Looking for excellent web hosting

[Leper]

I'm currently dealing with Omnis Network. They are pretty good as they allow me 1000 gig xfer a month and 1000 meg web space.

My problem with them is they are slowing me down. My site is averaging 30,000 raw hits a day now ant its not even a month old! I have no idea how far or how fast the site will continue to grow. But since I've opened a competition which now has 6 businesses sponsering it, the site has accelerated even more in hits. Yesterday alone we got 50,000 raw hits. That's a lot of clicking.. These stats are coming in my webalizer, not the forum stats.

At anyrate, during peak times my site slows down so bad that I believe it is hindering it's growth. I am looking for excellent web hosting that could take care of what I've got. I need email accounts and php, mysql. Also needing some gigs in bandwidth as my site (not even a month old now) has already exceeded 1.3 gigs in bandwidth.

I was thinking that it would be cool if someone could cut me a super deal and I would advertise their hosting services on my website.

my website is http://www.shmup-dev.com

Just about every user on my site has or wants to have their own website so I think your target market is there. Please let me know if you are interested and what we can put together.

Best regards,
Matt McFarland

[Leper]

Yeah here's the problem.. I spoke with a sales rep over at hostingzoom.com and said I would need a Dedicated server or semi-dedicated server because my php, sql queries plus the 10,000s of hits = hard hit on CPU.

Often times websites that are cheap put about 200 sites on one machine.. There's the problem!!!
So I need to be on an exclusive machine. Ded servers cost anywhere from 60 to 200 a month. they arent anything like webhosting because web hosters usually buy ded servers and then host out for 10.00 - 20 a month to a good amount of people and this site must be on its own machine.. alone.. or with just a couple more sites..maybe a maximum of only 9 sites on the machine.. on a GOOD machine...

[Leper]

Found the problem!! Talked to omnis and they said they had a few sites that were killing their servers. Literally they were doing something wrong causing cpu load to go nuts (30 sec SQL queries just earlier today) - they have shut them down and are working on finding the culprit!

So I guess that I should be fine with omnis for now.. thanks everyone.. I'll keep you posted if anything happens!

[jankoM]

I am not sure if you need dedicated serevr for that. I have website which gets 180.000 hits / day and has 50GB transfer / month and is highly scripted - allmost nothing is static and I had noticed no slowdowns any-time. Only a year back when I had phpBB (forum is just small portion of website) running and it was really getting slow so I changed it with punBB and now this problem is gone.

This is all on shared (not dedicated) server (at least 100 customers with multiple domains) I have 10 there but others are more low volume.

//later: ok, I missed your last post

[revve]

If you have a popular site (especially a CPU intensive one like a forum) it is always a good idea to go to a dedicated server (make sure you look at a managed server if you aren't a linux guru). With shared hosting, any single site can cause the entire server to come to a halt and stop all other sites. If you use your site(s) to make or help you make money, it's even more important.

The reason this is such a problem, is that most hosts (especially the ones that sells 100gb bandwidth for $5) oversell - it means they have (for example) 2000gb bandwidth, but they put 1000 accounts on it, figuring most people won't even use 1gb (it's just not financially feasable not to do this at those prices). This means they have a lot of sites on one server and it also means the server usually runs at it's limit - anything can upset it and cause it to die.

Been there, done that, learned my lesson.

[Leper]

Turns out I'm on a really good host! They dont use traditional servers but what they call "cluster servers" and so they said it should NEVER be slow for anyone. I think that they had a couple websites causing cpu to go haywire, and they shut those sites down only to find which one is the culprit. I'm glad I'm with omnis honestly, they seem to be the best now IMHO :)

[wazoo]

Sooooo you wanna stay with them even though they tried to sell you a dedicated hosting solution before checking out the problem?

I went with www.dreamhost.com and they are the bomb.

Check them out, you won't regret it.

[MrPhil]

Sooooo you wanna stay with them even though they tried to sell you a dedicated hosting solution before checking out the problem?

I spoke with a sales rep over at hostingzoom.com and said I would need a Dedicated server or semi-dedicated server because my php, sql queries plus the 10,000s of hits = hard hit on CPU.

Not picking on anyone, just don't want the dumbness to stick to the wrong guy.

[Teq]

10,000 hits, or 10,000 sessions, there is a big difference :) 10,000 hits is nothing, I would be concerned if you couldn't do 1/2 million hits per day before the alarm bells started to ring (have had several boxes do a lot more than that kind of traffic - though that was back when a site I was hosting had PC Zone coverage).

edit: was talking CPU usage with scripted pages

I personally don't have the whole hosting problem, have leased servers, usually host friends sites on it as well. :)

[Leper]

Well, certainly not 10,000 sessions :) If that were so I think my website would never run at all. Omnis is STILL having issues with their cluster servers and my website is running slow..

I wish I knew where to go. I just am afraid I'll go somewhere and my website wont be any faster, ya know? I've always went the dedicated server route in the past....

Any suggestions? WHO HERE has a website that gets loads of hits and is HIGHLY dependant on SQL? WHAT web hosting are THEY using?

[kreso]

I went with www.dreamhost.com and they are the bomb.

Check them out, you won't regret it.


Just in case you decide to go with dreamhost: although they are very cheap (you can even find coupon codes on the net and get whole year for only 9.99$) you don't want to use them if you have any scripts/mysql running on your server. They offer only 60 CPU minutes per day - which is very little (https://panel.dreamhost.com/kbase/index.cgi?area=3079)!

I suggest you go with dedicated server.
I have purchased a dedicated server from www.dedicatednow.com (unmanaged). Fee is 90$ per month. It has limit of 10Mbps and 1200GB per month. I have their slowest computer (Celeron 1.7GHz, 512 MB RAM) and it is using only 1%.
My site is script intensive, has 10000 unique visits and spends 10GBs per day.