Can someone recommend a good host for the following requirements?

1) Preferably Windows 2003 server, but 2008 is also ok
2) .NET framework 2.0 or higher
3) Full trusted mode in IIS
4) MS SQL server 2005 (one database)
5) MySQL database
6) PHP 5.0 or newer
7) PHP Safe Mode OFF
8) GD Libaries 2.0 or newer
9) FFmpeg

Server should handle about 1000 to 2000 unique visitors a day, and I'm willing to pay up to $20 a month. Appreciate your help :-)

Your requirements seems to be quite nominal and you have a decent budget to get quality hosting. Since you are looking for PHP as well on Windows, I would recommend you to go for Windows 2008 as PHP is built up to perform much better on Win 2008 under FastCGI mode. Also, what are your disk space/bandwidth requirements? Do you have any preference for control panel?

- Rick

Ok, thanks for the tip about windows 2008 and php. I need to make some minor adjustments to make the current site work under 2008, but I would be happy to do so if it improves performance.

I think 10 GB /100 GB should be enough for disk space/bandwith to begin with, but would prefer if upgrading is not too expensive.

I don't have much experience with controlpanels, so the only requirement would be one that is fairly easy to learn/use.

Full trusted mode in IIS feature is going to be the rough one. The only shared host I know firsthand that offers it is DiscountASP.

Sorry, not trying to confuse the situation. How does FFmpeg work within PHP and Windows? Is it calling an .exe?

That might be the tough part in shared hosting and more so than the full trust issue (also a biggie). Allowing anonymous users rights to execute cmd.exe in order to call executables is a really, really bad idea.

Either a 2003 or 2008 VPS might be the best solution depending on how FFmpeg has to be implemented.

Regards,

Wayne

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Here is a big more background information, so that you perhaps can advice me better what to do:

I initially had someone develop my main website using ASP. Now, I want to add a social network to the site, using SocialEngine (PHP-based). SocialEngine works best with Linux, but Windows server is also ok.

1) Windows 2003/2008 server
2) .NET framework 2.0 or higher
3) Full trusted mode in IIS
4) MS SQL server 2005 (one database)

are the requirements for running the main site, whereas

5) MySQL database
6) PHP 5.0 or newer
7) PHP Safe Mode OFF
8) GD Libaries 2.0 or newer
9) FFmpeg

are requirements for running SocialEngine.

I thought of hosting the different parts on different servers (i.e. one Linux and one Windows server), but from what I understand this is not possible when using the same domain. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.

If full trust is an issue, I have spoken to the developer and he can change this to medium, but it requires quite a bit of work. Therefore, I don't want to do this unless I should/have to.

FFmpeg isn't really required to run SocialEngine, but it's needed if people are going to upload their own videos. From what I understand, embedding from youtube etc. will still work without FFmpeg. Video uploading isn't essential for the social network, so if FFmpeg is an issue, I might consider dropping this function.

I appreciate your help!

If you can change to medium trust can drop FFmpeg support than your needs are pretty generic and just about any quality Windows hosting provider can assist you.

I would investigate usual top hosts such as DiscountASP, Crystal Tech and the signatures of helpful folks around here.

Regards,

Wayne

You might want to look at an MS VPS if you are having OS trust issues.