looking for host advice (no host people)
 

hi need a higher bw host than i got to do some tpging

only non host board members need give advice

no host people just webmasters

must be good priced and good service and offer good surport

and if your a gallery maker how much bw should i need to start

thanks

M3 Server has hosted all my stuff for some years now and I'm very happy with them. Check out the drop down menu in my sig for their link with my affiliate code. :)

I like phatservers. I know many that use Nationalnet, extremerack.

If you are looking for a real good provider, in a country where you never will run in any problem with porn and who has enough bandwith to host you (4GB) then I would recommend

Paw Kaas Petersen
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I would think twice about a Cobalt Raq server. I found them to be a bit shit.

I would suggest Cyberwurx (http://www.cyberwurx.com) great people, nice rates, and fantastic above and beyond service. Been with them over 5 years and never had a problem.

|peace|

I have been with a variety of providers over time and have made about every mistake possible. Right now, I use several hosts that have been proven to be good over time (I really prefer to not be dependent on a single network or ip cblock)..The best in my experience...

xxxwebhosting.com - Good service at a high value price + they have their own network as well as being tied into a redundant datacenter network.

xcite.net - Ask for a quote on a box. In an above.net network datacenter - good.


webair.com - Good value on the nac network which is pretty fair.

Two other good providers with pretty fair pricing are isprime.com )don't put scripts on their shared service) and oxeo.com.

As for good providers at cheap prices and good for static content, I would try candidhosting.com. I had all my tgp galleries and most free sites hosted there until recently. We only moved because we bought our own server and are colocating it in the Planet datacenter in Dallas.

FWIW, the providers mentioned by others above all have good reputations as well. If you are hosting galleries, I think it comes down to pricing and connectivity with any reputable host. For more mission critical items, there are other things you want consider. But it is pretty hard to crash a server with static content. As long as your software updates and reboots are done regularly (which any host mentioned thus far will do) uptime is almost totally dependent on the network.

As for bandwidth, it all depends...

1. The type of galleries you build.

2. Who you submit to

3. How often do you submit..

I know that does not answer your question, but we burn about 2000 gigs per month on galleries and we only submit 3 times per week. Some people submit every day and use less. There are quite a few variables.

Personally, I would start with an affordable dedicated plan ($160 to $200 per month) and make certain there is a resonable charge for excess bandwidth (.70 to $1.00 per gig if you are using managed services - there may be some with lower prices right now) and go from there. If you do a good job with your galleries, you will pay for the server within 20 days, and the whole thing (because some tgps are backed up a month or more on reviews) build steam from there...that's the best advice I can give ya'.

whitey,

Good post. I'll be taking a hard look at both webair.com and xxxadulthost.com as they are physically located close to where I live right now.

Another question is how much bandwidth a host will provide...

webair states unmetered, but as a business plan that can't really be kept up and I'm curious how stable the serving can be.

xxxadulthost has 3.75Mbps / 1200GB Monthly on the low plan ($ 139 Monthly) and double that on the step up for 7Mbps / 2300GB ($249/month). Double the RAM as well.

Though, I wonder how well an IDE drive would do. RAID 1 is offered for $50/mo more.

Their main data centers are both within driving distance... xxxadulthost less than 10 minutes away in the same city.

Oh- regarding your own sites...do you notice a spike in traffic during weekends or is it fairly even?

I recommend Oxeo.

OXEO Rocks.. their tech support is great and zero down time.. i mean in the year we've been with them it's less than 10 minutes total.

2 words:

National Net

I will never host anyplace else :)

Unfortunately, I need Windows+MS SQL Server 2000 as my apps are .NET based.

This narrows my host options down quite a bit.

BTW, I have 5,505 pics...698MB...68 picture sets.

I purchased content with niches/fetishes in mind to promote instead of going for just what turns me on.

Some sets overlap in niches/fetishes and I will probably edit down sets of redundant pics.

Since this will be a FREE site initially, I wonder if I am giving away too much. OTOH, with each set I can promote a different site, potentially leading to more sales.

Even with HTTP Compression (it's mostly JPG bandwidth, but every bit counts) and hotlink protection I'm concerned about bandwidth/speed issues.

I think I can leave out 30% or so of all the content I have without degrading the spectrum of possible sales.

Guess I'll just post a request here after I get a rough draft of the site done to ask for opinions.

PS- I'm still looking for a Puffy Nipples site to promote and haven't come across much of anything. This is really surprising since the OV Suggestion Tool gives pretty good numbers for 'puffy nipples'.

Alpha:

National-net, which GG mentioned is excellent for mission critical stuff. One of the highest service providers around.

But I am curious as to why you would run a window server for free site service (just curious as you usually need more server power, and cost, to accomplish many of the thing unix boxes will do). Maybe you can substitute or do without some of those .NET apps? Just a thought.

Those xxxadulthost prices seem damn good which is important for a free site. It appears that they are a colocated provider with above.net as their primary connectivity (above.net is good). The servers are in NY and have good ping times from both the westcoast and Europe...

Also keep in mind that their prices on dedicated appear to be unmanaged as they only mention server monitoring on their site (those prices are compatible with a wide variety of unmanaged providers). If you feel comfortable with sever and dns admin, you may also want to check out servermatrix.com. We are colocated at their facility - thePlanet - and that facility has some of the most premier bw providers around coming into it. The ping times to Europe will beat most East Coast dcs and to Asia most west coast dcs.

Also, if you go unmanaged, make certain that you are familiar with the webserver management routines or there is a WHM interface such as Windows Server or cpanel for unix - I don't see these things mentioned in the xxxadulthost.com materials.

