Couple of Webhosting Questions

Kris

Hey all. So I've been meaning to get a personal site up for a while now (would act as an online resume, a place to showcase applications I'm working on, as well as a slight blog). I picked up a domain name in the summer, but put off buying some hosting because I have been waay to busy with school. But school is over now, and I want to try and tackle this project.

So webhosts. Before a sink some cash somewhere, a couple questions about them:

1. Apache vs IIS. As far as I know, the main difference is that Apache does not support ASP or .NET. I doubt the site will be anything more than basic (x)html/css/javascript, but I did a lot of ASP.NET work in school. So if I ended up wanting to add some in later, I'd be screwed on an apache-run server, correct? In the opposite direction, is there anything I'd be screwed out of using if I went with an IIS server instead of apache?

2. Obviously, I do not intent to have a lot of traffic coming through, so bandwidth isn't really an issue in the near future. However, when I do start getting some applications put up, the downloads may spike my bandwidth, so would I be best to futureproof and look for hosting with very large or unlimited bandwidth? And is unlimited bandwidth really unlimited?

3. Any recommendations for hosting companies? I'm very new to this whole buying hosting thing, so if anyone has some big-ups for a certain place, or horror stories about another, please feel free to give a shout-out.

Thanks in advance!!

Jasconius

Very few monthly plan web hosts offer implementations of IIS/Apache with their competitor languages running on them. Example, most Linux/Apache web hosts will not run .NET (even though there are Apache hacks out there for .NET), and visa versa. So even if the opposing framework is technically supported, it is rarely implemented.



Unless you can find an IIS 7 web host then I would say just stick to Linux hosting. I've been with a few IIS6 hosts, all of them big-named (1&1, GoDaddy), and they have been awful and restrictive compared to Linux hosting.



It is probably out of your price range but I highly recommend Mosso to anyone who can afford it and needs .NET functionality either al a carte or with PHP support in addition. The control panel is amazing, the performance is godlike, the plans are well priced for what you get, and the customer support is world class.

Kris

Jasconius wrote: »

I've been with a few IIS6 hosts, all of them big-named (1&1, GoDaddy), and they have been awful and restrictive compared to Linux hosting.

Just curious, in what ways were they awful and restrictive?

And man, I really wish I had $100 a month to spend on webhosting. That link you posted looks niiice.

flatlinegraphics

apache basically lets you modify how the server reacts based on plain text files called htaccess. there are a ton of things you can do with it. IIS makes you configure the server through the IIS managers that you can only access while on the server. (this may not be 100% correct. its been awhile since i've dealt with IIS).

unless you are gun ho about running .NET apps, a LAMP stack is probably your best/cheapest bet (Linux Apache MySQL PHP). alot more tutorials and help out there too. .NET has the MSDN, and still alot of resources, but LAMP seems to have more, esp for a beginner.

i use asmallorange.com for hosting, runs about $25 a year. have had pretty good service. had 1and1.com for awhile during their free preview promotion, and they were pretty good too.

Jasconius

flatlinegraphics wrote: »

apache basically lets you modify how the server reacts based on plain text files called htaccess. there are a ton of things you can do with it. IIS makes you configure the server through the IIS managers that you can only access while on the server. (this may not be 100% correct. its been awhile since i've dealt with IIS).

This is the big thing right here. With IIS 6 there are many settings that require remote access to the machine so you can manage your application through the IIS interface. With IIS 6, you don't have as much control over your application via the Web.Config as you do with IIS 7.

For example, URL rewriting is very difficult on IIS 6 without machine access, whereas on IIS 7 it's built in and can be configured in the Web.Config. That's just one thing, there are several.

I mean, for basic web sites, it will never matter. But if you start running intermediate-advanced .NET application, a shared IIS 6 host will probably cause problems for you.


As for specifics, some hosts take shortcuts with IIS6, such as 1&1, which only gives you *one* application and you have to do some sort of stupid hack with classic ASP to make it work properly.

Godaddy is better, but not incredible.