OK, a month ago, I was a happy webmaster sitting on a friend's server sucking up about 15gigs of bandwidth a month...

after taking up about 20gigs and just too much of his resources, I had to switch, and ended up in the lap of the dreaded SiteTurn Network. Three days ago they got hacked, my site went down, and I was here looking for a host...

Now, after spending too much time reading the forums, I have some questions of my own, mainly because i'm quite interested in the hosting biz.

a) can someone explain to me the hierarchy of webhosting? i read of sprint, congent (?), and stuff like that..but how does it all work? who's the big daddy we all buy off of? and then who next?

b) what are reseller accounts and what does it take to become one?

c) i run a site with 20gig bandwidth a month, and expected to climb to 30+ what is the ideal way of hosting this site? it should be easy to find payment for this site through ads, right? how?

d) i'll be back for more! but at 7:15am, it's time for sleep! =)

Originally posted by raine
a) can someone explain to me the hierarchy of webhosting? i read of sprint, congent (?), and stuff like that..but how does it all work? who's the big daddy we all buy off of? and then who next?

Ok, sharks eat fishes, these fishes eat smaller fishes, and so on. :) No, just kidding.
network provider -> network operation center -> colocation/dedicated host -> reseller -> customers.
Of course this is much simplified, e.g. some hosts don't have resellers or some hosts have their own noc,...

b) what are reseller accounts and what does it take to become one?

A reseller either buys packages from the host for a discount and resells it to his clients or one big package which he breaks into smaller ones for reselling. He has to provide support for his clients and billing.

c) i run a site with 20gig bandwidth a month, and expected to climb to 30+ what is the ideal way of hosting this site?

You will have to find a host with big packages, but sooner or later you will need your own dedicated server.

it should be easy to find payment for this site through ads, right? how?

:) the market is a bit dry now. But I suggest to post either on this forum in the advertising section or at http://www.sitepointforums.com

I have a suggestion....wisen-up a bit. You are expecting a host to provide you with 30GB of monthly bandwidth for like $14/month? What the hell is wrong with you.

You should be paying anywhere from about $200-400/month for a dedicated server. You expect far too much.

I use SiteTurn and my site gets about 9-10GB of traffic a month, which works out great for me. You can even visit my site and see that there are no problems: www.mriwh.com. I pay $14/month and I get far more than that.

Don't insult companies because you don't know anything about the industry. They were not hacked by the way, you should have read the notification they sent to all the customers that same day. Someone got a hold of about 500 customer e-mail addresses and sent a bunch of crap. If they got hacked, why would the hacker ask for credit card information, don't you think he/she would already have it??????

me hands mriwh some midol..

Regarding possibly having advertising cover your hosting costs -- what is your web site about? If it's an IT related site, you may be able to get a host to sponsor it (they host your site for free, and you in return link back to them, or put up their banner ad).

His site is already being sponsored ;)
Note that this thread is a month old, and both of mriwh's whopping 2 posts are defending SiteTurn. :rolleyes:

-Dan

Originally posted by serve-you
His site is already being sponsored ;)
Note that this thread is a month old, and both of mriwh's whopping 2 posts are defending SiteTurn. :rolleyes:

-Dan

lol ... this is from the archives ... i wonder what the oldest post was that got replied to.

Nice observation serve-you. Being that this is my first time to this forum, I don't have that many posts yet...

Yes, I am wise like that. However, further observation shows that this is not your first visit to the forums, as you registered in Sept. but that's beside the point.

The point is, that when people start posting threads here, and they are all about the same host, either good or bad, it raises a flag. Especially when they contain comments like "I have a suggestion....wisen-up a bit. You are expecting a host to provide you with 30GB of monthly bandwidth for like $14/month? What the hell is wrong with you."

-Dan

I don't think serve-you is far off on his assumption: http://webhostingtalk.com/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=284189&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending

oooo. Busted!:stickout

mriwh has been banned from the forums, please disregard his posts: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=276459#post276459