Kitz Forum

Internet => Web Hosting & Web Design => Topic started by: tickmike on September 20, 2016, 02:26:05 PM

Title: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: tickmike on September 20, 2016, 02:26:05 PM
Web Hosting Recommendations.

Can we have a updated place to add any web hosting site you have used and what you think of them and a price guide please.

Also add a link please.
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: Weaver on September 20, 2016, 05:20:12 PM
I can thoroughly recommend these guys, UKServers Ltd, £20 per annum
    http://www.virtualnames.co.uk/web_hosting.php

Very friendly, human support, reliable *nix servers. I have also used them for my own and my customers' email for many years.
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: broadstairs on September 20, 2016, 05:51:10 PM
I have been using Ariotek for some years now and not had any issues with them, they also hold my domains for me so its all in one place. Not necessarily the cheapest but not that pricey, my renewal is due in a couple of months but if memory serves it was just under £40 for the year with 2GB data and 20GB bandwidth/month and they host my emails as well so I dont need to use the TT servers. All in all a very reliable UK company.

Stuart
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: petef on September 24, 2016, 01:57:58 PM
I use the free OpenShift service, operated and supported by Red Hat. They do not require ads or popups. My framework is Flask.

https://www.openshift.com/

--
Pete Forman
https://payg-petef.rhcloud.com/
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: kitz on September 27, 2016, 10:45:32 AM
Its no secret I use Vidahost (http://www.kitz.co.uk/files/jump2/jump2.php?isp=Vidahost).  Used them now for many years and have gone through several package upgrades with them.  My current plan is bespoke to requirements so price and plan not listed.. but I doubt you would need the same requirements as me anyhow.

Packages start at £2.99 per month for 2GB of storage 25GB of bandwidth.

UK hosting is always dearer than foreign hosting, but if you are in the UK and have a co.uk based domain and your audience is in the UK.. then you should use UK hosting.

--
PS
There's one of the reg guys on here who owns his own hosting company who also sometimes offers good deals.   Because he is a reg contributor in the DSL sections and doesnt go around spamming the fact he does hosting..  I dont mind if he speaks up.
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: d2d4j on September 27, 2016, 02:00:01 PM
Hi kitz

I hope I'm correct and you mean myself, if not, please disregard this post

I own and run a hosting company, for many years 

We use interworx control panel for the shared platforms (clustered) and I am a moderator on the interworx forums

I would offer anyone who uses this forum a monthly charge of £1.00 plus vat for 2gb space, 20gb mostly bandwidth, for hosting, email (50 email accounts, unlimited email aliases) and 1 MySQL database.

We can even register a domain or you can transfer your domain to us, if you prefer to have everything under 1 place

You will have your own account, which links directly to the Iw-cp etc

The offer is subject to no mass mail, no spam sending etc, and is clearly shown in our terms and conditions, which you must accept to be allowed to use our platforms

If anyone is interested, please let me know and I'll send you the link to our billing platform, which creates everything up

Oh, and you can have a free SSL as long as the domain is hosted on our platforms, and the A records point to our platforms. However, if you leave, you cannot keep the SSL and our platforms are backup daily using R1soft/idera enterprise

I hope you don't mind me posting though, as I said and please feel free to remove my post

Many thanks

John
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: kitz on September 27, 2016, 02:52:03 PM
Yes it was you I was thinking of d2d4j, I didn't want to name you earlier because I want sure of your current offers, but I do recall you offering decent prices in the past.  I don't mind you posting the details because I know you contribute on DSL and you arent here to advertise your company.   
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: npr on September 30, 2016, 03:54:09 PM
The are the people I've used to host my web site for the past 3 years.
For only £14.95 per year I've found them to be surprisingly good, had no problems whatsoever, coped with up to 20,000 page views per month with no slowdowns. :)

http://www.falcoda.co.uk/cheap_web_hosting/index.php

Don't know what their email server is like, never needed to use it.
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: matt9 on January 09, 2017, 04:23:06 PM
I tend to change up my web hosting service quite frequently, for no apparent reason, but am now looking into some shared hosting offers - for gaming of course!  ;D
Has anyone got any suggestions?
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: Chunkers on January 10, 2017, 04:21:59 AM
Until recently Zen were hosting my blog and my website (which has now been taken down because I am lazy) their service (https://www.zen.co.uk/smallerbusiness/hosting-and-applications/hosting/) is very well run and if you are a Zen customer might make sense although they are relatively expensive, I used their Bronze package for 4.79/month.

