I e-mailed this (the majority of it) to Matt over at Site5 since they were my top choice, but hadn't received a response, which I could understand since it is the holidays. But then I noticed he was actively posting here, so I guess it's time to look elsewhere since time is of the essence [of Emeril]. So allow me to present this in the public forum.

First off, I'm a current client (As well long time) of CommuniTech.Net. I've been with CommuniTech for quite a while now as mentioned so I still fall under the "unlimited bandwidth" crowd which they recently cut off to new customers. However, regardless of the unlimited bandwidth I still cannot stand their of textbook corporate censorship style as far as what goes on in their client area and when it comes to dealing with customers. Then to top things off, there is also poor customer and technical support and possibly the worst billing depart in the online business-2-consumer sector to boot.

Being in the professional media community, this turns me off greatly. Thus me looking for a new host. So if you may give me the honor of running a few things by you, I would appreciate it.

Firstly, just to briefly go over the type of site I will be operating on your servers if I elect to sign up ... As I mentioned above, I'm a native of the Media & Entertainment world (Freelance Journalism, Broadcasting, New Media & Talk Radio here in Los Angeles) and due to my "rogue nature" (as well freelance based work) I don't really work well with the current "corporatlization" of the media and entertainment industry that we are undergoing. So I'm currently in the process of putting together a independently funded Online Magazine covering general issues; nothing specific. We're either going to be publishing bi-weekly, or monthly. With the publishing time frame being on a non-daily time frame, we expect to have general interactive/user-oriented features to compliment the site on it's non-publishing days. Such features would include a daily poll or two, an online discussion board (most likely UBB), free e-mail (using a separate domain name and most likely a separate account, an online store (selling mostly stuff utilizing affiliate accounts such as amazon.com etc.), and also either bi-weekly or monthly we plan on broadcasting (pre-recorded) a online audio [radio] show that will most likely be 2hrs in duration, and will be encoded in Real Audio. As well general items (departments, features, columns, options etc.) you'd find in a magazine such as US News & World Report, Maxim, Time, George, Playboy (it has actual content other than photos you know!) etc.

As I said, this will be an independently funded operation basically just to test the waters without jumping the gun. We don't expect too many visitors compared to other more established sites so we're looking at the +500 ~ -5000 range per day during the initial months. Therefore I figure a dedicated server won't be needed right off the bat as a virtual server should do us well for at least a 3-6 month period. I speak somewhat from experience as we successfully were able to remain on CommuniTech's standard hosting plan for several months without any warnings of excessive processing usage in result of any of our features. This was with roughly 2.5k unique visits per day. And as I'm sure you know, CommuniTech pretty much has the most anal policies and views when it comes to over processing and bandwidth. Although they still are a good host in most senses, so I'm giving it to you fair & balanced.

So I figured a Virtual Host would do us well for the initial 3-6 months (maybe sooner) for us to test the waters and then move up to a dedicated server with no problem if things go as planned (in other words, if things look promising).


Once we figure out how the site fairs once operational I think once the initial 3-6 month term is over I think we would be able to properly determine if the site is worth continuing when taking into consideration our audience capacity, revenue and overall project dedication. If all products are in place at that 3/6 month standstill, I think it would be within our reach of going with a Dedicated server.

What we would need on a Virtual Host right now would be the features/options listed below (we can live without some of them):

1- Sub domain e-mail. This is one of the features we can live without.

2- "." in POP3 E-mil. Also one of the features we can live without, but something that is going to be rather useful to us.

3- Reasonable speed.

4- Roughly 400-600MB of space.

5- Somewhere between 20-35GB of bandwidth.

6- Atleast 50 POP3 Accounts

7- Changing MX Records for services like Everyone.net. This is something we could do without on our main account with whatever host, because we're most likely going to be using a .net domain for our free e-mail to avoid any conflicts with the possibility of people impersonating staff, spamming etc. on our .com name. So I think we will just use a basic $19.95 p/month host like Blue Dominoe for this.


5- Domain pointing would be a plus, although we can use MyDomain/MyDNS if it isn't available.

6- CGI/Perl, PHP, Java. And some type of reasonable database (mSQL/MySQL most likely) allowance.

7- A reasonable control panel.

8- Atleast 3 FTP accounts would be helpful, but we can deal with just 1.