We have unix and apache skills on staff (allowing us to operate a shell server) so we may give xxxadulthost.com a try as the prices for a 3.75 Mbs line are good and we have a new project coming up.

As far as unmetered vs. a fixed pipeline, it all depends on managing your bw. I prefer 10Mbs pipelines burstable to 100Mbs. I am sure that xxxadulthost.com operates similarly (which means similarly to webair's definition of unmetered), so you should check the bw overage costs. We are slowly moving away from shared pipe plans to fixed pipe arrangements as there is more control over the business and costs. But you have to manage carefully as you do not want your site to be slow or unreachable.

I did consider it early on...but no- cannot move away from the platform. I use Storefront 6 for Ecommerce and a superb classic ASP forum that is slowly becoming .NET. There is now a superb photo gallery feature which will just get better over time. All pics are dynamically resized as I upload for thumbs and slideshow viewing. Many features abound and it has excellent support.

Yeah. :)

Really...I just won't know the needs of the site until it launches. Instinct tells me to go with that second plan so I don't need to worry too much. To make up for LL lag time I'll be initiating an Overture and AdWords campaign as smartly as I can.

The goal is to get some branding out there and feedback from my user base as it establishes itself. I'll essentially allow the users to pick the content until I can go with custom shoots.

Since users can comment on and rate individual pictures...I will have a clear idea of what people want in a very specific manner.

As the user base grows and provides feedback I should get any kinks worked out...while it is free. Hopefully I pick good sponsors and get some cash coming in by 2nd month. By end of month 3 I should have a good idea whether I can transition to a paid side of my site. Perhaps, it will be better to leave as a free site after all I read...but at least I'll know for sure by that time. No guessing involved. :)

Thanks...I did have servermatix in my fav's. I like their $199 Server - SuperRAID plan.

I'll most likely have SQL Server on another host that is on the west coast and an all Windows 2003 network.

I sorta lean toward xxxadulthost and webair initially because I can be there in a few minutes to 'make things happen'.

Yep- I have a little check list I'm making. Back in the day...I was NT4, Networking Essentials and Win95 certified. Had a fair amount of hands-on experience, but have forgotten most of the basics.
:(

Actually looking forward on bringing those skills up to snuff. :)

I have kick ass server hardware and a well tweaked environment on the mind. East Coast, West Coast, Asia and perhaps the U.K. on a DNS Managed system with SQL Clustering. ;)

But...one baby step at a time as it can just plain fail.

Have a time frame on that? Would be nice to chat with someone who has been with them. It'll take me about a month before I am ready to launch.

Hmm.

http://www.xxxadulthost.com/dedicated_select.asp?plan=1

Does this not mean they throttle the bandwidth to those server's at 3.75Mbps?

Being in that their plans go 3.75, 7, then 10Mbps it would seem they cap the servers, no?

I also consider- if I went with the 7Mbps plan then it would be stupid to stick with an IDE drive and really RAID 1 would be a no brainer. Why up the amount of BW if the HD cannot handle it?

BTW, have you ever looked into a caching solution?

Yeah- sure need to look into Overage charges.

Yep- but the control over your own environment especially if you have competent people on staff is a huge piece of mind.

National Net can handle Windows servers - Consumption Junction is currently using them at Nat Net & they have a shitload of traffic :)

It will probably be a month before we want to bring an East Coast self managed server on line.

It seems like you do alot of soft fetish. All I do is soft fetish/softcore. There are alot of European customers for that type of site, that is why I want the next self managed server to be at an East Coast DC.

Keep me informed; maybe there is some way we can collaborate on other areas, link exchanges, etc.

Servint is about 4 miles from Washington, DC. I've never used them but you could ask Tommy and Rob.

I've been using XXXWebhosting for my most stuff and the support is great. I can call at any time and there's someone there. After 3 years I've had a few issues but they've been small and things were fixed fast.

I do use Phatservers for TGP traffic. I tried XXX for that but Phatservers is cheaper and I'm finding more and more Hosted galleries and TGP domains there.

Can we keep this post on file and send it yor way at a later date |greenguy|

Yep- but...

"Thanks for your inquiry. We do support Windows server, however, we don't provide licensing, so if you did host your site(s) with us, it would be your responsibility to provide the licenses for both the Windows operating system and the SQL server software. If this is something you can provide, then let me know and we can come up with a price on hosting."

Cha-ching. :(

>>>It seems like you do alot of soft fetish. All I do is soft fetish/softcore. There are alot of European customers for that type of site, that is why I want the next self managed server to be at an East Coast DC.<<<

More yes than no...at least on the domain in my signature.

>>>Keep me informed; maybe there is some way we can collaborate on other areas, link exchanges, etc.<<<

Will do. I typically only hang out here. :)

M3 Server has Windows servers. They would probable be really glad to find some webmasters that actually preferred Windows.

Thanks Cleo. But:

http://www.m3server.com/dedicated/plans.asp

Prices seem very high along with the Overage fees. It's always good to have options though.

I've had great luck with Cyberwurx dedicated hosting for years now. I also have my own server.

Whatever hosting you choose make sure you have them backup your files regularly. :)

Thanks for All The replys people now all i have to do is check them all out and decide thats another project

thanks all

www.extremerack.com

Tell them John sent you, no it's not our company or connected to us, they are simply the hosting company that keeps us connected.

Ive been with them for 3 years, love the Icq Support, Live Support Online Features, Up time has yet to be met by any other host Ive ever had, and the proffesionalism and price are top notch.