@matt9 : During the last few summers I usually pay for a Minecraft server for my kids to run, I do all the geeky stuff but they admin it, etc.  I have had very good experiences with Nitrous Networks (https://nitrous-networks.com/) - they have servers on both sides of the Atlantic, decent responsive Tech Support, no bandwidth issues I have ever encountered you can sometimes find discount codes.  They also give you a free Mumble server to go with your gaming server.  Their remote management console and backup system works well - I paid for the basic server but usually end up heavily modifying the configuration and even uploaded my own custom server config and they didn't seem to mind at all.  2016 was the third year I have used them, and will do again.

Chunks
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: matt9 on January 12, 2017, 04:44:53 PM
Hey Chunks, thanks very much for the informative reply.

Sounds like you've got it sorted. Will definitely look into Zen, thank you. I am, however, a bit of a while away from uploading my own custom server config, but some day soon hopefully!

I was also toying with the idea of a cloud server, and there's lots online about it (https://www.1and1.com/digitalguide/hosting/technical-matters/why-you-should-switch-to-cloud-hosting/), but I still feel like shared hosting is the way to go, especially as a bit of a gamer.

Thanks guys!  :)

Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: Ronski on February 05, 2018, 08:22:11 PM
I've taken d2d4j up on his very kind hosting offer (http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,18530.msg334345.html#msg334345), currently only using it for my families email accounts. I've always had my own domain name, and just redirected to my ISP email accounts, but with a potential ISP move coming up soon I thought it was time to do it properly.

It wasn't very complicated and John was very helpful, the control panel is very nice and simple to use (if I ignore the stuff I don't need to know about) and the webmail is great, there's actually the choice of three different webmail clients and I can very easily access my favourite by appending it's name to the end of my domain name such as https://mydomain.co.uk/roundcube/

Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: Westie on February 05, 2018, 09:35:34 PM
@Ronski

PM sent
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: d2d4j on February 06, 2018, 07:14:59 PM
Hi Ronski

Many thanks for your kind words and I hope you enjoy it

Welcome westie and I hope you enjoy it

You can contact me directly or open a support ticket if you have any issues

Many thanks

John
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: parkdale on April 30, 2018, 04:42:44 PM
@ d2d4j I took up hosting offer and just to say a big thankyou for helping me transfer my domain and email to your servers.
My last provider turned off my mail account with no notification ??? but I was quickly up and running again :)

Robin

Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: d2d4j on April 30, 2018, 06:40:41 PM
Hi parkdale

Many thanks, much appreciated and I’m soo pleased to have helped a little and welcome aboard

If you have any issues, please either contact me directly or open a support ticket

Many thanks

John
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: jelv on October 26, 2018, 09:55:08 PM
I'm probably going to embarrass John who doesn't know I'm going to make this post. I've taken up the offer below and have been very impressed.

I've set up some software packages and am now in the process of setting everything up ready to transfer email to them. I've had a few minor queries which have all been dealt with incredibly quickly even when raised at odd times. I'd dabbled a bit with cpanel before and never come across interworx but it is very easy to find your way around. John has a huge number of packages available for easy set up using Softaculous which are updated quickly after new releases come out. Note this offer is on a proper professional setup with a proper daily backup.

