like this survive on a shared host for 80$ per annum and only 32mb of php memory, or do I really need to think about a managed VPS account for 300-400$ per annum? That's obviously a huge jump in price.
I really have no idea if this would be considered a 'large, busy' website, or a relatively small one.
Thanks.
Comments
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32M is pretty light I'd find a shared host that will let you bump that up at a minimum. VPS would be a better solution though and you can explain to the schools the differences between the 2.
stick with security. housed on a server with 300 neighbors their site (the schools) is affected by the neighbors on a VPS with far fewer neighbors there is less room for "stuff" to happen.
Gotta strongly agree with
Gotta strongly agree with VeryMisunderstood. Shared hosts can work well, or can work terribly. You don't have rights to any server resources - sometimes you get a lot of processor time and memory, other times you can be starved of these resources. So the performance of your site can vary wildly.
But the security issue is huge, particularly if you have sensitive student information. You have a responsibility to secure this data. Shared hosts have many clients, any of whom can open a security hole through a badly written application. Once they do, you are vulnerable. Believe me this has happened to me on more that one occasion.
Additionally, VPS is coming down in price, although you will still pay a premium for managed. The only managed account i have used is media temple, which is okay but it does use plesk rather than cpanel, which i am still getting my head around.
This sounds like a reasonably big project - the stakeholders should be will to spend the $50+ a month on hosting.
Oh, and have a backup strategy!
Thanks for your replies. >
Thanks for your replies.
> particularly if you have sensitive student information
No, no identifiable student information.
> the stakeholders should be willing to spend the $50+ a month on hosting
I am getting paid an extra 1000$ per year to develop and maintain the sites in my own time (eventually four sites: two school annexes, a saturday school and an alumni site), which isn't very much considering I've put in 400+ hours since June so far! But all other costs have to come out of that too, so you can see why I don't want to have to pay 400-500$ for VPS if I don't absolutely have to. In the beginning I thought I could get away with an 80$ per annum shared 'business' account, but Drupal seems to be a lot harder on memory and SQL than I first thought.
The website would have to prove itself as an indispensable, daily resource before I could ask for more budget.
I've written emails to DVH and hotdrupal - awaiting replies.
Based upon my experience with
Based upon my experience with Drupalvaluehosting, i could not recommend them. They have very quick servers, but i have had a lot of downtime and very little in the way of support.
Just a warning (they may have fixed up the support issue, dont really know)
VPS is the best option IMO
After messing around with a number of shared hosting I went with a VPS. VPS's allow so much control over shared and with the prices of VPS hosting coming down it's really not worth it to "not to". The time you have to spend initially to set up reaps more than enough rewards to justify it. I went with Linode about a year ago and I'm happy as a clam, Drupal just rocks on it. I still have an account with a shared hosting provider but use that mainly only for the real estate for backups of my VPS's and also for a Gallery2 site. Linode's VP's start out at $19.95 and work up from there.
There is no way I could use
There is no way I could use Linode. It would take me too many hours of research to learn about the command-line and what needs to be done to set-it up so that is it safe, secure and works, and how to fix it when things go wrong. I really need a pre-installed, fully-managed solution with a cpanel/plesk backend. I also need very quick support - if the email server is down for more than a day, it has dire, stressful consequences for our office and administration.
I've not heard back from the two companies I mentioned above. That's not good enough. My current host replies to all support emails within a couple of hours, and more usually within 30 minutes. I wish I could stay with this host actually; they are great in every respect except price. Their cheapest VPS with cpanel is £517 (759$ / 564€). Do people really pay this much for hosting anything beyond a small personal blog? I find the jump from a shared account to VPS an incredibly large increase.
BTW, here is my current host's lowest-cost VPS package, costing £517 / 759$ / 564€:
http://www.ukhost4u.com/virtual-private-servers-vps/bronze
What do you think? Is it overly expensive? I've seen cheaper (eg. easyspace), but then read mostly mediocre or bad reviews about the servers and support services.
And again, is this *really* the kind of account I'd need to run these four small school websites with Drupal?
Thanks.