Right now I see us being able to afford no more than $150 per month for hosting.

I appreciate ALL responses as time is of the essence and we have until Monday to cancel our CommuniTech account without being billed for the next billing period. So we're trying to find a reasonable host ASAP.

I looked forward to signing up with Site5, but I guess that isn't going to happen anymore. LiquidWeb was also a host I was looking at ... anyone thing they will be on target for us for the initial time we're looking at?

Take care, thank you in advance and Happy New Years.

Hi Jeff,

You could afford a RAQ3 from 4webspace.com which would save you the hassle of another move. Not to mention the flexibility of having your own server. As far as virtual hosting goes, you would be close to the limit for most hosts.

Wouldn't the UBB cause damage on the RAQ3?

No. Not unless your UBB is going to be seriously busy. You could also upgrade to vBulletin which is much faster and less cpu intensive than UBB (and much nicer). Don't forget, on the RAQ3 all the resources available will be at your disposal, not shared like a virtual hosting plan. Just make sure to upgrade the ram.

With the upgrade on RAM ($111/128), adding MySQL ($250), the $99 Monthly Fee ... thats hmm :::adds in his head::: $460. Not including PHP either. :-/

They don't list any other specs either ... anyone happen to know what they are? i.e. control panel? pre-installed cgi-bin?

I notice they say you can install your own software as well. How easy would that be? I guess that would then allow us to install MySQL and PHP ourselves if the process is easy. Currently we have one webmaster now, and possibly two in the near future and between the two of them I'm not sure if server administration will be within the reach so that becomes a vital issue.

This would be all so much easier if I had a month to kill to write a business plan ... 3 months to kill to find a shark err I mena venture capitalist ... and 3 months to close a deal on funding. But nooooo ... Mr. Independent! Gotta spend my ownnnn money! ARGH! <Smiles> As you can see, the $bank$ account isn't very generous when it comes to funding this project, so I'm looking for a cost effective solution that will provide us with quality as well. Although I know! YOU PAY FOR WHAT YOU GET! But I know there has to be some sort of solution out there some where ...

Thanks for the lead though ... might be doable depending on if the above can be addressed.

Hi Jeff,

there are several threads on this forum explaining how to install php and mysql on the raq. So the only real issue is paying for the ram upgrade (which at $111, is very reasonable). The server is a standard RAQ3 which you can view all the specs (along with a demo of the control panel) at http://www.cobalt.com. I've never used a RAQ3 but there are many on this forum that currently have one with 4webspace and have been very satisfied. I think of all dedicated servers out there, the RAQ3 is the easiest to administrate. That's why a lot of newbies get them.

Other than 4webspace, I can't think of any other dedicated server solution under $150. You'll definitely find a virtual solution under that price, but I'm not sure if it will suit your needs. Do a search on this forum and you'll find many good hosts.

Jeff, normally for a site that isn't even built yet, no one would recommend a dedicated server. In your case with all the special things you want and the time from you want them, I'd say the RaQ is a decent place to start.

Like Tabernack said, you'll have full control over the machine (setting up whatever you want, whenever you want to).

If you check out the Cobalt forum (new to this site), you'll note that installing mySQL and php might not be the easiest thing, but it is very possible and recently a number of our members have undertaken the task (successfully). I'm sure they'll be able to guide you should you have questions.

Upgrade the ram to 128 (at least) to start, and then upgrade as needed after that. I think you'll like this over a standard shared hosting account.

Chicken forgot to mention that he OWNS a RAQ3 and is one of our RAQ veterans. :D

Chicken | Tabernack ... Thank you for the responses so far. Very timely, I appreciate it.

Just one more quick question, is the cgi-bin pre-installed on the RAQ's or are are they setup with just a running connection and control panel?

I couldn't find any info on what the specs were when the system is initially setup.

Going to check out Cobalt right now however. But I'd appreciate any additional information regarding this.

CGI and everything you need to put up a site, minus things like php, SQL, formmail, are already set up. For the price, I think it is a great option considering what you are looking for.

I'm not sure Cobalt will still have RaQ3 info, so if you can't find anthing, I'll try to dig up a basic list.

A few things that will give you an idea of what it is:
http://demo.cobalt.com/raq3en/
http://www.cobalt.com/products/pdfs/datasheet.raq3.pdf