1) I have heard that is best to host your site near where you live. I have been thinking of HostGator but they are in Texas and I am in Southern Ontario, Canada? 2) Plus I read on this forum that if someone were to go with HostGator that it is advisable to go with VPS Control Panel. There are 9 levels of VPS. Is it okay to start at Level 1 and then move up to different levels as the website starts to attract more clients? 3) What about a separate IP for my website? Is that recommended? 4) Also, I saw in a post in installation problems http://www.68classifieds.com/forums...ips-moving-68-classifieds-sites-new-host.html that you advised the person to put this code in their head section to indicate they are U.K. based... <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-GB" /> What would the code be for Canada? 5) I have an account with Bluehost with a bunch of domains of wordpress blogs that don't need much room.....but it is my understanding that Bluehost do not have accounts for high volume websites and I have read in some reviews on google that a lot of people have had problems with Bluehost having lots of downtime as the size of their site increases? Any one else heard this? My site is not even up yet, so I don't have any traffic yet, but in the event it does take off and I do manage to attract a high volume of customers...wouldn't it better to start off with a good host, near where you live, with close to 99.9% uptime, rather then begin from a cheap hosting package that has more problems? Thanks, in advance Alle
For 68C I recommend Hostgator and I live in France and my main classifieds site is for U.K. visitors. If you use G webmaster site maps you can quite easily specify your audience preference and as you have noticed you can give an indication in the header of layout.tpl. I would not worry about it too much. Hostgator is a great choice. You don't have to have VPS unless you think you will have a lot of traffic quickly. You can start with a business account and migrate easily to a VPS (I use level 4 but that is what I need). PM me if you need specific advice. I can show you what you need to do.
This is going to sound weird, But I would start with something like 1and1 shared hosting to start. Its cheap, and is has what you need to run a decent sized site. If your site starts taking off, you will most likely have some kind of notion, in which case you can scout a bigger service (Id still recommend 1and1, but a standalone server). Switching can be done without any down time also. Whatever you choose, start small, get a feel for it. Try to choose a service that offers bigger services, so you can stay within the same company and know what to expect from their server configs. Nothing will stress you more than to have a perfectly running site, that goes haywire when you move to another company. If you had to do anything weird to get 68 to run on a server, keep notes in a text file, and keep a copy in your home directory for the site. Maybe inside a folder called "backup-files" or something similar.
James with all due respect - 3 years, hundreds of customers and most of the moderators all use hostgator for a reason. It works first time, every time and it is scalable. Their service is second to none. If you are worried about saving $1.99 a month on a hosting plan then why bother. As we have seen two people in as many days could not get it to run on 1and1 hosting without having to put in a php.ini file or get their provider do it for them on their server. From the hundeds of TC customers I have to say I never have issues with Hostgator but I always do with the aforementioned and the other pain called Godaddy. What I have to say is if you are not technically competent then you can be 99% sure it will work first time on hostgator without having to do any coding or head scratching
seymourjames, Why exactly is GoDaddy so bad for running 68? I'll go ahead and admit that I'm using GoDaddy to run my 68 classifieds site and I haven't had any kind of problems. So is there something that I'm missing? I had previously paid for a year of hosting through them before buying 68 and wasn't able to get a refund due to the fact that it was a month after I bought it. So I was nervous about trying to install it because of all the negative hype about them. It did take me about an hour to get everything set up on the server side, but all in all, it was relatively easy. So I'm just a little confused.
It is not bad per se but problems have often occurred in having to make adjustments to it. It is not that it can't be done but some people are not able to do it without help. If you search the forum you will see the issues which have arisen in the past.
I believe it was due to irregular php environment settings and an unwillingness for these to be changeable by account owners. The issues might not exist now, but it was enough of a problem for it to be noted. I'll leave it for Blair to clarify exactly what the issues were as it was before my direct involvement with the source.
Thanks Thanks seymourjames and everyone else for all of the feedback. I will go with HostGator because they are used successfully by so many 68 classified users and also because they have a variety of hosting options to choose from if I ever need to upgrade my hosting. I am with bluehost now and they only have one standard hosting option.
In Dec 2011, I moved my 68C website to HostGator. Migration was just 3 simple steps: 1. In cPanel of old server, I did a full backup that includes all of the files in home directory, MySQL databases, and email forwarders and filters. 2. HostGator imported full backup into their server. 3. I updated NameServers. My 68C website started running on HostGator server successfully. 100% success, 0% error. All done in few minutes. I never touched anything in my new 68C website on HostGator. Now it is already 2 months and my 68C website runs very smooth on HostGator. HostGator ยป Switching Hosts How to switch hosts without having any down time Thank you seymourjames for keep recommending Hostgator in your earlier posts that gave me the confidence to move my 68C website to HostGator. Peri
As I have been doing web design and development for close to 15 years now and almost 5 years with 68 Classifieds, I have worked with so many different web hosting services for myself and clients. So from experience, I've seen the good the bad, the ugly, etc.. I personally made the switch for my own sites as well as my own hosting service to Hostgator about 7 years ago and have never looked back. I can say that their service has been great as well as the support services. I personally can not stand GoDaddy's service for anything. In my personal opinion, it has to be one of the worst most convoluted services that I have ever been exposed to. It makes me think of the old Programmers joke, "Well, it was hard to make, so it should be hard to use!" Their logins with separate logins for separate services, popping up different windows, their own online support with completely inaccurate information. Their server setups defaulting to old unsupported versions of technologies, etc.. Let alone the the antics of the owner and deceptive advertising practices. The most recent publicly statement for support of SOPA/PIPA only to then renege on their support, after losing tons of business because of that stance???
