Ego Eram Reputo Posted November 5, 2012 Share Posted November 5, 2012 It may be time to change my website host as they don't offer PHP on the plan I'm on. I've been toying with the idea of hosting my online presence (low volume website and blog). I've already got IIS and Wordpress installed for development purposes, and have a number of unused Windows boxes lying around that I could use as a server. There is also substantial unused data capacity on my home broadband plan. So is it worthwhile? Or will I just be disappointed with the result? If I have a server running - will I still be able to simultaneously use another PC on the same static IP connection? Quote ebook: Mastering Paint.NET | resources: Plugin Index | Stereogram Tut | proud supporter of Codelab plugins: EER's Plugin Pack | Planetoid | StickMan | WhichSymbol+ | Dr Scott's Markup Renderer | CSV Filetype | dwarf horde plugins: Plugin Browser | ShapeMaker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Brewster Posted November 5, 2012 Share Posted November 5, 2012 If you're going to do a blog, just use Wordpress.com or some other host. You'll save a lot of of the time and hassle that goes into managing your own blog software installation, especially regarding updates and avoiding the latest Hack-of-the-month. Same goes for a forum (like this one!). You probably don't want to be in the business of having to update your blog software on a late Friday night because of some new hack, rather than spending time with family, friends, or your vegetable of choice (TV, video games). With Wordpress.com if you want to have your own domain forwarding, e.g. yourblog.yourdomain.com instead of wordpress.com/yourblog, it costs money but it's only $12/year or something. Definitely worth it. The Paint.NET blog is hosted by Wordpress, fwiw. I used to manage the installation myself but it got unwieldly, with new updates not working correctly and having to stick to an old version because otherwise everything got broken and I had no idea how to fix any of that stuff. Dealing with the Wordpress PHP and the MySQL DB just spun me around in circles. It did get hacked once -- at one point if you did a search on Google for the Paint.NET blog, it would show titles with Viagra ads in them that did not show up on the regular page. So when I talk about "hack of the month," I'm not talking about some hypothetical scare-tactic scenario. If you get a lot of fun out of managing the installations and the updates and stuff, then by all means knock yourself out Also it's generally a very very bad idea to host it on your own connection. Quote The Paint.NET Blog: https://blog.getpaint.net/ Donations are always appreciated! https://www.getpaint.net/donate.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ego Eram Reputo Posted November 6, 2012 Author Share Posted November 6, 2012 Thanks for your thoughts Rick. I'm not so sure I really am a blogger, but I really need a website. The installation and management doesn't worry me - quite like that kind of stuff. Also it's generally a very very bad idea to host it on your own connection. This pretty much confirms what I've been reading. Guess I should start researching hosting packages... Quote ebook: Mastering Paint.NET | resources: Plugin Index | Stereogram Tut | proud supporter of Codelab plugins: EER's Plugin Pack | Planetoid | StickMan | WhichSymbol+ | Dr Scott's Markup Renderer | CSV Filetype | dwarf horde plugins: Plugin Browser | ShapeMaker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Ryan Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 To counter Rick's argument, managing your own WordPress install really isn't that bad at all, and it can be really cheap! If you want to commit specifically to WordPress, there are a lot of great hosts that provide WordPress only services with more freedoms than, say, WordPress.com. Kahuna and WP Engine are some respectable hosts that immediately come to mind. As for 'hack of month' type situations, they are pretty rare for WordPress. While they do exist, it's also incredibly easy to push updates to your site in about a minute over your phone. I manage around 15 different sites all powered on WordPress. Some of them are on basic shared hosting, some are on a VPS I rent, and some are on a hybrid solution of VPN/shared. I have more than enough hosting room, so if you want to, you are more than free to send me a PM and we could surely work something out that's probably going to be more affordable than the aforementioned services. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Brewster Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 Clearly you are far better at managing WordPress installations than I was Quote The Paint.NET Blog: https://blog.getpaint.net/ Donations are always appreciated! https://www.getpaint.net/donate.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Brown Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 NearlyFreeSpeech (which is what I use) offers pay-as-you-go hosting which includes the basics (PHP, MySQL, etc), which might be a better alternative to hosting it yourself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BoltBait Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 I use two different hosting companies. Both cost $9.99 per month. PM me if you want to know who they are. Both have MS SQL instead of MySql. I like it better. And, they do C# hosting. Quote Click to play: Download: BoltBait's Plugin Pack | CodeLab | and how about a Computer Dominos Game Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ego Eram Reputo Posted November 7, 2012 Author Share Posted November 7, 2012 Thanks for all your suggestions. @Mike: Very generous of you. I'll seriously consider that. Quote ebook: Mastering Paint.NET | resources: Plugin Index | Stereogram Tut | proud supporter of Codelab plugins: EER's Plugin Pack | Planetoid | StickMan | WhichSymbol+ | Dr Scott's Markup Renderer | CSV Filetype | dwarf horde plugins: Plugin Browser | ShapeMaker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Ryan Posted November 8, 2012 Share Posted November 8, 2012 Clearly you are far better at managing WordPress installations than I was Designing and developing for WordPress is basically how I makeup for the monetary gap between scholarships/grants and the actual cost of tuition/housing/food @Mike: Very generous of you. I'll seriously consider that. Sure thing. For what it's worth, I personally use http://www.gandi.net and http://www.ixwebhosting.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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