Hello, Im currently opening up a gfx/web design company and know little concerning web hosts. From reading around, Im basically looking at Dim 8, Dream Host, MediaTemple, Mycaen, HostingMatters, Tera Byte, or maybe another suggestion. Which site would everyone reccommend for a design site with a heavy influence on gfx? Another question I have is whats the difference if I set up under a unix platform versus a windows? This issue caught my eye at Tera Bytes plans. They seem to have nice prices, what about them? Im running a Mac, but I doubt that has anything to do with the whole issue. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks lots
Adam Robertson

meditemple might be a good choice. their website gives thorough informations and they provides a 60days guarantee. I've seen quite a numer of site like 2advanced.com, ultrashock and manymore hosted with them. many are award winning site and the speed of the host is quite acceptable.

maybe you should give it a try.

ide love to give mediatemple a try...the only thing in my way at the moment is cost. theyre prices are quite ridiculous. Well see though. I saw a compunotes.com page on here sometime, do you know whos it is or who hosts it?

Thanks
Adam Robertson

Myacen or terrabyte. I have hosting accounts at both, they are nice and reliable.

hmm..not sure about compunotes.com but you're right, mediatemple is quite costly. Maybe you should try dim8. My conclusion was dim8 but when I tried their cpanel, its quite disappointing from my expectations. Maybe I should just wait for a while more if there're anymore good host or any latest activities from dim8 as my site are still not well constructed yet. ;)

Hey,

Why don't you try Pulse Host? I'm currently hosted there and I'm loving it. The prices aint that high either.

http://www.pulsehost.com

Originally posted by arob0921
Another question I have is whats the difference if I set up under a unix platform versus a windows?

It all depends on what your doing but most applications will run on a Windows servers without any problems, if configured right. Here at GearHost we host using Windows but run Linux technologies on top of the OS as well as iControl our custom control panel and all works great.

If you website does not use any native Linux technology like Perl and PHP then going with Windows is no different than Linux. On the other hand if your using Linux technologies, they will run on Windows but you have to make sure they don't meet about a few exceptions to the rule but that's about it. We host a site that gets about a a half a million hits a day on a Windows server using Perl, PHP and MySQL thus goes to show that running Linux technologies over Windows works well.

I have an account at terabyte. I've been there for almost three years. They were my first host, and I didn't know much about FTP or cgi, but I sure did have fun learning. I now also have accounts a some other hosts too, so I can give you a quick compareson. (the R stands for cobalt RAQ which I am on. They do have other servers too, though)
The good:
- They have a HUGE bandwidth allowance. $10 / month gets you 200 MB and 20 gigs of BW.
- I have had very little down time.
- So far, there hasn't been a script I couldn't install and run because of server configs.
The questionable:
- My R4 plan does not have cpanel, the U ones might, (not sure) but I never use cpanel anyway.
- You will need a FTP proggy to use, but what webmaster wouldn't have one?
- No subdomains. Whats the diff bewteen "me.mydomain.com" and "mydomain.com/me" anyway?
- PHP uploading has been disabled, so I had to use a cgi one. I basically made a php authenicated html page which calls the cgi script to do the uploading. It looks like a php upload, but it isn't.
- They do not 'hold your hand' much, but they do deliver what you want - good hosting.

i really like tera byte's deals. one thing...whats the main diff between unix deals and windows. tera byte has quite a few unix plans and just 1 windows plan. sorry, im a newbie and dont understand the difference. also, im on a mac but i doubt that matters. by the way, has anyone tried dominet? it looks promising but havent heard anything.

thanks
adam robertson

You probably want a unix (you having a mac shouldn't matter one way or another) unless you want ASP, then you probably want a windows server. The cobolt RAQ server I am on has chilisoft ASP but, I don't know if they are installing that on the newer RAQ plans. I have never used ASP, I love PHP and perl.
btw, with graphics often being a huge BW hog, you may want to lean to the host that offers a decent amount of it. (not unlimited)