For those with a website what hosting site do you use and why?

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MIXMASTERMACHOM

DJ Extraordinaire
ODJT Supporter
Oct 16, 2011
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Who do you have hosting your website and why? Just looking into other options see if something is better than 1 & 1.com. They are very good and reliable. Is there something better?
 
I don't think it's the fault of a web hosting service that bookings never materialized. Web site design structure, page content, and SEO qualities are the three keys ingredients to web presence and success. Chances are, you're missing the mark on one or more of the keys.

For pure hosting (no design or SEO functions), I've personally had the greatest success with GoDaddy over a dozen other servers. They do offer design and SEO, but dammit, they expect to be paid for it.
 
I don't think it's the fault of a web hosting service that bookings never materialized. Web site design structure, page content, and SEO qualities are the three keys ingredients to web presence and success. Chances are, you're missing the mark on one or more of the keys.

For pure hosting (no design or SEO functions), I've personally had the greatest success with GoDaddy over a dozen other servers. They do offer design and SEO, but dammit, they expect to be paid for it.

I'm with Cap I don't know if there's a difference between any of them really from a hosting perspective. I use Netfrms for my main DJ site and I'm on the board of an organization and I make the decisions related to anything media and we chose Wix for that one because hosting was a bit less expensive.

From a design perspective if I was a beginner I would use Wix it is as basic as you can get
 
From a design perspective if I was a beginner I would use Wix it is as basic as you can get

I'll agree that Wix is probably the easiest platform but from a design perspective, it's easy to muck up the look-feel of a site with it. I've had a lot better luck with SquareSpace. The design tool is more limited than others, but it pretty well keeps you from stepping on yourself. As for Mix's site, I'd be interested to see it. Something tells me he's probably got 2-3 pages, with half a dozen really bad images and he's expecting that it should have customers beating down his door, which obviously ain't happening.
 
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Ive used a bunch. Godaddy and Bluehost have been best for me. Most are pretty much the same, the deference is if you need a design function as part of it.
 
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I have been with Wix for about 2 years and am very happy with it. Easy to use and update. I am beginning to question how well the SEO with it works though.

That was the main reason I left wix. Well that and it was so flexible that it let me mess up the user interface. After going thru the transition I'd have to say that Wix does about as good a job at SEO as anyone else. Seems the biggest problem I keep seeing is the excessive javascript that these site generators create and there's no way to minimize it. In the scheme of things though that problem doesn't seem to have much impact on actual analytics though.
 
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I was using 1 & 1 when I had a site up. They were very good as I saw it. The cost was just over $21 every 3 months. The first service was charging me $60 a month. I didn't know any better at that time. I don't remember the site. Looking to get a site done in the near future. Just want to see what works best for others here.
 
Just get a website up! Didn't someone design you a website a year or two back?

For hosting they're really all the same these days. A small business website doesn't require many resources so your cheapest GoDaddy, NameCheap, 1&1, etc hosting plan is fine. At the low end it's all pretty much the same as far as uptime and support.

When you start looking at design and SEO services offered by hosters you start to see these companies compete on features and price. I've never used "all in one" or 'full service" hosts like this but I have been in the middle trying to get sites off them for friends and clients. It's generally a nightmare because of vendor lock in.

Sites built on these services often cannot be moved to another host. Now, you spent a premium for an all in one solution for months or years. As a thank you when decide to move elsewhere you need to start from scratch.​

Compartmentalizing services (separate hosting and design companies) is the way to go for the same reason a component Hi-Fi system is better than a bookshelf system. In a component system if the CD changer dies you replace just that. In a bookshelf system you're stuck replacing the whole thing.
 
Just get a website up! Didn't someone design you a website a year or two back?
That was my question. Free web design? Now we need someone to stepup and offer free web hosting!!
 
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I used "my domain" to pick up my domain name. I have unlimited data with hosting from ehosts, which is good because this month alone I have used over a TB from my podcasts alone.

If you get a good hosting company, you should be able to install wordpress right there from your server. Then you can customize your wordpress installation and choose/purchase a theme.

You can check out my site for an example:

Keva Events - When Music Matters
 
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I'm using eHost, but I don't know that I'd recommend it. Good promo rate, but it went up after 2 years quite a bit. And now I get small amounts of downtime every once in a while.

I have the Jetpack plug in monitoring my downtime, and it has sent me 3-4 minute blocks when I'm offline. It's typically in the middle of the night, but still annoying to see.

If it gets worse or actually impedes business I'll switch.
 
I'm using eHost, but I don't know that I'd recommend it. Good promo rate, but it went up after 2 years quite a bit. And now I get small amounts of downtime every once in a while.

I have the Jetpack plug in monitoring my downtime, and it has sent me 3-4 minute blocks when I'm offline. It's typically in the middle of the night, but still annoying to see.

If it gets worse or actually impedes business I'll switch.
Middle of the night downtime is somewhat normal. They need to preform maintenance sometime. With the exception of Cloud Linux hosts if they aren't rebooting their servers at least once a month chances are they are not keeping up to date with patches.

Some of the better hosts are good about notifying you in advance. My go to guys, MDD Hosting, usually notify a couple weeks in advance for planned stuff and ASAP for emergency patches. They're also pretty transparent about any problems that arise.

I use both Jet Pack and Uptime Robot for uptime monitoring. The nice thing about Uptime Robot is they will text and/or DM you on Twitter whenever your site(s) are down.