I own and run a hosting company, for many years 

We use interworx control panel for the shared platforms (clustered) and I am a moderator on the interworx forums

I would offer anyone who uses this forum a monthly charge of £1.00 plus vat for 2gb space, 20gb mostly bandwidth, for hosting, email (50 email accounts, unlimited email aliases) and 1 MySQL database.

We can even register a domain or you can transfer your domain to us, if you prefer to have everything under 1 place

You will have your own account, which links directly to the Iw-cp etc

The offer is subject to no mass mail, no spam sending etc, and is clearly shown in our terms and conditions, which you must accept to be allowed to use our platforms

If anyone is interested, please let me know and I'll send you the link to our billing platform, which creates everything up

Oh, and you can have a free SSL as long as the domain is hosted on our platforms, and the A records point to our platforms. However, if you leave, you cannot keep the SSL and our platforms are backup daily using R1soft/idera enterprise

John
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: kitz on October 27, 2018, 11:08:15 AM
It does indeed seem like a very good offer :)
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: d2d4j on October 28, 2018, 09:41:49 AM
Hi

Thank you for your kind words. It is appreciated and I’m so pleased you like it.

We do not get everything right but where we do not, we try hard to correct quickly and are honest about issues.

I was somewhat deflated when chrysalis made his offer, particularly when no exact prices were quoted

Our offer still stands if anyone would like to take advantage

Many thanks

John
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: tiffy on October 30, 2018, 12:03:36 PM
A sincere word of thanks to John (d2d4j) for his excellent guidance and support in setting up a domain registration and signing up to his web hosting (kitz) package.

As a complete novice to the subject, submitted a general enquiry PM to John on Sunday morning, had no expectation of a reply until at least Monday, he responded to the PM very quickly and offered clear guidance on initially registering a domain name and through subsequent PM's registration with his web hosting service, all completed and fully operational by Sunday night while he was actually away from home persuing normal weekend family activities, most impressed.

As stated, I am a complete novice regarding web hosting but feel confident that help and support will be readily available when required during my steep learning curve judging by service offered to date.
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: d2d4j on November 04, 2018, 11:09:27 AM
Hi tiffy

Thank you for your kind words, much appreciated and any issues please let me know or open a support ticket

On Friday of last week, all the production servers were updated to interworx 6.2. Unfortunately the haveworx platform did not seem to update fully, so we had to restart the platform, which took about 3 minutes, so we apologise for the very small outage.

The issue did not affect any services running though, the issue was the update held the control panel in maintenance mode, so no one could log in.

This was quickly corrected though, and the server restart was actually not required as it turns out.

As a result of the update, squirrelmail is no longer supported as a webmail client so there is now only 2 webmail clients, roundcube and horde/imp.

I asked IW devs and the reason given was squirrelmail did not play well with php7.2

I hope that’s alright and apologies for the loss of squirrelmail

Many thanks

John
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: jelv on November 04, 2018, 02:43:44 PM
SquirrelMail
Preview release (https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&hl=en-GB&q=squirrelmail+preview+release&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiEo8br-7reAhVFF8AKHUR3AhwQ6BMoADAaegQIBRAG): 1.5.2 / 17 August 2012; 6 years ago
Stable release (https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&hl=en-GB&q=squirrelmail+stable+release&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiEo8br-7reAhVFF8AKHUR3AhwQ6BMoADAbegQIBRAJ): 1.4.22 (12 July 2011; 7 years ago)
The latest announcement on the website is

Quote
ANNOUNCE: PHP 5.4 & 5.5 Compatibility
May 30, 2013 by Paul Lesniewski
    PHP 5.4 and PHP 5.5 compatibility fixes are live in our nightly snapshots, and we strongly encourage those who'd like to help test or those who are having problems with version 1.4.22 to download a snapshot and report any problems.

Perhaps the only surprise is that it wasn't pulled earlier!
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: d2d4j on November 04, 2018, 03:25:23 PM
Hi jelv

Many thanks

Interworx took care of the security and php5.6 compatibly for squirrelmail themselves so it was alright to leave running

Interworx has now deprecated php5.6 fully (including all modules such as soap etc) and as such, can longer expand the time needed on squirrelmail hence why it has now been pulled.