They seem a bit expensive
Compared to the ones I've seen and tried out the host you posted are a bit on the expensive side. In comparison Linode quad dual core Xeon servers that I've never seen break a sweat. The 360 starts out at $19.95 USD a month, much cheaper than the host you posted. Too bad about Linode not fiting your needs, they really are an excellent host. If you don't have the skills nor the time to learn you might check into contracting the Admin out or just look for a more hands on managed provider.
As for email I just outsource my email to LuxSci, much easier than the hassle of running my own email. Excellent service and with the Premium anti-spam solution I may see one piece of spam every 3 or 4 months if I'm lucky.
Good luck
I personally recommend
I personally recommend ixwebhosting or lunarpages, they have everything that you need. I've been with them for more than 3 years, their service is top notch. I suggest you give them a call and ask them questions, you can be assured of satisfaction.
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cheap web hosting
Forget ixwebhosting. I am
Forget ixwebhosting. I am using them and it took me a one more than month long support ticket discussion to get them to finally admit that their mysql servers are crap and overloaded. They finally moved my dbs to another server and the graph on page load times from google webmaster tools went down more than 95%.
Of course a month later I am noticing page loads are slower and slower so this server is filling up as well.
I will move my hosting from them as soon as I can.
One I am looking at is http://www.uk2.net/web-hosting/. UK2 owns ANHosting that is listed as 2nd best Drupal host over at http://www.webhostingclue.com/best-drupal-web-hosting. I have no experience with wither of them myself but AN seems good, Blamcast (running drupalmodules.com) recommend them http://blamcast.net/articles/drupal-hosting...
UK2 also own vps.net that offers VPS from $10...
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@tsvenson
I also think that a VPS would
I also think that a VPS would work better. My advice is to call/ send main to some of the web hosts which are part of Drupal community. There are many reputable brands here. An objective would be to get a customized VPS.
You can choose hostgator or
You can choose hostgator or midphase shared hosting considering the budget you have. But it would be good to spend a little more to get a VPS hosting,
Thanks for all the replies
Thanks for all the replies and advice so far.
I think I'll have to go with a VPS account, and have seen three other companies I like:
· Wiredtree
· ServInt
· KnownHost
All three seem to be great hosts, with excellent support service. And they'll save between $150 - $200 per annum compared with the uk host I linked to above. WiredTree has the most suitable package, and is the one I get a good gut feeling about. Two things worry me though:
1)
Wiredtree is only three years old. Is it wiser to choose one of the older companies, even if they are a little less suitable? Perhaps they're less suitable *because* they're older and so their services and packages are more sustainable?
2)
All these hosts are in USA. Our primary user-base is in Spain, and to a lesser extent the rest of Europe. Should I really be looking for a European host, or does the distance across the Atlantic not make any real difference?
EDIT:
3)
A reply from wiredtree stated that I'd need more than 384mb of php memory if I had more than about 40 simultaneous users, and suggested I'd be better off with a hybrid server!!?? I find this hard to believe. Opinions please!
Thanks.
I think you should get a VPS
I think you should get a VPS or atleast a server that is shared with very very few people. Like 4-5.
Thanks for all the replies. I
Thanks for all the replies.
I got a VPS with eukhost.com
· Fully managed
· Web Space - 15 GB
· Monthly Bandwidth - 300 GB
· Guaranteed RAM - 384MB
· £216 240€ 315$ per annum
· If the site crawls or baulks with 50 simultaneous users, the next package is:
30GB/400GB/512mb for about £310 345€ 450$, which is 'manageable'.
Hardware:
Dual CPU Quad Core Intel
Xeon E5420 2.5 GHZ
2x2x6 MB CPU cache
12 GB DDR2 RAM
2x750 GB SATA Hard Disk
Hardware RAID 1
100 Mbps Switch port
2N + 1 UPS System
NAS Backup Storage
Not only are they cheaper than most of the other fully-managed VPS I looked at, their support totally blows all of the others out of the water, which is what I was primarily looking for. Also the fact that they're in Europe is very handy.
If they can keep their servers fast and functioning, I'll be very happy!
Cheers.