I have an existing wikimedia site that I'd like to transfer over to a windows host (along with a few other sites).

We don't have that big of a budget, so I've been looking at Soft Sys hosting, and their shared hosting plans would work great for every site except the wiki.

I sent in a feedback ticket asking about setting up wikimedia on a shared hosting plan and received this reply:

As far as I know, MediaWiki runs on PHP + mySQL which is supported on our servers and hence there shouldn't be any issues in using it on our servers. If there are specific php settings that'll be required for it to execute, we may need to setup custom php.ini file which would require you to purchase dedicated application pool.


I was just wondering if anyone could clarify a few things for me.

Does wikimedia actually need a custom php.ini file? As far as I know, there are no specific settings, but I could be wrong.

Also, would this mean a $75 one time setup fee, plus another $75 every time we need to do an upgrade? Do all windows hosts charge this much, or is there a cheaper alternative than softsys hosting? Running a wikimedia site on a php host cost us very little in comparison, so I'm a little curious if this is normal.

Thanks.

Frankly, I'm surprised they're using a shared pool by default.

Any decent Windows host would offer dedicated application pool by default.

There are quite a few custom php settings required for few php apps which would require setting up of custom php.ini file. Furthermore, each application will go into shared application pool by default (which is shared amongst 10-15 websites max). Dedicated application pool is available as an addon with shared hosting packages.

Well, I think you can easily find a windows hosting company that doesn't charge you anything extra for shared application pool. Moreover, certain companies will do php.ini settings free for you ... It is purely a matter of negotiation, a company policy and how is their approach towards acquiring new sign ups.

Hello,

What is your budget? If you would like to host several applications why not get VPS Server?

Regards

Yeah, I'd suggest VPS for this. IIS7 (Win2008), too, not IIS6 (Win2003).
I use EuroVPS for Windows hosting -- excellent.