For 2 years I used webburner.com and by and large they were ok. There were occasional issues with both system and network performance, some of their software is very old (Perl 5.004 for example) and as I was running 4 individual servers at 13$ each the total cost compared to today’s offerings were quite high. But when they became unavailable to many people for several days during the Code Red trouble early this month I eventually had to take the unpleasant steps of moving my servers.

I had a quick look around and Interserver.com seemed to be a nice host. They offer 350mb disk space, 10gb transfer and 10 domain pointers for $20/month. This more than halves my cost compared to Webburner and gave me additional advantages. Although each of my Webburner account had 50mb space and 3gb transfer per month, 3 of them barely used any capacity while the fourth used it almost 100%, meaning I might have to upgrade one server to a more costly plan. With Interserver I now had 10gb transfer that could be used by any of my web servers.

On Interservers signup page was a nice chat window and I asked a lot of questions and had good answers, I checked Webtalkinghost and did not find anything to prevent me from signing up with Interserver and on August 8th I signed up with their Mini plan.

Within the next 4 days I had to open 16 tickets. Some were initial configuration issues, odd questions, and this kind was answered quickly and cordial. Others were trickier and a few are still open today, more than a week later:

1) MySQL access rights. In order to be able to backup my databases from my development server I asked Interserver to change permissions to allow this. I explained how to do this (“use mysql; update user set host=’%’ where user=…”). They replied they had done this but now I could not connect from anywhere. I know this procedure works as I have done that on my own MySQL server, but it still doesn’t work for Interserver. Meanwhile I’ve had to create a new MySQL user simply to be able to work.

2) Effective UID for cgi-bin scripts executed by the web server. Some scripts update mail lists etc that need to be created with my user id. They “offer” a separate cgi-bin directory for this - /scgi-bin – but I don’t want to change all my links, I never need anything run by the web server as nobody:nobody so asked Interserver to change the httpd configuration file to have all my cgi-bin execute with my user id. Not possible. They have tried but the bottom line is that the closest (possible) workaround requires me to change all my /cgi-bin/ references to /~subdomain/maindomain/cgi-bin – something that is esthetically and practically unacceptable to me.

3) Web mail – requires all users to enter my administrator userid/password to be able to read mails. They have explained that the users own userid/password should work – but fact is that it doesn’t. They offer that I can run another web mail system if I like and I tried to install Squirrelmail – but although I had it up and running in 5 minutes on my development system it still fails to be able to login on the Interserver systems. Probably again something to do with effective permissions for the executing process.

4) Stats only work for the main domain. Stats for domain pointers simply don’t work.

An additional functionality we used a lot on Webburner is fixed mailing lists. While Interserver offers the Mailman mailing lists, a fixed mailing list system allowing central administration is simply not available on Interserver. They again tell me that I am welcome to install my own system but unfortunately I don’t know of such a system and frankly don’t have the time require to sort that out on top of the other open issues.

The bottom line is that we might have to move again. L I am still within my “30 days money back guarantee” period and might as well take advantage of that.

So what am I asking here? Well, this time I really want to have all corners covered. I see a lot of positive references to Wizardshosting.com – but of course things change all the time … are they still considered this good? Site5.com had very good references as well but recently there are negative sentiments, (http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18129). I am not a newbie and don’t need handholding – just professional and qualified answers to real questions. Which host would be the right for me?

1) Their MySQL server may be an old one, one that has different commands (although the backup command you are suggesting is pretty basic...). You can always try "mysqldump -u username -p databasename > filename.sql" from a shell prompt. That should back it up nicely, and to restore, simply type "mysql -u username -p databasename < filename.sql".

2) I think what you are looking for is a cgi-wrapper (which is what is used with scgi-bin) or suEXEC, which is server-wide (and I would recommend it over any cgi-wrapper). Many servers support suEXEC by default, so a good question to ask your next host is if they support suEXEC already. If they don't know, take them off the list -- it's an important feature.

3) SquirrelMail doesn't require any fancy settings or server configurations. It just requires IMAP to be running on the server. Your host should help you installing that since they should know their server well and should know how to set things up to connect to it properly. We run SquirrelMail as our Webmailer and it was a breeze to install. I love that software.

4) Domain pointers are tricky. Are you saying that when you go to check your stats for the pointers that they do not _work_, or they do not _exist_? Some hosts do not log stats for pointers and only for the main domain. Some group all the stats (from pointers and main domain) all into one fat stat. Make sure your next host offers you exactly what you are looking for.

5) I've never used MailMan before (I think that comes with CPanel or one/some of the other panels some hosts use). We use ezmlm with Qmail which is centralized and quite powerful, yet simple. Ask your future host what kind of mail server they run and what kind of mailing list software they offer, and do some research on it to see if it fills your needs.

These are just some things to look for and ask for when you talk to prospective hosts. Don't sign up with them until you get the answers you are looking for. There are a lot of _great_ hosts on this board, so you might want to make a request in the Advertising section and see what you come up with.

Either way, good luck!

Hi Allera,

Thanks for the reply.

1) Actually let me just correct what I think is a misunderstanding. Point 1 was not about which command to use. I fully agree with you that the command to use is mysqldump. They problem is that they suggest users to ssh/telnet to the server and then run mysqldump whereas what I want to do is to run mysqldump with the -h option from *my own* server. This way I can create a cron job on my development server to do nightly dumps.

2) Interserver does not allow the use of suexec.

3) I agree. Squirrelmail IS very simple - so why doesn't it work there? (rhetoric question)

4) Stats are completely missing. The main server had like 4 hits or so, probably all my own just to test if it worked, none of the domain pointers have any data at all.

5) Absolutely- That's what I'm doing here :-)

Rgds,

1) Oh! I gotcha now -- you want to backup from a seperate server. :) That's sometimes a security risk, but if you have a static ip on that development server, it shouldn't be a problem at all.

2) That's too bad -- suEXEC is much better than the scgi-bin wrapper, in my opinion anyway.

3) You might want to check a) if their IMAP is enabled (which it has to be for any other webmail (that I know of) to work and b) what IMAP server they are using, as Squirrel Mail has different settings for different IMAP servers (such as Courier, University of Washington's, etc). That may be the problem you are having -- although it could be others if the IMAP server isn't configured correctly.

4) What's the use of offering domain pointers if you can't track the stats on them? That's kind of silly...

5) Oh! Right. :)

Originally posted by allera 3) You might want to check a) if their IMAP is enabled (which it has to be for any other webmail (that I know of) to work and b) what IMAP server they are using, as Squirrel Mail has different settings for different IMAP servers (such as Courier, University of Washington's, etc). That may be the problem you are having -- although it could be others if the IMAP server isn't configured correctly.

Actually, there are some Webmailers that use POP3. :D