We had stopped php5.6 or earlier from been used on new hosting accounts around a year ago but IW-CP runs in its own space, so we could stop any service without effecting interworx or visa-versa

I hope that helps understand why squirrelmail was still running prior to interworx 6.2.

It still would have been nice to have a little advance notice though of the removal as it was removed in beta

Many thanks

John
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: jelv on November 06, 2018, 09:05:22 AM
I'll ask this publicly as it may help others:

John, How is the spam training supposed to work? I've dropped spam emails that were missed in to the learnspam folder but nothing seems to have happened. Is there something that needs configuring/turning on on my account?
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: d2d4j on November 06, 2018, 09:18:14 AM
Hi jelv

Many thanks

Please could you email me one of the spam emails so I could review

The Bayesian filters are turned off as the vast majority of the users do not train for good/bad emails, so it works in reverse to let more spam through and spam some good emails if you see what I mean

Spamassasin is updated hourly for new rules

It maybe that the threshold needs changing from default value on the domain, so to change this, login to siteworx, advanced, email, spam, and change threshold to say 6

I will also post later how to add your own rules to the filters for the domain, which when added will check each email and give it your desired score

Lastly, the spam is controlled as follows

Server level - server admin only

Domain level - domain admins only

User level - user

So we can set at server level which covers all. Domain admins can set their own to cover the entire domain level and users can set their own to cover their own email only

I would suggest setting spam level at domain level from siteworx

Users usually find it easier to set using webmail rather then using siteworx

I hope that helps

Many thanks

John
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: d2d4j on November 06, 2018, 09:48:16 AM
Hi Jelv

Sorry I have put this together quickly as I need to leave to goto Liverpool

This was one question asked on the IW forums, so it is a good example

Also, see the 2 pictures, one for Filter email (looks easy to understand and use) and one for setting SA rules. It also shows some of the SA features you can setup.  Our platform is designed to allow each DOmain Admin their own SA rules which they want to set

I hope that helps but please do email me one of your spam emails so I can review

Many thanks

John

Excert from IW forums

Thanks John
probably i cannot explain , that's why will give you simple example


Subject: Say "Oh!" and "Ah!" all the nights with Eustacia Glazener
Body:
Hello dvnyumssn,

Thank you for registering at Panther Equities - Investors In The Future. Your account is created and must be activated before you can use it.
To activate the account click on the following link or copy-paste it in your browser:


How can i mark/ block / as spam similar email with same subject or body "Panther Equities" with these words in it via Add Spam Preference


To add goto siteworx, administration, email, spam, in domain level section, add and select:

Add header - local_demo_body body=~/\panther equities\b /i

Describe local_demo_body test for panther equities

Score local_demo_body 40.1
Title: Re: Web Hosting Sites Recommendations.
Post by: Chrysalis on December 13, 2018, 01:08:33 PM
Only just seen this thread, I apologise you felt bad that I made an offer John, but to be honest I cannot even remember what the offer was, whilst I do manage my own servers, I no longer operate a web hosting company, instead I do server management, but I keep my own servers online as I need a platform to host the monitoring of other servers and it allows me to keep on top of things in the linux/bsd world.  So because of this I will occasionally make offers to friends and associates if they need hosting, the reason I never quoted a price is because the offer was probably for free of charge.

But if it makes you feel better :) I only host one website for Martin, and me Martin, skyeci, kev and a couple of other people host our dsl stats on there, thats it really related to the kitz community, so it looks like people flocked to you anyway. ;)

My main interest at the time was trying to replace MDWS, as now it seems we have people hosting their own stats either at home or on separate personal domains, without it been a centralised place so now we no longer have a one stop shop for accessing dozens of line stats which is sad after how good MDWS was, I keep my stats on a active link in my sig, so others can see but hardly anyone else is doing that.