Selecting the proper hosting company for your site can be the difference between whether your project is successful or not. From affordable to blazing fast, find out which hosting company is best suited to your needs.
Probably the best Grid Deal going right now is at GoDaddy. Now this comes with a lot of caveats. For one thing, you can only host a single site on your Grid Host account at GoDaddy. For another thing, it is in beta stage, and the $4.99 per month is not liable to last forever. Once the beta stage is over, they are thinking of charging $19.99 per month, which is still pretty good for grid service. Also, I talked to one of the managers at GoDaddy, and he assured me that at that time you would be able to host multiple sites. They are simply working through all the kinks.
I decided to give it a try, anyway, though, and I can tell you one thing. This thing is blistering fast and 100% reliable. It’s really the best single-site service you can have right now at the $4.99 per month, bar none. With one-click installations of many products and online FTP tools, it couldn’t be easier to use.
One site that I’m developing with it is here if you want to go check out the speed. Warning, though, is that only the main page and the blog on on GoDaddy. The rest of the pages are on Spreadshirt.com’s servers. Tee Shirts
No kidding. If you have a single site and want it to be handle massive traffic and never slow down, I have no qualms at recommending GoDaddy’s grid service even though it is just in beta.
Here’s the nitty gritty:
 Linux |
 Windows |
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| Monthly Fee No Setup Fees! | $4.99 | $4.99 | |
| Min. Purchase Length |  |
3 month | 3 month |
| No Long-Term Contract Required! | |||
| Disk Space | 100 GB | 100 GB | |
| Monthly Data Transfer | 1000 GB | 1000 GB | |
| Compute Cycles | |
Unlimited*** | Unlimited*** |
| FTP Users | |
50 | 504 |
| Email Accounts | |||
| Number of Addresses | 100 | 100 | |
| Total Email Storage | 100 MB | 100 MB | |
| Webmail |  |
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| “Light” Webmail w/PDA | |
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| Greeting Cards – 290+ designs | |
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| Forwarding | |
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| Auto-Responder | |
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| Catch-All Email Address | |
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| Fraud, Virus & Spam Protection |
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| Sender ID | |
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| Email privacy and protection with 256-Bit Encryption | |
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| Databases | |||
| MySQL | 25 | 25 | |
| Database Backup/Restore | |
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| MS SQL | 3×200 MB | ||
| Database Backup/Restore | |
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| Database Publishing Wizard | |
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| Domains | |||
| DNS Management | |
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| Access w/o “www.” | |
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| External Domains | |
Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Subdomains | |
25 | 25 |
| Multiple Web sites | |
Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Alias Domains | |
Unlimited | Unlimited |
| General Features | |||
| Site Statistics | |
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| Firewall Protection | |
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| 24/7 Phone/Email Support | |
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| Cron Jobs | |
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| Secure Shell (SSH) | |
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| SSL Certificate | $29.99/yr | $29.99/yr | |
| File Manager | |
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| FTP over SSL (FTPS) | |
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| Google® AdWords® Credit | $20 | $20 | |
| Microsoft® adCenter Credit | $25 | $25 | |
| Facebook Credit | $50 | $50 | |
| Getting Started Guide | |
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| Forums | |
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| Photo Gallery | |
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| Language Support | |||
| PHP4 or PHP5 | |
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| Custom PHP.ini/PHP5.ini | |
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| Perl w/ FASTCGI | |
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| Python CGI | |
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| ASP | |
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| ASP.NET v1.0/2.0/3.5 | |
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| ASP.NET AJAX | |
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| FREE Pre-Installed Apps. | |||
| ImageMagick | |
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| MS IE Web Controls | |
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| WSE 2.0 | |
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| ASPUpload 3.0 | |
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| ASPJPEG 1.4 | |
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| GUIDMaker | |
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| ASPCrypt | |
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| FREE Add-On Apps. |  |
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| Admin Tools | |
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| Advertising | |
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| Blogs | |
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| Commerce Solutions | |
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| Content Management | |
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| Forums | |
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| Image Galleries | |
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| Project Management | |
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| Tools/Scripts | |
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| Web Site Add-Ons | |
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| Wikis and Others | |
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Looking around the web at what others have to say, real users not hucksters trying to sell you affiliate hosting, Host Gator seems to be getting very high marks for a shared hosting company, but I can’t really recommend a company unless I try them out myself, so I’m going to be starting a trial today with Host Gator. I’ll keep you updated.
We have set up a site on PowWeb to test their processes and will be writing a full review of PowWeb soon. If you are interested in checking out our test site, you can find it here: Web Hosting Site
This is built on a Wordpress platform, which I consider the gold-standard as far as testing hosting providers goes. It’s a dynamic platform that requires a lot. So far, the site seems to be running pretty quickly on their platform, but only time will tell the true story.
So far I’ve been pleased with my HostGator trial. It took them almost 48 hours to get the DNS set up, but that’s no big deal. They have cPanel with Fantastico, which is easy to use, though you have to use an FTP program, like FileZilla, to upload your files.
What’s impressed me so far has been the site’s responsiveness. Even running sites with no traffic can be a bear with some hosts, but so far I haven’t noticed any sluggishness whatsoever.
You can see the test site here: Hosting Website. Much like this site, it is just in the beginning stages of being built. ; )
Do keep in mind that this site has no traffic to slow it down right now except for a trickle of folks coming from here.
Starting a new trial with LunarPages. Will update as this becomes available…
My wife and I take a lot of photos, and I’ve decided to offer them here just in case you find something that will help you to design your website. Or maybe you just want to had a different background on your desktop or whatever.
You can use these images in any way you want so long as they are not used to attact or in any way libel an individual. If you see something you like, please take it (download the image, don’t hotlink to it from your site), and put our site into your links section. You don’t have to put a credit for the photo, just add a link to us on a page that is indexed.
This will take some time to get all the photos uploaded, and we will be adding new over time, so check back often to see what we have to offer.
Photo Catgegories:
Flowers: