Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
something is going bonkers on your server in the middle of the night, in most cases you
can hop on a text chat with a technician in a matter of minutes and get your problem
taken care of swiftly. Out of all the hosting companies I have used in the past,Dreamhost
has been one of my favorites when it comes to getting help when you need it.
1and1
Switching authors (Jon here), it's now time to hear about my web host for the past six
years, 1and1. 1and1 is actually a fairly large host which has lukewarm reviews by most
in the industry. It's not the best (although it is debatable who is), and it's not the worst.
Many of the features Dreamhost offers, which Rocco discussed, are also available from
1and1 (and many other hosts, for that matter), so I feel it's probably best to simply
outline what I find truly useful about 1and1. That falls into two categories:
documentation and reliability. Documentation refers to the 1and1 FAQ section, which
surprised me by having in the general questions that detailed information I wrote about
earlier. I was having an issue with a script, and was amazed when the 1and1 FAQ site
had very specific information about the server setup, PHP version, and available
software. I was able to debug my problem without having to write a long, complicated e-
mail. The second feature I really have liked about 1and1 is the reliability of my service.
While no one can boast 100% uptime (the industry standard term for a server or service
being available), from what I've seen 1and1 gets pretty close. As a bottom-of-the-list
client (i.e., I pay around $9 a month on a basic shared hosting package), it wouldn't
surprise me if I had spotty service here and there. In fact, the opposite has happened—
my sites have remained up without much fail the entire time I've been there.
If you're considering another host and want to know how it does in reliability, you might
find a friend or person on a forum who uses it and ask what their domain name is. From
there, I'd suggest setting up a free account with a service such as Pingdom
( http://www.pingdom.com ), an uptime monitoring service. Pingdom will let you monitor one
web site for free, so go ahead and point it at your friend's web site. After a few weeks or
months, you'll have reports you can consult to see if the host is reliably up or not.
So there you have it, 1and1 has been reliable and thorough for me. Now back to Rocco
to discuss one last host!
Media Temple
Another hosting company that I (Rocco) have used in the past, and the third one I will
discuss with you in this chapter, is an industry favorite called Media Temple
( http://mediatemple.net/ ). In a lot of ways the services Media Temple offers can be
considered better than Dreamhost for a more technical user. Media Temple offers an
expanse of solutions, beginning withthe basic Grid Server package (see Figure 13-10),
which hosts your site on a cluster with hundreds of other servers powering that cluster.
It also offers dedicated virtual servers, as Dreamhost does, and a wide range of very
powerful dedicated servers.
 
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