Completely confused on what type of hosting setup to choose

The Grand Potentate

Well-known member
Can anyone possibly provide me some advice on this as I have no ****ing clue what I'm doing. I just purchased my Xen license (yay!) and registered my domain. Now I need to pick a host setup and I can't make heads or tails of what type of resources, bandwith, etc. I might need. I'm expecting to start out small, but have a LARGE amount of pictures posted on the site. No idea about how many people on at one time. Suggestions? I'm based in the US.
 
Start with something small, as you can always upgrade later. Go over to Hostgator and get the starter shared hosting plan. After you get that, login to your domain manager (where you bought your domain) and setup your names servers to point to Hostgator. It's usually something like NS101.hostgator.com & NS102.hotgator.com (they will give you this with the welcome email). Then you have to wait a few hours for things to propagate.
 
I've been reading around and it seems that there are a number of complaints about HostGator and their customer service and sales tactics.
 
Rambro I can't recommend xfhost.me enough.

It's done by a member here, Mike Edge, and he gives the best service I've ever known in my 15 years online as a web admin. His hosting is designed exactly for XF sites but you can have others if you want.
He'll install or import free and he's patient and courteous and quick on support. I did not have to repeat instructions and he's easy to contact.
The technical side of it gets high praise from those who know better than me. Mike has an extremely impressive background prior to XF and he knows XF backwards.

I do not gain financially or any other way from my recommendation: I am just a very happy client who Mike rescued from a hosting horror story.
 
Here is a rule of thumb regarding shared hosting: Don't use the most popular host. Don't be fooled by misleading advertising and numbers. And if possible, don't use US hosting. You are most likely to get thrown in a overcrowded bowl of people who slow down your website if you use a big shared hosting company like hostgator.

The most recommended plan should be a VPS from a european host. And if you can afford it, a managed VPS. Language barriers should not be an issue for you. German hosts all speak english and generally have quality hardware and are very affordable.
 
I have switched some sites over to Rathosting as they are small and you can't beat the cost IMO. Performance has been superior to any other shared host that I have used in that price range.
 
i´ve been using hostgator for the last 6 years and have no complaints what so ever... Im using the baby shared plan (the starter plan and the cheapeast plan) for a small community of 250 visitors (unique ip's) a day...
The good thing about hosts is that you can always switch to another one if you are not happy... So no need to worry... you'll be ok...
 
it's such a big help to have a host who knows all about XF and advises me.
For example I'm currently unsure about a couple of addons. I know I'll get good advice from Mike.

If you're a savvy admin who knows all about servers n stuff then yes the above advice is good - though xfhost is also handling really big sites with high level hosting.

For a beginner admin or one who is not a developer, you need good personal service, and knowledge of XF. That's what counts.
 
A lot of XF sites use Nimbus Hosting who get very good reviews. They're UK based so that might be an issue for you but I'd still readily recommend them.
 
Well other than xfhost.me site being down I can't say enough good things about the company. My site is hosted with them (mine is currently working) and I have only had one little issue and it was not anything Mike could control. Had a hardware issue with the server I was on. Because his servers are clustered he moved my site to a different server and boom it was instantly working again. Didn't have to change nameservers or anything. His prices are reasonable for what you are getting but you are also getting someone that is knowledgeable with xF and can/will fix most issues you are having.

I was on a managed VPS and really liked it but I switched over and believe it or not my site is faster than it was on the VPS. Running the SQL server from the solid state drives makes reading and writing faster so that is a plus. Also considering he has memcache installed for everyone also speeds things up. I recommend going with a private memcache port so that way it's like having your own memcache server and not having to share it with other sites.

Again I am very pleased with xfhost.me and I recommend anyone that is looking to start up a community with xF to use his service. Support in phenomenal!
 
There was a time on the blaze server where it messed up and couldn't get it to work right. Been moved to nitro and no problems at all after. Blaze I believe was the first server Mike had. Don't understand why xfhost.me is down currently though.
 
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