Hi

I am a university student doing my undergrad in Software Engineering. Me along with some of my fellow class mates are planning to open a new club come fall. The website we plan, is going to be potentially huge, atleast within the university community. We are expecting over 1000 views per day to begin with. Our site will deal with the latest information technology available to students. We will post around 3 to 4 news items 3 to 4 times a week and also there will be an extensive forum to discuss the technology.

While we don't want to get into developing a fancy website we will be using a lot of PHP, CGI scripting to make the site very dynamic.

For this purpose I am on a 'mission' to find a web hosting service which will satisfy all the needs and wants as stated above. We don't might if the website is a little expensive, since it is being catered to a huge audience we do not want the to cut corners anywhere. But even so we do not hope to pay 50 - 60 dollars per month.

The websites I have researched so far are :
http://invisionhost.com/
http://www.prohosters.com/featured/featured_windows.htm
http://www.3shost.com/
http://gearhost.com
http://readyhosting.com/hosting.cfm

Could you please give the pros and cons of the ones I have mentioned above...and if anyone knows of any other webhosts please do go ahead and tell me about them...

Regards

Of the ones that you've listed, I've only used ReadyHosting. I left them before my trial period was up since I could not get my CGI scripts working there and tech support was terrible.

I'm not familiar with the ones you list, but I have used www.venturesonline.com as well as www.insiderhosting.com and would highly recommend both.

On your list 3 of them are NT/2000 server hosts...If you only use PHP/CGI, no ASP/.NET, and on a limited budget, with a large user group which requires better security...no need to go for a host with NT/2000 server. They cost much more than Unix/Linux hosts. :)

I've been with DigitalXweb LLC for almost 3 months have been extremely happy. Brian Powell uses the ID "DigitalXweb" on this forum and he'd be glad to talk with you about your needs. And, no, I don't work for him or recieve any compensation for recommendations. I'm just a happy camper. And, if you read my post about HostSave, the previous hosting service, you'd understand why.

check them out

DigitalXWeb Hosting (http://www.digitalxweb.net)

thanks for those who responded and also I thank all the private mails that I got. So far the from the deals I have seen I haven't been able to come across something that might really satisfy the requirements of the website we are planning to host...

I will be posting this in the advertising section as well...but let me just jot down some features I am hoping to get...

- Unlimited...or atleast close to unlimited bandwidth...
- minimum of 300 MB of space...
- Subdomains
- PHP + CGI capabilities
- and as Mranan (thanks for the input :) ) said...Linux/or Unix hosting....
- around 20 to 30 CDN dollars ie 10 to 25 USD...

I understand that what we might be asking for might be a little out of league...but I do want to let you know that we can advertise your site on our website...and considering it will be a technological website you can expect quite a few customers through us....

If anyone is interested or if anyone does know of a service that can provide closest to what we are expecting please do not hesitate to either contact me or email me at 9ar3@qlink.queensu.ca

Thanks

I'm sure you will get many offers posting in the requests forum, but most people here will advise you to be careful about hosting with anyone who offers "unlimited bandwidth".

It's a frequently discussed topic here -- many people have been burned by unlimited bandwidth plans, mainly because it's technically impossible to provide.

Good luck with your club

thanks for the advice...:)

I appreciate all the input I have received so far...

more are welcome...:)

Please stay away from a host offering unlimited bandwith. In fact you mean transfer, bandwidth is the amount of data transferrable in a second and measured in bits. To deliver unlimited bandwidth would require a pipe the size of the Channel Tunnel. :D

No host is going to give you unlimited transfer as it doesn't exist. Just as their is no such thing as unlimited apples and oranges. Everything is metered. Water, Electricity, Gas, and no company is going to leave the tap on for you, even if they say they will.

Read an unlimited host's TOS and all becomes clear. These guys are dishonest.

Try using the search feature.

Originally posted by ritwix
Hi

I am a university student doing my undergrad in Software Engineering. Me along with some of my fellow class mates are planning to open a new club come fall. The website we plan, is going to be potentially huge, atleast within the university community. We are expecting over 1000 views per day to begin with. Our site will deal with the latest information technology available to students. We will post around 3 to 4 news items 3 to 4 times a week and also there will be an extensive forum to discuss the technology.

While we don't want to get into developing a fancy website we will be using a lot of PHP, CGI scripting to make the site very dynamic.

For this purpose I am on a 'mission' to find a web hosting service which will satisfy all the needs and wants as stated above. We don't might if the website is a little expensive, since it is being catered to a huge audience we do not want the to cut corners anywhere. But even so we do not hope to pay 50 - 60 dollars per month.

The websites I have researched so far are :
http://invisionhost.com/
http://www.prohosters.com/featured/featured_windows.htm
http://www.3shost.com/
http://gearhost.com
http://readyhosting.com/hosting.cfm

Could you please give the pros and cons of the ones I have mentioned above...and if anyone knows of any other webhosts please do go ahead and tell me about them...

Regards

why don't you just ask the university network to let you host inhouse? most universities will host websites for orginizations without even charging.

yeah we did that already but the service they are providing us with is not good enough to host a site this big. They are possibly giving us 50 MB 1 GB Bandwidth etc etc etc....

but thats for the advice :)

Regards

You might be able to receive non-profit hosting discounts. Ask your university to "approve" your project and give you a document that proves its not-for-profit status.

http://focalhosting.com/ offers free hosting to not-for-profit organizations.

http://futurequest.net/ offers a 30% discount.

http://hostingmatters.com/ offers a 50% discount.

You should do a monthly traffic estimation first then try to find a host that can offer you that amount.

I've done some tech web dev thing when I was in school last year...and I barely see any club sites consumes more than 10 GB per month (trust me the info tech clubs are very famous there :D)
It is very possible that a site has 1000+ visitors per day but still keeps a good traffic profile under 10GB as long as it does not have multimedia downloads. In your case I think 12GB is a good number to start..for the first two months the site wont be visited like hell :)